Blackstrap Hawco (25 page)

A few low curses were uttered, in hopes of silencing Ferrol, while the men cringed and stiffened further.

‘No onlookers,' shouted Ferrol, pointing toward the women and children who had come up from below. ‘Back ta tweendecks,' he demanded with a thrust of his arm. Not moving fast enough for Ferrol's liking, they were hurried along by a roar of ‘Now.' With the racket of Ferrol's bellow thundering in their heads, they could not have scurried off faster. ‘Turn dis facking vessel t'ward dem Amurican bassards.'

‘Da rudder's snapped,' said one man. ‘On da attempt ta navigate off course.'

Ferrol faced the lights that were approaching and Patrick saw, despite the dearth of moonlight, the gleam of mad pleasure in Ferrol's eyes and the bone-gnawing grin spread on his lips. ‘Dey'll be abreast us soon 'nough,' he said with dark cheer, and spun, treading directly toward the captain's bridge, while slapping mates away as he bounded
up the stairs. Arriving to protests from all present on the bridge, he slammed the captain into a wall. ‘Light da facking lanterns,' he called back to Patrick, who, like most of the men now crammed in the doorway, had followed after Ferrol, and whose presence Ferrol somehow sightlessly discerned. ‘Da rest o' ye rat fackers offa me bridge.' With one meaty hand, Ferrol seized hold of the wheel and made to spin it, only to find it jammed.

The
Venus'
captain, a long disgraced British naval officer, kept quiet and slunk from the bridge, muttering something about mutiny that made Ferrol burst with laughter in such an outrageous and extravagant manner that he was forced to drag his sleeve across his chin to make away with the spittle. Checking through the glass, Ferrol said, ‘Dey 'av arms. Break out da weapons.'

Weapons, thought Patrick, where were their weapons? The other men seemed equally confused, nattering at each other in a way that insinuated their desire not only to avoid fighting but to seek ample hiding space. Few of them ever imagining such a ruckus was possible.

Ferrol, seeming to possess familiarity with the exact location of all stores on board, appointed Patrick as captain, stood him at the snagged wheel, and went off to break the rifles from the cupboards. He tossed the weapons from one man to another, with instructions to blast the American dogs from the sea, for what was an American anyway, Ferrol decreed, ‘but a facking British bassard widt his cack ferever clapped in da muff 'a some'n else's missus.'

The men, each with a lifetime's experience with rifles, took hold of these ones as though they had never laid eyes nor set hands upon such astonishing contraptions before. They held them inappropriately and let the barrels point inertly toward their boots.

Ferrol, catching sight of this limp behaviour, went about fiercely slapping men and engaging in the worst sort of name-calling.

In time, as the four-master drifted within rifle range, gunfire was recklessly and half-heartedly exchanged, with several members of the crew succumbing to injury. The steamer, unprepared for such confrontations, was out of munitions in a short time.

‘Fer facking Ireland,' Ferrol was roaring while the American ship pulled starboard. With his rifle of no further use to him, he flung it into
the sky and commenced picking up barrels and hurling them at crew members of the rival vessel, crushing a few to death, as snapping of bones and splintering of skulls rose from the deck. The American crew members, confused by the seeming rain of barrels, discontinued their gunfire to dodge the barrels. Other Irishmen, attempting to lift barrels and mirror Ferrol's actions, were still straining under the weight of their first attempt, when the
Venus
was boarded, the well-armed American crew neatly advancing.

Ferrol, giving up on his arsenal of barrels, charged toward the rifles that were aimed at him and snatched hold of them, only to be shot twice, yet he kept on, until struck by a rifle butt that knocked him backward into a crate of dry provisions, where he lay felled and bleeding.

‘Where are you bound for?' one of the American crew demanded, his English pristine and noble. No one was willing to answer until the young man, the one with the licence, who, no doubt, was most informed on the laws of the sea and the necessities of speaking truth to prospective tormentors, revealed: ‘
Talamh an Éisc
.'

‘Ah, Newfoundland,' said the American officer with a laugh and a look to his fellow shipmates, who laughed openly and grinned at the contagion of the joke. ‘The leper colony to the north of us. You'll have a blessed time there. Plenty of fish. We are most grateful for all that has been done for us by the dog-eating Irish fishmongers, yet it remains a backward place where the Irish, as ever, mingle their seed amongst their own children.'

