The House of the Wicked

Jowan Connoch



The young man stepped down heavily from the gangplank and onto the dock. He took his first few steps on dry land uncertainly, like that of a man who’d taken a drop too much ale, for his sea legs, so long accustomed to the movements of the ship, took a little while to adjust. He surveyed the manic activity that was Albert Dock with disinterest; it was Liverpool, but it might have been any dockside in any developed port in the world, the same crowding of ships with a forest of masts, the same chaos of charging dockers and seamen, the same mountains of crates and boxes, barrels and livestock being craned or rolled onto the quays; the same sharp smells of the sea and of hard-worked humanity.

He saw all through a fevered haze. The malaria he’d contracted in South America still rippled through his body like the wake of a huge ship long past. He was in his twenty-third year, but he looked older. Life had not been easy and his body wore its troubles like a jaded coat. He dropped his canvas bundle to the cobbles, wiped away the sweat from his forehead and face on the arm of his jacket, the sounds of the dock coalescing into one large, bubbling cauldron of noise that his mind found difficult to make sense of. He launched himself into the strong currents of the flowing crowd of people, allowing himself to be taken along with it, feeling unable to steer his own course. He came up against a high wall of crates, lately in from Canada, sunk his spinning head into his cupped hands. He knew he needed somewhere to lie down, soon, to let the fever pass, and with this singular focus in his mind he wandered away from the dockside, pausing only to ask where he might find rooms for rent.

He found himself in the back streets and alleys. It was no quieter. There were many releases and distractions for a newly returned sailor, paid off and pockets bulging with wages, from illicit gambling houses and roving prostitutes to the many pubs and inns offering cheap beer and spirits. He knew of many a man who’d stepped ashore, spending months of hard-won wages in a few short days, only to sign on as poor as a church mouse on the next ship out.

But he had no appetite for such brief pleasures. He spotted a sign in a window advertising a room for rent, and forced his tired, illness-weakened frame to plough through the crowd towards it, fixing it in his sights like a beacon in fog.

“Are you drunk?” asked the woman who met him at the door. She had a strong Welsh accent

There were established communities of both Welsh and Irish in Liverpool, he thought absently, and he must have wandered into a tiny Welsh enclave. “I have a fever,” he explained drowsily. “It will pass soon enough.”

“I don’t accept anything in the house that will pass on to others.” She was a large woman, built firm, like a heavily padded mattress. She filled the doorway. Her expression told him she’d had a long life dealing with anything the docks could throw at her.

“It’s the last dregs of malaria,” he said weakly. His vision was swimming and he couldn’t make out what her facial response to this was. “I need somewhere for a few days, to lie and recover.”

“Your name?” she asked tersely.

Strangely he found he had to think hard about it. “Jowan Connoch, recently paid off the merchant ship Corncrake.”

“Cornish, are you?”

“Yes.”

Perhaps she had a son out at sea also, or husband, or simply an unexplained affinity for the Cornish, for the tone of her voice melted almost imperceptibly as she grunted something passing for acceptance and bade him follow her inside. As they ascended a complaining wooden staircase he was vaguely aware of her reeling off a list of instructions and various rules of the house, all of which came at him like the blustering of wind across the deck and he could make no sense of it.

The next thing he was conscious of was splashing water onto his hot face from a chipped bowl, cupping the warm liquid in his hands and holding it to his parched lips. He all but collapsed onto the bed, fully dressed, and remained there, the fever clouding his mind. One moment he shivered uncontrollably, till his teeth, arms and shoulders ached as if punched; the next he was awash with sweat, tearing at his shirt, unable to breathe and gasping for breath and water, but too weak to rise from his bed to satiate his thirst.

He was plagued with nightmarish visions, but worst of all was falling into the sea, the waves folding above his head, his mouth filling with rank salt water. He sank into the depths where dead men’s hands plucked at his body, grasped his legs and hauled him further into the icy void. Deeper still he plummeted, till his feet touched the sandy bottom. All around him was an unfathomable blackness, broken only by a shining disc far ahead. It moved closer to him, till he saw it become her face, and he felt a great happiness engulf him. She was a child, as he remembered her, and the next instant he was on the outskirts of Porthgarrow again, by the old stone cross.

He looked about him. He knew this place well. It was exactly as he remembered it. Reverend Biddle had told him as a child that the cross was the ancient way marker to Porthgarrow. It hadn’t always been here, according to Biddle, who had pulled down a dusty old book from a high shelf to show him that he wasn’t making it up. The monks had fashioned it to guide pilgrims, merchants and believers from many foreign lands to the monastery in Porthgarrow, and to make way for it they had torn down a pagan stone block that had stood at the crossroads for over two thousand years, long before Christ had been born. So Reverend Biddle had said, slamming the book closed with a loud clap of finality.

All children, and most people in Porthgarrow, had their own additional stories about the cross. So many were circulated that he didn’t know which to believe. Murderers, smugglers, witches, highwaymen, demons, dragons, piskies – all were reputed at some time to have had connection with it.

“It was here that he put a dagger to his broken heart and killed himself,” she said, and he was drawn to look at her. He smiled. She spoke with an assuredness that seemed to ooze from her very pores.

Her name was Jenna Hendra and he’d been completely under her spell. When they were both older, for he had only been nine years of age and she ten, they planned to marry. He watched as her small hand touched the stone cross, and her eyes widened with excitement and mock sorrow. In his mind he saw the blade pierce the man’s chest and he touched his own.

