The Law of Dreams (45 page)

Whales rose hissing in the river. Thousands of black-and-white ducks beat
across the flat bays, their wet wings making a whirring, groaning noise.

Sips of cold water bit the tongue.

Finally they saw one cabin in a clearing, with a red cow and calf grazing
around stumps and smoke curling from a heap of burned timber. A sort of
púcán
boat was drawn up on the beach where a man and a boy were
repairing a fishing weir staked out into the river.

“Is it Indiana?” Fergus asked Ormsby.

“We're coming into old Canada now.”

But the clearing slipped behind quickly, and there were no further marks
of settlement along the shore.

In the lee of the deckhouse Molly, gorgeous and burnished, was basking in
humid sunshine. He sat down beside her.

“We can handle half a dozen horses, easy, on a
string. One for you to ride, one for me, and four to trade. We'll tie flowers
around their necks, water them at the river, and graze them along the road.”

“No roads I see,” she murmured.

This was true, but passion makes you hopeful and tough.

“A horse wants open country and dry feet. I'll make a world of
this, Molly.”

THEIR STAKE
was kept at the bottom of their sea chest,
rolled up in handkerchiefs. When she went to count it that evening, it was gone.

“Sure, it's there,” he insisted.

“No, it isn't I tell you, it isn't!”

“You might have missed it.”

“I wouldn't — I've missed nothing —
it's gone.”

They turned out the chest and pawed through the contents: their steel
knife, Molly's boots, two last sprouting onions, blankets and woolen clothes
he'd stolen from Maguire's Germans. They couldn't find the money.

Standing on the edge of their berth, Molly pushed open the old
woman's curtain. “Where is our money?”

“God help you. Are you asking for a look in my blue bottle or are
you calling me a thief?”

“You old poison cook, I know you took it. Tell me where it
is.”

“You are a bad girl. You haven't a heart for them that has
helped you.”

Molly began poking and prodding the old woman's straw pallet.
Brighid climbed down with an air of injured dignity, drew on her shawl and headed for
the ladder, leaving Molly furiously shaking potion bottles, searching for coins sunk in
the fluid.

Finding none, she confronted the Cooles. “You wanted money for your
school.”

The schoolmaster began turning out his pockets.

“Stop it, Martin,” his wife said. “You humiliate
yourself.”

“I'll humiliate him if he has my money —”

“You watch your gash with me, miss!
Sraoilleog!
Hussy!
Clipping the cash off poor men! He hasn't taken your swag and if you say it again
I'll smack you down, what you deserve!”

“Well someone's got it!”

“They don't,” said Fergus wearily, “they are our
shipmates.”

“Well who then?” White faces were peering down from the tiers.
“Who has our money? Do you? Do you? You wretches, which of you has stolen our
money? God help me if I find you, I'll whip you blue —”

“Quench it, Molly, it's no use.”

She flung herself into their berth and lay in stormy silence, wrapped in
her cloak, until Mrs. Coole went up on deck to cook the stirabout. Then Molly crawled
out and began digging through the Cooles' trunk while the schoolmaster lay in his
berth not lifting a finger to stop her. Finding nothing in the trunk, she began to poke
and feel the straw pallet where he lay.

“Stop it, Molly.” Fergus began pulling her away. She
struggled, then broke free and ran up the ladder.

After helping Coole repack the trunk, Fergus climbed on deck. There was
little-wind. The sails were flapping and banging. Smoke from the cabooses hung over the
deck. Mrs. Coole glared at him.

Seeing Molly up in the bow, he went forward. She was alone, smoking her
pipe. He stood next to her, resting his elbows on the rail, watching
Laramie
's prow split the black river, curling back a froth of white.

“I'm sorry for your horses, Fergus.”

How different was the river from the sea. Sweeter. He could feel the
country drawing in, the scent of trees and ground.

“There will still be horses.”

“Hold on to me, man.”

Her body light and warm, like a candle.

THE MAN
he had chased up the ladder died with his face
dark and swollen.
Fiabhras dub
, black fever. The sailors called it
ship
fever
.

