Breadspotting

Historical fiction, set in the East End of London in 1856, in which a gang of delivery drivers for a family owned bakery take on a big firm moving into the area with bad bread and strong-arm tactics.

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Henry kept the lead despite Kevin, the youngest of the drivers, having a longer stride, pounding along harder through sheer determination. Her left hand wrapped calloused fingers around the wooden hilt of a utility knife, a broad blade with a short heavy hook at the end. Her right clenched into a fist and pumped for balance as she leaned into her charge, committing her body weight to forward motion.

A pace or two behind her, Kevin ran with the bounding lope of late adolescence, all legs and gangle, hauling air on the left step and blowing on the right in steady chuffs. He swung a leather girth strap extension in his right hand, that he had to show Day Lily when he harnessed her so she wouldn't inflate her barrel when he tightened the girth, a daily ritual of deception he and his horse went through.

A couple of paces back, Isaac, a lean, muscular man in his late twenties, close cropped wiry black hair mostly hidden under a red and yellow bandanna, ran with less effort, elbows in close, head down, saving what he could for the expected fight at the end. Having immigrated to Britain from Great Cayman with his parents when he was eight, and seen more of the rougher side of London than his lighter-skinned brethren, he'd taken a moment to seize a hammer from the tool rack, bringing the potential of murder to what was reportedly a stomping.

The loaders followed a good six paces behind, having heard the news a few seconds later, and having to scramble out of the wagons pulled up to the loading dock. Malone, a broad-shouldered, muscular woman in a threadbare blouse faded from black to grey from repeated launderings and wool trousers more befitting a dock worker, swung a Stillson wrench, having had it in hand checking the lug nuts on the wagon wheels. You don't want a loose wheel, that's a recipe for disaster. Off to one side and slightly ahead, out of arm's reach and where Malone could keep an eye on her, Jennie Redteeth tore along like a ragged tornado, very nearly on all fours and galloping, held back only by the rusty hacksaw she swung left-handed. Malone had no idea where the teenaged girl had found it and didn't really want to know, as long as she could stay out of its arc.

Behind them, lagging a few paces more, Tuppence pounded gamely along, the stable boy having trouble keeping up with the older drivers and loaders. He still carried the manure rake, having set it at port arms, seeing himself as the peasant infantry bringing up the rear of the charge behind the knights ilke in the picture book they showed him at the Ragged School.

Henry slapped the stone wall of the rectory, pivoting on it around the corner into the alley behind St. Anne's. Ahead, down where the kirkyard fence met the back wall of the rectory, four figures danced around a fifth on the ground. The largest, his features just barely visible through the mist by the glow from the kirkyard watch-lanterns, raised a foot, brought it down, the gristly crunch drowned out by the shriek torn from the victim.

Henry met it with a shriek of her own, and went for the attacker, swinging her knife low and raking upward, aiming to geld. Her target lunged back, avoiding emasculation by a hair's-breadth as the knife tore open only the front of his woolen trousers, and fought for balance, raising a police baton in defense.

The boy to his right, barely out of his teens, wiry, with a dangerous glitter in eyes that looked a little past his opponent, went low, dropping into a crouch as he swung a nail-studded cricket bat. Kevin whipped the girth strap up, over, and down in a tight spin that wrapped it around the bat, lunged sideways, and yanked. The bat went flying, and its wielder very nearly followed, not recovering his balance until he'd gone three staggering paces beyond, putting Kevin behind him.

The one to the left, a little older, certainly a little wiser, saw Isaac coming at him cold and efficient with his body weight gathering behind the swing, and stepped back fast, bringing a broken chair leg up to block the hammer. The shock forced him back another half a step, and Isaac followed through, bringing the hammer round for the next swing as he closed.

The last one, again mid twenties and with a driver's cap pulled low over his eyes, glanced away from Typhoon Jennie bearing down on him, up the alley toward the sound of a whistle, and sounded almost relieved when he shouted, "Peelers!"

Everyone glanced that direction, the threat of police greater than the immediate violence. The big man stepped back another half pace, maintained his defense. The movement drew Henry's attention. She dropped into a crouch, readying for another lunge. Kevin and the other teen circled each other slowly, Kevin wary, the other predatory. The rest of the battle held, Jennie with considerable difficulty, halting her swing in mid arc and drawing back ready to strike if the man with the cap so much as blinked wrong.

"You fight us," the big guy said fast, Brummie accent a bit thick, "we all get nicked."

Henry and Isaac traded glances, acknowledging each other's special concerns with the law in quick nods.

"Our boss has got a man at the station already with a purse waiting to bail us out," the big man went on. "How are you fixed for ready coin?" He smirked.

Jennie growled, deep in her throat, a rough, not entirely human snarl. The man with the cap shifted his weight slightly, maybe thinking about taking a step back. He suddenly had Jennie's full and undivided attention, pinning him to the spot like a bug on a collection board.

