‘I’m not a witch.’
‘But there might be witches.’ Janey Mack shivered. ‘’Cause there’s demons. And the parson said that the quantity of heretics and heathens in this city would keep Satan busy for a good many years since we are living in a place worse than Sodom and Gomorrah.’ Janey Mack squeezed her right hand and squinted into the mist.
‘What if they burn us out?’ she whimpered. ‘Maybe all of Dublin will collapse down into hell. Maybe the Dolocher is the start of it, and then the ground will open up and swallow us all down into the pit of sulphurous lakes and we’ll be roasting in the scalding, blistering fires, only we won’t die but we will feel like we are forever burning.’
Merriment sighed and shook her head. ‘That’s not going to happen.’
‘But how do you know?’ Little droplets of mist gathered in small sparkling globes on Janey Mack’s hair. Her huge eyes blinked with terror. ‘You didn’t know there were such things as demons until the Dolocher came along and now we’re all going to perish.’
Merriment flung the brush into the small bucket and put her hand onto the crown of Janey Mack’s head.
‘Stop, Janey,’ she said firmly. ‘You have to govern your feelings.’
‘Why?’ Janey Mack suddenly bawled, tears wobbling on the rims of her eyes. ‘Why have I to govern my feelings? What if they hang ye for being a witch? What if they don’t listen to me when I tell them yer the best woman that ever walked the earth? What if they hang me for being yer assistant?’
‘No one is getting hanged.’ Merriment pushed in the door and brought Janey Mack into the back room.
‘But if they burn ye, like what they did with Joan of Arc?’
‘Janey . . .’ Merriment swept her hands through her hair and for a moment stood clutching the sides of her head. ‘We’ve all had a long day. Now, sit in by the fire and dry yourself. I’ll put on a bit of supper.’
Merriment fried potatoes and sorrel, and tried to quell the rising sense of doom that seemed to unfurl into the atmosphere as the sun sank low, leaving a grey bank of mist shrouding the city streets.
‘What if he comes to take you away?’ Janey Mack poked her food around the plate.
‘The Dolocher?’ Merriment could feel her patience fraying, her nerves jangling.
‘The man who left the word on the door.’
‘He won’t take me away.’
Merriment had to sit at the end of the table, forced by Janey Mack to dictate out loud what she was writing to Beresford.
‘“There is a matter pertaining to the defacement of my property and a slander on my character that I wish to discuss with you.”’
‘Tell him about the lie yer man wrote.’ Janey Mack stood next to her, her fingertips pressing the edge of the table so hard her fingernails were white.
‘I’m doing that.’ Merriment nodded, adding, ‘Janey, we are living in the eighteenth century. The law, believe it or not, is on my side.’
Merriment waved off every counterargument Janey Mack put up, until the little girl switched tack and refocused on the other horror terrorising the city, the Dolocher.
‘He could slip in under there,’ she whispered hoarsely.
‘I told you.’ Merriment pointed to the hiding well.
She was pouring two cups of milk when they heard a commotion out front. Janey Mack darted forward, then spun round shaking, her huge eyes fixed wide and unblinking. ‘It’s yer man.’ She darted for the back door and pulled it open. A wall of mist blotted out the yard as the chill air flooded into the room. ‘He’s come to fetch ye away, have ye tied to a stake. We have to escape,’ she whispered frantically. Merriment’s hands were trembling as she slipped the Answerer from its holster and put her index finger to her lips.
‘Shh,’ she mimed.
Holding her breath, she listened, her heart thumping, fine beads of sweat popping on her brow.
She could hear men calling, feet thumping on the pavement.
Had Dolly Shelbourne’s husband returned, only this time with a mob? Was she about to be carted off? Burned out? Perhaps she should run, bolt out into the night with Janey Mack and head to sea. She paused at the open door to the anteroom and strained to hear.
She could hear voices. Someone called out the name ‘Joe’. She thought she heard something metal clang on the cobbles. She peeped across the shop floor. At the edges of the doorjamb she thought she saw a flicker. A passing torch. Footsteps ran by. She heard another shout, this time from further down the street. ‘Fred,’ the voice called and someone, presumably Fred, called back, ‘Jessop, ye mongrel, get up here.’
