The Law of Dreams

by Peter Behrens

  The floor was awash with spilled yellow meal, and the Bog Boys were feasting. They had hacked open sacks, broken into casks, smashed clay jars. Boys were cramming their mouths with ham and butter and fighting over beakers of honey and jam.

  He cut himself a slab of ham, then took an apple and rubbed it in butter and ate it before he started dragging the Bog Boys away from their gorging. He could feel his lips swelling from salt and grease. He knew if the Carmichaels rushed the storehouse, and Shamie and Luke were unable to hold them off, the boys trapped in the cellar would be killed like rats.

  “Come along, men, we must get as much as we can.” Organizing them into a line, he started them passing rations up the ladder to Johnny Grace, who dropped the goods through the window to Luke and the others waiting outside.

  They heard a shot and a piercing scream. The boys on the ladder froze.

  “She’s killed, I reckon,” the Little Priest said. “Luke is killed, Fergus. Are you chief now?”

  Shoving boys aside, he scrambled up the ladder. In the tool room Johnny Grace was standing on the bench, peering out the window. Pushing him aside, Fergus squeezed out through the opening, dropping feet first into the yard.

  She was squatting against the wall, panting.

  “Are you shot, Luke?” She nodded to Shamie, lying on his back a few paces out from the protection of the wall. “The poor one, see how he spills.”

  They could hear the blood gurgling out of Shamie’s chest, spreading wetly on the stones.

  Little boys huddled along the wall behind them were munching apples. Luke stepped out before Fergus could stop her, grabbed Shamie’s ankles, and started dragging him in. “Fergus, fetch the musket!”

  He stepped out, snatched the musket, and jumped back to safety.

  Luke was kneeling beside the soldier. “He’s dead.”

  Shamie’s jacket was black with blood. Both eyes were staring. Luke began unbuckling the white cross-straps and pulling off the ammunition pouches. “You must reload quick, Fergus, they’ll be coming for us now. Powder, ball, wad — you seen him do it.” She peered out around the corner. “Hurry!”

  Ripping open one of the paper cartridges with his teeth, he spilled powder down the barrel then dropped in a ball.

  “Here they come!” Grabbing her pitchfork, Luke stepped out.

  He knew she was shot before he heard the report — she was turning to him, mouth open, when the pitchfork fell from her hands, and he saw the wound blooming on her clothes.

  The noise of the shot sped past like a bird in the dark.

  Johnny Grace leapt down from the window and tried to seize the musket from him. Luke lay on her back on the cobbles, snorting, her lips wet. Shaking off Johnny Grace, Fergus looked up to see Saul Carmichael running across the yard, horse pistol in one hand, ax in the other. Without thinking or aiming, Fergus raised the musket and fired. The ball caught Saul in the chest and knocked him backward, the pistol and ax flying from his hands, screeching on the cobbles.

  With Johnny Grace’s help, he dragged Luke behind the storehouse. Her clothes were steeped in blood. They sat her up against the wall, her legs splayed. He couldn’t look at her anymore. Methodically, he reloaded, stepped out, fired at the farmhouse window, stepped back, and began reloading again. A gun flashed from the upstairs window and the iron shot cracked on the stones. Reloaded, he peered around the corner. He kept watch until he caught a shadow of a movement — they were firing from one of the bedrooms. Stepping out briskly, he aimed and fired, hearing a muffled scream as he stepped back to shelter. He began reloading.

  When he stepped out again, a shot sang past his ear, snapping on the wall. He fired again at the upstairs window and stepped back again to reload, then repeated the sequence, exchanging shot after shot with whoever was gunning from the farmhouse.

  After each returned shot, when they must be reloading, Johnny Grace raced out to plunder Saul Carmichael’s body, taking the pistol first, then Saul’s beaver hat, then the ax.

  Boys dropped down from the slit window and huddled along the wall, cramming food in their mouths and staring at Luke. Fergus could hear her asking for water.

  “We must get away, Fergus, it’ll soon be light,” Johnny Grace said. “You lead us the way, Fergus.”

  Fergus ignored him. Stepping out again, he fired at the house. He tried to avoid looking at Luke as he was reloading.

