The Law of Dreams (6 page)

“Do as they tell you now,
an mhic
,” Abner was saying
between the iron bars. “Good luck to you. God bless you, dear.”

He was on the point of opening his mouth and pleading with Abner to take
him back, to take him home, but something stopped him, and he remembered his
father's silence. He watched the farmer's son climb aboard the donkey cart,
crack his whip lightly, and start driving away.

Go, you hasty fucker. I'll get you.

“Look smart, boy.” The keeper gave him a shove, pushing him
toward the bonfire. “Here is the warden coming — Mr. Conachree. Strip off
your clothes now, they go in the fire.”

A small official was beetling across the yard,
followed by an orange youth lugging a pail in each hand. Ignoring them, Fergus turned to
stare at the fire.

Everything red, warping, and changing.

Water cascaded over his head. While he was still gasping and sputtering
the keeper and the orange boy seized and pinioned him, peeled off his rags, and threw
them in the fire. Then they held him while the official began clipping his hair with
sheep shears.

Looking down at the flagstones, Fergus watched snips of his hair twitching
with lice.

“Hold still or Warden might slip and snip off your ear,” the
orange boy warned.

He could feel the tears but fought them back. Humiliated, trying to hold
on to some string of himself, he attempted to withdraw inside himself.

Are you just that voice inside?

Frightened, cagey. A rabbit dashing for a hole. Heart beating fast and
hard.

Shearing done, the warden dropped the clippers into the pail of
strongsmelling fluid and left without a word, walking across the yard and disappearing
inside the building.

Fergus stood naked, shorn, gasping and shivering. The orange boy was
pulling on a pair of leather gloves. “Close your eyes, man. This goo stings very
wicked.” Dipping his gloved hands into the pail, he began vigorously rubbing
Fergus's scalp. The acrid solvent stung at cuts and welts, made his eyes tear.

He felt like a badger, trapped, killed, peeled.

The orange boy gave one last violent knead then pulled off the gloves.
“There, that'll do you I reckon.”

He would remember his shearing as the end of everything, therefore a
beginning as well. A kind of birth, in sheep dip. He knew himself then — skin and
soul and nothing else. He would not forget.

Digging into a sack, the orange boy dropped some clothes at his feet.
“Put on your jacket, fresh fish. We dress like gentlemen here.”

Fresh fish
was what you were called until they had gotten used
to you.

Paupers were fed in the yard, where the steam of soup was stunning, and he
lingered over the kettle until the warden screamed at him to take his noggin right fast
and move along, move along.

A hundred men and boys slept on straw pallets in the male paupers'
sleeping hall. He fell asleep instantly but awoke in blackness in the middle of the
night, with strangers lying flat as the dead, and the fire too far off to give any light
or heat. He had wet himself, and the sour stink of piss on straw reminded him of
Carmichael's stable and the red mare in her stall. Carmichael calling out
instructions as Fergus trotted her around and around the little pasture.

Use your knees! Straight back! Don't slump like a
plowboy!

He struggled to stay awake, afraid of the night, the breathing of
strangers, afraid to sleep, afraid of death, but his eyelids were heavy, his face had no
strength, and soon enough he was gone.

AT DAWN
the paupers arose obediently at the clanging of
a bell. He followed the others outside, passing six fever cases writhing on the floor.
They trooped out to the yard, where snow had fallen overnight, greasing the stones, and
an iron kettle was seething over a fire.

a>

Breakfast was a thin porridge of yellow meal. Paupers
ate in silence, standing about in the snow, using their fingers to scoop the gruel.
After they had finished eating, boys began launching snowballs over the walls.

The orange boy was packing a snowball in his hands when he suddenly
wheeled, cocked his right arm, and took aim at Fergus.

Feeling reckless, without any edges, Fergus said, “Throw
it.”

Yes, then I'll murder you, so. Yes I will.

The boy hesitated, then spun around and heaved the snowball over the
wall.

If you'd thrown it at me, I'd have taken off your head. I
would have. Yes. Somehow.

“Know what that is there, fresh fish?” The boy was pointing to
scaffolding on the gable end of the building.

