Mullins was seeing a customer out when Lord Muc came from across the road. He had been out there for about an hour, and he had been watching Mullins all the while. Mullins had looked back a few times, but there was no change in the face of the gang leader.
“What are you looking for?” Mullins said when he finally came over and entered the blacksmith’s shop. There was an edge to his tone that he hadn’t fully intended but didn’t altogether regret, either; it was more than likely he was going to be delivering bad news to this man, anyway, so why be pleasant at the outset?
“We need you,” Muc said.
“For what?” Mullins asked.
“To join.”
“To join!” Mullins laughed.
“Yeah, there is another battle coming, and I think with you on our side we can finish those Ormonde pricks off for good.”
“What difference to your little ‘army’ do you think I’d make?” Mullins mocked him. He was annoyed by Muc’s usage of the term ‘battle’ to describe the street fights the Liberty Boys and the Ormonde Boys engaged in periodically. There was nothing of the honour of battle involved in these vicious tit-for-tat brawls.
“I saw you fight one night a few weeks ago on Cook Street. You were out-of-your-head drunk, but you still managed to take out four guys all about the same size as yourself,” Muc said with a sneer that might have been intended as some kind of camaradly smile.
“Fighting in taverns and mindless street thuggery are two different things. People go to taverns just to have fights sometimes, to get the anger out of them, to rid them of poisons,” Mullins said and wondered if he was describing himself or the people he fought with.
“Fighting is fighting, and you can get rid of all the poison you want in one of our fights,” Muc said, excited now, a flick of life animating his dark eyes as he spoke of his passion.
Mullins looked at him, and he could sense something almost sexual that talk of fighting had aroused in his visitor. This was a man who didn’t rid himself of anything by fighting, but who took something on by doing it. Did he think it was some great strength giver or elixir?
“I’m not interested,” Mullins said, and he turned back to his forge.
“That might not be a wise choice,” Muc said.
Mullins turned to face him. “Is that supposed to be a threat?” He spread his shoulders as wide as he could and stepped closer to Muc, who gave away a good four inches on the blacksmith. Muc didn’t seem fazed at all, and though he didn’t want to look away from Muc’s eyes, Mullins could sense that his own fists were balled and ready to be used.
“Not at all. I just don’t think you are making the right decision.” Mullins didn’t respond this time. “You know the way you feel when you fight? Well, this is a hundred times more intense, and what’s more, the man you are fighting has set out to fight and so accepts anything that comes his way.” Muc’s eyes were wild now; he was clearly remembering something he had done before. “You can kill, and there is no victim, only a willing combatant who would do the same to you if he could.”
There was something almost hypnotic in his eyes and the way he spoke, and Mullins was sure that many a lost and hungry man had been roped into this gang with that very same speech, but he was still not interested.
“I fight to blow off steam the odd time, not because I’m violent. I have no desire to kill or be killed by anyone.”
“I should have known,” Muc said, “you only like killing women.”
“If you ever say anything like that to me again, it will be you I’ll be killing!” Mullins shouted at him, but Lord Muc had already turned his back and was walking out. Mullins could hear him chuckle at the threat as he waved a dismissive hand in the air as he passed under the door frame.
Mullins was angry now, as he knew that it wasn't just his neighbours who thought him capable of attacking a woman. The rumour had spread all over the Liberties by now, and there would be no shortage of people willing to believe it. He just couldn’t understand that people could think this of him. Who did they think he was, if not the blacksmith who for years had done all they’d asked of him?
For the rest of that day, he worked hard and was gruff with any customer who happened to come in. He didn’t want to see anyone, and he blamed them all for how he was feeling. Faces of neighbours and people he saw every day kept coming to mind, and he could feel their sneers as they looked down on him and called him ‘killer’ behind his back. He could feel a swell of violence come up in him, and he wished that Lord Muc would come back now and try to goad him some more so that he could vent his rage on that ugly, smarmy face.
He got more angry knowing that Lord Muc would only be delighted to know that he had caused such a reaction in him, a reaction he would see as proof that Mullins was who Muc said he was and a step closer to unleashing that same poison he had spoken of. He wondered: Did Lord Muc even want him in the gang, or did he just want to see him erupt in an orgy of violence that would reverberate and mix with the undertones of pain and suffering that spread their dark flow over this city? Could he be what people thought even when he felt so different to that view? Was he violence? Was Dublin violence? There was a killer or wild animal on the loose, and yet there was still the everyday violence of life to contend with. Did the Dolocher grow out of this same city of violence?