A Conspiracy of Paper (7 page)

“ ’E said ’e would keep ’em ’pon ’im,” Kate told me, “for ’e said ’e knew that someone would be comin’ for ’em sooner or later. They wasn’t safe nowhere else, ’e said.”

This information certainly narrowed my options. If this Arnold had a notion of what was in the letters, it could be quite bad for Sir Owen. They need not have the proof to spread damaging rumors, particularly if this Sarah Decker he intended to marry was as delicate as Sir Owen claimed.

I went over with her what she had told me and then handed her a purse with five pounds in it, enough for her to eat, drink, and clothe herself in relative comfort until her trial.

Once I left her cell I would have to make arrangements for her lodgings. In order for her to cooperate with me, Kate would have to be made comfortable, and that meant moving her to the Press Yard—no inexpensive place, I can assure you, as it was the most desirable section of the prison. There the inmates could enjoy relatively spacious and clean rooms, walk about unmolested in the open air of the courtyard, and be waited on by turnkeys who had more in common with tavern publicans than jailers. Anything could be procured for silver in the Press Yard. While the drink was weak and sometimes stale, it was better than the foul water of the Common Side. And if the food was overpriced and bland, it proved far superior to the slop the poorer prisoners endured, often so crawling with maggots as to be nearly inedible.

The price of these accommodations would injure me severely: twenty pounds to gain Kate entrance to the Press Yard, and another eleven shillings a week for her rent. After the money I would have to pay this villain Arnold, and the several bribes that had already lightened my purse, I saw no possibility that Sir Owen’s remarkable fee of fifty pounds should so much as cover my expenses. A matter I had believed should be simple and lucrative was now to cost me an amount that would reckon in the shillings if not the pounds. Parting with so large a sum to house Kate made me miserable, but I could not see that I had a choice. I would pay as required for her silence.

“I shall come back to make sure you are well,” I told her, though it was a lie, just as my assurance that she would not hang was a lie. I expected the evidence would acquit her, though I knew not to what lengths Jonathan Wild would go to procure witnesses for a prosecution. Nevertheless, I could not make myself Kate Cole’s protector, so I left Newgate prison hoping, in the weeks ahead, to think of her as little as possible.

SIX

R
ATHER THAN RETURN HOME
I went immediately to the vicinity of Bloomsbury Square, where my friend Elias Gordon took a lodging he could ill afford on Gilbert Street. I was younger in those days, and required little in the way of assistance, but at times when I could not adequately serve one of my patrons without some aid, I was accustomed to calling on Elias, a Scottish surgeon and a trusted friend. I met Elias after my last fight, when I had so permanently damaged my leg. It had been during my third pitched battle with Guido Gabrianelli, that Italian whom I had beaten twice before and whose beatings had earned me so much notoriety.

Gabrianelli had come from Padua, where he was known as the Human Mallet or some other such rot uttered in his native and effeminate tongue. I had boxed against foreign men before; Mr. Habakkuk Yardley, who arranged my fights, loved a match against foreigners, for Englishmen gladly paid forth their shillings to see one of their countrymen—or even a Jew they could pretend was a true Englishman—fight a Frenchified dandy. There was something rather leveling about the conflicts of fists—Jews became Englishmen and all foreigners became Frenchmen.

This Human Mallet Gabrianelli arrived in England, and without so much as inquiring of me or Mr. Yardley about arranging a pitched battle, he proceeded to publish the most infuriating notice in the
Daily Advertiser:

It has come to my attention that there is a Boxer on this island who is credited with the strength of a Samson—one
Benjamin
Weaver
, who calls himself the
Lion of Judah
. But if he claims he can beat me, I call him the
Liar of Judah
. In my native
Italy
no one dares fight me, for I break every opponent’s jaw with my fist. Let us see if this
Weaver
has the courage to match his strength with mine. Standing ready and at his service, I am

Guido Gabrianelli, the Human Mallet

My fellow-fighters and I were astonished at the belligerence of this foreigner. It was no uncommon thing for boxers to take out provoking notices in this paper, but one usually waited until a conflict had produced a grudge—to begin a relationship with a grudge was a very preposterous thing. But Mr. Yardley saw that there was silver in Gabrianelli’s absurdity, and that these flamboyant boasts should draw us a pretty crowd. So while he made arrangements with this worthy, I replied in kind, taking out my own advertisement, which Mr. Yardley had advised me to make as provoking as I could.

