The Legacy of the Lynx: Three people, two murders, one oath... Page 20

  At almost the same moment Joachim lost his footing, went headfirst into a large mound of thrift. It wasn’t hard to do. The polders were pocked through and through with small holes scoured out by the sea. George waited a few seconds, but Joachim didn’t get up. The upper part of his body was hidden from George by the pink and green haze of the thrift he’d gone into. George leaned his body forward, shaded his eyes, but could make out only the tips of Joachim’s boots, slowly registering their spasmodic kicking up and down, up and down.

  George ran, best as he could with his uneven legs, Joachim maybe forty yards away, then thirty, then twenty, and still not getting himself up. George was panting hard by the time he reached Joachim, who was still prostrate, but he’d managed to roll himself over on one side and George was appalled to see both ends of the arrow that had gone in at Joachim’s chest and out again the other side. One of Joachim’s hands gripped about the ingoing shaft, the other flailing in the sand, and a broad dark rivulet of blood spreading obscenely across his habit both front and back.

  ‘My God!’ George murmured going down on one knee, immediately placing his own hand around Joachim’s to stop him plucking at the arrow, the only effect of which would be to pull the barbed end of it deeper into the flesh on the other side.

  ‘Don’t move, Brother,’ George said quickly. ‘Keep on your side exactly as you are, and be as still as you can. Can you breathe?’

  Joachim’s face was pale as reed pith, but he moved his head a fraction in acknowledgement.

  ‘Very well,’ George went on, keeping his voice steady and calm. ‘In a few moments I’m going to move you just a little. I’m going to pack some mud about your back and chest to slow the bleeding and then I’m going for help. Do you understand?’

  Again Joachim gave a barely perceptible movement of his chin.

  ‘Alright then. Don’t you worry. We’ll have you fixed in no time.’

  George went quickly at his task, scooping up handfuls of the heavy, clay-like mud that made up the polders, building it in mounds about Joachim’s chest and upper back, packing it tight and hard, grimacing when Joachim groaned as he shoved each one home.

  ‘I’m away to the Servants now,’ George said. ‘Don’t move. Concentrate on your breathing. Pull it in, push it out, and I’ll be back in a flash.’

  This was a little optimistic he knew, but he was only five minutes away from the Servants at full tilt and if he could get someone younger than he then they’d be quicker back. He was off then, lolloping up to the promontory, cursing as he passed the small copse, cursing even more as he caught a glimpse of someone leaping like a hare over the polders away to the west, well in the distance now, and no hope of being identified.

  Goddamned hunters. Goddamned lousy hunters. Never mind that he’d only moments earlier been thinking of going out of and doing the same.

  So, no woodcock then, just some young boy who probably had one of those new bows that were all made of metal and no easy things to master, so easy to aim one way and shoot another. Nothing in the copse now but a couple of starlings bickering about the bullace flowers and a wren chittering loud, low and hidden as he passed. He ground his teeth. No time to think on that now.

  Afterwards he’d track down every last boy and bow within two square miles to find the nit-witted coward responsible, who’d not even bothered to check the damage he’d done before fleeing to save his own skin.

  Time now to get to the Servants, and with any luck save Brother Joachim’s life.

  Shauna did not sleep well, but rose at the usual hour, her body honed by habit and common usage. Five o’clock, and always much to do in the hours that were spread out before her every waking day before she sat down to breakfast.

  First there was the stove to see too, next she had to lay out her man’s clothes, polish his boots, rub wax and goose-fat into every seam of them, into every crevasse, to keep his feet dry as she could. She had to skim the buttermilk for the soda-bread dough, mash up the bran-mix for the chickens, milk the cows in the shed before leading them out to the field behind the house, taking the time on her way back to pick any mushrooms she could find or gather any fruits, nuts or herbs, according to their seasons.

  But this was a morning with a difference.

