Galore - Michael Crummey [38]
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 parlor 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 harbor 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 harbor so as not to disturb his rest.
Callum was watching his daughter’s face as he rowed her toward her wedding. She seemed strangely serene for a girl who only hours earlier had no notion of marrying Judah, of sharing a bed with a man. He wanted to offer her a blessing or some encouragement, as Mrs. Gallery had, but he was too ashamed to open his mouth. Jabez Trim’s story of Abraham and Isaac was in his mind and he felt himself playing out the scene himself now, about to sacrifice his own child with no hint of a reprieve at hand. Callum held the pilings to keep the boat steady underneath the fishing room, the shimmer of Jude’s face appearing at the offal hole as if he’d been expecting them. Father Phelan lifted Mary Tryphena through the hole and dragged himself up behind her, then reached back through to take the hands of the old woman.
Callum waited in the darkness there, the whispered ceremony performed overhead by the light of a single candle. The priest and Devine’s Widow climbed down to the boat when it was done and they left the newlyweds to their first night together. The light of the candle was visible in the room’s one tiny window as Callum rowed away. He helped his mother climb up onto Jabez Trim’s wharf and glanced back across the harbor one last time but by then the light was out.
Lizzie was already in bed when they got home, lying with her face to the wall. Callum placed a hand on her back as he climbed in beside her, his palm snug between the shoulder blades. He sang softly in the black, a song about his love for a dark-haired girl, as Lizzie wept silently, each shudder traveling the length of Callum’s arm. —She’ll never have this, Lizzie whispered when he was done. —Not as long as she lives, Callum.
—Hush Lizzie, he said. But he knew exactly what she meant and he was awake all night with the thought.
Devine’s Widow lay sleepless likewise, thinking of her long-dead husband, preoccupied with his memory for the first time since Callum married. The image of him so vivid it made her hands shake, as if she was the one approaching her first night in a conjugal bed.
After the naval officer declared her not guilty of all King-me’s charges and ordered her released from custody she walked the path back toward the Tolt. She felt ill at ease for all she’d seen Sellers put in his place, thinking it was impossible to make a life for herself in the man’s shadow. As she crested the Tolt she saw the Irish youngster who’d stood witness against her sitting with his legs dangling over the cliff edge. A moment of black fury rising in her throat, seeing how easy it would be to send him headlong to the rocks below. —You’re not thinking of jumping, are you? she asked finally and he started at her voice. He was lank and bone, a boy of fifteen