Let
Mr. Gabrianelli
, this fighter from
Italy
, be aware that I am ready and eager to box with him at a moment’s notice. I do not doubt the veracity of his claims that in his native land he breaks every opponent’s jaw with his fist, but
Mr. Gabrianelli
ought to be advised that here he will be fighting men of grit, and I have reason to doubt that he could break a
Briton’s
jaw with an anvil. Should
Mr. Gabrianelli
be reckless enough to agree to the challenge he has proposed, I heartily hope all natives of this Island will attend to see what happens to foreigners who come to these shores to make idle boasts to,

Ben. Weaver

This fight became the talk of the votaries of the art of pugilism, and it proved to be better attended than we had dared to hope, bursting to its very capacity Mr. Yardley’s theatre in Southwark. Indeed, the take at the door was in excess of one hundred and fifty pounds, of which Yardley took a third and the fighters each a third.

Gabrianelli arrived looking like a game-enough boxer. I had seen this man once before, and that at a distance, as he paraded about town in his silly red suit, dandified with stuff and ribbons, and from the look of him I thought any Briton at all should be able to fell the Italian with no greater weapon than his breath. Now, stripped as we both were to naught but our breeches, stockings, and pumps, I could see he was a man of some muscle. More than that, he had a frighteningly bestial quality about him, for beneath his freshly shaved head, his back and chest were matted with thick black hair like an ape of Africa. The crowd, too, had been expecting a silly fop who knew not enough to remove his wig for the match, and many stared in mute amazement at this shaggy creature as he lumbered back and forth along his end of the ring, flexing the muscles of his chest and arms.

My concerns, at least for this fight, proved groundless. Once the battle began, Gabrianelli lashed out with a powerful blow to my chin. It came quite suddenly, and it hurt tremendously, I admit, but I made a show of demonstrating to the cheering crowds that my jaw was not broken. I turned my back to my opponent and slapped my own face lightly on either side, which gesture awarded me an uproarious cheer.

Gabrianelli attempted to sneak up behind me, to take advantage of my antics. I knew my behavior was dangerous, but it pleased the crowd, and thus it pleased Mr. Yardley, who was never ungenerous with bonuses for his best fighters, just as he was merciless to his fighters who lost too often. In any event, I ducked just in time to evade a powerful blow of this Human Mallet, and taking advantage of my crouched position, I lashed out with a right fist pointed directly to his gut, cutting upward just as I made contact, in the hopes of lifting him into the air.

I succeeded. It is no idle boast that I sent him reeling backward, as though blown by a great gust of wind, until his feet met the railing of the ring, and he tripped over, falling onto an eager gathering of spectators, who joined in the fun by beating him down until he grew quite intertwined with the thicket of legs. The crowd was now wild, and I raised my hands in victory, even as I taunted Gabrianelli to return to the ring. He lay motionless for only a second, and then he stirred, rising to his feet, his mouth agape with confusion. When he turned to look upon me, I saw that his face, along with much of his bald head, had turned a blinding crimson, and he began waving a fist about him in a challenging manner, shouting something in his own whimsical language.

Mr. Yardley, a notorious fighter in his own day, now grown fat and jolly, called to me from below, “I think he’s challenging you, Ben.”

“Challenging me to what?” I inquired with some difficulty, for my jaw had already grown sore from the blow it had taken. “This is a boxing ring. What more of a challenge could he desire?”

As it happened, he wished to challenge me to a duel of blades. It seemed that in Italy, one never strikes an opponent in the stomach. It is considered unmanly. There, I suppose, they simply strike one another in the face all day—making it no surprise that these jaws of theirs shatter so routinely. Gabrianelli believed that I had committed an outrage and refused to step into the ring again with a man who knew no honor. I was thus declared a winner, and Mr. Yardley narrowly averted a riot, for the crowd began to murmur with rage that they had paid a shilling to see only three punches thrown. By announcing that their admission fee had paid for them to witness proof of the strength of the Briton over the foreigner, Yardley saved his neck and our proceeds.

My reputation only grew as a result of this match, and while I continued to fight, and quite frequently win, all about the city—in Smithfield, Moorfields, St. George’s Fair Grounds, as well as Yardley’s theatre at Southwark—Gabrianelli crawled off to lick his wounds and to learn that in England boxing is more than just an endless volley of jaw-pummeling. After spending some months sparring in the British fashion, he sent me another challenge, which I happily answered. Gabrianelli had improved his skills, but I found him still weak about the middle section. He struck me in the jaw. I returned in the stomach. He launched another peg to my face, and I to his middle. This continued, almost monotonously, for a quarter of an hour, until out of pure spite I aimed a blow as hard as I could to his chin, sending him down on his back. I ran over, ready to serve him more of the same, though I could not believe that his jaw had taken any more punishment than had my hand, for Gabrianelli had a solid chin, and it hurt far less to punch him about the middle. Further blows, fortunately, were not called for, for he lay still, his arms high above his head, his legs curled up like a baby’s. It was a position from which he did not stir for a full half an hour.