  She knew it the second she opened her eyes and gazed up towards the small porthole built into the wall across from her bed that allowed in a small shard of light as soon as the sun passed a certain degree above the horizon. A clock of sorts, one that never lost time if you knew how it worked, going slower in winter, speeding up and then winding down again. Usually she would lie a while, just a few minutes, watching the sun slanting down the walls, guessing the weather outside from its intensity.

  She would wait until its rays hit a certain point when she would sigh and creak her way up off her mattress, trying not to wake her husband, and move bare-foot across the cold flagstones and on into the next room. Here her clothes and clogs would have been left the evening before to warm themselves by the fire, her dress and undergarments hanging out their creases on the folding clothes-horse she erected every night by the grate.

  But not this morning. For a start, there was no husband to mollycoddle, for he was away to the coast with a host of other men – at least those who hadn’t gone south to take part in the Rising – because a pod of whales had beached themselves on the sands on some bay outside of Dublin. There was good money to be had in stripping down their carcasses, boiling out their oil, get their acres of skins scraped and stretched for leather, any ambergris collected, refined and filtered, the best sold to perfume-makers for a fine price, the worst to the soap-makers for a little less.

  Her man had spent a good few of his early years, before they’d married, on the Scottish whaling ships up north and so knew what he was about. There was a possibility he might bring home more money than they could otherwise have accrued throughout an entire year of scrimping and saving on the farm. Be that as it may, the fact was that Donal was not here.and there was no need for her to set out clothes for him or get his boots seen to, and she was still wearing most of her own clothes from the night before, having lain down directly in singlet and stockings, stripping off only the outer layers. More importantly there was a young girl sleeping in the box-bed by her fire, and so Shauna dallied a little, not knowing whether her getting up would wake the girl, wanting her to sleep for as long as her body needed.

  Shauna reflected that she could count upon the fingers of one hand the mornings she’d woken up alone in this bed since she was married, the few exceptions being when she’d been as beached as were those whales outside of Dublin, her stomach a gravid mountain rising up before her. Her successive children even then hadn’t let her sleep too long, kicking – as they all had – with a relentlessness that told her each was over-eager to get out before their time.

  Two of them had done just that, and in consequence died before opening their tiny, blood-smeared eyes onto a world that should have been theirs. Of the other four who had bided inside her a little longer, three had gone on to survive – hardy little beggars all – all now grown and gone, the two boys to the fighting, the girl marrying into a neighbouring farm. Only her and Donal left at the homestead, and her da Owen, when he was back for the winter from the droving.

  She tried to relax, closed her eyes, tried to drift back into sleep, but her body was having none of it. Within a few minutes she was too restless to remain lying idly on her bed, needing to get up and doing. She dressed quickly and quietly into yesterday’s clothes, but took a clean pinafore from the shelf below the wash-stand before splashing some water onto hands and face. She opened her door and tiptoed across the flagstones of the main room of the cottage, where the girl was in the box-bed.

  She could see from where she stood that the fire had enough red life left in its embers to last another while and so she let it be, did what she had never done before – feeling strangely exhilarated to be breaking the pattern of almost every single day she had spent in this house
for the last twenty-seven years. Instead of going to fire or pantry she stepped straight for the door that led outside, putting her stockinged feet into her boots but not doing them up. Before leaving she looked back at the girl, who was sleeping soundly.

  The blankets Shauna had placed over her the night before had been pushed down below her waist, but Shauna could see the gentle rise and fall of the girl’s chest, her small breasts more evident now that several buttons had been loosened on her singlet, hands curled liked a baby’s beneath her chin. One bandaged foot hung over the edge of the box-bed, a dark brown stain spreading from heel to ankle.

  She looked so very young and vulnerable that tears began to leak from Shauna Clooney’s eyes as she stood there immobile, gazing at this wounded child she didn’t know the name of, feeling an echo inside her of when her own children had been young, like she hoped she’d feel again if they ever provided her with another generation to mollycoddle and worry about.

