The Law of Dreams (37 page)

Underneath, protected from rain and wind, Coole was sitting with long legs
crossed and a red book in his hands. His two children were perched on coils of rope.
Coole was giving them a lesson.

Fergus recognized the red book, the
Dublin Universal Speller
. The
old Waterloo hero, his occasional schoolmaster on the mountain, had owned a copy.

His rare days as a scholar he had loved — walking across the
mountain, carrying a penny for the lesson and a lump of turf for the schoolroom fire.
The Waterloo hero had told them stories of battles and smoke, Frenchmen, cavalry on
enormous horses, cannon shining gold in the sun.

Coole's boy and girl finished chanting through their letters, then
Coole passed the book to the girl. She started reading aloud in a piping voice that
didn't carry well across the deck. Coole beckoned to Fergus, but he shook his head
and took a step back.

He watched the little girl finish the passage then pass the book to her
brother, who began reading aloud.

He kept watching them until he heard the bos'n's whistle, the
signal that daily rations were being distributed. Then he turned away, heading for the
hatchway to collect their water cans and kettle. He yearned to read; it was another
hunger.

What you wanted would keep you going.

“
THAT BEEF
will be fresh enough now,” Brighid
said. “Go ahead, cut it up.”

The salt beef had been soaking in a pail of fresh water. Pouring off the
water, he started cutting up the meat and adding it to the stirabout cooking in a kettle
on the grate.

Looking up, he watched a gang of sailors run straight up the ratlines.

Laramie
had finally caught the wind. The companion ships had
fallen off, and they had the green sea to themselves.

Did the sailors hear commands the bos'n and the master were
shouting, or did they work through a coordinated feeling of their own, a sense of wind
and terror?

Brighid tossed another handful of herbs into a simmering can. She
wasn't cook-of-the-day, but no one had tried keeping her from the cabooses. They
respected, even feared, her powers.

“What are you cooking there, mother?”

“Syrup.”

“What's it for?”

“To calm the passions of the womb.”

Like many old women, she spoke obliquely and seemed to cultivate an air of
mystery. She'd sold the Cooles a salve for their boy's bruises, made with
crushed herbs and mutton fat she had from the galley cook.

He gave the kettle another stir.

Sailors called the yellow mush
slop-and-grindings
and said the
passengers' salt beef was
monkey's paws
, not fit for Christians to
eat. But the crew's beef came from the same casks and their stirabout —
called
burgoo
— was also made with yellow meal, the only difference being
it had molasses in it, and was cooked for them by the black man.

Floors were
decks
. Walls were
bulkheads
. Ropes were
sheets
,
halyards
, or
lines
, depending on function.

The
booby hatch
led down to the passenger hold, which the crew
called the
'tween deck
. Passengers' cribs were
berths
. The
crew slept in
hammocks
strung from beams in the
fo'c'sle
,
a dank hole at the front of the ship —
before the mast
— that was
entered by a
scuttle
.

Other words and phrases were still mysterious, but he had resolved to
learn their meanings by listening and watching, not by asking.

Men dislike being questioned. They sense you're trying to rob them
of something.

Looking up, he watched sailors walking out along the yards, treading on
footropes they called
horses
.

So high the men looked like squirrels. Above them the slender stick of the
royal mast at the very peak of the ship, rocking back and forth, scratching the sky.

Every sailor belonged to
port watch
or
starboard watch
,
depending on which side of the ship his hammock was slung. While one watch was on deck,
the other slept in their hammocks, though both watches were ordered aloft when sails
were being set —
bending sail
— or if the yards needed
trimming
and
bracing
.

Laramie
was speeding now, wind singing off her sails. While she
had been beating up and down the Welsh coast, he'd overheard passengers complain
of her sluggishness, wishing aloud they'd spent the extra money for a Black Ball
packet and a racy, easy crossing to New York.

He'd heard people calling their ship
an old Canada cow
.

A
wreckage
.

A
coffin ship
.

