Galore (10 page)

—And how exactly does the archbishop plan to deal with the man?

—As you are aware, Reverend Dodge, the Romans are not keen to discuss their internal problems. I’m surprised he spoke to me at all.

—He must have wanted something?

—Just an eye, Waghorne said casually. —A line or two now and then to say when Phelan is here, what he’s doing. Who he’s closest to.

Dodge turned to set his plate on the table. —I hardly thought when I was ordained, he said, that I would be asked to spy on behalf of the Catholic archbishop.

—Come now, Waghorne said gently. —Think of it as a neighborly gesture. A Christian duty.

A tall girl wandered by with an empty plate, offering a cursory bob in their direction as she passed.

—Mary Tryphena Devine, Dodge whispered.

—Is that the young one half the men of Newfoundland are heartsick for?

—The same.

Waghorne tilted his head in appraisal, his lips pursed. —Well, the girl has fine posture, he said dismissively.

—I expect you will have noted the relative lack of female company about you.

The vicar glanced around the yard and even by that casual assessment he could see the women were outnumbered at least three to one.

—Hunger is the best sauce, Your Worship.

After Mary Tryphena had taken her fill from the tables she heaped a plate with food for Olive Trim, then entertained the baby so the woman could eat her meal in peace. Happy to be distracted from thinking of Absalom who was still nowhere to be seen. Olive was leaning back on a pillow of straw in her truckley beneath the weight of her belly, finally pregnant with a child of her own after taking in the orphan they’d christened Obediah. She was only days from delivering and looked like a creature trapped under some obstruction she was helpless to move.

—Jabez is certain it’s a lad we’re having, Olive said. —Wants to call him Azariah.

Mary Tryphena looked at Olive to see if she was meant to laugh at this. —Obediah and Azariah.

Olive said, Too many hours with his head in the Good Book if you want my opinion, may God forgive me. She shifted slightly, reaching a hand to change the position of one of her lifeless legs. —Don’t know how I’ll manage to chase two of the little buggers around.

Mary Tryphena was watching Selina’s House distractedly and only nodded.

—Have you seen Absalom since he’s been home? Olive asked.

Mary Tryphena smiled across at her and shook her head, embarrassed to be caught out. She saw Judah and Lazarus wandering through the crowd with the wood dog at their heels and she called them over to show off the youngster. Lazarus took the tricorn from Judah to place it full over Obediah’s head and the filthy darkness set the child to bawling. Mary Tryphena thought to say something to Olive about the ridiculous proposal from the sailor she’d turned down that morning but didn’t see how she could avoid more discussion of Absalom with the subject and let it lie. She took the hat off the baby’s head, tossing it back to Jude, and he offered up a fool’s dance to try and quiet the youngster.

Captain John Withycombe almost missed the garden party altogether, retreating to his quarters following the disastrous proposal to Mary Tryphena, shutting himself away with a chair against the door and a bottle in his lap. He’d sat there in a daze, unable to understand what had made him behave like such a goddamn fool. He felt as if he’d been living under a spell the last months and before long came to the conclusion that his condition was the girl’s doing, that she’d bewitched him somehow and used him for her sport. He took his first drink before noon and did not stop until he’d fallen into a near coma in his hammock. By the time he was roused by a hammering at the barred door he’d all but lost the day’s events in the fog of sleep and drunkenness.

His shipmates guessed how things had unfolded by his face when he first came back over the Tolt that morning, and they left him to his misery. But they were drunk themselves by suppertime and insisted on offering some distraction. He’d missed the parade, they shouted through the door, and he was in danger of missing the food and drink as well. He didn’t know what parade they were talking about. A sense of disquiet and offense pricked at him but he was damned if he could name its source, and the rush to deliver him to the party at Selina’s House pushed it aside.

He saw the girl as soon as they reached the garden, sitting in the grass beside a pregnant cripple, and the morning rushed back to him, the bile of it closing off his throat. She was smiling up at a tall white bastard who was wearing John Withycombe’s tricorn and acting out a dumb show that could only have been at his expense. Mocking him with his own fucking hat. The captain’s legs shaking with a mortified rage and he started yelling over the noise of the crowd that his hat had been stolen. The man ran off when he saw the captain pointing him out, with young Arscott in pursuit. The soldier jumped onto his back to wrestle him down while a black and white dog savaged the soldier’s stockings.

