The Legacy of the Lynx: Three people, two murders, one oath... Read online

  Hendrik Grimalkin’s voice trailed away, to Ruan’s profound relief.

  It was an endemic trait of his personality that he didn’t care greatly about other people or their feelings unless they impinged directly upon himself. He had begun to fidget during Hendrik’s talking, not that he was aware of it. His left leg was jigging up and down and he was winding his thumbs around and around themselves in circles where he had interlaced his fingers upon his lap.

  Hendrik noticed, blinked in annoyance, embarrassed and humiliated that he’d spoken out his deepest secrets to someone who so plainly didn’t give a damn. The only reason he didn’t chuck the young tyke straight back out into the Singel was because of Golo Eck, because it was a name he knew well and had the highest regard for.

  ‘Well,’ he said curtly. ‘Get yourself down to Louisa. She’ll arrange food and a bed for the night and we’ll discuss your situation in the morning. Good afternoon, sir.’

  Hendrik stood up, went back to his desk and sat down, turning his attention to the papers neatly laid upon its surface. Ruan was out of his seat with an alacrity that bordered on the rude, and Hendrik felt his teeth grinding together as he clenched shut his jaw. Frugality with words had always been his way until today, and he would not let the lad go without a last parting shot.

  ‘I will help you, but only because of Golo Eck,’ he said to Ruan’s retreating back. ‘And I hope you will remember that.’

  Whether Ruan Peat would remember it or not was moot, for he was already stepping out into the corridor and starting for the stairs, not bothering to close the door behind him.

  18

  SUNKEN ROADS AND PEOPLE DYING

  Greta Finnerty was cursing herself for waiting so long before leaving Rosslare. Certainly she’d had her orders from Mick Malloy but Christ, she should have realised she’d waited too long. Wolfe Tone might well be coursing over the waves with his French soldiers to come to their rescue just as promised, but he was going to be too late.

  She’d heard other news on her way from New Ross to Rosslare and it wasn’t good. General Gerard Lake was amassing his Loyalist forces, getting ready to attack Vinegar Hill. How he knew about Vinegar Hill she didn’t know, but he knew it all the same; the last of the United Irish gathering there for the past few weeks and a chance to get rid of the lot of them for good. The moment she heard the whisper that Lake’s forces were on the move – twenty bloody thousand of them – she uncurled herself from the harbour wall and set off.

  Only one thing for her to do now and that was to reach Vinegar Hill before Lake and his men did, tell the United Irish that no French reinforcements were coming their way, at least not in time, and to run like hell while they could.

  There were no heartfelt goodbyes, just Fergus slipping from the knoll and setting off.

  ‘I’ll be watching,’ Malloy said as Fergus looked back once, saw Malloy tapping at the telescope slung from a piece of string around his neck.

  Fergus glanced up at the sky. A moon just passing from the full, flattened on one side like it had fallen on its face and got up again. Clear skies, a few silver-etched clouds scudding silently across a bat black night. Let him watch all he liked. He could hardly believe Malloy had agreed to his plan, but that was all to the good. Fergus had no intention of tracking Bagenal Harvey, but now he had names and safe places to go. Soon as he hit the coast he’d be off for Holland.

  The moment he set foot on the streets of Scullabogue he took off his boots and strung them about his neck. There were curlicues of smoke coming from the chimneys of several houses, possibly actual inhabitants, possibly the odd Loyalist here and there, though Malloy had assured him there were only one or two. High rankers, he said, who didn’t want to muck in with the rest who were camped out somewhere to the south.

  Fergus kept to one side of the street, creeping through the moon shadows. He could hear men talking in the cottages and the shuffle and clinking of several horses. His broken ribs were making it hard for him to move as quick as he’d have liked and the wheezing of his breathing was loud in his ears. He had a distinct burning sensation in the small of his back and imagined Mick Malloy up there in the knoll of oak trees sighting him in the cross hairs of his telescope. He’d assumed there’d be a quick scamper through the village, keeping to the back lanes, but there were no back lanes, only the one main street, cottages on either side.

