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

  ‘Found him in with the goats,’ the stout boy-bringer announced, as if in explanation of the smell and the rips in the boy’s clothes that exposed rough bumps and rashes on his bared arms and legs.

  ‘Is it you, Caro?’ Ruan asked, letting go his nose just long enough to get the words out, pinching it tight shut again afterwards, because now the boy was nodding vigorously and making once more for Ruan, letting out another noxious wave of rotting vegetation with high notes of manure and urine.

  ‘Why don’t you sit down?’ Joachim asked kindly, pulling out a chair that was as far distant from him and Ruan as it was possible to be without the boy being completely out of earshot, dismissing the Brother who’d brought him in with a wave of his hand.

  ‘But I thought you already left?’ Ruan asked, for surely the boy couldn’t have been all this time at the Servants, unnoticed and unseen, could surly not have spent all this time in with the goats, despite the stench.

  ‘I did,’ Caro piped up immediately, thankfully sitting down on the chair Joachim had pulled out for him. ‘Went with Mr Ducetti, but came back again.’

  He was eyeing the abandoned porridge on the table with such longing that Joachim couldn’t help himself.

  ‘Hungry?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ll say!’ Caro replied, Joachim pushing a bowl across the table towards him that Caro attacked with the same fervour Ruan remembered he’d always done on board ship – quick and greedy – snaffling up what little was left after everyone else had had their fill. Before Caro finished the first bowl Joachim was already pushing forward the second, finding it pitiful to see such a rag-thin boy so desperate for what he could get. Joachim wondered why the boy had come back at all.

  ‘So you went away,’ Joachim commented mildly. ‘But why on earth have you come back?’

  Caro swallowed, wiping a gloop of porridge from his chin.

  ‘I went away,’ he agreed. ‘Took Mr Ducetti to Middleburg on account of him not knowing the area and me having been here before. Afterwards I was supposed to go on to Vlissingen to meet up with Mr Froggit and the rest of the crew, but Mr Ducetti met a fellow at Middleburg and asked me to bring him at least some of the way, and I was coming back anyway on account of having another obbelligation, and so here I am.’

  Ruan scowled. He couldn’t give a tiny blue-arsed fly shit about what this boy had been doing, and the way he’d put an extra syllable into the word obligation irritated him beyond measure. He was as fluent in Dutch as he was in English, the former being Golo’s family language – and God forbid they should ever lose even a tiny part of Golo’s back-history so as to only speak the language of the country in which they actually lived.

  ‘And exactly why would you do that?’ Ruan asked shortly, wanting to get this over with so he could get back to his tiny cell and start making his plans.

  His plans, not Golo’s. His plans alone. He’d been dredging through his memory to conjure up some – any – of the names of the people Golo had corresponded with and where they lived. He didn’t need details, just a name and a city, because he knew the kind of men Golo hobnobbed with were of a very specific type, always congregating in the same places, usually a coffee house or library. All he needed was a place to start. He was no longer pinching his nose, and had the pleasure of looking down it at this annoying interloper, reckoning the lad to be maybe twelve or thirteen, recalling how Golo had enthused about him.

  ‘He’s been jumping from ship to ship since he can remember,’ Golo had said of Caro, plainly impressed. ‘So think on that, Ruan, when you think your own life has not been all you’ve wanted it to be.’

  Christ, that had hurt, like Golo had seen right down into the depths of Ruan’s soul and shoved in a knife, given it a twist. Golo had the need for everyone to see the good in their situation and be grateful for it, even if what they’d got was being stifled to death in a draughty house on the indescribably desolate shores of Loch Eck.

  Caro had fit Golo’s do-gooding attitude like a glove.

  ‘Italian originally, he thinks,’ Golo had burbled on to Ruan the second night out on the Collybuckie. ‘But his Dutch is excellent, his English not far behind, and,’ – another twist of the knife – ‘I’m going to tutor him in a bit of reading…’

  Ruan’s bitter reminiscences stopped as Caro shoved the last spoonful of the second bowl of porridge down his gullet and spoke.

