Michael Crummey Read online

  Jabez Trim, she decided, was her only hope. Through November and December as the temperature dropped and people’s lives contracted to the circle of their tiny properties, to their hovels, to the three square feet closest to the fire, Mary Tryphena tried to think how she might steal a few moments alone in his company. By the third week of Advent she’d all but given up on talking to him before spring and the thought of the wait made her surly and impatient. —If we don’t get that girl out of the house, Devine’s Widow said, I’m going to poison her.

  Lizzie was boiling Christmas puddings in a pot over the fire, dark molasses with dried currants and cherries. —Leave the child be, she said.

  —I’ll take her with me when I bring the cakes over the Tolt, Callum offered.

  Mrs. Gallery had no work of her own and she survived on offerings made to the church by the faithful, an account at Sellers’ store for the woman divided equally among the debts of Catholics on the shore. And it was the custom at Christmas to offer some small token to Jabez and Father Phelan for the services provided through the year. The Christmas puddings were an extravagance, a sign of how well the fishing had gone that year.

  —We’ll walk out tomorrow, Callum said to Mary Tryphena. —It’ll do wonders for us both.

  But her father was taken with a flu overnight, the fever so high he lay under a blanket next the fire calling out to his dead father, and Lizzie said the puddings would have to wait. Mary Tryphena wouldn’t hear of it, knowing no better opportunity would come to her, and Lizzie insisted she ask Judah along, not wanting the girl out by herself with the weather so changeable. She’d take the dog, Mary Tryphena said, sure it could guide her back if a snow squall came on.

  —Leave her go, Devine’s Widow said finally. —I’m sick of listening to the two of you.

  Mary Tryphena’s feet were wrapped in cloth inside her shoes and she went out into the day wearing an old blanket as a shawl against the cold, strapping on her father’s snow rackets at the door.

  Judah heard the voices and peeked out at Mary Tryphena as she walked the path toward him. He was still living in the shed and had taken to sleeping with the dog under the covers against the freezing temperatures. The dog was Judah’s only real companion, a black and white mongrel with a barrel chest and the stunted legs of a beagle. Judah stepped into the open air when Mary Tryphena called the dog and he stood watching as they set out, the animal bounding ahead to break trail through the waist-high snow before turning to run to Jude. It was in a state of agitation, whining and barking as it ran longer and longer relays between the two until Judah disappeared into the shed and the dog sat outside, pawing at the door. Mary Tryphena called uselessly awhile and then turned toward the steep slope of the Tolt Road. There’d been a heavy fall of snow days before and so little traffic between the two communities that it promised to be a slog. The dog nudged past her minutes later and she looked back to see Judah coming along in his rags, a coat rigged out of a bit of rotten sail, his boots two squares of brin tied around his ankles with twine. Her heart fell but she couldn’t think how to send him away without losing the dog.

  It was two hours of hard travel to make what was normally a half-hour trip over the Tolt and down to Mrs. Gallery’s tilt, tucked back in a spindly droke of woods above the harbor and away from the other houses around the bay. The trees were the only ones within a mile of the water that hadn’t been cut for firewood or walls or stagehouse posts or oars. Their sparse sickliness saved them from the axe and the surrounding trees made the little building seem confined and haunted. Mary Tryphena had never gone near it before and she called to Mrs. Gallery as they approached. She took one of the puddings from her shoulder pouch as if she planned to heave it at the door from a distance. The dog stopped behind them and barked its fool head off, running back and forth along a line it refused to cross. Judah knelt beside it in the snow, trying to calm the animal down.

  Mrs. Gallery came to the door in a heavy woolen sweater and a bonnet, wiping her hands on a gray apron hung over her skirts. —Hello Mary Tryphena, she said.

  —I brung a pudding from Mother, she said and held it out, still three feet from the door. Mrs. Gallery didn’t invite them in or ask if they were hungry or thirsty. She stepped out and took the pudding. —Your mother’s a good woman, she said. There was a commotion in the room behind her and Mary Tryphena glanced past Mrs. Gallery to the door. She had never laid eyes on Mr. Gallery and wasn’t sure she wanted to. He’d killed a man out of jealousy years ago and never forgiven himself, was what people said. He was a kind of bogeyman on the shore, parents warning their youngsters away from the woods or playing on the ice on Nigger Ralph’s Pond with stories of what Mr. Gallery would do if he got hold of you.

