Chapter 37
People scuttled along the streets and disappeared down laneways and through doors in fear. Mullins stayed in his shop, knowing full well what was happening outside. He worked on with the red hot metal, dousing it in water and laying it on his anvil to be hammered. He waited for the doorway to be darkened as he knew it would; when it did, he turned to face Lord Muc.
The gang leader had a mean look on his face, and his eyes were wide open and yet somehow calm. Outside, there were about twenty men with various arms and improvised weapons. Their eyes were full of wild excitement, and their bodies jittered from the effort of standing still. Mullins didn't bother to let him speak. “I’ve no interest.”
“I’m not here to ask you to fight.”
“I’m not fixing any weapons, either.”
“I’m here to ask you to just come and watch today.”
“Why?”
“To see what you are missing.”
“I’m not missing anything.”
“You don’t think you are, anyway.” Muc smiled.
“So you think I will go and watch you lot fight and I will be so impressed that I will want to join up?” Mullins sneered, but Muc wasn’t fazed at all.
“I don’t think you will be impressed, but you will be stirred, and that’s all I’m looking for.”
Mullins thought for a moment what to say next. “If I go and watch and am not interested at all, will that be the end of your pestering of me?”
“That sounds fair,” Muc said.
“Where will it be?”
“At the Poddle, where the Dolocher was found.”
“When?”
“About half an hour.”
“Right, I’ll follow up in a few minutes.”
Muc nodded; he went outside and headed in the direction of the river.
Half an hour later, Mullins was on the site where the fight was to take place. He took up a position on a high wall that would allow him to watch and at the same time would not permit him to become involved too easily; he had no intention of joining in, but one of the Ormonde Boys might mistake him for an enemy and attack him if he was at ground level with the rest of them.
The Liberty Boys were congregated around Lord Muc, who seemed to be performing some kind of ritual. He was saying something over and over, and his eyes were closed as he put his face up to the sky. Mullins could not make out what he was saying, but he had a feeling it was something in Irish. Then Muc, still saying something, got down on his haunches, but this time the gang were responding. As Lord Muc began to rise from the ground, they became ecstatic, hooting and hollering until finally Muc was standing bolt upright. He held two weapons into the air and the others went wild in praise of them. Mullins looked closely to make out the weapons: they looked like two short swords but made of bone and with sharp, serrated edges. He looked closer still as they were held up against the sky, and he knew then what they were. The tusks of the Dolocher!
At that moment, a gang of about forty young men appeared from the west—the Ormonde Boys must have done a wide westward arc to avoid detection by the troops as they crossed the river to come to this fight. They arrayed themselves in front of the well-outnumbered Liberty Boys and stood, shouting obscenities.
Without hesitation, Lord Muc let out a feral howl and charged at the enemy, his gang close behind. It seemed to take the other gang by surprise; to a man, they stepped back a little. Lord Muc met them at full charge and slashed savagely with the tusks of the Dolocher, and two of the enemies fell immediately. Mullins was stunned as he saw the rest of the smaller gang pummel into the shocked lines of the Ormonde Boys. All manner of weapons were swinging and poking and slashing and thrusting, and screams and grunts of pain and effort rang out all over.
The congealed grouping began to break off into smaller man-on-man fights, and the circumference of violence expanded dramatically, with some men even splashing about at each other in the river itself. Mullins had heard of these gang fights before, but he had never actually seen one. He was amazed at how willing these people were to maim and slice their enemies.
There was eye gouging and hammers smashing into cheekbones, knives cut into flesh at every part of the body, and fists and kicks supported the weapons wherever they could. Mullins was drawn to the vision of Lord Muc in the middle of the melee. He looked powerful and seemed oblivious to any of the wounds that peppered him as he doled out more serious damage to his foes. He slashed and hacked at them with abandon, and pretty soon the Ormonde Boys (those who could) were running away.
Lord Muc called a halt to proceedings. Everyone, both Liberty and Ormonde Boys, stood up and looked about and saw the damage that had been done.
“We have the day,” Lord Muc proclaimed. “Take your lads back across the Liffey,” he said to a few enemies who were still there and possibly able to do anything for their mauled allies. There were men on the ground in extreme pain and some who were clearly dead. The whole thing had lasted only a few minutes, but the damage done was immense. Lord Muc held up the tusks, and his men cheered. He looked at Mullins with a smile as blood ran from his forehead and neck, and he breathed heavily to oxygenate his muscles.
Mullins sat on his wall with his arms crossed, but he smiled back and gave the gang leader a nod of appreciation before looking at the fallen men once more, their bodies still and their clothes rustling slightly in the breeze. He couldn’t lie to himself. He was intrigued by it all, and he had found his mind so involved in the fight that he felt almost as though he had been down on the ground in the thick of it.
The Dolocher Page 37