  But there were other things needed doing now, other animals needing her care and protection and so she slowly, slowly lifted the latch of the outer door and disappeared into the pale light of dawn.

  Joachim was taken up to the Servants. Once there, George supervised the removal of the arrow, clipping off the barbed end so it could be removed, clipping off the feathered end for his own purposes, arrows being feathered differently, each to their own, and here was a way to find out who had done the actual deed. No doubt it would never come to anything as far as the law was concerned, but George was intent on discovering who that early morning poacher had been who’d hit a man instead of a goose or a woodcock or whatever else he’d been firing at. And hewas going to make damn sure he never did anything like it again.

  Joachim was lucky, or God blessed, as the Brothers would have it, the arrow having grazed his heart but done no permanent damage. A lung had been punctured, but he would be able to get along with the other until it healed, as long as pneumonia didn’t set in. There was no sign of it yet, nor two days later, which was a good sign. Of the person leaping over the polders and away George could give no adequate description, but once he was certain Brother Joachim was out of danger he spent every waking hour going round every house in every village strung out on the edges of the peninsula asking questions.

  Who had been at home on the morning of such and such a date? Who had access to bows and arrows? What kind were they? Could he see the feathers they used to make their flights? Did any one of them possess a crossbow?

  More and more George was thinking crossbow. So much harder to aim, so much easier to maim. He was convinced he could uncover the guilty party, but the more people he asked, the more they seemed to exclude themselves. He was not discouraged. He would not rest. He would not sleep easy ande would not desist, not until the culprit was caught.

  Greta didn’t hear Shauna go, passing quiet as the shadows did across the port-hole dial of Shauna’s room. Greta wakened only when the cattle out in the shed began to low and clatter and cough as Shauna sat upon her stool, pumping out their milk into her pail.

  Shauna had already seen to the chickens, giving them the last scraps of yesterday’s mash and brose, scolding them as they were scolding her for not giving them anything fresh and new. She had tried to lead them away from the house and to the back of the yard so their noise wouldn’t wake the girl, tempting them with a few handfuls of almost ripened corn she snapped from the field onto which one side of her yard was backed.

  She’d found eleven eggs in the roost-house and was well pleased with that, didn’t chide the chooks for long for their noise, was thinking instead on what she could make for breakfast. She’d still a few links of beef sausage she’d traded for down in the village the week before, and they’d been hanging in the smoke from the fire long enough since and would be truly tasty. She’d been saving them for Donal’s return from the whales, but a good breakfast for the young visitor seemed a better use. Add to that some drop-scones made yellow by this morning’s eggs and milk and there’d be a bit of a feast when the lass finally awoke.

  Shauna was startled by a slight rapping at the door of the milking shed, and looked up to find the girl herself standing there, propped on two of Owen’s old sheep staffs she must have found by the boot-box by the door.

  ‘Can I give you some help?’ Greta asked, Shauna so surprised she gave an inadvertently hard tug at the teats she’d been working, making the old cow low and give out a feeble kick that nearly overturned the pail. Shauna grabbed quickly at its rim to keep it still. She looked towards the girl and saw the feet she’d bandaged with so much care the night before now fortified by several strips from her ragbag, tied on with some of the knotted strings from the girl’s mangled boots that Shauna had neglected to burn with the rest the night before.

  On any other day than this her reprimand would have been sharp and quick – using dirty string on clean bandages, indeed – but not today, and not with the girl leaning there so pathetically, looking like an old woman fifty years before her time, thinking instead how hard it must have been for her to have hobbled across the yard on her makeshift crutches, feet protected from the cobbles and their dew by only those small scraps of dirty cloth.

  ‘My Lord, girl,’ Shauna said, putting a milk-spattered hand to her forehead, ‘but what a fright you gave me. How are you not still sleeping by the fire?’

