Galore

by Michael Crummey

  Devine’s Widow waved a hand.—It was the soldier’s own knife killed him, people are saying.

  —I’m not at liberty to discuss the details.

  —He fell on his own knife trying to get at the dog is what happened and everyone knows it for the truth, whatever else they might be telling you.

  The officer nodded thoughtfully a moment.—There was no Toucher involved, was there.

  Reverend Waghorne stared at Goudie.—I don’t follow, Lieutenant.

  —We can’t distinguish the Toucher in question from his brothers, Goudie said slowly, still piecing it together.—And there’d be hell to pay if we hang all three. So. It would appear that witnesses named a man they were reasonably sure would not be convicted.

  —Judah has no family you’ll have to answer to, the widow said.—That’s the only reason he’s locked up now. He got no one belonged to him.

  —He has you, Missus, King-me said without meeting her eyes.

  She stared at Sellers standing stock-still at the door, as if on guard.—How long before you leave, Lieutenant? the widow asked.

  —We’ve delayed the Spurriers vessel a fortnight already, he said.—We’ll have to sail within the next day or so.

  She stood abruptly and left then, not waiting to be shown the door. She stopped in to see Father Phelan at Mrs. Gallery’s, the priest half-drunk and delighted by the proposal she made until he realized the widow had yet to broach the subject with any of the principals. She told the priest to be sober enough to perform his office when they came for him and she would look to all other concerns.—A wedding, Mr. Gallery, Father Phelan said to the husband in the darkest corner of the room.—God’s covenant made flesh between man and wife. Will you have a drink to celebrate?

  The widow said, A priest isn’t meant to relish the sufferings of others, Father.

  —We choose our own hell, Phelan said, and he smiled at her.

  She stopped at the peak of the Tolt on her way back into the Gut. Dark water and ragged patches of pale blue over shoal ground. As a younger woman she often thought of Ireland gone under that horizon and swallowed by the waters. But it had been a lifetime since she’d felt that regret, knowing it was useless to ask questions of the past.

  She wasn’t much above a girl when she first came to Paradise Deep, indentured to Sellers for two winters and a summer, and she’d nearly worked herself free of him before his marriage proposal led to her dismissal. The harbour settled by a handful of English and all of them tied to King-me’s operation, so she walked to the Gut where she expected a more sympathetic welcome among the Irish and the bushborns. The Tolt Road only the barest hint of a path and rough walking with snow still down among the trees. She made a tour of the cove but no one would chance the merchant’s wrath by taking her on. Sarah Kerrivan at least offered a bed but she refused to sleep under another’s roof again. She fashioned a lean-to of spruce boughs next the Kerrivan’s scrawny apple tree, sleeping with their wood dog to avoid perishing in the cold. The following spring she raised a one-room tilt with logs she’d cut through the winter, but she had no better prospects for employment. There were nine or ten men to every woman on the shore in those days and any single man would have wed her if she showed the slightest interest, if it wasn’t common knowledge she’d spurned young Sellers who lived in Paradise Deep like some feudal lord, drinking tea with fresh milk from his own cow. No one could imagine what they might offer to turn her head and they left her alone.

  The same had been true of King-me while she worked for him. Before he proposed he never spoke a word to her except to give instructions or request a specific meal from the kitchen, though it was clear to her how besotted he was. King-me had no experience or interest in love and he seemed incapable of recognizing what had struck him. He blamed fevers and ague and indigestion for his feeling so out of sorts. He consulted her on a cure for worms he suspected as the cause of his distress. He ordered Tincture of Sage and Essence of Water-Dock from quack physicians in England who promised relief of the sullen headaches, the poor appetite and swollen stomach, the spirits funk. In desperation he had her brew a colonic of molasses and cod-liver oil to clear his system of its bad humours.

  In April of their second winter in Paradise Deep, only weeks from losing his right to order her around the property, he came into the shed where she was milking the cow, standing out of sight on the far side of the animal as he proposed. She didn’t lift her head from her work, smiling down at the pail.—Marriage, is it? she said.

