Eventually he lost his taste for food and drink to imagining just such a thing. He slept poorly or not at all and spent all his waking hours with his vision of the Irish maid. He forsook his regular visits to prostitutes so as not to sully the image of the girl he carried. His shipmates let him know what an arse he was making of himself but their ridicule only strengthened his resolve and he set himself to have Mary Tryphena Devine when next he sailed into Paradise Deep.
He left the vessel after the vicar disembarked that morning and walked over the Tolt Road with the whistles of his crewmates echoing derision off the hills. He found the girl working in a potato garden behind the stud house and made his intentions known before he so much as told her his name. He was standing with a tricorn hat in his hands, turning and kneading it like bread dough as he waited for her response.—You won’t starve, he said.—And you can stay on in the Gut if you like, next your kin.
They had never been introduced, though Mary Tryphena knew something of John Withycombe by reputation. She smiled across at him, already at ease with the particular agony of a man in love, and the smile unnerved the sailor completely. The girl was not at all the picture he’d carried in his mind since the previous fall. She was tall for her age and pretty enough but her frame was still a boy’s, slender and tough as a whip of alder.
—What kind of a life would that be for me? she asked.—You off on the water most of the time?
It was all going askew. Before answering her question John Withycombe asked if she was the Mary Tryphena who was granddaughter to Devine’s Widow.—I’d have thought it would be just the sort of thing a woman might want, he said then.—To have a man and her life to herself besides.
The notion gave Mary Tryphena a moment’s pause and that pause inflated the man’s hope she might be considering him. She was thinking of her grandmother who lived by no rules but her own, who could claim the land their house sat on and the fishing rooms on the water, the privilege of ownership granted only to men and their widows. A life to herself. She smiled again at the ridiculous old sailor.—You’ll live too long yet to suit me, she said.
The Englishman kneaded his hat, perplexed, trying to comprehend the content of her refusal.—I haven’t been well is the truth of it, he said finally. He coughed into his fist, looking down at his feet.—On death’s door is what some says.
A rock struck him square in the chest and he startled backwards, dropping his hat to the ground as another sailed by him. He looked past the girl toward the stud house where her brother Lazarus was in mid-stoop, searching for another stone. As practised as his sister in brushing off her unwanted suitors.
—You little bastard, the Englishman growled.
The youngster had an arm on him and was surprisingly accurate. He whipped a rock that clipped the old man’s ear.—Fly the fuck out of it, the little one said.
—Michael Devine, Mary Tryphena shouted and she went on yelling at the boy in Irish, chasing him around the corner of the house and all the way to the tiny outbuilding that had been given over to Judah. They both fell through the door and onto the bunk Jude slept on, rolling around with their hands over their mouths to stifle their laughter. By the time Mary Tryphena gained control of herself and tiptoed back to the house the Englishman was gone, though he’d left in such a muddled passion that he’d forgotten his hat where he dropped it. She picked it up and turned it in her hands. It was made of wool felt, a rosette cockade with a pewter button on the left side. She turned to Lazarus who had followed behind her and placed it on his head. It fell around his ears, covering half his face.—You little bastard, he said in his best West Country accent.
Mary Tryphena could see her father’s skiff coming through the channel, the gunwales low to the water with fish. Devine’s Widow already making her way to the Rooms from the big garden to help gut and salt the cod. Mary Tryphena took little Laz’s hand.—Come on then, she said.—See if you can’t make yourself useful.
When they came up from the fishing room hours later, the Englishman’s abandoned tricorn hat was on Judah’s head, Lazarus sitting high on the Great White’s shoulders, the dog going before them like a horse drawing a cart. Lazarus had come to love the animal and Judah in the same proprietary fashion. Before he’d learned to walk he began following one or the other around, pulling at the dog’s fur, clinging to Jude’s trousers. He crawled to the shed whenever his mother’s back was turned and Lizzie found him at Judah’s feet or on his lap and she dragged him out by the arm, slapping the youngster’s backside to warn him away from the man. But he rose from each savage trimming like the Lazarus he was, more determined than ever to follow his own inclinations. Judah became a kind of pet to him, a mute, good-natured creature who suffered the boy to ride his back or poke at his belly with a stick or force-feed him handfuls of spruce needles.
Lizzie swore the child was being corrupted by the company he kept, that he was growing wild and strange in his thoughts from spending so much time with Judah. Callum walked the thin line of defending his friend without drawing his wife’s anger squarely down upon himself, repeating generalities about the wonders wrought on the shore in the time since Judah had come among them—the fishery’s unprecedented run of luck, the steadily growing population.
Almost three hundred souls were settled on the shore by this time and each spring Spurriers’ ships brought planters and their families and young men and women who took positions as servants before striking out on their own. The abundance of Judah’s first year continued, though for most newcomers his talismanic appearance and stench were little more than oddities, the tales of his arrival and influence on the fish an entertainment. It seemed more likely the story of the whale was born from Jude’s strangeness than the other way round. Even people who had witnessed the events began downplaying the evidence of their senses, and each season saw Judah’s status dwindle slightly in the minds of fishermen who preferred to think their success the result of their own cunning and skill and hard work.
