The Dolocher

by Caroline Barry

  Annoyed that she was pining for Ashenhurst on the one hand, and intrigued by Solomon on the other, Merriment thought of how she had been sculpted by rejection: what Johnny Barden had carved from her all those years ago, Beresford had finished off. Perhaps they had done her a favour. Giving up on love had drawn her away from romantic attachment and channelled her passion, directing it to the secure, flawless realm of logic and scientific rationalism. She thought of Solomon, arched over the table writing, and she frowned. Stop, she told herself. Don’t do this. She looked at Janey Mack and her heart was tugged in another direction. Merriment shrugged off her interest in Solomon and smiled at Janey Mack’s expectant face.

  ‘Were ye thinkin’ of him there, miss? The lad from the tragic love affair.’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘Don’t be wasting yer time, miss. He’ll not be thinkin’ of you, will he?’

  And Merriment smiled, to mask the pang in her heart.

  ‘I don’t suppose so,’ she said.

  *

  When Anne called in later that afternoon she was carrying a copy of Pue’s Occurrences.

  ‘It’s seven pence a copy,’ she complained. ‘I thought that lad with the crooked teeth was having me on. The widow Byrne will not be impressed. Where’s Sol?’

  ‘Off burying Maggie,’ Janey Mack said.

  ‘Did she die?’ Anne gasped. ‘God rest her poor soul, the Dolocher has claimed another victim.’ She opened out the broadsheet and pointed to the headline. ‘And Solomon saw him.’ Anne read from the article. ‘“He emerged, a solid block of thick bristling flesh, his fearsome head glowing ominously in the pitch black. The barbed hairs growing along his extended snout appearing eerily russet along the depressed cheeks that accentuated his pronounced jaw. His polished eyes glimmered with a terrible light and, hunching above me, the demon made to lurch. Immobile and paralysed with fear, I was fixed to the spot, unable to breathe. Then just as suddenly as he had appeared, his terrible form vanished into the impenetrable darkness and I took off, afraid of where the Dolocher might materialise next.”’

  Anne clutched at her throat. Janey Mack’s mouth hung open, her face drained white. They both looked at Merriment, waiting for her to speak.

  ‘I . . .’ Merriment started, but she was confounded. ‘He saw something,’ she said quietly and Janey Mack groaned, tears springing to her eyes.

  ‘The Dolocher’s after Solomon now. He could follow him home. Solomon must have done something.’ Janey Mack stared out into the streets. ‘We’re not safe, none of us are.’

  Anne scowled, pressing her pale fingers to her bloodless cheek.

  ‘My God, the widow Byrne will not believe this. I don’t think I can breathe.’ Her eyes widened as she sipped in threads of air, clutching her breastbone and shaking her head. ‘Poor Sol.’ She blinked back two huge glittering tears.

  ‘Anne.’ Merriment licked her lips trying to think of a way to comfort both girls. ‘We are safe inside . . .’ she began.

  ‘You’ve to say yer prayers, Janey.’ Anne tried to pull herself together, her voice high-pitched and false. ‘Y’er a grand little girl. Sure, the devil wouldn’t be after us. We all stay in. He only comes out at night, roaming around the streets.’

  Janey Mack ignored Anne and gazed intently up at Merriment. ‘Ye shouldn’t let Solomon back in,’ she suggested.

  Merriment patted the little girl’s head. ‘We can’t bar the door to him.’

  ‘Ye have te, miss: if ye don’t, he’ll draw the Dolocher here and the two of us will be found dead in our beds or taken like that turnkey from the Black Dog.’

  ‘Oh.’ Merriment suddenly remembered Charlie and her promise to Sol. ‘Anne, can you bring Janey with you on your errands?’

  ‘Why?’ Janey Mack panicked.

  ‘I’ve something to do. I’ll only be an hour at the most.’

  ‘What about the shop?’

  ‘I’ll shut it up, leave a sign.’

  ‘Where are ye going?’ Janey Mack tugged at Merriment’s sleeve.

  ‘To the Black Dog.’

