by Clio Gray
‘All of you off to Vinegar Hill,’ he told them, holding up his hands to stop the inevitable protests. ‘We need to consider our options, consolidate our troops, and Vinegar Hill is the place to do it. Set off as soon as you’re able. Small groups, going different ways. Keep clear of any roads south. Don’t want any of you bumping into the rest of the Loyalists coming up from Waterford.’
‘What about you?’ someone asked. ‘Where are you going?’
‘I’ll be with you shortly,’ Malloy assured them, ‘just as soon as I’ve taken care of a small matter here that you’ve none of you to be minded with.’
‘If you’re staying then I’m staying,’ piped up one voice, followed by several others mimicking his intent.
‘No,’ Mick said with absolute decision. ‘You’re not. The only men I want staying with me I’ve already told.’
There was a small ripple through the crowd at this command but no one openly dissented. Despite the havoc and devastation of New Ross everyone trusted Malloy implicitly and the moment night fell groups of men began slithering from their knoll, breaking away in twos and threes into the dark countryside. Fergus was not amongst them. He tried hard, but no one wanted an unknown stranger hanging on their tails and would surely kill him if he tried to follow.
His only option was to head off alone, with no idea of which way to go or whom he could trust. He knew he most likely wouldn’t last twenty four hours without being arrested or murdered. He needed a plan and he needed it quick and an idea began to form when he inadvertently overheard Mick’s conversation with the few men he’d chosen to stay behind, discussing the Bagenal Harvey situation.
‘We should have left that bastard lawyer to rot in gaol,’ Malloy muttered through clenched teeth. ‘Who else knows about this?’ he asked the burly man who had brought him the news, the same burly man who had shoved Fergus so viciously in the back when he’d first arrived.
‘No one, Mick. Just us few and the man from Three Rocks who came straightaway once he knew Harvey had crept off with that pal of his, Colclough. Gone half a day already, heading for the Saltee Isles if no one stops him.’
‘Right then,’ Mick said. ‘Let’s keep it that way. Last thing we need is this getting out. Fecking lawyers. Got more slip than eels.’
Fergus hadn’t intended to listen, far more concerned with how to extricate himself from this pile of shit he’d inadvertently dug himself into. It was all too hard and precarious. Wolfe Tone be damned. As much as Golo loved the Lynx he surely wouldn’t want Fergus risking his life for it, certainly not more than he’d already done. He’d write another letter telling Wolfe Tone all that had happened, tug on childhood sympathies, give the letter to Mick Malloy to do with whatever he would, but that was as far as Fergus was going.
What he needed now was out and soon as he was able. The most pressing concern for him was not what was going on with the United Irish but finding out whether Golo and Ruan were still alive. Jesus, he felt alone, a lost pigeon looking for signs of home who would have given anything, anything in the world, to be back there again. And then he saw his chance. Malloy was talking about Bagenal Harvey, that he was a lawyer and on the run.
Fergus stood up, took a few steps through the trees, but he was no silent forest creature and within moments he was manhandled to the ground, his ribs moving an agony in his chest so he could hardly breathe.
‘Jesus hell,’ Malloy was bearing his teeth as Fergus tried to lift his face into the small circle of light cast by several candles shoved into the earth. Mick indicated to his henchman to let Fergus go, which he did. Fergus gasping greedily at the air.
‘What the feck are you still here for, Scotsman?’ Malloy asked. ‘This is a private conversation we’re having.’
Fergus blenched, discovered before he’d had time to properly think his one plan out.
‘You said if I fought then you’d help me,’ he croaked, ‘and now I think I can maybe help you too,’ at which pronouncement Mick’s bad eye did a further swerve to the left, so much so that Fergus was unsure whether the man was looking at him or someone over his shoulder.
‘And what the feck do you think you can do?’ Mick growled.
Fergus’s blood began to hammer in this throat, his head telling him this was a really bad idea, his blood telling him it was the only way out. He found his voice, began to speak.
‘Bagenal Harvey’s a lawyer. My father was a lawyer. Maybe I can reason with him.’
Malloy snorted, though whether in approbation or disbelief Fergus didn’t wait to find out.
