Adam sprang again. He struck but one blow this time, a rounder with the right fist, but he landed it just where he wanted it—a trifle to the left of the point of the chin. Then he danced back.
Any other man on earth, he thought with a sob, would have been stopped by that punch. It stung all down Adam's arm, and the fist itself had been set aflame. But Cyossetta came on in.
Adam retreated. He had to.
He ducked low, and went in with head down, hooking right and left. He butted the belly, swung for the groin, missed, slipped. Something that could have been an elbow struck the back of his head, and a knee came up and caught him on a cheekbone. He was down, but his head was clear. He had time to spring to his feet and scrabble away from Cyossetta's charge. Baffled, Cyossetta came to a stop. Adam jumped in and plopped a fist spang on the nose. The blood fairly gushed out, slobbering all down over Cyossetta's fur togs. Cyossetta paid it no mind. He simply shook his head, the impatient gesture of a man who has walked into a cobweb in the dark, and came shambling on.
Did the brute have no point of vulnerability? Adam backed away, backed away— He tried to maneuver himself to a point behind Cyossetta, or even to one side of him; for the giant, waving his hands the way a lobster waves its claws, like a lobster again could only hold off a head-on attack. If Adam couldn't knock him down, perhaps he could throw him, spill him suddenly? Once Cyossetta was down, his head could be kicked against the cobbles.
Whether from instinct or reason, Cyossetta did not permit this. He turned as Adam moved.
When Adam would stand still for a moment, Cyossetta would start toward him. Cyossetta never appeared to be in a hurry.
Adam retreated, felt a wall behind him, stepped to one side, felt another wall. Then he couldn't swallow; for he realized that he had let himself be cornered. Intent on the giant's face, performing a series of quick retreats, never worried about the onlookers, who were careful to keep out of his way, he had given no thought to what might be behind him. It had appeared, initially, as though they had plenty of room. But though the houses that made up this circus were close together, in most cases touching, and though generally they presented a smooth wood-and-plaster front to the pavement, there were projections, irregularities. And Adam was in a corner now.
He took a deep breath. He bumped his buttocks against the wall, pushed forward with a foot, too, and hurled himself against Cyossetta.
It was like pummeling a tree, trying to make it go dowoi. Adam swung from side to side, evading those enormous hands, hooking in punches as hard as he could—and as fast.
He couldn't have told you, afterwards, when it was that he missed Cyossetta. Men cooed and chittered reassuringly at him, a whit afraid to reach out and touch him, and after a while he caught himself stumbling around looking for the face he was to punch, not finding it.
Once he had seen a cock, a shakebag, hackles high, gaffs wet, one eye torn out while the other was flooded with blood, stagger around the pit, furious, tearing the air, blindly seeking its enemy—which lay dead. Adam must have been something like that.
He stopped, feeling a little foolish. He looked around.
Cyossetta the oak tree had been felled at last, and lay motionless. The spirit kicked him twice in the side of the head.
"Y' bleedin' fool," he screeched, accurately enough. "Yer carn't even fight!"
He kicked Cyossetta again, then slipped into the crowd.
Adam Long went to the young man in blue and silver, and bowed briefly, murmuring thanks.
"You were right, sir. It was more than I'd bargained for."
" 'Twas a damned fine show, sir. Here—permit me to help you on with the coat. Will you share a bird and a bottle with me, sir?"
"Well— Do you know any place we could go?"
"La, I know 'em all."
Together then, the slim and elegant young man carrying his hat, which was cocked all around and had blue feathers, they departed daintily from the circus. Their swords swung at their sides.
The young man's name it turned out was John Chumley, and it was necessary for him to carry his hat because he wore so big a periwig, a massive full-bottomed affair.
At the Crimson Cockatoo the host fairly slavered, and half a dozen customers bowed and called greetings.
"You are from the American colonies, sir?" politely,
Adam stared at him.
"Now how did you know that?"
Chumley smiled, and talked of something else.
He spoke slowly, indeed he drawled, yet it was not easy to understand him. His speech sounded to Adam even further from straight English than that of Willis Beach. In some respects, and notably in the use of "a" for "o"—he said "lard" when he meant "lord," for instance—it reminded Adam of the speech of Maisie Treadway. It had been purposely perverted. It was a class mark.
"What do you think of London, then?"
"Well, it seems mighty—crowded."
He stole a look at his companion, who, having demolished two partridges and a bottle of St. Julien, was picking his teeth.
"You must know a lot of folks in this town."
"I know everyone worth knowing."
"There are two men I'd like to meet. Something I want each of them to explain. I want satisfaction."
"What a bloodthirsty one it is! Invades our fair isle for the purpose of skewering a couple of gents he don't fancy, and the first morning he's here he pummels the guts out of some Whitefriars Hercules with a name like a sneeze—just to keep in trim, I take it? 'Struth, Captain, is it really that wonderful air the spirit spoke of?"
"Only one of them I'd fight," Adam said mildly.
"Now would it be unmannerly if I was to ask the names?"
"No harm. One happens to be the Earl of Tillinghast."
"Why now, dip me down a jakes! You'd call out a fuddyduddy like that, a man old enough to be your father?"
Adam flushed.
"He ain't the one I'm going to call out. Uh, I take it he don't live here in London? Out in the country, in his own castle maybe?"
"Well now, I wouldn't call Tillinghast a castle. Damned handsome shack though."
"I mean, he's not here in the city now?"
"Not now, no. He was, an hour ago."
"Eh?"
"Right this minute I'd say his lordship is just wondering what part of the river to heave his breakfast into. He just embarked. Ambassador extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary with love from Anne to Louis. What's that? We're at war with France? Why, so we are, man! And Tillinghast's being sent to Versailles exactly because Sarah Churchill wishes to be sure that we continue at war. There's been ugly rumors of a possible peace."
"He—just sailed—you say?"
" 'Bout an hour ago. I saw his coach trundling down toward the river just before you came along and started tilting at the dragon."
"Is it— Is it yellow, that coach?"
"Why, 'tis, truly."
"Has it got a device on top—two wobbly white lines slantwise across a field of red?"
"Dexter?"
"Well, I guess so."
"Must be. Hardly be sinister. Why, that's gules, two bendlets invested argent. Aye, the Tillinghast 'scutcheon."
Adam touched his chest. He winced.
It had been a memorable welcome.
"The other one," he said, "is Sir Jervis Johnston."
"Oh now, see here, you're not proposing to fight Jerve Johnston?"
"I sure am. Reckon you could arrange it?"
"La, I'd be an accessory before the fact in a murder case if ever I did. Why, Jerve'd carve you."
"Well, he'll get the chance."
"Yet you could call him out right enough, yes. All the formalities. Go to the field. Then an apology, last minute. It's been done."