  ‘I’m so sorry I never found Mr Golo,’ he said, looking beseechingly at Ruan who had sat down again at the table on the opposite side. ‘But I did look, Mr Peat, I really did.’

  Ruan could not have been more surprised if the lad had leapt across the table and bitten him on his condescending nose.

  ‘What do you mean, you looked?’ he asked, infuriated by the sudden pitiful look the boy was giving him, even more annoyed when Caro shrugged his skinny shoulders before responding.

  ‘Well I saw him go up, and I went after him. But it was so dark up there, and the boat was pitching like a bitch in heat with the storm, and there weren’t no lamps and I couldn’t find him…’

  Caro looked like he might be about to throw up all the porridge he’d so eagerly consumed, face pale as a shaving of pine, but Ruan was angry now, and would not let it go.

  ‘You were out there with him?’ he demanded, lips pinched into thin grey lines, an image flashing across his mind of what George had said, how Golo’s wrists had been bound. But surely this Caro couldn’t have been responsible, much as Ruan might have wanted him to be.

  Caro hung his head.

  ‘I looked, honest I did. Went where I thought he would go, where the others were roping up the rafts, but a wave came over and knocked me off my feet. Next thing I knew I was in the deep. Almost got my head caved in when the first raft came down.’

  Even Ruan flinched at this news. He’d been out there himself and knew how utterly disorienting and terrifying it had been and if the boy’s testimony was true then he’d hit the water long before the rest had done, alone in the unfathomably deep and malevolent ocean for ten minutes, maybe more. It was an absolute miracle that his skinny body hadn’t frozen into an icicle in that while before Ruan had raked his fingers through Caro’s hair and pulled him out. Even so, Ruan wanted to squeeze every last drop of information from the boy.

  ‘So who else did you see out there on deck when you were there?’ he asked.

  Caro shook his head.

  ‘Honest, mister, it was terrible dark and everything was moving all around and there was stuff being thrown up out of the cabins and the holds and everywhere..’

  ‘You saw no one? You must have seen someone, anyone…’ Ruan persisted.

  ‘No one,’ Caro said, and then lifted his head and opened his mouth in apparent surprise. ‘But there was someone came up behind me when I went to find Mr Golo. I could feel his feet on the steps when I was almost up.’

  ‘And you didn’t think to look?’ Ruan was angry all over again with this boy who most likely had Golo’s murderer right at his back and hadn’t had the nous to turn and take a look.

  He felt a sudden pressure in his head telling him to desist, that he was being unfair, that he should stop, but he couldn’t. The momentum of his rage was pushing him on, and not just the rage at Golo’s death, but the rage that Golo’s death had put him in such an untenable position. He would have gone on grilling the annoying boy had he not felt a painful pinch on his arm, right above his bandage, Joachim picking his spot carefully, enough to know it wouldn’t harm him, enough to make it hurt and make Ruan stop.

  ‘The lad has told you all he can,’ Joachim said firmly, ‘so let him be. He certainly needs a wash, and thereafter a change of clothes.’

  Ruan pulled his arm away from Joachim, his anger unspent.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Ruan started to say, but Joachim interrupted.

  ‘I understand exactly, Ruan,’ Joachim said calmly. ‘But I think you’re missing the point. Don’t you want to know why young Caro here has come back?’

&nbs
p; Caro looked up gratefully at Brother Joachim but held his tongue, and Ruan subsided, for he had to admit he was mildly curious.

  ‘So why then?’ Ruan said loudly, though not as loud as before.

  He blinked rapidly several times to dismiss the images flashing through his mind of poor old Golo, out there on the dark and thrashing deck, someone coming upon him and binding his arms before chucking him into the boiling sea. Assuming that was what had really happened. Another twist of the knife, because where had Ruan been in all this? Looking after his own skin was what, no thought of Golo at all. The guilt was sharp and sudden. The little tic Caro had done what little tics do, and clung on to Golo before Ruan even registered he’d gone.

  The bell for eight o’clock mass rang out just then, Joachim twitching involuntarily, his body wanting to head off and start his working day as it always started, his head eager to stay and resolve the problems of these two young and desperate people. Time to wrap things up, and quickly.