‘I’m just saying,’ Fergus went on quickly, ‘that I know lawyers through and through, and maybe I can bring this Bagenal Harvey back to you before anyone knows he’s gone.’
‘And how on earth could you do that, Scotsman?’ Mick’s voice was sceptical. ‘The man’s obviously got a liver yellower than a side of cheese, and nothing you can do about that.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Fergus said. ‘Surely when he became your Commander-in-Chief he signed some papers to that effect, and maybe that’s enough for me to coerce him into returning.’
Mick Malloy’s entire body visibly tensed and Fergus thought all was up. Mick’s swiftest, surest course of action would be get shot of him once and for all, strangle the life out of him and leave him behind. But Malloy did the unexpected and gave Fergus a chance.
‘You’re right enough on both counts. I promised you help if you fought, and you did, so what are you asking me to do?’
Fergus swallowed, answering as succinctly as he could.
‘I’m asking you give me leave to go after him. After Bagenal Harvey. Maybe I can catch him up, maybe I can’t. But if I do then I’ll make damn sure he comes back again. In return I want directions, places I can go, strategies to keep myself safe.’
It sounded weak, even to Fergus, and Mick Malloy was not taken in.
‘And how do I know,’ Malloy asked, ‘that you’re not just running away because things have gone badly?’
Fergus hesitated, but not too long, and then took out his pouch and offered it over.
‘Because of this,’ Fergus said. ‘You know what I offered Greta to help with your cause. She doesn’t know exactly how it works but she’s smart, she’ll figure it out. Get it to her or your Mogue Kearns and we’ll call it quits.’
Mick stared at the pouch and then at Fergus.
‘And just what is it?’ he asked, making no move to take the pouch though Fergus continued to hold it out to him. Fergus shook his head.
‘I can’t explain it to you, not now, not in the dark. But Greta knows enough. Get it to Greta.’
Malloy narrowed his eyes, his men shuffling their feet behind him.
‘We need to get moving, boss,’ one of them said, casting an anxious eye about him. ‘Darkest hour’s almost on us.’
Malloy weighed up the odds and added his own rider in his head. He and his men had work to do and he saw that Fergus could indeed be of help, if not of the sort he was offering.
‘Agreed,’ he said, taking the pouch and tucking it carelessly into a pocket, Fergus letting out an audible sigh of relief.
‘And you’ll give me directions? Safe places to go?’
‘I will,’ Mick said. ‘We know Harvey is heading to the Saltee Islands and if you’re true to your word in finding him then I can steer you right.’
‘Alright then,’ Fergus said, and after a brief discussion - Fergus making a rudimentary map in his head about where he should go - he was ready to depart.
‘You’ll be needing to start by going through Scullabogue,’ Malloy said, nodding his head towards the tiny village that lay a mile or so to their right.
Fergus frowned. ‘Isn’t that where…’
‘It is,’ Malloy cut him off, ‘but it’s the quickest way out, and there’s only one or two soldiers there. You still up for it?’
Fergus swallowed but nodded, Mick giving Fergus a hard slap on the back that was the closest thing to encouragement he could mus
ter. He wasn’t going to tell Fergus the real reason for sending him unprotected through the dark streets of Scullabogue, no more would he have told a terrier he sent into a badger set to sniff the brockies out. War was war after all, and more often than not the terriers got out the other side alive.
Caro’s belly was round as a pumpkin, Louisa Grimalkin taking discreet pleasure in seeing the ragged boy fill himself full. He was respectful, didn’t dive in like a beggar, but took each spoonful slowly, closing his eyes, licking his lips, complimenting her on how well it tasted.
‘Ain’t eaten mutton stew in I don’t know how long,’ Caro said, Louisa smiling, which was more than could be said for her husband upstairs once she’d finally consented to take Ruan Peat up to see him.
She gave no introduction except to announce Ruan’s name, and couldn’t help enjoying the immediate look of discomfort on the whippersnapper’s face when her husband looked up from his desk in obvious annoyance. He was a scholar right down to the marrow who hated having anyone invade his private chambers. Fine at the library – there it was expected – but not here, not in the private sanctum of his home, as well she knew.
