The Dolocher

by European P. Douglas

  Chapter 10

  Edwards was drunk and in high spirits when the appointed hour finally came that Sunday evening. A boy had been sent to scout the local area, and he reported that there were no soldiers in Hell or in any of the streets just off it. James had kept his word. The boy was highly excited, and Edwards clipped him on the back of the head and told him to go and keep watch out on the streets.

  His horse was getting very uncomfortable, but this was only going to aid things; it had been extremely agitated when they had forced it up the two flights of stairs and into this long room. The drunken members of the Hellfire Club had not been able to contain their merriment, and there was much laughter as they pushed and heaved and whipped the frightened animal that had never been inside anything tighter than a spacious barn.

  “The soldiers are gone,” Edwards announced to the rest, who cheered and raised their glasses.

  “Get on with it, then!” someone shouted.

  “Patience, brother, the carriage is not in place yet,” said Edwards. A few men went to the large window and looked down at the street just as a pristine black carriage rounded the corner. It came up and stopped in the centre of the road, in front of the building they were in. The driver, clearly inebriated as well, looked up and doffed his hat in a theatrical manner, and they all cheered down to him.

  “Will this spot do?” he called up. A man came up to the window, looked down, and then looked to Edwards and nodded.

  “That’ll do it,” he said in a gruff manner, and Edwards made motion to the driver that it would suffice.

  “Well, gentlemen,” he then said, addressing the room. “I, for one, will want to see this from street level. Any of you are, of course, welcome to stay up here, but I think it will be better down there.” He made his way to the door, with the majority of the men following.

  “You still want to make this wager?” the gruff man asked him with an evil smile, to which Edwards returned a much more pleasant one.

  “I supply the horse and the carriage, and you do the rest.”

  “Well, it’s your money to do with what you will, Edwards.”

  “I’ll see you when you land,” Edwards said, and he laughed, as did most of the men in the room.

  When they were down on the street, Edwards looked up and down to be sure there were still no soldiers and then shouted up to the room they had been in: “Whenever you are ready.”

  As he looked up at the candlelit room, he realised how high it actually was, and he was sure that he was going to win his wager. No one in their right mind would do this. But then, who among them now was in his right mind? They had been drinking since daybreak, and it was now almost ten o’clock at night. As he pondered this, there was suddenly an almighty series of crashes as the windows of the second floor were smashed apart from within, and huge shards dashed noisily on the ground nearby. The horses that stood with the carriage jumped and moved away in fright, but the driver sat back down and managed to bring them back under control.

  When this stopped, the streets of Dublin had never seemed quieter. There were a few faces appearing at windows, but they quickly disappeared at the sight of well-dressed gentlemen on the street. If it had been a normal night, the soldiers would have arrived by now, but there was no sound of the stomping march of their boots.

  The next sound to be heard was the whinnying of the horse up there in the room. The sound seemed to filter out and echo around the street, and they could hear the rider trying to get control of the animal with whips and curses along with the sound of furniture breaking and glassware getting knocked over. The hooves on the wooden floor clapped and scraped, and then finally there was a “Yah!” a whipping noise and a massive outburst of neighing from the horse, and suddenly the beast sprang from the window jamb and out into the night air.

  They looked up in amazement; no one had thought it would actually happen. Both horse and rider seemed frozen in the air, both with masks of the utmost terror. The sweat glistened on the black coat of the horse and small shards of glass twinkled in candle- and moonlight as all plummeted to the earth.

  “Look out!” someone shouted, and the men realised that, having not thought it would happen, they had not given themselves a safe distance to watch from. Drunken men scurried everywhere, and the smiling driver quickly lost his jocularity as he saw that the horse was about to land on the carriage. He leaped clear and ended up covered in street grime, just as the rear legs of the horse hit the top of the carriage. The rider was sent flailing through the air and landed with a sickening thud against the building across the street from where they had leapt. The horse let loose a final screech as its head dashed against the cobbles, and it was killed instantly, a loud cracking of broken legs happening just after it died.

  The men rushed to the rider and found that he was alive but delirious with pain. His leg was snapped at the shin, and the ragged bone protruded through the skin. His body was covered in scrapes and cuts, and he felt like jelly as the men picked him up to take him to the doctor.

  “Wait!” he said when he got a little of his sense back. “Edwards!” he called.

  Edwards came to him. “What is it?”

  “Sorry about the carriage. Didn’t intend for that to happen,” the injured man said.

  Edwards looked at the cracked and splintered top of the carriage and smiled. “Don’t worry about that,” he said, looking back at the rider. “It was worth it to see that display, you utter madman!”

  The rider smiled back. “Never bet against a Hellfire member,” he said. Edwards nodded, and the men carried the rider off as he lost consciousness.

  Edwards was now alone on the street, and he surveyed the damage, the glass everywhere, the smashed-up carriage, and the huge dead horse. The carriage driver was nowhere to be seen; he had probably got caught up in the group taking the rider away and was now drinking somewhere, no doubt.

  “So this is why you didn’t want the soldiers here tonight, eh?” a voice said from the darkness.

  “You don’t have to hide, Alderman,” Edwards said, looking into the darkness.

  “Call me James.”

  “As you wish, James.”

  James came from the shadows and surveyed the scene with Edwards. “What the hell was this all about, anyway?” he asked.

  “Just a friendly wager.”

