The Law of Dreams (39 page)

“What do you want of me?”

The tip of the old man's cigar glowed red as he drew on it, then
breathed out a cloud of fragrant smoke. “Do you play cards?”

Fergus shook his head.

“You'll have to learn. I like to play a hand, traveling up the
country, it passes the time.

“The spring brigade — think it over, Fergus. Perhaps
it's your fortune I'm offering you. Perhaps it's death in the woods.
Who can say? I'm going to bed. Good night.”

HE RETURNED
to the windlass housing and tried to sleep
but the wind creaking through kept him awake. At first light, sniffing smoke from lit
cabooses, he crawled out feeling stiff and groggy.

Morning light the color of iron. Clouds bloomed low, and the ocean was
greasy with calm.

Was it death he felt in his bones, or just a wretched night? He felt sore
all over.

On the afterdeck, Mr. Blow was bellowing orders and sailors of both
watches were scrambling in the rigging. There wasn't much wind — he could
hear the sails billowing and cracking. When the wind was soft, they made a great deal of
pointless noise. When they hardened there was a vibrant, strumming sound, the sound of
speed.

He watched the sailors climbing the ratlines hand-over-hand. Men aloft
were walking out the yards on footropes —
horses
— slung beneath.
From out on the tips of the yards, there would be a clean fall to the sea.

Only a few passengers were on deck, cooks-of-the-day starting the
breakfast, or people using the heads in the bow. Though the air down below was awful
most people disliked coming up on deck because the endless sea terrified them.

When you were ashore the sea seemed to have a relationship to the land.
Aboard ship, you knew the sea was nothing but itself.

Ormsby appeared at his usual spot at the afterdeck rail. “Weather
coming in,” he called down. “I hope you have found your sea legs.
She'll be rocking in a while. We'll get some speed coming out the other end,
perhaps. Anything to get us out these murks. Two weeks and we ain't seen Cape
Clear. Never had such a pallid ride.”

This morning he wore a Scotch bonnet and velvet jacket. Without the bulk
of his fur coat the old man looked small and wiry, a rugged little peck of a fellow
sipping coffee from a noggin, the pungent, gorgeous scent steaming. He had a shock of
white hair and pale blue eyes. His face was pink and freshly shaven.

“You cook yourself a good ration this morning. Don't suppose
you'll be allowed fire while the storm lasts. And our captain will nail down the
hatches if there is any weather, so the people will have to ride it out in the hold. You
tell them there's no need to be frightened, though. The ship is sound.
She'll withstand. I suppose there's few of them below have ever ridden out a
storm at sea. The Irish have always kept their backs to the sea.”

The sea looked placid enough, though darker than usual.

He could see the sailors up high taking in sails, gathering and bunching
canvas and bundling it in long fat rolls, which they were lashing to the yards with
dozens of small ties.

“Have you given any thought to what I said?”

There was a smile on Ormsby's lips, but his eyes were
appraising.

“Will you take a seat in a canoe, and see what the country brings
you?”

“I can't go with you, mister, I am traveling with a
girl.”

Ormsby was silent for a moment. “Are you now?”

“Yes.”

“I've not seen her.”

“She's keeping down below. She's been ill.”

Ormsby nodded and took a sip of coffee, looking out at the sea.
“I'll wish you luck then. I hope you both land on your feet.”

Sensing the old man's disappointment, Fergus was afraid he had
wounded — even insulted — him by refusing. Pride hones disappointment into
insult, and Ormsby was proud. Such a caustic old man would know how to cut.

Ormsby hadn't said so, but Fergus assumed that the son with the
changeable names — Many Gray Horses, Daniel, the Constant Sky — was dead. If
Ormsby was after a replacement for his son, he'd never find it.

The living won't stand in for the dead. The thought of it fills them
with revulsion.

THE OLD WOMAN
and Mrs. Coole were rubbing Molly's
ankles and soaking her feet in warm brine. Her stupor reminded him of small animals
he'd found alive in his traps — not yet dead, but ready to die; numb with
the foretaste.

“She's in a violent purge,” Brighid told him. “All
her sense is occupied.”

