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

by Clio Gray

  Hendrik reined himself in. She was right. It could wait. Science might be about to be unbounded but it wasn’t going anywhere. It was going to take days yet, weeks, maybe even months to go through the lists in the coda and get it all figured out – every conversation the Lynx had ever committed to the khipu with Galileo and others besides. But there was one message that couldn’t, or shouldn’t, wait.

  ‘Quite right, my dear, quite right,’ he said. ‘The Enlightenment is only just beginning and we have all the time in the world to explore it, but for Ruan the enlightenment is now.’

  Ruan sat quite still. He’d no idea what to expect, no idea how any of this could involve him. The lawyer’s letter was abandoned once more, his hands clasped together on the table, sweat prickling on his palms.

  ‘It’s Fergus,’ Greta said quietly, taking her hand from Hendrik and placing it over Ruan’s, feeling the slight jolt that went through him as she did so and oddly pleased for it. ‘We said before how I thought the khipu looked different from when I first saw it with Peter and then Mick, and so it was. I didn’t realise it before at Shauna’s, I don’t know why. Maybe because it’s only now everything’s come to a stop I can look back and see it all as it was. And it’s different, Ruan. I know it. Fergus changed it. Maybe before he went into battle at New Ross or maybe afterwards, but I know he changed it, and because of the letter he sent to Mr Hendrik here, we know he changed it for you.’

  Ruan’s blood drained away like water from a lifted sod of peat. All the anger he’d ever felt for Fergus had long since dissipated, grief at his loss taking its place. He knew he’d been the spoiled child, favoured over Fergus for as long as he could remember and for no better reason than Ruan having been descended from Walter Peat. Two siblings shoved into a nest not their own vying for Golo’s favour, but Ruan always superior in his claim because of Walter. Blood calling to blood; the Ecks and the Peats always entwined, just as Golo had said.

  Greta’s touch tethered him to the world, bringing back to him the last words he’d had for Fergus before they left Scotland: You’d be nothing but a couple of muddy footprints without Golo, you and your da. Ever think on that?

  His throat tightened. He swallowed. He was close to tears. Such cruelty in those words, aimed at the man who had practically raised him, who had taught him, tried to show him not only the world of Golo’s obsession but the myriad opportunities that lay beyond. Ruan let out a short sob. He couldn’t help it and couldn’t hide it.

  He was suddenly seeing himself as others had these past few years: an ungrateful little sod so self-involved he believed the world owed him a living, assuming he was more important than any shelf-load of books left behind by the Lynx. That this wasn’t the case was now so self-evident all Ruan could do was shake his head in sorrow.

  Il Ignorami finally disinterred from the sand. Golo had been right all along. The Lynx really did have something reveal to the world and just when Golo was on the doorstep of it, ringing the bell, about to be let in, the hell-damned Ducetti family had stopped him dead. Literally.

  ‘Ruan?’ Greta asked. ‘Are you alright?’

  That hand again, warm fingers resting anxiously over his own. Almost too much to bear.

  ‘You said Fergus gave you a letter for Hendrik?’ he whispered. ‘What did it say?’

  Hendrik nodded at Greta.

  ‘You tell him.’

  And Greta did.

  ‘A fair bit that concerns you,’ she said softly, ‘but basically he repeats what he encoded in the khipu now we’ve figured out how the Lynx and Golo worked it and that is this: To Ruan Peat,’ Greta quoted, ‘to my friend, my family, I leave everything. FM.’

  Too much for Ruan Peat, his shoulders never broad, and out came the tears held in far too long and out and out they came once they’d started, a blubbing drain in a rainstorm. Hendrik winced at Ruan’s meltdown, too close to the bone, got himself up, took himself off. He left Greta stranded by the wreckage blinking in alarm, one arm held out about Ruan’s shoulders but never quite touching, waiting for Ruan to subside which he soon did, folding in on himself, all dignity gone. The only thought in his head was that he might as well have stripped himself bollock naked and paraded through the town of Deventer, because if he had he couldn’t have felt more exposed than he did now.

  ‘It’s alright,’ Greta said gently, patting his hand, moving her arm, resting it on his shoulders. ‘It’s alright.’

  The humiliation of Ruan Peat complete.

  43

  SINGING THAT OLD SONG

  IRELAND, 1799

  Shauna’s Young Wexford Warrior disembarked at Rosslare and set herself on the path to Vinegar Hill, going by carriage this time, reaching it late the following evening.

  It was later still when she found the small litter of scrub and gorse she’d been seeking, the cairn tumbled by time and weather but notable, if only to her. She pulled away the remaining stones one by one, and there it was: dirt-ridden, chain rusted into nonexistence. She licked a finger and brought up the tiny silver cross on its tip, laid it bare, folded it into a square of linen and placed it in her pocket to nestle against the blood flakes of Mogue Kearns.

  ‘Alright, Greta?’ Ruan asked, Greta turning her face towards him.