When Yardley and I received our third challenge of Gabrianelli, we little thought to accept it. It was unclear that the crowd would pay to see me beat this man a third time, but while we hesitated, Gabrianelli assaulted us with insulting advertisements almost daily, first calling me
coward
and
buffoon
. I laughed these insults off, but when he changed his tack to calling me
a coward from an island of cowards
and a
British buffoon, the most
laughable kind of buffoon in the world,
Yardley believed these insults should produce a sufficient interest in the match. Indeed, the crowds did turn out for this third fight. I had grown overconfident of my abilities to defeat this man, which was foolish of me, for I knew Gabrianelli to have some true skill; I had tasted myself the power of his blows. But I believed too strongly in my own previous victories, and the bets placed on the fight echoed my confidence, for the odds that I should lose were placed at twenty to one.

My opponent had trained for this fight. I later learned that he had spent hours allowing men to strike him in the stomach, hoping to build an endurance. Now, when I began, as I had before, with a frenzied assault upon his middle, he manfully withstood my blows. He continued with his own strategy of pummeling me about my face, and I, with an equally masculine resolve, withstood his best. We beat each other fiercely for the better part of an hour until my naked skin glistened with sweat and his black hair clumped in ugly tangles about his body. This fight lasted so long that I believe the crowd began to grow restless, for by the end we circled one another listlessly, as though underwater, aiming blows, or slowly avoiding them.

It was then that he hit me. It was a marvelous and artful punch, one I did not believe him to have in reserve. He aimed directly at my jaw, and in my weariness I did not see it coming. Or rather, I did see it coming, but I could not quite remember what to do about a punch aimed full to my face. I watched it sail toward me like some demon bird, until he struck me hard upon my chin. I remember thinking, as a hot, obscuring whiteness clouded my vision, and I lost all sense of balance, that I should be the object of unceasing ridicule if my jaw should indeed be broken. My concern was misplaced, for my jaw survived the day with only a severe swelling, but the force of Gabrianelli’s blow knocked me backward and quite out of the ring in a mirror image of our first match.

I cannot easily describe what I felt—confusion, horror, shame, and a kind of focused agony so intense that I could not even tell if it was pain at all or something entirely new to my experience. At first I could not quite locate its source, but as my vision cleared, I noted with the kind of calm acceptance that sometimes befalls the victims of misfortune that my left leg lay at the most damnable angle. Upon flying from the ring, my right foot had caught upon the very edge of the stage, and I landed hard upon my left shin, which broke in two separate places.

As the shock of the moment wore off, my torment, the likes of which I hope never to know again, rendered me insensible, and I must rely on Elias’s account of what happened next.

Then a complete stranger to me, Elias Gordon had chosen, in a gambler’s panic, to bet a hundred pounds against the favored fighter. When I landed against the ground in a twisted heap, he had jumped up and shouted “Two thousand pounds!” at the very top of his voice. I do not believe he had ever been in possession of so massive a sum before, and overwhelmed with the possibilities that my misfortune had provided for him, he arranged with Mr. Yardley that he should tend to me himself at no charge. My supposed friend, Yardley, was agreeable, for Elias expressed some concern over the injury. The break was serious enough that he considered my life to hang in the balance for the next few days, and should I live, he doubted that I should ever walk again, and fully dismissed the idea that I should ever fight again. Like all medical men, Elias perhaps exaggerated the dangers of my condition, so if matters turned out badly his predictions would prove accurate, and if I recovered he should appear a miracle worker. Mr. Yardley listened to Elias’s evaluation and pronounced that it was all one to him and that he had no regard for ruined fighters; I never saw the man again but when he came to deliver my share of the proceeds.

Elias, however, made my recovery his only concern; he stayed with me in my rooms almost every night the first week, to make certain my fever did not carry me off. It was a testament to his skills as a surgeon that I can even walk at all, for most men to suffer damage of this severity can move about only with the aid of crutches or must bear the indignity and torment of amputation. As I lay under his care, growing fond of this whimsical Scotsman, I confess I felt the greatest envy of him. My livelihood had been wrested from me, and here was a man gifted at his craft who had procured enough money that he could set himself up in the proper style and never want for bread again.

Elias, unfortunately, like my new acquaintance, Sir Owen, had a taste for the pleasures of the town—he also had a bit of poetry in him. Just a bit, I say, as anyone who had read his volume of verse,
The Poetical Surgeon
, would agree.

Elias never explained to me how he spent that money—no doubt he had squandered it in endless and unmemorable bouts of whoring, gaming, and poetic composition—but after I recovered from my injury, and spent my darker years away from London, I returned and called upon my old friend to find him as jolly as ever, dressed in the fashionable style and following after the amusements of the town—but for all his gaiety, he was entirely penniless.