Galore by Michael Crummey Page A

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    Devine’s Widow waved a hand. —It was the soldier’s own knife killed him, people are saying.
    —I’m not at liberty to discuss the details.
    —He fell on his own knife trying to get at the dog is what happened and everyone knows it for the truth, whatever else they might be telling you.
    The officer nodded thoughtfully a moment. —There was no Toucher involved, was there.
    Reverend Waghorne stared at Goudie. —I don’t follow, Lieutenant.
    —We can’t distinguish the Toucher in question from his brothers, Goudie said slowly, still piecing it together. —And there’d be hell to pay if we hang all three. So. It would appear that witnesses named a man they were reasonably sure would not be convicted.
    —Judah has no family you’ll have to answer to, the widow said. —That’s the only reason he’s locked up now. He got no one belonged to him.
    —He has you, Missus, King-me said without meeting her eyes.
    She stared at Sellers standing stock-still at the door, as if on guard. —How long before you leave, Lieutenant? the widow asked.
    —We’ve delayed the Spurriers vessel a fortnight already, he said. —We’ll have to sail within the next day or so.
    She stood abruptly and left then, not waiting to be shown the door. She stopped in to see Father Phelan at Mrs. Gallery’s, the priest half-drunk and delighted by the proposal she made until he realized the widow had yet to broach the subject with any of the principals. She told the priest to be sober enough to perform his office when they came for him and she would look to all other concerns. —A wedding, Mr. Gallery, Father Phelan said to the husband in the darkest corner of the room. —God’s covenant made flesh between man and wife. Will you have a drink to celebrate?
    The widow said, A priest isn’t meant to relish the sufferings of others, Father.
    —We choose our own hell, Phelan said, and he smiled at her.
    She stopped at the peak of the Tolt on her way back into the Gut. Dark water and ragged patches of pale blue over shoal ground. As a younger woman she often thought of Ireland gone under that horizon and swallowed by the waters. But it had been a lifetime since she’d felt that regret, knowing it was useless to ask questions of the past.
    She wasn’t much above a girl when she first came to Paradise Deep, indentured to Sellers for two winters and a summer, and she’d nearly worked herself free of him before his marriage proposal led to her dismissal. The harbor settled by a handful of English and all of them tied to King-me’s operation, so she walked to the Gut where she expected a more sympathetic welcome among the Irish and the bushborns. The Tolt Road only the barest hint of a path and rough walking with snow still down among the trees. She made a tour of the cove but no one would chance the merchant’s wrath by taking her on. Sarah Kerrivan at least offered a bed but she refused to sleep under another’s roof again. She fashioned a lean- to of spruce boughs next the Kerrivan’s scrawny apple tree, sleeping with their wood dog to avoid perishing in the cold. The following spring she raised a one-room tilt with logs she’d cut through the winter, but she had no better prospects for employment. There were nine or ten men to every woman on the shore in those days and any single man would have wed her if she showed the slightest interest, if it wasn’t common knowledge she’d spurned young Sellers who lived in Paradise Deep like some feudal lord, drinking tea with fresh milk from his own cow. No one could imagine what they might offer to turn her head and they left her alone.
    The same had been true of King-me while she worked for him. Before he proposed he never spoke a word to her except to give instructions or request a specific meal from the kitchen, though it was clear to her how besotted he was. King-me had no experience or interest in love and he seemed incapable of recognizing what had struck him. He blamed fevers and