John Withycombe was buried then in the pell-mell confusion, tramped upon by the shoving crowd and half deafened by the cursing and the screams of the women, until a musket fired and the Irishmen scuttled for the hills. When he pushed himself up he could see his hat trampled to ratshit and the dog lying dead on the grass beside it. Arscott sat cupping a wound in his gut that leaked like a Portuguese trader, the poor little shagger as good as dead now, a virgin still and forever and ever amen.

There was no prison in Paradise Deep and Judah Devine was locked in a fishing room, one soldier assigned to guard the entrance.

Lieutenant Goudie interrogated everyone present at the garden party but the mash of conflicting detail made it impossible to settle events with any certainty. The dog was shot by Kinnebrook who couldn’t force the animal to leave off Arscott in any other way. Arscott died by a wound from his own knife which was found in the grass beside him and which he’d likely drawn to defend himself against the dog’s attack. No one admitted to witnessing the fatal blow but Alphonse Toucher’s name was mentioned several times as a likely suspect and four soldiers were sent off to arrest him. They came back to the fishing room with all three Touchers in custody, each accusing another of being Alphonse. Lieutenant Goudie brought in their parents and siblings and a handful of people from the Gut who failed to make a convincing case in any direction and he was forced to set them all loose in the end. Which left them with Judah as the principal.

Callum thought a plea of self-defense might relieve Jude of the charge, but Devine’s Widow dismissed the notion. Judah was also being held for the theft of Captain John Withycombe’s tricorn and had been apprehended while attempting to escape a soldier of the crown, all of which spoke against self-defense.

The subtleties of the argument were lost on Lazarus. He’d insisted they carry the dog back to the Gut to bury him near the Catholic cemetery and he was tormented by the thought of losing Judah as well. No court in Newfoundland was invested with authority to try capital crimes and Jude would have to be transported to England to face a judge, which was no different than a death sentence in the six-year-old’s mind. It seemed not to matter that John Withycombe had abandoned the hat of his own accord or that it was Lazarus who retrieved it. He threatened to confess to stealing the hat unless something was done to win Judah’s release and Devine’s Widow decided to go to Selina’s House herself in the end.

It had been years since she’d been troubled by the dreams that preceded Laz’s birth, the blood in the wake of that separation, but the memory was still visceral and immediate and she carried it with her over the Tolt Road. She went to the servant’s entrance at the back of the building and waited in the kitchen while the mistress was called. Selina beckoned for Devine’s Widow to follow her and they went down the hall to the parlor where Lieutenant Goudie and Reverend Waghorne were drinking brandy and smoking. Devine’s Widow turned to Selina when she saw the men there.

—I gave you my daughter, Selina whispered. —I can’t be any assistance to you in this matter. And she ushered Devine’s Widow in to sit with the other guests. —Master Sellers will be along directly, she said.

The vicar and Lieutenant Goudie were boarding at Selina’s House while the investigation was carried out and they fell into silence so suddenly the widow assumed they’d been discussing the case. She took a seat near the window and they all three waited for King-me to join them from the office. Selina clearly hadn’t told her husband who it was waiting on him and he stopped inside the door as he entered, startled to come face to face with the old woman.

Devine’s Widow looked up at him, then glanced around the room. —Just like old times, Master Sellers, she said.

King-me didn’t follow her meaning for a moment but he straightened when he saw it. A naval officer, a clergyman and Master Sellers facing her. Devine’s Widow put on trial half a century ago. She smiled her lopsided smile at him. It was the wrong way to begin the discussion she’d come for, but the configuration in the room was so unlikely she couldn’t resist.

—There’s no talking to be done where Judah is concerned, King-me said, guessing the reason for her visit.

—There’s no one saw him raise a hand to that soldier.

—There’s none will admit to seeing it, Reverend Waghorne said.

—You was there, Reverend, did you see it?

—My vantage point was not ideal, he said defensively.

—Judah had no part in killing that soldier, no more than Master Sellers’ grandson.

