A cold rain was falling, the wind picking at their clothes like the hands of beggars on a city street. Please sir. Please sir. Dodge wandered along the uneven rows of crosses, names scored or painted on the wood. Spingle. Codner. Bozan. Harty. Devine. Hussey. Toucher. Snook. Brazill. Woundy. Protestant and Catholic set down in a mash. He turned at the far side of the cemetery and shouted across to Sellers.—We will have a fence. The earth beneath him was solid enough but he felt as if he was still at sea, adrift on a grey expanse without demarcation or border. He was shaking with a rage that he mistook for certainty. —Before another body is set in the ground there will be a fence, and the ground will be consecrated.
They built a riddle fence of narrow poles around the graveyard and Dodge himself spent hours each day helping to dig post holes and fix the logs in place to ensure it was completed before Martha Jewer was buried. The funeral was held in King-me’s largest storehouse to accommodate the same crowd of people who had come to meet the minister on the shoreline three days before, both Catholic and Protestant. Dodge stood before them on an overturned puncheon tub, decked out in his Episcopalian vestments, determined to turn the tide of local sentiment where he and the Lord were concerned.—Brothers and sisters in Christ, he began.
King-me lost all interest in building a church after Reverend Dodge took up residence on the shore. The minister spent three years trying to wheedle the money promised for the project and he had to threaten to leave to get it. The foundation was laid the summer before Absalom arrived home from England and it was in use for holy services by Christmas, the building complete but for the stained glass shipped from Manchester and stored in St. John’s over the winter. It was scheduled to arrive with the bishop when he travelled to the shore for the dedication.
Everyone expected there would be trouble of some sort during those ceremonies. Along with the bishop, Skipper John Withycombe had transported a Navy officer and a handful of soldiers who were meant to keep the peace, or at the very least ensure the vicar wasn’t stripped of his vestments and thrown buck-naked into the harbour by drunken Irishmen still nursing their resentments.
At Martha Jewer’s funeral Dodge announced that the French Cemetery would be open only to the remains of Episcopalians, starting with the corpse laid out before them. And further that all sacraments in the Church of England would be made available only to those confirmed in the faith. People tried to shout him down but he pressed on with the funeral. Chairs were thrown. Half the congregation walked out in the middle of the service. The funeral procession was pelted with stones and curses, as was every Protestant funeral procession in the year that followed. Mourners were forced to carry wood staves and fish forks to defend their clergyman and brawls often erupted between the two groups on the way up the Tolt Road.
Away from Dodge and his pronouncements most people did their best to carry on as they had, but the sectarian feuding spilled over from the funeral altercations. Boats and equipment were vandalized in a spiral of retaliation. It might have ended in bloodshed but for Peter Flood’s corpse being stolen in the confusion of a brawl one April morning. Flood had married a Protestant woman twenty years past but converted to the Church of England only weeks before his death, when Dodge threatened to dissolve the union and declare his children bastards. The thieves buried Flood in the new Catholic graveyard in the Gut without ceremony or prayer and his family were forced to disinter his remains at night, spiriting him away to the Burnt Woods for a proper burial in the French Cemetery. Every week or so the corpse was moved again, carted back and forth from one graveyard to the other. The bizarre tug-of-war went on through the spring and no one could say for certain where Peter Flood finally came to rest. But the episode engendered a revulsion so general that the funeral processions became quieter affairs and some semblance of peace returned to the shore.
Dodge took it as a sign of God’s favour that the new church hadn’t been burned to the ground before the first services were held. The men who designed and raised the sanctuary were all boat builders and the structure looked like the hull of a ship flipped face down on the Gaze. The eight-foot stained glass window arrived on the vessel bringing the bishop, and Jabez Trim spent the day installing it behind the altar. Dodge had chosen the motif himself: the disciples hauling their nets under the watchful eye of Jesus.