  Greta smiled, and now she had no bonnet on and no oversized boots she looked so small and fragile and feminine that Shauna couldn’t believe she’d mistaken her for a boy for even half a second. And that smile: it was radiant. No other word for it, no matter how filthy the girl’s face was, how stained and puffy from last night’s tears.

  ‘But it’s morning,’ Greta said simply. ‘And this is a farm, and I know there’s much to do on it and if I can help, then so I will.’

  There was such defiance to her answer, making it seem like she was expecting retaliation and was ready to counter it that Shauna smiled. She’d been just like this when she was young, and would have bet money – if she hadn’t considered betting a mortal sin – that this girl had grown up in a family of boys. And so she said nothing, merely stood and gestured at the half-filled pail and the three-legged stool she’d just vacated.

  ‘Any good at milking?’ Shauna asked, and in answer Greta hobbled over and took Shauna’s place on the stool, leaning her sticks against the side of the stall, taking the old cow’s teats in her young hands with a tenderness that almost broke Shauna’s heart.

  ‘Any good?’ Greta said, grinning up at Shauna, the milk already splashing white into the pail. ‘Only been doing it me whole life.’

  Later, they sat in the kitchen together, eating fried eggs and smoked beef-link sausages and the griddle scones Shauna had cooked up in the fat left by both. She quickly learned Greta’s name, but it took far longer to drag out of her the rest of her story, Shauna assuring Greta that anything she said would go this far and no further. Greta became quiet and sad as she recounted her part in the struggles, but Shauna would have none of it. What this girl had done for the Cause was truly astonishing. She’d risked her life every day for getting on three years, working as a messenger, moving from cadre to cadre, from Dublin down to Wexford, dressing sometimes as a boy, sometimes as girl, whichever suited, slipping her way between chinks in enemy lines, gleaning information as she went that would have had her strung up from the nearest tree if anyone understood what she was about.

  When Greta finally spilled out her guilt that she’d not got to Vinegar Hill in time to let them know the French weren’t coming, and so precipitated a massacre, Shauna put her foot down.

  ‘That was never going to happen, Greta,’ Shauna said decisively. ‘No matter what time you got there or did or didn’t do, those men were always going to fight that fight.’

  Greta didn’t looked convinced, not until Shauna spoke again.

  ‘My oldest son,’ she said, ‘went off to join the Rising last year, and my youngest fought at Bunclody with Myles Byrne. They both su
rvived, the Lord be praised, and got to Vinegar Hill with the rest of them since the end of May. And I can tell you this, my girl, that no matter what the Frenchies were doing, or had intentions of doing, or whether or not they or you would’ve got there in time, those men at Vinegar Hill were always going to make their stand there. It was long ago decided, and I had word of it myself from my youngest. Nothing you or anyone else could have done to stop it.’

  Greta tried to absorb what Shauna was telling her, her face scrunched up in concentration. She closed her eyes, shook her head.

  ‘So why?’ she said quietly. ‘If they knew there wasn’t going to be any reinforcements, why did they stay?’

  ‘Hush yourself, child,’ Shauna said. ‘These are men you’re talking about. If you or me had been in charge it would have gone differently a long time ago. Women always look to the future. We know what it means to invest in a child. Men don’t. You’re young yet, but you’ll find out. Men only see the here and now. And those men on the Hill? Well, they always meant to do or die. It’s all in the moment for them. It’s all about power and keeping face. I’ve two sons, lass, both on the Hill, so I know what I’m talking about.’

  Greta frowned. She’d never heard anyone say anything quite like this, but it all made so much sense: why Peter hadn’t legged it when he’d had the chance, why Mick Malloy had done what he’d done, the things Mogue Kearns had said to Greta, who would have laid down her life for his. He’d the chance to get them all away and hadn’t acted on it, and now Greta was beginning to question those decisions, seeing them from the outside instead of from the in, which was something she’d never done before.

  ‘Do you know where your sons are now?’ Greta asked, after a few moments absorbing what was for her a revelation.