Hendrik had been born to the part, being tall and thin, with a face that might have been mistaken for the business end of a hatchet. Sharp and stern were the words most often employed to describe her husband’s features, stern and dry as a sea-bleached stick. He looked so incredibly unlike his father that Ruan had difficulty seeing any resemblance at all, and was so unnerved he couldn’t get his words out.
‘What the devil do you want?’ Grimalkin was quiet spoken, with an undertow of authority that meant he hardly ever needed to raise his voice to get himself heard. Indeed, he had never shouted in his entire life, not since he was a boy.
Ruan cleared his throat. He’d been expecting to be welcomed with open arms, from father to son, assumed everything thereafter would go smoothly: off to the bank to get some money; off to the lawyers to formalise the declaration of Golo’s death and then away he would be, free and clear. The reality was so different that Ruan’s skin prickled with trepidation.
‘Your father, Joachim, sent me,’ Ruan managed to get out through the constriction in his throat, his previous bluster dissipated like dandelion seed on the wind. The silence that followed this announcement gave him to understand what people meant when they spoke of quaking in their boots.
‘My father,’ Hendrik Grimalkin finally said, his voice hard and brusque, hands clenching into tight white fists on the table before him. ‘Well, boy? What of him?’
Another short silence as Ruan tried to pull together the words he needed. He’d never felt so intimidated, nor so defenceless. He needed this man’s help. Jesus, he needed all the help he could get. He’d not quite grasped the enormity of the plight he was in, not until now.
‘I was…shipwrecked off of… Walcheren,’ he began slowly, hesitantly, trying to fit together what he needed to say. ‘And Joachim’s a brother at the Servants of the Sick there, as I’m sure you know…’
Ruan’s little speech trailed off because it was obvious even to him, who was no connoisseur of other people’s emotional reactions, that this was news to Hendrik Grimalkin. Hendrik stood up so suddenly that his chair scraped back across the wooden floor, two sharp lines of varnish scratched out in its wake.
‘He does many good deeds there,’ Ruan ploughed on. ‘He looked after me and my…’ Ruan searched for the word. He wanted to say father but that was not quite right, and it was palpably obvious that getting it right in this situation was what he needed to do. ‘… my guardian,’ he grasped the word. ‘His name is Golo Eck, and I believe…it’s possible certainly…that you may have corresponded with him.’
This last he’d plucked out of the air for he’d no idea who Hendrik was or whether or not he was part of Golo’s extended network of supporters. Hendrik Grimalkin gave no clue. He merely stared hard at Ruan Peat before moving towards the window that looked out over the Singel and the slow-moving waters of the lagoon beyond. He turned his back on his visitor for such a long silence that Ruan dared not move. His future life was hanging in the balance. He’d no idea where to go if things here didn’t pan out. He had a terrible itch on his nose but didn’t want to disrupt whatever was going on by scratching it. He distracted himself by casting his eyes over the many books on the many shelves in the room, noting how similar they were to the ones in Golo’s library. There was the map of the world made by Aaron Arrowsmith a few years before, volumes of the latest works of eminent philosophers, philologists and mathematicians in Dutch, English, German and Latin; other tomes on natural history and botany.
The room was so like Golo’s that Ruan’s eyes unexpectedly welled up with the memory and, without conscious thought, he put his hand up to brush away the drops that were forming on his eyelashes, blurring his sight. The sudden movement was apparently sensed by the black streak of Grimalkin at the window who chose that moment to turn back to his visitor. Who was the most discombobulated was hard to say, both recognising, at the same moment, this shared weakness at remembrance of times past.
‘Sit,’ Grimalkin said succinctly, taking his own advice, moving his chair back to its accustomed place behind his desk, grimacing at the thin lines scoured into the varnish of the wood and choosing instead to sit himself down in one of the two leather armchairs placed about the cold and empty fireplace.