  He went quietly and slowly down the street, stopping every now and then, his blood pulsing in his throat. He had the most God awful headache he’d ever had in his life and it was getting hard to think because of it. And then a thin sliver of light widened a few yards from him as a door opened and the bulky form of a man lurched out onto the street.

  ‘Gotta take a piss, lads,’ the man said, unmistakably English.

  Fergus froze, pinioning himself against the nearest wall, trying to make himself small and dark and unseeable in the too bright night.

  ‘Watch out for them native rats!’ came a voice from inside the cottage.

  ‘Got a thing for English cocks,’ came a second, which was met with much merriment and ribald laughter.

  ‘So much bigger than their own,’ the burly man replied jovially. ‘I know, I know.’

  He turned the corner of the cottage, his back to Fergus, and put one hand out against its wall to brace himself as he unbuttoned his trousers, sighing as he let go a stream of urine, steam rising up into the night. Fergus didn’t move. It was clear to him that the men inside the cottage had been drinking and maybe weren’t at their best, but obviously they were soldiers and Fergus didn’t move except to slowly, slowly slide himself down the wall until he was hidden in its deepest shadow. The man finished his business, did his trousers back up, turned around and, as he did so, caught a slight movement on the other side of the street.

  Seven hundred miles away, Ruan considered he was having a hard night of it. The bed he’d been given was too soft for him to sleep easily. Louisa Grimalkin had begrudgingly given him the remnants of the mutton stew Caro had already apparently feasted on, for there’d not been much left. He’d had to fill himself up with bread, which wasn’t ideal. In fact none of this set up was ideal. He got the distinct impression that Hendrik Grimalkin hadn’t exactly warmed to him, though he’d no idea why, especially given that special moment they’d shared of collective tearing up. But tomorrow was another day and the one Ruan firmly believed was going to solve all his problems.

  He turned himself over in his bed and sighed, gazing out of the window at the moon that hung like a pallid coin in the night sky. Money was what he needed most at the moment and Grimalkin his only means to it. He was trying to think of the best strategy to follow, and that was undoubtedly Golo and the Lynx. Grimalkin was like every scholar and tutor he’d ever come across all rolled into one, and Ruan had one ace up his sleeve: Caro’s book, so liberally sprinkled with Golo’s words and thoughts; Behemoths, and other Wonders of the Deep the bait on the hook, with a few tantalising facts to trade about the Lynx that no one knew apart from Golo, Fergus and himself.

  And where are you now, Fergus? He asked of the cold and uncaring moon. If you were with me instead of that boil Caro, this would all have gone so much easier.

  He sighed again and closed his eyes, and a few moments later was asleep.

  Fergus was spotted.

  ‘Hie!’ shouted the man, his hand still fumbling with his trousers. ‘Get out here, lads, and quick. There’s a rat on the move!’

  And Fergus was on the move, running as fast as his stockinged feet could take him down the lumpy, bumpy street, stubbing his toes numerous times, not that he noticed. The thumping in his head was like a sledgehammer and he was gasping for air as his heart beat out his increasing panic in his chest against his cracking ribs.

  For a brief moment a cloud passed over the moon and all was darkn and Fergus believed all might yet be alright. Mick was watching. He’d see what was going on and send help. Just a little further. Just had to get to the trees on the other side of th
e village, disappear into the undergrowth, just had to…

  The first shot hit him in the shoulder like a thunderbolt and down he went, face slamming hard onto the cobbles, chin bone snapping in two, right hand crumpling up below him, a shard of broken rib pushing into his left lung. The pain was immediate and overwhelming, a great whooshing sound in his ears as if he’d been plunged below the waves of a raging sea. Only gradually did that sound separate into the thudding of several pairs of boots crashing down the street towards him, on him before he properly understood what they were about, kicking and stamping, joined by the hammering on his head of the butts of their guns. Quick and brutal. Just like everything else about that day in New Ross and Scullabogue, Fergus’s last thought flitting through his mind like a leaf in an empty forest:

  Why didn’t I keep my boots on? I don’t want to die without my boots on.

