Читать книгу Wrecker - Noel O’Reilly - Страница 10

1

I got to the beach too late to find anything of real worth. The gale had moved inland, leaving an icy breeze in its wake, and there was a sea stench as if the ocean bed and all its secrets had been torn out overnight and dumped on the strand. All about me the dead from shipwrecks past muttered and moaned in the tongues of their own lands. Having shaken themselves free of their unblessed graves, they shuffled about in search of some lost thing. Look upon them too long, and they’d fade into the mist that sailed across the strand.

A dead wreck it was, all hands drowned. Sounds of hacking and wrenching floated over to me on the gusts, as my neighbours took the ship apart, plank by plank. All that was left was the bare ribs of the hull, stuck between Jack and Jill, two rocks that stood like monsters’ teeth at the western end of the cove. The ship’s bottom was torn out and her timbers lay in piles. Alongside, casks and boxes waited, and ponies and carts laden with plunder filed from the ship up the steep track to the headland. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen a ship picked clean in a single tide.

I rubbed the grit of sleep from my eyes and tied back my hair, casting my gaze all about me to make sure I was alone. On the sand a few passengers lay among the dead, but my neighbours had already stripped the corpses for the most part. Among the bodies lay cabin furniture and fittings, lengths of pipe, a binnacle and other nautical instruments of some use unknown to me. Jellyfish lay all over, like plates of glass with the grey sky trembling inside them. Queerest of all were the hundreds of oranges scattered among the corpses as if they’d rained down from the heavens. They were all the more vivid in a world grey and tired as an old garment with the colour washed out. I took my kerchief from my shoulders and scooped as many as I could carry into it.

A few yards away I saw a human hand lying palm down on the sand. Thinking it might crawl towards me and grab my ankle, I hurried off. Nearby was a severed foot still in its shoe and such other gobbets of human flesh as could hardly be named. Dogs’ barks pierced the air off to the east where hounds were mauling a corpse. My best hope was to move out towards the ebbing tide, where I might find a body freshly washed ashore. As luck would have it, down where the sand was still wet and glistening I found a fine-looking man stretched out. I wove a path towards him, willing myself to touch every corpse I passed for luck. The gentleman wore a dark suit, so sombre he must have had an inkling he was on the way to his funeral when he dressed himself. A well-built fellow he was. If you stood him up he’d be head and shoulders above any man in the village, apart from the giant, Pentecost. I wondered how long he’d struggled in the cold water.

It grew lighter by the minute. Pale lichen showed on the rocks, pink crystal glinted in the seams of the cliffs and the rising sun lit the dead man’s face. His dark hair lay across his cheek, covered in a slick pale rime. There was a gash down one cheek and a shadow of stubble on his chin. There was no smell off him yet, fresh out of the sea as he was. I crossed myself to show contrition before digging into his sodden trouser pockets, searching his wrists and inside his jacket, but I found only a pocket book, the pages stuck together, which I threw aside, and a watch on a silver chain which was full of sea water. Time had stopped and God had turned his back on the world.

When I was done with the man, I rose to my feet and moved through the mist, almost stepping upon a child’s body that lay like a sixpenny doll on the sand. The little thing’s face was turned away, which was a mercy. I went further down towards where the tide was washing out, but was stopped in my tracks by the sight of two pretty boots poking out from under the hem of a woman’s skirt. Though the boots were soaked, I saw they were of the softest tan leather, laced before, with the tops reaching only just above the ankle. It was a fashion new to me. On one toe hung a little rose cut out of leather, but its twin was missing on the other boot. The woman’s feet were daintier than mine, but I would gladly have put up with a bit of pinching around the toes for the chance to be seen in a pair of boots such as those.

I got down on my knees and set about working the boots off the lady’s feet. The first came away easy enough but the other was the devil’s own work. I tugged at the laces, but they were tightly knotted and wet, and in any case my blood was turning to ice and my fingers, usually so strong, were losing their grip. Almost crying with vexation, I pulled with all my might, but the dead woman’s ankle was swollen with water and the boot wouldn’t shift. If only I’d come out with a knife. By now my fingers were so numb I could barely move them, but I gave that boot one last tug and off it flew, so sudden that I hit myself in the mouth with it, and fell backwards onto my ass. For a moment I sat there, winded, my mouth stinging from the blow.

When I got my breath back I put the boots in my kerchief and knotted it. Wasting no time, I got to work searching the rest of the woman’s body. Her frock had been stripped from her and her shift clung to her limbs, cambric silk by the feel of it but rent beyond repair. There was nothing else on her of any value.