  *

  Anne took Janey Mack’s hand and said, ‘Now you don’t let go of me. We’ll swing by Saint Werburgh’s church. I’ve to meet the widow Byrne there. There’s some preacher lad coming and we thought we’d give him a listen to. Anyway, we said we’d get some holy water and say our prayers, it’s the only way to repel the devil.’

  Janey Mack nodded sombrely. It was a grey, misty afternoon. The bells of Christ Church Cathedral rang out cheerlessly, the steeple vanishing in a bluish shroud of fog. No one liked the poor visibility. Horses and riders emerged out of the gloom like phantoms. People scurried, cloaks and shawls and skirts flapping, heels clicking, dissolving into the mist like they were insubstantial wraiths blending into an anonymous cloud.

  ‘It’s bitter,’ Anne complained, clutching her shawl and hurrying across Castle Street with Janey Mack in tow. ‘Don’t this mist creep into yer bones? Gets under the skin, so it does. Come on.’

  A huge crowd filed into the church. Some of the throng paused on the steps and clustered into frightened groups, clutching at their Bibles or wringing their hands anxiously, trading Dolocher stories. Janey Mack scanned the crowd. There were young and old, fine ladies with pale, wretched faces, old men with sour, angry expressions, charwomen and weavers, even tradesmen who’d normally take a sup of ale at lunchtime were giving up their luxury to hear the famous Reverend Malachy Jones extol his learned advice on how to approach the current crisis.

  The widow Byrne was a plump woman of about fifty with bright blue eyes and a high wig intended for a much younger woman. She wore a dark purple dress and a wool cape embroidered with blue roses. She took one look at Janey Mack and tapped the little girl on the edge of her shoulder.

  ‘The trumpet has sounded,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Gabriel has blown the last call and the devil himself is rounding us up one by one.’

  Janey Mack nodded bleakly.

  ‘You better have no sins, little girl, or you are done for.’

  ‘Misses Byrne, she’s half out of her wits with fright as it is.’

  ‘I’m only saying. Unless you’ve led an exemplary life, there’s no hope.’

  Janey Mack peered through the mist, watching as people emerged from the shrouded air, ghostly quiet. They moved silently up the steps and past the broad grey columns at the church entrance.

  ‘We’ll go in.’

  The widow Byrne led the way, stepping into the dark wainscoted reception and moving with a curious kind of lightness that belied her weight. She glided to the top of the pews arranged to look out from a side aisle, insisting that everyone squash up and make room for her and her servant. Janey Mack sat on Anne’s knee, absorbing the cold, grey atmosphere. The church was huge and cavernous and bare: there were no paintings on the ceiling, no icons adorning the wall, no tabernacle or side niches holding dying saints or beatific angels. The church was a sparse, restrained Grecian monolith, with a high balcony supported by fluted Ionic columns. To the right of the altar, carved from dark polished wood, there was an imposing pulpit. Janey Mack snuggled into Anne, feeling the creeping anxiety as it moved in waves through the congregation. A low murmur rumbled through the church as people whispered, uncertain of how to deal with the tricks of the devil, how to avoid the terrible wrath of the Dolocher. When the church was crammed to capacity, with people spilling out onto the steps, the sexton hammered his mace three times on the slab floor, sending three resounding booms through the edifice, which echoed up into the rafters. A profound, thick silence descended, while a small man dressed in black, wearing a neat white periwig and thick spectacles, slowly made his way up the pulpit, carrying a sheaf of notes and a small Bible.

  For a long time he stared at the congregation, and the longer he waited the more people held their breaths. When he finally spoke, he shrieked, a loud high-pitched elongation of the name Mark. The congregation pitched back. There was a universal groan of communal shock.

&nbs
p; ‘Mark five.’ The preacher waved his left hand. ‘And so they arrived in the region of Gerasenes.’

  Janey Mack squeezed Anne tight.

