The Toilers of the Sea (9 page)

IV

UNPOPULARITY

Gilliatt, as we have said, was not liked in the parish. This antipathy was entirely natural.

There were abundant reasons for it. In the first place, as explained above, there was the house he lived in. Then there were his origins. Who was the woman? And where did the child come from? People do not like strangers about whom there is something of a mystery. Then, too, his clothes. He dressed like a workman, but—though not rich—he had enough to live on without working. Then there was his garden, which he managed to cultivate and which produced crops of potatoes in spite of the equinoctial gales. And then there were the big books that he kept on a shelf and that he actually read.

There were other reasons, too.

Why did he live such a solitary life? The Bû de la Rue was a kind of lazaretto in which Gilliatt was confined in quarantine. This explained why people were surprised by his isolation and held him responsible for the solitude that they had made around him.

He never went to chapel. He often went out at night. He held converse with witches and warlocks. He had once been seen sitting on the grass with a look of astonishment on his face. He haunted the dolmen of L'Ancresse and the fairy stones that are scattered about in the countryside. People were convinced that he had been seen respectfully saluting the Crowing Rock. He bought all the birds that were brought to him and set them free. He was polite to the good people he encountered in the streets of St. Sampson, but liked to take a long way around to avoid the town. He often went out fishing and always came back with a catch. On Sundays he worked in his garden. He had a set of bagpipes, bought from the Highland soldiers who had been stationed on Guernsey, and used to play them at nightfall amid the rocks on the seashore. He waved his arms about as if he were sowing seed. What are people to make of a man like that?

And the books that he had inherited from the dead woman, and that he read, were disturbing, too. When the Reverend Jaquemin Hérode, rector of St. Sampson's, had been in the house for the woman's funeral, he had read on the spines of the books the titles of Rosier's
Dictionary,
Voltaire's Candide, and Tissot's Advice to the People on Health.
⁷⁴
A French noble, an émigré who had come to live in St. Sampson, declared that this must have been the Tissot who had carried the Princesse de Lamballe's head on a pike.

The reverend gentleman had also noticed on one of the books the daunting and threatening title
De Rhubarbaro.

It must be said, however, that since this work, as the title indicates, was written in Latin, it was doubtful whether Gilliatt, who knew no Latin, read it. But it is just those books that a man does not read that provide evidence against him. The Spanish Inquisition considered this point and put the matter beyond doubt.

In fact the book was merely Dr. Tilingius's treatise on rhubarb, published in Germany in 1679.

There was also a suspicion that Gilliatt might be making charms, philters, and magic potions. He certainly possessed vials.

Why did he go out walking along the cliffs in the evening, sometimes as late as midnight? Evidently it was to talk to the evil beings that haunt the seashore at night, enveloped in smoke.

Once he had helped the witch of Torteval—an old woman called Moutonne Gahy—to pull her cart out of the mud.

When a census was taken on the island, he replied to a question about his occupation, “Fisherman, when there are any fish to catch.” Put yourself in the place of the local people: they don't like answers of that kind.

Poverty and wealth are comparative terms. Gilliatt owned fields and a house, and, compared with people who had nothing, he was not poor. One day, to test him, and perhaps also by way of an advance—for there are women who would marry a devil if he had money—a girl asked Gilliatt, “When are you going to take a wife?” Gilliatt replied, “I will take a wife when the Crowing Rock takes a husband.”

This Crowing Rock is a large stone standing erect in a field near Monsieur Lemessurier du Frie's. It is a stone to beware of. No one knows what it is there for. A cock is heard crowing there, but it cannot be seen: a very unpleasant occurrence. Then, too, it is asserted that the stone was set up in the field by sarregousets, who are the same as sins.
⁷⁵

At night, when it thunders, if you see men flying in the red of the clouds and the quivering of the air, these are sarregousets. A woman who lives at Grand Mielles knows them. One evening when there were sarregousets at a crossroads this woman shouted to a carter who did not know which road to take, “Ask them your way. They are civil creatures, always ready to talk to people.” Ten to one the woman was a witch.

The learned and judicious King James I had women of this kind boiled alive: then he tasted the stock and from its taste was able to say whether the woman was a witch or not.