“I don't.”

The scaffolding supported a wooden slide made from yellow planks. The
slide sloped from the second-story gable window to a pit dug in the ground.

“Up there is black room for fever cases. They push the dead ones out
the window, and they tumble down into the pit. Have you had fever yourself?”

“I have.”

“Only once?”

“Yes.”

“You'll get the relapse, then. I am Murty Larry
O'Sullivan. I can sniff the ones to live and ones to die.”

“Which am I?”

But Warden Conachree came out on the steps, shaking a bell, the sound
banging across the stone yard, and Fergus followed Murty into one of the ranks hastily
forming.

Paupers stood coughing and scratching while the little warden wandered up
and down the ranks, peering into their faces.

“Scouting for fever cases, the wee rogue,” Murty Larry said
softly. “The overseers prefer paupers dead — it's cheaper. They pay
Warden sixpence for each one buried.”

They filed into a long, gloomy hall with rows of benches facing each other
down either side, and daylight filtering through broken windows high in the roof. Murty
Larry pointed out a fat woman wearing a cloak, sitting on a stool
near the fire. “Mam Shingle, our schoolmistress, the old whore. Her and
Warden are robbing the Union blind. They say he's bought a farm. Did you like that
porridge they fed us?”

“Trash, I thought it was.”

“Cheap old dust! Workhouse has gone to Hell. In the old days I
approved of the grub. Why, we used to have mutton every Saturday — it did me
nicely.”

He knew something of the ABCs, not enough to read or write easily. An old
Waterloo hero gave lessons in one cabin or another on the mountain, costing a penny and
a turf for the fire. He'd had the turf but rarely the penny.

Mam Shingle lit her pipe and took a few puffs. The benches gradually
filled with paupers of all ages, some carrying children in their arms. Instead of
drilling them in ABCs, Mam Shingle began singing, in a high, quavering voice, a song
about a white horse and a battle. She sang in Irish. Her accent was unfamiliar, and he
could not make out half the words. Murty Larry was already dozing, chin on his chest,
and many others appeared to be asleep. Fergus turned up the collar of his jacket. The
fire was too small and far off to deliver any warmth. Smoke curdled through the room,
until all he had in his head was its powerful gassy flavor.

The old witch was still singing, but another song — he
couldn't make out a word. Perhaps it was the
uilecan
, a funeral cry.

Perhaps it was.

Slumped forward, or resting their heads on one another's shoulders,
most of the paupers seemed asleep. Knocked out by the lazy, heavy smoke clogging around
the benches.

Not knowing the words — were there words? — he began to sing
with the old poison cook. Keening, an animal sound. Wind through trees. Rise and
fall.

Sensing a fluttering overhead, he looked up and saw a pigeon flapping
around the beams. He stopped singing. More birds were fluttering in through broken
windows, high in the ceiling.

“There you are, your honor,” Murty Larry said, abruptly coming
awake and digging Fergus sharply with his elbow. “Pigeon pie for supper? I
don't think so.”

Many of the paupers, Fergus saw, had come into the schoolroom with their
pockets stuffed with stones. Standing up on the benches, they began to fire at the
birds. Stones rained on the floor and he joined a scramble of men and boys
scavenging ammunition while Mam Shingle waddled up the aisle
hitting out with a cattle quirt. The paupers ignored her, screaming in frustration as
sleek, plump pigeons began to escape, plummeting out the windows.

Only Murty Larry sat still on the bench, arms crossed, looking grave.

The last bird had escaped. Frustration feeding rage, the paupers began
firing stones at one another. The air sang with stones, and a young man in front of them
suddenly spun around, hands cupping one eye, blood leaking between fingers.

Fergus watched the scarlet dripping, feeling cold and remote,
careless.

“Get down or it'll happen to you!”

Grabbing him by the wrist, Murty Larry pulled him to the floor, where they
were shielded by benches and bodies.

“Faction fight! Mountain tribe against the fishermen! No one ever
kills a bird! I don't like excitement myself. It encourages fever.”

