The Legacy of the Lynx: Three people, two murders, one oath... Page 3

  Golo was sweating. He hated the rambunctious noises and crowds, the shouting and smells, and was more glad than he could say that Fergus was still at his side, guiding their way through the throng of bodies, immensely relieved when Fergus shouted that he could see the gangway they were headed for.

  ‘Just over there!’ Fergus yelled, shoving a couple of small boys out of the way, the uneven wheels of the trolley bumping over the cobbles, setting the sea chests wobbling dangerously on its back.

  The Collybuckie looked a mean and shabby craft compared to the great fleets that went over to the Americas, but then it did not have so far to go, nor such great and unpredictable seas to contend with. Once at the gangplank, a crew of men swarmed over to take their chests on board and stow them in the hold. Their papers were checked; Ruan leaving Golo and Fergus to this tedious duty, running up the gangplank laughing as he left them behind.

  Golo was finding it hard to believe this day had ever come. He was brimming over with excitement and undeniable trepidation, hoping his heart could take it. He gripped hard at Fergus’s hand before he took his first steps on-board and away from the pandemonium that was helter-skeltering around them both. Fergus’s own boat over to Ireland had well and truly sailed, but they were frequent, and he was booked onto the next one available, due to sail that very afternoon.

  Fergus was worried for Golo, and – though he hated to admit it – worried too for Ruan Peat. He’d not always been the thorn in Fergus’s side that he was now and he prayed to God that Golo was right, and that this journey would be the tool Ruan needed to heave-ho him back onto a more even keel.

  ‘A new chapter,’ Golo said, Fergus bending his head down to hear him so his beard touched Golo’s sparse hair. It was such a gentle, unbefore-made touch that Fergus was moved to rest his chin briefly on Golo’s head. It only lasted a moment, this contact, before Fergus broke away.

  ‘Be safe,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ll come find you when I’ve done what you’ve asked.’

  Golo nodded, his eyes wet as he gripped Fergus’s hands hard in his own.

  ‘You’ve meant so much to me,’ Golo said. ‘I feared you would go after your father died, and I cannot thank you enough for not leaving me alone with that young boil who calls himself Ruan Peat.’

  The jest was timely, and Fergus smiled.

  ‘Where would I have gone?’ he said, and after a second Golo answered in all seriousness.

  ‘Back to Ireland. I always thought you’d go back. And now you are going, if at my own bidding, and I wish it wasn’t so.’

  ‘As do I,’ Fergus replied. ‘But it’s not forever.’

  Two strong men teetering on the brink of emotion and not quite getting there.

  ‘Look after Ruan,’ Fergus said, realising suddenly how deeply he cared for the sullen boy, never mind he’d made his life a misery these past few years.

  ‘I will,’ Golo said. ‘But who is to look after you?’

  Fergus brushed at his beard and then tapped his finger against his chest.

  ‘I’ve your tokens, and because they are with me I shall be invincible.’

  They both smiled at the bravado, but with it were content. They hugged briefly, patting at each other’s backs, and then Golo Eck went up the gangplank onto the Collybuckie, Fergus keeping watch until Golo reached the safety of the boat, when he turned and waved, Ruan suddenly appearing at Golo’s side and also raised his hand before dragging Golo off to show him where they were berthed.

  Fergus pushed his way back through the crowds of shouting men, running boys, the huge tottering pallets of merchandise being directed this way, the imposing piles of barrels waiting to be shifted seaward or landward depending on what they contained. He looked back only once but there was no sign of Golo or Ruan, only the small, shabby outline of the Collybuckie itself, dwarfed by monsters on either side.

  ‘Be safe,’ Fergus whispered. ‘Both of you.’

  6

  WHEN A HANDKERCHIEF BECOMES THE SKY

  Ruan revelled in their going. He couldn’t wait to leave Scotland behind. He couldn’t believe he’d allowed himself to be cooped up in that house for so long with no one but Fergus and Golo for company. No wonder he’d griped at them both like a scratchy burr. Anyone would have in his situation. He should have left years before, with or without Golo’s blessing, with or without the paltry allowance that would revert to him from the Peat Estate the moment he turned of age, as he would do by the time this journey was halfway through.

