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Authors: Paul Rowe

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BOOK: Silent Time
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The old man and the boys had arrived late and went home with only some lumber and a few coils of rope. Meanwhile, she saw others leave the wreck with their brin bags full of neat things they had taken from the galley. She noticed the best kind of pots and pans, cups and saucers, plates, knives, forks and spoons, white mugs with the ship's name on them; all stuff that wasn't cheap and that could last a big family, like the one she and Paddy were on the way to having, for generations. She'd felt a strong thrust of envy back then, and the memory of it rustled in her now as she bounded down the stairs with a vague plan already forming in her mind.

She noted that the neighbouring yards were empty and that the slow quiet stream of men coming across the meadow was headed her way. They gathered quietly, their hands in their pockets, one or two praying with rosary beads; another held a statue of the Virgin Mary to his chest. There were forty or more and Leona realized she couldn't keep them secret for very long.

A man with a thick moustache and dark brown eyes, carrying a pair of hefty brown cardboard cases, one in each hand, approached her. He laid the cases on the ground, took her hand in his and said, in uncertain English, “I am Captain Miguel de Silva of the schooner
Santa Maria
. My ship, it is on the rocks near here. She is lost. I need you to help my crew this day while I go to Placentia. I must send owners a message.” He allowed himself a careless shrug. “They have insurance.”

Leona knew the ship had gone up on the Virgin Rocks, a dark trio that rose menacingly out of the ocean about a half an hour's row from Knock Harbour.

“Did she sink?” she asked.

“She is on rocks, out there.” He pointed through the mist. “She will sink soon. Very dangerous. You understand?”

“We'll need to get everyone into the school,” Leona said, pointing across the road to where you could barely make out the building's tiny white cross in the fog. “We can look after your men there.”

“Thank-you,” said the captain, looking round to reassure his men. “You must say your people not to board my ship. Too dangerous.”

Paddy came out of the house. Leona gave the captain an excusing smile, then pulled Paddy to one side. She kept a worried eye on the men, aware that at any minute someone else might see them and give the whole thing away.

“There's a schooner out there right now,” she said, “and no one knows a thing about it except me and you.”

“Others will know soon enough,” said Paddy.

“Sure, but not before we gets a chance to go out there and have a look around by ourselves.”

Paddy lifted his cap and scratched his head with his thumbnail. “If we take off now these fellows is only going to knock on someone else's door. Besides, I just heard that fellow say the wreck is not safe.”

Leona ignored the last remark. “I'll go by myself. You look after this crowd. Everyone will think I'm in the house with the youngsters.”

“But, Leona,” Paddy persisted, “he just said it's too dangerous.”

“I won't board if it is,” Leona replied quickly. “I just wants to have a look around.”

She had learned to get her way with Paddy. He was still in raptures over her young body, her handsome face and thick black hair which, during the day, she kept wrapped in its tight bun, but which, during the night, she poured over him in a dark teasing flood. She looked at his guileless blue eyes, worried that this was not a face to hide a secret in. Still, she wanted to go to the wreck and decided to press her advantage.

“You go on up to the church and ring the bell,” she said. “Bring this crowd up there and see they gets some tea and a bite to eat. That'll take up a lot of time right there. I can get back and forth to the rocks in no time.”

Paddy didn't budge.

“Tell me what you're going to salvage in a rodney, Leona.”

She answered with a sharp whisper that drew a look from the captain. “I don't know, Paddy! Money, jewellery, gold, maybe. These fellows abandoned ship in such a hurry, who knows what got left behind out there?”

“What about the youngsters?”

“The boys are sound asleep and Jas is in his crib. What's gonna hurt ‘em?”

“What if you gets caught, Leona? Everybody's supposed to get their fair share of salvage around here.”

“We'll share, Paddy, if anything comes off her later. I wants a quick look around first, that's all. No one is going to see what I'm at through this fog. Now, go on.”

She turned to the captain and told him that her husband would look after them. Meanwhile, she said, she had to fetch a load of kindling from the back cove. She turned and gave Paddy a wink before heading off down the meadow.