King-me Sellers’ operation expanded to meet the demands of the unexpected prosperity with a cooperage and smithy and a handful of new stores and warehouses, and additional clerks to keep account of the credit given to fishermen in the spring and the quintals of salt cod used to pay off their debt in the fall. A young Englishman named Barnaby Shambler opened a public house where he sold India ale and dark rum from the Jamaica trade. Some of the local planters—Callum among them—had done well enough that they were cutting and milling lumber each winter to build real houses with wooden floors and stone chimneys. A Church of England minister had finally settled in Paradise Deep, a flagpole out front of the new church in the absence of a bell, St. George’s cross raised to call people to Sunday worship morning and evening. All of it thanks to Judah, or so some believed.
—I don’t know how you can call that Reverend Dodge a good thing, Lizzie said.
—Now Lizzie, you can’t blame Jude for the preacher.
—If you can credit him for the fish, why can’t I blame him for the minister?
There was no talking to the woman, he thought.
—You aren’t going over there tonight are you, Callum?
—What, and miss the bishop’s parade?
Lizzie made a face.—Someone is going to get killed before this is all over, she said. She caught sight of Judah and Lazarus and the dog coming up the path from the Rooms, the tricorn on Jude’s head.—Where did his nibs get that hat? she asked.
—Lazarus brung it down to him this afternoon, Callum told her.—Said he found it on the ground.
—Found it on the ground, Lizzie said dismissively.—A little liar you’re raising, Callum Devine.
Mary Tryphena was just outside the open doorway, carding wool in her lap. She considered telling Lizzie how the hat came to hand but decided it was better to stay clear of the argument. She was planning to take in the celebrations as well and wasn’t willing to risk her mother refusing to let her attend. After the parade there was a garden party planned at Selina’s
House and Mary Tryphena had yet to lay eyes on Absalom since he’d sailed home in the spring. Twenty now and a man to look at, is what she heard. She’d hardly thought of him while he was gone though each new proposal forced her to reconsider his letter and the autumn of gifts he’d treated her to. She was nostalgic for the innocence of the exchange, considering herself a worldly woman now. And she was interested to know, in an idle way, if he had thought of her at all in his years away.
King-me Sellers had lobbied the Church of England to send a minister to Paradise Deep for almost a quarter century. He felt the lack of a church was a mark against the village he’d built from nothing and saw as a mirror of his own success in the world. When he first settled on the shore he had visions of the place as a rival to St. John’s or Harbour Grace, and the church was simply one more benchmark in the progress of his ambitions. Jabez Trim was getting on in years, Sellers wrote every year for twenty-five years, and there was no telling when they would be bereft of even the amateur ministrations he provided. For twenty-five years the Church ignored him. It wasn’t until, in the flush of recent prosperity, Sellers promised to underwrite the expense of building a permanent sanctuary in Paradise Deep that they relented.
An archway of var branches decorated with wildflowers was built for the Reverend Eldred Dodge to walk beneath as he came ashore and the entire population turned out to welcome him, Protestant and Catholic alike. He’d been seasick the entire three-week voyage from England and the misery of it was clear in his ashen face. He was six foot tall and thin as a stick, his hair was wispy and sparse which made him look that much sicklier. The archway, which had been built to accommodate people of a more subdued height, confused him. He considered stepping around the thing before King-me directed him forward with a hand at his elbow. He staggered as he ducked beneath it, trying to steady himself with a hand to the flowered arch, and it tumbled to the wharf on top of him. It took King-me and Jabez Trim to get him to his feet and he leaned on Jabez’s shoulder all the way up the path to Selina’s House. As he stepped off the wharf a massively pregnant girl took his hand to touch it to her belly and the bizarre intimacy of the gesture made him flinch away.
—He won’t last here long enough to shave, Daniel Woundy said.
At Selina’s House, Dodge was put to bed in Absalom’s room like a child. He woke the following morning to the news that young Martha Jewer had passed away overnight while giving birth.
—It was a breech, Selina explained to him.—She was there yesterday, Reverend. Did you see her?
He nodded.—Is the baby with the father, then?
—It was a moonlight child, she said.
Dodge looked to King-me Sellers who was staring down at the table.
—A moss-born, Selina said, trying to elaborate.—A merrybegot.
—The child is a bastard, King-me said bluntly.
The minister nodded again, contemplating a funeral for a woman of loose morals and a baptism for a bastard. He had a moment of real doubt then, not simple misgiving or hesitation but a profound fear that he’d been mistaken about himself or about God. He would live a long life—all of it from this day forward in the one and only parish of his ministry—before he experienced another like it.
—The little one will have to trust to Providence now I suppose, Selina said.
—Providence takes care of fools, Dodge said, trying to rouse himself to a challenge.—Where is the child?
