The Place Read online

  “Aye, Michael, I did say it, but in the womb, a sleeping babe is a dead babe.” She didn’t tell him such a birth was known as a coffin birth. Quietly, her voice low and sorrowful, she went on. “I couldn’t tell her the truth, b’y. ’Twould only add to her misery. She might not fight if she knew the fight was useless. And fight she must, if she is to survive. The child is a dead weight. Dead as a killick. Ruth was right about that. It cannot help with the birth. The strain of it will be hers alone to bear. ’Twill be hard to watch, Michael. ’Tis no place fer a man. You should leave.” Even as she spoke the words, Aunt Kitty saw in Michael’s eyes that he would stay.

  “I will never leave her. If Ruth must endure the pain, then I must keep her watch.”

  22

  And keep her watch Michael did. Aunt Kitty had never seen a man witness so much “women’s affairs.” She was still of the opinion the birthing room was no place for a man. But as that day of suffering wore on, she was glad he stayed. Michael fetched warm water at her request and found the many clean cloths she needed, and when Ruth screamed his name aloud and didn’t see him in her torment, he went to her side right away. And once when Ruth moaned for her mother, who wasn’t there, he held her tight.

  Once when he stepped outside the house, as sometimes he must, he found leaning against the clapboard the Christmas tree, which his friend Louis had brought. Michael carried it upstairs, its branches tearing the wallpaper in his haste as he went, and stood it in the corner of their bedroom. Aunt Kitty was moved by this. From a box that Ruth had prepared days ago, she and Michael decorated the tree with simple ornaments—pearly shells and coral gathered from the beach, pine cones and red leaves from the forest, trinkets handed down, and small angels carved from pinewood. And between her bouts of pain, Ruth managed to smile her gratitude.

  Dusk came again without relief for the woman suffering unbearable pain. Michael brought the glowing lamp again. He left the curtain open, but Ruth was too weak to notice last light or the sheen from the first star in the window. The pushes Aunt Kitty demanded, pleaded of her, grew weaker, too. It seemed every woman in the Place came and sat quietly in the kitchen downstairs and waited for news from Ruth. It was always bad, and after a while they retreated, only to keep returning.

  Then, an hour before midnight, Michael’s friend and mentor, the old priest, came into the house. He wore a long coat, well-mended, over his cassock. The hem of his raiment hung below the coat like a woman’s dress, and upon his head was a fur hat covered with snow. He wanted to see Ruth. Michael led him up the stairs to the room where Ruth lay pitifully weeping and moaning.

  The priest had been summoned to many rooms in many houses, and he knew a deathbed when he saw one. The pale of it was upon the poor woman’s pretty face. Removing his coat and hat with an attitude of great sorrow and even greater reverence, he crept to her bedside. Pulling a carefully folded stole from his coat pocket, he brought it to his lips before draping it over his neck. When he bent over Ruth, the stole brushed her hands and the lamplight glinted on a golden Cross dangling down from his chest. Feeling hands upon hers, Ruth, through eyes dazed with pain and thinking it was him, called Michael’s name.

  Stooping over his wife beside the priest, Michael lifted her hands to his lips and said, “Here I am, my heart. Close by your side. Always. As close as the shawl upon Mary the Blessed.” The priest nodded in agreement.

  Turning toward his voice, Ruth murmured weakly but plainly through cracked lips, “Michael Kelly. The things you do say.”

  The priest, with Cross in hand and contemplating for just a second, then waving the Cross once over Ruth’s head and once more over her tormented belly, said with deepest solemnity, “Domine dimitte eam, quia auxilium Tuum a Loco Sancto,” which translated to, “Lord send her aid from Your Holy Place.” Taking both Michael and Ruth’s hands, he combined them and entwined his stole around them. “Bind them together, sweet Christ. Bind them. In life. In death.”

  The priest reluctantly left soon after, telling Michael the entire Place was gathering in church for midnight Christmas Mass. The biggest crowd ever, he told Michael. Every adult wanted to plead aves for the gentle Protestant girl who had come into the Place of the Catholics. “Our Ruth,” they were fondly calling her now. Donning his coat and fur hat again and wishing the room the blessing of birth on this night of birth most sublime, he walked down the stairs and exited the house, gently closing the door behind him.

