English Art/Literary Poetry & Literature A historical detective novel set in New York in 1702

Here "bustarole" must mean something like "a fight", I suppose. However, I have not found this word anywhere, except for in another Maccammon's novel, with a slightly different meaning.

"Yep, Matthew thought as his heartbeat quickened and his guts went squirmy. Sure as rain. The crazed maniac had brought them here to get into a fight. It wasn't enough that Matthew had been doing very well in his arduous lessons on swordplay, map-making, preparing and firing a flintlock pistol, horsemanship and other such necessities of the trade. No, he wasn't progressing fast enough in that "fist combat" nonsense that Greathouse imposed upon him. Remember , Greathouse had said many times, you fight with your mind before you use your muscles.
It seemed that Matthew was about to get a demonstration of the great one's mind. And Heaven help us, he thought.
Greathouse stood up. He was still smiling, though the smile had thinned.
Matthew again counted the heads. The fiddler had stopped his fiddling. Was he a fighter, or a fixture? George and his unconscious companion were still face-down, but they might come to life at the first smack. Who could say what Dippen Nack would do? The blowsy lady was grinning; her front teeth had already been knocked out. Baiter would probably wait for Bonehead to bash a skull before he started nose-chewing. Skelly's axe was always near at hand. Of the five others, two looked like rough-edged wharfmen who craved a good ***bustarole***. The remaining three, at a back table, were dressed in nice suits that they might not want to disfigure and were puffing on churchwarden pipes, though certainly they were no reverends. A throw of the dice, Matthew thought, but he really hoped Greathouse was not such a careless gamesman."