THE DOLOCHER
First published 2016
by Black & White Publishing Ltd
29 Ocean Drive, Edinburgh EH6 6JL
www.blackandwhitepublishing.com
This electronic edition published in 2016
ISBN: 978 1 78530 030 1 in EPub format
ISBN: 978 1 78530 011 0 in paperback format
Copyright © Caroline Barry 2016
The right of Caroline Barry to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Ebook compilation by Iolaire, Newtonmore
For Neil. For everything.
*
Thank you to Emer Fallon and thank you to my editor Karyn Millar.
Contents
Title Page
Chapter 1 Black Dog Prison, Dublin, 1756
Chapter 2 The Apothecary Shop, Fishamble Street
Chapter 3 The Lodger
Chapter 4 The Bargain
Chapter 5 Blood and Beast
Chapter 6 The Dolocher
Chapter 7 The Keeper
Chapter 8 The Cure
Chapter 9 The Hiding Well
Chapter 10 The Girl in the Gutter
Chapter 11 Pyrrho of Elis
Chapter 12 Two Houses
Chapter 13 The Confession
Chapter 14 The Apparition
Chapter 15 New Beginnings
Chapter 16 We Are Legion
Chapter 17 Pigs
Chapter 18 The Vanishing
Chapter 19 Malleus Maleficarium
Chapter 20 Rosie
Chapter 21 The Wound
Chapter 22 The Schoolhouse
Chapter 23 Torched
Chapter 24 Actus Reus
Chapter 25 The Slow Swing
Chapter 26 Kill-Grief
Chapter 27 The Pits
Chapter 28 The Cock and Hen
Epilogue
1
Black Dog Prison, Dublin, 1756
‘Well, is the bastard crying out for a priest yet?’
Martin Coffey sauntered down the crumbling steps into the cellar, flung his satchel down and leaned his gun against the dripping wall.
‘Y’er late,’ Boxty grumbled.
‘Got delayed.’
‘It’s not on, Martin. I’ve been sitting here, freezing me balls off when I could have been down in the Cock and Hen this last hour.’ Boxty’s head craned forward, his chin jutting at an angle. Martin snorted and fidgeted in his coat pocket.
‘Here, for your trouble, ye old codger,’ he grinned, flinging a quart of whiskey into Boxty’s skinny lap. ‘You’re such a woman. I’d a bit of business to do.’ Martin flicked his hand towards the red door. ‘And I’m not in a humour to listen to him whinging the night either.’
Boxty fumbled at the jar, unplugged the cork and smiled, holding the promise of whiskey at a tilt to his narrow lips.
‘God bless yer black soul, Martin me darling.’ He raised the jar a fraction making a toast to the inmate locked behind the red door. ‘Here’s to the devil.’
‘Aye,’ Martin chimed in, ‘and his bastard crew.’
Boxty took a long deep slug, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his scrawny neck. He didn’t cough or wince at the tart malt sliding down his grizzled gullet; instead he took three deep gulps, sucked in a cold sharp breath and in one bony movement wiped his mouth and ran his hand through his thick grey hair. ‘That’s the cure,’ he mumbled.
‘Yer nerves at ya?’ Martin snipped, tugging his satchel open to fetch a bunched-up handkerchief and a knife.
‘It’s him.’ Boxty nodded towards the red door. ‘He’s not the usual.’
‘Isn’t he?’ Martin wasn’t interested.
Boxty’s watery eyes widened in the grim torchlight; he was surrounded by damp shadows, his boots grimy from the mud floor, his skin a faintly bluish colour from the stagnant air. Martin glanced at the flaking red door. Above the thick lock and iron ring handle was a window space studded with bars. Behind the bars he could see the pale glow of a single candle flickering. Boxty took another swig and licked his lips, savouring the warm heat of the whiskey. His eyes flicked anxiously into the pale gloom of the cell. He leaned towards the back of Martin’s head and hissed in a loud whisper.
‘Quiet as a church mouse he’s been. Sittin’ in there just staring. Never seen the like.’