  ‘When Jesus stepped out of the boat a man possessed by an evil spirit came running out of the cemetery, for this man lived among the tombs and the burial caves and he was insane. He could not be restrained; even chains and shackles could not hold him back. No one was strong enough to subdue him. Day and night he wandered among the burial caves and the hills, howling and cutting himself with sharp stones. And when the man saw Jesus he rushed forward, shrieking and screaming, and Jesus demanded, “What is your name?” and the man replied, “Legion. For we are many.”’

  The preacher paused, his breath coming sharp and strong, his magnified eyes searching the crowd. The congregation sat pale and quiet and trembling.

  ‘Dublin,’ Malachy Jones assured them in a loud sonorous tone, ‘is this graveyard, is this very cemetery mentioned in Mark’s gospel. Dublin is the haunting ground of Legion.’

  Women muffled their mouths with hankies. Men coughed uncomfortably. Malachy Jones held up the Bible.

  ‘And the man cut himself with stones.’ He thumped the pulpit. ‘Did not Olocher slice his own throat? Was he not possessed by a vile spirit? One of the legion? Did not one of the legion animate Olocher’s dead bones? And what happened to the possessed man in Mark’s gospel?’ The preacher raised both arms. ‘Jesus healed him by banishing the evil spirits into a herd of swine. Swine,’ he shrieked, the word piercing the air high and shrill. ‘Is not Olocher’s body a hybrid? A distortion of all that is natural and good? Has his wickedness not fused the head of a black pig to the decaying bones of an autopsied corpse? This is Mark’s gospel. This is Dublin. Today we are in the graveyard of one who calls himself Legion.’

  The congregation shifted, terrified by the biblical comparison. Some women whimpered and sniffed.

  ‘We have, out in those very streets there’ – the reverend pointed to the doorway – ‘Olocher’s wicked spirit, his malformed, grotesque soul prowling the alleyways and the backstreets. And he is recognised by his visage, for he has been banished from salvation and left to roam this earth in the shape of a pig. This deviant human has risen from his dank grave and we have been warned: we will be snatched away, we will be destroyed by the savage appetite of this fiend from hell, this fiend that roams hell. The devil,’ the preacher roared, ‘is among us. You will be measured by your deeds and you will be found wanting. Repent your sins. Repent and be devout, repent and be vigilant.’

  Janey Mack nuzzled into Anne’s neck.

  ‘Me skin is crawlin’ up and down me arms,’ she whispered, fighting back tears. The Reverend Malachy Jones whipped the crowd into a frenzy of renunciation and suspicion. His sermon warned them that Olocher had appeared ordinary before his heinous crimes were discovered.

  ‘Who are you sitting beside? Is your neighbour evil?’ he asked. ‘Is the one sitting beside you rotten through and through with wicked sin? Be vigilant and abhor those who blaspheme, those who indulge base pleasures, those who pray with one hand and smite with the other. Be vigilant and mark those who have taken the lower road, those who have turned away from God and court the devil, for if you keep the company of sinners you are tarnished with the stench of corruptible doom. You will be smelled out, your wrongdoing will exude an odoriferous stench, for the Dolocher will recognise you, he will sniff you out and you will be devoured and eradicated from the book of eternal life and left floundering in an agony of pit fire and sulphur.’

  The Reverend Malachy Jones battered his wretched audience with a terrifying litany of possibilities, until finally, an hour later, the church emptied and the petrified congregation hurried into the misty streets rushing to get home, lock their doors and fall on their knees in a feverish act of contrition.

  The widow Byrne was luminous with morbid excitement. She chatted to her friends while Anne squeezed Janey Mack’s hand. Janey Mack heard a group of workmen grumbling on the steps. One man with thick black hair and small narrow eyes sucked furiously on his pipe, only pulling it from his teeth to repeat over and over, ‘Shifting his shape, hiding in a herd of swine.’

  ‘That’s right,’ his workmates nodded, ‘hiding in the herd.’

  The men huddled tight, their rough faces blotchy with red patches, their eyes shifting, their heads turning, suspiciously scanning the last of the congregation before they continued whispering out the sides of their mouths. When they shuffled off in the direction of Lord Edward’s Tavern, Janey Mack watched them while the widow Byrne chuckled and wrung her hands, her face lit with a gleeful kind of horror that made her blue eyes sparkle.