  The hour before midnight was both interminable and fleeting. Ruth was fading. She no longer strained to push the child from her womb. The torturous ordeal had been more than she could bear. She had bled profusely for hours. Life’s hue had gone from her face. Ruth was dying. Not content with bending over her, Michael was lying on the bed beside her. He felt the warmth, the scent, the essence of her within his chest, the pulse of her within his anguished soul, the bond that looming death would not sever.

  Her voice, as soft and weak as a dove, murmured in his ear, “I am done, my love. ’Twas too short.” The struggle to speak the words taxed her, and she said no more.

  And Michael, who had spoken in hushed tones the day long, could not bear it any more. He cried out, “Please, my heart! Don’t go! Tarry! Oh, please, tarry with me!”

  And just then, from out of the splendid night of Christmas, resounding into every habitation in the Place, through the window and penetrating the very walls into that room of death, the jubilant bells of birth pealed from the nearby church. Michael, still pleading to the newborn Christ, beseeching the Virgin, and making the sign of the Cross over his love, cried out again. “Into your keeping, Blessed Mother. Into your flock, Great Shepherd, till I cross over that last stile and come to them.”

  With one final, gentle breath, Ruth’s chest rose no more. The old priest’s prayer had been answered. The newborn Christ had sent her His aid.

  23

  The Culler

  A crowd had gathered outside Jack’s house by the time he reached it. They were curious. They were pitying. Most were astonished. Jack spoke to no one but walked past his house and continued on to the cemetery on the hill, where his mother-in-law had said his family lay in one grave. A few children as well as a couple adults followed him but stayed outside the graveyard fence. The mound of earth above his wife and child had not yet settled. It still looked and smelled fresh. There was no marker yet.

  Jack’s mind was reeling. He realized then that he had asked no explanation from his mother-in-law. Jack had simply rushed to the cemetery, as if there her cruel statement would be proven false. Confused and disbelieving, he fell upon his knees, making an imprint in the tender mud. But with no evidence, he still did not weep.

  He stayed long in the cemetery as he tried to come to terms with his grief. How had they died? Were they the only ones who had died? Was there some disease in the place? They had been the picture of health when he left. His head reeling for answers, Jack stumbled out of the cemetery and went along the road. The children parted to give him way.

  He burst through the chandler’s door. Poring over his precious ledgers, the man was startled when the door was thrust open and had half-risen out of his chair when he saw who had entered. “’Tis you, Jack my b’y!”

  “What ’appened to Sophie and little Emiline?” Jack demanded. He was visibly upset. His face was drawn, and he was shaking with grief. Here he knew he would get the answer, even if his face showed reluctance to knowing it.

  For once, the chandler’s face looked contrite. He sat back in his chair and opened a drawer behind the desk, from which he pulled a dark bottle half filled with brandy. He said, not without kindness, “Sit, my b’y, and have a shot.” He pushed the bottle, along with a tumbler, toward Jack, who had crossed the room and stood over him.

  Jack waved the bottle away. “I’ve not come fer drinkin’. I’ve come fer answers. Where is my family?”

  “Why . . . they . . . they are in the cemetery, Jack. Su
rely someone has told you?” The chandler, thinking Jack already knew, wasn’t sure how to deal with this situation.

  “I’ve been showed a fresh grave. Nothing more. No one has told me anyt’ing. ’Tis a mistake, fer sure! Now, fer God’s sake, man, tell me where they are.”

  “There is no mistake, Jack my b’y. Your wife and child are buried in the cemetery.” The chandler offered the bottle again. “You will need it,” he said.

  “I told ’e I don’t need a damn drink! I need answers!” Jack slammed his hand upon the desk. Papers fell on the floor, and the chandler jumped in fright.

  “Sit down, Jack, and I’ll tell ’e all I know. I need a drink, if you don’t.” Reaching for the brandy, the chandler gulped from the bottle. Placing the bottle down again, he smeared the back of his hand across his mouth. The cheap brandy burned all the way down. And thus fortified, he told Jack what—as far as anyone knew—had happened to his family. It was a sad, sad tale. The chandler hated to be the one to tell it.

