At the place where Saffron Hill Road disgorged its push of Londoners into the Hole, two men, stripped to the waist, were circling around each other with their fists up. One of them already had a red knuckle-print on his cheek, and a huge smear of dirt on one shoulder where he’d tumbled into the street. They were bulky coves, probably meat-cutters from Smithfield, and at least a hundred men had already formed a ring around them, and begun to lay wagers. All foot-traffic had to squeeze through a strait no more than a fathom wide between this storm of elbows and the building-fronts along the north side of the Hole: a line-up of taverns and of smudgy enterprises that looked as if they didn’t want to be noticed.