The Star of the Sea (48 page)

T
HE
TWENTY-THIRD
NIGHT OF THE
V
OYAGE
(
THAT BEING THE LAST NIGHT OF
NOVEMBER);
IN WHICH
M
ULVEY RECEIVES A MOST
UNDESIRED VISITOR.

57° .01′w; 42° .54′N
— 9 p.m. —

The killer was awakened from a dream of dictionaries by the clang of the watch-bell tolling on the upperdeck; a cold, iron jangle he could almost taste. He sat up blearily in the dripping half-darkness. Stones in a canister. Stones like bullets. Looked at the ratlike grin of the bars.

A full moon was visible in the centre of the frame; around it an aureole that made it look saintly; further out again a couple of stars, but too few to be able to name them. He watched for a while. Cassiopeia, maybe. But without the whole picture the stars were anonymous. A sneeze shook him badly. Pain in the abdomen. Everything depended on how much you could see.

The squall rose up in a sudden whistled gust, racketing the loose timbers and clattering a door. It died down as suddenly. Changed its mind. It sounded to Mulvey as though another storm might be coming. He hoped he was mistaken. He could not take another storm.

From somewhere behind him through the bulk of the ship came the damped-down complaining of fiddles and pipes. The tune had several names, a reel from Leitrim, but he could not remember any of them, though he had heard it a hundred times. He tried to stand or at least to squat, but a seam of astonishing pain ran its way down his leg.

The taste of his mouth disgusted him now. Coppery, astringent:
the taint of blood. His teeth had been chipped in the beating in steerage; every time he slept they ground against his tongue. He was afraid to sleep again, the pain was so bad. He did not have nightmares any more: just physical pain. No evil dream or incubus since Nicholas died. But the whet of jagged teeth on tongue and gums.

He crawled to the corner of the small, dark cell and took a swig of greasy water from the chained-up jug. A crock of mushy pap had been shoved through the hatch. The grub was stone cold but he had eaten worse. A congealing of potato with mashed pig offal and hardtack, a concoction the sailors called ‘Lobscouser Boxty’. He ate it quickly and licked the dish clean. It was better than anything available in steerage.

For a time he looked at the graffiti scratched into the seeping walls. English words and Irish words: names, obscenities. More strange the pictograms which had been etched like badges. Lions and apes. Perhaps a giraffe. A diagram that looked like a map of a forest. The characters of some language for which he had no name.

Manacles and hoops had been set into the bulkheads. A cast-iron lattice in the deck planks served as latrine; thirty feet below, down a shaft of leaden tubing, was the echoed blackness of the agitated sea. And you could watch that, too: but not for long. Upsurge, downdraught. Like the boil of a cauldron. The kind of dissipation that could set you astray. Last night he had contemplated trying to escape down the hole; had considered ways in which the bolts of the lattice might be unscrewed. To hold your breath and plunge into the water: to feel the hard scrape of the keel on your back. But even as he was thinking, he knew he was only passing the time. Such days were long over. His strength was gone.

A captain bold in Halifax, who dwelt in country quarters
,

Seduced a maid who hanged herself, one morning in her garters
.

From down the oaken corridor he heard the Northumbrian guard singing.

His wicked conscience smited him; he lost his stomach daily
,

He took to drinking turpentine, and thought upon Miss Bailey
.

Queer his nickname, the neat little Northumbrian; a birdlike man who twittered when he sang. He had explained it several times to his interested prisoner. Scrimshaw: a term used by seamen for trinkets fashioned from maritime wreckage or ivory. He would talk to you sometimes if you wanted him to talk. But more to the point, he would leave you alone.

Mulvey went to the gate and shouted for Scrimshaw. When he appeared at the hatch, the prisoner told him he was parched. The guard slouched away without uttering a word and returned a minute later with a mug of cider. The captive swigged it down but it didn’t slake his thirst. Crawled back to the bunk and lay down in a crumple.

Maritime wreckage. Bone and driftwood. Darker now: the wind blasting and stopping, like exchanges on a battlefield when ammunition is low. Everything had a bluish and shadowy look. He tried to curl up in the dismal coldness and shut out his thoughts as best he could. The blanket was a comfort on a night like tonight.

That nobody could kill him seemed a less measly blanket; that no killing would have to be done by himself. The ship would rock and the water would pound and he would plunge no dagger into any gulping victim. No crack of shattered ribs, no twist in the gristle. No sag of the body when you pulled out the blade.

Twelve dawns previously he could have done it easily. The target had been sleeping when Mulvey crept into the cabin. As his eyes adjusted slowly to the stale, cold darkness he could make out that the prey was lying on his back. The low, muttered uneasiness of drunken slumber. The whimper of a man trawling through his own depths. And Mulvey had stolen up like a lover to his bed, so close he could smell the victim’s whiskey-tainted perspiration. The morning star would rise soon; the dreamer would not see it. Everything fell quiet. Even the sea seemed quiet. It felt to the killer as though the dilation of his pupils might be noisy enough to give him away.

He thought about the whisper of the target’s son, the scarcely discernable, sleep-fuddled boy who had half woken in the blackness of Atlantic night to find a shadow shifting across from the open porthole. The boy gave a stir. Mulvey said nothing. ‘Grantley?’ the
boy murmured. ‘Are we in America now?’ Mulvey did not move. The ship gave a peaceful pitch. ‘Go to sleep,’ he said softly. ‘It is only the night steward.’ The boy’s breathing became drowsier; he yawned into his bolster. ‘What room does your daddo sleep in?’ the dream-figure whispered. And the boy had gestured vaguely and rolled back into the void.

His father was dead to the world, arms folded across his chest, as though already in a coffin or a sailcloth shroud. A corpse, David Merridith. And a killer looking down on him. The Monster of Newgate resurrected from the past – rising with the first pallid glow in the east.

