The Legacy of the Lynx: Three people, two murders, one oath... Page 19

  ‘O’Malley,’ said the old man. ‘My name’s Owen O’Malley, case you want to know.’

  Owen looked across the fire at the lad who had been so bone weary he’d carried on sleeping even when Owen came up beside him, knelt down, placing his calloused fingers against his wrist to see if he was dead or alive. It wouldn’t have been the first one he’d come across. Several times over the past eight years of the United Irishmen’s struggles he’d stumbled across some man or boy who’d escaped the fighting in one place, only to die in another of infected wounds or the constant drip, drip, dripping of their blood as they’d staggered on. It was a tragedy, was what it was.

  If he’d been ten, fifteen years younger he’d have been with them, side by side, but he’d not the knees for it now, nor the will. Let the young do the fighting was his philosophy. After all, they had the most to gain. This lad, though, was younger than most and it had seemed criminal to leave him all on his own, so Owen had retreated a few yards and gathered together some fallen boughs and twigs to make a fire and sat there tending to it, waiting and watching, curious as to this boy’s situation, and more so when he caught the few words mumbled out in his sleep.

  ‘Them names,’ Owen said, seeing the guard go straight back up in the boy’s eyes like an axe-blade from the stump. And what eyes they were – green, like new born grass, the kind that always brought on an unwelcome twitching in his trousers ever since he was young. Not that he’d ever acted on it. Never had the guts. Always knowing it was wrong, but knowing it never made it go away. Sixty five years of dealing with it, but the impulse stronger now than ever, especially when it was so obvious this boy was going nowhere and no one to go to, just another casualty of the struggles, someone no one would ever miss.

  It took all his willpower not to just leap across the fire and have done with it once and for all. Small burial mound out here in the sticks – no one would notice it, no one coming anyway, as he’d earlier observed, not with what was going on, all the unrest in the country. Oddly, it was precisely this that stopped him, because he recognised the names the boy had mumbled in his sleep. He looked longingly at his flask of poteen but didn’t dare pour himself out another shot. Too much, and who knew how long his willpower was going to last.

  Best thing was to get the temptation away and then he could drink as much as he wanted, imagine everything that might have happened. Those green eyes…that small compliant body…that small compliant body that could be his. Owen swallowed, his mouth flooded with saliva at just the thought of the transgression. It had always been like this, but he’d conquered it before and could do so again.

  ‘You’ve nothing to fear from me,’ Owen said, licking his lips, unable to deny himself this one small pleasure. ‘But I’m guessing you’re maybe friends with those people you were talking on, from the way you spoke them.’

  He watched the boy closely. Do or die time. Literally. If the boy was part of the Cause then Owen would let him off with a free pass. If he was on the Loyalist side then things were going to go a different way. Sixty five years of repression was a long time to be waiting, and he’d no love for Loyalists, no matter how young. One gone would be a blessing to his country, no matter how they went.

  ‘Mogue Kearns was the first of ‘em,’ he said quietly, and caught the small flicker in the boy’s eyes at the mention of the name, the unmistakable look of yearning and regret in them that made Owen let out a sigh.

  So, one of ours then, he thought with bitterness. So close, and yet no turnips.

  He stabbed hard at the fire and lowered his head. Time to get the boy away from him before he changed his mind.

  ‘Ain’t dead yet,’ he said, ‘or so I’ve heard.’

  He was rewarded by a smile from the boy that had Owen pulling his legs rapidly together to hide the small spurt of ejaculate he’d not been able to keep in. Jesus, but this boy looked good. A ripe plum begging to be picked, and if a smile could do that for him… Christ, he urgently needed to get out and away and see to himself before he really lost control.

  ‘Guessing you’re needing direction to a safe house,’ he managed after a few moments, ‘and there’s one not long yonder; my daughter’s home, maybe hole you up for a few days.’

  Please Christ, take me up on it.

  He couldn’t get the images out of his mind – him leaping across the fire, doing what he’d been wanting to do his whole life. And then Greta spoke, the first she’d done so far.

