‘Put the Devil in the pie,
Hot coals, hot coals,
Put the Devil in the pie,
Hot coals hot.
Dish the Devil to your wife,
Hot coals, hot coals,
Dish the Devil to your wife,
Cut his tail off with a knife,
Run away to save your life,
Hot coals hot.’
Katie hoped that Canadians would prove to be a little more self-conscious than these Americans. The fiddler had almost put her off her meal. She didn’t like the way the beef had whistled when George had spooned it on her plate. She didn’t like the way that Aymer Smith was watching her, as if she had the Devil’s gravy on her chin.
Elsewhere in Wherrytown, the more observant families had already finished their pies and had climbed the lanes to chapel. The Norrises wouldn’t go. They couldn’t condone the preacher’s fierceness at the funeral.
‘Master Sacrilege and his bloody uncles, Mr Cant, Mr Sin and Mr Cynicism,’ Preacher Phipps told his smallest congregation for more than a week in his toughest — and most alliterative — sermon of the year, ‘are not amongst us with the Lord this evensong. They do not hear the Sabbath’s holy horn. They do not lay their cups aside, they do not hand their hammers down, they do not pause in their profanities. These gentlemen and their dark friend are not content with building Pandaemonium for six days of the week, and doing Devil’s work amid our harbours and our homes, amongst our barley and our beans. Now Master Sacrilege is roaming free in Wherrytown and he is intent on breaking up the one day in the week when we can give our thanks unto the Lord, Amen. These freethinkers, the Devil at their side, are lodged in Wherrytown and they are labouring against the Lord our God and His Observances.’
His congregation couldn’t think where the beans and barley were. The best they had was thistle-rye. But they enjoyed this sermon more than most. It cracked with piety and spleen. And it was thinly coded. They could tell whom Preacher Phipps was lamming from the pulpit — anyone who hadn’t come to chapel. He thrashed the sailors and the Sabbath-breakers. Master Sacrilege was ‘surely’ Agent Howells (the preacher’s most long-standing foe). And that dark stranger doing Devil’s work was, no doubt of it, the African. The congregation was, for once, excluded from his disapproval. It was a happy sermon then. They couldn’t wait to sing.
So when Mr Phipps called the first note of the hymn, the congregation did its best. They sang more loudly, more zealously, more fearfully than they’d sung for weeks. They sent the African away with verses beating at his ears. They drove him back to Hell with choruses. This was their battle hymn. They’d save their daughters and their chickens from the Devil’s work with euphony. They’d scarify the night with noise. Their voices could be heard at sea. But Mr Phipps was not entirely pleased. The hymn seemed thin. So did his flock on that chilling Sunday night. He should have been elated. He was not. He missed the finest voice. He missed the finest head of hair.
When Mr Phipps’s flock departed for their beds, his eyes were fiery at the chapel door. His goodnight handshakes were hard and purposeful. And unforgiving. But the preacher’s fires were dull. He was cold inside. He put the chapel candles out and went back to the chapel house. Usually he was proud of the simplicity of his two rooms, the hardness of his bolster, the bareness of his unplanched floor, the plain wooden cross, the water in the jug. He wasn’t lonely with the Lord as his companion. How could he be? That was the choice he had made when he was only seventeen, that he should embalm himself in God. But today he hoped the Lord had not been his witness, had not heard him preach so icily, and did not see him now retrieve the brandy bottle from its hiding place. He warmed his teeth and chest on it. He said his prayers. He could not sleep. His sermon haunted him. Had it been too venomous? It had, it had. It had no warmth, no Christian charity. It was not kind. He was a snake, he thought, a hornet. No wonder people flinched when he shook hands with them. No wonder Katie Norris had not come to chapel. He warmed his teeth again. He was used to dealing with self-pity. He lay, fully clothed, on his bed. He dreamed up better times in Wherrytown; he made amends. He and the Norrises — and even Mr Smith — were spending pleasant evenings in the chapel house. They made a decent four at whist. He called them by their Christian names. They called him John. They put the world to rights over cups of tea. They lodged with him, and somehow he refrained from feeding them on Buttered Tracts or Bible Soup or Hebrewed Ale, or dishing up the Word Made Flesh for supper. And Katie, Robert, Aymer, John were fond companions for the night.
13. Cradle Rock
THE AMERICANS had slept their last night at the inn. That was the end of mattresses for them. They’d spend the Monday night in hammocks on the Belle, roped to the quay at Wherrytown but ready for the Tuesday’s swelling tide and for the eight hard, pieless weeks at sea which separated them from home.
Their ship had been refitted in a breathless seven days. It would have taken seventeen — or seventy? — if Walter Howells hadn’t been there, with his quick eye and his belief in shaving costs rather than shaving badly fitting wood. Was he their captain on the land? Their own Captain Comstock hardly bothered to speak. He still seemed beached. Dry-docked. An Admiral Driftwood who had turned green and queasy as soon as he’d come ashore. But Walter Howells was a Napoleon: shorter, fatter and more demanding by the day. He’d told ten of the younger, fitter sailors that they had to get out of their beds at dawn that Monday morning to fetch the cattle and the stores from Dry Manston beach. He should have sent ten older, calmer men. They would have done less harm. He woke the Americans himself; he never seemed to sleep. The sailors only had to pull their boots and surtouts on. They slept in shirts and breeches. They didn’t wash themselves. Tobacco took the smell away.
Walter Howells provided two narrow, open wagons and a pair of nags. He told them not to touch the smaller herd of cattle, but to drive the larger group back to Wherrytown for re-loading on the Belle. He gave them two black bottles. ‘Keeps you warm,’ he said. ‘And quiet, I hope.’ He winked. He put his fingers to his lips. The sailors didn’t give a damn what Walter Howells was up to. Fewer cattle, less work, was all that bothered them. What mattered most, once they were up and out, was that they were freed from the dullness of the town and not yet prisoned by the sea. Two nags, two wagons, two bottles, and the whole day to themselves. They would have a high time on the coast. Still farting Sunday’s beef and beer and creased with sleep, they left the courtyard and made a noisy exit west.
Ralph Parkiss was their guide. He knew the coastal path. He led them out of Wherrytown along a half-flagged lane. Some of the sailors sat on the wagon ends and smoked. Some walked ahead with Ralph. They only had to give the horses gentle tugs at first, but once the lane and flagstones ended and they had to climb on softer ground into the wind the horses became obstinate. They dropped their heads, and tried to back the wagons home.
How should the sailors navigate a horse? They tugged the ropes as best they could, but made no better progress than an ostler would if he were put behind a ship’s wheel and told to sail it to America. It would have taken them all day to reach Dry Manston beach, if Palmer Dolly hadn’t come by on his way to the quay. They pressed him into helping them. He showed them how a wagon horse was like a fishing boat, steered by the rudder, from the back. He found two sticks, and beat the horses on the flanks. They soon put up their heads and rattled off along the paths. Once they’d reached the granite levels above the town, the walkers had to run to keep up with the wagons, and the riders had to put their pipes away and hold on with both hands.