The Law of Dreams

by Peter Behrens

  He waded out through more dead reeds, heart roaring, skin on fire. Luke was laughing, her skin covered in goose bumps. “I wish we had a fire, I would bake in the coals, and you would eat me.”

  “I wouldn’t want to eat you.”

  She scraped her wet hair with her fingers, looking at him.

  “Come,” she said suddenly. “It’s in here — in the willows.”

  He followed after her, pushing through a little thicket of willows and alders.

  There was a little leather boat, overturned on a couple of stumps.

  “I’ve been considering the use of the thing.”

  Not much bigger than a kettle, the currach was made of a cowhide, stretched over a basket frame of hazel wands, the seams sewn and thickly tarred. A pair of leather paddles were tucked up inside.

  Fergus was delighted by the discovery. “I think we must light the river.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “The best fishing is at night. I’ll make a lister. You’ll see. We’ll need torches and a net. It would be fine to catch a salmon, wouldn’t it, Luke?”

  Reaching out, she touched his ear with cold fingertips. “There may be a keeper with a gun. But I figured you was a waterman.“

  He didn’t have much experience on the river. The little boat belonged to a poacher, perhaps one of his uncles — he had overheard talk of lighting the river. There was no paid keeper on this stretch. Carmichael and his sons did not pay much attention since the fish did not belong to them.

  “We’ll paddle back over to the other side and hide it there, then come back at night.”

  There was just room for the two of them to squeeze into the little boat. They each took a paddle and worked quickly back across. Concealing the currach in the trees, they quickly dressed. He watched her pulling on her breeches, tying them with string.

  Sunlight warmed the scented grass. He was hungry.

  “I know Shamie is a coward,” Luke said, wrapping herself in her layers of gauzy old linen shirts, “which is why the Bog Boys have done so little, and lived so meager.”

  He followed her out of the trees and across the pasture where Carmichael usually kept his bull in winter, but the bull was gone and the grass was thick, tufted in bunches.

  He missed her body after she was dressed. Nakedness was powerful, like a separate thing between them — a spell; a mysterious bird.

  Whatever it was, clothes hid it.

  “It is time we acted,” Luke said.

  “Fishing is good.”

  “I mean other actions as well, Fergus. I mean war.”

  Suddenly he felt sick and cold.

  “You’re not shy. I know you,” she said happily.

  He knew what she was going to say next.

  “There is a farmer. Rides a red mare. They say he is very rich.”

  Vengeance

  A STORM WAS BLOWING UP black as they came along the road to Carmichael’s. It suddenly felt cold enough for a snow. He wanted to turn back but something kept him on the road. A spell had carried him here, after all; why resist? He walked in a daze, hardly hearing her.

  “I have not raised it with Shamie, thinking we could not put it over, but now, with you and me captains, we can. I know we can. A gentleman I used to know in Limerick, a land agent, told me this here is the richest farm of the estate. They keep a year of food in a storehouse.”

  They were coming past the badger wood, crossing the bridge. He didn’t want to go any farther, but couldn’t seem to stop himself, or change anything. Something strong had carried him this far and he couldn’t escape it now.

  “What is it, Fergus? Is something wrong? You look very ill.”

  “I know these people.”

  She stopped, gripped his arm. “Do you know where they keep the food?”

  “A little stone house in the yard — he keeps tools there and stores in a cellar underneath.”

  People on the mountain claimed the little stone hovel had been a holy church in the days when there had been saints in the country.

  “Are there dogs?”

  “There was but she hated them so he got rid of them.”

  “Who hated them?”

  “Phoebe. Carmichael’s daughter.”

  “Bless her. I hate dogs too. Here.” She took off the soldier cap and placed it on Fergus’s head. “Now you look like a ribbonman. What stores does he keep?”

  “Corn. Apples.”

  “What else? Meat?”

  “Meat if they have slaughtered.

  Butter.”

  “Butter!”

  “He keeps it locked.”