Janey Mack tip-toed towards Merriment, her little body pitching forward, stiffly making progress, as her panicked face glared up at Merriment, her jaw tight with anxiety.
‘You stay here.’ Merriment stepped forward.
‘Don’t,’ Janey Mack squealed, instinctively reaching out.
But it was too late. Merriment crept into the shop, her pistol cocked and raised as she quietly made for the front door. Janey Mack followed, her face gleaming in the brown shadows. Through the long hinges of the window shutters Merriment could see flecks of flickering orange. She drew back the bolt and slowly opened the door, her pistol firmly gripped, the nozzle emerging first into the grey evening, Janey Mack clinging to her back. Merriment’s head peeped out into the street her face glowing pearlescent with apprehension.
Across the way, in the thickening mist, a group of ten or so men had gathered with blazing torches and sundry weapons. They were clustered together communing among themselves.
‘Yes?’ she called firmly. Her voice rang out loud and sharp in the mist though she felt her body might collapse, suddenly limp with terror. What if she were set upon and hauled away? She rallied, quickly stiffening, making sure to keep the door only partially ajar, ready, so that if she had to shut it quickly she could.
‘There now, m’am.’ A slender man with a patchy beard broke away from the others and marched across the road, his hands in his pockets. ‘Ye best go in.’
They weren’t here to drag her away. Merriment exhaled, her shoulders instantly relaxed as she swallowed back her relief and pulled the door wide, stepping out into the grey chill night.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked, still concerned that the men were so heavily armed.
‘There’s going to be a cullin’,’ the man with the patchy beard told her.
‘What do you mean?’
Merriment slipped the Answerer back into its holster and looked down the deserted street. The fog obliterated the buildings. Carriages rattled close by but could not be seen. It was twilight and darkening quickly. The men spoke in low, serious tones, comparing weapons and looking eagerly into the mist.
‘What do you mean a culling?’ Merriment asked again, shivering a little.
‘Only one way to make sure we catch the Dolocher,’ the slight man sneered, his nostrils flaring wide. ‘We kill the pigs.’
Merriment was appalled. ‘All the pigs?’
‘Every last one of them.’
Janey Mack peeked out, her pale face shimmering with reflected torchlight.
‘That’s what Jesus did,’ she whispered. ‘He cast the devil into the herd of swine and drove them off a cliff.’
A large man with a tattered periwig and a great grey cloak spit to one side and, looking at the weapon in his hand, a huge butcher’s knife, he nodded in agreement.
‘See?’ His bulging eyes looked about. ‘Out of the mouths of babes.’
‘Ye need to fasten the doors and shut up the windows,’ the little man with the patchy beard told Merriment. ‘We’ll not be long now. Bring yer little lass inside and don’t come out no matter what ye hear.’
‘But all the pigs in the city?’ Merriment’s face drained.
‘Miss, don’t leave me,’ Janey Mack wailed.
‘Shh, I’m not going anywhere.’ Merriment stared down Fishamble Street. Coming through the darkening shroud of thick fog she saw a line of torches, a r
ow of dim golden glows and soft red smudges carried by spectral outlines. The phantasms drew near, their forms coalescing and emerging out of the gloom. A row of determined men came forward, all armed with spikes and hooks and knifes and blades. Janey Mack instantly recognised two of the men she had seen outside Saint Werburgh’s church that afternoon: one was a colossus with a big slab of a face who peered at the world from beneath his thick brows, the other was his little friend, a skipping man with brilliant eyes and false teeth.
‘There they are,’ the huge man with the tattered periwig nodded. Then, taking Merriment by the elbow, he hissed, ‘Get in, miss, none of this will be pretty.’
Merriment slipped back inside and locked the shop up. Janey Mack nervously squeezed her right hand open and closed.
‘Mother in heaven,’ she swallowed, ‘they’re goin’ to hunt him down. He’ll have nowhere to hide.’
‘Pointless,’ Merriment muttered, ushering Janey Mack into the back room. ‘Such waste,’ she grumbled, ‘to slaughter every pig.’