  ‘So why come back?’ Joachim repeated Ruan’s question, standing up, gathering the emptied bowls, placing one inside the other in hope that the two lads would understand he was keen to be away.

  Caro answered by putting his hand between shirt and trouser belt and extracting a small package that he slid across the table towards Ruan Peat.

  ‘Mr Golo told me that if ever I got sick of the sea he’d give me a position,’ he said quietly. ‘And after what happened, well, I’m sick of the sea.’

  The statement was so bald and disingenuous it took Ruan aback.

  ‘But you know he’s dead,’ Ruan said. ‘That Golo is dead.’

  Caro nodded. Caro looked up. Caro’s eyes were wet with tears.

  ‘Heard it when I got in early doors last night, but I’d nowhere else to go. Froggit and the rest will have gone from Vlissingen by now, but I heard you were still here, Mr Peat, and I thought, well, I thought that maybe…’

  Caro’s words dried up, but not his tears, and this lack of control aggravated Ruan, mainly because he’d done the same with George and was ashamed of it.

  ‘So what do you expect me to do about it?’ Ruan’s words were hard and spoken sharply, and Joachim grimaced at his lack of compassion. ‘And what the hell is this?’

  Ruan poked a finger at the small package Caro had produced. It looked like a book wrapped in a scrap of oilskin, tied up tight with string that had been tarred, though not too well, globules of pitch spattered across the package’s surface like a spray of blood.

  ‘It’s his book,’ said Caro, sniffing back his tears.

  This wasn’t going anything like he’d imagined. He’d been so certain Golo would do him right, lift him out of his life spent jumping from one ship to the next. He lived in the hope that on the next ship he would seem old enough for the seasoned sailors there to give him leave and not do what seasoned sailors always did to young cabin boys. Caro had wanted out, and Golo had been his promise for it.

  ‘No more running,’ Golo told him. ‘When we land, you’re coming with us.’

  All finished now.

  Ruan Peat obviously disliked him, and nothing left but for Caro to get to Vlissingen and find another ship that would in all probability be worse than the last. When he’d started out, the younger Caro had been by disposition optimistic, but all that had been knocked out of him in his first few years at sea. Golo finding him, looking after him and teaching him had given him a glimpse of a whole new possible world. Going back to the old one was going to be worse than falling headlong down a flight of stairs into a scary unknown cellar, but it was the only way Caro knew to go.

  One last chance, he thought and so, with shaking fingers, he undid the string, unwrapped the oilskin and shoved the book across the refectory table to Ruan on the other side.

  Ruan frowned. He was sick of all this, sick of the interruption of Caro. He wanted away. Golo was dead, and he’d dealt with it. Golo was dead and his body would be interred here on the Walcheren Peninsula and Ruan free to go and get on with the rest of his life. What he absolutely didn’t want was this millstone of a boy around his neck.

  ‘What of it?’ Ruan said as the boy pushed the book at him.

  ‘He said it was his favourite,’ Caro replied quietly. He’d lost all hope in Ruan Peat, Golo’s promises of a better life disappeared like diarrhoea down a pan. But against his expectations Ruan did, at the very least, put out a hand and pick the book up.

  ‘Behemoths, and other Wonders of the Deep,’ Ruan read out loud the title etched in worn gold-leaf upon its leather cover. An involuntary choke of ironic laughter came from his throat after he’d got the words out. So this was the only book to have survived their voyage on the Collybuckie. This one, and no other. Ruan felt sick.

  Whatever Golo had told Caro this was certainly not his favourite book, and in fact was possibly the opposite. Golo’s paranoia was such that all his most important volumes had been carefully stashed, at his request, cocooned and carefully packed away in straw in the sea trunks that were now presumably at the bottom of the sea.

  ‘And he gave this to you?’ Ruan had his own knife out now and could dig and twist with the best of them. ‘But it’s worthless! It’s the worst of the bunch, and no wonder he gave it away without a thought.’

  He was being deliberately cruel, he knew it, but Jesus Christ, what in hell was he supposed to do? And who was the victim here? Not Caro, who could go join another ship at any time. Ruan was the one who’d been stopped in his tracks, the one who needed help, and this damn fly production of a book that Golo never gave a damn about wasn’t going to wash with him.

