The Law of Dreams (7 page)

The only safety he could imagine was up the high pastures, on the booley,
where as a young herd he had followed cattle week after midsummer week, grazing animals
from one grassy brow to another.

But winter up there so high was wild and empty.

Phoebe's bare feet on blue stones.

Perhaps she would do for him.

Steal rations. Keep him fed.

Easy to think so.

But would she? She'd turned him off. She was one of them.

Forget what you know and don't know.

Invent the world to stay in it.

WHEN THE
door finally swung open at dawn, there were
four fever cases writhing on the benches, two lying dead on the floor.

“I am weak this morning, fresh fish. And feeling so quiet.”
Murty Larry spoke in a whisper. His eyes blinking behind pink slits.

He helped Murty out to the yard where the little warden was standing close
by the fire trying to warm himself while a keeper served out the porridge. The air
smelled of smoke and snow.

While he ate his ration, Fergus watched Warden Conachree. The little man
looked like a rabbit with his pink chin and white flecks of beard. Swaddled in his coat
he kept shuffling closer to the heart of the fire, inch by inch — it seemed Warden
Conachree couldn't get enough of heat. The toes of his boots, Fergus noticed, were
dusty with fine gray ash. His rabbit face was flushed, and
he was
shivering. As Fergus watched, the little man unbuttoned his gorgeous coat and held it
open to the blaze. His teeth were hammering.

Chills were a sign of fever. You didn't feel warm until you were
blazing.

Fergus studied the florid, gasping little warden. His breeches were nice
yellow whipcord, fresh and new. Beautiful coat and boots and —

You're no one's keeper now.

Paupers were crowding around the fire like cattle in a storm, the stink of
their bodies unfurling in the violent warmth. Fergus saw Murty Larry was staring
stupidly at his ration.

“Eat it, man, you'll feel stronger.”

The orange boy's weakness and helplessness were somehow provoking
fresh strength in Fergus, which he could hear in his own voice. He felt harder, more
fixed.

The warden's face was sweating white drops like an onion.

“Shall I?” Murty sounded listless.

“You will, sure.”

The warden suddenly dropped onto his knees where he wavered, then toppled,
falling forward into the heart of the fire.

For a few seconds no one moved. Frays of cloth caught light instantly,
flaring. You could smell the burn. His cheek, his neck, sizzling on the coals. Frying
meat.

Grabbing the little man's spindly legs, Fergus started dragging him
out of the fire, out of the ash, then turned him over gently on the snowy pavement
stones. He was snorting and muttering — alive, but insensible. His pink face
steaming. Ashes and bits of char stuck to his flesh.

“Fever case! Black room for him, the old gouger!” Kneeling,
Murty Larry began to rifle through the warden's pockets. “Devil old man,
sour guts, what do you suppose? Will you burn in Hell now?”

Fergus watched Murty work through the warden's pockets. The keeper
who had been serving out the ration made no move to stop the orange boy.

Digging up a handkerchief, an apple, a twig of tobacco, and two pennies,
Murty stood up stuffing the goods in his pockets. “As good as fresh meat, an apple
is.” He began polishing it on his sleeve, then looked at Fergus and grinned.
“An apple, Fergus, is all I need to lick the fever. It's a gift of
God.”

Two paupers with sticks were trying to fish Conachree's hat from the
fire.

As Murty Larry ate the apple, two keepers came up with
a carpet, and Fergus watched the warden rolled up inside, and heard his muffled screams
as they carried him away.

Finishing the apple, Murty tossed the stem on the fire. “He's
for the black room, isn't he, Fergus?”

“I reckon.”

“Well, he deserves it, don't he. He has stolen our rations,
the old pecker, and sold 'em. I'd like that coat he had on his back,
I'd have that, I would.”

Murty began to snuffle and weep.

“What is it?” Fergus said.

“God watch over me, Fergus. I shouldn't have took his apple,
should I?”

“He won't be needing it.”

“No, but it's feverish, ain't it? You mustn't
touch a body's goods what has the fever. No, no. It's all a poison. Oh my.
Do you think I'll catch it?”