  He’d been a fool, he told himself, for this was what life should be: the salt and the sea and the anticipation of all that would come. He’d hardly spoken to Golo since they’d been on board. They shared quarters, but Ruan spent as little time in them as he could. It had pleased him at first when Golo took under his wing the young cabin boy, Caro, assigned to look after them, and then it had irked him, Golo apparently wanting to spend no more time with Ruan than Ruan did with him, and happy in Caro’s company.

  He’d broken in on them one day to find Golo brushing the young lad up on his reading and writing and had gone away shaking with some emotion he only later realised was jealousy. Not that it made him seek out Golo – rather the opposite. Let Golo fill someone else’s head with rubbish for a change, for Ruan was sick to the back teeth with it, glad all that was behind him. Back in Scotland he’d been forced to be a part of Golo’s obsession with the Lynx, but it was no longer his concern.

  All had gone swimmingly as the cat-built ex-collier of the Collybuckie swept its usual rounds, heading from Glasgow to Aberdeen and from Aberdeen to Hull, stopping at both to unload and load up again. Ruan had the chance to roam more streets and towns, hardly understanding a word the natives said, so thick were their accents. He’d been excited when the winds rose as they rounded the Strait of Dover, and less worried than he should have been when those same winds drove them off course and then ceased abruptly, the fog coming down like a shroud for an entire day and night so he could barely see a few yards in front of his face.

  The Collybuckie limped on down the channel towards its goal of Gravenhage, already a day late for their landing, and by the time the fog lifted they were miles further on than they should have been, the rising winds making it impossible to turn. The only thing to do was to head on and find relief in Vlissingen on the lea side of the Walcheren Peninsula. But the winds did not let up, instead got stronger with every hour, hammering at them from every side as if it had iron and malevolent intent in its fists.

  Night fell, and even Ruan was thinking enough was enough. Excitement was one thing, but he saw fear in the faces of the crew and didn’t like it one bit, swiftly obeying when everyone was ordered down below, told to hang on to what they could, make sure they were all together and accounted for.

  The Collybuckie lurched like a drunk between the walls of a dark and narrow alley, the waves monstrous to either side, the storm giving no appearance of abating. Down below, loose cargo rattled and rolled in the hold, broken from their moorings. Trickles of sea water began to seep in through the caulking. Planks shrieked and rivets popped from their holes.

  Ruan was gripping for dear life at one of the tables bolted to the floor when a chair flew loose from its bolts and knocked him free as a tooth from a rotten jaw, sent him rolling about the floorboards trying to grab onto anything solid and fixed, hands flailing in the darkness, every lamp and candle long since smashed or blown out. A hand caught him as he thought he might be crushed against the furthest side, hauled him up, kept him fast. He couldn’t see his rescuer nor had any breath to thank him, for off the Collybuckie went to the other side, all that was left being to cling on in the hope that it would keep on righting itself after every horrid lurch and dip. Ruan couldn’t help but think of the Corryvrecken whirlpool just off Jura where men and boats had been sunk and lost, their boards and bodies flung up months – and miles – later.

  Jesus, don’t let me die like this, he prayed, his clothes drenched with sweat and the sea that was coming in at them
from every angle, sloshing around their feet, eager to swallow them whole. And where was Golo? Suddenly all Ruan wanted was Golo by his side to tell him everything would be alright, but he’d not seen Golo since the storm began to worsen so swift and sudden an hour or so earlier. He was sure he wasn’t in this room with everyone else for he would have sought Ruan out, and had probably – like the idiot he was – not been able to bear the thought of being smothered in other people’s sweat and fear and gone up on deck, despite all the warnings given to the contrary. And Caro? Where was Caro? Probably with Golo, and suddenly Ruan couldn’t bear it any more.