It is regrettable that in our day kings have lost any talent of this kind, which showed the usefulness of the institution of monarchy.

Gilliatt had a reputation for sorcery, and there were good grounds for this. One night at midnight, during a storm, when he was in a boat, alone, off the Sommeilleuses,
⁷⁶
he was heard to ask, “Is there room enough for me to get through?”

Then a voice cried from the rocks, “Plenty of room! Go to it!”

Whom could he have been speaking to, if not to whoever it was that replied? This seems to us proof.

On another stormy evening, when it was so dark that you couldn't make out anything, near Catioroc
⁷⁷
—a double row of rocks, where witches and warlocks, goats and spectral faces gather to dance on Fridays—people were sure they recognized Gilliatt's voice in this terrible conversation:

“How is neighbor Brovard?” (This was a building worker who had fallen off a roof.)

“Getting better.”

“
Ver dia!
He fell from a bit higher than that big post. Good that he didn't break anything.”

“There was good weather for the seaweed-gathering last week.”

“Better than today.”

“Right! There won't be much fish in the market.”

“It blows too hard.”

“They won't be able to put their nets down.”

“How is Catherine?”

“She is a charmer.”

Catherine was evidently a sarregousette.

Clearly Gilliatt was up to some dark business at night. Certainly no one doubted it.

He was seen sometimes pouring water from a jug onto the ground. And it is well known that water poured on the ground marks out the form of devils.

On the road to St. Sampson, opposite the first of the Martello towers, are three stones set in the form of steps. On the top step, which is now empty, there once stood a cross—or it may have been a gibbet. These stones are maleficent.

Worthy people and absolutely credible witnesses declared that they had seen Gilliatt talking to a toad near these stones. Now there are no toads on Guernsey: Guernsey has all the grass snakes, while Jersey has all the toads. This toad must have swum over from Jersey to speak to Gilliatt. The conversation was in a friendly tone.

These facts were clearly established; and the proof is that the three stones are still there. Anyone who doubts this can go and see them; moreover, a short distance away, there is a house on the corner of which is the sign: DEALER IN CATTLE, ALIVE OR DEAD, OLD ROPE, IRON, BONES, AND CHEWING TOBACCO; PROMPT PAYMENT AND ATTENTION TO ORDERS.

No honest man can deny that the stones and this house exist. All this was injurious to Gilliatt's reputation.

Only the ignorant are unaware that the greatest danger in the waters of the Channel is the king of the Auxcriniers. No figure in the marine world is more redoubtable. Anyone who sees him is sure to suffer shipwreck between one St. Michael and the other.
⁷⁸
He is small, being a dwarf, and deaf, being a king. He knows the names of all those who have died at sea and the places where they lie. He is familiar with every part of that great graveyard, the ocean. A head, massive in the lower part and narrow at the top, a squat body, a viscous and misshapen belly, wartlike excrescences on his skull, short legs, long arms, flippers for feet, claws for hands, a broad green face: such is this king. His claws are webbed and his flippers have nails. Imagine a fish that is a specter and has a face like a man. To get the better of him you would have to exorcise him or fish him out of the sea. But as he is, he is a sinister figure. It is alarming to encounter him at sea. Above the breakers and the swell, through the dense mist, sailors glimpse the outlines of a figure: a low forehead, a snub nose, flat ears, an enormous gap-toothed mouth, a glaucous grimace, eyebrows in the form of inverted
V
s, great grinning eyes. When the lightning is red he is livid; when the lightning is purple he is pallid. He has a stiff, spreading, square-cut beard, dripping wet, over a membrane in the form of a cape, ornamented with fourteen shells, seven in front and seven behind. These shells are extraordinary even to those who know about shells. The king of the Auxcriniers is seen only in violent seas. He is the lugubrious strolling player of the storm. His figure is seen emerging from the fog, the gust of wind, the rain. His navel is hideous. A carapace of scales covers his flanks like a waistcoat. He stands erect above the heaving waves whipped up by the wind, which twist and turn like shavings from a carpenter's plane. His whole body emerges from the foam; and if there are any ships in distress on the horizon he dances, pale in the half-darkness, his face lit by the ghost of a smile, mad and terrible in aspect. He is an ill-omened figure to meet. At the time when Gilliatt was a subject of concern to the citizens of St. Sampson, the last people to see the king of the Auxcriniers declared that he now had only thirteen shells on his cape. Thirteen shells: this made him all the more dangerous. But what had become of the fourteenth? Had he given it to someone? And whom had he given it to? No one could say for certain, and people were reduced to conjectures. What is certain is that Monsieur Lupin-Mabier of Les Godaines, a man of property paying tax at the rate of eighty quarters, was ready to depose on oath that he had once seen a very unusual shell in Gilliatt's hands.