  “There’s ways to kill locks.”

  They came around the bend in the road, and there were the familiar iron gate and the gaunt farmhouse, blinking at him across the yard.

  Luke pointed to a thick little stone building with slits instead of windows, standing between the house and stable. “Is that the stores?”

  “It is.”

  Luke scanned the yard. “It’s perfect. If we come at night, who’ll stop us, if we are quiet enough? We can boost a little fellow inside, through them skinny windows. Only we must wait the night without any moon, move quiet. We’re plenty of hands to carry off rations. A noggin of butter, that would be famous.”

  The kitchen door opened. Carmichael stepped out.

  “God, don’t let the fellow know you,” Luke said under her breath.

  “Nothing for you here!” the farmer shouted.

  “Only looking for soup, mister!” cried Luke.

  “We give charity at Scariff, not on the farm! The soup kitchen is at the church. Keep on the road to Scariff and you’ll be fed.”

  “Thank you, sir!” Luke bowed.

  “Off with you now,” Carmichael called.

  “WAS that him? The fellow that ejected you?”

  He nodded.

  As they crossed stripped fields, heading back to the bog, Luke began telling her story.

  “My mother sold me to a farmer when I was small. I was a dairy girl, only last summer the farmer decided he would emigrate. I supposed they would take me with them, but he gave me four shillings instead and turned me on the road.”

  “What was your name when you were a girl?”

  “What does it matter?” She stopped walking and glared at him.

  “I didn’t mean to sting you — I only wished to know your name.”

  “Luke! Luke is my name!”

  “All right. I didn’t mean to cut you, Luke. I’m sorry.”

  “All right then.” She smiled at him and they resumed walking.

  “What happened after they left you on the roads?”

  “Oh, I aimed for Limerick. Where they had gone. I was thinking to get a passage to America. No notion what it cost — six shillings was as much money as I’d ever seen. As I was going along, I met a mob of little herds down off the Galtee Mountains. All their black cattle were being sold up, shipped to England, and the boys were thrown out on the roads like myself, only younger. They had no place to go, and the potatoes everywhere was coming up black so there was nothing to steal. We moved along the roads, keeping together, a band of us, me the eldest, though I was the girl.”

  She stopped again. “I tell you, Fergus, we were frightened of strange country, the little fellows especially, grabbing hold my hands and not letting go. You see ’em now, how bold they are, but not then. Some of them were born up in the booleys. They always lived wild.”

  “I was on the booley.”

  “Were you? Some of them were sold up very young for herds, sold to graziers. None of ’em knew a life beyond grass and sky, rain and cattle.

  “Two or three of them caught the black fever and died along the road. We kept asking people, ‘Is this road for Limerick?’ We never seemed to get there. We walked for days and never found a town.

  “I’ll tell you the truth, Fergus — we were frightened of towns, that’s why we didn’t find it.” She touched his arm. Her hand was clean from the river, small and whi
te. She had left her hair loose. She was small. Her body was like a whittled stick. Her face was white, clear, and fine. Gray bright eyes. Full, pale lips and good teeth.

  “But finally we did come into Limerick. I was still a girl then. I was nice enough, and there were gentlemen that fancied me, spoke to me on the street. At first I thought it was kindness I heard, but it wasn’t.

  “I did well, whoring in Limerick. Oh, I did nicely there. I wasn’t any soft one — no. They liked me small and rough. I had a gentleman kept me, in a room above a beer shop. Wanted me all to himself. Guinea a week he paid — that’s a pound and a shilling. Once, looking down out my window, I saw a whore being mauled in the street. Pair of wolfhounds snapping her to bits and wouldn’t mind any shouting. I seen her afterward, all ripped to pieces.”

  Her voice was clear. Her skin glowed.