  —I should get back, Mrs. Gallery said. —You thank your mother for me.

  It was gone to noon by the time they reached Jabez Trim’s house. Jabez ushered them inside and sat them near the fire where they could open their clothes to the heat. He seemed thrilled to have company, calling into a back room to his wife. The Trims had no children, which everyone agreed was a trial for them, though Jabez let it be known the absence wasn’t due to a lack of trying. Olive Trim made her way out to greet them on her fists, her emaciated legs swinging lifelessly beneath her. Mary Tryphena was always surprised by the dexterity and grace she incorporated into such an awkward posture and motion. Olive lifted herself into a chair beside Mary Tryphena and took the pudding she unwrapped from the pouch while Jabez served up bowls of fish and potato stew.

  It was Judah’s first time inside a house since his move to the little shed and the smell of him was making Jabez’s and Olive’s eyes water, but they soldiered through with good humor. Judah removed his brin boots and hung them at the lip of the fireplace to dry, stretching his filthy, blackened feet as close to the flames as he could stand. Jabez asked after the health of everyone in the Gut and Mary Tryphena, who was still following Devine’s Widow on her rounds, had plenty of news to offer. But all the while she was preoccupied by her letter. She had pictured a cloistered conversation, just she and Jabez in near darkness, speaking in whispers, but there was no hope of such a thing. Soon enough Olive was urging them to leave, to make certain they’d be home before dark. —Your mother will be worried half to death you aren’t back before supper, she said. Jabez was out of his seat with Judah, the two of them tying strings and arranging clothes at the door, when Olive said, Jabez. She was watching Mary Tryphena who hadn’t budged from her seat and Jabez came over to stand beside her.

  —What is it, maid? he asked.

  There was nothing for it then but to bring out the letter and offer it to him. Jabez untied the string and opened the paper.

  —Behold, thou art fair, my love, he read, behold, thou art fair; thine eyes are as doves. He stopped there, too embarrassed to go on. He passed the paper across to Olive and she glanced through it, shaking her head. —Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my bride, she read.

  Mary Tryphena had never heard anything like those words. They made her feel exposed and ashamed of herself, she regretted showing it to a living soul.

  —Do you know who this is from? Olive asked.

  Mary Tryphena couldn’t bring herself to speak Absalom’s name aloud. She leaned into Olive’s ear to whisper it and they stared at one another, Olive looking to see if it could possibly be true. —Do you love him? she asked.

  Mary Tryphena was taken back by the bluntness of the question. —I don’t know, she said.

  —Could you love him do you think?

  Mary Tryphena barely heard the question over the buzz in her ears. She couldn’t hold Olive’s eye any longer and turned away, caught sight of Judah at the door. She’d forgotten he was in the room and was mortified to see she had an audience. Jude seemed no happier to be overhearing the exchange, his fish eyes bulging in his head. —No, she said. She pointed at him and shouted No a second time, and Jabez went across the room to usher Judah outside.

  Mary Tryphena slumped into her chai
r and did her best not to bawl. —Why would he send me this letter and not say a word to my face?

  —Who are we talking about here? Jabez asked.

  Olive gave him a quick look and then smiled across at the girl. —You know Absalom has a stutter, Mary Tryphena.

  —Jesus loves the little children, Jabez said. —Do your parents know about this?

  Mary Tryphena grabbed Olive’s wrist. —You won’t tell anyone, she pleaded.

  —Not a soul, Olive said. She folded the note and retied the string before handing it back to Mary Tryphena.

  Judah hadn’t waited for her but she could see him in the distance and followed in his tracks toward the Tolt. The wind had come up and the blowing snow whipped at her, as sharp as grains of sand. Mary Tryphena was crying by the time they reached the Tolt Road though she couldn’t identify the source exactly, whether grief or relief or pity, the sobs shaking through her. Judah pushed on ahead and the dog ran back and forth between the two, whining and jumping to lick at Mary Tryphena’s face before bolting ahead to catch Jude. The weight of the stupid animal knocked her into the snow each time it leaped up and at the crest of the Tolt Mary Tryphena refused to get back to her feet. The dog pawed and licked at her but she ignored it, pulling the blanket over her head to protect her face from the massive tongue. She was being lifted up then and surrendered to it, wrapping both arms around Judah’s shoulders and she fell asleep in the stink of his arms as they jolted down the Tolt Road to home.

