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

  3

  GOODBYE RING, HELLO ROAD

  LOCH ECK, SCOTLAND 1798

  ‘At last!’ Ruan exclaimed as they piled themselves and their luggage into the open cart and were away, Golo having finally finished his checks on the house and outbuildings, the last shutter closed and nailed, the last key turned in the last lock and secured.

  Golo was smiling broadly but said nothing, and made certain to place himself between Fergus and Ruan for the first leg of their journey. Despite Fergus’s belief to the contrary, Golo was well aware of the feud that had grown up between his two protégés. He was neither deaf nor blind, and although they’d both tried not to argue or posture in front of him there was nothing went on beneath his roof he didn’t know about. He was sixty seven years old by his last count and this war between Fergus and Ruan had gone on far too long. Hence his eventual plan of action. Time apart would do them good.

  Golo never had family in the conventional sense. He’d spent his life obsessed with his past, and with Ruan’s, with resurrecting what their shared ancestors had started. The world was in darkness and it was high time it came into the light, and that was never going to happen until the doors of knowledge were flung open to every man and woman who had an inclination to learn. And this was his goal. He was an old man, he knew, but an old man with a mission, and he wanted Ruan and Fergus beside him when it came to fruition, to carry on his work when he was gone.

  The cart bumped and joggled them down the road but Golo kept his eyes upon the house that had been built above the loch, steady and serene. He loved every contour of it, every board, every wall, every shelf that held every book in its library. The most important of these last had been carefully chosen and culled and packed into three of the sea chests whose bulk and weight were weighing down their cart. They were the kernel of what he hoped to achieve, and he had more. He had the ghost of the Lynx at his side. He’d been tracking their lost library for years and now knew for certain where the most part of it was – one third in Ireland, one third in Holland, one third in Paris. All he had to do was put them together and the Lynx would be reborn.

  The cart stumbled around a bend, house and loch disappearing from view. Golo turned towards Ruan, wondering if he had the same small kick in his gut at leaving that Golo did, but Ruan wasn’t even looking in their direction. His lips were parted and Golo realised Ruan was humming some small tune to himself. Golo winced and turned away. Fergus observed this small gesture and unexpectedly rose to Ruan’s defence.

  ‘He’s young, Golo,’ Fergus said softly. ‘And he’s off on that big adventure he’s always dreamed of. He might not think it now, but never fear. One day he’ll be back.’

  Golo blinked. Fergus had been with him since Fergus and his father were fresh off the boat from Ireland, and ever since had proved himself a kindred spirit, never slighting Golo or his obsession, working with him man and boy to get them to the point they were at now.

  ‘There’s something I should have told you long ago,’ Golo said quietly, not wanting Ruan to overhear. ‘You’re as much my son as Ruan is, never mind that neither of you are my flesh and blood.’

  Fergus was about to speak but Golo placed a hand on Fergus’s knee and stopped him.

  ‘If Ruan doesn’t want the house then it’s yours, every last nut, bolt and book of it. It’s already taken care of. Half yours, half his. Not that I’ve told him. Let the young pup find out about life when he’s ready.’

  Fergus blinked. He’d not expected this,

  ‘So you’re not sending me to Ireland to be rid?’

  Golo’s stomach turned a somersault.

  ‘My God,’ he stammered, ‘but of course not. Surely you didn’t think…’

  Fergus’s beard parted slightly as he let out a small chuckle.

  ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘Though I did wonder when you first proposed it. Are you sure this Mr Crook really has what we’re after? It seems such an odd place for any of the Lynx to end up.’

  ‘That’s precisely why I need you there, to verify it. He does sound a little…eccentric, shall we say,’ Golo smiled, stones and glass houses coming to mind. ‘But if it really is the case then the ring and khipu will be a small price to pay for his inclusion.’

  Fergus patted the pouch in his pocket, remembering Ruan chucking his ring at Golo when the idea was mooted, saying he didn’t want it anyway, no matter how many generations of his family it had passed down through. Ruan’s ease at parting with his link to Lynx pained Golo, that much was plain, but Golo accepted it, as they hoped this Crook fellow would. Golo sighed, perhaps remembering the same scene.