It was snowing so thickly they couldn't see either shore. Two of the
man's daughters shivered as the sailmaker sewed up the corpse in a piece of
canvas, along with a chunk of iron. Mr. Blow didn't try to read any prayers. The
hands set the bundle on a plank, carried it to the rail, and quickly tipped it into the
river.

“Call it what you will, it's
typhus,” Fergus overheard Ormsby telling Mr. Blow. “Scour the ship, scour
what can be scoured and throw away everything else, then lower a caboose to smoke the
hold and hope to God we raise Quebec before it spreads.”

For the first time since Cape Clear, they were ordered to collect the
filthy straw from the hold and pitch it overboard along with blankets, old clothes,
rags, and garbage. There was no fresh straw; they would have to sleep on the boards.
Sailors were made to throw away their hammocks. The passengers scrubbed the ship from
stem to stern using hot water, straw brooms, and clean yellow sand from the ballast.

He was helping dump straw and trash into the river when he saw a bungled
hammock passed up through the fo'c'sle scuttle. The sailors placed the
bundle on deck, the sailmaker folded it open, and with wet snow driving in their faces
they all stared down at Nimrod Blampin's naked corpse, his chest and arms covered
with maroon blotches. “He went quite hard, poor fellow. Very warm, terrible
headache, sweats, then blisters.”

Nimrod's hammock was sewn up with a lump of iron ballast inside and
Mr. Blow was summoned. The sailors removed their tarpaulin caps and stood in silence
while the master read English prayers then slapped his prayer book shut with a last,
distracted “Amen” and hurried back to the afterdeck. “There it is,
Nimrod dear,” cried the sailmaker as the hands raised the plank and tipped it. The
bundle stuck for a moment then slid off abruptly, knifing into the current and sinking
quickly so that when Fergus looked back he saw nothing in their wake but the tawny
flotsam of straw and garbage.

“
IF IT'S
spread to the crew, we'll be
next,” Mrs. Coole said. “See what your politics and your false religion have
done? My poor children!”

“A good douse will preserve them.” Coole clapped his hands.
“Come, Carlo! Come, Deirdre!”

The Coole children peeked out from the uppermost berth where they had
taken refuge with Brighid. A few passengers were still scrubbing, but most were occupied
packing and repacking their trunks and sea chests.

“Clean they must be. Come with me, children!”

“No, the water's too cold, Martin.”

Ignoring his wife, Coole lifted down Carlo and
Deirdre. He began leading them to the ladder, but Mrs. Coole grabbed Deirdre's
hand.

“You cannot wash off what you have done to us, Martin!”

“Clean they must be,” the schoolmaster said doggedly.
“It's filth that kills.”

They tugged the little girl back and forth, both children howling, until
Mrs. Coole let go suddenly and the schoolmaster began herding them up the ladder.

“Stop him! Whatever I say only makes him worse!” Mrs. Coole
begged Fergus. “Don't let my babies come to harm!”

Reluctantly, he climbed onto the deck where Coole was looking agitated and
disheveled, his jacket, wild hair, and beard flapping in the wind. “Don't
you say, Fergus,” the schoolmaster shouted, “there is nothing healthier than
a freshwater bath?” Carlo and Deirdre were crying as they undressed, and Fergus
wondered if the schoolmaster intended to pitch his children overboard. Then he saw that
Coole had dropped a bucket over the side and was hauling it up.

“Too cold for bathing, mister.”

“Never! Hurry! Hurry now!” Coole shouted at the children.
“Peel off your clothes! Pluck off your hideous things! Time to get
clean!”

“Why not Mama?” the little girl whined. “Why isn't
she come with us?”

“She will, she will!”

“Come on, mister,” Fergus cajoled. “You ought not to
soak them — it's too cold.”

“Too cold for pure water? It's not cold that kills, it's
filth and the poison air, the miasma down below.”

Setting one full bucket at his feet, Coole quickly lowered another. He
turned to the afterdeck where the figure of Mr. Blow could be seen, standing near the
ship's wheel.

“I have seen Hell, and Hell is a ship! Hell, sir, is your ship! Can
you hear me, sir?” the schoolmaster roared. “That makes you the devil,
don't it? The Satan of the pits! I curse thee, Satan! From a thousand tombs I
curse thee!”

