The Dolocher

by Caroline Barry

  Corker cocked his head and winked, ‘I think that aul’ fella wants you.’

  ‘Funny.’

  Solomon glanced behind. The sun was captured in the Diocletian window; the clear bright sky was burnished a coppery red and cast a pale gold shadow on the upper reaches of the dreary walls. It was later than he had expected. He’d had a busy day. Solomon walked towards the old man and it was only as he drew nearer that he recognised something in the features, around the eyes.

  ‘Boxty.’ Solomon reached out to shake his hand.

  Boxty trembled, his head constantly bobbing.

  ‘Heard ye were here,’ he said, coughing up a wedge of phlegm and quickly spitting it out. ‘Shockin’ what the bastard did.’

  Boxty pointed to the reception room, which was empty now that the crowd had dispersed. Someone had lit another two candles in the niche and placed three lanterns on the desk.

  ‘I won’t sit in this place in the dark.’

  ‘You’re working here?’ Solomon was genuinely shocked.

  ‘They’re paying me double for the next few days. Figure I won’t let anyone in or out to assist Hawkins in his deviousness. And by Jesus, I won’t either.’

  Boxty blessed himself, his blasted frame shaking and malfunctioning.

  ‘Look what he did to me.’

  He tapped the numb side of his face, his features distorted in a downward slump. ‘Had me praying on me knees, shivering with the fear. He took me job, me livelihood, dressing up like a devil and lunging at me out of the dark. I’ll tell ye’ – his eyes filled with a chilling glee – ‘it’ll lift me heart to see the bastard swing.’

  Boxty eased his skinny frame down into the large reception chair and turned his worried eyes to Solomon’s face. The old man was completely altered. His hair was white, one side of his face still hung half-dead and he had a stoop. Boxty seemed smaller and more fragile then when Solomon first met him.

  ‘Hawkins.’ Boxty clacked his tongue, his large Adam’s apple running up his gullet as he swallowed, his head bobbing involuntarily. ‘To think he did this to me and we sharing drink and dividing out any excess that came our way.’ Boxty sniffed and pulled a large musket that leaned against the wall over onto the table. ‘He was always a black bastard,’ he snarled. ‘Look at what he did to Martin, the pair of them thick as thieves till they fell out.’

  ‘What did they fall out over?’ Solomon asked.

  ‘What do that kind ever fall out over?’ Boxty pressed his hanky to his nose and, his hand trembling with a palsy, he blew. ‘Money.’ He licked one side of his mouth and looked furtively at the door to his left. ‘Martin owed Hawkins well over twenty pounds. Some smuggling caper that went wrong.’ He sighed and tutted. ‘Martin owed everyone. The poor sod’s paid his debts in full now.’

  A young guard with a rash over his nose wandered in and took up his sentry, nodding at Solomon and looking at Corker’s sketch.

  ‘Has ye down to a T, Boxty,’ he said.

  Solomon and Corker left Boxty sitting in the bright reception room telling his tale of woe to the young guard with the rash.

  ‘Well then.’ Solomon looked up at the twilit sky, his breath leaving his mouth like a fine mist. He looked at the blue smoke trailing in perfect straight lines out of the chimneys. The hush of the frozen city crept into his heart. The crystalline night, exquisitely beautiful, seemed to mirror the expansion he felt behind his ribs. He was about to head home. The unspeakable pleasure of having a regularity to his existence, along with the immeasurable sense of life suddenly having meaning now that he had Merriment to return to at the end of the day, made him breathe in a long, slow, deep breath.

  ‘Freeze the balls off a brass monkey.’ Corker blew into his hands. ‘Are we away? Or are ye keen to view the rooftops a bit longer?’

  ‘We’re away,’ Solomon laughed, ‘you’ll have a bit of supper with us, and here’ – he handed Corker two shillings – ‘buy a bit of grub for your siblings.’

  Corker whistled. ‘Much use it is now, when the hawkers have gone home. But there’s always a few pies at the Swan, I might get something there. I can’t join ye for supper, Sol, much and all as I’d like te. It’s not for me ma’s sake I’m heading back, it’s just Effie. She’ll be walking the streets with worry.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Solomon pinched Corker’s cheek.

  Despite the weather, when they glanced down one of the side streets they saw a queue for the Italian Opera.

  ‘Word’s out the streets are safe,’ Corker chirruped. Then: ‘Were ye thinking of marrying her?’