The vicar, the Right Reverend Arthur Waghorne, was an amateur botanist. He barely glanced at the new church before wandering off into the fields behind the building where he spent the better part of the day sketching and collecting specimens on the Gaze. He was accompanied by two soldiers who sat in the grass below him, speculating on their chances of bedding a woman before returning to St. John’s. Arscott was a fifteen-year-old private from Devon, a virgin who laboured under the illusion that no one but he knew the truth of the matter. He was next to useless as a soldier, clumsy with his weapons, naive and harmlessly sycophantic in his relations. Arsewipe was his nickname among the enlisted men. Corporal Kinnebrook was four years the boy’s senior.—Paradise Deep, he said.—What does that make you think of, Arsewipe?
—Heaven, is it?
—No, jesus, Kinnebrook said, swiping at his head.—A man of your vast experience on the battlefields of love, Arsewipe. Tell me that doesn’t make you think of fucking. Paradise Deep, he said with a note of reverence. The name alone had given Kinnebrook high hopes for the expedition, but everything he’d seen of the place so far promised disappointment.—I expect we’ll have to jump in the harbour to wet our dicks in this shithole, he said.
By the time Reverend Dodge came up from the church to collect them for the parade the two soldiers were asleep on the grass.—His Majesty’s finest, the vicar said as he kicked the men awake.
The parade began at the steps of the new sanctuary and wound its way through the footpaths of Paradise Deep, past the stores of Spurriers’ Premises as far as Mrs. Gallery’s droke and back again to Selina’s House where food and drink was set up on long tables in the garden. The Reverend Waghorne was at the head of the procession on King-me’s piebald mare, Dodge walking at the horse’s shoulder. The Navy officer, a mutton-chopped Scot named Goudie, marched directly behind them. The clergymen led hymns for the people in their wake. Olive Trim aboard her truckley at the rear, holding Martha Jewer’s orphan boy in her lap, the wooden cart pulled along by a Newfoundland. The soldiers were marshalled in two groups at either side of the procession and they kept a wary eye on the Catholics gathered in clusters to watch the parade. They followed at a discreet distance when the turn was made for Selina’s House and watched their manners, not willing to miss a chance at the spread laid on for the celebration.
A pig and two sheep turned on spits over an open fire outside Selina’s House and new potatoes roasted in the coals. There was partridge and rabbit stew and vegetables dipped in flour and fried with butter, roasted goose and turr, boiled puddings with raisins and fresh berries with cream for dessert. There was no fish of any description to be had and that absence was another sign of their newfound prosperity. That eating the bounty of the sea was a choice rather than a necessity.
Reverend Waghorne said grace and people lined up in orderly rows to be served. The vicar turned to Dodge.—Your fears seem to have been overstated, he said.
Dodge smiled at his superior. It was early yet, he felt, to judge.
—I half expected, Waghorne said, we might lay eyes on the priest you speak of in your correspondence.
—You can trust Phelan won’t show his face anywhere an English soldier would see it.
—I had a most curious visit from the prefect vicar apostolic before I left St. John’s, Reverend Dodge.
—The Catholic archbishop?
—It seems the Romans are as anxious to be rid of Father Phelan as yourself.
—Well, they make a poor showing of their anxiety.
Waghorne pursed his lips.—He’s a rogue, I’m told. Defrocked by the Dominican Order after he was ordained. And gallivanting through the country all the years since
as if it was ceded to him by God.
—And how exactly does the archbishop plan to deal with the man?
—As you are aware, Reverend Dodge, the Romans are not keen to discuss their internal problems. I’m surprised he spoke to me at all.
—He must have wanted something?
—Just an eye, Waghorne said casually.—A line or two now and then to say when Phelan is here, what he’s doing. Who he’s closest to.
Dodge turned to set his plate on the table.—I hardly thought when I was ordained, he said, that I would be asked to spy on behalf of the Catholic archbishop.
—Come now, Waghorne said gently.—Think of it as a neighbourly gesture. A Christian duty.
A tall girl wandered by with an empty plate, offering a cursory bob in their direction as she passed.
—Mary Tryphena Devine, Dodge whispered.