‘But how else will they get the Dolocher?’ Janey Mack tapped the necklace at her throat. ‘He hides among the pigs, looks like one of them. This will see an end to him.’
‘Janey,’ Merriment snapped, but then, seeing how desperate the little girl looked, she took a breath and stopped. Janey Mack stood at the end of the table, her frame quivering, her hands nervously tapping, her forlorn eyes beseechingly looking for comfort.
‘I suppose,’ Merriment smiled. ‘This will put an end to him. Come on, have a bit of supper.’
No matter how she tried to distract the little girl, there was no getting her to sit still and talk. Every sound, every creek and footfall, every horse and carriage that rattled past sent Janey Mack over to the door that led into the shop. She’d slowly draw it open and peeping into the dark interior she’d listen, holding her breath.
‘Do ye think they’ve started?’
She strained to hear, standing on her tippy-toes and angling her head, ready to pick up the slightest indication, the most remote wail. Merriment cajoled the little girl to come and sit on her knee.
‘Haven’t we a lovely fire?’ she said, trying to divert Janey Mack’s attention. ‘When I was a little girl, sitting on my father’s knee, we used to play a game called looking into the flames, and we’d look deep into the fire and see whole kingdoms among the burning logs. I can see a face, can you see a face?’
‘Maybe Solomon won’t come back,’ Janey Mack said.
‘Why would you say that?’ Merriment wondered.
‘He took most of his money and the rope is gone. He left the Bible and the law book.’
Merriment frowned.
What had he intended? A remote niggling doubt seeped into her heart; then, looking up at the mantelpiece and recalling his goodbye, she shook her head.
‘He’ll be back,’ she answered firmly.
‘Might not be a good thing.’ Janey Mack stared at the gap above the threshold of the back door. ‘Maggie said he leaves nothing but tears in his wake.’ She pleadingly turned to face Merriment. ‘I don’t want him bringing the Dolocher here,’ she whispered.
‘He’s not going to bring the Dolocher here,’ Merriment said sternly.
‘Ye can’t convince me I didn’t kill the baby.’ Janey Mack looked into the fire. ‘I know ye said it was Hoppy John, but the devil doesn’t care, he’s here to take whoever had a hand in any kind of badness, big or small, and I’ll never be forgiven for my part in that baby’s death.’
Outside, sets of women’s heels hurriedly clicked by.
‘Well then,’ Merriment sighed, resigned that there was only one thing that could calm Janey Mack down. ‘We’ll have to take you to a priest. Get him to absolve your sin and then your soul will be white as snow and you’ll be safe as houses.’ She squeezed the little girl tight. ‘Mind you, you’ll have to say a paternoster or two as part of your confession. But that should do the trick.’
‘Will it, miss?’ Janey Mack clung hopefully to the notion of a priest.
‘Definitely,’ Merriment smiled. ‘I promise.’ She wrapped her arms around Janey Mack and they sat in silence, listening to the wood sizzle and spit, both of them conscious of every sound that emanated from the surrounding streets. Merriment could feel her heart pattering. Her mind wandered to the conundrum of the Dolocher. How had a demon evolved out of the mixture of bad deeds and the decomposing corpse of Olocher? What energies were employed to construct such a demon? How could the most incorporeal of substances, the most elusive of supposed realities come into existence? What initiated the transformation?
She looked about at her potions and tinctures. She understood the relationship between chemicals, the single addition of a dominant ingredient that permeates and alters a mixture, to render it completely transformed by simple infusion. Had a demonic force infiltrated Olocher’s dying body, invading every nerve ending, every muscle, taking his cadaver over, or had the mingling occurred earlier, encouraging Olocher to murder, to be an agent of evil on behalf of the demon? She thought of raw nitric acid, aqua fortis; it was by its nature corrosive. Had Olocher always, by his own impulses, been demonic?
Merriment gazed up at the mantelpiece. How does a mortal being wrestle with the devil? she wondered, appalled that she now had to contemplate such a thing. But her predisposition was towards order and method, and as she considered how a demon could be destroyed, her heart sank. In all the cases she could think of, demonic possession required some kind of spiritual dominance to eradicate it, and this she knew was not where her strength lay.