  ‘Golo!’ Ruan shouted again and again, but his exclamations were subsumed by the awful noises of the boat beginning to come apart at the seams and the sea that was crashing and crushing them, and the wind that was screaming all around them, conspiring like a pack of wolves to bring this fleck of humanity down, forcing it closer and closer in on itself until it had nowhere else to go.

  Ruan was right. When the call came to go down below into the communal space where passengers and crew gathered to eat, drink, play cards and pass the time, Golo went with them, though not for long. He was soon forcing his way up to the freedom of the over-world on deck, bent almost double as he struggled, half crawled, his way up the steps and across the deck, hanging onto halyards. Loose ropes whipped like cats-tails from the booms that swung without warning across his path, unsecured sheets flapped and cracked above his head. He felt his guts turning inside out and a sulphurous burn in his throat from the bile that made him retch and spit even as he sucked for breath against the terrible push of the wind.

  He could hear the shouts of the crew somewhere on the other side of the boat as they fashioned rafts however they could. They lashed old rollers and spars together along with any buoys they could lay hands on, adding some uprights, weaving in safety lines so that survivors could tie them about their waists or wrists to haul themselves in, should they make it as far as the water. Golo knew then the Collybuckie was done for and would soon be swamped, going down like one of those whale pods he’d once seen as a young man, sinking themselves in circles, sucking everything else in behind them.

  Golo had already resigned himself to dying, knowing all those rescuers with their makeshift rafts are on the other side of the boat and he cannot reach them without being tipped into the sea. But he doesn’t want to go, God help him, not without seeing some small scratch of light again: a sliver of the moon, a hint of dawn upon the horizon. He’s never felt such urgency for anything in all his life; he’s always been so rational, such a placid and unexcitable man, but the strength of this need in him for a glimpse of light is overwhelming.

  The tears stream down his face as he crawls along the deck to find only more darkness and a wind so strong it knocks him straightaway off his feet when he tries to rise. He wishes now he’d stayed down below with the others, found Ruan in the scrum, tell him he loved him, to carry on the task once he was gone.

  The lad must be terrified, Golo thinks, glimpsing the white-tipped line of another massive wave about to crash down upon the Collybuckie, the dark lines of two masts already broken and snapped. And then, despite the skirling and screaming of wind and wave, he has the strangest conviction someone else is out here with him. He can feel it. He wraps himself around the nearest capstan, lets himself be pulled and pushed by the enormous waves, until extraordinarily, miraculously, he hears someone calling out his name. The words are harsh, as if screeched from the throat of one of those black-headed gulls he’s always hated, but he hears them all the same.

  ‘Golo! Golo Eck!’

  Ruan, he thinks, it must be Ruan, come to find me. And he shouts back that here he is, when suddenly his seeker bumps hard into his back, inadvertently colliding in the darkness. Then there is the indescribable comfort of a hand clutching hard at his shoulder, someone crouching down beside him, shielding Golo’s body from the appalling storm with his own.

  ‘Golo! Thank God!’

  Golo has no idea who is speaking – certainly not Ruan – the unknown voice rasping in his ear like sand scouring out a shell.

  ‘They’re lowering down the lifeboats!’ the voice tries to shout though it is weak and ineffectual against the roaring of the wind and the crashing of the waves and the screeching of the boat’s boards as they are torn asunder the one from the other. ‘And they’re throwing out the rafts! Everyone’s to go, all into the sea!’

  Golo opens his eyes, unaware he has closed them, and whispers his thanks to God as he is dragged bodily along the deck, clothes ripping as they snag on the boards, not that he cares. And then he understands he is not being pulled in the direction of rafts but right down to the danger zone. He’s being taken to where the boat is almost dipping beneath the waves, and he starts to struggle, tries to free himself, but whoever is upon him has already wrapped his large body about Golo’s own like a heavy cloak and has sliced a line of guy rope from the collapsing sails, pulling Golo’s arms behind his back and binding them before Golo has time to react. He kicks out madly to get some purchase on the deck and push his assailant backwards, knock him flat, but the man is too strong and wily for such playground tactics and Golo is held fast, a prickling against Golo’s skin as a face is held against his own, a few words growled into Golo’s ear.