  “No, no, Fergus, a town is wicked, I suppose. In Limerick sometimes, I was so whirled I had trouble remembering my name. I’d never known a room before, nor slept in a real bed. In Limerick my bed was better than mistress’s at the farm — white linen, soft pillows, rugs. My fellow, my gentleman, I would see him regular. He would give me a shilling extra if I’d let him lick my feet, and I did, and a few other things, and he always handed it over.”

  “He paid a shilling to lick your feet?”

  She nodded, grinning.

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “You haven’t been in the whirl, Fergus. Men will pay for just about anything.” She started walking away.

  He started after her. “I didn’t mean any insult.”

  “What you can or cannot believe, Fergus, don’t change a thing. Perhaps your head’s too small for the world. You can’t fit much in.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  They walked in silence for a while, then — “Do you want to hear it as it was?”

  “Yes. If you please.”

  “My gentleman would pay, and I would buy a ribbon or two, and Indian meal for the boys. For I had all the rations I required, and they were living in a stable in exchange for sweeping out the stalls, and begging and ranging for their food; and what they call in my country snow gathering — stealing clothes off hedges when they’re set out to dry.

  “One evening my gentleman did not come, and next day a friend of his told me he had caught fever and was dead. There was wild fever in Limerick. Country people were pouring in, crowding the quays, selling whatever they could, buying passages for Liverpool, for Quebec. I wasn’t able to turn a living no more, there was so many girls for the trade. Then, one morning, in the stable, I came upon Shamie, with his little Mary Cooley, sleeping in the hayloft. He had cut loose of his regiment. Where he picked up the Mary I still don’t know. Seeing that Brown Bess gun of his gave me the notion for shaping the boys into a band of ribbonmen, outlaws. Rebels.

  “Because my gentleman always said there was plenty of food only it isn’t in the towns, the strong farmers have it. The farmers are holding it for themselves and selling dear. Anyone could see the carts and wagons lined up on the quays in Limerick, stuffed with food — butter, honey, bacon — and the cattle and sheep, everything going onto the ships, sold away to England.

  “Everyone who couldn’t afford a passage was dying in Limerick that week, so I made up my mind we should all leave the town and go outlawing and find some of that food my old fellow was talking about. I organized the boys, and found rations for the road, and Shamie come along with his little Mary, wearing a cloak over his uniform, with one of the boys carrying his musket.

  “Shamie hates the road. He don’t have the outlaw heart. He is a coward. You can’t live on boiled nettles forever.” Stopping, she turned and looked back in the direction of the farm. “The food is there, Fergus. I know it is. You know it. Butter. Honey. A fletch of bacon. What right have they, those farmers? Who gave them the land? Vengeance is due, Fergus. That’s why you’ve come among us.”

  Vengeance? Fergus looked back at the mountain. Considered from a distance, it seemed small enough. There was the sky he had lived under all his life. It was hard to believe that the mountain had contained his life and the lives of everyone he had known.

  “Don’t you think, after all they have done, Fergus, that they deserve to pay?”

  “They won’t give up anything. They’ll fight.”

  “The Bog Boys would rather die in a fight than in a ditch, Fergus.”

  The Oath

  THE BOG BOYS SPENT the next few days searching for birds’ eggs and beating through the gorse, trying to flush another hare. To Fergus’s surprise, Luke did not mention raiding the farm to any of the others, and Fergus did not raise the subject, grateful to let it lie, hoping Luke would forget it. He had found a wooden handle from a turf cutter’s spade and was making a lister, a fish spear, honing the tip to a sharp point and notching teeth in the shaft.

  While he worked on the lister, Luke gathered charlock and other herbs.

  Shamie amused himself by placing shots very near the little boys beating the gorse, who screamed with laughter as the bullets snapped by them.

  “He is a fool,” Fergus said angrily to Luke.

  “Don’t mind him. Shamie is careful.”

  “He’s wasting powder.”

  “Practice is good for him.”

  When Johnny Grace, one of the Bog Boys, flushed a hare, Shamie killed it on the run and they carried it back to camp in triumph, Johnny Grace walking at the head of the column with the dead hare on his back.

