Galore - Michael Crummey [61]
—Forgive us Father, Callum said.
Cunico looked at Michael Devine, Little Lazarus, the boy almost thirteen and already the height of his father. —And you? the priest demanded.
Lazarus turned to his father to speak again in Irish and Callum cuffed him so hard he fell from his chair. Lazarus smiled as he picked himself up from the floor. He genuflected toward the Italian with an attitude of false deference inherited directly from his grandmother. He left the room and was followed quickly by Lizzie, then Mary Tryphena and the strangely livid child in her lap walked out as well.
Cunico stood from his seat so he might look down on Callum and the widow. —God appoints a man the ruler of his household, he said, just as Christ is the head of the Church.
After he left them Devine’s Widow said, He’s sent us by the archbishop, Callum.
—I don’t know your archbishop, Callum told her and he walked down to the Rooms to be alone awhile. He opened the doors onto the water and sat looking out at the still pool of the cove, the wide flat tables of the flakes on the waterline where the summer’s fish had been set to dry. His hand was still pulsing from striking his son and sitting there he was overtaken by a puzzling nostalgia for Eathna. He could barely picture her now, a little redheaded girl climbing into his lap, insisting he pay attention to some childish secret. He used to set her aside, calling to Lizzie to occupy the girl so he could get on with knitting his twine or hear the end of Father Phelan’s foolish story. And she was gone now, her childish secrets with her.
There was no neater sum of how life unfolded, he thought, and he was ambushed by a crying jag, sobs tearing through him as ragged and relentless as a seizure. Judah found him huddled over his lap with his arms wrapped about his chest and went to fetch Lizzie, leading her to the Rooms like a dog trying to alert someone to trouble. Callum was as helpless as Jude to tell her what was wrong and in the end she simply stood beside her husband while he cried himself out, a hand to his bowed head, the tangled mat of his hair. Beloved.
—Was this all a mistake do you think? he choked out finally.
—Hush Callum, she whispered. —Hush now.
On the afternoon of Absalom’s wedding, Father Cunico stood on the path to the church in his clerical gown and surplice as if standing at the gates of hell, turning Catholics back to their homes. James Woundy and Lazarus and Judah holding Patrick’s hand walked past his warnings without so much as a nod. The priest chased after them, waving his wooden stave and shouting like some lunatic highwayman. He came too close to Patrick for Judah’s liking and he shoved the priest away.
Cunico was apoplectic to be treated so roughly, swinging blindly with his cane. Jude was struck in the face and spat one of his front teeth into the grass beside the path. The three men fell on the priest together then, dragging him to the harbor where they threw him into the bitter cold, Cunico twisting free of his vestments as he fell. Lazarus Devine standing with the sacred habiliments of the priest still in his hand.
Jabez Trim and one of Peter Flood’s youngsters fished the priest out before he drowned and the scandal cast a shadow over the wedding. No one spoke of anything other, not the bride’s dress or the extravagant spread of food laid on or the money spent. King-me took a moment before the ceremony to swear in half a dozen constables who were sent to track the perpetrators down while the wedding went ahead.
At the reception Barnaby Shambler told Reverend Dodge the Romans were a crowd of savages who would eat their young if left to their own devices. Dodge suggested Shambler was being unchristian in his assessment, though privately he nursed the same opinion not just of the Romans but of practically every soul on the shore. At times he felt all civilization had been bred out of