  ‘Thank you,’ Greta said. ‘I would be much obliged.’

  Jesus and Mary, Owen O’Malley near broke his breeks. The boy’s voice was so pure and unbroken, and his wanting of that voice and that body so great it was all he could do to speak.

  ‘Shauna,’ he said, he wasn’t quite sure how. ‘Her name is Shauna Clooney. Part of the safe house route. Lives up the road maybe ten, eleven miles. Follow the river, and if you’ll take my advice you’ll get to her soon as you can and she’ll see you right.’

  So close then, so close he came to snapping, but thankfully the boy got himself to standing then.

  ‘Shauna Clooney,’ Greta repeated. ‘Thank you.’

  Owen blinked. He thought of offering his hand, but the touch of that cool, pale skin against his own would have boiled him over. Instead he muttered out a few more directions and Greta nodded and went.

  The moment the green-eyed boy began walking away, hobbling on his sticks, Owen took a few large swigs of his poteen, undid his trousers, and began to tug away for all he was worth. Jesus God, how had it come to this?

  26

  AND SHE SEES MAGGOTS IN HER TIDY HOUSE

  NEAR THE EAST COAST OF IRELAND

  The old man’s directions had been fine and easy to follow, not one of her known safe houses, but even so. Greta reached the place late in the afternoon, feet so sore she could hardly bear to take another step. But she was nervous, now that she was here. She’d disliked Owen O’Malley intensely. The way he’d looked at her had been in no way good, but for all that he’d given her a name and the possibility of somewhere to stay, if only for a couple of nights. And that was all she had going for her right now.

  Her previous despair had dissipated a little. Owen O’Malley, no matter how despicable he had been, had told her that Mogue Kearns was still alive, and if he was alive then Greta still had a purpose. An oath was an oath, and no way around it. Even so, when she chapped at the door of Shauna Clooney’s cottage there was a small tremor to her hand as she shooed away the several chooks that gathered themselves straightaway about her ankles, pecking at the maggots she was unaware were spilling in abandon from the cuffs of her trousers and the torn-up folds of her boots.

  When there was no answer to her knock her heart sapped of a sudden with the contradictory anxieties of both relief and disappointment. She leant her shoulder against the wood of the closed door and closed her eyes. She might have gone to sleep again with sheer weariness if she’d not previously registered the white corner of a sheet fluttering from a line somewhere to her right. She forced herself to take a few more steps, took the couple of yards to the corner of the small cob-and-wattle building, seeing then a lean, freckly woman hanging out her washing on the drying green.

  The woman turned at Greta’s approach, shading her eyes, taking from her lips the last peg she needed to finish hanging out her sheets. She moved towards Greta, and if there was a threat there then Greta was in no fit state to see it, and for herself all Shauna Clooney saw was a raggedy-arsed boy hanging by her wall, noting the way he limped and stepped so gingerly in his boots as he took a single pace out onto the drying green. Shauna raised her arm in acknowledgment to let him know she’d seen him and for him to stay where he was.

  No threat, Greta thought, as she saw that pale arm raised up into the late afternoon.

  No threat, Shauna thought, as she raised it, for God knew she’d lived through enough of them over the years to know one when she saw it.

  Nothing like being brought up a Catholic in a Proddie enclave for un
derstanding danger, especially not when she’d a da like she had, who’d a mouth that didn’t understand how to shut itself up even when the enemy were camped up just outside of town. Old da, she thought. Hadn’t seen him in months, not since he’d taken himself off with the sheep down the drove roads, fattening them up on the riverside grass as he went, selling the best off at the markets he fastened on to, buying up others he could bring home to increase the quality of the flock. Always a sheep man, never one for arable. He maybe wasn’t far away, but would never be back until the harvests were brought in and every last grain of corn gleaned from out of every field by his sheep and the newly arriving geese – share and share alike – and only then would he come home.