  ‘Rafts are out there, but nowhere for you to go, old man, but down.’

  A sharp shove against his back and Golo is sliding the last few feet of deck towards the broken rails as the boat dips once more, and over the edge he goes, banging on the wood, unable to break his fall. Immediately before he hits the water he sees a flash of white up above him and is absurdly grateful for it, mistaking the fluttering, fluting fall of his own handkerchief for the dawn. Then he’s in the water, the coldness so shocking, so profound, that his body has no time to close itself off from salt and sea and in they go, flowing freely down his windpipe, seeping quick and seditious into his lungs.

  Meanwhile the Collybuckie has dipped again to the opposite side and down go the two proper lifeboats, the makeshift rafts and the men tied to them by their ropes. Everyone brought thronging up from the lower deck and chucking themselves in afterwards grabs at the buoys, at the wood, at each other, at the safety ropes dangling from the rafts, hauling themselves through the waves towards the possibility of survival.

  But none of those ropes were grasped by Golo Eck because he’s already been swept fifty yards away from the Collybuckie and three fathoms deep. Just a glimmer of the light he has longed for as a troupe of phosphorescing medusa swim deeper and deeper to escape the pull of the waves, going down with Golo Eck as far as they can go.

  Ruan gasped and flailed with the rest, scrambling for a place on one of the rafts, the coldness of the water terrible and the darkness almost worse. But he grabbed at something that slapped against his cheek: a barnacle-encrusted rope-end that scoured a red weal down the side of his face. He pulled himself along it, hands bleeding, almost at the moment of exhaustion when he heard a voice and felt the back of his jacket being tugged and pulled, and then he was up and onto a raft.

  Scarcely was he there, panting for breath, shivering violently in his skin, when he saw a little scrap of blonde hair about to disappear beneath the waves. He lunged forward, gouging a deep and ragged line through the skin of his forearm on a nail as he grabbed his fingers through the hair and tugged at it with all his diminished might. Someone beside him came to his aid and together they hauled young Caro up beside them, bleeding and bruised, his face so blanched it could be glimpsed even through that blackest of nights.

  Another two men were rescued in the next couple of minutes and Ruan did his share to bring them in, along with Caro, the last so fat he almost up-ended the raft as they manhandled him on board, spitting out his thanks with the water coming up from his throat. Moments later, the Collybuckie went down without a fight, presenting only as a small signpost of creaking wood and flapping sail.

  By then the rafts had been blown too far distant for its sin
king to suck them down with it and the survivors shook and shuddered against one another as the waves came down on them again and again, all holding their breath until they bobbed back up again. The salt scratched at their skin and great swathes of kelp slapped and wrapped about them. They wrenched themselves free of its extra weight so that it wouldn’t sink them.

  The sea was a violent and malevolent enemy out there in the darkness, intent on their destruction It flung them up onto the crests of waves and then back down into troughs so deep it seemed impossible they would not be swallowed up by the brine. The threat of imminent annihilation was a black hole in all their chests for the next few hours until at last, at last, the screaming of the wind abated and the sea returned to a less treacherous rhythm.

  Even so, their chances of survival appeared bleak for they had no idea where they were nor where the wind and waves were taking them. They all had a dread in the pit of their stomachs that when dawn came they would look around to see nothing but sea on every side. What would happen then they had no idea.

  Only one man among them – the last to be dragged in, mainly by Ruan and Caro – was differently minded. He was fat as a blubber whale, which no doubt explained why he’d survived so long in the water. Once the raft had rocked into something approaching calm, he kept their minds focussed with his incessant banter, cheerily leaning over to slap anyone so worn out they had nodded their chins down on their chest. He had a lively stream of anecdotes and stories that kept the rest clinging to their ropes, listening hard to every word, anything to tune out the fear that threatened at every moment to overwhelm them.