—Is that the young one half the men of Newfoundland are heartsick for?
—The same.
Waghorne tilted his head in appraisal, his lips pursed.—Well, the girl has fine posture, he said dismissively
—I expect you will have noted the relative lack of female company about you.
The vicar glanced around the yard and even by that casual assessment he could see the women were outnumbered at least three to one.
—Hunger is the best sauce, Your Worship.
After Mary Tryphena had taken her fill from the tables she heaped a plate with food for Olive Trim, then entertained the baby so the woman could eat her meal in peace. Happy to be distracted from thinking of Absalom who was still nowhere to be seen. Olive was leaning back on a pillow of straw in her truckley beneath the weight of her belly, finally pregnant with a child of her own after taking in the orphan they’d christened Obediah. She was only days from delivering and looked like a creature trapped under some obstruction she was helpless to move.
—Jabez is certain it’s a lad we’re having, Olive said.—Wants to call him Azariah.
Mary Tryphena looked at Olive to see if she was meant to laugh at this.—Obediah and Azariah.
Olive said, Too many hours with his head in the Good Book if you want my opinion, may God forgive me. She shifted slightly, reaching a hand to change the position of one of her lifeless legs.—Don’t know how I’ll manage to chase two of the little buggers around.
Mary Tryphena was watching Selina’s House distractedly and only nodded.
—Have you seen Absalom since he’s been home? Olive asked.
Mary Tryphena smiled across at her and shook her head, embarrassed to be caught out. She saw Judah and Lazarus wandering through the crowd with the wood dog at their heels and she called them over to show off the youngster. Lazarus took the tricorn from Judah to place it full over Obediah’s head and the filthy darkness set the child to bawling. Mary Tryphena thought to say something to Olive about the ridiculous proposal from the sailor she’d turned down that morning but didn’t see how she could avoid more discussion of Absalom with the subject and let it lie. She took the hat off the baby’s head, tossing it back to Jude, and he offered up a fool’s dance to try and quiet the youngster.
Captain John Withycombe almost missed the garden party altogether, retreating to his quarters following the disastrous proposal to Mary Tryphena, shutting himself away with a chair against the door and a bottle in his lap. He’d sat there in a daze, unable to understand what had made him behave like such a goddamn fool. He felt as if he’d been living under a spell the last months and before long came to the conclusion that his condition was the girl’s doing, that she’d bewitched him somehow and used him for her sport. He took his first drink before noon and did not stop until he’d fallen into a near coma in his hammock. By the time he was roused by a hammering at the barred door he’d all but lost the day’s events in the fog of sleep and drunkenness.
His shipmates guessed how things had unfolded by his face when he first came back over the Tolt that morning, and they left him to his misery. But they were drunk themselves by suppertime and insisted on offering some distraction. He’d missed the parade, they shouted through the door, and he was in danger of missing the food and drink as well. He didn’t know what parade they were talking about. A sense of disquiet and offence pricked at him but he was damned if he could name its source, and the rush to deliver him to the party at Selina’s House pushed it aside.
He saw the girl as soon as they reached the garden, sitting in the grass beside a pregnant cripple, and the morning rushed back to him, the bile of it closing off his throat. She was smiling up at a tall white bastard who was wearing John Withycombe’s tricorn and acting out a dumb show that could only have been at his expense. Mocking him with his own fucking hat. The captain’s legs shaking with a mortified rage and he started yelling over the noise of the crowd that his hat had been stolen. The man ran off when he saw the captain pointing him out, with young Arscott in pursuit. The soldier jumped onto his back to wrestle him down while a black and white dog savaged the soldier’s stockings.
John Withycombe was buried then in the pell-mell confusion, tramped upon by the shoving crowd and half deafened by the cursing and the screams of the women, until a musket fired and the Irishmen scuttled for the hills. When he pushed himself up he could see his hat trampled to ratshit and the dog lying dead on the grass beside it. Arscott sat cupping a wound in his gut that leaked like a Portuguese trader, the poor little shagger as good as dead now, a virgin still and forever and ever amen.