  No threat then, she thought again, but was still surprised when she got close enough and the boy spoke out all hesitant, quoting her da’s name right after she’d been thinking on him, offering up old Owen as his explanation for him being here at all.

  ‘Your da Owen sent me,’ was all he said, Shauna looking more closely at her visitor, alerted by the light pitch of the voice, the faint bulge of breasts beneath her jacket. She had the advantage of full light as Owen had not and realised with a shock that this was no boy but a lass in lad’s clothing, and none too well fitting at that.

  All threat gone now in that simple act of perception and two minutes later Shauna was welcoming this lost lassie into her cottage, into her fold. She had her sat by her range, presenting her with a bowl of warmed brose and her taking it as if she’d never had a better meal in all her days.

  After Greta had downed the first bowl she placed it gently on the floor beside her feet and was about to introduce herself properly, thank the woman for her kindness, tell her who she was and how she had come here and why, when a few fat maggots rolled themselves out from her boots onto the floor. She watched their small white wrigglings with astonishment, unable to figure where they’d come from or what they meant.

  When Shauna bent to pick up the bowl to give it a re-fill she saw those maggots, the blood draining from her face, appalled that such things should be found in her own home and in front of a guest, even a guest as ragged and battered as this young-comer. And then she saw another roll out beside its siblings and understood.

  ‘Off with those boots!’ Shauna ordered.

  When the girl didn’t react Shauna knelt down beside her and gently broke away the frayed knots of string that were holding the paltry scraps of leather together about her feet, horrified when she eased them off entirely as she saw and smelt the remnants of the lass’s socks and the dirty strips of material stuck to her skin with sticky pus and drying blood. Straightaway she fetched a bowl of warm water, a small blizzard of soap flakes scattered upon its surface, and down she knelt again, picking up each of the girl’s feet in turn and placing them in the water, socks and all, tutting, not in admonition but sorrow. Greta sucked her breath through her teeth as Shauna worked, wincing as the warm water seeped and broached the broken layers of her skin.

  ‘My lord, girl,’ Shauna Clooney spoke softly as she dabbed with the utmost care and gentleness at Greta’s feet, peeling back what was left of her bandages, easing away the many strands of wool that had embedded themselves into her soggy-scabbed wounds. She skimmed away the maggots that fell into the blood-stained water of the bowl, throwing them expertly into the small fire that burned in the grate, their soft white bodies sizzling and exploding as she carried out her work with the efficiency of a mother who has spent many hours of her life tending to the bruises, bites, grazes and cuts presented to her by her own children – not that she’d ever seen anything as bad as this.

  After she’d cleaned Greta’s feet as best she could Shauna went into her pantry, bringing back bottles of lavender-infused oil, honey and goose-grease, then nipped outside for a few moments to pick some fresh wood-sage and comfrey leaves. Once returned, she applied all her medicaments in the specific order she deemed necessary before bandaging the girl’s feet in a swaddling of clean rags.

  ‘My Lord, girl,’ Shauna said again once she’d finished, Greta having remained quiet throughout her ministrations, biting the insides of her lips when Shauna had run her nails through one or other of her sores to remove a last maggot, a last fly-egg or casing, some stubborn piece of earth that had been lodged inside her burst blisters from the first, moved not so much by the pain as this woman’s efficient kindness.

  When Shauna was finally done, and Greta’s feet were mummified in her ointments and bandages, she threw the last aspects of those stinking socks and the pathetic scraps of what remained of her boots onto the fire, left them flashing and sizzling like bad sausages as they quickly disintegrated into the nether-realms of wood and peat. Shauna straightened up from her kneeling, wiping a hand across her brow, tidying back the strands of hair that had come loose during the hour or so of her nursing, drying her wet hands upon her apron and in doing so noting that it was bloodied and stained and would need boiling for at least an hour to get it back to righteous white.

  ‘But what have you been doing in those fly-farms you’ve been calling boots?’ Shauna asked as she levered her way to standing, started picking up her bottles and liniments and began to move away. And Greta couldn’t have said whether it was this finishing or this moving away that triggered it, but suddenly she started to cry.