  The day after Jack had left on the Plunging Star, his wife, Sophie, was seen walking to the post office. Little Emiline toddled along with her, and at times her mother carried her. It wasn’t long before they were seen returning home in the same manner. Sophie was carrying a letter in her hand. There was nothing really unusual about that, though people who saw her go by wondered who the letter was from.

  Late afternoon that same day, the neighbours noticed Sophie setting forth again. She carried Emiline and was obviously struggling with the child’s weight. There was still nothing unusual to see a mother walking through the place, child in arms. What was unusual, though, was to see what else the mother was carrying. Sophie was carrying a hammer in her free hand. It was thought by a woman who was hanging clothes on the line that Sophie was lending the hammer to someone farther down the lane. The woman waved to Sophie. She took it a bit strange when Sophie did not wave back.

  The evening came, and no one but the woman who lived next door to her noticed if Sophie had come home or not. When she saw no lamplight coming from Sophie’s kitchen window, she assumed that, with Jack being gone, maybe Sophie had decided to spend the night with relatives. All the next day, no smoke rose from Sophie’s chimney, and that evening, when she still had not returned home, her concerned neighbours went looking for her. When dark came, neither Sophie nor her child had been found. It was decided she was nowhere in the Place.

  Then an elderly couple who lived hard by the forest at the end of the settlement recalled seeing a woman with babe in arms head up the arm toward Muddy Cove. A search party was got up, and at first light the next morning they walked to Muddy Cove. The tide was out when they got there, and Muddy Cove was showing the searchers how it had obtained its name.

  Between the shoreline and the water were a half-mile stretch of cloying grey mud, shallow tidal pools, and small green gardens of kelp interspersed with a myriad of small grey boulders. During the flood tide, this would all be six feet under water. At low tide the cove had that unpleasant odour common to all muddy coves, of tiny organisms, most of them invisible, which died in the mud each time the tide ebbed. The tide was out now.

  Imprinted in that muddy plain for all to see, though washed by the tides, were the clear prints of a woman’s feet leading seaward. There were no other prints in the mud. Only three of the searchers wore rubber boots. The three men stepped into the cove and followed the tracks. With every step their feet sank deep into the mud and had to be pulled hard out of the suck before continuing.

  It was slow going. Eel-like tansies writhed away as they approached, and long, skinny, flat worms the colour of human flesh burrowed into the mud. It was clear to the three men by the prints they were following that the woman had struggled hard. In several places the imprint of a child’s footsteps, barely breaking through the mud and stumbling beside the woman’s prints, could be seen.

  They led toward what appeared to be an oddly shaped rock covered in mud. The farther from shore the three men went, the more cloying became the mud. Perched atop the rock was a lone saddleback seagull, and prancing all around in the mud were several lesser gulls, which stepped on webbed feet without breaking through and frequently billed at the mud. The saddleback was pecking at the rock upon which it stood. As the men neared, the lesser gulls flew away. They walked nearer still and shouted before the saddleback grudgingly flew off.

  The rock was in fact Sophie’s body, lying on her right side on the muddy bottom. Both her feet were lodged deep in the mud well above her boots, and there was no evidence to show she had tried to free herself from the mud’s grip. By then, several tides had flooded and receded in the long cove. Also lying on the mud, face up, was Sophie’s little daughter, Emiline.

  The daughter was at arm’s length from the mother and had been held there by what appeared to be a lady’s silk stocking fastened to the mother’s waist and one of the child’s hands. Sophie’s body, by use of the silken tether, which had filtered the mud like a colander until it looked like a flattened hemp rope, had served as an anchor to keep her child by her side and prevent her from being carried to sea by the perennial tides.

  Emiline’s bonnet was still tied, and even the muddy water could not fully disguise several locks of her hair, the same burnished hue of her father’s, protruding from beneath. The child’s skull had received a severe blow, as evidenced by a bloody spot that had dried the size of a government copper. Other than the rent in Sophie’s shawl where the saddleback had pecked a hole, there appeared to be no other marks on the mother’s body. Lying prone on the bottom between mother and child was a steel hammer with a wooden handle. Sea lice and the long, flesh-coloured flat worms had found the bodies.