When Molly began to writhe and moan, Fergus helped the two women hold her
still, and Brighid placed two drops of tincture under her tongue.

When he leaned over to kiss her lips, he could taste the acrid decoction.
Her eyes were open, but she wasn't seeing him.

The ill are consumed by their illness, it swallows them.

THE CATTARACKWEE
boy, his face spangled with the red
nick of fleabites, stood on the foredeck, fiddle tucked on his chin, playing a familiar
tune, “The Bonaparte's Retreat.” Passengers were dancing on the deck,
determined to burn off the murk and gloom infesting the ship. They danced to warn off
the sailors and impress the master with their noise and their power, and Fergus had
joined in, trying to defeat the dread he could feel growing inside, slowly paralyzing
him.

Like all the dancers, he had taken off his boots. As he jigged and twirled
on the slippery boards, he could sense
Laramie
changing course. All day she had
been sloughing in a fat sea. Now the wind was picking up and the sky had darkened.
Looking aloft, he saw the sails had tightened and filled. He heard
the strumming noise of speed.

The fiddle tune kept spinning faster, as though the fiddler was trying to
dance them straight into the eye of whatever was coming.

When Molly's cry came, he heard it through the deck boards. It
nipped at his bare feet and sent him crashing into a pair of dancers who ignored him and
kept on dancing. Pushing his way out of the crowd, he grabbed his boots and raced for
the hatchway. No one else seemed to have heard her.

SHOVING OPEN
the curtain, he looked down at Molly lying
on bloody straw with a mound of bloody rags crammed between her legs. Brighid and Mrs.
Coole were sitting on the berth, Mrs. Coole wiping Molly's legs with a wet rag
while the old woman chafed her ankles. They looked up at him.

“Go away, man!” Brighid whispered. “Go away! You
don't belong here!”

“Is it the fever? Is she dying?”

“Go away! Come back when we've cleaned her up for you. You
must go away!” The old woman gave him a push.

“What are you doing with her?”

“Cleaning her, can't you see. She'll be better if you
go. It isn't for a man. Go!”

“Poison!” Mrs. Coole hissed.

“Don't say so,” said the old woman.

“Look at the mess coming out of her! Poison!”

“Go away,” the old woman retreated. She sighed, as if she knew
he wouldn't obey, and resumed rubbing Molly's feet and ankles.

“What do you mean, poison?”

“This one has poisoned her,” said Mrs. Coole.

“Ach.” Brighid's face twisted in contempt.

“She is, she is — an old poison cook, I told you
so.”

“Poison cook? Who brought your little boy back? You knew how far he
was gone, didn't you? And I called him back —”

“What's wrong? Why is she bleeding so — tell
me.”

“Go away, man. Go away, you don't belong here, you'll
spoil her.” She glared at Mrs. Coole. “What are you saying, you bossy crag
— you've a face like a hawk, missus. Cruel you are, vicious.”

“I'm telling him the truth,” said
Mrs. Coole.

“The truth? The truth is your boy's alive, ain't he,
thanks to me.”

Both women were silent.

“What is it?” he asked. “Will you tell me,
please?”

The women looked at each other.

“Go on, tell him, you.” Brighid sighed. “You've
ruined him now. Only tell him the truth.”

Mrs. Coole looked at him. “She was carrying a child, she was, your
child.”

“What?”

“She couldn't keep it,” Brighid said, wearily.
“She wasn't ready. Thought it would kill her. What are you doing here, man?
Go away.”

“This one has been dosing her with syrup of pennyroyal.”

“Pennyroyal? What is it?”

“Poison, man.”

“To draw down her blood,” Brighid said.

“Draw down this man's baby, you mean.”

“No baby it was — she hadn't quickened. Only a few days
gone. There, there, daughter,” Brighid crooned at Molly. “Nothing to fear.
Old me is here.”

“Don't say you didn't know what you were doing,”
Mrs. Coole said.

“It isn't my baby — it's Muck's.”

They both looked at him.