Sitting with her arms around Janey Mack, she recalled Solomon’s broadsheets, disturbed that a preternatural force was operating in the district around her. She stroked Janey Mack’s head, thinking of all the subtle energies that wrought great change in the world, all the hidden, secret dynamism of love and greed and envy. To have to include pure, undiluted evil made her skin ripple with gooseflesh. Could Olocher really have been in communication with the devil? The notion appalled her, but in the dark brooding anteroom, listening to the muffled sounds coming from the street outside, she could not quell the rising certainty that something was abroad. Something inexplicable that executed a swift and ruthless judgement.
‘There.’ Janey Mack bolted from her arms. A rush of feet thundered past the front door. The distant sounds of voices calling cut through the air.
‘They’re here.’ Janey Mack squeezed her hands to her mouth, her eyes frantically searching the walls.
A pitiful shriek sounded in the far distance; a long, awful whine filled with unearthly suffering splintered the night air. It was followed by another baleful cry and the howling grunt of a herd of pigs. Merriment sat upright, squeezing the arms of the chair, her knuckles white. She arched forward, craning to hear. The noise grew closer, the air suddenly alive with the commotion of men running, calling and baiting. Pigs squealed and scattered, the noise a confusion of animal panic mingled with the sound of metal clanging and men screaming. A flurry of thumping feet and rampaging hooves burst up the backyard. There was a tremendous bang at the back door that drove Janey Mack crying for shelter behind Merriment’s chair. The back door shuddered and rattled. Merriment jolted to her feet.
‘Get him,’ two men shouted at once from the other side of the door. Janey Mack grabbed for Merriment’s hand. There was a muffled scuffle on the other side of the door. The door juddered and buckled in its frame as a distressed, wriggling pig was pinned against it. ‘We have, we have him. Stick him, for fuck sake, stick him.’
And the most horrific, human-sounding scream filled the room. The pig struggled, thumping the door, flailing and shrieking, desperate to live. Janey Mack began wailing, her hysterical sobs indistinguishable from the high-pitched terrified shriek emitting from the pig’s severed gullet. A crimson pool slipped under the door, sliding over the threshold, oozing into the anteroom. The grunts from the men holding the beast down was punctuated by the sound of them kicking and punching the wounded
animal until finally the creature thrashed one last time. The door shook gently as the body slumped in relief against it.
‘That’s it,’ a man said. ‘Put it with the others.’
They heaved the creature, huffing and moaning as they hauled its dead weight over the cobbled yard, bashing and knocking any stray clutter in their path, until finally their voices faded and Merriment let go of her breath, shocked to her core.
‘It’s over,’ she told Janey Mack, but the little girl was wracked with fear. She stood chattering, her pale face streaked with tears, her right hand clenched tight.
‘It sounded like a man,’ she blubbered. ‘D’ye think it was him?’
Merriment threw a sheet over the pooling blood.
‘I do,’ she said quietly.
‘I don’t think I’ll sleep.’ Janey Mack watched the blood soak into the white linen, the crimson spreading and fanning in all directions. ‘It sounded shockin’ savage, like a banshee wailing. I thought me ears would explode in me head. Do ye think he’ll come back, now his throat has been cut a second time?’
‘No.’ Merriment mopped the blood, her hands turning scarlet, the blood caking beneath her fingernails.
‘He screamed shockin’ loud. I thought me bones would burst from me skin with the fright and he was hammering at the back door to get in and I thought he was going to flay us. I thought he’d bash the door in and hop on us with his tusks full of gore and rip us limb from limb.’ Janey Mack crept close to Merriment, watching her dump the soaking sheet into a tin bath. Merriment went to fetch water, a scrubbing brush and fresh cloth.
‘Ye should check,’ Janey Mack finally said. ‘Ye should draw out yer pistol and check.’
‘Check what?’ Merriment scrubbed, so disturbed by the amount of blood that her eyes welled with tears. She hid her face by leaning both hands on the scrubbing brush and bowing her head, working furiously.
‘Out back, ye should check if there’s a lump of flesh, like what he was prone to leave behind. If there’s a bit of flesh we know they got him.’
The Dolocher Page 28