Minuet (21 page)

There was a hush in the room, the silence stretching from table to table as the insult was relayed by the patrons.

“You call the Butcher of Lozère a baboon?” he howled, in accents not so very different from one.

“My apologies—to the baboons,” Degan answered with a bow.

A savage smile descended on the giant’s face. The stupidity was replaced by some animal lust that was terrible to see. At the same time his loose hands folded into fists as big as cabbages, the muscles in his arms bulging taut against his shirt. Involuntarily, Degan took a step backward. His frustration and anger, as much with Mérigot as with the Butcher, goaded him on, but reason whispered he was badly outclassed.

He knew Henri and Sally were only seconds away; at that instant they entered, their eyes widening at what sight met them. “What’s going on?” Henri asked in deep alarm. In a few quiet words Degan told them.

“Come, we go,” Sally said, taking Degan’s hand and heading for the door.

“The midget beater runs?” the Butcher howled after him.

“If you wish a match with my boy, I’ll arrange it with you,” Henri said, approaching the giant, but with a quailing heart. He had, of course, no intention of keeping any appointment, but thought this might ease their exit.

“No time like the present. We meet this afternoon at two,” the Butcher replied, with a gloating, hungry smile at Degan.

“We’re busy this afternoon,” Sally said, pulling to a stop.

“We go to Rouen for another match,” Henri added, to lend an air of verisimilitude to this excuse.

“Come, we leave,” Sally whispered to Degan, but he held back, waiting to hear the outcome. “He’ll kill you,” she warned. “He broke a man’s jaw, remember, and
killed
someone last year.” These reminders did not increase Degan’s wish to fight, yet he felt his blood rushing again at the bold way the damned baboon ogled Sally.

“A good excuse. Your boy is a coward, in other words,” the Butcher said in a loud, jeering voice, glancing around to the patrons for admiration.

Henri, eager to appease the menace, answered affably, “Not a
coward,
surely, to be afraid to meet the Butcher of Lozère.”

“I’m not afraid to meet him!” Degan heard himself say.

“Bah, how does this milksop rate a pretty whore like the redhead?” the baboon laughed.

Henri readied himself for more appeasement of the giant, but soon realized he had a more pressing diplomatic chore on his hands to appease Degan. He was pulling free from Sally’s hands that tried to hold him, and was rapidly advancing to demand satisfaction for this insult, though it had been intended as no insult, nor did any of the patrons read one into it.

“You will apologize to the lady,” Degan announced in a quietly menacing voice. The dread word “lady” stood Henri and Sally’s hair on end. Add to it the fact that his French was bad enough to raise doubts in the most unsuspicious of ears, and they could fairly feel the guillotine fall on their necks.

“Come, Philippe,” Henri said, pulling his arm.

“Oui, mon chou,
we do not bother with this one,” Sally said, trying to convey by her tone both her lack of offense at the word and her eagerness to be off.

“Why do you bother with this dull one, my little whore?” the Butcher asked her, letting his eyes rove over her slowly, from head to toe. “I, Antoine Laurier, the Butcher of Lozère, will be honored to replace him, and prove a better lover too.”

While Antoine was still leering at her, Degan shot a hard blow to his mouth, its force somewhat diminished of course by the fact that he could barely reach it. The Butcher threw back his head and laughed, a great roaring bellow that shook the glasses on the table, and revealed to the room several gaps where once teeth had resided. Degan hit him in the stomach. It was like hitting a sandbag. The hand went in a quarter of an inch, and was stopped dead by a solid wall of muscle. The jar of hitting that firm flesh sent a tremor up the whole length of his arm. The Butcher was unaffected, except in his temper.

He turned a red, wrathful eye on this David, and began swinging wildly, knocking over tables, chairs and glasses. If he had possessed an atom of coordination, Degan wouldn’t have lasted two seconds, but all these fine punches were rained on furniture and empty air.

“Come, we go,” Sally said, running and pulling Degan by the hand. But he was sufficiently riled by this time that he had no wish to go, before he gave the monster some punishment. He shook her off.

“Henri,
do
something!” she begged.

“The ox has no science. He won’t hurt your precious Degan.”

“You
want
him to get hurt!” she cried, and stamped her foot in vexation. “Stop them at once!”