  ‘Well, in my whole life, of all that I’ve seen and done, I never heard the like of such a sermon. My spine is that affrighted I don’t know how it doesn’t jump from my back and run off without me. What an appalling predicament we are all in, girls, appalling.’

  *

  When Merriment returned from the Black Dog she found Janey Mack and Anne at the door of the shop, both of them white-faced and shaking. She was about to ask what they were doing standing about outside when she saw what they were trembling at.

  ‘Oh.’ Merriment staggered to a halt.

  Daubed in bright red paint over the door and facade of her business was the word WITCH.

  The crimson letters glistened, the power of the word punching through the thin veneer of rational thinking, reverberating with a menacing authority. The word glimmered in the grey air, in the twilight region between understanding and fear. A witch, a strong woman distorted by a maligned will, in contact with devils and familiars, using evil mystical rituals to conjure up demons and hex neighbours and do harm. Merriment tried to stop her hands shaking, recalling the deformed sailor lynched by the crew swinging from the yardarm off Port Royal. She’d escaped then because someone else had been targeted as the source of the misfortune. But if the crew had applied the superstition that it was bad luck to have a woman onboard ship, she could have been strung up. She swept her fringe to one side wondering, had her luck run out? Was this the law of the land? Would she be purged to counteract the hideous appearance of the Dolocher? Would the belief that she mixed potions and poisons be whispered throughout the city? Would she be expelled from the guild? Taken to trial? Formally accused?

  Her breath came short and fast. She swallowed, staring at the word, her eyes widening as she ruminated over the macabre world she now lived in, feeling suddenly cast back in time to an era cluttered with religious zealotry and punctuated by profound spiritual fear. And knowing what fear could do to a crowd, she gazed at the letters scrawled over her doorway, afraid that if not stopped the word could command such primordial power that it could very easily become her epitaph. The thought of a baying crowd gathering outside the shop, armed with stones and torches and legal writs, chilled her to the bone.

  She swallowed down her terror. If she had to, she could pack quickly and take Janey Mack with her to sea. For now, she would contact Beresford.

  ‘I know who did this,’ she whispered hoarsely.

  ‘Fling them in jail.’ Janey Mack squeezed Merriment’s hand, her whole body trembling. ‘Shoot them.’

  Merriment swept her fringe out of her eyes and, smiling to mask her concern, she pressed Janey Mack’s fingers. ‘Come on. Let’s scrub this off.’

  Anne said her goodbyes and scurried into the mist, her heart racing as she pattered through the cobbled streets, squinting at every grey shade in the hope that she would catch up with her employer.

  ‘Misses Byrne,’ she called meekly whenever she saw someone stout, ‘is that you?’

  Close to Hanbury Lane, the widow Byrne heard Anne’s plaintive whisper and called back through the drear air.

  ‘Mother?’

  ‘No, Misses Byrne, it’s me.’ Anne ran, her face glistening, her complexion flushed, her eyes bright and shining.

  ‘Oh my God, you look like you’ve consumption,’ the widow Byrne gasped. ‘Like a beautiful sp
ectre, bursting back from the dead.’

  ‘Don’t be saying that,’ Anne quivered, linking her employer’s elbow.

  The widow Byrne tugged her shawl tighter. ‘I’ll tell you this much, if you don’t die young, you’ll be a beautiful bride.’

  ‘Stop frightening me.’ Anne poked the old lady in the ribs. Then, squeezing in close to her, Anne whispered, ‘The apothecary on Fishamble Street is in trouble.’

  17

  Pigs

  By five o’clock the city was deserted.

  Merriment had to mix fresh paint to put on the door to obliterate the accusation scrawled there. All the while she had to outline in great detail for Janey Mack how common sense would prevail and how her dear friend Lord Beresford would quash this outrageous accusation.

  ‘But what if he can’t?’ Janey Mack wanted to know.

  ‘He will.’

  ‘But now that the devil is true, isn’t everything else true?’ The little girl watched Merriment blot out the CH with a daub of thick paint.