  ‘And let’s not forget,’ he went on, ‘that this Mr Crook has offered to help with the French part. My contacts tell me Paris is pretty much closed to foreigners, at least to the English and that, apparently, includes the Scots.’

  He grimaced, and took a deep breath. ‘And that’s if we can get the necessary funds. Letters of intent and promissory notes aren’t going to be enough, however much I’d like them to be.’

  ‘If I can get finished in Ireland soon enough…’ Fergus began, but Golo shook his head.

  ‘One problem at a time. That’s the only way we’ll get there. One step, one problem at a time.’

  ‘If anyone can do it, it’s you, Golo,’ Fergus said after a couple of moments.

  ‘You mean I’m the only one mad enough to try,’ Golo replied lightly, patting Fergus on the shoulder.

  ‘You and me both,’ Fergus laughed. ‘You do know there’s a civil war going on in Ireland?’

  ‘I do,’ Golo smiled, ‘but if anyone can do it…’

  ‘I know,’ Fergus said, but felt a small jiggle in his stomach at the thought of going near fighting of any kind, but then again how bad could it be? This was Ireland after all and Ireland was no France, a country at war not only with itself but apparently just about every other country in the world.

  ‘Life would be so much easier if folk just got along,’ Fergus said, looking briefly at Ruan, a look not lost on Golo.

  ‘It will come out right in the end, Fergus. You’ll see. It’s like you said before, he’s young, and this adventure? Well, it will be the making of him.’

  ‘Of all of us, I hope,’ Fergus said.

  ‘Of all of us,’ Golo agreed. ‘A new chapter in all our lives, and by God, Fergus, I mean to see it done.’

  4

  ALMOST STOPPED BEFORE THEY’VE STARTED

  The boulder came out of nowhere, tumbling down the hillside with the momentum of a bull on heat, dislodging a tide of smaller stones that plinked and jumped onto the track a couple of seconds before the main event. It gave the boy driving the cart just enough time to hie up the horses and swerve them off the track to one side before the massive boulder darkened the sky above them and thundered down a few yards ahead, spewing up great wafts of dust and dried mud as it landed, lurching forward into the stone wall on the other side of the track before bouncing back again, rocking like a madman on his heels.

  ‘My God!’ Ruan exclaimed, jumping from the trap that had come to a ragged halt. ‘Where the beggeration did that come from?’

  He was excited, and made no secret of it. They’d all been within a second of being crushed to death or bowled out of the way like skittles, yet Ruan was happy as a bairn in a sandpit. He ran up to the boulder and laid his hands upon it, as if it had secrets to tell to only him.

  ‘Nearly did us all in!’ he said, his eyes shining, no fear in them, only the exhilaration of narrow escape. ‘Imagine the chances!’

  Golo already had, and found them wanting. His heart was doing somersaults and he put his fingers by habit to his wrist to check his pulse. It was fast and erratic and he tried to breathe deep and slow as the doctor had instructed him, looking up the short incline from the top of which the boulder must have come. The sun was against him, and although he shielded his eyes there was nothing to be seen but the top of the hillside and the blue sky beyond, and several lines of dust trickling downward
s in the boulder’s wake.

  He looked over towards Fergus, about to speak, but Fergus was already getting his way down from the cart, pragmatic as always, trying to figure a way around the obstruction that had so inexplicably landed in their midst.

  ‘It shouldn’t be too hard,’ he was saying, ‘we’ll have to unharness the horses, lead them around individually. We’ll need to shift the cart ourselves, take it and all the luggage around the wall. Get everything reassembled on the other side…’

  He was cut short by the cart boy shouting out a warning as another smaller rock came hurtling down, missing Fergus’s shoulder by barely an inch and only because Fergus flung himself behind the larger boulder at the warning. This second rock did not have the weight or mass of the first and hit the track and bounced once before flying spectacularly over the stone wall and going rolling on down the lower side of hill, continuing right down to the bottom of the valley the track was carved into, until it reached the river at the base a good two hundred feet below. It spooked the horses and they picked up their legs and began to run, taking the cart – and Golo – with them, Golo shouting wildly as he felt the heavy chests shifting in their ropes at his back.

