Galore - Michael Crummey [63]
The women came down from the Tolt to stand with their men when they saw King-me approaching. The two groups squared off on the waterfront, the priest flanked closely by Judah and Callum and Lazarus, by Daniel Woundy and Saul and the Toucher triplets and a dozen others not at work on the roof of the church. Absalom had followed his grandfather to the shoreline and he watched the faces railed across from him. Every one of them looked ready to hammer the first man to touch the priest.
Lizzie and Mary Tryphena stood at the front, their childlike features set off by the dark bounty of their hair, though Lizzie’s was veined with gray now. The shock Absalom felt the first time he laid eyes on Mary Tryphena’s bare head pricked at him again. Her hair the same blue-black sheen as the lock Mrs. Gallery gifted him when she left Selina’s House. Jabez Trim slipped him the square of cloth when they had a moment alone and Absalom kept it under his pillow, sleeping with a hand wrapped in the coil. He felt it was his life he’d been handed in secret, if only he were able to decipher its meaning. The day they’d carted Judah up to Selina’s House from the landwash, Mary Tryphena inched near to clutch at the hem of his coat with her bonnet in her hand and he’d glanced down at the coal-black hair of her head. A lock. A key. He was right to see his own story tied up somehow with the girl’s, though he misread the markers childishly, falling in love with her as if the stars themselves had ordained it.
Absalom couldn’t take his eyes from her still, her face set and ready to spit on anyone who stood against her men. King-me was directing the handful of constables to arrest the priest but they weren’t willing to risk life and limb in the undertaking. He cursed them all for cowards and moved to take Phelan into custody himself until Selina came between them. She managed to talk King-me into relenting to avoid bloodshed and they retreated up off the landwash. Back at Selina’s House the old man stood at a window, watching the Roman sanctuary shingled and sided and hung with doors oddly marked with crescent moons. —We’ll have the Navy in to haul it down, he said. —And arrest every man jack who stands in the way.
Ann Hope said, I doubt that would do much to improve the situation.
King-me turned from the window to gape at her, but left the room before speaking another word.
A Mass was held in the bare church by the light of Ralph Stone’s lamps that evening, Father Phelan decked out in the fine clerical vestments once the property of the Italian priest. When he made his way back to the droke, he found Mrs. Gallery sitting at the fire beside her husband. He went straight to the bedroom and called her to join him but she only came as far as the doorway, her outline dark against the fireplace light.
—You’ll get yourself killed at this foolishness, she said. —And I’ll be left alone with that creature out there by the fire.
—Come to bed, he said. —We’ll make the angels jealous.
She didn’t move and he could feel the weight of her considering him. —You’re just like him, you know.
—Like who?
—Mr. Gallery, she said. —You think of no one but yourself.
The priest swore under his breath. He’d come to the house pleased with himself and with the events of the day, the speed with which the church was raised, the Romans facing down Sellers and his henchmen, the beauty of the sacrament celebrated within the bare wood walls, and he wanted to toast it all with an evening between Mrs. Gallery’s legs.
—Make him go, she said. —Before you leave me, promise you’ll make him go.
He was afraid for a moment she might cry but there were no tears in her. It was anger that made her voice quiver and he was surprised to see it, undiminished after all these years, a shape as black and bottomless as her outline in the doorway.
—Promise me,