There was no prison in Paradise Deep and Judah Devine was locked in a fishing room, one soldier assigned to guard the entrance.
Lieutenant Goudie interrogated everyone present at the garden party but the mash of conflicting detail made it impossible to settle events with any certainty. The dog was shot by Kinnebrook who couldn’t force the animal to leave off Arscott in any other way. Arscott died by a wound from his own knife which was found in the grass beside him and which he’d likely drawn to defend himself against the dog’s attack. No one admitted to witnessing the fatal blow but Alphonse Toucher’s name was mentioned several times as a likely suspect and four soldiers were sent off to arrest him. They came back to the fishing room with all three Touchers in custody, each accusing another of being Alphonse. Lieutenant Goudie brought in their parents and siblings and a handful of people from the Gut who failed to make a convincing case in any direction and he was forced to set them all loose in the end. Which left them with Judah as the principal.
Callum thought a plea of self-defence might relieve Jude of the charge, but Devine’s Widow dismissed the notion. Judah was also being held for the theft of Captain John Withycombe’s tricorn and had been apprehended while attempting to escape a soldier of the crown, all of which spoke against self-defence.
The subtleties of the argument were lost on Lazarus. He’d insisted they carry the dog back to the Gut to bury him near the Catholic cemetery and he was tormented by the thought of losing Judah as well. No court in Newfoundland was invested with authority to try capital crimes and Jude would have to be transported to England to face a judge, which was no different than a death sentence in the six-year-old’s mind. It seemed not to matter that John Withycombe had abandoned the hat of his own accord or that it was Lazarus who retrieved it. He threatened to confess to stealing the hat unless something was done to win Judah’s release and Devine’s Widow decided to go to Selina’s House herself in the end.
It had been years since she’d been troubled by the dreams that preceded Laz’s birth, the blood in the wake of that separation, but the memory was still visceral and immediate and she carried it with her over the Tolt Road. She went to the servant’s entrance at the back of the building and waited in the kitchen while the mistress was called. Selina beckoned for Devine’s Widow to follow her and they went down the hall to the parlour where Lieutenant Goudie and Reverend Waghorne were drinking brandy and smoking. Devine’s Widow turned to Selina when she saw the men there.
—I gave you my daughter, Selina whispered.—I can’t be any
assistance to you in this matter. And she ushered Devine’s Widow in to sit with the other guests.—Master Sellers will be along directly, she said.
The vicar and Lieutenant Goudie were boarding at Selina’s House while the investigation was carried out and they fell into silence so suddenly the widow assumed they’d been discussing the case. She took a seat near the window and they all three waited for King-me to join them from the office. Selina clearly hadn’t told her husband who it was waiting on him and he stopped inside the door as he entered, startled to come face to face with the old woman.
Devine’s Widow looked up at him, then glanced around the room.—Just like old times, Master Sellers, she said.
King-me didn’t follow her meaning for a moment but he straightened when he saw it. A naval officer, a clergyman and Master Sellers facing her. Devine’s Widow put on trial half a century ago. She smiled her lopsided smile at him. It was the wrong way to begin the discussion she’d come for, but the configuration in the room was so unlikely she couldn’t resist.
—There’s no talking to be done where Judah is concerned, King-me said, guessing the reason for her visit.
—There’s no one saw him raise a hand to that soldier.
—There’s none will admit to seeing it, Reverend Waghorne said.
—You was there, Reverend, did you see it?
—My vantage point was not ideal, he said defensively.
—Judah had no part in killing that soldier, no more than Master Sellers’ grandson.
King-me turned to Lieutenant Goudie.—Pay no attention to this witch, he said.
Goudie was slouched against the arm of the chesterfield, combing a hand against the grain of a massive sideburn. He had a lazy Scots inflection that made him seem disinterested in life in general.—These soldiers, he said.—They’re sentimental men, understand. They’ll have blood for young Arscott. We might be able to do something for Judah Devine if someone could help us identify the Toucher lad.
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