  —You have no husband, he said.—And I need to take a wife.

  She could tell he felt it was a simple business decision about property and standing and knew she could never expect anything different of him. The thought of marrying a man so ignorant of his own motives seemed no different than indentured servitude.—You need to take a wife, is it? she said, and King-me nodded helplessly, out of his element altogether.—And I need to take a piss, Master Sellers. Is that for or against we two getting married?

  She could simply have said no and they might have carried on as though nothing of consequence passed between them, instead of her being turned out of the house before she could collect her few possessions or her wages. She could have left the premises without raining curses down on his head, half of which she had no memory of now, something about death to his household and the fruit of his loins and his livestock, though she never mentioned the skinny cow in particular. The words were flung about in the fury of the moment and she couldn’t have known they would tie her to Sellers as tightly as any wedding vow.

  ——

  As soon as Devine’s Widow left the house, King-me slipped out to the barn where the cows were in from the meadow to be milked. He took a bucket off its peg to join the two hired men already at work. He loved the smell of a barn, the rank closeness of it. He sat next the udder of a cow and leaned his forehead against the heat of her flank, hoping it might ease the ferment that seeing the widow brought on.

  It wasn’t enough that she had refused to have him those ages ago, an Irish girl who’d come from nothing and owned nothing. She had to ruin his livestock and poison half the household besides. The cow shifted away from him as he latched on to the teats and he whispered to settle the animal down. It made him look a fool to blame Devine’s Widow for the state of his cows, he knew, but no one had been able to offer any other explanation. The milk of his one milk cow dried up within a week of the woman leaving his employ and she was never the same mild creature, not even after the milk came back in. All his stock descended from that first cow, each one just as unpredictably skittish, kicking down the stalls at the slightest provocation, knocking pails of milk across the barn.—Explain that, he demanded of the doubters.

  And he was supposed to think it coincidence, was he, that four of his servants took sick the very month she was dismissed, their faces gone red and puffy after a particular meal of cod, his own head swollen to twice its natural size? The look of it in the glass like some livid pillow from a whore’s chesterfield. He was like to die the better part of a week and knew who to blame for the affliction, but he bided his time, let her think she’d got away with it. There were no magistrates in those days and he had to wait almost a full year before a naval ship stopped into the harbour.

  Given the charge, Captain Churchward insisted on having the ship’s chaplain present for the trial and they sat in a bare store appointed as the courtroom, the naval officer and his clergyman behind a table, plaintiff and defendant in wooden chairs before them. King-me had no memory of the men’s faces, just a vague recollection of the red and black of their outfits. The Irish servant girl who refused him sat her hands in her lap, soft-spoken and polite through the whole procedure, and she still with every goddamn tooth in her head when she smiled. That face still vivid to him, so many years on. The naval officer asked for King-me’s evidence and he offered it as calmly as he was able. The milk drying up overnight and he had seen the defendant sneaking away from the property on the evening in question a
nd believed she was there decidedly to take away the milk of the cow by force of witchcraft. The naval officer making notes in a booklet, then leaning to the chaplain to conference in whispers.—Did anyone see the defendant in the presence of the cow, the officer wanted to know.

  Not as far as he was aware, King-me told the man, but he suspected no person other than the defendant for the loss of the cow’s milk.

  The captain pursed his lips, as if puckering for a kiss.—So there is no one who might have seen the defendant placing a spell on the cow in question?

  —Never mind the bloody cow, King-me shouted.—We was all nearly poisoned to death by this creature.

  —Ah, the officer said.

  Fucking Ah!

  —Do you have any evidence to support this claim, Master Sellers?

  —I had my head swell like a pig’s bladder and turn scarlet. And most everybody in my employ afflicted to a lesser extent.

  —And what makes you think the defendant was responsible for this?