  One of the three searchers turned his head away and retched violently. Another, looking white and feeling sick, walked away from the grisly scene, one that he would never get out of his head again. The sound of his boots pulling out of the mud was disturbing to the others. The third man watched his two companions leave. He studied the scene for a while and waited for the others to regain their composure and return. Then he picked up the hammer. He held it aloft between mother and daughter for a second before letting it fall from his hand. With a plopping sound the steel hammer settled into the mud, its handle sticking straight up.

  “The ’ammer ’ad to ’ave been dropped while the cove was flush wit’ water. ’Twould ’ave settled into the mud elsewise.” His companions saw his logic now that it was pointed out to them and nodded in agreement. The one who had vomited before turned away and threw up again. The one who had dropped the hammer looked out the cove to the nakedness of the glassy sea beyond and said quite suddenly, “The tide ’as turned! Quick is the game, now! We’ll need a ’and-cart along wit’ more men afore the tide floods.” His voice held authority.

  “I’ll go,” said he who had the weak stomach, and he gladly plodded toward the shore.

  By the time a sturdy hand-cart was obtained, which was primarily used to carry yaffles of codfish to and from the drying flakes, the tide was flushing new water in over the mud flats. Though rigor mortis had claimed both bodies, the tides had kept them malleable, and they were loaded onto the hand-cart as they were found, the mother still moored to her child by the umbilical silk, and they were carried ashore. The men’s feet sank deeper into the mud with the added weight, and they struggled with their load.

  Fresh sea water, as clear and cold as ice, ran in the cove. It trickled over the grey mud flats and swept over the place where mother and child had died. It purged the sticky mud from the boots of the men who struggled with their burden. The racing water gave the men reason to hasten. Spindrift, frothy and white, surged ahead of the water. Seagulls volplaned above them, drawn from above the cove by the commotion of the swilling tide. When the men reached the shore, they were knee deep in the tide. Eager hands reached to help, and their sorry charge was lifted out of the cove and brought back to the Place.

  It was nearing midday,
when kettles boiling for the dinner meal were placed back on the hob, by the time the searchers came abreast of kitchen windows and people came out of doors in great alarm. A sight such as this had never been seen in the Place before. Soon a large crowd followed the pallbearers.

  Sophie’s mother, Emiline’s grandmother, who had been wringing her hands between kitchen window and door all day, dreading, and by now knowing what the searchers had found, collapsed into her husband’s arms when they came abreast of her door. Before the procession reached her home, some thoughtful woman had covered the cart with a clean white sheet.

  The searchers stopped beside Sophie’s father’s door, and the entourage behind them shuffled near. The men carrying the hand-cart, not knowing if they should stop here or go on to Jack’s house, looked to Sophie’s father for direction. The old man, his face hardened by a thousand winds, his eyes softened by two deaths and still holding his barely conscious wife, said in a stricken voice, “We’ll lay ’em out in my inside place.”

  And so it was that Sophie and little Emiline’s bodies, still bound by the silk stocking, were laid out in the room below the stairs, across the hall from the kitchen, which was only used for special family gatherings such as holiday feasts. Or for wakes.

  24

  The constable was sent for in Greenspond, half a day’s sail away, and he came to investigate. He knocked on every door in the Place trying to find answers to the two deaths. During the course of the constable’s investigation, he was informed by a couple of women who had seen Sophie walk by with Emiline in her arms that Sophie had a hammer in her hand. This was confirmed by the woman who lived next door to Sophie, as well as by the older couple who lived closest to Muddy Cove and who were the last in the Place to have seen them both alive.

  A murder-suicide was his conclusion. Murder of the child by her own mother, after which the mother had committed suicide by sticking her feet into the bottom of Muddy Cove to allow the flood tide to drown her. The constable, used to dealing with petty misdemeanours, was clearly out of his realm with such a major and unprecedented crime. But he was a smart man and was convinced that was what happened. He signed the official paper for Emiline as murder by her mother, and for Sophie, death by drowning caused by her own hand.