“Love is that powerful?” he asked, as if he were that same nine year old boy again and he were forced to play his part all over again.

She turned to him, brows lowered, her pretty face clouded. “Would you not die for me?”

“Yes!” he cried. “I’d die a thousand times!”

“Don’t be silly,” she said curtly. “You can only die once.”

His face became crestfallen. He didn’t like to think she thought of him as being silly. He never did.

“His one true love died in the storm,” she continued, “and the ancient king killed himself with his own dagger rather than live another hour without her.” Her eyes had drifted to that secret place that only she knew. He had always tried so much to join her but could never quite see what wonders she beheld.

“Well I will love you even after I’m dead,” he declared.

She plucked a daisy from the grass beneath the cross and held it to his cheek. “This is a holy place and has been for thousands of years.” He was filled with awe, the immensity of all those aeons pressing down on the place. “You know you cannot lie.”

He felt the fervour of his nine year old love, or what he thought to be love, rise through him like a scorching fire. “May I be stuck down dead if I lie!” he said.

She gasped, pulling away her hand and staring up at the cross. “Don’t say that! Not here! A thunderbolt may shoot down and burn you to a crisp!”

He was not afraid, as the king with a dagger at his heart hadn’t been afraid. “We shall be together for ever!” he said.

But she receded, back into the blackness of the deep ocean, till her faint shining orb of a face turned into an oblong patch of blue light. He awoke, or experienced what passed for wakefulness. The same oblong patch hung on the wall opposite, but now it was faint moonlight shining in through the window. He raised his head, which throbbed mercilessly, staring helplessly at the jug of water on the table, but sank down weakly to his pillow. The sounds of people outside bounced inside his head like the echoes inside a huge cave. He groaned as he felt his mind being consumed by the fever again.

The bedroom door opened, the noise amplified by his illness to the sound of a thunderclap. A figure loomed over him, the face in shadow, and he could smell the mustiness of coal dust. He wondered whether it was real or a figment of his twisted imagination. Then a hand beneath his head, lifting and supporting him; warm but sweet water being fed from a cup held to his burning lips.

“Jowan? Jowan Connoch? I thought it was you.” A man’s voice, close to his ear. “You are the image of your father. I thought for a moment I was seeing a ghost. Fair took the wind from my sails.”

The young man coughed on the water and the cup was removed. A cloth was dabbed on his chin and neck where the water had dribbled and pooled. “Who…?” he said feebly, but could manage no more.

Hours passed that might have been mere minutes, populated with nightmares that left only a sense of dread in the memory. He briefly saw the sunlight striking the wall where once he’d seen the patch of moonlight, and in the space of a blink it was night again. In between all this he thought he saw the man, or felt his presence. Sometimes there was a cold cloth laid on his forehead. More water at his lips. Words that made no sense.

Then, like a storm that passes as quickly as it had begun, the fever passed and he awoke to the sounds of sparrows chirruping loudly on his windowsill, the clatter of horses’ hooves on the cobbles under his window and the usual urgent babbling of humankind. Sat silently on a chair at the foot of his bed was the man, watching him. His eyes were is shadow; his forehead was heavily creased and ingrained with dirt, looking as if they had almost been drawn upon his skin with ink. The young man could smell coal dust again. He’d seen many such men who worked the steamers, feeding the great boilers below the waterline, their faces and hands as marked by their trade as much as coalminers. He tried to raise his head from the pillow but the action caused it to spin alarmingly.

“You’re not quite over it yet, young Jowan,” said the man. “You need to rest a while.”

He recognised instantly a fellow Cornishman. A man of the cove. He squinted at the bright light. “Thank you,” he said.

The man rose. “I shall have to go now,” he said. “Goodbye, young Jowan and remember that I am truly sorry for my part in things.” He left the room.

The young man heard the heavy tread of boots on the bare boards outside his door. “Wait!” he called. But there was no reply. Once the sounds of the footsteps had died away he was unsure whether all along he had been fooled by another product of his fever. He allowed himself a few minutes to recover then swung his legs over the side of the bed, gripping the iron headboard as he tested whether his weakened legs could carry the weight of his body. He staggered over to the door, then, holding the banister, eased himself down the stairs. He was met at their foot by the landlady.

“Where did he go? The man?” he asked. “He was taking care of me…”

“Gone,” she said.

“Where?”

She scowled. “How am I to know? People come and go all the time and it’s none of my business to know where from or where to.” She held out a small canvas bag tied with twine at its neck. “He left this for you.”

Puzzled, Jowan Connoch took the bag from the woman. “Did he say who he was?”

She shook her head. “He never gave his name, but he said to tell you that he’d gone some way to making recompense. Paid me extra to keep you here and look after you if you didn’t recover before his ship left port.”

“Recompense? Did he say what for?”

Again she shook her head. “He told me to tell you he knew your father. He was there on the night he died, in – where was it? – Porthgarrow? He said the bag held answers for you.”

He sat on the stairs, the canvas bag clutched in his hands, what little colour that remained in his cheeks draining altogether.

“Nothing of value,” she said, realising she’d given away the fact that she’d already rifled through the bag’s contents. “I would assume,” she added, “given that you and he were strangers.” She left him to untie the string around the neck of the bag.

He reached inside and removed a folded letter and an old key.



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