The Law of Dreams (38 page)

“I was to sail straight for the Bay in June, on the annual Company
ship. Then the Company changed its mind, and now my orders are to take charge of the
spring brigade of canoes from Lachine, nine miles above Montreal. The northern brigades
want a fresh supply of boatmen, and I'm to lead the Lachiners up the country.

“Canoes have set out from Lachine for two hundred years; a child
could follow the route. It is clear and plain as any road in Ireland. The camps and
portages have been in use for centuries. Every rapids is named for drowned men.

“I don't say the trade is what it was when I was a youngster.
Even the fur ain't what it was. The men are different too. And when I think of
gentlemen wearing silk hats in Dublin and London town! Silk! I suppose steamers and iron
rails will one day reach even Rupert's Land. Before that the Yankees will have
grabbed it, as they grabbed the Oregon country, which belonged to
the Company. Meanwhile I am to bring my Lachiners as far as the Stone Fort on the Red,
sixteen hundred miles or so from Montreal — does this make any sense at all to
you, or are you nodding because you're a sleek, duplicitous ribbonman?”

“I'm listening, ain't I? I suppose it makes sense,
eventually.”

“There's a lot that don't, never. Life comes running at
you, trailing gaudy streamers, and you can't make them out until it's too
close — are those ribbons, or is that blood? Very little makes
sense
to
me, but I know I like to sit in a canoe, I always have.”

AT DAWN FERGUS CLIMBED
on deck with Coole, who was very
eager to see land. The fires had been lit in the cabooses, and there was no land in
sight, just the plate of pewter sea.

Coole called up to Mr. Blow on the afterdeck, asking when they should see
the rock of Newfoundland.

“Newfoundland? We aren't even in the western ocean, you
fool.”

HE BROUGHT
her food, but she turned away and would not
speak.

“Where is your tongue, Molly?”

He straddled her on the berth, searching her eyes, the heels of his hands
pressing down on her shoulders. Her face, small and white, defiant in its stillness. He
had never looked at anyone so closely before.

“What is wrong with you? Tell me how you're feeling. What is
wrong inside?”

He couldn't penetrate. He knew by her eyes that she could hear him,
and her willful silence frightened him. Silence made her untouchable.

“It's fear of the sea has taken her tongue,” the old
woman said, looking in. “See if she'll take a little taste of
food.”

He sat on the edge of the berth, holding spoon and bowl, while she stared
at him. He tried to talk to her, as if nothing had changed. “Good scran today,
Moll. I have put an apple in yours. Cut it up in pieces.
It's very good, gives it a taste.”

She wouldn't open her mouth.

“A spell of the sea.” Brighid shrugged. “She'll
come back to you.” She patted Molly's hand. “You take your time,
lovely, and come out when you're good and ready.”

“Why can't she say what it is?”

“But she can't speak.” She looked at Fergus. “You
know nothing much about women, do you?”

“I know her.”

“Well, she has gone away a little while. If you are patient and
kind, she'll come back.”

HE WATCHED
sailors at work high in the rigging. Wishing
he could get up there somehow, ride so high. Watching them, he couldn't help
thinking of her. In her sickness she was like a bird he couldn't reach.

It looked very wild, up so high, but you'd be able to see like a
hawk. He'd overheard sailors saying there was ice on the rigging, but from the
deck he couldn't see any. He'd rather be living up there, in the high, than
down below in the hold. All his life he had lived in holes of one sort or another:
cabins made of stones and turf; scalpeens made of sticks, shanties, steerage holds.
Burrows smelling of earth and bodies.

He'd rather live where it smelled of the sky.

Nimrod Blampin was sitting on an overturned bucket, working with a spiky
tool, deftly kneading together three strands of line into one.

“What's it like up high?” Fergus asked.

Nimrod glanced at the men aloft. “That ain't
high
,” he said scornfully. “They is only bending topgallants.
High
is the very last wriggle, the tip of the skinny — capping the
royal mast.”

“What's it like?”