A tooth was dangling from the lady’s bottom lip on a pink thread of flesh, so I pulled it out, a charm I might use to cure my Mamm’s windpipe of the chronic. Although it shamed me to look for long at the faces of the dead, I couldn’t help but gaze at this woman. Her dainty upturned nose, black as if charred, stood out against her face that was all the paler for being encrusted with salt. Her eyes were black seams with just the whites showing between them. White sand covered her hair like a hoar frost, and there was a streak of gleaming red on a lock that fell over her ear. Looking closer, I gasped with horror to find her ear lobe had been chewed off. It was the same on the other side, the jagged edges still wet with fresh blood. For a long moment, I shut my eyes, breathing deeply to keep down the hot bile rising in my throat.

As I put the tooth in my apron pocket, I heard a noise, a low moan, more beast than human. Did the woman yet breathe? Had I jolted her back to life by drawing the tooth out of her jaw? Her eyes and mouth seemed to move, but they might have only trembled in the wind. Bubbles rose between her lips, and then – that sound again, part moan and part belch, her bosom rising and falling, and at the last only the hiss of air between her lips. Her soul was fleeing her body, and the thought gave me such a fright I screamed, which set the gulls shrieking overhead letting the whole world know what I was about. I would have fled, but right then I heard footsteps, and a crone in black widow’s weeds loomed out of the fog, planting her crook in the sand at each step, her back-basket a hump on her shoulder and her shawl fluttering behind her. It was Marget Maddern, known to all in the cove as Aunt Madgie. She was the very last person I wanted to see at that moment. The old woman drew up by me and leant on her crook, panting as she looked me up and down, her creased brow crowned by a white mob cap.

‘Was that you screaming just now, Mary Blight?’

I nodded. ‘I had a fearful shock – seeing what some devil have done to this poor lady’s ears.’

Aunt Madgie leant over the woman and looked her up and down, before fixing her gaze on the ragged frills of crimson where the earlobes had been chewed off. She turned and peered at me through narrowed eyes. ‘I hadn’t thought you so faint-hearted,’ she said. ‘I see that for all your tender feelings, you were still able to fill your kerchief.’ She leant closer towards me, looking into my face. ‘What happened to your mouth?’

‘My mouth?’

‘It’s bleeding.’

I put a hand to my lips and saw blood on my fingertips. ‘I bumped into something in the mist and cut my mouth, that’s all,’ I said.

She gazed at the woman’s ears again. ‘Do you swear this is not your doing, Mary Blight?’

‘I do.’ She gave me such a damning stare, I had to look away. I could outstare anyone but her.

‘And yet I found you crouched over the body, and with blood on your lips?’

‘Oh wisht! I confess that I did take the woman’s boots off, and in so doing hit my face with them. I didn’t tell you at first, for I was all of a tremble when I saw you. But it’s the truth, as God’s my witness. Some other devil got here before me and did the rest.’

She gave me a still keener look. ‘And she was dead when you came upon her?’

‘I swear to God.’

‘Take care with these oaths, lest they prove false. Perhaps you thought that while there was still life in the woman, you had no natural rights to take those boots. Maybe you helped her soul on its way?’

‘Never! I am no murderer.’

‘I’d be more inclined to take your word for it, were you less renowned for stripping clothes and jewels off dead women.’

‘I’m not alone in that.’

‘Aye, ’tis true, but we must not cross the bounds of decency, or the cove will be infested with Preventive Men.’ A crow swooped low over our heads and croaked to harry us away from the corpse. ‘It doesn’t belong to you to go sneaking about like this after the hard work is done, Mary Blight. I know your ways, looking for pickings from the last few bodies that drift ashore. And all for vanity. When will you learn that it’s One and All in this cove and always has been? What else have you found this morning? Sovereigns? Spanish dollars? Let me see.’

‘Only some oranges.’ I swayed the heavy kerchief in front of her. ‘And I found this on a man a little way off. A watch that be full of water.’ Fumbling in my apron pocket, I brought the watch out and handed it to her.

‘Maybe we can get it fixed in Penzance,’ she said. ‘Whoever owned this won’t need to tell the time where they’re gone.’

At last, she slowly turned and hobbled away. But before she was gone more than a few yards, she stopped and spoke, her back still turned to me. ‘I’ll have my eye on you, Mary Blight. Take heed.’

With Aunt Madgie gone, I got up and threw my kerchief over my shoulder. The mist had cleared to show a mass of broken clouds flung across the heavens from the east to the west, glowing with the sun’s red fire. But the pale round moon still tarried in the sky, knowing the work of the night was not yet over.

