Bruar's Rest

sickness and couldn’t be trusted. Her mother never got over his death, so took a mixture of deadly nightshade and black throat mushrooms, witch poison, and died in total agony with her innards coming up her throat, dark green coloured. That’s what witch poison does to you, though.’ She began shaking, Megan held her close. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
    ‘My mother lives for me, that’s why she’ll go mental when she knows what I’m doing. But you promised not to say.’
    Megan promised, but wasn’t paying much attention, for down below things were turning uglier as the two fighters were by now eye to eye, hissing and spitting. ‘He’s like that mad horse.’ Megan’s heart was beating fast.
    ‘What horse? Who?’
    ‘The one who killed your and Ruth’s fathers; him, Bull Buckley.’ Without realising it, her voice had carried to the crowd below.
    Bull looked up and for a moment she froze in terror as their eyes met. Never had a man’s eyes held such evil. She turned away, closing out the stare. Then, as if hypnotised, she found her face being drawn back, back to stare into those pools of sheer wickedness.
    A right hook from Moses’ clenched fist broke the spell. The ground shook along with Bull’s jaw. Pieces of hedgehog brains spewed into the crowd. The fight had begun in earnest.
    Bull lunged forward, then putting one foot back threw a punch that caught Moses square on. His head dropped to the left, Bull straightened it with a hard right elbow; teeth and blood spurted from his half-open mouth. He fell. Bull picked him up with two punches below the ribs. Moses teetered for a moment, then over he went. Clouds of still warm fire ash spiralled in the air. Punters began choking on it, while others rubbed their eyes. It made the crowd’s fury worse. The boxing ring got flattened, and soon Moses, not getting to his feet, began to feel theirs.
    ‘No!’ roared Bull, ‘he’s mine.’ Like rag dolls he threw aside the fired-up spectators until a form of calm was regained. The crowd spaced themselves and waited for Bull Buckley’s special ending. ‘Wait, boys, now he be a dead man,’ someone dared whisper. Buckley grabbed the offender by the neck. Hissing like a viper, he asked through clenched teeth, ‘Who be a dead man, then?’
    The one who had dared to open his mouth was left with no choice as Bull’s grip tightened on the grimy muffler around his neck. ‘Bloody big Moses Durin, that’s who,’ he said, gasping for air, then scurried away on all fours between fire ash and trouser-legs, like a terrified rat, when Bull loosened his vice-like grip.
    Moses began to stir and slowly rose on hands and knees, when Bull let out a scream, drew back his right leg and with inhuman ferocity let his opponent take its full force to his stomach. Bull growled, ripping his shirt off at the same time. Megan was gripping at Lucy’s arm, wondering what manner of end was coming Moses’ way. It surely was coming. Bull Buckley was holding every card. Lucy began to shake. She rose to her feet from her precarious seat and screamed. All eyes looked upwards. ‘You wicked bastard, Buckley. Don’t you go and kill him, bringing the muskries [police] here, because you’ll shoot with the crows, leaving your mess on our backs.’
    Megan yanked her down and whispered, ‘Why should you worry, are you not this night deserting everyone?’
    ‘I’m thinking on you all—me Mam, Mother Foy, the children, Ruth, Anna, the old ones. Moses ain’t a gypsy; he’s a godger. If Bull kills him the wagons will be broke to smithereens by those searching for that hound from hell. Oh, it don’t matter if us gypsies kill each other, but lay a wrong hand on a godger, then every law officer in the shire will be on us.’
    Bull Buckley couldn’t hear them speak, but he had heard Lucy shout. He sneered while he lifted the limp head of an almost comatose Moses and called up, ‘Look, little Lucy, see how a fool meets his maker.’ He drew in a deep breath, laid the head down in a gentle fashion, like a cat teasing a mouse, and bestriding his prey he fixed a steely gaze on the man lying below him in the dirty ash. If a leaf had fallen it would have been heard, such was the silence of the crowd. For the last time of his wild existence, Moses Durin opened dazed eyes.
    ‘You’ve breathed the same air as me for too long.’ Like a sledgehammer splitting rock, Bull’s metal capped boot thudded in, and the skull made a gruesome popping