‘Makes a change.’ Martin stood up, wiping the knife blade in the folds of his dirty coat. ‘Usually they’re weeping for their mammies, all snots and remorse.’
Boxty shook his head. ‘None of that. I tell you, Martin, it’s unnerving. He hasn’t moved a muscle. Hasn’t said a thing. Giving me the shivers, so he is. There’s something not right about it.’
Boxty gripped the butt of his gun so tight his knuckles gleamed white. Beneath his papery skin blue veins popped in his forehead. He watched Martin unwrap the balled hanky, his attention momentarily distracted.
‘What’s that?’
Sitting in the palm of Martin’s hand, surrounded by an unwashed nose rag, was a fuzzy, russet globe.
‘It’s a peach,’ Martin smirked, holding the fruit out so that it glowed in the dusky light. He winked at Boxty, cocking his head conspiratorially before striding to the red door and looking into the cell where Olocher was sitting, half his body hidden in black shadow.
‘See this, Olocher?’ Martin’s blue eyes glinted, his huge jaw moving up and down over his tight smile as he lifted the peach towards the bars. ‘You should have seen the sweet little thing that gave me this. Christ her titties were pert. Young little squirmer she was. Tasty.’
Martin sniffed the peach’s soft perfumed skin before his thick tongue suggestively licked the dimple where the stalk would have been.
‘You liked to diddle them young, didn’t ye, Olocher? No more of that for you, eh?’
Olocher didn’t flinch. He sat looking into the gloom, the pale candlelight picking out half the hollows in his face, his eye sockets, his temple, his cheek, the cleft in his chin. The fingers of his left hand spread over his left knee. Each finger long and slender and pale, delicately carved, imbued with a hint of precision, like perhaps they could do fine lacework. Martin’s eyes glinted like a hook flashing on water. His upper lip curled, exposing the telltale black spots of gum disease.
‘What I don’t get is why you had to cut them open, slosh about in their entrails. You see, I don’t get that.’
Olocher’s left eyelid dropped a fraction, but his brow remained smooth, broad and unreadable.
‘Never mind, eh?’ Martin grinned now, his haphazard teeth glistening with yellow spittle. ‘You’ll swing for it tomorrow. Isn’t that right, Boxty?’
Boxty pulled the jar swiftly from his mouth. ‘Off bright and early to Stephen’s Green. There’s a gallows waiting for you there.’
Martin leaned against the red door, his elbow resting on the ledge where the bars ended. He slid the blade of the knife through the peach’s soft flesh, cutting a segment and gliding it into his mouth.
‘You must have really upset the magistrate, Olocher,’ he said, his lips wet with juice. ‘Mustn’t he have, Boxty?’
‘Turned the magistrate’s stomach, so he did.’
Martin cut another peach segment, flinging it into the dark wet pocket of his mouth.
‘So the magistrate has the last laugh arranging to hang you of a Wednesday.’
‘Rolling
about in his wig and his cape laughin’, so he is,’ Boxty agreed.
‘If it’d have been Tuesday, you’d have been fine. But Wednesday, eh, Boxty?’
‘Should be a sight. Hard to know which way it will turn out.’
Martin pointed the blade, the peach juice dripping along his index finger and sliding into the thick crevices of his gnarled hands.
‘You see,’ he said, using the blade like a conductor’s baton, ‘you’re to be hung by Fuck-it-up Farley. And if there’s one man that can fuck up a hanging it’s . . .’
‘Farley,’ Boxty cheered, raising his whiskey jar.
‘Last week he cut the rope too short, took half an hour for the poor sod to die.’ The blade danced in the candlelight, the coating of peach juice making it glint and gleam. ‘All that spitting and choking and kicking of feet.’
Martin’s eyes wrinkled at the edges as he gleefully related the details. Boxty chuckled as he drank.
‘Poor bastard danced a full thirty minutes at the end of the rope. Talk about capering the Kilmainham minuet.’
‘But the worst was two weeks ago. Wasn’t it, Boxty?’
‘Disaster.’
‘Farley made the drop too long. There was a big burly lad due to be hung and Fuck-it-up Farley doesn’t calculate the weight properly. He makes the rope too long.’
