Chapter 29
It was a Thursay evening in Frebruary, and the whisky cabin on Cook Street heaved with people. Mullins could tell as soon as he came in that something was afoot, and he wondered if there was going to be a raid on a gaol or an attack on a patrol troop. Everywhere he looked, there were wild, drunken eyes and rosy cheeks and ruddy noses. Men fell against one another in comradely banter with arms over each other’s shoulders, boasts and oaths were flying around the room, and there was a low simmering of violence yet undone in the howling atmospheric timbre, as every man had some sort of weapon on him.
Cleaves came up to him, and he was as wildly drunk as any of them, his deep-blue eyes losing some of their sheen and beauty with the dilation of his pupils.
“You better get some into you, boy,” he cried to Mullins, taking him by the arm and leading him to the bar. “It’s going to be a rare night tonight!” he roared this last part, and those around him cheered in support.
“What’s going on?” Mullins asked. In surveying the room, he had seen that Lord Muc and many of his gang were present.
“The Dolocher is going to get a taste of his own medicine tonight!” Cleaves cried out, and again there was more cheering.
“We’ll make him pay dearly for all the killing he’s done!” someone else shouted out, and this too was cheered.
“Has he been captured?” Mullins asked. He assumed the Dolocher had been and that these men gathered were going to take him from custody and do him in themselves. There was no point in sentencing him to hang and run the risk that he could kill himself in the way Thomas Olocher had.
“No, but he will tonight!” Cleaves said almost conspiratorially now, as though the Dolocher was in earshot.
“Does someone know where he is?” Mullins said, matching the low tone. He was confused as to what was going on.
“He’s everywhere you look,” Cleaves said in such a serious way that Mullins almost laughed at him.
“What are you talking about?”
“The pigs.”
“The pigs?”
“We’re going to kill them all.”
As he said this, Mullins knew he was telling the truth. Everyone in here, bar himself and maybe the owner, was waiting for later in the night, and they were going to sally forth and kill every pig they came across. The myth of the Dolocher and the frustration and fear that his continuing elusiveness created in these people had led them to this desperation. He could feel their belief that if every pig in the city were slain, the Dolocher was bound to be among them. There was no point in arguing or trying to change their minds; there had been enough drink had that any naysayer could easily see himself added to the list of victims tonight. He didn’t want to get involved in this madness, but he didn’t want to be seen to stand against it. He was, after all, prime suspect for a lot of people who believed in the human version of the Dolocher. He took the drink offered by Cleaves, and he downed it in one before pouring another big one.
Cleaves patted him on the arm. “That’s the spirit, boy; that’s the spirit.”
As midnight approached, Lord Muc ambled up beside Mullins. The blacksmith looked at him but said nothing, giving a salutary nod instead.
“This is a serious business tonight, blacksmith,” Muc said, looking out over the crowd. Mullins looked too but said nothing. “Violence on this scale is always a serious business.” Mullins could feel that Muc was going to start eulogising about the pleasure of violence again, and he took a long drink against it.
“What happens afterwards?” he found himself asking.
“Depends on whether he is killed tonight or not,” Muc said. “If not, the suspicion falls on the likes of me and you again.”
“There’s no suspicion on me anymore,” Mullins lied.
“Maybe not now, but if the Dolocher is not slain by morning, you might find that there is a new level of paranoia once the next killing happens.”
“You seem sure that there will be a next killing,” Mullins said. “What makes you so sure?”
“This thing lives to kill. It doesn’t kill for food or in self-defence. It kills with such ferocity that it has to be enjoying it. To it, killing’s like fucking the top whore in the world. It can’t go on without doing it.”
“Like you and your gang?”
“Something like it,” Muc agreed. He seemed to Mullins to be in a state of preparedness (albeit drunk in it as well) for what could be his own death. Mullins imagined Lord Muc envisioning his hand-to-hand combat with the Dolocher and perhaps getting the better of the wild beast (that he believed it to be) and the glory that would come with it.
“The Ormonde Boys will be sorry they missed all the fun tomorrow,” Mullins said to change the subject a little
“They are doing their part on the north side tonight,” Muc said. “This is bigger than what’s between us.”
At two in the morning, they ventured out into the streets. Led by Lord Muc, they were a frightful sight for anyone who happened to look out onto the street that night. They grouped on the road around him, and he gave out orders to spread out in groups of no less than three in all directions.
“Remember!” he shouted, like some battlefield commander from Roman times, “leave none alive. The throat is the best way to kill them! Let this be the last night of killing in Dublin!”
The crowd hurrahed and cheered and then spread out quickly down all side streets and alleys. The first pigs were killed on Cook Street and by Lord Muc himself; he shoved his pike through their necks and stamped on their heads as he pulled it back out.
These first squeals woke up the night; the bitter cold grew colder still, and snow began to fall heavily at almost the first strike against the first pig. Within minutes, the ground was covered, and visibility was down with the heavy blizzard that whipped up. It seemed to some as though Dublin itself had thrown this haze down to hide what was going on in its streets.
The death squeals of pigs rang out all over the city, and everywhere the white surface was shocked red by splattering blood. Pigs lay dead, and others, still alive though mortally wounded, dragged themselves over the bodies or tried to seek out some shelter. Men cried out in anger as they found more of the animals, and some men cried out in pain as they underestimated either the strength or the will to live of their enemies. Drunken men wounded themselves and each other with their clumsy handling of weapons their hands were unused to.
The snow continued to fall, and the wind grew colder by the minute. By five, the last of the known pigs in the city was dead or dying, and the last and the most committed of the slaughterers finally made their way home to sleep off their night. What they left behind were hundreds of dead animals, streets and alleyways that were filled with bloodied, mushed snow and body parts, and weapons that lay strewn about where men had given up or been injured. Some of the men had run afoul of soldiers who challenged their behaviour; those men were in gaol this morning. A few were holed up in taverns that had reopened to let them in after their work.
When the sun rose at just after eight that morning, what Dublin showed the world was what no one expected to wake up to. There was a fairy-tale picture of beautiful, snow-covered streets and squares; the sun shone and the light the snow threw on the stone walls and the wooden buildings was magnificent to behold. Children came out and rolled snowmen and threw snowballs at one another until their mothers told them to come in from the cold. Footprints were dotted here and there from early risers going to set up stalls at the market or go to work, wherever that might be. The city looked amazing and more tranquil than it ever had before.
And this was what was so terrifying about the morning: Less than three hours after the brutal slaughter of upwards of five hundred pigs, there remained not a trace of it anywhere to be seen. There were no slain and open pig carcasses anywhere. No blood lay beneath the new snow that had fallen. There were no longer splashes of viscera and bile and blood on the doors and walls and laneway steps as had been only a few hours bef
ore.
Mullins had come home before four, but even he had seen enough carnage to know that something extremely odd had happened overnight. He stood at the corner and looked around, and it was a different world than before. Mullins could not explain away what had happened and for this reason, it was a much scarier world than it had been up to now.