  So silly and inconsequential, but no time for more. One of the men fixed a bayonet and struck Fergus through back and belly, slicing his guts betwixt and betwain. His ragged, stockinged feet twitched feebly as he lay there pinioned to the ground like the victim of a shrike stuck by a thorn to its tree.

  Mick Malloy slammed shut his telescope and let it drop.

  ‘Well feck, there goes nothing,’ he muttered, his squinty eye throbbing from being pinched closed all the while he’d had his good eye fixed to the glass. The Scotsman had only been in his purview a little over twenty four hours but Malloy was not without compassion. Fergus had done exactly as Malloy had supposed and been caught, and now Malloy had the information he needed – which cottages the Loyalists were in and which ones they were not.

  Now he and his men could get down there and finish the job, burn out the bastards in one last cock-a-snook before they legged it for Vinegar Hill. Tit for tat and back to tit again. The Loyalists had burned the rebel hospital and Mick in turn had burned down theirs. Only this last cremation to go, just to let the English know the United Irish weren’t beaten, not by a long chalk.

  One last stand, boys. One last stand.

  19

  SECRET SOCIETIES, SECRET NAMES

  DEVENTER, HOLLAND

  Ruan was keen to put his plan into action, but by the time he crawled himself downstairs Hendrik Grimalkin was long gone.

  ‘He’ll be back later this afternoon,’ Louisa told him. ‘Do you want something to eat?’

  Ruan did. He’d been hungry from the moment he’d woken up and was looking forward to something good, only to find that Caro had beaten him to it once again and not much left of the skilleted scones and eggs Louisa had cooked up. Ruan ate what was left, slopped out cold upon a plate. He was angry all over again because of it, and more so that he had to kick his heels for the best part of three hours before Grimalkin finally reappeared, Caro skipping along behind him having apparently spent the morning with the man.

  ‘You should see the library Mr Grimalkin took me too!’ Caro was beside himself with excitement. ‘It’s enormous! Belly of the whale kind of stuff!’

  Grimalkin smiled coldly at Ruan Peat.

  ‘I’d’ve taken you too, if you’d been awake at a suitable hour,’ he said, Ruan frowning, not understanding why the world was treating him so badly, yet again. It was as if Fergus had taken over their bodies, put his words into their mouths, his expression upon all their different faces. The only man he’d met who’d treated him with a little respect and kindness had been that man back at the servants…George, whatever his name was. Ruan was aggrieved, but pleased with the scheme he’d made the night before and now was the time to put it in action.

  ‘Can we have a little talk?’ Ruan asked, politely.

  Grimalkin lifted his eyebrows enquiringly.

  ‘Certainly,’ Hendrik replied. ‘Caro, why don’t you go along with Louisa and see what she’s got prepared in her kitchen for you.’

  ‘Righto, sir, thank you sir,’ Caro piped, to Ruan’s immediate and visceral disgust. Apparently toadying was what got you on around here. He moved his neck as if he had a kink in it, resolving that it would not kill him to do the same.

  ‘I think I may have something that will interest you… sir,’ he tacked the last word on as an experiment but it was a moment too late and didn’t sit right, and that was the way it was understood.

  ‘Do you, now?’ Hendrik replied, a little too sarcastically for Ruan’s comfort, but heroically swallowing his pride.

  Just get it done and over with, and in a few days you’ll be out of here forever. Neither spoke any further until Hendrik led Ruan up to his study and motioned Ruan to sit on the same armchair he had the night before.

  ‘I’d rather stand, if that’s all the same to you,’ Ruan said, Hendrik closing his eyes briefly, wondering why nobody had never had the nous to beat common civility into this boy.

  ‘Let me start…’ Hendrik began, but was immediately interrupted.

  ‘No, no,’ Ruan said hurriedly. ‘Let me. I believe I’ve certain bargaining points in my favour.’

  Hendrik bit the inside of his lip with irritation, at least until Ruan extracted the large gold ring from his jerkin pocket and held it out towards him. It had a huge lapis lazuli at its centre and even from the yard or two that separated them Hendrik could see it was engraved.