  ‘Quite alright,’ she smiled. ‘Only one thing left to do.’

  Ruan took her hand, drew her up and together they began to walk up the hill, reaching the blackened stump of the windmill as the sun began to sink, the slim crescent of a new moon rising out of the east, just as the old rebel song had it, the song of the United Irish:

  Beside the river the dark mass of men were seen,

  Shining weapons above their own beloved green,

  ‘Death to every foe and traitor, and Hurrah, my boys for Freedom’

  And the rising of the moon. Just as it was doing now. Bodies gone, earth drinking in the blood of the dead to its own purpose, swallowing their flesh the same way, filling the craters carved by hooves and boots, shell and canon, burying bones, abandoned weapons and farm implements that had not months before been pilfered for better use. A new moon rising above Greta, a new earth beneath her feet. A new life waiting to be lived.

  Shauna came out of her door as the horse trap drew level with her gate, holding up a freckly hand to shield her eyes from the sun, watching the young couple alighting, presuming they’d stopped for directions or maybe some refreshment on their journey.

  The pale young man lifted down the girl who had such a glory of red hair curling about her head. What on earth she would find to give them she couldn’t think. She’d a few eggs of course, and milk, and could maybe throw a bannock or two upon the fire… and then her mouth dropped open as she recognised something about the girl, about the way she moved. She didn’t dare believe it. She rubbed her hands furiously in her apron and began to shake her head.

  It can’t be, she thought. It absolutely can’t be. And then the girl spoke.

  ‘Shauna!’ Greta called, starting down the path towards Shauna, tripping on her skirts, falling headlong into the dirt only to have Ruan come up behind her and pick her up, set her back on her feet again.

  ‘Should have kept her in trousers,’ he said wryly, not that Shauna heard for she was already running towards Greta, seizing her from him, engulfing her Young Wexford Warrior in her arms.

  ‘Oh my Lord, girl, I can’t believe it! Oh my Lord, but you’ve come back! I can’t believe you’ve come back!’

  They sat for a long while in Shauna’s kitchen, Shauna catching Greta up with the news.

  ‘It’s not good,’ she told Greta. ‘All dead, or almost. Philip Roche, the man who took command after Bagenal Harvey? Well, he didn’t last long. Hanged with eight others in Wexford, back end of June. And Cornelius Grogan? You mightn’t’ve known of him – High Sheriff of Enniscorthy – executed a week after the battle of New Ross, and early doors July John Kelly too, along with Father Murphy and James Gallagher.’

  ‘Bagenal Harvey?’ Greta asked, hoping he hadn’
t escaped completely after his skulking away, leaving the men on Vinegar Hill in the lurch.

  ‘Got as far as the Saltee Islands with John Colclough but was betrayed, as befitted, ‘Shauna said, like Greta having no love for the man. ‘The two of ‘em brought back to Wexford and strung up like chickens.’

  Greta nodded, took a breath before asking about the men who meant most to her.

  ‘And Mick Malloy?’

  She was thinking on all the fearless stands he’d taken, his squinty eye looking down on her, his all too rare smiles, his many kindnesses to her over the years despite his ferocious reputation. Shauna shook her head.

  ‘Missing. No word on him, nor on Harry Docherty, nor Gerry Monahan. All have to be dead.’

  Greta swallowed, absorbing the bad tidings. She’d hoped for better but had always feared the worst

  ‘And Mogue Kearns?’ she asked, dreading what she would hear.

  ‘I’m sorry, lass,’ Shauna said in response, ‘but he’s gone too. But you’ll be glad to know he got off the Hill that day, hid out in Killoughram Woods so I heard, got fighting fit again until he got arrested a few weeks later. Hanged in Edenderry, twelfth of July last year since…’

  ‘Anyone else?’ Greta whispered. ‘Anyone survive at all?’

  Shauna smiled and patted Greta’s shoulder. ‘As a matter of fact some did, and one of them was your Myles Byrne. The boy you told me you grew up with.’

  Greta let out a breath and thanked God for it. But Myles Byrne? Of all of them she’d have thought he’d have gone under – such a hothead and a go-doer all the days she’d known him.

  ‘But how?’ she asked, astonished.

  ‘Went over like you,’ Shona said. ‘Went over to join the Frenchies. And didn’t go alone. Took my youngest with him, so he did.’

  Greta coloured, hung her head.

  ‘I should have asked,’ she said quietly, ‘about your sons, I mean. That should’ve been my first question.’

  ‘Don’t you fret, darling,’ Shauna placed a finger below Greta’s chin and lifted it up so their eyes met. ‘And don’t you be sorry, because if it hadn’t been for you and those…knitted things…the name of which I’ve forgotten, well, if hadn’t been for you and them I’d never have known a thing. I can’t tell you what a Godsend they were in the last few months after the Hill, messages flying here and yonder. We mightn’t have won, Greta, and Lord knows we haven’t, but we’ll rise again, and when we do they’ll give us certain advantage.’