  ‘So you stole a book,’ Ruan said. ‘And you think that gives you the right to come back here to me crying for penance?’

  Caro said nothing. He’d nothing to say. He’d gone head to head with brick walls all his life and recognised another one when it was right in front of it. As did Joachim.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Joachim intervened, ‘but I really have to be going. I’m already late for mass. But I’ll not be gone long, and there are certain things I’d like to speak to you both about afterwards. Caro,’ Joachim said, pushing his arm beneath the lad’s own. ‘Why don’t you come with me? We can say a prayer for Golo Eck together and then get you washed; and I’ll speak to Ruan later, if that’s alright with you?’

  Joachim looked Ruan Peat bang in the eye and Ruan Peat looked back, but only for a moment. That look from Joachim was not one Ruan wanted to see again and despite his bravado he knew that one way or another his time here staying with the Servants was done. Time to get his head on. Time to figure out what next he was going to do. But despite himself he picked the book up the moment Caro and Joachim had departed. It had been Golo’s, after all, and no harm keeping a keepsake.

  13

  MORDECIAH CROOK IS NO MORE

  IRELAND

  Greta barely spoke during the few hours it took her to take Fergus to the small cadre of United Irish camping on a wooded hillside eight or nine miles south of Dublin. The outfit was a scraggy lot, thin men in thinner clothes regarding Fergus with suspicion until Greta explained that she was detailed to get him down to Wexford and then to Mogue Kearns.

  Fergus was in a daze as they travelled south. He’d like the grownup Peter and was shocked by what had happened at the Printworks and what might befall him. Greta didn’t speak to him about it, nor engage in his trite attempts to talk to her about his and Peter’s shared childhood. She was terrified Peter would already have been put up before the courts and found guilty, certain he must be in gaol and nothing she could do about it, frustration leaking out of her like a second shadow.

  For his part, Fergus was alarmed by the extent of what was going on in Ireland, travelling with the cadre who apparently only moved freely at night, always slowly and with great care, no lamps or fires ever lit that might give away their position. The only person who had some degree of freedom during daylight hours was Greta. She scampered here and there to various previously established safe houses to garne
r their meagre supply of food, whilst the rest sat back in whatever hollow or glade they’d selected to hide in.

  Conversations were few, the men obviously used to boredom and playing quiet games of cards or dice, ignoring Fergus completely. He found the whole experience alienating and claustrophobic, and was beginning to smell as bad as the rest. He didn’t sleep well, unable to nod off like the others the moment their night tramp was done and dawn scratched at the horizon.

  It was eighty odd miles to their destination, always hugging the coast and Fergus found the pace gruelling. Greta and her companions were able to cover fifteen miles or more at one hike with ease, despite the darkness. They knew their way, had done it many times – Greta at least – but as they neared the larger encampment of men outside New Ross that was their goal, Fergus was spent and exhausted.

  They couldn’t just march in and announce themselves, Fergus and the others having to wait an uncomfortable couple of hours packed between several ricks of straw while Greta went on ahead, winding like a slithery piece of seaweed through the rocks and tussocks that separated them from the oak knoll of the camp proper, a mile or so ahead. How she coped with such fortitude and survived a life like this, constantly on the move, left Fergus bewildered and filled with admiration. He was mighty relieved when the clump of men began to move forward, and Greta returned, despite her sudden materialisation at his elbow that had him jumping like a sand shrimp.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, gripping Fergus’s cuff, the darkness so acute Fergus couldn’t see a yard in front of him, Greta clicking her tongue every time he stepped on a twig or stumbled over a stone. But at last he could make out the tiniest glimmer of light between the trees up ahead and a few minutes later Greta led him into a large circle of men, two of whom immediately grabbed Fergus and shoved him roughly down on a fallen log which at least had the merit of being as damp and dirty as Fergus was himself.

  ‘This here’s Mick Malloy,’ Greta said, pointing to a man standing with his hands tightly gripped behind his back, obviously suspicious of Fergus and wasting no time in small talk.