Galore - Michael Crummey [27]
An archway of var branches decorated with wildflowers was built for the Reverend Eldred Dodge to walk beneath as he came ashore and the entire population turned out to welcome him, Protestant and Catholic alike. He’d been seasick the entire three-week voyage from England and the misery of it was clear in his ashen face. He was six foot tall and thin as a stick, his hair was wispy and sparse which made him look that much sicklier. The archway, which had been built to accommodate people of a more subdued height, confused him. He considered stepping around the thing before King-me directed him forward with a hand at his elbow. He staggered as he ducked beneath it, trying to steady himself with a hand to the flowered arch, and it tumbled to the wharf on top of him. It took King-me and Jabez Trim to get him to his feet and he leaned on Jabez’s shoulder all the way up the path to Selina’s House. As he stepped off the wharf a massively pregnant girl took his hand to touch it to her belly and the bizarre intimacy of the gesture made him flinch away.
—He won’t last here long enough to shave, Daniel Woundy said.
At Selina’s House, Dodge was put to bed in Absalom’s room like a child. He woke the following morning to the news that young Martha Jewer had passed away overnight while giving birth.
—It was a breech, Selina explained to him. —She was there yesterday, Reverend. Did you see her?
He nodded. —Is the baby with the father, then?
—It was a moonlight child, she said.
Dodge looked to King-me Sellers who was staring down at the table.
—A moss-born, Selina said, trying to elaborate. —A merrybegot.
—The child is a bastard, King-me said bluntly.
The minister nodded again, contemplating a funeral for a woman of loose morals and a baptism for a bastard. He had a moment of real doubt then, not simple misgiving or hesitation but a profound fear that he’d been mistaken about himself or about God. He would live a long life—all of it from this day forward in the one and only parish of his ministry—before he experienced another like it.
—The little one will have to trust to Providence now I suppose, Selina said.
—Providence takes care of fools, Dodge said, trying to rouse himself to a challenge. —Where is the child?
King-me had an Irish servant show him to the Gut where the infant was in the care of Devine’s Widow. Dodge had to bend nearly double at the waist to get under the lintel and the ceiling was too low to allow him to stand upright inside. Sellers had offered a brief sketch of Devine’s Widow before he set out and he’d planned to stand over her during the visit, but his stunted posture in the low room was too ridiculous to make a proper impression and he took a seat when it was offered. The baby was in Mary Tryphena’s lap and she was feeding him goat’s milk pap through a tit made of cloth, sneaking a furtive glance up at the minister now and then. No one in the room looked at him directly and there was the air of a smirk about them, as if they had just left off making fun of the pallor of his face when he stepped onto the wharf the day before.
—You slept well I hope, Devine’s Widow said. She was a crone of a woman, as Sellers said, her face withered and fierce. She was missing all the teeth on one side of her mouth which made her entire body seem to list when she spoke. He didn’t answer the pleasantry, asking instead if he could have a moment alone with her, and she said a few words to Mary Tryphena in Irish. The girl placed the infant in Lizzie’s arms and went through the door without so