  Boys began escaping the farmyard in the intervals between shots. Lugging sacks of food, they cleared the walls or raced through the open gate. Johnny Grace was shot dead while trying to pull Saul Carmichael’s boots off his feet.

  One by one the Bog Boys fled, until there was no one but Luke and Fergus sheltered behind the storehouse. As dawn leached into the sky he could see the dead scattered across the yard. Luke was making coughing sounds. Ignoring her, he placed shot after shot at the upstairs windows, until he noticed she had fallen over on her side. Propping the musket against the wall, he sat her up. He had a handful of bullets left, and four or five powder cartridges, and he began to reload. After firing and stepping back, he saw she had fallen over again. This time when he tried to sit her up, she was dead. He sat her up anyway. Then he peered around the corner at the farmhouse.

  He could see the kitchen door had been left ajar, probably by Saul.

  He looked down at Luke. Her black hair had come undone, spilling around her shoulders. “I can’t put you in the ground. You’d like me to, but I can’t.” His fingers were busy reloading. “I’ll finish it if I can. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  Instead of stepping out and firing, this time he held his fire and ran for the house. Crashing into the kitchen, racing for the staircase. Abner Carmichael appeared at the top with a bell gun and Fergus shot him then galloped upstairs. The upper floor was crowded with gray, sour smoke. Stepping over Abner’s body, he heard groaning and saw dim light spill through a doorway. Coughing in the dense smoke he reloaded hastily then advanced down the hallway.

  Cautiously he peered into the bedroom. His eyes stinging, he could hardly see through the smoke. Phoebe Carmichael lay on a massive four-poster. The smoke poured from a smoldering carpet, set alight by a spilled lamp. He began to stamp on it but it was no good; he couldn’t squelch the smoke.

  He approached the bed. The pillow and bedclothes were brown with blood. Her eyes were fixed on his. As he came close she made sounds. A piece of her jaw had been shot away. He couldn’t understand her mumble; her lips were bubbling blood. There was water in the stand, and he filled a cup and tried pouring some in her mouth, but she seemed unable to swallow. He kept stamping the smoldering carpet. Bits of spent shot gritted underfoot; the room stank of gunpowder and burning wool. He fell into a jag of bitter coughing. When he looked back at the bed Phoebe was unbuttoning the front of her dress.

  Fingers dirty with dry blood.

  “Fergus?” Somehow she articulated his name.

  “Yes, miss?”

  “You won’t leave me lying in pain, will you?”

  He barely heard the awful sounds, but understood what she wanted. She had pulled open her dress, exposing her white breast, and was struggling to raise herself up on her elbows. “Please, Fergus.”

  Slowly he raised the musket, taking aim at her heart.

  “Will you lift me up to the Lord?”

  Everything stopped. The world stopped.

  He squeezed the trigger. Smoke filled the air and the gun roared and she flopped back on the bed, dead as any of them.

  Cattle

  Summer! Summer! The milk of the heifers,

  and ourselves brought the summer with us.

  He lay on his stomach, concealed, watching cattle drovers pushing a herd of bullocks up toward the pass. He didn’t recognize their song, but it was low and plaintive, like all the cattle songs he knew.

  A fat man followed the drovers on a pony. Dressed like a cattle dealer, in a cloak and boots and straw hat, he was swaying from side to side as if he were asleep in the saddle — and perha
ps he was, a broad yellow hat shading his face.

  Fergus had left the farm riding Carmichael’s red mare, blood on her saddle that he’d tried to wipe clean with handfuls of straw. He could ride her well enough but, afraid people would recognize her, he’d dismounted after a few miles and left her grazing along the road, where someone must claim her and feed her.

  He’d found his way up the road into the pass, where he had been hiding for weeks, sleeping in a crevice padded with leaves, surviving on wild herbs, rainwater, and eggs stolen from birds’ nests below the cliff. Time had become an astringency of cold nights, various kinds of sunlight, handfuls of gathered food. Three or four times he’d painstakingly loaded, primed, and cocked Shamie’s musket. With a peeled stick on the trigger, he held the muzzle to his heart while curlews and magpies cawed from the rocks and gnarled shrubs. Despite the birds’ taunting he had been unable to bring himself to fire, and would unload slowly and carefully, then repeat the sequence a few hours later.

