The Legacy of the Lynx: Three people, two murders, one oath... Page 5

  ‘So no one local?’ Joachim asked as he got to his knees, his cassock giving an ease to his movements that George, in his damp, salt and sand encrusted trousers, envied. He didn’t answer, but shook his head, knowing as well as Joachim that if he’d known who this man was then he and the villagers would have seen to him themselves.

  ‘Well there’s some praise due to God for that, then,’ Joachim said, as if George had spoken, his fingers automatically sketching out a quick sign of the cross as he did so

  ‘Nicolas,’ Joachim called over to the brother who had accompanied him.

  The gathered men moved back to make way for him, shifting themselves a few yards down the beach where they had set up a small fire. They were soon sitting comfortably about it, smoking, watching the proceedings with interest, but making no move to participate. Nicolas hovered, looking as if he were about to bowk at any moment, and so it was left to George and Joachim to do what was needed.

  Neither of them spoke as they went about their duties, clearing the rest of the weed from the body, rolling it towards the canvas stretcher Joachim had brought with him from the Servants. All the while, there was a small undercurrent of talk from the men about the fire as they made various guesses as to who this drowned man might be, from what ship he might have been blown off and where that ship might have come from or have been going to, given the time-frame, the currents, and the strength of the winds over the past few days.

  The body was stiff as a board, which made it difficult for George and Joachim to get him properly out upon the sand. His legs were slightly crooked, one arm still folded across his chest, the other – the one George had yanked free – the only incongruity, being loose and broken at the shoulder. George coloured as Joachim noticed this, looking questioningly at George.

  ‘I was just trying for a pocket,’ the words stumbled out of George’s throat, tight with guilt, wondering if this Man of God might not be able to see right through the threadbare pocket of his jerkin to the small lump of gold that lay within.

  Joachim cast no aspersion, although had maybe made his guess, for his fingers lingered for a moment over the empty button hole in the wet lace of the dead man’s cuff. George felt the sweat prickling in his armpits and at the back of his neck, felt an urge to blurt out the truth of his small theft. Before he could, Joachim looked up at George and smiled, patting him roughly on the back as they both squatted on the sand.

  ‘You did quite right, Mr Gwilt. It is no easy thing to die a stranger in a strange land.’

  And then there was nothing for it but for the two of them to cart the corpse off to the hospital of the Servants of the Sick. Had the man been less well dressed, or more well known, they might have taken him straightaway to church and cemetery for quick burial, but plainly this was someone of import, no anonymous sea-bought soul.

  The corpse was a heavy load, for water always finds its way into a body too long immersed and his clothes were of the kind that sucked it in and held it there. Nicolas took the head of the stretcher, George and Joachim at its feet, George oddly glad of the duty, for he felt a debt to this dead man not only because of the pilfered cufflink but because George had been the one to find him.

  Once up and over the scratchy, fifty yard spread of the dunes they got onto the track that led from George’s village to the hospital and found the going easier. Joachim struck up some chat, asking George about his village’s latest goings on – who had died, who was sick, who might be in need of his care. Once George had answered as fully as he was able Joachim fell silent for a while before starting up again.

  ‘So what’s your guess, Mr Gwilt, about where this man came from?’

  George took his time answering, the same calculations going on in his head as had been doing the rounds of the small beach-crowd earlier, weighing up the intertwining influences of storm and tide, current and wind.

  ‘Couldn’t be sure, Brother,’ he said finally. ‘But most likely he’s off of one of the ships going through the straits, blown off course. Maybe the trader that goes from the Scots’ land to Gravenhage. Must’ve been due about now.’

  Brother Joachim nodded.

  ‘As it happens,’ Joachim said, ‘there was such a boat.’