‘You must excuse my rudeness,’ Hendrik Grimalkin said, as Ruan subsided into the opposite chair. ‘Only it’s such a long time since I’ve heard any mention of my father. He joined the Order almost a quarter century and half a lifetime ago, and I wasn’t even aware of the name he’d taken, let alone where he might be now. If truth be told, the Order served him as a coffin as far as the family was concerned and to hear of him now, well, it has been a bit of a shock.’
Hendrik was not a man given to agitation, nor to drink, but the sudden occurrence of the first demanded the second. He stood up briefly and went to a cupboard, opened it, removed a bottle and two glasses, placing all three on the small table beside his chair, pouring out a hefty swig of grappa for them both.
‘To the renascence of those lost to us,’ he said in toast, drinking the spirit down in one, refilling his glass before Ruan touched his own. ‘Let’s start again. Your name, you said was…’
‘Ruan Peat,’ Ruan gladly supplied the information.
The tide had turned, he could feel it, and all because he’d allowed a few tears to drop in memory of Golo Eck. He breathed deeply, and out it all came: their leaving Scotland in search of the lost library of the Lynx, the shipwreck, his survival, Golo’s death. He didn’t add any details, didn’t mention Fergus at all, nor George’s suspicions about how Golo had died. But he did talk a little of Joachim, Grimalkin’s father, and how diligently he’d cared for both Ruan in his sickness and Golo’s body, arranging the burial of the latter before directing Ruan to his son for the help he so obviously needed.
‘He always was a caring man,’ Grimalkin said, swilling his third grappa around his glass. ‘Your Joachim. My father. He almost ruined the family business by doing other people right. We have a printing impress, still do, no thanks to him. He was forever giving away the merchandise to scholars who couldn’t rub two groats together. Hang the money, that’s what he used to say, the pursuit of knowledge is far more important than lining the coffers of dull men who already have too much.’
Hendrik Grimalkin let out a short bark that might have been laughter, but Ruan didn’t interrupt. He wasn’t much interested in what this Grimalkin man was saying. His mind was wandering to the mutton stew whose warms scents had drifted up the stairs behind him. His stomach was already growling and was not being helped by the small sips of grappa he was forcing himself to imbibe, which went down his throat like paint stripper.
Let the man talk, he was thinking. Let the man talk all he wants if he’ll give me the help I need. He supressed a sigh as Hendrik Grimalkin proceeded to do exactly that.
‘Sad
ly those dull men, as he called them – the shareholders – didn’t see it that way, and the moment I came of age they forced my father to resign his office of directorship in my favour, and how glad he was to hear the news!’
Ruan could sympathise with the shareholders. He’d have done exactly the same in their place. Whether the son agreed with this decision was undecided, as Grimalkin made no more pretence and removed a large handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his tired grey eyes before starting up again on the apparently interminable story of his family history.
‘Precisely three days later,’ Grimalkin continued, his tongue loosened by the alcohol and the sudden influx of memories this visitor had brought in with him when he stepped over the threshold, ‘my father vacated the family home – this home – taking nothing with him but the clothes he stood up in, leaving behind a bundle of documents signing all his interests over to me and a short note telling us he was off to join the Servants of the Sick.
‘And that was the last we heard of him, from that day to this. Twenty four years ago that was. He left us on the feast day of St Camillus. My mother always said we should have seen it coming, and she was right in her way. He always held that feast day in the highest regard, revering Camillus above the other saints of the pantheon. It came from his time fighting in the Seven Years War, although he was only at the very start of it, on the Austrian side, stationed on the sunken road between the Morellbach brook and the village of Lobosik, when the Prussians attacked. He never told us much, only that it was a terrible day, one born in fog and dying in fire, along with uppermost of five thousand men.
‘That more didn’t go the same way was due entirely to the monks of the monastery of St Camillus near Lobosik who came out of their walls the whole day of the battle, despite the constant firing of artillery from both sides. Their men went in under cover of the dense mist that never left, dragging away the wounded, no matter their allegiance, to their hospital. My father amongst them.
‘He always had a soft spot for mist and fog, did my father, precisely because of it, and so it seems fitting in some way that you’re telling me he now resides on the very edge of the Walcheren Peninsula, where fog and mist must be a daily occurrence…’