He started a lump of biscuit roasting on the grate, and when the bugs came
crawling out, he scraped them off into the coals.

Brighid tasted the stirabout. He had watched her collecting pennies and
tobacco from passengers in exchange for her potions. The sailors paid with oily little
herrings called
old soldiers
.

“It's done, man,” she said.

“Wish we had the potatoes.”

“You will not see those sweethearts again.”

WITH THE FOUL ATMOSPHERE
in the hold, all the passengers
who were strong enough to climb the ladder had come out on deck to eat their supper.
Crouching under the bulwarks, trying to stay out of the cutting wind, they spooned
stirabout into their mouths.

He went below with a bowl for Molly but when he tried feeding her, she
turned to face the wall. “I won't have that awful goo.”

“Come, Moll, only try a little.”

“No. Go away.”

She was weeping again.

Brighid, pushing open the curtain, peered in. “Give her only what
she'll take. Don't force her.”

“What's wrong with her?”

“It's only the sea — she'll come back to you.
Here, let me try.”

Molly accepted a few spoonfuls from the old woman then shut her mouth. A
few moments later she was violently sick. While the old woman was cleaning her, he went
up on deck to scrub out the kettles, pans, and dishes. Sniffing resiny smoke, he looked
up and saw Ormsby on the afterdeck, puffing a cigar.

Going below again, he found Molly lying with a blackthorn stick by her
side.

“What is this?”

“What?”

“This stick in our bed.”

“She says to sleep with it between us.”

“Why?” He looked around for the old woman.

“The
fianna
used to sleep with their swords, man. Sleep
with their swords between them — they'd keep pure that way.”

Fianna
were the soldiers in the old stories, giant-killers.

“We're not
fianna
. I don't want that pure. I
want you.”

“Only until I am better. I'll have you then, man. I promise I
will.”

BY THE FOURTH DAY
a few more passengers had found their
sea legs, and news flew around the ship that if the winds continued favorable they would
be seeing the cliffs of Newfoundland the following morning, and Quebec itself a day or
two later.

Fergus recalled Maguire saying it was forty days across, but when he came
below all the passengers well enough to get out of their berths were packing trunks and
crates and tying up their baggage with ropes. The Cooles had dragged out their sea chest
and were busily packing it. Molly sat on the edge of the berth, holding the blackthorn
stick. Brighid was dosing her with a spoonful of black syrup.

“Feeling better?” he asked.

“Ugh! Wretched!” She made a sour face. “Tastes like bad
milk!”

The old woman looked at her balefully. “Pennyroyal and horehound,
nip and marigolds — poison for a cure.”

“Cure of what?” he asked.

“Juice to draw down the blood,” Brighid said.

Molly gasped and coughed. “Well, that is strong gear, ain't
it? I want to be strong for America.”

“What you need is smoke. A dove's stomach, or an ass's
dung, smoking on red coals —”

“Yes, well, no dove's stomachs
available.” Molly placed a pinch of tobacco in the old woman's hand.
“I hope there is something to this gunk, you old poison cook, not just cat piss
and pressed dandelions, like the nasties they sell at fairs. I hope you ain't
going to murder me.”

“Don't you say it.” Brighid was offended.
“You'll see, you'll see.”

“What does it look like upstairs?” Molly asked him. “Can
you smell ground? If we see Newfoundland we'll see Quebec, won't
we.”

“Don't know.”

“It's the favorable winds as we've had.” Martin
Coole looked up from the chest he was lashing with rope. “A lumber boat like this
travels fast with only a lightish cargo of people in her hold.”

Fergus shrugged. He really did not know. Some families had already planted
themselves at the foot of the ladder, where they were sitting on their baggage. Everyone
wanted to be first ashore in America.

“Man, tell me I'll see it, though,” Molly whispered.

The potion the old woman had dosed her with seemed to be making her ill
again. She lay back, clutching the stick with both hands. When he touched her brow, she
felt cold.

“Tell me I shall, Fergus.”

“You'll see the other side.”