  He listed the curses she’d thrown about as she left his property as best he remembered them but there was no one he could call to confirm what was said. Not a soul among the servants who knew the woman would speak against her. He had to haul out of the courtroom and grab a fifteen-year-old taken on the spring he fired the servant girl, a stranger to the witch’s influence and more likely to listen to reason. He gave the youngster a quick study in the evidence required as they walked back to the storeroom and let him know what would become of him if he refused to give it.

  Yes, the boy testified, he’d seen his master’s sorry condition and other people ill around him, though he’d not taken sick himself. He looked to King-me a moment before he went on. Yes, he’d seen the defendant down at Spurriers’ Rooms of a night before the sickness struck them and she was putting out Sellers’ fish to cure in the moonlight. And she was saying some words over the flesh besides to poison it.

  The chaplain said, You heard her speak?

  —Not that I could understand, sir. She were talking some black language that were beyond me.

  The youngster managed an admirable job of it to start, adding the bit about the black language of his own initiative. The captain and his clergyman were whispering on each other’s shoulders and King-me had a moment of premature elation come upon him, to see the servant girl at his mercy suddenly, certain the game was won. He straightened in his chair as the captain turned back to them.

  The captain said, You observed the defendant place a black spell on the household’s fish?

  —I did, sir, yes.

  —Did you tell anyone about what you’d seen?

  The boy glanced at King-me, a look of uncertainty creeping into his face.—I don’t believe so, sir.

  —Did you or did you not?

  —I didn’t, sir, no.

  —You observed the food of your master being poisoned by a witch and told no one, is that correct?

  —I suppose that’s the truth, sir.

  The captain smiled then and King-me felt the floor fall out of his stomach.

  —You allowed your fellow servants and your employer to partake of flesh you had seen being poisoned?

  The youngster only gaped. He was shaking so severely King-me thought he might soil his trousers.

  —One might conclude from this evidence, the captain said, that you consented to the misfortune that befell Master Sellers.

  —No sir, the youngster said.

  —One might even argue that you were a conspirator in the event, a party of equal guilt to the defendant.

  And with that the boy commenced to bawling.—I never saw it but from a long ways off, he sobbed.—I never heard a word, I was that far off. I don’t know for certain if it were she were out there in the dark, that’s the truth of it. It might be it were someone else were out there. I might have seen shadows and thought it a person on the wharf.

  —Thank you, the captain said.—That will be all.

  The officer turned his attention to the defendant after the Irish youngster left the room and King-me stared at the floor, not willing to see the look on her face. She spun some yarn about being owed wages upon dismissal and helping herself to a laying hen as payment while Master Sellers was at his store, but she denied doing anything to cause the cow to lose her milk. She denied curing his fish in the moonlight or speaking black words over the flesh or even setting foot in Spurriers’ Rooms after her position was terminated.

  —Are you in any wise responsible, the captain asked, for the afflictions described to us by Master Sellers?

  There was a pause before she answered and he could feel her staring at him.—If I caused Master Sellers’ head to swell twice its normal size, she said, it was through no deliberate action on my part. And I’d wager it was not the head on his shoulders that was so afflicted.

  King-me pulled furiously at the cow’s teats against the memory of that moment, the milk coming sharp against the pail. Maddening bitch of a woman. Even the chaplain smirking into his chest. Maddening, maddening bitch of a woman. The cow bucked suddenly and knocked him off his stool into the filthy straw and he had to crawl clear of the stall to come away without his head smashed in, the milk spilled over the ground. One of the hired men came to help him but he cursed him away, hanging the empty pail on its hook where he’d found it. Back at the house he offered his apologies to his guests and made his way upstairs to bed.

  He stripped out of his clothes and lay naked on the cold board floor of the bedroom, hoping some mortification of the flesh might clear his mind of the woman’s poison. There was a time after he’d brought Selina to Paradise Deep that King-me considered himself more or less clear of the widow’s trouble, married as he was to a half-sensible girl whose childlike stature suggested she could do him no harm, his work going well and a small brood of youngsters to will the business to.