Murty was a fever case now, what did it matter what he touched or ate?

“Who knows?”

“Do I look nice, Fergus? I don't look ill, do I?”

Murty Larry's skin was straining dark, which was fever.

“You don't.”

WITH
the warden in the black room, many of the keepers
deserted, slipping through the main gate, carrying off sacks of Indian meal. Mam Shingle
refused to hold schoolroom. Girls and women were set to picking oakum, and boys were
left out in the yard with the men. A few began swinging hammers and breaking rocks,
trying to stay warm, but there were not enough hammers to go around, and most of them
lay down on the pavement, too weak to make any effort.

Fergus cruised around the yard, keeping close to the wall. The
morning's ration, however thin, had nourished him. He felt strong. Climbing onto a
pile of broken rocks, he stared over the roofs of the town, thinking of roads, the magic
of roads, which had given his father a kind of hard joy and shape.

Time to burst out. No life in this place, only dying.

“No, it's getting very close,” Murty whispered. He had
scrambled up on the rock pile beside Fergus.

“What is?”

“Winter. You're looking flashy, captain. What are you
thinking?”

“To get away.”

“There isn't any getting away, not from here.”

“There must be. If we stay we'll die. Look at them.”

Paupers lay about the yard, soft as gutted trout.

Of course there was a way out; he had only to find it. He'd go back
to the farm and bark at them. Go up the mountain and scream for the dead.

Or forget them all, and go for Ohio.

But he couldn't stay in this place, no.

Climbing down off the rock pile, he strode up to the main gate. There were
no beggars clustered outside trying to claim entry to the workhouse — either
they'd abandoned the fantasy of rations and shelter, or the snow had driven them
off. Or perhaps everyone else in the world was dead.

Grasping the bars, he rattled the gate, then looked back at the
gatekeeper's lodge. No smoke in the chimney, no sign of life. Perhaps the
gatekeeper had deserted with the others.

If he could get into the lodge, he might find the key. He went to try the
door. Finding it locked, he shook it.

“Get away!” the gatekeeper's voice roared from
inside.

Returning to the gate, Fergus tried to squeeze between the iron bars, but
they were set too close. He tried climbing. No one paid any notice as he writhed,
grasped, and struggled on the bars. But the gate was too high, the iron too slippery. He
gave up. Limping around the yard, he studied the walls closely. The blocks of dressed
limestone were fitted too neatly to give purchase for toes and fingers in the
cracks.

Calling Murty Larry over, Fergus made the orange boy stand in a corner
then tried climbing onto his shoulders to see if he could reach the top of the wall and
pull himself up, but Murty wasn't strong enough to bear the weight, and quickly
crumpled to his knees, sobbing.

“It ain't no good, Fergus, I ain't got the iron for it,
my bones all soft now. Why do you fluster me? Help me up, help me up or I'll stay
here, I'll stick to the stones I will, I'll lie here like a splatter of
sick. That's all I am.”

“You don't want to give it up, do you? You don't want to
die.”

“I don't care so much anymore.”

“If you could stand on my shoulders, perhaps you might reach the top
of the wall.”

“She's too high, too high, Fergus! You never shall conquer
her! Such hard walls ain't made for climbing but to keep us in. Oh, I would
fashion wheels in Limerick town. If I got out of here, I would so.” Murty Larry
was snuffling again. “They are going to carry me off to the black room, Fergus, I
know it.”

Fergus left him and kept cruising along the walls. Running hands over
blocks of seamless, smoothly fitted stone. Promising himself he would not die here, but
find a way out.

LATER
he brought Murty a noggin of soup and stood
watching over him so no one would steal it.

“I don't want it, Fergus. I haven't the stomach for
it.”

“Drink it, man, that's your life in there.”

Murty sighed. Dipping two fingers, he licked soup. “Jesus, but the
gunk tastes awful.”

“It isn't good, but it's better than nothing.”

“When did you last eat a potato, Fergus?”

“Don't remember.”