  Ashamed of his weakness, he decided to avoid thinking any more than necessary. Trying not to let words form, but feeling his way through the days by sensation, texture, mood, the play of light on the rocks.

  There was a string of fine-weather days, which he spent lying on his back on the rough, warm granite, watching clouds float across the country. When it rained, the pass was cut off from the world. He respected that, the precision of solitude, his body in the clouds.

  Solitude and constant wind gradually honed him, or numbed him, until he was no longer bothering to reload.

  One day a fine carriage had come through. Hiding the musket in the rocks, he had stepped out into the road, begging, and the lady presented him a loaf of bread, butter in a noggin, a hunk of mutton, and a fat little tract, which he used for a pillow.

  Pads of white, pulpy skin developed on his heels. The skin of his face hardened. His lips cracked, healed, cracked again. Fissures had appeared in the balls of his feet, frightening him — red cracks into himself, exposures, openings. The blue workhouse jacket, leached of dye so it was almost silver, hung from his shoulders like a husk. His trousers were greasy rags.

  Another afternoon, concealed behind rocks, he observed a company of dragoons working up the pass, walking heavy black horses, in perfect silence — all noise being shoveled off the mountain by the wind. He’d kept out of sight, flattened on granite, sighting the musket from man to man — but he hadn’t felt tempted to shoot.

  He spent hours each day gathering herbs, chewing them soft. Stolen eggs he broke in his fist, licking up raw egg-meat and splinters of shell. Hour after hour, lying on his back, on warm rock, he watched hawks wreaking havoc on smaller birds.

  The yellow summer and the white daisy,

  And ourselves brought the summer with us.

  A strange song to be singing in winter, he thought. Perhaps it was the only cattle song they knew. The bullocks were now almost at the mouth of the pass, where the road narrowed between two boulders. Wary of the squeeze, the animals were hesitating, and the drovers started pitching pebbles, trying to force them ahead.

  A mistake. Cattle couldn’t be forced. You had to respect their wariness. Driven stiffly, they would always rebel.

  Pecked by stones, the lead bullock lurched off the road, kicking his heels. He watched the others start to mill and turn. The dealer awoke and bellowed at his men, who were haplessly cracking their little whips. Two drovers went stumbling down the bracken slope after the strays. Braying and frisking, more animals quit the road and wandered uphill, biting at the rough grass.

  Watching the disarray, he decided the drovers didn’t know their business. Perhaps they were sheep men.

  He’d expected to die on the pass but hadn’t been able to kill himself, and had let the dragoons pass through without engaging. Weather had flayed him, but not killed him. Perhaps it wasn’t the time to die after all. His feet were hardening again.

  It was time to go down into the world.

  Shamie’s musket lay in a crevice, protected from the weather. He decided to leave it there. It was too dangerous to carry — any cattle dealer in the mountains would be carrying a bell gun or a pistol and would be quick to open fire on an armed stranger.

  He stood up. Facing the wind, he started picking his way down the slope, and a flash of Luke lit up his brain. The tune of her little voice. The scent of her cunt, like straw burned from a field.

  BULLOCKS WERE an awkward set of creatures, difficult to handle, insolent, infinitely nervous. Six were wandering in the rough above the road as he came at them obliquely and started pushing them together, speaking softly, taking advantage of their instinct to herd.

  When he had them in a group, he knew he could turn them without getting too close.

  He could feel the dealer watching from under the brim of his straw hat. Slowly, steadily he worked the bullocks back to the road, where most of the herd was grazing on the grassy crown.

  Once they were back on the road, he snapped off a hazel wand. Cracking it against his leg and clicking his tongue, he started pushing the herd through the narrows of the crest. The bullocks foraging in the rough slope below the road trotted uphill to rejoin the moving herd, the inexperienced drovers floundering after them.

  No one spoke to him, but after a mile or so he was included in their pattern of position and calls. The dealer went back to sleep in his saddle.

  THEY CAME out of the mountains into country smelling of grass, damp wind in their faces. The dealer awoke. Kicking his pony’s sides, he pushed ahead through the herd and cantered off into the dusk.

