The Quality of Mercy

11



As Michael Bordon, walking close behind his father, drew nearer to the eye of the pit, he saw, in this first light of day, what looked like stones falling through the sky, and knew this for the plunging flight of peewits, the first of the year, the courtship flight. Because of the mist that lay over the fields he could not watch the recovery from these downward plunges, but he had seen it often enough before, the way they flirted with catastrophe, saving themselves at what seemed the last possible moment, rising again on strong wingbeats.

The sight of the birds did something to uplift his mood, which was somber this morning. It was Saturday; next day he was due to meet Walker in the corner of the big field. He was not afraid of hurt, but he was afraid of losing. He felt now that he had been unwise to force the issue in this way; he had allowed his temper to get the better of him. It might have been possible to ask the overman if his brother could be shifted to another putter. Too late for that now; he could not withdraw from the fight at this late stage, on any pretext at all. If he lost, David would be worse off than ever. He had some advantages: he was very quick in the reflexes of his body, he had good balance and he saw well on both sides. But he was not a natural brawler, and his adversary was two years older and a good deal thicker in the shoulders.

Walker was among the men waiting at the head of the shaft to be winched down, but the two did not look at each other. They had to wait there some minutes for the banksman’s call of all clear. Michael saw the women and girls arrive, a little later than usual. Elsie was among them, and he could see her face and form clearly because of the lamps round the mouth of a new shaft that was being sunk to serve for ventilation; the sinkers were only three feet down, they needed a good light at the surface. The smile she gave him was different from one you might get when passing in the street or talking together among other people. It stayed with him as the banksman’s call came up, as side by side with his father he clutched at the rope and made a loop in which to bind his rig ht thigh, as he secured his grip and took David astraddle over his knees, as they were winched down and the light from the fire bucket overhead slowly faded, leaving them to descend in a darkness relieved only by the flickering light of the candles far below.

Elsie’s face and the movements of her body as she worked came to him intermittently as he toiled through the day. The routine of his work varied little. He had a youth to help him, a little older than his brother. Together they loaded the corves with the coal hacked out by the hewers, together they loaded these onto the wooden sledges, though the heavier part of this fell to the elder—the boy was not yet strong enough to take his full half of the weight. Michael wore thick strips of leather attached to the back of his belt and known to all as bum flaps; with the aid of these he would crouch to get his backside against the loaded corf and heave against it, while the boy hauled on it from the other side, until together they got it shifted into position on the sledge. Then, with one pushing from behind and one dragging from the front, they moved the loaded sledge to the pit bottom, where the corves were tallied, hung on the rope by the onsetters and drawn up.

This series of actions they continued for the fourteen hours of the shift, with two breaks to eat and drink—brief, because their wages depended on the amount of coal they moved. In the final two hours neither man nor boy had any thought at all. There was only the ache of the muscles, the patient endeavor to keep on till the time was up, the wish to be out of the dust and the shifting light, to get to the rope and wrap themselves in it and be drawn up into the open, into the friendly dark.

It was not until evening, when he was washing down, that Michael thought of Walker again, and then only because David was with him, and it was there that he had first noticed the boy’s bruises. David had said he wanted to be there, to see the fight, and Michael had found no reason against it, though knowing that if he were beaten David would suffer a double blow, forced to witness his own defeat and the loss of his champion.

From the beginning he had sworn his brother to secrecy. He had said nothing about the matter to anyone else in the family, hoping particularly to keep it from his father, who was violent in his rages and quite capable of challenging Walker’s father to a bout—or any other member of the family—if he saw things going against his son. Michael was glad, that Sunday morning, as he walked the half-mile or so to the big field—so called because it was a hundred acres in area—that he had made no mention of it. It was a personal quarrel; he had no desire at all for any public triumph. The only thing that mattered was that Walker should stop taking things out on his brother.

He had chosen for his seconds, first making them promise to say nothing to anyone, two men of his own age whom he had known for as long as he could remember—they had all three started down the mine at the same time. One of them was a cousin of Elsie Foster. There was no source of water anywhere near the field; it had to be carried, and the two took turns with the bucket and sponge as they walked beside him. It would have made more sense to choose a place nearer the Dene, where water could have been fetched from the beck, but the corner of the big field was the time-honored place for such encounters, and it would never have occurred to anyone to suggest anywhere else.

At the far end of the field the ground sloped down, then leveled out near the corner, so there was a clear space bounded on both sides by fences and giving a certain sense of enclosure. Michael and his small party were first to arrive, and while they waited he stood a little apart from the others, tense now with knowledge of the test he knew to be coming. In spite of this tension he was curiously detached, taking note of his surroundings as though he would be required afterward to give an account of them. It was a misty morning, with a pale radiance of sunshine. In the copse at the top of the field there was a colony of rooks, and he could hear the bleating of lambs somewhere beyond that. The cries of the rooks had the same wild, plaintive note as those of the lambs; they echoed back and forth until it became difficult to distinguish one from the other. Through this confusion of sound there came the song of a lark overhead, steady and unfaltering, as he felt his own purpose to be now. He thought again of his brother’s face, wide-eyed with the guilt of the bruises.