  The cart boy and Ruan charged after the cart and caught the reins only seconds before they attempted the insane leap over the wall to what they saw as their only path to safety. The horses were still frothing and rearing and pounding at the earth in panic when Golo stepped down on shaking legs and sat heavily on the ground, breathing hard, his heart racing out of control. Fergus ran towards Golo, glancing up the cliff, fearing a landslide might be in progress. Like Golo he was hampered by the sun being directly in that quadrant, but he saw the faint flit of a shadow that might have been a mountain hare or a deer. Or a man.

  ‘Goddamnmit, goddammit, ‘Fergus said over and over. ‘Are you alright, Golo? Are you alright?’

  Golo nodded weakly. ‘How long to get round?’ he managed to ask, as Fergus put an arm about his shoulders and helped him away twenty yards back up the road in case anything else might fall.

  Fergus didn’t answer immediately. He was badly shaken. Landslips were common enough occurrences on these roads, especially after the type of weather they’d been having – dry for weeks on end and then sudden downpours that could dislodge the earth around anything and set it falling – but he’d never been in such close proximity to it actually occurring.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he said eventually, ‘couple of hours maybe. Quicker if I can leave you and give the lads a hand.’

  ‘Go,’ said Golo, leaning back against the cliff. ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘I’m fine.’

  Fergus hesitated a moment but then went to help the others.

  It took three and a half hours, Ruan and the driving lad – much to Fergus’s annoyance – keeping up an unstoppable banter about badly things might have gone.

  ‘One second more and we’d have been catapulted down the side of the glen;’

  ‘Squashed into fish chum;’

  ‘Had our skulls crushed like cobnuts.’

  On and on until Fergus threatened to chuck the two of them down the side of the valley himself and finish what the boulder had not managed to do. He was not angered so much by their chatter as worried about the cause. He couldn’t understand how a landslip could have dislodged that first enormous boulder and then a second smaller one, but nothing before or since. The whole incline was crenelated at the top with rocks of all shapes and sizes, none of which had fallen with them, and he thanked God for it or they would truly have been done for. But he was curious and took a few minutes before they left to take a proper look at the boulder that was blocking the middle of the track.

  It was of no uncommon shape, slightly larger at the base than it was at the top, and had landed the same way up it must have been at the top, a tideline clearly indicating how much of the base had been in the ground and which above. What concerned him most was that the bottom couple of inches that were stained by soil and peat had several lines marked through them – not clear, not that straight – but it looked to Fergus as if someone might have put a couple of strong crowbars beneath the boulder to send it on its way and, however you looked at it, that could not be good.

  Once back on their way Ruan and Golo were in good spirits.

  ‘We should still make the boat,’ Golo was saying. ‘No journey ever goes as one would expect and I built in an extra day to make sure of it.’

  Fergus was relieved to hear this news. He hadn’t imparted his suspicions to Golo that the landslide might not have been all it seemed and was glad of it. Golo had enough to worry about, and his grounds for suspicion were thin – a few marks on the stone were neither here nor there. Nor, apparently, were the hours they had wasted because, as usual, Golo had planned well. Another day’s travelling and they’d be at the top end of the Holy Loch where they would say farewell to the cart boy and load their stuff onto the ferry that would take them from the Holy Loch to Gourock, and from Gourock on to Port Glasgow.

  But when they got to the Holy Loch their hopes took another dive.

  ‘It’s been holed,’ they were told by the man who was supposed to shift their gear onto the ferry.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Golo asked, doing that thing Fergus recognised, taking his pulse with his fingers, as if that was going to stop the heart palpitations he’d suffered these past few years.

  ‘You must have more than one ferry,’ Fergus put in.

  Their luggage was piled up high behind them, the cart boy already gone, filled with his stories, eager to get back and tell them loud and long to anyone who would listen. Fergus was not best pleased, and no more was Golo Eck, and he was about to speak again when the harbourmaster held up his hand and got his tuppence worth in first.