King-me had an Irish servant show him to the Gut where the infant was in the care of Devine’s Widow. Dodge had to bend nearly double at the waist to get under the lintel and the ceiling was too low to allow him to stand upright inside. Sellers had offered a brief sketch of Devine’s Widow before he set out and he’d planned to stand over her during the visit, but his stunted posture in the low room was too ridiculous to make a proper impression and he took a seat when it was offered. The baby was in Mary Tryphena’s lap and she was feeding him goat’s milk pap through a tit made of cloth, sneaking a furtive glance up at the minister now and then. No one in the room looked at him directly and there was the air of a smirk about them, as if they had just left off making fun of the pallor of his face when he stepped onto the wharf the day before.
—You slept well I hope, Devine’s Widow said. She was a crone of a woman, as Sellers said, her face withered and fierce. She was missing all the teeth on one side of her mouth which made her entire body seem to list when she spoke. He didn’t answer the pleasantry, asking instead if he could have a moment alone with her, and she said a few words to Mary Tryphena in Irish. The girl placed the infant in Lizzie’s arms and went through the door without so much as a curtsy in his direction. Lizzie stayed in her chair and made no move to join her daughter but Dodge decided to let that go.
—You’ve picked a busy time to come ashore, the widow woman said.
—I am the Lord’s servant, Dodge offered.—I’m told there is no father.
—You don’t think she found herself in this condition without help, Reverend?
He couldn’t believe the gall. And the woman holding the baby seemed to have fallen asleep while he sat there. He raised his voice, hoping to startle her awake.—Do you know who fathered this child?
—From what I seen of the world, Reverend, motherhood is a certainty, but fatherhood is a subject of debate. Some say it was Saul Toucher or one of his young fellows. But that’s what some say whenever there’s blame to be cast.
Dodge leaned away from the woman to collect himself. He looked about the pathetic shack, taking in the meanness of the lives it held. The sand on the floor was raked smooth and someone had used a stick to trace a pattern of ocean waves where the traffic of feet wouldn’t scar it. There was nothing else on view that suggested the slightest interest in elegance or beauty.
—There’s worse off in the world, Devine’s Widow said as if she could see his thoughts.—What we have is ours.
A witch, Sellers had called her, and there was certainly an argument to be made. Dodge said, That child will be raised in an English home.
—The Lord’s servant you are, Reverend. We were wondering what would become of him. Devine’s Widow stood to take the child from Lizzie who was still dead asleep and she plopped the bundle into his lap.—His mother is being laid out at Shambler’s, she said.—You’ll want to look in on her.
Dodge had the Irish servant he’d come with carry the infant back over the Tolt and he went immediately to Shambler’s premises, stood over Martha Jewer’s body on a wooden table in the back room. She was wearing her one filthy dress, her chin tied up with a length of twine and her feet bare.—She wasn’t fourteen, Shambler told him.—An orphan girl.
—Was it one of the Touchers fathered the child?
Shambler shrugged.—It’s all fellows out at Toucher’s, nine or ten of them but for Saul Toucher’s woman. They’re like a pack of dogs, that crowd.
—That hardly answers my question.
—It might mean the question’s better left, Shambler said.
Reverend Dodge placed his hand briefly to the belly where the day before there’d been a child.—I should like to see the cemetery, he said finally.
It was a thirty-minute walk up the Tolt Road and then further into the backcountry to the Burnt Woods where there was a meadow of soil deep enough to accommodate a body. Reverend Dodge was accompanied by King-me Sellers who went ahead of him to show the way. It was called the French Cemetery, King-me told him, because the first people buried there were sailors drowned when a French ship wrecked on the Tolt a hundred years before. Or because the land once belonged to a man named French who buried a wife and child during a typhoid outbreak before he was cut down himself. Sellers seemed to have no idea which story was the true source of the name and no obvious preference for one over the other. There was no fence to mark the graveyard, just a scatter of wooden crosses and three tall stone markers placed side by side. The meadow was high enough they could see the ocean and the boats of the fishermen on the grounds, and all the graves
faced outward to the sea.—That’s a long way to carry a body, Master Sellers.
—Every decent bit of ground is planted with potatoes, King-me said, or used to graze goats and sheep. This is all stone and boulders and plates of shale, not fit for growing. You gets two feet down into that and you’re liable to believe the land don’t want us here, alive or dead.
Dodge leaned forward to read the stone markers. Sellers, each of them said. He straightened and looked across at his host.
—All mine, King-me said.
Dodge read more closely. Two sons and a daughter-in-law.
—A ship headed over to England, Sellers said.—They’d gone with the youngest, to find him a wife. Harry’s woman was from Poole and anxious to have a visit and they made a trip of it. They had Absalom, he wasn’t two years old at the time, and Selina kept the youngster here. Told them she wanted to have something to make sure they’d come home to us. King-me smiled at his feet.—You say all sorts of things the world makes you regret, I find. There’s nothing in the ground there, being as they were lost at sea. Spent a king’s ransom to have those stones shipped over from Devon.
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