“I'd take a yellow lumper, big as a fist. We used to eat
'em by the basket, sometimes with a relish of herrings. Smash her in a bowl with a
stirrup of milk. Butter on top.” Murty Larry dipped and licked his fingers again.
“I shan't die tonight, captain, shall I?”

You might. You have a look.

“If I goes in the pit, you must cover me up. Don't let me lie
there in the sky, captain, but cover me up, and make sure my eyes is shut.”

No one welcomes death, those nearest the most reluctant.

HE EXPERIENCED A SERIES
of beast dreams. Wolves with
fishes on their backs. Speaking badgers. Carmichael's red mare laughing at him,
through a hole in the stable.

He swam to consciousness like a fish in a cold hole, rising sluggishly to
the light. He lay for some minutes before realizing there was daylight outside.

Carmichaels — the dispossessors, they had everything now.

The bell had not sounded.

Others were stirring. He got up quickly, and went outside where it was
snowing — the stony yard was covered with pure white stuff. No footprints yet. The
fire unlit. He hurried to try the gates, but they were locked. The gatekeeper's
lodge was deserted.

Emerging from the sleeping halls, paupers stood about the yard, rangy and
nervous as cattle in changing weather.

There was no one in Mam Shingle's room. No sacks of meal in the
storeroom. The last keepers had fled during the night, taking all rations.

Fergus saw Murty Larry pacing up and down by the iron gate. They had been
abandoned by Mam Shingle and all the other keepers, who had fled and locked the gate
behind them, deserting with the keys.

Murty looked wilder then ever, pacing by the gate. Some spirit in the
orange boy was strong enough to keep him on his feet. Even if it was only fear of the
black room.

A fox in a trap would bite off its own leg to get
away.

A female pauper clanged the warden's handbell for a long time as
though the sound itself might summon rations. In pewter light Fergus climbed the rock
pile and stared out across the walls at the snowy roofs of the town.

You might set for rabbits nicely, in such snow. See the tracks neat.

He could scrounge lumber off the black room slide, find nails and tools,
build himself a ladder, and get over the wall that way.

Hearing a squeak, he looked up and saw the gable window of the black room
swinging open. A body was being shoved out through the window, feet first, onto the
wooden slide. It was the little beetle man, Warden Conachree.

Whoever was inside let go of the ankles, and the warden's corpse
flew down the slide and tumbled soundlessly into the pit at the bottom.

A spade of powdered lime, flung from the window, clouded the air before it
began to settle over the pit. The window closed.

Excited shouting at the gate caught his attention. Hurrying over, peering
through the iron bars, he saw a company of dragoons mounted on black horses clattering
and steaming in the road.

Paupers howled through the bars at the soldiers, begging for food. The
dragoons were escorting a miller's cart piled with fat burlap sacks of Indian
meal. An English officer was braying orders. Fergus watched two soldiers on horseback
uncoil rope and throw two lines over the top of the gate, snagging the iron bars. They
began spurring their black horses. The lines sung taut, the gate began to flex, and he
heard the iron twisting, screeching on its hinges.

“No good, no good,” Murty Larry groaned. “Them sojers
want to crush us all.”

The gate snapped off its hinges with a loud twang and clattered down on
the pavement. Looking around, Fergus saw pauper women already fanning a fire. The
miller's cart, driven by a frightened-looking boy, rumbled over the flattened gate
and into the workhouse yard, dragoons crowding in behind, their massive horses creaking
with gear and leather.

Murty Larry bowed low, sweeping his arm toward the open gateway and the
snowy street outside, in a gesture of magnanimous invitation.

Fergus looked back at the fire where a dragoon was piercing sacks with his
saber and pauper women were already sluicing yellow meal into the kettle. The inmates
stood about anxiously like cattle waiting to be milked.

Looking through the opening in the walls he saw Murty
Larry running away down the white street, already a dim figure in the mist, leaving
black footprints on the snow.

The scent of the raw meal — sweet, dusty — was tempting.

You might stay, get yourself a ration.

The road, the road.

Red soldiers, famished inmates.

Rations might keep you alive, but they were all you'd ever get, and
you wanted more.