The wind was blowing strong off the beam. It was doubtful the master could
hear.

“Cold is clean. Come, come, Carlo! Who shall be first? It must be
you.”

The little boy stood with arms by his sides, fists clenched, and eyes
squeezed shut as his father drenched him. Picking up the next bucket, Coole approached
the little girl, who was naked and shivering. He dashed the
bucket over her and the child began to dance and howl, slapping herself.

“There it is, my turn now!” Coole cried, throwing off his
coat. He tore his shirt over his head and was kicking off his boots when his wife
appeared at the hatch.

“Martin!”

Both children ran to her, howling.

“Douse me, for the love of God!” Coole cried to Fergus.
“Douse me!”

Flinging away his trousers and his drawers, the schoolmaster stood naked.
“For the love of God, will you give me a drench! Satan, I renounce
thee!”

The bos'n and a party of sailors were approaching — the
bos'n holding a cargo net. “I renounce thee, Satan!” Coole screamed.
“Get behind me, imps of Hell!” Fergus picked up a bucket and pitched it and
the schoolmaster whooped when the water struck him, then, slipping on wet planks fell
onto his hands and knees. “Again!” he screamed. “Douse me again! Douse
me!”

The bos'n flung the net, and the sailors quickly seized him up like
a lobster and started carrying him below. Fergus followed, sickened by the
schoolmaster's howls as the men crammed him into a sail locker, ruin burst open
for strangers to see, humiliation exposed to the world.

OVERNIGHT THEY HAD SLIPPED
into settled country. The
Canada sun shone with strange ferocity as
Laramie
beat her way upriver.

Soaked with spray, he stood out on the slick, wet bowsprit, clutching a
buzzing stay and watching farmers with ox teams working fields running back from the
river in black and yellow stripes.

The St. Lawrence River threw herself at them in brilliant splashes. The
moan of wind on canvas.

Passengers stood packed along the starboard rail, holding up babies,
laughing in the light, pointing out farmhouses with chimneys leaking smoke, wooden
barns, stone churches.

The new country dousing them awake.

He saw children tending cattle, driving flocks of sheep. At a wooden jetty
two men stacked cordwood into a scow.

“Here it is, man, here it is!” Molly stood in the prow, small
and soaked, her hair black from spray, the wet gown clinging to her body.

The passion in her voice was the bead of life. She was scanning the
country like a hungry owl, absorbing it.

Men and women need each other, don't they.

* * *

FORTY-ONE
days after clearing
Clarence Dock,
Laramie
dropped anchor below the quarantine station at Grosse
Île, an island in the St. Lawrence twenty miles downstream of Quebec. They had two
fever cases aboard: the girl Fergus had tried to protect, and her sister.

The line of ships at anchor stretched two miles in the river. A few had
been inspected and flew the green flag of quarantine, but most were awaiting medical men
to come out and remove their fever cases to the island so that their days in quarantine
could begin.

Ormsby was pacing the deck impatiently. They had been at anchor twentyfour
hours, with no sign of inspectors. “Dammit, we'll be floating here all
summer! I must reach Montreal before the canoes leave!”

There were swans in the river. Even the quarantine island looked green and
pleasant from the ship. The fever lazarettos — long white sheds — were
isolated at the eastern tip, and the rest of the island was covered in broad-leaved
trees that were coming out soft and green in the heat.

In the middle of the second afternoon at anchor he watched a noisy little
steamer beating away from a jetty at the western end of the island, carrying emigrants
who had passed through quarantine upriver for Quebec and Montreal.

Three more emigrant ships hove into sight and dropped anchor that
afternoon. The powerful heat of Canada enclosed
Laramie
, pungent with the stink
of liquefying tar. A scum of trash and straw floated on the river — masters hoping
to impress the medical authorities were cleansing their emigrant holds.

Skiffs and flatboats worked between the ships at anchor selling provisions
and water. Leaned over the rail, Fergus listened to Ormsby haggling in the Canadian
tongue with a boatman who wore a red stocking cap. The old man handed down coins bundled
in a handkerchief, and the boatman passed up a cheese, a loaf of fresh bread, and a pot
of honey.