  The stretcher dipped suddenly as Nicolas stumbled on a stone, shifting the weight of the corpse back to George’s side. George caught the weight and said nothing. He felt a fear creeping through his body quick as sea fog rolling in from wave to land after a warm day, so fast that one minute you spy it lying benignly a half mile out and the next it’s upon you, its coldness clammy on your skin. He swallowed, his throat constricting at the strong smell of his own sweat through the salt and wet that was habitual in his clothes. It was a dampness that caused mould to grow upon their hem-lines and seams so that George sometimes had to hold the clothes over a low fire to burn away the mould that gathered there before rubbing them over again with wax. The process always made his clothes seem thinner every time, despite the added weight of the wax.

  ‘We think it was the Collybuckie,’ Joachim went on. ‘Boat that got caught in the storm, blown off course just like you said.’

  George made a sound in his throat but did not comment.

  ‘As a matter of face there’s a man back at the Servants,’ Joachim went on after a moment. ‘A Scotsman. Says he was on it, this boat, the Collybuckie. Said they broke up in the storm. Managed a couple of lifeboats and some rafts and saved a good many of the passengers and crew. But not all. Never all, as you know as well as I do, Mr Gwilt.’

  A few moments quiet then, just the sound of their feet trudging along the path, the slight shift of the corpse within its sheet on the stretcher side to side as they went, George feeling every sway of it as if it was a living man they were carrying.

  ‘One of the rafts made it in further up the peninsula,’ Joachim said quietly. ‘All survivors gone now, except this one man. Well I say a man, but he’s hardly more than a boy. He’s been sending folk up and down this stretch of coast ever since the wreck…’

  Joachim looked over at George, whose heart had suddenly begun to race, his free hand moving awkwardly across his body to the pocket where the cufflink lay, the guilt heavy on him. But Joachim did not accuse him and went on with his tale as easy as if he were sitting around that fire George’s fellows had struck up back on the beach.

  ‘Well, you know how it goes, George. I gather a couple of other rafts and lifeboats made it in too, though none so close to here as his, but they’ve none of them found the man he’s looking for. But he hasn’t given up and maybe, given your find today, he was right to wait.’

  George swallowed. He was desperately trying to locate the damned cufflink in the sand that had accumulated at the bottom of the pocket he had hidden it in, his blunt fingers finding nothing. All the while he made a vow to himself that no matter what the temptation was he would never do such a thing again, would never ever steal from the dead, not when someone was so desperate to find him, whoever he was.

  And then they were at the entrance arch to the Hospital of the Servants of the Sick, and a few minutes later they were in the chapel, rolling out the corpse onto a wooden bier that had been erected in front of the altar, Nicolas making haste to leave, George shuffling his feet, Joachim looking at George questioningly as George fumbled in his pocket once more. And then he found it, and he brought out the cufflink, held it towards Brother Joachim.

  ‘I’d no reason taking it,’ George said softly. ‘And surely not from a man’s been through what this’un,’ he tilted his chin at the corpse, ‘must’ve bin through. I’m sorry, Brother. I don’t know what I was thinking.’

  Joachim took the small cufflink from George’s fingers and looked at it curiously, at the odd shape of it, the fine detailing on its decorative side that looked almost like a lion’s head, almost, but not quite. And then he did the entirely unexpected and handed it back, although George held up his hands and would not take it.

  ‘No one’s going to call to you on it, Georg
e,’ Joachim said, ‘least of all this man you’ve found, and neither the one who’s been looking for him, if anything is to go by. They’ll not miss a small thing like this.’

  But George refused absolutely, telling Joachim to reunite it with its owner and this time Joachim did not demur, leant over the corpse and threaded the small gold link back within its cuff.

  Later, George would bless this small act of honesty, and for Nicolas leaving, both incidents leading directly to Joachim asking George to remain for the laying out of the dead man. Had he not done that he would not have met the dead man’s friend and instead would have gone straightaway back to the fire on the beach, listened to the crackles and pops of the seaweed the men put on it to augment its flames, the discovery of the corpse giving them grace to knock off from their labours for a couple of hours to gossip about it and shake their heads, and thank God it had not been one of their own.