“It would take the Dragoons to stop them at this point,
ma mie,”
he answered amiably, and elbowed past another watcher to get a better view. He was just in time to see the Butcher land a telling punch on Degan’s chin.

“Oh my God, his jaw is broken!” Sally moaned, taking a quick peep from behind her fingers, which she had raised to protect her eyes from the battle.

Degan staggered against a table, shaking his head. Blood oozed from the corner of his mouth. The Butcher made a lunge at him, but he rolled aside just in time to avoid it. His attacker turned quickly, issuing a banshee of a wail that raised some doubts as to his precise origins. Degan continued to sneak punches in as best as he could, but even when he connected with all his force, they had no effect. For full ten minutes they battled, then some enterprising watcher suggested it was a round, and while Henri wiped the blood from Degan’s face, the
patron
began taking bets. He was giving odds of ten to one in the Butcher’s favor, and finding even with those odds very few takers.

“Make them stop!” Sally begged. “Degan, is your jaw broken?”

“Le Taureau’s jaw is not broken,” Henri told her in a significant tone. “Go for the stomach, Taureau. You can’t reach his jaw. Try to knock the wind out of him. It is your only chance.”

The break was over, and they were back at it, with the Butcher lunging wildly and awkwardly, while Degan ducked for his life, concentrating when possible on the stomach. He landed a few telling punches that had the Butcher breathing hard, but he was nearly completely winded himself. The Butcher, on to his tactic, caught him off guard and hit him hard in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him. Degan crumpled to the floor, gasping. The bet-taker called another round, and raised the odds from ten to fifteen in favor of the Butcher.

“That’s enough. We throw in the towel,” Henri decided, when his best efforts gained no more than a rolling, unseeing eye from his boxer.

“Not yet,” Degan said, shaking his head and struggling to his feet.

“Yes, you stop
now!”
Sally commanded in her fiercest accents. “Degan, if you don’t stop this minute I’ll never speak to you again.”

“Taureau,
darling,” Henri reminded her in a low voice. “And if he stops now, we will have some fancy footwork to get out of here without leaving you behind,
chérie.”

“What do you mean?” Degan asked, shaking his head and frowning.

“You are unaware of the French custom, Philippe? This is no ordinary boxing match. The Butcher challenged you for Sally—you heard what he said. You accepted the challenge when you struck him. Winner takes all.”

“What are you talking about?” Degan asked, incredulous.

“It is understood by every man in the room—except yourself, apparently. There is no purse to be won; you fight for Sally, the Butcher and you. But I won’t let him take her, of course. When he finishes you, I shall have to challenge him myself.”

Degan narrowed his eyes, and directed such a stare on his manager that Mérigot half feared it was Degan he must fight, rather than the Butcher. Degan struggled to his feet, and the Butcher advanced to resume the battle. Both were showing the strain, puffing, but each was determined to do the other in.

Degan shook his head and settled down to a strategy at last. Fright and anger had left him. He was fighting a large, dumb animal, and it was cunning that must save him. He was more careful than before to avoid being hit, for another blow from those hams was likely to finish him. He saved his energy, not beginning any blows that were unlikely to connect. He hit seldom but hard, always in the pit of the stomach, then quickly danced out before the blow was returned. His tactic appeared to be working. The Butcher was huffing like a tired bull, but he seemed to be impossible to knock down. He was too big, too strong, too stubborn. He took blow after blow, and kept coming back for more.

Degan was the underdog this time, thus the favorite of the crowd. He heard the cheers when he landed a punch, felt the sympathy of the mob with him. His senses seemed to be more alive to such sensations, almost as though a sense hitherto unpossessed had formed within him. The Butcher was an evil force that must be exterminated, and he was the man chosen from among men to do it. A sense of strange joy filled him; he became intoxicated with it,
enjoyed
hitting the man, which was a thing he had never foreseen.

The exhilaration was short-lived, however. One of the Butcher’s wicked punches landed over his left eye, and the blood began to flow down over his face, till he was literally seeing red. He looked with his one good eye at this animal that had the temerity to think he was going to win Sally, and with the last of his strength wound up and hit him again in the stomach. He hit the crucial, tender spot, and the great hulk of flesh folded up with a grunt, shaking the floor with his weight when he hit it. The onlookers waited impatiently to see if he could get up. Unwilling to take any chances, Sally darted onto the floor and grabbed Degan’s arm, to pull him away.

