Galore - Michael Crummey [84]
—He asked for a spot on the crew.
—You know he’s not made for that kind of life.
—Patrick promised to look out to him.
—Hell’s flames, Absalom said, which was as close as he came to obscenity. He limped across the room to look at the baby on the daybed and shook his head. —How Henley got tangled up with the like of Bride Freke is beyond me.
—Judge not, Mary Tryphena said and Absalom winced as if from a physical cramp. They were both embarrassed to be dealing still with their one act of indiscretion, so ancient now it almost seemed to have happened to other people.
Mary Tryphena had never served as midwife to Ann Hope before being called to intervene in Levi’s birth. The infant stalled in utero after crowning and she spent half the evening dickering the baby’s shoulder past the bridge of cartilage between the pubic bones, Ann Hope so exhausted she drifted to sleep between contractions. Levi arriving blue and frail and Mary Tryphena stayed on to watch him until the moon had set. She left Virtue to keep an eye on mother and son then, making her way downstairs and along the hall toward the servant’s entrance. She assumed the rest of the house was asleep but Absalom stood from his chair at the sound of footsteps, turning to face Mary Tryphena as she came into the kitchen. —Did you need something, Mrs. Devine? he asked.
She glanced at the table where he’d spent the night and most of the evening before, flipping through ledgers by the light of Ralph Stone’s lamp, feeding wood to the fire to keep the kettle simmering over the dog irons. —I was just on my way, she said. —But for one thing. She walked past him to the cupboards, opening doors until she found what she was looking for, reaching for a teacup placed upside down on the highest shelf. Absalom stared at her with his head to one side. —I thought it might be some help to Adelina, she offered by way of explanation.
—This has something to do with her warts, does it?
—I had Virtue put it up there for me, she said.
—Does Ann Hope know about this?
Mary Tryphena passed the cup across to him. —I doubt Virtue would have come to me without your wife had sent her.
He looked down at the cup, turning it in his hands. —I guess that’s one more thing we’re in your debt for, he said. —There isn’t a mark on Adelina to say the warts were ever there.
The room was close with the fire’s heat, Absalom’s shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow. They hadn’t enjoyed a moment as private since they were children in the branches of Kerrivan’s Tree, watching Father Phelan’s festival of debauchery on the Commons. Absalom set the cup on the table beside a draughtsboard he’d used to distract Adelina while they sat waiting for news the previous evening. Mary Tryphena reached a hand to fuss idly with the checkers. In a dark room at the back of her mind she could hear Devine’s Widow calling her a vain fool to have brought out the cup in Absalom’s presence, to be standing in the kitchen still. She stared at the table to avoid his eyes. —Is this King-me’s checkerboard? she asked.
—His board, yes. Most of the checkers were missing when I was a youngster. We used to play with stones.
—I remember watching you, she said. —On the beach that time. She stopped there to avoid mentioning Judah.
—I had the missing pieces replaced years ago, he said and held one up. —Would you like to try a game?
—I don’t know the first rule of it.
—Child’s play, he said. He placed the wart cup on the windowsill and pulled the board toward them, inviting her to sit. —White leads, he said when he finished explaining the mechanics of the game. They made their alternate moves in a slow dance, the white and black drifting into hybrid patterns, a competitive intimacy to it that felt illicit. Mary Tryphena moved a checker the last square to the far side of the board. —King me, she said.