  And if he’d done that then George would never have found out anything more about the corpse that had been rolled up like a cigar in the seaweed. He would always have wondered who he was, would maybe have asked Brother Joachim about it when next he saw him. Maybe Brother Joachim would have answered, but it wouldn’t have meant anything to George Gwilt and his life would never have changed as it did, starting with the invitation from Joachim to stay, and so was there when the young man seeking him had given him a name.

  Ruan Peat was far younger than George had been expecting, maybe the same age as his youngest son, who’d just turned seventeen. There was none of the prosperity about him Joachim had spoken of, for his own clothes had been ruined by his shipwreck and desperate swim to shore. He was dressed now only in the cast-offs held by the Servants from other men not so fortunate, given out to the poorest during the winter months as George could well attest to, most of his own family’s clothes having been acquired by such a gift.

  Ruan was shaking as he approached the corpse in the chapel. The first thing he did when he’d woken was to ask about Golo, still a little feverish, finding it hard to make himself understood, but insistent that someone – anyone – carry on looking for Golo. He was most eager that word be spread so that Golo would know where Ruan had landed up. That Golo was dead didn’t seem possible. He’d looked after Ruan since he was a young bairn. It was a common enough practice in the area of Scotland they came from, this fostering. Families often swapped children and brought them up as their own in order to strengthen the kinship between them. It was an ancient Pictish custom that had stitched one clan to another for centuries.

  It wasn’t quite like that in Ruan’s case. His family – the Peats – had been rooted in Argyll for God knew how long. It was the Ecks who were the incomers, who needed to be established, and this fosterage between the two families had been the way to do it ever since. All to do with that damned Lynx, Ruan knew. But Ruan was the last of his line, and by his time the custom had all but died out until both mother and father had succumbed to some strain of pneumonia when Golo stepped up, re-invoking the old tradition and taking him in.

  Jesus, get a grip, Ruan told himself, wrapping his arms about his body. It can’t be Golo. It just can’t be Golo.

  He wished Fergus was here. He would know what to do. He would know how to handle all this. He would have told Ruan to go and sit down on his narrow Servant’s bed and wait while Fergus got on and dealt with everything that needed to be done. But Fergus was away in Ireland doing Christ knew what on Golo’s say-so, and Ruan was alone. He’d stood outside the chapel for a good while before he could make himself take the first step in.

  It can’t be Golo. It can’t be Golo.

  But no matter how many times he repeated the mantra there was a faint doubt at the back of his mind, for how else to explain why Golo had not come looking for him? He certainly wouldn’t have gone anywhere without scouring the whole peninsula searching for his almost-son.

  Ruan pushed open the chapel door and went inside. He took a few steps down towards the bier erected to take the dead man’s body and had to stop. He had to hold his hand over his mouth to stop himself from vomiting, the smell was so awful. More awful still was that he recognised something of the clothes despite the bloated body distorting them, all the blood draining from his face like whey through a milk-sieve.

  ‘Take your time,’ Joachim said kindly, coming up to Ruan and putting his hand below the lad’s elbow. ‘But you need to let us know if this is him. If this is the man you’ve been looking for.’

  Ruan swallowed back the acid that had surged up his throat, not daring to open his mouth, fearing how bad it would smell, fearing what else was going to rise up and take its place.

  ‘I can’t,’ he whispered.

  ‘I know,’ Joachim coaxed. ‘But if you don’t look then you’ll never know for sure, and that can only be worse.’

  George Gwilt stood to one side of the bier, hands clasped on his thighs. This was too hard. Too hard. The boy was too young and this death too bad. He wanted to run over to the lad and tell him he needn’t worry, that it was going to be alright; except that if this was his friend then it wasn’t going to be alright, not for this boy, not ever again.

  Ruan moved onwards, Joachim guiding him, keeping up a gentle pressure on his elbow to push him on. Ruan got within three yards of the bier when he suddenly bucked away to his right and threw up the meagre meal of soup and bread that he’d had for his lunch, retching and coughing as Joachim rubbed at the his back.