Henri turned to join them. “Stay and talk him out of another round,” Sally said. She put Degan’s arm over her shoulder, and half carried him up the stairs, bearing a good part of his weight. His legs were like rubber; his eye ached and his mouth stung, and most of all he felt as if he had a bucking horse inside him, but he was perfectly happy. “I beat the bastard,” he said.

“How did you get mixed up with him?” she scolded. “Why couldn’t you stay in the room as Henri told you to? This will hold us up for hours. You should be beaten, Degan.”

“What, again?” he muttered, as the blood began to fall in drops from his chin.

She helped him into the room and set him on a chair, pouring water into the basin and ringing out a towel to pat gingerly at his eyebrow and chin. “What a mess! You’ll be scarred for life. What made you do such a foolish thing?”

She scolded like a harpy, but when Degan was able to see, he saw there were tears on her cheeks, and her lips trembled. He took the towel from her hands and pulled her onto his knee. “You know why I did it,” he said, kissing her wet cheek.

“You think I care what that animal calls me? It doesn’t bother me.”

“It bothers
me,
to hear you traduced. Henry should have told me what we were fighting for. I would have finished him sooner.”

“You’re lucky he didn’t kill you. Oh, I’m worried about that eye, Degan. It should be tended by a doctor.”

“About the prize we were fighting over, Minou...” he said, kissing her neck, her throat.

“There is no prize. Henri made it up.”

“You’re caught now, my girl,” he laughed weakly, and tried to hold her to kiss her, but his arms were trembling from fatigue, as though he had carried a hundred pounds of coal for ten miles.

She wrenched free and hopped up. “If Henri should come in and catch us—”

“To hell with Henry! I’m not likely to worry about him when I’ve just floored the Butcher!” he said, and pulled her roughly back onto his knee, for he was too weak to stand up. He thought he was too weak to take his reward as well, but felt a new swell of energy pulse through him when he kissed her. His arms found the strength to crush her against his chest, where he could feel her heart fluttering, and his own pound when she tightened her arms about his neck. His arms felt as strong as the Butcher’s around her, and as dangerous. Whoever thought her placid Degan would arouse such excitement? He had seemed so safe, but there was a new danger in him. She felt submissive, and it frightened her.

Pulling reluctantly away, she said, “Henri just made it up about the prize, to frighten you.” She peered closely at his battered face to see traces of this danger she had felt, but saw only Degan looking at her, with infinite tenderness.

“A good idea. It frightened me very much. We’ve got to get you out of here, Minou. Home to safety.”

“Why do you call me Minou now? You didn’t use to.”

“I’m pretending I’m French, as you dislike cold Englishmen. I want you to
like
me, as well as love me.”

“I didn’t say I loved you!”

“You said it,” he answered, smiling softly with a satisfied, possessive smile, at the tears drying on her cheeks. “I expect you’ve known for some time how I feel about you.”

“Ah no, we are too incompatible,
mon chou,
to speak of love.”

“You are mistaken,
mon chou,”
he contradicted bluntly, and kissed her again in a way that tended to make her overlook any incompatibility of spirit, or anything else but securing him forever.

“Maybe you’re not quite so proper as I feared,” she murmured happily.

“You’re just the ladybird to smarten me up,
‘tite
Agnès.”

There was a discreet shuffling at the door, and Sally hopped off Degan’s knee to retrieve her towel and pat his face. It was Mérigot, smiling broadly.
“Félicitations encore une fois,
Taureau,” he said, walking in. “How bad is the damage?”

“I’ll live,” Degan replied.

“We’re proud of you, my friend. The Butcher is still out like a lamp.
Hein,
that eye looks bad. A deep gash.”

“He should have a doctor,” Sally said.

“It’s my stomach that hurts like the devil,” Degan said. “I hope he hasn’t ruptured something with those damned hamhocks of his.”

Sally looked at him in alarm, and noticed that where his face was not red or purple, it was pale. The eyes too looked strange. He stood up, weaving slightly, took one step toward her, and fell over into her arms.