  Solomon ruffled the young lad’s hair. ‘Pack it in.’

  ‘She keeps a grand and tidy house. Nice warm fires. But I likes to see the boobies meself, neatly displayed like pies on a tray, and Merri tends to cover hers with men’s shirts and waistcoats.’

  Solomon grinned to himself as he crunched through the snow. Corker continued.

  ‘And I like skirts; they swish and you can lift them and see a dandy ankle. Merri likes to keep her legs well covered, but she’s nice.’ Corker faltered. ‘Me own ma wouldn’t give ye the steam off her chamber pot. Merri’s the gait of a man and the habits of a man, talks straight and doesn’t flutter her lashes. Ye mustn’t like frippery, if ye’ve cast yer hat at Merriment O’Grady, and she could do much worse than yerself.’

  Solomon beamed. ‘I’ll tell you, lad, I’ve never felt more lucky.’

  ‘I’ll stop ye there, Sol.’ Corker grinned. ‘Can’t bear to hear a man talk poetry about his bird, tends to turn me stomach.’

  Solomon smacked Corker’s back and laughed heartily. ‘I wouldn’t want to be responsible for giving you indigestion.’

  They parted at the back of Skinner’s Row.

  ‘I’m cutting up this way, Sol. See ye tomorrow.’ He ran to the mouth of an alleyway, waving goodbye and calling, ‘Don’t wear her out, Sol!’ He pitched his head back and laughed before vanishing into the snowy darkness.

  Solomon cut into Burris Court and was heading for Saint Michan’s Lane when an arm reached from the shadows and snatched him into an old doorway. Solomon instinctively pushed and was knocked against the snowy bricks for his trouble, his spine and ribs ringing from the collision.

  ‘There now.’ Solomon saw a dazzling row of teeth. ‘Knoxy wants another instalment.’

  Solomon groaned, realising that the only leverage he had with Pearly was now locked up in the Black Dog, but being in fighting mood, he tried to negotiate a new deal. Wriggling free from Pearly’s grip, Solomon tugged his jacket down and rearranged the collar of his cloak.

  ‘Pearly,’ he coughed, his eyes flicking into the vanishing dusk, the distant snow winding through the cobbled alleyway gleaming with a purple light, ‘you know that Hawkins has been confessing to the Ordinaries.’

  ‘All birds sing.’ Pearly grinned, his dimple curiously pronounced in the twilight.

  ‘There’s three clerks writing down in detail his various business ventures.’ Solomon’s eyes sparked with a steely light, hoping the veiled threat would hit the mark. ‘He seems particularly keen to name his associates.’

  Pearly nodded, his hand briefly sweeping up to his temple before snapping out and lightly punching Solomon on his nose, making him reel back in pain.

  ‘Ow, for Christ’s sake.’ Solomon’s eyes smarted, his nose particularly sensitive after being reset. ‘What the hell?’

  Pearly chuckled and slid a blade out from his gold-trimmed sleeve.

  ‘Sorry, I must have given ye the impression I wanted to parley. You want to prattle about the Keeper and I have work to do. Give over yer money.’

  Solomon grumbled as he fidgeted in his pocket and drew out three shillings.

  ‘I saw you with Hawkins.’ Solomon’s voice crackled with nervous bravado. Pearly smiled, cocking his head to one side. Drawing up the blade in his hand, he pressed it to his cheek, letting it dully rest against his beaming smile.

  ‘I could cut you a fresh pair of dimples,’ he chuckled, �
�or carve off the tip of yer nose, take the old sniffer in instalments.’

  ‘He’s named you as a partner in some smuggling racket,’ Solomon blustered, quickly holding out his money.

  ‘Well now,’ Pearly chortled, ‘nose it is.’

  He grabbed Solomon in a headlock, brought the blade to his cheek and sharply cut. Solomon yelled ‘no’ and flinched away. Miraculously he managed to heave Pearly against the wall and scramble away, running and slipping onto Saint Michan’s Lane, followed by Pearly’s throaty laugh. A razor-thin line of blood bubbled beneath Solomon’s left eye. He mopped it with the edge of his cloak and clacked his tongue: getting away from Billy Knox and his debt collector was proving to be just as difficult as he had first supposed.