  ‘Let me see,’ he said, taking out the magnifier he habitually kept in his pocket, used to examine the various manuscripts he encountered during the course of his working day. ‘But that’s a very fine stone you have here,’ he stated, intrigued by the engraving. ‘A quarter moon, and maybe the sun,’ he said, studying it with care, ‘with a triangle of light going from the one to the other.’

  ‘It means the Enlightened One, L’illuminato,’ Ruan stated, confident his plan was in the off and bounding helter skelter towards success. ‘I don’t know how much you know about the Lynx from Golo…’

  ‘Not much,’ Hendrik interrupted, still looking at the ring, ‘but maybe you can, ah ha, illuminate me.’

  Ruan winced. A scholar then, like he’d thought. No doubting it now, not with a pathetic pun like that.

  ‘Well,’ he said, like the seasoned bargainer he believed himself to be. ‘This ring is just the start, but there’s so much more I can tell you. All the secrets of the Lynx laid bare. Imagine all the papers, the books you could write about it, the first Scientific Society in Europe…’

  Ruan stopped abruptly, Hendrik having shifted his intent gaze from the ring to Ruan’s face.

  ‘You mean to trade? Is that what you mean to do, young man?’

  ‘Um, well,’ Ruan faltered. ‘The shipwreck and all. I need help…’

  ‘And you’re intending to blackmail me with the knowledge your…guardian,’ Hendrik remembered well Ruan’s own grasping for the word the night before and employed it to its full force before he went on, ‘with the knowledge that your guardian, Golo Eck, the man who presumably has clothed and fed you your whole life, clearly meant to gift freely to the intellectual universe?’

  Ruan swallowed. He’d not anticipated this reaction for a moment.

  ‘I just didn’t think you’d help me…’ he stammered, and for the first time in his life Ruan blushed, going the deep red of dock-seed in autumn that children so often pull up with their fingers and scatter like a trail of crumbs upon the ground.

  ‘I think, Mr Peat,’ Grimalkin said sternly, ‘that we need to start this conversation again.’

  Ruan nodded miserably and Grimalkin softened somewhat. Ruan might be rude and full of bluster but it had to be admitted he was having a bad time of it. It wasn’t every day a person was shipwrecked in a foreign country and found himself without guardian, money or direction. He’d come to Hendrik for the help he was too young to procure for himself, and Hendrik was not without sympathy.

  ‘Alright,’ Hendrik said, commanding as he’d done before. ‘Sit down.’

  And this time Ruan did.

  ‘No more pandering,’ Hendrik stated, ‘and no more lies, young man. And if you can be civil, I’ll thank you to start agai
n at the beginning…’

  20

  THE RISING OF THE MOON

  VINEGAR HILL, NEAR ENNISCORTHY, IRELAND

  On the very top of Vinegar Hill stands a windmill. On the eve of the solstice of June 1798, the longest day of the year, when the sun is at its farthest point from the equator, this wide-bottomed windmill was surrounded by the remaindered rebel forces of the United Irish, their women and children crammed inside its walls, at least as many as it had room for.

  Outside the windmill the menfolk sit and talk, their pikestaffs and meagre gun-stocks gleaming in the sparse evening light. The sun is a few degrees above the horizon to the west as they grit their teeth grimly at what the following day might bring. There are, among their numbers, Catholics, Protestants and Dissenters altogether, labourers, landowners, even priests, all wanting the same thing: all wanting the English gone.

  The night, when it comes, is pale with the solstice, and they can see each other’s bodies, smell each other’s sweat, each other’s fear, all taut and tense as they hunch side by side upon the mist-dampened grass. Down below them, from the valley, come the sounds of the twenty thousand men-at-arms the Crown Services have sent to defeat them, barricaded into the small village of Enniscorthy, its native inhabitants having long since fled.

  These forces are under the command of General Gerard Lake, Loyalists to a man, eager for the fight that will come with the morning. The thought of it lying no heavier upon their shoulders than the weight of their coats and capes, for they know how vastly they outnumber their opponents on the hill, both in terms of men and weaponry. They want nothing more than to wipe the last of these squalling rebel Irish from the face of the earth.