  He should never have gone to her for help when his wife took to her bed and refused to leave it. In some recess of his mind not crammed with ledgers and sums he was sure this request had cost him his children. Lizzie, for certain, a loss he had never rightly recovered from. His girl married to the witch’s son, she and her children, his own flesh and blood, living like savages in that woman’s house. He’d vowed to let it all lie, for Selina’s sake. But this trouble with Judah had simply fallen into his lap. The Great White, sea orphan, St. Jude. He was the widow’s work and no one could convince King-me otherwise.

  Sellers had paid off a vessel in Newfoundland at the age of eighteen after several years apprenticing to the ship’s chandler and he became a small-time lender in St. John’s, fronting cash to fishermen and sailors to buy their drink. It was a job that required a minute attention to detail alongside a measured ruthlessness and he was perfectly suited to the undertaking. His success brought him to the attention of the town’s merchant community and he took invitations to meals and small entertainments among the quality, but the squalor of St. John’s depressed him. Still a young settlement and infested with all the old vices, TB and syphilis, petty crime and drunkenness and an inflated sense of its own importance. He took the position with Spurriers & Co. when he was promised a pristine posting, a merchant operation on a virgin shore that he could set to his own liking. For years they’d been supplying a crowd of bushborns up there and were ready now to make a push into the country. He’d sailed out of St. John’s on a May morning with thirty hogsheads of salt, two muzzle-loaders and three Irish servants, a crate of hens, four sheep, a single cow and a bull. A checkerboard that he was assured would help get him through the winters. A fortnight beyond sight of any human habitation he confronted the captain who had been sailing back and forth a wild stretch of coastline for days.—Ten years I been coming out here, the captain said, and the bloody place sits somewhere different every time.

  Eventually they anchored in a harbour a full league in length, the bay with fathom and width enough for Spurriers’ ships to deliver provisions in the spring and to take on salt fish in the fall. A steep horseshoe
of hills rising around them, the densely forested spruce crowding down to the landwash. The silence of the place was implacable, and King-me felt a panic rising through him in the face of all of that nothing, the shoreline a mute angel he was meant to wrestle a name from. He settled on Paradise before he’d stepped off the boat, thinking anything less would be an admission of weakness. The bushborns in the Gut knew the harbour simply as Deep Bay and the name was too apt to abandon altogether—Paradise Deep, they insisted on calling it. As if to tell King-me that something of the place would always be beyond his influence.

  Watching Judah emerge from the whale’s guts, King-me felt the widow was birthing everything he despised in the country, laying it out before him like a taunt. Irish nor English, Jerseyman nor bushborn nor savage, not Roman or Episcopalian or apostate, Judah was the wilderness on two legs, mute and unknowable, a blankness that could drown a man. King-me was happy enough to think of that carted off to England and hung.

  His mind was spinning despite the cold board beneath him and he doubted he’d sleep at all that night. It was uncanny how the widow arranged that little tableau in the parlour to mock him, to make him doubt the strength of his position. As if it could all turn her way just at the moment he was certain the game was won. Maddening bitch of a woman. Out there this very minute, he knew, plotting against him.

  It was long gone to night at the peak of the tide when the wedding party rowed for the fishing room where Judah Devine was being held. Father Phelan and Devine’s Widow in the bow and Callum at the oars, Mary Tryphena facing her father where she sat astern. Lizzie left at home in the grip of one of her spells, and time to weep in solitude at the sudden loss when she came to herself.

  They’d walked over the Tolt Road from the Gut to fetch Father Phelan, and Mrs. Gallery stood in her doorway when they left for the waterfront.—Be strong, she’d called. They went along the east side of the harbour opposite Judah’s prison and climbed into Jabez Trim’s half-shallop where it was tied to the stagehead. The soldier guarding Jude’s door was asleep at his post and they made a silent procession across the harbour so as not to disturb his rest.