  “That man jumped out of a building on a horse, over a carriage, for a wager?” James was astounded.

  “Why else would a person do something like that?” Edwards asked, amused at James’s shock.

  “How did it even come about?”

  “When you mix alcohol with anything, you can be very surprised as to what will arise.” Edwards laughed.

  “Well, this caper has cost somebody a pretty penny. Look at that carriage, and that horse looks like it was worth quite a bit.”

  “Oh well, sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose,” Edwards said with a resigned sigh, and then he looked about as though he were bored and hoping to see something else that might amuse him. “What has you over this side of the city tonight, anyway?” he asked the alderman.

  “I’m looking for whatever did those two guards in at Newgate,” he replied.

  “And you came alone?” Edwards asked. “Brave or silly? I don’t know.”

  “Have you heard anything more about it?”

  “Nothing solid. There are obviously rumours going around.”

  “Such as?”

  “Just what I have already told you. A large dog, a wolf, things like that.” At this, he chuckled, as if remembering something funny.

  “What is it?” the alderman asked.

  “I just remembered that there is also a rumour that the wooden carving of the devil at the archway has been leaving his perch at night and doing these things.” He laughed out loud this time.

  This didn’t amuse James, and he looked towards the arch in question nervously. It was too dark to be able to see if the statue was there or not; the lantern there was not lit
at the moment.

  “I’m going into the Liberties to take a walk around by the prison,” James said as confidently as he could. “Would you like to join me?”

  “Yes, why not? I’ve had enough of those fellows for one day,” Edwards said, and they set off in the direction of the arch.

  As they approached it, James could feel the fear growing inside him, and he became convinced that the carving would not be there when they passed underneath the arch. He did his best not to show any outward signs of his fear, but Edwards was not paying attention to him anyway, and he passed through the arch without even glancing in the direction of the carving. James followed through, and he did look, and there was a wave of relief as he saw that it was indeed where it always had been.

  This was another of those Irish-sense-of-humour things that he didn’t get. Here was this area adjacent to the grounds of Christ Church, and the locals had decided to call the place Hell and put up an idol of the Devil at its entranceway, and every single person here as afraid of the Devil as he was. It beggared belief.

  They took a circuitous route that brought them down Cook Street and around by Wormwood, up John Street, across to Vicar Street, and then took Swift’s Alley to Francis Street and came to Cornmarket through Cutpurse. They didn’t speak on the way, and they watched the lives of the people they passed: men coming out of taverns, women who were probably prostitutes, children who probably didn’t have anywhere to stay hiding and running. It was grim to walk here after ten on a Sunday evening.

  When they were finally standing outside the gates of the prison, they could feel the eyes of the guards on them—more eyes than they could see, they felt sure.

  “Poor lads,” Edwards said. “They must be terrified that they will be next.”

  “Probably,” James agreed. He was looking at the walls of the prison and peered at where the first guard had been mauled. Then they walked a little up Back Lane to where the torn, shredded, and bloodied remains of the second guard had been found.

  “They’ve stopped patrolling from without the walls of the prison,” James said, though he knew that Edwards would already know this.

  “Seems sensible, considering what has happened,” he replied. James bent down and examined the wall where the second guard’s clothes and halberd had been found. There were blood splashes on the wall that had not been cleaned up.

  “It seems reasonable that the attacker came from the lanes of the City Market,” James mused, nodding across the thin lane to an even thinner alley just across from where they stood.

  “Maybe.” Edwards nodded in half agreement.

  “Maybe?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why only maybe?” James pressed.

  “Well, you and everyone else who is looking into this seem to always assume that it was an animal that walks and uses the street and lanes the way that we do. But look at these walls. Look at all those sections where brick is missing or at all the window ledges and low walls everywhere,” Edwards said, gesturing at an example of each thing as he said it.

  “I see! You know, you’re right; an animal is much more agile and dexterous than we are. I have been seeing things very narrowly indeed!” James said in revelation.

  “An attack from above would indicate why two men, supposedly on alert as guards, would have been able to be subdued without the opportunity to fight back in any way.”

  Though he was sure it was not intended at all James again received an image of the carving of the Devil; he saw it swoop down on the men, and he heard their screams as it slashed wildly at them. He shuddered.

  “Cold?” Edwards asked.

  “Yes, I think a quick walk around a couple more streets and I will be on my way home.”

  “I’ll stay with you until you get to the river, and then I’ll say goodnight.”

  They walked through more of the smaller lanes and alleys and then across larger streets and into the area of Usher’s Quay. They came across many dogs, cats, and pigs but none that looked likely to be their savage beast. They interrupted a few men using the services of streetwalkers and woke a few who were passed-out drunk. They came out along the banks of the black Liffey and looked at some of the ships moored for the night, teetering slowly.

  “Of course, it’s always possible that it is some kind of animal not native to this land,” Edwards said, nodding towards the ships. “It could have come in as a stowaway on one of those, and no one would have a clue as to what it was if they saw it.”

  “That’s true.” James nodded. “But I hope it’s not right. At the moment, I like the idea that it might be a hungry wolf that has made its way into the city.”

  “Well, I still think that is what makes most sense,” Edwards agreed.

  “The trouble is that sense doesn’t hold much sway when people are afraid,” James said. They walked along the quays in thought and said goodnight at Essex Bridge.