Tuppence pounded to a halt behind Malone, and leaned on the rake, puffing and wheezing.

"Or you can scoop up your boy there," the big man went on, "and get away before the Peelers arrive and scoop you up. Your choice."

More whistles sounded, this time closer.

"Go on," said Henry disgustedly. She stepped back, lowered her knife, gestured with it toward the other end of the alley, away from the authorities.

"Smart move," the big man shot back as he turned to leave, grabbing the youngest of his accomplices by the shoulder. "You can get 'nother bat, Nige, we've no got time for you to find that'un."

Henry clenched her fists down by her side, and shouted after him, "We'll sort you lot later. We know where to find you, Big Tony."

Tony turned round, walked backwards, bowed mockingly. "We'll be waiting."

Then he turned away, and he and his boys went round the far corner. Jennie gave a disgusted snort and sent the hacksaw spinning across the alley with a sidearm wrist snap into a broken crate, where it hit not with a clatter but with a disconcertingly solid thunk.

"Henry!" Kevin dropped to his knees on the rough cobblestones where the victim, their missing driver, Dapper, not looking much like his nickname at the moment, lay. His call drew Henry's attention for only a scant second, before another, closer set of whistles brought her about like a hunting dog winding the quarry.

With a shrug, Kevin glanced to his left, where Isaac had put one knee down on the cobbles to check Dapper's leg, running practiced fingers over the limb and apologizing in a whisper for the pain. Catching the glance, Isaac shook his head once, grimly.

"One bone's broken clear through, other's cracked." What happened to horses with similar injuries hung in the air between them like a ghost.

Malone, who'd taken Dapper's head and shoulders into her lap, holding him both gently and firmly as he writhed against the pain of Isaac's gentle diagnostic touch, grimaced. She looked down the few inches into Dapper's face, pale and sweaty where it wasn't bloody, scuffed, or dirty, nearly gone grey.

"Puir thing," she told him, "you won't be walkin nowhere for a long while."

Dapper made no response, his eyes unfocused, searching randomly, the left swollen half shut and weeping at the corner. His breath came in quick gasps, and his hands flexed like he'd lost hold of something important, the right quicker than the left. His pinched, sallow face had gone greyish, sweat beading on his high forehead (receding hairline, let's be honest) and in the carefully trimmed mustache that could have been drawn on with an eyebrow pencil. His bleached-white muslin work shirt was dirty, torn, and bloodstained in a couple of spots, and his weskit was missing both buttons and the watch chain, Dapper not owning a watch to put on it. And to add insult to injury, the Stickers had taken his bowler, the rounded, narrow brimmed hat that every working man in London, and some of the laboring women, wore. Not only practical headgear, the bowler provided a tiny bit of safety against falling objects and wouldn't blow off easily if you stuck your head out the locomotive window. More than that, it was a badge of solidarity, a marker of class and profession, the emblem of the labor force. And the Stickers had taken it.

Kevin waved urgently at Henry, trying to get her attention away from the approaching police.

"Henry, Dapper's in a bad way. Come on, we have to get him out of here."

Tuppence held out the rake. "If we had one more pole, we could make a stretcher or summat couldn't we?"

Isaac rose and joined the boy making a quick search of the alley for anything, a fire escape railing, a ladder, owt that could be used for the other side. Henry stood her ground, took a step in the direction of the approaching footsteps.

"You get Dapper," she tossed over her shoulder as she braced herself. "I got the Peelers."

Jennie snarled, and snaked an arm into the damaged crate, coming back with the hacksaw. Sticking it into the waistband of a couple of the ragged skirts she wore in layers, where it stuck out like an oversized pistol, she swarmed up the wall, finding finger and toe holds in the mortar between the bricks.

At the first floor cornice, she swung out on fingertips, then flipped up and over, bouncing off the top of the cornice on her toes and moving on up the wall to the second floor in the same motion. Landing on the next cornice ledge up, by the seond floor window, she reached up and took hold of both strands of a clothesline, a length of rope looped around a pulley above the window and another pulley on the wall of the building opposite.

Whipping the hacksaw up and around, Jennie swung across the alley one handed on the now severed line, tucking the saw back into her skirt as she went, and swarmed up the rope with the agility of a ship's rat the instant her toes hit the wall. At the top, she found footing on the window sill, then pried the pulley loose with the hacksaw and dropped the entire assembly, line and pulley, to the Bappers below.

"Make a sling," she rasped, a voice that didn't get much use squeaking painfully through a damaged and poorly healed throat.

Kevin and Tuppence were already shucking their jackets. Isaac picked up the line, discarded the pulley, and threaded the rope through the sleeves of Kevin's jacket, then Tuppence's. While he held the ends of the line, Tuppence and Kevin knotted the sleeves of their jackets to make two bands of fabric across the loop.

