“There you are, your honor,” Murty Larry said, abruptly coming awake and digging Fergus sharply with his elbow. “Pigeon pie for supper? I don’t think so.”
Many of the paupers, Fergus saw, had come into the schoolroom with their pockets stuffed with stones. Standing up on the benches, they began to fire at the birds. Stones rained on the floor and he joined a scramble of men and boys scavenging ammunition while Mam Shingle waddled up the aisle hitting out with a cattle quirt. The paupers ignored her, screaming in frustration as sleek, plump pigeons began to escape, plummeting out the windows.
Only Murty Larry sat still on the bench, arms crossed, looking grave.
The last bird had escaped. Frustration feeding rage, the paupers began firing stones at one another. The air sang with stones, and a young man in front of them suddenly spun around, hands cupping one eye, blood leaking between fingers.
Fergus watched the scarlet dripping, feeling cold and remote, careless.
“Get down or it’ll happen to you!”
Grabbing him by the wrist, Murty Larry pulled him to the floor, where they were shielded by benches and bodies.
“Faction fight! Mountain tribe against the fishermen! No one ever kills a bird! I don’t like excitement myself. It encourages fever.”
On the mountain there had been faction fights, brawls — one set of poor relations against another. No one ever fought the farmer, but against one another they were busy.
Murty Larry and Fergus huddled on the floor while the stones whizzed. Phoebe was suddenly in his mind.
I would cut you with a stone. I would kill you.
When Mr. Conachree entered the hall, shouting for order, he was met with a flurry of stones and fled with Mam Shingle. Gangs of boys began raiding back and forth across the hall.
Suddenly a pair of hands seized him, hauling him to his feet. Before he could put up his fists, a yellow-haired stranger with a face like a knot of wood had punched him in the lips.
The hot, salt taste of his own blood was immediately stimulating and he began to punch and kick in a flurry. The taste of fury, almost joy. The stranger tripped over a bench and fell on his back and Murty Larry, scrambling across the bench, kicked the stranger briskly while he lay on the floor, three kicks to his yellow head. Then Murty grabbed Fergus’s hand and began guiding him through the tumult of fighting, steering toward the thick doors.
“I tell you, fresh fish,” Murty said, “workhouse ain’t no place to obtain an education.”
The door when they reached it was locked so they sat down on the stones with their backs against the wood. The stranger’s unexpected attack had left him breathless. After a while his blood began to cool but his knuckles were stinging. He looked at them. They were raw, smeared with blood.
The fury in the hall was quickly spent. Exhausted paupers lay shivering on the benches and floor. Soon the hall was quiet except for the groaning of the injured.
From the other side of the door, they heard Mr. Conachree shouting that fever would burn the wickedness out of them! And meanwhile they should have no rations! And the door to stay locked!
Exhausted paupers pounded on the door, screaming defiance. They wept.
“These janglers, these herds!” Murty Larry was scornful. “They’ve stirred up bad air with their hassling.”
Fergus looked at Murty. He was trembling and his face seemed dark.
“Were you hit by a missile?” Fergus asked.
Murty shook his head so violently spit flew from his mouth. “Not hit, no! Something inside! My head hurts something awful. It does. Like birds a-pecking at my eyes.”
These were unmistakable signs of fever.
“It won’t get me! You’ll help me, won’t you?”
Help you? How? You have the curious journey before you.
“Promise you won’t let them take me to the black room!”
“Yes,” Fergus agreed. “All right.”
Murty Larry
ALL DAY HE REMAINED SITTING with his back against the locked door, trying to pay as little attention as possible to the others caught in the same trap. He tried thinking of Phoebe in her blue dress. She was alive, but he’d not see her again. Hard to believe.
Hard to believe in the mountain, that the place still existed, or ever had.
Murty Larry, feeling stronger, wanted to talk. He said he had been wheel boy for a wagon builder who’d emigrated for Ohio.
“I said he must take me with him, only he didn’t think so. Said he had his own mouths to feed, and there wasn’t enough to spare for my passage.”
“What did you do then?”
“He left me a shilling and a pair of tongs. I spent the shilling on porter and sold the tongs in exchange for a spoileen — I was that hungry. I went to the holy well and tried to fish some coppers, Fergus, only I couldn’t. Tried to steal a boat and go for the holy island where there is rabbits, only some women stopped me. Fished for a while — some days — by the lake, only couldn’t catch nothing. Still, only one salmon is all you need.
“I went a-hunting birds, trying to bang ’em with rocks. Did you ever try to kill a bird so? It’s not easy. I squeezed milk off a cow, I did. Got some yellow meal. The potatoes are gone. I was plucking turnips when they caught me and put me in here. Now it’s very hard getting in, they say. If I get out of here, I’m going for Ohio.”
“How do you go there? Where is it?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps I’ll fly.” Murty laughed weakly. “Now no more craic. Leave me be. I can tell there’s a lick of fever coming on, and I must buckle down and fight it off. Black room won’t get me.”
MURTY MOANED and sweated all night while Fergus stayed awake, his back against the thick door. The workhouse was no refuge. If they stayed in it they’d die. All of them must end up in the black room. Promise or no promise.
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.
Dragoons
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.
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.
The Law of Dreams Page 5