It was not uncommon to hear two countrymen talking on these lines:

“It's a fine ox I have, isn't it, neighbor?”

“A fine fat one, certainly, neighbor.”

“It's a good one all the same.”

“Better for tallow than for meat.”

“Ver dia!”

“Are you sure that Gilliatt hasn't cast his eye on it?”

Gilliatt would sometimes stop on the edge of a field where plowing was going on, or of a garden in which gardeners were working, and make mysterious remarks, for example:

“When the devil's bit is in flower, harvest the winter rye.” (The “devil's bit” is scabious.)

“The ash is putting on leaves: there will be no more frost.”

“Summer solstice, thistles in flower.”

“If it doesn't rain in June, the wheat will turn white. Look out for blight.”

“There are berries on the wild cherry. Beware of the full moon.”

“If the weather on the sixth day of the moon is the same as on the fourth, or on the fifth, it will be the same, nine times out of twelve in the first case and eleven times out of twelve in the second, for the whole of the month.”

“Keep an eye on neighbors who are at law with you. Beware of malicious tricks. A pig given hot milk to drink will die. A cow that has had its teeth rubbed with a leek won't eat.”

“When the smelts spawn beware of fevers.”

“When frogs appear, sow your melons.”

“The liverwort is in flower: sow your barley.”

“The lime trees are in flower: mow the meadows.”

“The poplars are in flower: take the covers off.”

“The tobacco is in flower: close the greenhouses.”

And the terrible thing was that those who took this advice did well out of it.

One night in June, when he was playing his bagpipes in the dunes at La Demie de Fontenelles, the mackerel fishing failed.

One evening, at low tide, a cart laden with seaweed overturned on the beach below the house at the Bû de la Rue. Gilliatt was probably afraid of being brought before the magistrates, for he went to a good deal of trouble in helping to raise the cart, and reloaded the seaweed himself.

When a little girl in the neighborhood was infested with lice he went to St. Peter Port and returned with an ointment, which he rubbed on the child; and since Gilliatt had got rid of her lice this proved that he had given her them in the first place. Everyone knows that there is a charm for giving people lice.

Gilliatt was suspected of looking into wells, which is dangerous when a person has the evil eye; and it is a fact that one day at Les Arculons, near St. Peter Port, the water in a well turned bad. The woman to whom the well belonged said to Gilliatt: “Just look at that water,” and she showed him a glassful. Gilliatt admitted it was bad. “It's true,” he said, “the water is thick.” The woman, who mistrusted him, said: “Then put it right again for me.” Gilliatt asked a number of questions: Had she a stable? Had the stable a drain? Did the gutter of the drain run close to the well? The woman replied, “Yes.” Then Gilliatt went into the stable, worked on the drain, and altered the line of the gutter: whereupon the water became pure again. The local people knew what to think. A well does not become foul one moment, and then pure, without reason. The trouble with the well was clearly not natural; and indeed it is difficult not to believe that Gilliatt had cast a spell on the water.

One day he had gone to Jersey, and it was noted that he had stayed in St. Clement's, in Rue des Alleurs; and
alleurs
are ghosts.

In villages the inhabitants observe all the little details of a man's behavior; then they add them up, and the total makes a reputation.

One day Gilliatt was observed to have a nosebleed. This was thought to be a grave matter. The master of a ship who had traveled a lot—who had sailed almost around the world—affirmed that among the Tungusians all witch doctors were subject to nosebleeds. When you see a man with a bleeding nose you know what to think. Fair-minded people, however, remarked that what was true of witch doctors in Tungusia might not apply to the same extent on Guernsey.