The captain, who had once again picked up the two cardboard cases, looked on as she walked into the mist.

When she'd first come to Knock Harbour four years ago, Leona had loved the fact that you could row through the gut, land your punt or dory, then walk through the small droke of trees, across the meadow and right into Paddy's house without having to cross another property. She'd had no idea how to exploit this delicious bit of privacy at the time, but delighted in it now as she reached the cove unseen and pulled the sleek little rodney from its moorings to the shore.

She rowed with a will, giving a firm tug on the oars at the end of the stroke as Paddy had taught her. She made the rodney skip along over the calm, gently rolling sea. It took her only twenty minutes or so to get to the Virgin Rocks. She heard the creaking timbers and the wash of surf against the wounded vessel before it loomed drunkenly out of the mist. The thick masts and drooping canvases dipped alarmingly to one side, rose and fell gently with each push and pull of the tide. She saw the cracked timbers in the ship's hull where the water had poured in and set the stern section heavily in the waves, like a stunned beast knocked on its behind.

One thing was immediately clear; the captain was right. It was too dangerous to board. Disappointed, she rowed to the other side of the vessel, hoping to spot something salvageable in the water, and saw instead a pilot's ladder, with rungs of weathered grey plank embedded in thick rope, swinging loosely from the ship's side. The crew must have used it to board the lifeboats. It hung there like an invitation. She rowed up, cautiously gauging the time and effort it would take to climb it and board. She decided she could do it. The ladder hung right to the water so she tied the rodney to one side of it and eased herself onto the bottom rung. Her arms and hands were strong and the boots she wore were solid, so she made slow but steady progress. She was hardly out of breath at all when she dragged herself over the side and tumbled onto the deck.

She very nearly landed on top of a thick cardboard case, exactly like the two she'd seen the captain carry into the yard earlier. The captain had kept careful watch over the cases and Leona was convinced that this one, too, contained something valuable; maybe not money, but something
like. But there wasn't time to open it now. She found herself alarmed by the shifting surface of the deck and had to fight off an almost overwhelming urge to get out of there. Part of her still hungered to scour the ship's galley, but she knew now this was impossible. The box was a lucky enough find, even if it presented the immediate problem of getting it over the side and aboard the rodney. It was too awkward to carry down the ladder. She thought of dropping it over the side into the rodney but this would likely scuttle the little boat. She'd be in a poor state then with no way back to shore. She was loathe to throw it into the water and retrieve it, for fear of damaging what was inside. Luckily, she found a piece of loose rope lying nearby and tied it to the handle of the carton. She leaned over the side and lowered the box on the rope as far as she could toward the rodney. Then she released it from her grip and watched it land with a thump in the stern. The little boat hardly budged and Leona heaved a sigh of relief.

Then, she noticed a small seaman's chest floating a little distance off in the mist. Another stroke of luck! She carefully descended the ladder, boarded the rodney, stowed the box under the rear taut and rowed to the trunk. She found the thing to be quite light and dragged it into the rodney with one hand. “I told you, Paddy,” she said aloud, delighted with herself. “I told you it would be it worth our while.”

The ship gave a sudden groan behind her and she turned to see it settle a little further in the stern. She felt the gentle pressure of sunlight on her eyes. It was time to get to hell out of there. She leaned into the oars and made for the beach.

The sailors sat shoulder to shoulder in the pews, their faces tired but relaxed. The worry, cold and salt dampness of the wretched morning had eased in the reassuring heat of the fire Paddy had crackling in the wood-stove. They talked quietly among themselves and, once they'd noticed the Stations of the Cross on the upper walls, took turns kneeling quietly in the pews to pray.

The Knock Harbour crowd had filed in over the last hour or so and enclosed the sailors by filling the space behind and alongside the pews. Paddy was uncomfortably positioned at the head of the crowded room, where a priest or teacher normally stood. When worrisome talk of going to the wreck began, however, he got over his shyness and addressed the room.