  The sun was setting and the first stars were glittering as the lamplighter and his assistant began lighting the three oil lamps newly erected outside Christ Church Cathedral. Solomon turned down Saint John’s Lane and emerged onto Fishamble Street, chastened. How was he going to escape Billy Knox’s clutches and pay back the money he now owed Chesterfield? He thought of Merriment and hated that her bright face should flash behind his eyes. Could he ask her? He bit the inside of his cheek, snapping the idea in half, frustrated that his old weak habits still lurked just beneath the surface of his new-found strength.

  God damn it, I will fix this myself.

  He was so preoccupied with this thought that he was unconscious of the two men opposite Merriment’s shop, one with a cane, the other hopping with a jittery energy from the kerb to the road and back again. As Solomon approached wondering if selling his law books would raise the money he needed, both men wandered off, melting into the pedestrian traffic. He paused a moment, looking across at the dark shuttered windows of Merriment’s shop.

  ‘Damn this,’ he hissed, striding over the hard snow and putting his key in the lock. ‘I’ll work something out,’ and taking in a breath, he heaved open the door to the sound of Janey Mack singing at the top of her voice a ballad about a girl who dressed herself up like a sailor.

  25

  The Slow Swing

  Two days later the slush prevented Solomon from taking long, light strides to the High Court, but nothing could quell his buoyant mood. He breathed in the crisp chill air, passing dripping sills and drainpipes and checking and rechecking with Corker whether they had included all the prisoners’ statements in their submission to the judge.

  ‘I dropped everything over like ye asked me to. His clerk took it.’

  ‘And there’s still no sign of Fred and Jessop?’

  ‘They’ve hightailed it. What are ye worried about, Sol?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Solomon smiled. ‘Absolutely nothing.’

  The courtyard of the Tholsel heaved with excitement. Someone had hauled the gallows down from Stephen’s Green and parked it right by the entrance so that as Hawkins was led from his boarded-up carriage the first thing he would see was the hanging platform.

  ‘That’ll sober him up,’ one man said, tapping the large wooden wheel of the portable scaffold; the crowd around him laughed. Someone called out Solomon’s name as he pushed his way through the crowd and up the steps.

  ‘Sol, Corker, over here.’

  Gloria waved frantically from behind her stall and ran out to hug Solomon and kiss him on the mouth.

  ‘Who scratched ye?’ She glanced at his wound.

  ‘His new mot likes a bit of rough and tumble,’ Corker chimed in and Solomon chuckled as they teased him about Merriment.

  ‘Well’ – Gloria mopped up her fake tears – ‘can’t say as I’m not surprised, you were bound to be snapped up in a flash. But I’m heartbroken ye didn’t try a bit of my delights.’ Jiggling her enormous breasts, she grabbed Solomon by the arm and pulled him towards her makeshift pie stand. ‘Here he is,’ she announced loudly, ‘the man that saved us all. This is the lad that found Hawkins out.’

  And before he could pull himself away, a crowd fought to shake his hand and kiss his cheek and tell him what a man he was. While Solomon basked in his new-found fame and Corker asked Gloria for two pies, the court beadle arrived and there was a crush for the door.

  ‘I’ve to get inside.’ Solomon tore himself away from the appreciative crowd and pushed his way up the steps and through a side door with Corker screaming after him, ‘Wait for me.’

  The courtroom was packed to the seams. Every lord and lady interested in the case had reserved seats in the gallery or bribed their way into prime locations down on the floor. Solomon met Chesterfield and Beresford by the prosecuting bench.

  ‘Damn scuffle,’ Chesterfield complained. ‘Are you ready?’

  Solomon nodded, catching his breath. The air was thick with tobacco smoke and perfumed with cologne and the underlying musk of stale sweat. He looked about the courtroom, having only once peeked into it when he was a student. It was grander than he remembered. The imposing dais holding the judge’s chair was constructed from polished oak and set beneath a huge domed ceiling decorated with ornate coffers painted gold. The witness stand was to the right of the dais and spread in a semicircle before it were rows of carved benches, arranged to accommodate the teams of lawyers, assistants, clerks and sundry officials. To the left of the raised platform was the stand where the accused was placed and directly behind and above it was the gallery already full to capacity with eager observers keen to get the best view.

  The hum and chatter in the courtroom rose to a fever pitch as the crowd became agitated and the beadles tried to stem the tide of bodies squeezing their way into any free space. Everything was delayed as more and more members of the public insisted that, if there was standing room, they had a right to stand and see the scoundrel that had terrorised them.