  It was dark when Fergus next saw the dealer, standing in the road ahead holding a lantern on a stick, turning the herd into a field he must have hired for the night. As soon as the gate was shut, the dealer climbed back aboard his pony and rode off to find his supper, and the drovers started a fire of sticks. Wooden noggins were pulled from a sack. Fergus took one, and a wooden spoon. No one stopped him. He helped himself to their porridge of Indian meal, licked his bowl clean, refilled it, and ate more slowly. He had always disliked the Indian meal, each summer he’d grown sick of the taste long before the new potatoes came in, but now it tasted luxurious — rich, greasy, sweet. He felt it softening his tongue, restocking his brain, language returning.

  It was dark when the cattle dealer came back, smelling of whiskey. Throwing his reins at Fergus, he pulled a pistol from his saddle and walked off to inspect the herd while Fergus unsaddled the pony and turned it out to graze. A few minutes later the dealer returned to the fire and glared at Fergus as though seeing him for the first time. “Who are you? What’s your business?”

  Fergus looked down into the fire. He felt the weight of English words on his tongue but couldn’t say them.

  “I don’t need no scamps. Got a tongue? Are you a rebel?”

  He felt strained and anxious but he couldn’t spring the language. The dealer was looking at him with hard eyes. “Are you one of the reivers? A cattle thief, are you?”

  Fergus shook his head.

  “I’m driving for Dublin, for Eden’s Quay. I could use another fellow that can trail a herd of wild woollies and no fuss. Pay, five shillings, coin of the realm, once they are safe aboard.”

  Fergus nodded.

  “Give me your hand, so.” The dealer spat in his palm and slapped Fergus’s hand. “You are a vicious-looking scoundrel, have you been living in a hole? Now you’re Billy Butler’s man — Butler of Slieve Gullion. What name is yours, buachaill ?”

  “Fergus.”

  “After we get to town, you Fergus rascal, you’ll have brass in your pocket, the wee girls will rip you to shreds.” Billy Butler sat down heavily, leaning back against his saddle, his thick legs stretched out toward the fire. He placed the pistol on the ground, filled his pipe, and lit it with a wand from the fire. Puffing away, he looked at Fergus.

  “Get a feed?”

  “Yes.”

  “No blanket, though.”

  Fergus shook his head.

&nb
sp; “You can roll up with one of the other fellows. Get out there now, buachaill. We all stand night guard. Take a round of the fencing, see my beauties is easy.”

  BILLY BUTLER slept aboard his pony all day, straw hat and canvas cape protecting him from weather. He kept his pistol dry in a greased welt on the saddle.

  They began overtaking crowds of people moving east along the road for Dublin. Men and women, with children on their backs, stepped out of the road as the bullocks were driven through. At every halt the drovers cooked stirabout. Wary of reivers, Billy Butler never slept at night, but sat by the fire smoking his pure tobacco, getting up frequently and strolling among his bullocks, pistol in hand.

  Dublin Town

  “BY THE LIGHT OF BURNING martyrs, I’ll drop any Dublin digger tries to turn my herd.”

  Butler sat in his saddle. Swigging poitin from a clay jar, he coughed, spat, and handed the jar around. The drovers were at the edge of Kildare plain. Instead of grazing the herd one last night, they were going to drive straight through the city, heading for the quays.

  When the jar reached Fergus, he took a swallow, stamping his foot when the liquor scorched his throat. The men laughed at him.

  “The Dublin girls will eat you fellows alive,” Butler told them.

  As they ran the bullocks in along the black river, Dublin’s sharp forms and hardness impressed him. Granite blocks sheathed the water. The moon slapped light on the city’s endlessness of stone.

  Just at dawn they began passing the quays, the light like gray wool. Ships lay in packs along the river. The road thickened with traffic of drays and barrows and people carrying children and baggage on their backs. The bullocks kicked their heels and threw their heads back, bellowing from thirst. The river smelled of tar and herring.

  They drove the bullocks into a wooden pen on Eden’s Quay. Dublin was packed with noise of dray wheels crackling on stone, men shouting, whips cracking. Hundreds of people sat guarding their baggage as the winter sun blared orange in the east. Children slept on mountains of baggage: trunks, cases, sacks, grips, casks, bundles of tools, sets of harness, chairs, lamps, stools.