A wreck is a queer purging, when compass reckonings go awry and Nature shakes the world out of order and time out of joint. My first harvest had been in my fifth or sixth year and since then perhaps a hundred ships had broken their backs upon the western rocks. Every time I was left with an unease for days to come. That morning after Aunt Madgie had come upon me on the beach, I could find no peace. My nerves were frayed as it was, having seen the drowned woman’s soul bubble up out of her throat. And then to find myself called to account by the old lady and made to suffer her dark looks! I couldn’t rid my mind of the fear she might accuse me of stealing the noblewoman’s earrings. To put my mind at rest, I went down to the harbour to find out how things stood.

On the slipway a fine chestnut horse with mud-spattered saddle bags was tethered to a post outside a warehouse. Its flanks foamed with sweat and its head hung low as if it had been ridden hard. The beast snorted and scraped a hoof on the stone slabs as I passed. All that was left of the wreckage was a broken old cabinet propped against a barn wall, and a couple of hogsheads with staved-in sides and spoilt cargo. No doubt, the rest was hidden away, safe from the eyes of the Preventive Man, on farms on the moor or down in tunnels, or sunk out at sea waiting to be recovered.

A huddle of men was gathered by the wall of the quayside. I was about to pass when they moved aside to let two fellows through. They were carrying something heavy in a sack, one at each end, and I knew by the way the load sagged between them that it was a body. The sight of it fixed me to the spot. Not one of the men in the group gave me more than a glance, which calmed my nerves a little. The two men bearing the carcass took it to a low black shed on the slipway, where the bodies were kept before they were taken up to the graveyard.

A tall fellow stood in the midst of the men, a foreigner in a long brown cloth coat. It must have been his horse I’d seen. I knew his face from other wrecks. He was an outlier in Penzance for the wrecked ship’s insurer, a loss adjuster. His trousers were streaked with mud, and his shoes covered in sand. A group of men from the village answered his questions while he looked down his nose at them and noted things in a black pocket book. The men shuffled further along the harbour wall and I moved along with them, keeping out of the way. For the briefest moment before the men hid them from view, I saw two bodies laid out on the cold, rough stone, a woman in a tattered and grubby shift and a child of perhaps four or five years old. I crossed my arms and held myself tight to stop myself from shaking.

The loss adjuster looked around at the men in his lofty way, an eyebrow raised, and spoke. ‘So, you’d have me believe that not a single one of you was anywhere near the wreck last night?’ he said. ‘That a five-hundred-ton vessel like The Constant Service could be plundered of every last scrap of its cargo and its timbers broken up while all of you slept, unknowing, in your beds.’ The men shook their heads and tugged at their beards. None would meet his eye. ‘My client Lord S— owned the greater portion of the cargo, but this loss will be as nothing compared to this outrage,’ he said, looking down at where the bodies lay, and scratching out some more notes in his black book. ‘Mark my words, this is not the end of the matter.’ I wanted to slope away, but feared it would seem like I had something to hide.

‘It is the very woman I’m looking for, without a doubt,’ the loss adjuster said. ‘Her face is well known in Society, that is to say the civilised world far beyond this shore. This is a foul crime, and His Lordship will not sleep easy until justice is seen to be done.’ His head jerked to let the men know they should remove the body. Two big fellows stooped to lift the woman up and lay her on a sheet of sacking. It was then I saw her face, and the frills of dried, blackened blood where her earlobes had been chewed off, her jewels pilfered. The child lying alongside her was surely her own. It was lucky I stood by a barn and could lean against the wall, for my legs were going from under me. But the men took no notice, just moved along the wall to look at another victim of the wreck.

My mind raced, thinking of the loss adjuster’s words about a great lord wanting justice, and seeing in my mind’s eye the pretty boots I’d left drying on the hearth in our cottage. I looked away as the two men passed me with their burden slung between them. All that was left of the woman was a wet patch on the stone where she’d lain.

I fled that place and turned up the lane towards home, but after a few paces I felt a feeling like a shadow passing over me, so I stopped and looked about. I found myself at the end of Back Street, the very place Aunt Madgie lived. And there she was, the old devil, as I knew in my bones she would be, standing between the two posts that stood before her ancient house, clad in her black dress as always, one gnarled hand clutching her crook and the other holding an ancient china chamber pot. When our eyes met, she shook her head slowly, before emptying the pot in the lane, making sure to throw it towards where I was standing. As she turned back to the house, she gave me an evil look before doddering inside.