“Fine if you don't fall. Curious.” The sailor grinned.
“There was once a young gentleman — very rich — wished to climb the
peak of his father's ship, an Indiaman, never having been. Said he would cap the
mast, and made a wager
with another passenger, for fifty pounds. Up
he goes, climbing like a spider, until he must work up around the mainsail tops —
see? — hanging on by the futtock shrouds.”

Nimrod pointed up to a circular wooden platform halfway up the mast,
supported by iron struts — the futtock shrouds — fixed to the mast.

“It is a devilish place and yet only halfway to the peak, or less.
To get out around the platform you must climb straight out, while hanging upside down,
which is a funny feeling, the first time.

“Well, the young gentleman, he goes the dead cat there, hanging on
upside down at the futtocks. Sixty feet above deck. Won't be coaxed to move
another inch. Deadest cat I ever saw.”

“What happened?”

“He hung there all night. The watch brought him up a dish of
lobscouse and fed him with a spoon, but he couldn't be persuaded to let go the
shrouds. Then a wicked storm came on and he froze solid as iron, then died. And they
could not work him off even then, and left him until he was leather. Hands going aloft,
they would kiss him on the lips for luck. Two years later, when that Indiaman come into
Clarence Dock, he was still seized to the shrouds. The ship riggers finally worked him
off by use of tar oil, which softened him nicely.”

Patches of fog were swirling over the deck. Fergus peered aloft. “Do
you suppose I could cap the peak?”

“No!”

“I think I might.”

“You're a very lubberly fellow.” Nimrod sounded annoyed.
“You may start for a lark, but a passenger's lark won't carry you far.
You would do a dead cat or fall into the sea. Takes a seaman to cap the mast.”

Fog had swallowed the ship while they were talking, and when he looked up
again he could see nothing of the rigging or the men. They had been cut off completely
by the white pillow of mist. He could hear them shouting to one another, and the sails
flapping.
Laramie
was beginning to wallow on her beam ends as her canvas
softened and the hull gradually lost way.

He went forward to the bow. Standing on a pile of anchor chain, he peered
through the white fog, trying to catch a scent of America, the heavy aroma of
ground, animals, people. But all he could smell was the chilly
blankness of the ocean.

AS SOON
as his eyes adjusted to the dimness of the hold,
he saw the curtain had been drawn shut on their berth.

Brighid was shaking a potion bottle. “Come here, man, you must help
me dose her.”

She pushed the curtain aside. Molly writhing on the pallet, her linen
shift rucked at her hips.

“Sit her up so I can dose her.”

He could smell the sweat glistening on her white legs and patch of sexual
fur.

“I'm going down, man!” she gasped as he put his arm
around her.

“I will bring you through, dear,” the old woman crooned.
“Oh, you are lucky to have me. Only I wish I had a drop of lamb's blood and
the black cohosh. Here, angel” — holding out a spoonful of syrup —
“you must take another dose.”

“I know, I know — only I can't.”

“Darling, it will give you some heat.”

“I don't want any more . . . Can't . . . no more.
Please!” She was weeping.

“Is it black fever?” he asked Brighid.

“Hold her, man, she must take the potion, though it tastes bitter
— it does, I know it does, sweet angel.” Slipping the spoon between
Molly's teeth, she pinched her lips together until she had swallowed. “Now
let her down.”

Fergus let her down gently until her head was on the pillow, one of the
German blankets he'd rifled from Maguire's storeroom.

“Now this, baby.” The old woman shook drops from a little
bottle onto Molly's tongue.

After a few moments she stopped thrashing and lay still. Her eyes were
glassy. Drawing a blanket up to her chin, the old woman began stroking her cheek with
the back of her hand.

“I have all the juice — I always have,” she boasted.
“I am famous in my country. ‘Go see Brighid of Faha,' they say.
‘She will cure the cattle. Bring her wheat bread. She likes a cup of honey. The
whiskey in the cool blue jar.'”

“Is it black fever?” Mrs. Coole asked, when she came below and
saw Molly. “Oh my poor children.”