“Before we does anything,” he said, “someone got to bring this captain fella to Placentia, or else we'll be all day and night looking after this
crowd. Where are we going to put them? How are we going to feed them?”

“Paddy's right,” said his brother Phonse. “We can't look after ‘em for any length of time. Someone from Placentia got to come and get them, and that means one of us has to go up there.”

Paddy was encouraged by the general murmur of agreement until Maisie Tobin got her oar in to make things more difficult.

“Well, the Merrigans can do what they likes, but my Thomas is going straight out to that wreck soon as we get these fellas a cup o' tea. Now, give us our six or seven and let us go back to the house and look after ‘em.”

“Maisie, that ship is takin' on water and might go to the bottom anytime,” Paddy replied. “If you gets a crowd going out there now, there's no tellin' what could happen.”

Paddy's brother Edward came to his rescue this time. “He's right, Maisie. No amount of salvage is worth getting killed over. It feels like this fog is going to burn off. I say, when it does, we take two or three boats out to the wreck and size it up. We can all agree that no one takes any salvage until we gives the go-ahead. That's the only fair way to do it. Right, Paddy?”

Paddy made a guilty nod in his brother's direction.

“Well, then, I wants my Thomas to be one of the ones who goes.” Maisie gave her distressed husband a poke in the ribs. “Right?”

“Yes, girl, I'll go if ya wants me to,” he said.

“If I wants! Ye should want to yerself. Soon they'll be comin' from every corner of the bay to get something off her. A wreck is the grace of God and it's a blessing she went aground off our shore.”

Thomas nodded wearily at the lecture as knowing looks were exchanged around the room.

“Where's your young one at anyway, Paddy?” Maisie asked, looking around suspiciously. “She's practically the only one not here.”

“She's not my young one, Maisie, like I'm tired of tellin' you. She's my wife. An' for your information, she's home, lookin' after the youngsters an' gettin' the house ready for the strangers.”

Paddy was shaken by this outright lie. He was also troubled by the suggestion that the fog was burning off, and increasingly anxious, besides, for Leona's safety. He breathed a sigh of relief when the door to the church opened and she stepped into the crowded room.

“I'm here for me parcel o' sailors” she said, and everybody laughed.

Paddy seized the moment to start assigning the sailors to different households and moving them out of the church.

“Wait a minute,” Maisie said, unwilling to let well enough alone. “We still didn't decide who's going to take yer man there to Placentia. Whoever it is won't be getting any salvage today.”

This stirred things up again until Katie Merrigan called from the doorway. “There's Tramore. Sure, he's the perfect one to do it. He's on his way to Placentia, he got no boat and I'm sure he don't want nothin' to do wit salvage.”

Tramore was a travelling tinker who made his living selling from the back of his gig: everything from candles and kerosene to sides of lamb and beef. He rarely spoke to anyone except to make a sale. He constantly sucked on a pipe and his weathered face was covered with a thick, yellowed beard. It was true he would be the perfect one to take the captain to Placentia. Essentially a hermit who never made ties with anyone, Tramore had no interest in the doings of any community.

“He won't take you unless ya gives him a dollar,” Paddy said.

The captain, who had been listening carefully to the proceedings, nodded as if to say “no problem.” In a matter of minutes, he was making the slow climb up Knock Harbour Hill on the back of Tramore's wagon. The two cardboard cases were placed carefully by his side.

Leona knew, by the time she got back to the church, that there would be no worries about salvage. She had seen the wreck go down. The stern, full of water at last and weighed down by submerged cargo, had sent the prow skyward like a compass needle pointing north. She'd heard the ship's last, exhausted sigh and watched it slip out of sight beneath the waves.

The fact no salvage had been taken meant that Leona would have to keep whatever lay concealed in the rodney a secret. If not, she'd either have to face down accusers or make up reasons for new things in her life. She didn't care much either way, but for Paddy's sake, she allowed it was important to keep good relations in the community and planned to lay low for a while with whatever it was she'd found.

BOOK: Silent Time
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