  Solomon flattened down his jacket, smoothing the lace ruffs of his best shirt beneath his waistcoat, and in his mind quickly went over the events leading to his suspicion of Hawkins in the first place.

  ‘Did you sign in?’ Chesterfield Grierson queried.

  Solomon shook his head. ‘Where?’

  Chesterfield pointed to a stout man with a drooping moustache. The beadle hammered the mace on the floor with three loud resounding thuds and ceremoniously cried, ‘All rise.’ Solomon pushed his way forward and quickly hissed his name to the clerk who would call the witnesses. The jury stood in two neat rows of six men, all dressed in bright silks, all coiffed and powdered and ranging in age from twenty-three to ninety.

  Judge Coveny looked like thunder. He marched into the courtroom, his cape fluttering, his powdered wig leaving a faint chalky trail behind him, and sat down, scowling at the thick portfolios stacked on the bench before him.

  ‘Call in the accused,’ he grumbled, pouring himself a generous glass of claret.

  The nudging and whispering stopped. A thick, expectant silence descended. No one breathed. Everyone inched higher in their seats or stood on the tips of their toes, straining to catch that first glimpse, their hearts trembling with a mixture of anticipation and morbid fascination, everyone’s nerves teetering on the edge. The sound of a large door slowly creaking open cut through the air like a gothic prelude to a cautionary tale. Women corseted and decked in lace craned forward. Men perched straight-backed and tall, their eyes fixed in the direction of the creaking door. Even Judge Coveny froze, poised over his drink and his notes. Solomon could see Corker across the way quickly sketching, his eyes flicking towards the door, his pencil hovering as four armed guards marched in, the sounds of their boots stomping on the tiled floor blotting out the shuffle of Hawkins’ feet.

  Hawkins swallowed back the gush of saliva that rushed into his mouth, his head darting right and left, his feral eyes jumping from the judge to the crowd to the ceiling. He had tied back his hair in a scrawny ponytail and buttoned up his battered jacket in a desperate attempt to improve his appearance. The crowd drank in his wiry form, his rattish face and jerking movements. No one breathed as he climbed the steps into the stand and placed his manacled hands on the polished oak enclosure. No o
ne whispered when his lips curled into a defiant snarl. Then, cutting through the silence, tearing at the air with abrupt unexpected defiance, Hawkins opened his mouth wide and howled at the top of his lungs, ‘I am innocent.’

  The courtroom erupted. A burst of hissing and booing shook the rafters. The floodgates opened and the crowd rose to its feet and hurled abuse, insults, whistles and catcalls.

  ‘Rapist!’

  ‘Murderer!’

  ‘Beast!’

  ‘Devil!’

  Despite Judge Coveny hammering his gavel furiously and bellowing for everyone to stop at once, it took a full five minutes to quell the crowd.

  ‘You shall all be held in contempt,’ he sputtered, turning beetroot, pointing his gavel round the room. ‘Every last one of you.’ He drew in a long, rasping breath and warned them all to contain themselves. ‘Or the trial will be conducted in secret and you will be denied access to this most sacred process.’

  The crowd settled, baited to silence by the prospect of being excluded from hearing all the salacious information. While the list of Hawkins’ deeds was being read, Solomon sat perched on the edge of his seat, his heart racing in his chest, unconsciously squeezing his knuckles. The prosecuting lawyer was a tall, myopic man who wore thick spectacles that enlarged his eyes so that they looked too big for his face. He had the peculiar habit of constantly sucking on his gums and poking his tongue under his lips. Despite his idiosyncrasies, Mister Freedman had a flair for theatre. He called on Jedediah Sorrel to take the stand.

  Solomon watched as Boxty, using a walking cane, slowly climbed the steps and placed his hand shakily on the Bible, his head bobbing in constant affirmatives with every word he spoke.

  ‘I swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’

  ‘Mister Sorrel,’ Freedman boomed, ‘I will address you by your sobriquet Boxty, if you don’t mind, sir?’

  Boxty nodded.

  ‘Tell me about the night Olocher died.’

  ‘I were waiting for Martin Coffey to relieve me of me duty.’ Boxty’s stricken face blushed on one side. ‘It were a cold, lonely night and Olocher was muttering to the devil and I was fearful.’