  Father Phelan made it back to the shore two days before Christmas. He arrived in the dead of night and made his way to Mrs. Gallery’s house in its pathetic grove of trees, whistling outside to wake her before he pushed into the tilt. The fire had guttered down to embers and he could just make out Mr. Gallery in the dark light, his chair pulled up to the fireplace. Each time Father Phelan laid eyes on him after an absence he seemed to have diminished again, fading under the weight of his guilt. —Bless me Mr. Gallery, he said, it’s a cold night. The priest stamped the snow from his boots and leggings and then crossed the room to stir up the embers, adding a junk of spruce and standing to take the new heat. Mrs. Gallery called to him from the single room at the back of the tilt. —I’ll be along directly, he said.

  Mrs. Gallery’s bed was constructed in the same fashion as the wharves and fish flakes and walls of the tilts, spruce logs skinned of their rind and nailed lengthwise on one side of the room. There was a thick layer of boughs as a mattress and bedding of ancient woolen blankets and a leathery sealskin and underneath it all the heat of Mrs. Gallery. He lifted the covers and crawled in beside her. Her mouth sweet as spruce gum and the skin of her thighs like fresh cream. Mrs. Gallery spread her legs and brought his hand to the wet of her, a little noise at the back of her throat when he found it. —That’s the bowl that never goes empty, Mrs. Gallery, he whispered. —That’s the miracle of the loaves and the fishes. His hand rocking slowly into her and he began talking in Latin, his voice rising enough to be heard through the house as she came for the first time.

  An hour later there was a commotion from the other room, a clanging as Mr. Gallery kicked at the cook pot on the fireplace crane. —He’s only making trouble, Mrs. Gallery said.

  —He’s cold is all, the priest told her. —What other comfort does he have?

  He stepped out of the bed into the piercing frost, pulling on his breeches and worn black vestments before slipping into the next room to add another junk to the fire and Mr. Gallery seemed to nod absently at the flames. —There’s plenty of this to look forward to in hell, the priest said.

  He and Mrs. Gallery lay awake after they’d exhausted each other’s appetites, talking of the news on the shore and plans for the season ahead. It had been years since people had any enthusiasm for Christmas, households far gone into the winter’s supplies by December and months of rough hunger still to struggle through. Toward March some families were so weak they hardly moved from their bunks for weeks at a time. A central fireplace with a square wooden flue was the only source of heat in the spruce tilts, and Father Phelan would sometimes find a family huddled around it in silence, their faces cratered and blank. Not a morsel of food among them beyond a pot of watery soup. He went begging to King-me Sellers on their behalf, coming away with a pocketful of green fish not fit to feed a dog, a bag of brown flour infested with weevils. It was enough to keep them another week or two and stave off starvation until the seals came in on the Labrador ice.

  But Christmas this year promised a return to the days when the shore had known something closer to prosperity. Everyone did well enough on the fish to clear their debt with Sellers and set aside a good store for themselves, and the warm summer delivered a historic crop of root vegetables to see people through to the seals. There was an air of celebration in the two communities and Phelan expected that Christmas was the time it would surface in all its glory.

  He held Mass in Callum’s fishing room on Christmas Eve, the building lit with whale-oil torches, and he had to repeat his homily and offer the sacrament three times to accommodate the numbers who waited outside in the cold. From Christmas Day through to the Feast of the Epiphany the nights were ruled by bands of mummers roaming from house to house in the dark, five or six to a group and all dressed in outlandish disguises, brin sacks and old dresses or aprons, coats worn backwards and legs through the arms of shirts that were tied at the waist as breeches, men dressed in women’s clothes and women in men’s, underclothes worn on the outside of their many layers. They traveled with spoons and crude wooden whistles and other noisemakers, they knocked at one door after another for admittance and barreled inside requesting cake and bread and whatever drink the house had to offer. In return they sang songs and danced and in general acted like fools. Their heads and faces were covered by sacks or veiled with handkerchiefs and they spoke ingressively to disguise their voices and they stayed until the inhabitants guessed their identities or until they’d drunk up every drop of liquor on the premises. They were aggressive and rude, they were outlandishly genderless and felt free to grab the ass of man or woman for a laugh, they frightened the children and left a house in shambles, but not a door was barred to them. Father Phelan loved the devilment and followed in their wake, taking up with one group of mummers and then another. There was a mild spell through the whole of Christmas and mummers crisscrossed the two tiny villages till daylight, the priest making his way back and forth over the Tolt Road half a dozen times in a single night.

