The Golden Ocean. Patrick O’Brian
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had it from her grandmother,’ he said, ‘and she thought it came from the Spanish ship. And I tell you what, Liam, she’ll hear what you say if you do not take care.’
Made bold by the distance Liam snapped his finger and thumb. ‘Little I care for all she may do, the black witch,’ he said, ‘and that green gawd is only some fairing she stole as a girl if ever she was one and not born as old as a crow, which I doubt.’
A distant roaring came through the low window. ‘They are beginning a race,’ cried Liam, on fire to be gone. ‘Will I wait by the door while you put on your shoes?’
At the door he may have waited for a time that seemed long to him, but he was gone when Peter came down, though he had been upstairs only the time it took to ram his feet into his shoes, to rip the left one off in order to remove the shoe-horn, and to put the shoe on again: there was Sean still there however, hovering on the door-step and peering impatiently back into the hall and then out over the heads of the crowd.
‘There’s the Lord-Lieutenant’s own cousin has just gone by,’ he cried on seeing Peter arrive, ‘in a coach and six with outriders and footmen galore.’
‘Where?’ asked Peter, staring into the river of men and horses and asses and carts.
‘There,’ cried Sean, darting into the throng as a coach-horn brayed out loud and high, and Peter saw him no more.
Peter hesitated for a moment, but the tide of people was setting strongly down towards the church and he joined in the wake of a party of butchers, who were marching down the middle of the street, clashing their marrow-bones and cleavers and from time to time uttering a concerted shriek.
‘They must know where they are going,’ observed Peter to himself, as he stepped over a blind-drunk soldier lying at peace in the gutter: and he was right, for in a few minutes they had traversed the little town and he was in the tight-packed jostling crowd that lined the green race-course. They were all waiting on the edge and staring away to the right, and Peter wriggled and thrust his way through until he could see the green grass from under the arm of a gigantic seller of tripe; he was half-deafened by the talk and the shouting, but above it all he heard a great roar that swelled, mounting and mounting until it was caught up by the people all about him, and in another moment he saw the horses all close together racing down like a wave of the sea. Then they were passing him with a thunder and pounding and the green turf flew from under their hoofs and Peter found that he was shouting at the top of his lungs and although he could not hear a sound of his voice he could feel the vibration. And they were gone, leaning in on the curve, the beautiful horses, and there was nothing but the brown earth where they had passed and the shouting died away.
Peter began to recover his breath. ‘The roan won,’ he was crying to the world in general when the words were jerked back down his throat and his hat banged down over his ears as the tripe man brought down the arm that he had been waving these ten minutes past.
‘Did you see him?’ cried the tripe man, picking him up and abstractedly straightening his hat. ‘Did you see Pat in his glory a-riding the roan?’ He screeched out a kind of halloo and quietly observed, ‘He’s my own sister’s son, the joy, and I am a ten-pounder this minute, a propertied man. However, I am sorry I beat down your honour’s fine hat: and will you take a piece of the tripe—it was Foylan’s young bullock and one of the best—or a craubeen for love, with the service of Blue Edward, your honour, the propertied man?’
Peter did not wish to seem proud, still less to offend the good man, so he accepted the pig’s foot, wrapped the end of it in his handkerchief to keep it from his flowered waistcoat and wandered away into the dispersing crowd. It was now that he found the stalls of fairings and gingerbread, the fire-eater and the sword-swallowing marvel from the County Fermanagh, for they were placed in irregular lanes on the outside of the great expanse of grass, all trodden now into a dun-coloured plain, smelling like all fairs in the open and resounding with the cries of the men with raree-shows, two-headed calves, the great hen of the Orient, admired by the Pope himself and the college of Cardinals, performing fleas and medicines for the moon-pall and the strong fives. He also saw the pea-and-thimble man against whom Liam had warned him, and a gentleman who promised a guinea for sixpence, if only you could pin a garter in a certain way, which seemed quite easy—so easy that Peter regretted his crown. ‘For,’ he thought, ‘there are ten sixpences in a crown, and with ten guineas I could buy such fairings for Sophy and Rachel and Dermot and Hugh and the rest.’
However, nobody ever seemed to win the guinea, except for an old little wizened man, who was strongly suspected of being the garter’s father.
‘Sure the old thief is the garter’s own Da,’ said an indignant grazier from Limerick, who had lost three shillings clear, and in the momentary silence that followed these ominous words the gambling man cried, ‘Fair, fair, all fair; fair as the Pope’s election and the course of the stars: come, who’s for a nobleman’s chance at a guinea? Pin him through, pin him fair and the guinea is yours—will you watch how I do it and do the same, so?’ And catching Peter’s eye he said, ‘Let the young gentleman have a try for his craubeen alone—I’ll not ask a penny, but accept of the elegant foot, always providing he has not bitten it yet.’
‘Ha ha ha,’ went the crowd, forgetting its wrath, and Peter, with all eyes upon him, started back, feeling wonderfully and undeservedly foolish.
‘Why, young squire, never blush; come up and never show bashful,’ cried the showman, and Peter felt his face growing redder.
‘Down with the gambling,’ he thought to himself; and leaving the crowd he hurriedly veiled the trotter and thrust it down into his pocket.
He walked quickly away past the fortune-tellers and the double-jointed prophetical Hungarian dwarf from Dublin, then more slowly through the real business of the fair, the long lines where grooms led and ran horses up and down before the gaze of knowing, horse-faced men; and so, forgetting his vexation, he drifted on to the blue booth where a shanachy was telling a story, accompanying himself with twangs on a harp, fierce or pathetic as the matter required.
He had seen everything, and two races more, including the last, when it occurred to him that he might find Sean over where the dancing was, and the pipes. But though he scanned the rings of dancers in the ceilidhe, admiring their steps, he saw nothing of Sean; nor did he find him at the big enclosure for the wrestling; and now that the main events of the day were done the shebeens with their whiskey were beginning their trade and already there were men drunk on the ground. Yet it would have been strange if Peter had not been used to that; and tranquilly avoiding two fights and a small riot he made his way slowly back to the inn.
It took him some time to find it, for there were more people than he had ever seen in the world quite filling the streets, and everywhere there was the confusing babble of voices, English and all the accents of Irish and even the dark speech of some horse-dealing strangers; but suddenly he was facing the open door of the courtyard, and right in front of him were his two missing followers.
‘Listen, Peter a gradh,’ said Sean, much agitated; ‘listen, you’ll not be angry now?’
‘Why would I be angry, Sean?’ asked Peter, frowning and staring after Liam’s hurrying back.
‘Sure my uncle’s the great judge of a horse,’ said Sean. ‘It is in his nature to judge them with skill.’
‘Oh,’ said Peter, doubting the worst.
‘And there was this grand spotted horse as tall as a church,’ said Sean, ‘and he, regarding its legs and considering their strength, said the horse could run faster than the others. And sure it ran like the wind.’
‘Did it, Sean?’ cried Peter, brightening. ‘But there was another ran faster, maybe?’
‘Not at all, not at all. My uncle Liam was right and the great spotted horse ran—it flew, never touching the earth. The other horses, you would have said it was assess they were, barely creeping along.’
‘Well then?’
‘But—you’ll