  ‘It’s him,’ Ruan choked out between clenched teeth once the worst was past. ‘I can’t believe it’s him. It can’t be him. It can’t be him. It can’t…’

  ‘It’s alright, son,’ Joachim said, gently turning Ruan around, nodding at George briefly before he led Ruan away back up the nave and out of the chapel into sunlight.

  George stayed where he was, uncertain of what he should do, enveloped by the solemnity of the moment and the silence of the chapel, a cool darkness given by the thickness of its walls because the sun had moved on and was no longer shining – however weakly – through its single, east-facing, window.

  He was unused to deep emotion, had no time for it in the continual hard graft that was his life. He woke up in the early morning, went and fetched his sons from their homes along the shore and together they went to work at whatever was needed. They went to work, they came back to one of his son’s homes and ate whatever meagre meal his daughter-in-laws had conjured up for them. Then he took his leave, trudged back down the shore to his own little cottage and went straightaway to bed, utterly exhausted. He slept while the sky was dark and then, when it was light, he got up and repeated the whole exercise again, day after day, month after month, season after season.

  The storm that wrecked the Collybuckie had been a welcome relief to the tedium, despite it having ripped off the roof of the communal barn – which would mean disaster over the winter for the entire village if it wasn’t fixed – but they had the whole summer to carry out whatever shabby repairs they could manage.

  In the meantime, there was the interruption to normal daily life necessitated by every able-bodied man going down onto the beach to rake up the weed. He’d not counted on finding a body, never found one before, and to be present when that corpse was identified was an absolute first. He doubted it could have been the lad’s father, for the age disparity was too great; more likely Ruan was a grandson, but either way George wished he could have spared the boy the sight.

  ‘How is he?’ George asked when Joachim reappeared a few minutes later.

  ‘Not too good,’ Joachim said. ‘But he won’t leave. He’s sitting outside. Says he’ll not be completely certain until we’ve undressed the body. Apparently this Golo Eck wears a ring that’s unique, and he refuses to believe this is he until we take it out to him.’

  George nodded, looking down towards the body and that curled up hand, thanking every god that might be up there playing without care amongst the stars that he’d not taken out his knife.

  ‘Is it his father? His grandfat
her?’ George asked quietly.

  Joachim shook his head. ‘Neither, but I gather he might as well have been.’

  And with that they said all that was needed and set about undressing the corpse with method and care. Joachim gave George directions to unbutton and unbuckle his clothes, explaining briefly that the cold of the sea must have delayed the rigour that should already have come and gone. It was not as bad as it had been when George first found him, some of it jogged loose by his travelling from the sands. George took great care to ease the man’s limbs away from his body before tipping him almost into sitting so that Joachim could pull off coat, jerkin and shirt. Joachim next directed George to the foot of the bier and to lift up the legs so they could remove boots, trousers and undergarments.

  Once every item of clothing was removed, they went through every pocket of the wretched material before folding the clothes up and laying them neatly on an empty pew. An unsteady drip fell from the stack like a metronome that has lost its rhythm and purpose, yet still carries on regardless. The removal of the ring was an unpleasant task, George having to rub grease from one of the tallow candles up and down the man’s finger, squeezing the putty-like flesh until the ring finally slid away and came free.

  Once done, George wiped his hands upon his trousers and then immediately regretted it. He felt the slime and stink of the wax and the dead man’s skin seeping through the coarse weave like oil from fish-guts, and knew he would rather beg another pair from the Servants, no matter how ill-fitting, than wear these breeches ever again.

  They also removed a well-wrought chain from about the dead man’s neck that held a charm of sorts, with the same lion-like insignia Joachim had noticed on the cuff-links. There was a girdle-pouch too, the kind that travellers strapped about their waists beneath their clothes to keep money and documents safe. From this they extracted a soggy wad of papers that may at one time have been money bills or maybe letters. But it was of no earthly use to anyone now, being little more than a handful of sludge. There was no fob-watch, and for that George felt obscurely grateful, as if its non-existence somehow validated his reluctance to search for it in the first place.