"Henry!" Isaac called her this time, in a more urgent tone.

She glanced round, irritated at having her vigil at the fogbank interrupted, but said nothing, continuing to listen for the approaching Peelers.

"Henry!" Isaac urged again. "We need your jacket!"

She glanced back round, having turned away to face the approaching police, and followed his hand with her gaze to the obvious gap. Yes, they were going to need three jackets for Dapper. She yanked angrily at hers, trying to get it off and still keep an eye on the alley and the footsteps that drew closer.

"I've got the Peelers," Kevin told her, rising from the pavement. "Besides," he said, as they passed, Henry moving to Dapper's side and Kevin taking her place on point, "I can play the role of the earnest young man to the hilt. They know you too well."

Henry spared a glance for her scarred right knuckles, then gave a quick nod of agreement, too angry to speak but unable to deny the truth. Kevin would have a better chance of fending off the police than she would. She and Isaac slipped her jacket onto the rope, and Isaac tied off the loop with a square knot and a couple of quick hitches to secure the loose ends.

Malone eased Dapper's head and shoulders up off her lap, and Henry and Isaac slipped one of the jackets under the wounded man, bringing the sleeves up around his ribs, right under his arms.

Isaac grimaced, looked down at Dapper, and told the man, "I'm sorry, mate, there's nothing for it."

He reached for Dapper's legs, to raise them up, and Jennie slapped his hands away. Startled, he jerked back, turning to face her, and she held up two pieces of crate she'd sawn off.

"Splint first," she croaked.

Isaac's shoulders fell. Of course he should stabilize the leg before moving it. With Jennie holding the sticks in place on either side of Dapper's shin, he tied them above and below the break with pocket handkerchiefs that could have used a laundering first.

"What's all this, then?"

The query came from one of the constables easing their way out of the fog and into the clear spot the Stickers and Bappers had made with their activity. They advanced two and two, the local beat pair and another that had arrived for backup, truncheons ready, covering both sides of the alley and staying out of the dangerous open ground in the middle.

"We come to find what happened to our coworker, sir," Kevin said, pitching his voice up a little and widening his eyes. "He was late. We come to see why. Somebody done for him." He choked up a little on the last, and blinked rapidly to force a tear from one eye.

The Peeler regarded him suspiciously, as police always do when encountering someone in an alley standing over a fallen body. His bearing, manners, and moustache could have all been described as "bristilng". But the stretcher efforts were blatantly obvious, and the fresh splinting on Dapper's leg, and not many assailants stick around to render aid to the victim. Annoyed that he didn't have an easy arrest, the Peeler glanced round, taking in the rest of the crew and the lack of any opposing force.

"You see who did it?" he demanded.

"Aye," Kevin replied, gaining a little clarity, sharpening his voice just a touch, "for maybe a heartbeat, then they scarpered off round that corner right when you blew your whistle." He waved in the correct direction. The enemy of my enemy is a useful tool.

"You didn't go after him?" This from the Peeler's partner. His eyes had narrowed and his broad, blocky face had tried to gather into a sharp frown, but only succeeded in looking dyspeptic.

"We have to get him back to the Bappery," Isaac answered, waving a hand at Dapper's splinted leg.

"You're Bappers?" The first Peeler had taken a couple of steps toward the Stickers' exit point, but turned back at this, obviously surprised.

"Aye," Kevin took up the narrative once more. Again a wave at the fallen Dapper. "This is one of our drivers."

The Peeler's mustache bristled back up. "What route does he drive?"

"Cheshire up to Bacon Street, sir." Kevin tagged on the honorific that had been missing, thankfully the Peeler hadn't made an issue of it.

"Crispin's blood," the Peeler snarled. "The slap bang where I get lunch won't have rolls today."

"That's bluidy personal, it is," the lead officer of the other pair said, Dublin accent flavoring his words heavily.

The first Peeler pointed his truncheon at Kevin, who let himself flinch back, but held his ground.

"You behave yourselves, let the Metropolitan Police deal with this, do you hear me?" he demanded of Kevin, and with a glance, of the rest. "No taking the law into your own hands, you understand?"

Kevin nodded, and gulped out a contrite, "Yes, sir".

With one more sharp look from narrowed eyes, that the officer must have practiced in front of a mirror as a tactical move, he led the Peelers off around the corner.

"They've no clue who they're actually hunting," Isaac pointed out. "We need to make ourselves scarce before they realize this and come back to ask more questions."

In answer, Malone took hold of the top end of the rope, and braced herself to stand. Isaac took the foot end, Henry one side and Kevin the other. A three count, they lifted, Dapper groaned at the shift, and with a worried glance for their injured comrade, the Bappers headed off down the alley toward home.