This accusation stirred a noise from the distance as Ferrol, as though catching a whiff of the comment, groggily came to life.

The American officer, only giving the groans minimal attention, continued in a tone of self-cherish, with his worldly words: ‘We have our troubles with the Irish in America. Drunken felons. We've been sent to deliver a message. That message being this.' He turned and fired his pistol into the face of a woman, who having heard the commotion had been chosen to seek out its source and report back to those who had once been safely locked away. Her face exploded in a mash of red as her legs jerked beneath her and kept jerking in accordance with the shrieking of her daughter of seven years, until those legs were horizontal and pointedly still. The child, who had sneaked along to be in what she believed to be the safety of her mother's presence, continued shrieking
and was promptly shot, the shriek gone dead, the small body landing against Ferrol, the child's blood gushing warmly into his eyes which were now opening to see this changed world.

‘Kill a few of them,' instructed the officer. ‘And remember our creed: Seed spilled in an Irish whore contaminates the spirit of England. If you must indulge, take the verifiably fruitless route up the rear.'

 

The baby came without effort in the moments before dawn, the labour brief, as though Rose's body, having endured the birth of its previous two offshoots, had become familiar with the process and abandoned the struggle. Rose named the girl Catherine, after her mother. She was a quiet, fair-haired baby, with the deep-set, suspicious eyes of Peter Proudfoot, the British landowner who had made a regular ritual of his midnight visits with Rose back in Limerick.

On the day following her birth, the baby slept through most of the hours, waking only to nurse and to stare at the visiting bishop who entered Rose's shack to baptize the infant, the second such ritual he had undertaken that afternoon on his enduring schedule of holy rites. The bishop spoke perfect Irish, which consoled Rose, although the baptismal ritual itself was recited in the sacred undertones of Latin.

The baptism could not have come too soon, for on the second day, just as Rose had envisioned in the dream she had awoken from, the baby had disappeared from its wooden-crate cradle. One of the Bareneed women, Emily Bishop, claimed that the black-cloaked wind, the messenger for the fairies, had been witnessed making away with the newborn. Women from the shacks assured Rose that the baby would eventually find its way back, although they could not attest to the condition in which the infant would be returned. The women suspected something grotesque would be discovered in the cradle in due time, a creature with a gnarled face and lumpy forehead, and so took greater interest in the tilt and its residents, wanting to be the first to manage a peek at the horrible changeling.

Rose took solace in the fact that the infant had, at least, been baptized, so that if any harm should come to her, Heaven would welcome little Catherine into its glorious realm. Rose prayed to St. Jude for Catherine's safety, with a compassion and desperation possible only
from a mother, reciting rosary after rosary to the Blessed Virgin, and was further comforted by the appearance of the bishop at her door, joining her in prayer, while the naked children darted about the room, all silenced by the authoritative stare of the bishop, save for the eldest boy who shrieked with a raving wildness and fled.

Bishop Flax had insisted that Rose visit the graveyard alongside the Catholic church at the head of the valley where, in the presence of two old ladies in black shawls who had stood in vigil, he recited a deeply felt prayer over the grave of Tommy Cavanagh, whose rock-battered and water-soaked body was buried in a pine box six feet under.

‘Take comfort in the end,' the bishop soothingly intoned. ‘There is goodness to be had from all of this. You have been chosen, singled out to suffer in the name of the Lord, you will bear the burden. As Jesus struggled beneath affliction, the ghastly weight of his cross, so you, too, will be burdened by this mortal pain. Accept it and allow the Lord to enter your heart, where your pain and his pain might mingle in holy reverie.'

Bishop Flax had then brought Rose aboard his vessel to counsel her. The loss of a baby, the death of a husband. A woman from another land, so lost, so vulnerable and in want of soothing. Much to the bishop's surprise, there was an intoxicating loveliness about the woman, the way her filthy hair could still seem elegant, and the smell of her in passing – despite the fact that she was not of a position to afford scented aromas – was soul-loving, her body exuding its own natural fragrance that was sublime.