Martin cocked his head to one side, throwing Boxty a quick glance. Both men sniggered.
‘Tell him what happened,’ Boxty said.
‘The hatch opens, down the prisoner drops, keeps going and snap . . . the head is ripped off him. His body splatters to the ground, twitching like an eel, spine poking about looking for the skull, blood everywhere and his head rolling under the ladies’ skirts. I swear half the men watching threw up.’
Martin laughed, his enormous shoulders moving up and down. Suddenly a pale hand reached through the bars and grabbed the knife from Martin’s peach-scented fingers. Martin bolted backwards, his eyes fixed on the half-lit prisoner moving away from him into the shadows. Boxty snapped to his feet, pulling his gun upright. The whiskey jar clanged to the floor and rolled noisily against the wall. Boxty stared at the back of Martin’s skull, his watery eyes blinking, a tight whistling sound wheezing in his chest. For several seconds neither man spoke nor moved. The air in the cellar seemed to contract as the two men stood frozen, staring through the barred window into the poorly lit cell. The gun in Boxty’s hands shook. He peered fearfully over Martin’s huge shoulder and saw in the square of frail candlelight Olocher’s taut face looking back at him. Motionless. Something altered in Martin’s stance. His spine lengthened, his chest broadened. He was shaping up, measuring his own wit against Olocher’s audacity. Boxty said nothing but he could see the taunt forming in Martin’s frame before the words ever came out.
‘Do it,’ Martin whispered. The words snaked through the choking damp, through the stench of pitch and the noxious fumes emanating from the slop bucket standing in the corner. Still Olocher didn’t move. One side of his face hidden by darkness, the other softened by the meagre candle flame. He stood, chiselled by the diffuse light into a sculptural being, something impenetrable in his eyes, his mouth softly separated, nothing resolute nor harsh nor panicked about him. No single bead of sweat slid from his hairline. No rush of blood to his cheeks, no pulse throbbed in the vein in his neck, no quick flick or darting expression, just a granite stillness, dark and magnetic as a deep hole staring out of the gloom.
‘Go on. I dare ya,’ Martin goaded, his tongue drily touching his lower lip. ‘Go on, ya coward.’
Boxty couldn’t move. His breath came in short stabs, wheezing in the suffocating damp. Martin was faltering. His voice grew louder, but his tone was tinged with fear.
‘Do it,’ he bellowed. And Olocher’s hand snapped to his throat, smearing the pale candlelight in a sudden stream of crimson red.
‘Jesus,’ Boxty gasped. He stared at Olocher’s face as it fell backwards, and the bursting gush of blood as it splattered on the prison wall.
2
The Apothecary Shop, Fishamble Street
‘Here we are. Sorry for the delay.’
Merriment O’Grady emerged from the small anteroom, her long auburn hair flowing in thick tresses about her shoulders. She was a fine, handsome woman, almost forty, with keen blue eyes, pale skin and a spattering of freckles that ran across her nose giving her complexion the fragile quality of an eggshell. However, at first glance the most obviously striking thing about Merriment was that she was wearing men’s clothes. She wore buttercup-coloured breeches, an ornate buttoned-up waistcoat dyed a deep sloe berry and her lace shirt was high-necked. She had turned up the cuffs of her sleeves, rolling them above her elbows so as not to damage the fine lace trim as she mixed, siphoned, boiled and chopped in her workshop. Long used to being gawped at, Merriment was oblivious to the fact that she stood out. She popped a small vial on the counter and watched as two young ladies came towards her, one carrying an ornate bulbous bottle filled with a hay-coloured liquid.
‘Take two drops with every meal,’ Merriment told the taller girl.
‘Thank you,’ the taller girl replied, holding up the engraved bottle she was carrying for Merriment to see. ‘How much is this perfume?’
As she asked the question, the door to the shop opened and a tall man, wearing his cloak collar high, tapped his hat lower over his brow and wandered to the side counter pretending to be looking through the small cures packaged in the drawers there. Merriment checked out his profile. Aware that she was looking at him, the man turned his back and stepped up to a glass cabinet. Merriment smiled at the tall girl, her eyes filled with a curious kind of glee.