“
DO YOU
suppose we'll see Newfoundland
tomorrow?” Fergus asked the old man, Ormsby.

“Where did you hear that?”

Unable to sleep, feeling the stick between them every time he moved, he
had come on deck to find the old man leaning at the rail. It was a soft night with
thick, damp air. He heard canvas flapping as
Laramie
wallowed in a rolling
sea.

“Down below it's what they say.”

“You don't believe it?”

“I don't know —”

“Well, don't. We've hardly started. We've been
knocking back and forth looking for our wind. It's often so. We're
nowhere.”

They smoked in silence for a while.

“Tell me of the horse thieves. Tell me how you
bought your son.”

Ormsby looked sideways at him. “Can't you sleep? Is it so bad
below?”

“Pretty bad.”

Ormsby drew on his cigar, slowly exhaled the smoke. “The horse
thieves were Bloods. One of the Blackfoot-speaking tribes.

“He — my son — was Crow. The Bloods captured him on a
horse-stealing raid down on the Missouri. He was eleven or twelve years old.

“He was night herd, looking after two or three hundred ponies,
buffalo runners belonging to a hunting chief. One night those Bloods came down whooping
and firing, killing the other boys, and stealing the herd right out from under him.

“He was too ashamed to face his own people so he set out after the
Bloods. He trailed them to Fort Benton, where he saw his first steamboat. That was
summer of the year 'thirty-seven. There were five thousand dead of smallpox at
Fort Benton that summer — smallpox came up the Missouri on the steamers, and
killed off the grass nations, so that the Americans could start trapping for themselves
in the Rocky Mountains.

“Once he was exposed to the smallpox — he had heard stories,
so knew what it was — he realized he could not return to his people without
carrying them the plague, so he decided to attack the Bloods, who were still driving
north, and steal his ponies back, or die trying.

“He'd picked up a trade musket at Fort Benton, and a little
ammunition. He chose to attack while they were watering at the Milk River. He killed one
brave dog and was charging the others, only they shot the horse from under him. He
begged them to kill him, but they laughed and said he was too small for a bullet. He
would not give them his Crow name, of course, so they called him Many Gray Horses.
You'll find men in that country have many names. The Bloods brought him up to Fort
Edmonton and sold him to me for three pounds of lead.”

“Where's your country?”

“Rosses Point, Sligo, but spent my life in the fur trade, in the
Athabaska country. Have you heard of it?”

“I haven't.”

“The greatest fur country in the world. I joined the XY Company at
fourteen, the Northwest Company at sixteen. Made partner at nineteen. Fought and lost a
war against the Baymen, made and lost a number of fortunes, and
retired from service of the Hudson's Bay Company at sixty and went home to
Sligo. Here, let me see your hat.”

Fergus handed it over.

“Beaver fur felt — that's what a good hat is made from.
Good beaver felt is hard, doesn't drink up water, and you can always brush it
clean. Nothing like it.” Ormsby gave the hat a vigorous brushing with his hand
then handed it back. “When I came home I bought a couple of hunters at the sales
in Derry and Kildare and set myself up for a gentleman on a place inherited from my
father. In my absence it had been badly managed, the agent robbed me blind, and I found
the whole operation sinking under debt and bad drains.

“During all the years upcountry, I'd thought of Sligo as my
home — but I found a melancholy life there. I told myself it was the rain. But
they say that worn-out Indian traders are the most useless, helpless class of men. When
I wasn't buying girls in Sligo town, I was worrying that one of my tenants was
going to shoot me from behind a hedge. The best thing about Irish rain is they cannot in
the cabins keep their powder dry.

“Poor drains and grand horses took most of the capital I had. And I
missed the country. I missed the snow. Missed my friends and my women. So last month I
went across to London and begged Sir George Simpson himself — the Little Emperor,
the governor of the Hudson's Bay Company — for a position, any position, in
the trade. I told him I'd build boats at York Factory, go out as an apprentice
clerk — anything. He offered the factorship at Fort Chipewyan.