A table was set in the galley. Silver cutlery from Willowbank was laid out around rose-bordered china from the House of Palermo in Italy. The baptismal gift of a succulent lamb from one of the residents in shacktown had been cooked and was roasted and steaming in the centre of the table, its tender, skinned head intact. Scalloped potatoes had been prepared from the local offerings of potatoes and cream, provisions from the nearly bare cellars and cupboards of the locals who willingly made this offering to a man of God.

‘I am accustomed to more humble meals than this, believe me. My travels tend to afford me victuals of the more austere sort, those shared with the fisherfolk and farmers. This is a treat. A blessing. Please,' said the bishop. ‘Eat.'

Rose looked at the food with an ailing expression.

‘You have no appetite?' he asked, pouring wine into his silver goblet.

‘No,' was all Rose could manage.

The bishop kept his eyes on her throughout the meal, chewing and drinking and wondering. ‘This wine is very pleasant. Made from blueberries, I hear.'

Rose kept her eyes lowered to her plate. In time, she lifted the weighty fork and poked at her cut of lamb that had been sliced from the centre, her stomach shrinking protectively around the thought of it.

The bishop was wiping his whiskers as he stood and placed the napkin on the table. He stepped toward Rose and sat in a chair which he pulled up by her side. ‘You must eat, to keep your strength.' He delicately took the fork from her and raised the knife, slicing away a piece of the most tender lamb toward the bone of the chop. ‘Here.' He lifted the fork to her lips and was thrilled at the sight of them parting to accept nourishment. ‘Yes, please, eat.' Again, he cut another piece. ‘Drink.' He offered her the goblet, his own goblet, which he rose from his chair to retrieve. ‘Good for the blood,' he said, the final word sending a waft of warmness into Rose's face. She drank as instructed, then allowed the bishop to feed her a forkful of creamy potatoes. He continued doing so, commenting on her lost baby and the rumours he heard from the women in Bareneed.

‘The baby was not your husband's. Is there truth to this, my child?'

Rose nodded in mortal embarrassment.

‘Better that it has been removed then. Here…eat.' He fed her more meat. ‘You must keep up strength. The turmoil of what you have endured strives on hunger. It would be no blessed fasting, yours.'

The bishop spoke more of the bastard child, his words becoming barbed with severity, until his guest's plate was perfectly cleaned.

Once done, the bishop stood, watching Rose, whose eyelids fluttered slightly, her throat contracting. Expecting a reaction of this sort, the bishop turned for the ash bin near the door and held it out for her. Rose's face inclined forward as she held her hair away from her cheeks. It was an intimacy the bishop could not bear, watching this woman vomit, spit, choke and, subsequently, moan.

When Rose was done with her expulsion, the bishop dabbed her lips
dry with the napkin provided, and, again, took his seat beside her.

‘This only confirms the menace,' the bishop assured her, watching Rose's left shoulder, so that Rose suspected a fleck of something from her mouth might be there. The bishop's fingers reached to brush it away. Inadvertently, his fingers slipped the dress down, enough to catch the hint of cleavage where the voluptuous curves of her weighty, milk-laden breasts began. He took a moment to stare there, before Rose fixed her garment. Then the bishop studied Rose's face, whose eyes were filled with sickness and inexplicable wonder.

This man, she was thinking, this man.
Diabhalta Easpag
. Further sickness in the pit of her stomach.

‘Your spirit has been disburdened. Not so laden now.' The bishop gave a brief smile then, again, slipped the dress from her shoulder, lowering it further until the heft of her curves became pronounced and the dark arc of her right nipple showed itself. ‘Stand,' the bishop instructed, rising while holding out his open palms. Rose complied, setting her hand on the edge of the thick table to steady herself.

Nearer to her now, taking in her fragrance and the creamy white pallor of her skin, enthralled by how the green veins were so pronounced in her breasts, the bishop edged the material down further and set his fingertips to her left nipple, a quiver coursing through him that stuttered in his moist breath. Searching Rose's eyes, as though testing for objection, he thought one word: physiology, then lowered his mouth to the nipple and sucked, his mouth steadily contracting and releasing. He drank plentifully, his actions turning vigorous while his hands squeezed her breast more energetically, pumping the milk into his throat.