  ‘Canna help it, gents,’ he said, all dour looks and drooping jaws and a massive stomach sticking out over his drawers. ‘We’ve only the one and it’s holed good and proper. Ferry’s aff til we can get it fixed. Might be one day might be two, but we’ll fix it. Till then we’ve nought more to tell ye. Over land to Port Glasgow’s a helluva way and’ll take far longer than us’ll need to fix the boat, and no more price, like.’

  It was deeply frustrating to look over that short stretch of water and see the lighthouse at Cloch Point on the other side and know they weren’t going to make it in time for their respective passages to Ireland and the Continent, but they had no choice.

  ‘Cupla bonny stopping houses in Dunoon,’ the harbourmaster offered. ‘An I can tak care on yon chests so’s you dinna need to move ‘em.’

  Golo waved a limp hand.

  ‘So be it,’ he said wearily.

  Fergus looked at him with some anxiety. The travelling had seriously tired Golo and it might be no bad thing to be delayed. It would give Golo time to rest up before the boat journey he was dreading, hating confinement and proximity to other men, the lack of space, of having to eat and sleep with people he didn’t know.

  Fergus arranged transport to the nearest coaching inn, secured assurements that their baggage would be safely kept and a boy sent to fetch them the moment the ferry was fixed and sailable. Ruan, meanwhile, was clicking his heels on the flagstones as he stamped up and down.

  ‘What the blasted hell are we supposed to do in a hole like this for two days?’ he said with venom, spitting into the green waters of the loch. Fergus closed his eyes in irritation, busying himself with seeing to Golo, who patted his hand with his own.

  ‘Don’t worry, old friend,’ Golo said. ‘It’s a setback, nothing more, nothing less. We’ll be in Port Glasgow shortly and once there we can rearrange our passage onward. No journey is worth its goal if obstacles are not put in its path.’

  Fergus smiled briefly. It was so like Golo to see the good in the bad.

  ‘And a couple more days together,’ Golo continued. ‘Where can be the harm in that?’

  None at all. Fergus thought. Unless I kill your ward for being the most annoying person on the planet. As if on cue Ruan
picked up a handful of stones and began to pitch them at the heads of the oystercatchers who flashed up their red legs and beaks and took a noisy decision into clumsy flight to get out of his range.

  He dreamt that night of Ruan throwing those stones at the oystercatchers, but this time Fergus – who had taken on the form of the rolling boulder – rammed right into Ruan’s back and shoved him down into the green water, happy to see the panic and despair on his young and handsome face, and did not lift a finger to save him.

  No point, Fergus had thought in the dream, of pissing into the wind.

  5

  GETTING ON, AND LUCK ON THEIR SIDE

  The harbourmaster’s guess had been good, and two days later they were all delivered without further incident to Port Glasgow.

  It was the busiest place Ruan had ever seen and he was goggle-eyed with staring at the enormous harbour that had been excavated into the river Clyde, at the warehouses, bond sheds and custom houses dwarfing the dwellings scattered behind them like seed thrown out for hens. Most of all he was hugely impressed by the gargantuan tobacco ships that plied between Scotland and New England and the intricate riggings of the barques, brigs and snau – mostly of Dutch design – that went out over to the continent.

  ‘My God!’ he shouted, as they pushed their way through the noisy and busy quays that were thronged with stevedores, passengers and traders and lined on the landward side by chandlers, rope makers, sail menders and all sorts of other wondrous wares he’d never seen before, certainly not in such profusion. The stink was appalling, a mixture of rancid fish and sweat, bilge-water spilling out into the river stale from thousands of miles of travelling. Ruan breathed it all in until his blood began to fizz and tingle in his veins.

  My God! This is what life is all about, he thought: tumultuous and busy and filled to the brim with new things. Fergus tried to keep one eye on the lad whilst he struggled with Golo to keep the trolley they had bargained for from tipping over with the weight of their sea chests and baggage. They were looking for a boat called the Collybuckie on which Golo had booked his and Ruan’s passage. By great good fortune – at least for them – it had not sailed on time but was still in dock owing to the captain having come down with some fever or other, and was due out on the morrow.