King-me turned to Lieutenant Goudie. —Pay no attention to this witch, he said.

Goudie was slouched against the arm of the chesterfield, combing a hand against the grain of a massive sideburn. He had a lazy Scots inflection that made him seem disinterested in life in general. —These soldiers, he said. —They’re sentimental men, understand. They’ll have blood for young Arscott. We might be able to do something for Judah Devine if someone could help us identify the Toucher lad.

Devine’s Widow waved a hand. —It was the soldier’s own knife killed him, people are saying.

—I’m not at liberty to discuss the details.

—He fell on his own knife trying to get at the dog is what happened and everyone knows it for the truth, whatever else they might be telling you.

The officer nodded thoughtfully a moment. —There was no Toucher involved, was there.

Reverend Waghorne stared at Goudie. —I don’t follow, Lieutenant.

—We can’t distinguish the Toucher in question from his brothers, Goudie said slowly, still piecing it together. —And there’d be hell to pay if we hang all three. So. It would appear that witnesses named a man they were reasonably sure would not be convicted.

—Judah has no family you’ll have to answer to, the widow said. —That’s the only reason he’s locked up now. He got no one belonged to him.

—He has you, Missus, King-me said without meeting her eyes.

She stared at Sellers standing stock-still at the door, as if on guard. —How long before you leave, Lieutenant? the widow asked.

—We’ve delayed the Spurriers vessel a fortnight already, he said. —We’ll have to sail within the next day or so.

She stood abruptly and left then, not waiting to be shown the door. She stopped in to see Father Phelan at Mrs. Gallery’s, the priest half-drunk and delighted by the proposal she made until he realized the widow had yet to broach the subject with any of the principals. She told the priest to be sober enough to perform his office when they came for him and she would look to all other concerns. —A wedding, Mr. Gallery, Father Phelan said to the husband in the darkest corner of the room. —God’s covenant made flesh between man and wife. Will you have a drink to celebrate?

The widow said, A priest isn’t meant to relish the sufferings of others, Father.

—We choose our own hell, Phelan said, and he smiled at her.

She stopped at the peak of the Tolt on her way back into the Gut. Dark water and ragged patches of pale blue over shoal ground. As a younger woman she often thought of Ireland gone under that horizon and swallowed by the waters. But it had been a lifetime since she’d felt that regret, knowing it was useless to ask questions of the past.

She wasn’t much above a girl when she first came to Paradise Deep, indentured to Sellers for two winters and a summer, and she’d nearly worked herself free of him before his marriage proposal led to her dismissal. The harbor settled by a handful of English and all of them tied to King-me’s operation, so she walked to the Gut where she expected a more sympathetic welcome among the Irish and the bushborns. The Tolt Road only the barest hint of a path and rough walking with snow still down among the trees. She made a tour of the cove but no one would chance the merchant’s wrath by taking her on. Sarah Kerrivan at least offered a bed but she refused to sleep under another’s roof again. She fashioned a lean- to of spruce boughs next the Kerrivan’s scrawny apple tree, sleeping with their wood dog to avoid perishing in the cold. The following spring she raised a one-room tilt with logs she’d cut through the winter, but she had no better prospects for employment. There were nine or ten men to every woman on the shore in those days and any single man would have wed her if she showed the slightest interest, if it wasn’t common knowledge she’d spurned young Sellers who lived in Paradise Deep like some feudal lord, drinking tea with fresh milk from his own cow. No one could imagine what they might offer to turn her head and they left her alone.

The same had been true of King-me while she worked for him. Before he proposed he never spoke a word to her except to give instructions or request a specific meal from the kitchen, though it was clear to her how besotted he was. King-me had no experience or interest in love and he seemed incapable of recognizing what had struck him. He blamed fevers and ague and indigestion for his feeling so out of sorts. He consulted her on a cure for worms he suspected as the cause of his distress. He ordered Tincture of Sage and Essence of Water-Dock from quack physicians in England who promised relief of the sullen headaches, the poor appetite and swollen stomach, the spirits funk. In desperation he had her brew a colonic of molasses and cod-liver oil to clear his system of its bad humors.