  It was quickly peeled and cut up, the meat added to the stirabout. While the kettle simmered, Luke and Fergus sat puffing their pipes.

  “It’s time you had the oath,” Luke said suddenly. She looked around at the others. “What do you say, men? Shall we oath Fergus in?”

  “No, no — not yet,” Shamie warned. “You watch that fellow, Luke — he’s not one of us. Let him put some meat in the pot before you oath him.”

  “No, it’s time,” Luke decided. She stood up. “Give me your hand, Fergus.”

  The small boys gathered around eagerly, as if the oath had a scent that tantalized them. Licking their fingers, they stared wide-eyed from Luke to Fergus.

  “Repeat after me,” Luke began. “I swear to defend the queen —”

  “I swear to defend the queen —”

  “— and true religion lost at Reformation.”

  “— and true religion lost at Reformation.”

  “I am bound to rebellion for life and death.”

  “I am bound to rebellion for life and death.”

  “True blood for true blood, or the devil take my soul.”

  “True blood for true blood, or the devil take my soul.”

  “There you are,” said Luke. She kissed Fergus on the cheek, then Shamie. The small boys began kissing one another. Mary Cooley stood next to Shamie, holding his hand while sucking her thumb.

  The deserter had watched the oathing with a sour expression. Now Luke took Shamie’s hand and Fergus’s and pressed them together. “There we are, boys, all brothers now.”

  “Another mouth to eat what’s ours,” Shamie said.

  “Don’t be grim, Shamie.”

  While the scent of meat simmered from the kettle, Luke started telling the Bog Boys about the farm. “They will have hams as big as any of you — pink, with a reel of yellow fat. They will have turnips and apples in baskets. I like an apple with my meat. Mutton for spoileen. When was the last time any of you tasted spoileen?”

  “Will there be butter?” Johnny Grace asked.

  “There will be, yes, plenty.” Luke knelt, placing a turf on the fire and blowing at the coals. When the flames were singing, she stood up, facing them. “There’s no use being outlaws if we never engage.”

  Fergus had been hoping that she had forgotten about raiding Carmichaels’, but now he saw the idea was on her like an animal, with a scent and a weight.

  “Yellow meal?” Johnny asked.

  “Yellow meal, sure. And oatmeal. A casket of tea —”
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br />   “Potatoes?” asked a small boy whom the others called Little Priest.

  “Sure there will be potatoes. And a jar or two of herring — I love a herring with my spuds.”

  “Is there a plan?” Johnny Grace asked. “I should relish any action, but I’d follow you to Hell for a plan, Luke.”

  “Of course there’s a plan. Fergus and I have worked it over, very military.”

  No. It wasn’t true, there wasn’t any plan, not that he knew about.

  To Luke, he realized, a wish was the same as a plan.

  “Will some of us be killed?” Johnny Grace demanded. “Will we hang if they catch us? Will they transport us? It’s not that I mind much being killed. Only if I was to go down without tasting no spoileen nor other stuffs first, it would seem cruel.”

  “Hanging is cruel!” Shamie called out angrily.

  They all looked up at the deserter sitting at the top of the trench, his legs dangling. He had laid the musket flat across his knees and was rubbing browning on the barrel. Mary Cooley was beside him.

  “We all know you ain’t the fellow for raiding, Shamie,” Johnny Grace said, grinning at the others.

  “Watch what you say!”

  “We’re tired of withering out here on account of your old womanhood.”

  “I’m the one with a price on his head! I’m the one they served twenty lashes!”

  “The rest of us are keen,” said Johnny Grace. “You’ve killed two coneys in sixteen days and that doesn’t make you a chief. If Luke and the Fergus have a plan, then I’m for it. You can stay here eating grass.”

  “Quiet now, fellows!” said Luke. “Don’t be tearing each other up.”

  “We want food, don’t you?” Johnny Grace said. “We want potatoes, don’t you?”