The old woman told Fergus he should sleep on deck; she herself would stay
the night with Molly. “She'll rest better if you're not here. Go up on
top, sleep clean under the stars, and wish for her.”

She was trying to spare him, he knew. He had no wish to be spared, but
suddenly felt too exhausted to resist. Struggling to empty his mind, to feel as little
as possible, he took a German blanket from the sea chest and climbed up on deck.

HE MADE A BED IN THE WINDLASS
housing on the foredeck,
but couldn't sleep. The pressure of loneliness screeched and howled through the
cracks and kept him awake.

He tried to recall the tip horses, grazing softly along the Sunday roads.
He'd been alone then and content. But he could not find sleep, and finally crawled
out of the windlass housing and went aft to the galley. It was the hour when watches
overlapped. The wind was blowing steady and the enormous sky was sprinkled with
stars.

The galley was packed with sailors drinking mugs of tea with rum. Handed a
steaming mug by the black cook, gripping its warmth in his hands, he got a light for his
pipe then went to stand at the rail, watching the black sea splashing white along the
hull.

Why should being alone be so hard to bear?

“I've been playing cards with our captain.”

Looking up at the voice, Fergus saw the old man leaning with his elbows on
the afterdeck rail.

“Won two pounds off the gentleman.” Ormsby swallowed the last
drop of liquid in a tumbler, dropped the glass into a pocket. “Care for a
cigar?”

“No.”

“I'll trouble you for a light.”

Ormsby swung down the ladder deftly, the unlit cigar
clamped between his teeth. Fergus gave him a light and the old man puffed and blew until
the tip was glowing red. “How are you tonight, Fergus?”

“Well.”

“And down below? How are they keeping?”

“There's some of them sick.”

“Seasick or fever?”

“Can't say.”

“So early on a passage, fever wouldn't be a good
sign.”

They smoked in silence. He could see the red tip of Ormsby's cigar
glowing, hear the sputter, smell the smoke.

Ormsby knew nothing of Molly, probably had never seen her.

“What prospects, Fergus?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you have people? Friends in America? Do you have a
trade?”

“My people were murdered by the landlord. Carmichael his
name.”

Ormsby was looking at him, expressionless, his face a mask.

Saying the word
murder
felt like setting up a kind of gravestone,
hard and permanent, marking the truth of what had happened to them. It felt intensely
satisfying to say it.

Ormsby was still looking at him. A landlord himself.

Finally Fergus broke the silence. “Cattle I know. Horses a little.
Navvying. I drove the tips. I'd like to get some ground.”

“Navvying's no trade! Do you have any capital whatsoever? Any
savings? Every Irish emigrant thinks he'll have a farm in America, but farming
takes capital.”

He was hardly listening. He couldn't really think of America. His
head was full of her.

“You'll need to find a place. America is not for the poor. You
could starve to death at Quebec or Boston and no one would know your name. It's no
different than anywhere else. In Canada they hire Irishmen for cutting timber, but
winter is the season for work in the woods. In spring, the camps are all shutting down.
Cotton mills down the Boston states pay a dollar a day for hands so I'm told. From
Quebec you might walk to Lowell or Manchester in nine days.”

He remembered them leaving the camp together aboard
the blue horse. The memory caught in his throat and made him cough.

“Are you all right?”

“I am.”

Ormsby tapped his cigar, and a trail of embers streamed off into the dark.
“There may be a place with the spring brigade.”

“A place?”

“A seat in a canoe. I can promise nothing more. Seven weeks'
hard travel from Montreal to Rupert's Land.”

“A canoe, what is it — a
púcán
?”

“More or less. Our freight canoes are birch bark on red cedar,
seamed with pitch. If you make the trip with me, and present yourself to Company council
— with a character from me — they'd offer you an
apprenticeship.”

“Why mister? You don't know me.”

“We travel hard, I warn you. A young Irishman with no capital but
brains and nerve can make himself a place. Get rich in the trade.”

“What do you want, mister?”

“What do you mean?”