Knife in hand. Knife raised to strike. But his hand was shaking. He could not bring himself to do it. No question of morality but of visceral disgust. To kill was a matter of angle and propulsion, the movement of steel from one co-ordinate to another, but he who had murdered for no other reason than survival had found it impossible to work the equation again. He did not know why, merely that it was impossible. He had known it from the moment he was given the task, from long before that: from Leeds, maybe. He had killed two men. He could never kill another. You could call it cowardice; he did not care what it was called. Here in the cell he was safe from definitions. His only imminent problem was the threat of release.

He dozed for a while but not deeply or easily. The muffled music was loudening; shrilling; through it he could hear the obscure clap of dancers. My Love is in America? Name of the tune. The docks at New York. What would they be like? Like docks in Liverpool or Dublin or Belfast.
Dock: the place where a prisoner stands
. Would his murderers be waiting? Bluster and bluff.
Bluff: a hill, a bank, a precipice. A term in poker. An empty brag. Perhaps from Middle Dutch: blaffen; to boast
. His brother was sitting in the murk with him now. The Newgate Governor. A girl he didn’t know. His father by firelight. Dickens. Moloch. Michael Fagan of Derryclare. The voice came from close to him but he did not know from where. It sounded again; a red-hot blade, but plunging ferociously into the iced-over Corrib; the whispering hiss:
A friend issss here, Mulvey
.

He opened his eyes to the cavelike darkness. Looked up at the grating. A shadow was moving.

‘Who’s there?’ he called.

No answer was given.

‘Is somebody up there?’

A footstep scuffed quietly on the timberdeck by the bars. He thought he heard the heaviness of a large man breathing. A clatter of boots as he sat down on the boards.

‘Come over to the window,’ the voice muttered urgently. ‘A friend is here and wants only to help you.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘It is the Reverend Henry Deedes. Be quick. My time here is short.’

Mulvey rose from the putrid blanket and cautiously approached. The wind blaffened up like a boasting rage and then stopped as before; as though it had been killed by something violent. He could make out the breathing more clearly now.

‘I say, owld Pius. Do come a little closah. Don’t be afeared. I
am
a man of gawd, awftah awl.’

Low came the chuckle, like a sneak’s while watching a caning.

‘Say who you are in truth or I’ll not move another inch.’

The voice came back at him, wild with anguish.

It is your brother. Nicholas Mulvey. I am in torment this night! They roast my soul, Pius! They scourge me on the hobs!

‘Who in the name of Hell is this?’

No response. He took another step. Craned his neck. Climbed on to the bench. A fist thrust through the grating and grabbed at his hair. Mulvey lurched backwards and fell to the drenched floor. A lugubrious snicker came from the window. The oddly regretful laugh of a man addicted to torture.

‘Fairly had you that time, Deadman. But the day’s coming soon. You’ll be seeing that gulpin brother of yours before too long.’

The hand pushed through the bars more slowly this time and dropped something soggy on the slimed planking.

‘There’s your heart, Deadman. I’m after cuttin it out for you.’

The prisoner toed it carefully: it oozed as he did. A glutinous clump of yellow-black sea-wrack.

‘Can you read that, scholarboy?’

Mulvey said nothing.

‘That’s right, Deadman. We’re closin on land. Three days now and we’re in sweet New York.’

‘Who is this?’

‘He was given his job, boys, but he didden do it. Murra, he thought he was after escapin by gettin himself slammed.’

‘Who are you?’

‘You were told you’d be watched on the ship. And you are watched.’ A hacking cough. The rasp of a match. ‘Well maybe I’ll get myself slammed, too. We’ll have a royal auld spree, the two of us together. I’ll teach y’a few little jigeens you won’t forget.’

‘How do you know me?’

‘Don’t you remember me, scholarboy? Think good and hard now.’

‘I don’t know you at all.’

No answer came back. Just the wheeze of his laughter. The rainstorm of applause from the steerage compartment.

‘Give your name itself like a man.’

‘You might go reportin on me then.’

‘I’m no rat or informer.’

‘You’re both and worse, you milk-livered gallowsbird. But it don’t make no matter, for there’s plenty more like me. They all have your description, that’s been seen to.’

‘Show your face for Jesus’s sake.’

‘But that’s no use. It had a nice little mask on it last time you saw it.’

‘A mask?’

‘Aye, Deadman. I was one of them came to give you the little send-off your last night in Ardnagreevagh. Me and me cumrades had you shriekin like a mule in a snare that time. But you’ll make worse screams again we’re finished.’

‘Liar,’ cried Mulvey. ‘This is some antic. Go to Hell.’

The scrape of feet. A stir in the breezy dark. A face appeared in the moonlit grating; a malevolent leer the prisoner recognised.

‘You’re buried, Deadman. You’re watched every minute. And that treacher Merridith ever laves this ship, there’s five hundred in New York who’ll line up to stick you. And you squeal on me to anyone, it’ll only go slower for you.’

Seamus Meadowes gave a grin through the rusted bars.

‘I’ll raffle you, Mulvey. For who gets the first slice.’

Gaelic Physical Characteristics. – A bulging forwards of the lower part of the face
, most extreme in the upper jaw; chin more or less retreating (in Ireland the chin is often absent); forehead retreating; large mouth and thick lips;
great distance between nose and mouth;
nose short, frequently concave, and turned up, with yawning nostril; cheek-bones more or less prominent; eyes generally sunk and eyebrows projecting;
skull
narrow and very much
elongated backwards; ears standing off
to a very striking extent; very acute in hearing. Especially remarkable for open projecting mouths, with prominent teeth (i.e., prognathous-jawed – the Negro type), their advancing cheek-bones, and depressed noses, etc.