‘You’ve smelled it?’ she asked.
The tall girl nodded, glancing guiltily at her shorter friend.
‘You’ve excellent taste,’ Merriment said.
‘That means it’s expensive,’ the short girl said.
‘Five shillings.’
‘Dear God! What’s in it?’
The tall girl laughed with shock. Her friend opened the bottle and brought it to her nose, inhaling deeply, her eyelids closed.
‘Smells about five shillings’ worth,’ she agreed.
‘It’s a rare nectar milked from the stamen of the rootless desert flower called the bud of Jericho.’
As Merriment spoke she was aware that the man pretending to be absorbed by the instruments in the glass cabinet kept shifting impatiently. He glanced anxiously out the window, then over at the counter, looking quickly away whenever Merriment tried to catch his eye.
The short girl gave the tall girl the bottle.
‘Sniff it, Stella,’ she said. ‘And take comfort in the fact that you have a good nose. Come on, pay the lady. I’ll put this back.’
Stella did as she was told. She watched her friend take the perfume away and resigned herself to having a small bar of rose soap and a vial of concentrated drops to help her digestive system.
‘Thank you,’ she said, sliding four pennies across the polished oak countertop.
‘Not at all,’ Merriment said, waiting patiently with her thumbs crooked into her slender waistcoat pockets for her next customer to turn around and stop skulking by the glass case. The man didn’t move. He waited for the bell over the doorway to chime and the latch to click before he approached Merriment.
‘Morning, sir.’ Merriment kept her thumbs hooked into her waistcoat pockets, faintly amused by the man’s keenness to shadow out his features and hide his face. She could tell he was aristocratic from the impatient way he strode towards her; that and the fact that his cloak was lined with silk, his walking stick was capped with a silver mermaid, and his cologne was made by an expensive Parisian perfumery and smelled of spiced lemon with an overnote of cucumber.
‘Take me to see Mister O’Grady at once,’ the man demanded.
‘Certainly.’
Merriment came out from behind the counter and made for the front door, giving the man enough time to initially grimace
at her breeches before becoming intrigued by her legs. Merriment flicked the Open sign, latched the door and pointed to the anteroom behind the counter.
‘Go through, sir.’
The man snorted disapprovingly out of habit and marched into the crowded anteroom. It was filled to the brim with glass jars, pickled roots, hanging herbs and bubbling in a large copper retort on the fire was a thick greenish liquid that stank of sour, fermented offal. There were two tables and two simple chairs, both pressed against the wall. Merriment stepped in behind the man and shut the door.
‘You’re O’Grady!’
It wasn’t a question, the man just couldn’t help himself.
‘Take off your breeches,’ Merriment said, fetching a leather-bound ledger from an open drawer.
The man didn’t move; instead he stared a long, harsh, accusatory stare, examining the frank, open expression on Merriment’s face.
‘I am sure you came here on a recommendation?’ Merriment suppressed her amusement, observing the tinge of purple colouration around the man’s mouth and the high white crescents of his polished fingernails.
‘You’re a woman,’ the man hissed, his disgust faltering beneath a wave of humiliation.
‘I appreciate that this may be something of a sensitive issue.’
‘Beresford never said . . .’ The man’s grey eyes looked pitifully about. A fine sheen glistened on his face.
‘What is your name?’ Merriment asked.
‘Rochford.’
The word was out before the man could deny his identity. He tightened his lips, suddenly furious at his own indiscretion.
‘I mean . . .’ he fumbled, wishing to hell he had never listened to Beresford in the first place. Merriment lost interest in his discomfort. She placed the ledger on the free table and stood square before Rochford.
‘I don’t have time to cajole you into an examination,’ she said. ‘This is a confidential meeting, Mister Rochford.’
‘Lord.’
‘Lord Rochford. I run an apothecary shop and have private clientele. Now, if I want to have repeat business it behoves me to be discreet, to operate under the strictest code of confidentiality.’
The Dolocher Page 1