Across the fields, in the direction of the village, he saw a group of five or six men approaching, dressed in Sunday best, dark suits, caps, white mufflers. As they drew nearer he made them out: Walker was in the center, flanked by his father, two of his uncles and his two older brothers, one of whom was carrying the bucket.

“He’s browt the family with ’im,” Elsie’s cousin said.

Michael’s heart contracted with contempt for Walker, who had blabbed to his people. “Numbers are needed if tha’s in the army an’ facin’ the same way as arl the others,” he said. The scorn was unreasonable, even childish; in some part of his mind he knew it. But it came by necessity; it gave strength to his purpose. For the first time he felt that he had a fair chance of beating Walker.

Greetings were of the briefest. The respective seconds took up position with their buckets roughly ten yards apart. Michael took off his jacket and Walker did the same. The two men advanced toward each other, and they came in a fighting crouch, fists raised—there were no preliminary words, no handshake.

Because the other had adopted a boxing stance, Michael was braced for an exchange of blows, but at the last moment, when they were scarcely a yard apart, Walker dropped his hands, lowered his head and put all his weight into a shoulder charge. There was no time to step aside or give ground, no time to draw back an arm and deliver a punch. Michael took some of the impact on his forearms, which were still extended before him, but the main force of Walker’s head and right shoulder took him in the chest, in the region of the heart, winding him so that he fell on one knee, fighting for breath.

It was fortunate for him that he did not try to remain standing, or the fight would have ended there. His seconds came forward to bring him to his corner—this was technically a fall, and he had a right to two minutes of breathing space. But he waved them away and struggled to his feet again. Walker came forward in a rush, as if to repeat the maneuver, but in the midst of the pain that breathing still caused him, some instinctive cunning told Michael that this was a feint, designed to make him lower his guard, that the other would stop short and strike at his face, reversing the trick that had served so well at the beginning. In a pretense of being deceived, he took two steps back and lowered his fists as if bracing himself for another charge, at the same time drawing back his right shoulder and keeping his right arm low. As Walker stopped short and swung with his right hand, Michael raised his left arm to block the blow, stepped in close and put all his strength into a hooking punch to the upper part of his opponent’s midriff. He saw Walker’s face twist with pain, saw the droop of the body as the breath left him. He struck again, first with the left, then more heavily with the right. Despite his hurt, Walker had tucked in his jaw and lowered his head, so these blows were too high to clinch the fight, but the second, landing on the left cheekbone, was enough to send him staggering sideways. Underestimating his opponent’s toughness and power of recovery, Michael made the mistake now of advancing too eagerly, and received a blow that split his lip and sent him back on his heels. Again he was lucky. Walker, in haste to make the most of his advantage, slipped on the grass as he advanced. He did not fall, but he lost some moments, and Michael was able to slow him down further with a desperate blow, somewhere between a swing and a lunge, landing on the left temple.

It was a wild blow, but it turned out to be the one that decided the issue. Walker had made no move to block it, though it had been clumsy enough and clearly signaled. It came to Michael now, as he tasted the blood running into his mouth, that his opponent had not seen it coming, that perhaps he did not see well on that side.

The impetus of the fighting, always fiercest in the opening minutes, had lessened now. The two men circled each other for some moments, then Michael repeated the blow, this time giving a wider angle to the swing. Again the blow landed on the temple, but now more heavily. Walker shook his head slightly as if dazed. Michael jabbed at the other’s left eye in an effort to close off his vision on that side altogether. He received a flailing blow across the bridge of the nose. Through the tears that this occasioned he saw that Walker’s head was hanging low. He swung against the left temple again, putting all the weight of his body into the punch, and Walker went down.

He was supported to his corner and the wet sponge pressed to his forehead to revive him, but the two minutes passed and he did not rise to come forward. Looking across at him, Michael saw that he was conscious. The left eye was obscured by blood, despite the bathing, but the other was open and regarding him sullenly. Walker was beaten and he knew it—he had no heart for more.

Michael knew better than to utter any words. The men with Walker had faces of rage. He stood waiting a half-minute longer, then turned away. As he did so he experienced some moments of giddiness and a certain doubt as to whether the ground was firm enough under his feet. He backed against the wires of the fence for support. The corner of his right eye gave him pain, his ribs on the left side ached from Walker’s charge and the blood from his upper lip was still flowing, staining his shirt. He closed his eyes, and in a darkness shot through with fire he heard a girl’s voice: “A canna reach up so far, sit thesen down against the fence.” He opened his eyes to see Elsie Foster’s face before him, very serious and intent. She was holding the bucket and sponge. “Tha’s too tall for me to reach up,” she said, almost as if it were a failing on his part.

He sank into a sitting position against the fence. A moment later he felt the wondrous cool of the water on his brows and on his mouth. “Tha’s in a right mess,” Elsie said.

“She must have got wind of it somehow,” the cousin said. “Mebbe she heard some talkin’. She must have follered behind us. She took the bucket, it was nay use arguing, she’s a terror when she’s set on summat.”

Through the blessed touch of the sponge, he saw her face, full of care. “Can a call round nex’ Sunday?” he said, in something of a mumble because of the split lip.

Now at last he saw her smile. “A thowt tha’d never ask me,” she said.