“Muck Muldoon, the ganger. He was her man. Before me. It must be his
she couldn't carry. She didn't say so on account of being afraid that I
would cut her loose. Which I would not, Molly,” he whispered, picking up
Molly's limp hand. Hot tears filling his eyes, spilling down his cheeks. “I
swear it.”

Both women were watching him.

Brighid shrugged then turned back to Molly, placing a hand on her brow.
“Sometimes it comes down very easy but I warned her, I said it might be rough
—”

“You wicked, lurid creature, and to think you were doing your black
art in the same berth with my babies —”

“Don't speak ill of me, missus. Black art indeed! You know
nothing.” Brighid looked up at Fergus. “Forget what you've seen, man.
Your girl will get better
now. The poison is come out. I told you
— she'll come back to you. She'll give you another, by and
by.”

Reaching up, she drew the curtain and shut him out. He could hear the
women murmuring but didn't want to listen to any more. He ran to the ladder and
quickly climbed up on deck.

POOR OLD
Muck, you're twice dead now.

The sea had broken open, and the wind was aggressive. Waves were cracking
over the bow, water sweeping the foredeck.

The passengers were still dancing. The old man, Ormsby, had joined in and
was cutting capers, hands on his hips, head thrown back, yipping like a rooster. A dance
so crowing and sexual that even the young men and buxom girls were shying away, giving
old Ormsby plenty of room — their quick, light stepping so demure next to his
jagged leaps and spins.

“Passengers below!” the master shouted through his trumpet.
The weather was beating hard at the ship but the Cattarackwee boy kept fiddling and the
passengers kept dancing, glad to disobey Mr. Blow.

Two sailors ran up to the foredeck and attempted to seize the Cattarackwee
boy. Dodging them, he ran around the deckhouse still with the fiddle on his neck,
scraping out music, until the black cook stepping from the galley headed him with an
iron pan. The boy crumpled on deck, and a sailor seized the fiddle and swung it against
the foremast, smashing the instrument into splinters then dropping the wreckage over the
side.

A wave broke over the side, bursting seawater at their feet. Panicking
passengers began pushing for the hatchway, trying to get below.

The carpenter appeared with a hammer and bucket of nails, and Fergus saw
the hatch was to be nailed shut. He stepped back but the bos'n caught sight of
him. “Below with the rest, Mike.”

He seized of a shroud and refused to let go. They began beating him with
rope-ends but he kept his grip on the shroud until a blow caught him just behind his
ear. Stunned, he let go the shroud and felt the sailors dragging him across the deck.
They threw him down the hatch and he heard the oil lamp swaying and squeaking as he
fell, then nothing.

CABIN PEOPLE WERE AFRAID
of the dark. They lit bonfires
to welcome a fresh moon, and hated venturing out alone on a black night. If a man must
go out, he carried a torch. If he didn't have a torch, he lit his pipe and kept it
burning. Any fire was some protection.

He came to, staring at the flame of a candle. Molly held the candle, and
Brighid was pressing a cold, wet cloth to his forehead. Confused, he tried to think his
way back into himself, but it was difficult.

The flame entranced him. Insubstantial it seemed. Flickering. So near to
going out.

WITHOUT ANY
light, time slurred, days lost distinction.
Even when he was fully conscious, he couldn't guess how long they had been trapped
in the hold. The air was rank. He heard rats scrabbling in the ballast, but nothing from
above, except the wind. He wondered if the crew had abandoned ship.

The 'tween deck leaked and dripped. He felt the weight of the sea
punching
Laramie
, the ship staggering from blow to blow.

When a tier of berths collapsed, the framework cracking and splintering,
spilling people out of their cribs, he thought she was finally breaking up — but
no; she held.

There was nothing to do but lie in the darkness and
wait for what was going to happen.

“
MRS. COOLE
said at Quebec there is nuns,
Fergus.”

They lay in their berth, the blackthorn stick between them.

Even in the fear and darkness, he could tell she was recovering her
strength. Her breath, so close, smelled deep and sweet.

“Nuns?”

“Black gowns, ever seen them?”

“No.”

“They take girls in, feed them, teach them.”

“Teach them what?”

“Letters. I don't know. What there is.”