  On the eve of the Feast of the Epiphany he fell in with a group of mummers that included Horse Chops, a man covered in a blanket, a wooden horse’s head on a stick before him. The eyes were painted at either side of the head, one black and one blue, the jaws of the horse driven through with nails for teeth and tied with leather strings so they snocked together. Horse Chops was a seer who could answer any question put to him. At every stop a mummer wearing a crown of spruce boughs chose one member of the household as a victim, asking Horse Chops the most embarrassing questions he could dream up. No subject was too lewd or personal, no question was taboo. Secret loves and affairs, unpaid debts, illegitimate children, ongoing family arguments, sins buried and unconfessed, all were fair game.

  —This one now, the King mummer whistled, shaking a stave topped with a bladder of dry peas at Mary Tryphena. Horse Chops galloped across the tiny room to stare at the girl, the great jaws flapping loose. In the gloomy light of cod-oil lamps the creature’s face looked like something called up from a netherworld. The other mummers were negotiating their glasses under veils and sacks, tipping their heads back to drink. —Horse Chops, is there someone in love with this girl? the King asked.

  —There’s no such thing, Mary Tryphena said.

  Horse Chops pawed at the dirt floor and the jaws clapped once to signal otherwise. The mummers broke into applause and Father Phelan along with them, though his mood was dampened a little to have missed Callum. Callum had spent the entire Christmas season recovering from his fever and the priest was surprise
d to find him not at home now. He’d gone off on his own hours ago, Lizzie said, to try and make something of the final night of celebrations.

  —Is it a man from the Gut? the King asked.

  Clap, clap went the wooden jaws to say no.

  —A man from Paradise Deep?

  Clap.

  —A man from Paradise Deep then. Now is this a rich man or a poor man, Horse Chops?

  One clap signaled the former.

  —Bless you child, a rich man in love with you. And is our rich man one of Father Phelan’s flock?

  Clap, clap.

  —A Protestant? An Englishman? A black?

  Lizzie turned to Devine’s Widow and said, For the love of God, Missus. It was clear to them both who the King was suggesting, and Lizzie thought the suggestion crossed the line, even for mummers.

  —Let it be, Lizzie, the old woman said angrily.

  —And now Horse Chops, the King said, the most important question. Will our girl marry her rich Englishman from Paradise Deep?

  Mary Tryphena held her breath, trying desperately to look disinterested, dismissive, though she couldn’t help but feel some portion of her destiny was about to be laid out for her to see. Horse Chops stepped back and gave two claps and the mummers fell over one another, groaning in despair.

  —No wedding, the King said. —No riches for our girl, alack. He turned to the room and said, A song. We’ll give her a song and a dance at least.

  —And she’ll be better for it, Devine’s Widow said under her breath. She was watching Mary Tryphena, reconsidering the girl’s inconsolable moodiness through the fall. Thinking of King-me Sellers and all she’d done to keep clear of his way, only to find herself these years later, married to it regardless.

  The mummers’ last stop of the night was Selina’s House, the stars almost doused by the first hint of dawn. There was no one up, the house dark and the fireplace cold, but they hammered at the door until they heard movement upstairs. King-me despised the mummers, who treated him as no one would dare without their disguise and the license granted by the tradition. He only let them in for fear of what they might do if he refused. During his first years in Paradise Deep he barred the door and had his chimney stopped up with sods, one morning found his cow lowing mournfully on top of her shed. He allowed their visits then to avoid worse again, although he was frugal with the food and drink he offered. The mummers ensured they had plenty of snow on their shoes and clothes to leave a mess behind them, as a protest against King-me’s lack of enthusiasm for their entertainment.