  It was weeping like she’d not done since she was a bairn, if she’d ever done it then. She’d never been a complainer or a moaner, the sort of child who fell out of a tree and knocked herself out, woke up, brushed herself off, embarrassed by her momentary weakness, hoping her brother wasn’t witness to it, wherever he was. This silent kind of weeping came as much of a shock to her as it did to Shauna and overtook them both completely.

  Greta’s entire body convulsed, making her feel like she was collapsing in upon herself, her throat completely choked like an eel-trap that has been left untended over winter with no way for anything to get in or out. She despised herself for this crying, but couldn’t stop it. She wanted words to spill out of her mouth like those maggots had spilled out of her boots, wanted to tell Shauna all about the terrible things she’d seen, how she’d been responsible for the slaughter on Vinegar Hill because she’d not got there in time to stop it, how she’d grabbed at escape when offered it and turned her back on the one man she most admired in the world with hardly a second thought.

  ‘Wheesht, wheest,’ Shauna Clooney murmured, trying to calm the girl, hurrying herself back to her side once she’d replaced her bottles to the press. She dragged up a stool, sitting herself beside Greta, rubbing at her back, alarmed at the depth of the girl’s distress.

  But sent here by my da, she thought, and that’s a gift worth preserving.

  She eased the lass up from her chair and led her to the box-bed built into the wall nearest the fire; led her there and sat her down, pushing gently at her shoulders until the girl subsided onto its length, Shauna covering the shaking child with blankets, despite the summer’s easy warmth and the extra heat from the fire, because she was shivering so. Then she placed a flagon of water by the side of the box bed, leaving the girl only when she saw her eyes close in sleep, despite the tears still rolling sporadically down her face.

  Shauna left her, made her way to her own bed, listening to the girl’s quiet weeping that just went on and on, Shauna’s hands cupped around her chin as she lay back on her pallet, waiting until she heard the girl’s breathing regulate into a softer rhythm meaning she was at last at rest, for a time at least.

  27

  ST DROSTAN FORGETS TO COME THROUGH

  WALCHEREN PENINSULA

  George got to their meeting place before Joachim. It was an unusual state of affairs, George having started from his home a good half hour early, the day gloriously fresh and inviting. He didn’t bother with breakfast and instead headed straight out, getting to the spring and crouching down, dipping the pewter mug – hanging from chain and hook – into the clear, cold water and taking a long draught before settling onto his be
nch. From here he could see the long bay below his village, and pondered on how different his life had been since those days following the storm and the gifts of both Ruan’s cufflinks and the coins from Vlissingen.

  Joachim had told him of a clock in his home town built into the tower in the central plaza, how whenever the hour struck, the figure of a woodcutter would come out of a hatchment at one side of the clock and move itself slowly to the other. He would chop at his never diminishing pile of wood as he went before disappearing once more, the circle of his existence spent half in darkness, half in light. And this was precisely how George saw his own life: the dark half having already passed, the new part, in the light, having only just begun.

  He heard a noise in the nearby copse of alders and willows that grew along the line of the burn tumbling down past the Servants onto the polder line where it met the sea, at least when the sea was at its highest.

  Woodcock, he thought, imaginings their fat bodies sizzling on a spit above an open fire. Soon time to do a bit of hunting. Get the lads with me and pull in a few fat fowls before they turn into winter scrawn.

  He hummed softly and closed his eyes, enjoying the warmth of the rising sun on his skin and the sharp smell of stranded seaweed in his nostrils, the taste of sea salt on his lips. By Heaven, but it was good to be alive, and even better when he heard Joachim calling out his name.

  ‘Hi there, George!’

  And there he was, this Brother in his pale habit George had grown so close to, coming down the slope from the promontory that housed the Servants, stepping gingerly over the polders past the little copse where the woodcock lay. George stood up to meet his friend, raising his hand in greeting, when something flashed across his line of sight – a hawk, maybe, something fast, a peregrine maybe, or a merlin.