On the mountain there had been faction fights, brawls — one set of
poor relations against another. No one ever fought the farmer, but against one another
they were busy.

Murty Larry and Fergus huddled on the floor while the stones whizzed.
Phoebe was suddenly in his mind.

I would cut you with a stone. I would kill you.

When Mr. Conachree entered the hall, shouting for order, he was met with a
flurry of stones and fled with Mam Shingle. Gangs of boys began raiding back and forth
across the hall.

Suddenly a pair of hands seized him, hauling him to his feet. Before he
could put up his fists, a yellow-haired stranger with a face like a knot of wood had
punched him in the lips.

The hot, salt taste of his own blood was immediately stimulating and he
began to punch and kick in a flurry. The taste of fury, almost joy. The stranger tripped
over a bench and fell on his back and Murty Larry, scrambling across the bench, kicked
the stranger briskly while he lay on the floor, three kicks to his yellow head. Then
Murty grabbed Fergus's hand and began guiding him through the tumult of fighting,
steering toward the thick doors.

“I tell you, fresh fish,” Murty said, “workhouse
ain't no place to obtain an education.”

The door when they reached it was locked so they sat
down on the stones with their backs against the wood. The stranger's unexpected
attack had left him breathless. After a while his blood began to cool but his knuckles
were stinging. He looked at them. They were raw, smeared with blood.

The fury in the hall was quickly spent. Exhausted paupers lay shivering on
the benches and floor. Soon the hall was quiet except for the groaning of the
injured.

From the other side of the door, they heard Mr. Conachree shouting that
fever would burn the wickedness out of them! And meanwhile they should have no rations!
And the door to stay locked!

Exhausted paupers pounded on the door, screaming defiance. They wept.

“These janglers, these herds!” Murty Larry was scornful.
“They've stirred up bad air with their hassling.”

Fergus looked at Murty. He was trembling and his face seemed dark.

“Were you hit by a missile?” Fergus asked.

Murty shook his head so violently spit flew from his mouth. “Not
hit, no! Something inside! My head hurts something awful. It does. Like birds a-pecking
at my eyes.”

These were unmistakable signs of fever.

“It won't get me! You'll help me, won't
you?”

Help you? How? You have the curious journey before you.

“Promise you won't let them take me to the black
room!”

“Yes,” Fergus agreed. “All right.”

ALL DAY HE REMAINED SITTING
with his back against the
locked door, trying to pay as little attention as possible to the others caught in the
same trap. He tried thinking of Phoebe in her blue dress. She was alive, but he'd
not see her again. Hard to believe.

Hard to believe in the mountain, that the place still existed, or ever
had.

Murty Larry, feeling stronger, wanted to talk. He said he had been wheel
boy for a wagon builder who'd emigrated for Ohio.

“I said he must take me with him, only he didn't think so.
Said he had his own mouths to feed, and there wasn't enough to spare for my
passage.”

“What did you do then?”

“He left me a shilling and a pair of tongs. I spent the shilling on
porter and sold the tongs in exchange for a spoileen — I was that hungry. I went
to the holy well and tried to fish some coppers, Fergus, only I couldn't. Tried to
steal a boat and go for the holy island where there is rabbits, only some women stopped
me. Fished for a while — some days — by the lake, only couldn't catch
nothing. Still, only one salmon is all you need.

“I went a-hunting birds, trying to bang 'em with rocks. Did
you ever try to kill a bird so? It's not easy. I squeezed milk off a cow, I did.
Got some yellow meal. The potatoes are gone. I was plucking turnips when they caught me
and put me in here. Now it's very hard getting in, they say. If I get out of here,
I'm going for Ohio.”

“How do you go there? Where is it?”

“I don't know. Perhaps I'll fly.” Murty laughed
weakly. “Now no more
craic
. Leave me be. I can tell there's a lick
of fever coming on, and I must buckle down and fight it off. Black room won't get
me.”

MURTY MOANED
and sweated all night while Fergus stayed
awake, his back against the thick door. The workhouse was no refuge. If they stayed in
it they'd die. All of them must end up in the black room. Promise or no
promise.