  Ruan had been sitting back all this while, taking everything in. The little Greta had told him of what went on in Ireland had never seemed quite real. Even her pilgrimage to Vinegar Hill hadn’t swayed him. Only when she started pointing out the pitiful places she’d slept, the miles she’d trudged, had he caught a glimmering of the true extraordinariness of Greta Finnerty.

  The litany of men dead and executed – men Greta had known and fought beside – shocked him to the quick. And now the khipu was kicking in too – that old cats-cradle he’d once blithely consigned to the rubbish bin of history along with the rest of the Lynx. Who knew it could have an actual practical use? Well, Greta and Shauna obviously, sitting at this very table, planning how an ancient Incan artefact could be adapted to save Irish lives on a used beet bag, of all things.

  ‘Can I ask you something, Shauna?’ Ruan slipped his words into the silence left between the two women.

  ‘But of course, Ruan. What is it?’

  ‘Did you ever hear anything,’ he said, ‘of a man named Fergus Murtagh?’

  Shauna looked towards Ruan, and the smile he got from her was so absolutely unexpected he moved back slightly in his chair.

  ‘But of course, my dear boy,’ Shauna said brightly. ‘I thought everyone knew! I thought at least that Greta did. Has she not told you?’

  Ruan shook his head, glanced at Greta, who shrugged her shoulders. She’d told Ruan everything she knew of Fergus which wasn’t much, except that he’d fought briefly at New Ross and presumably died. This was part of the reason they’d come over here together – her to her home to find out what had happened to Peter, Ruan to find out about Fergus. Shauna Clooney laughed like a lark on the wing.

  ‘But he’s our great hero!’ Shauna explained, giving the party line because that was the only line she knew, the same line Mick Malloy had given out to all and sundry: build up a legend, give the men some fire in their bellies before the last big push.

  ‘Well, it went like this,’ Shauna went on, oblivious to Malloy’s machinations, never contradicted. ‘Fergus was the only one who volunteered to go after Bagenal Harvey, which was when he got caught; but if he hadn’t got caught then Mick Malloy would never have found that nest of Loyalists in Scullabogue and they’d have been on Malloy’s men come the morning; and if that had happened then Malloy would never have got to Vinegar Hill, and if Malloy had never got to Vinegar Hill then your Mogue Kearns, Greta, would never have made it out alive. And neither would the Scotsman’s Bauble and our stringy thing, so think on that! Fergus Murtagh is a hero, son, an absolute hero, and don’t you ever forget it.’

  Ruan drew in a deep breath and let it out again. Fergus, a hero. He nodded agreement and never did forget, those words running through the rest of his life like a root going down and down until it could go no further. He cleared his throat.

  ‘It’s called a khipu,’ he said softly, ‘that bit of Fer… the Scotsman’s Bauble that helped you. It’s called a khipu.’

  ‘A…khipu…’ Shauna repeated the word once or twice, before turning back to Greta, unimpressed. ‘And now, young lady, I want to hear the rest; what happened after you left here, and how you met this handsome fellow. I knew you would have adventures, didn’t I say it at the time?’

  Greta smiled and began her tale, starting with the sea, then the Servants, how she got to Deventer where her and Ruan’s stories dovetailed. Ruan nodded at appropriate intervals but wasn’t really listening. He had in his head the sight of a slender bodied, sharp eyed lynx stalking the mountains of the Pyrenees, the northern forests, the snowy plains of Scandinavia and – long, long ago – the wilds of Scotland too. Maybe it had licked at the waters of Lock Eck, left its paw prints in the mud on which Johannes Eck built his house. Ruan’s house now, thanks to Fergus and the khipu. Legally binding, given the contents of the letter he’d sent to Golo care of Hendrik Grimalkin.

  Everything connected, from beginning to end, from when Federico Cesi first puzzled over rocks turning into trees – or trees turning into rocks – and enlisting his band of merry men to help him explore the puzzles of the universe; lines of men linking down the years, lines of footprints in the mud leading on the one from the other until here Ruan was. He had a sudden longing to return to his homeland, take Greta to the stones of Kilmartin depicted on Walter’s ring, fitted now to his finger along with Golo’s moon at quarter, given light by the shining of the sun.

  L’Illuminato: the Illuminated One; what Johannes Eck had been to Federico Cesi; what Greta had become for Ruan – not that he’d plucked up the courage to say it out loud; the one who sees, who pours light into your darkness, revealing the world for what it truly is. The lesson of the Lynx finally learned and never abandoned, not by Ruan Peat.

  Only open up your eyes, he thought, and see.

  A journey started, one he hoped he wouldn’t have to take alone; he looked at Greta, head bent towards Shauna as they talked quietly and privately of places, men and battles he had no knowledge of; but that was fine. Il Ignorami could wait. A few hours or days here and there were of no consequence; he would wait until the time was right and then he’d ask her.

  New moon rising, new world unfolding at his feet.

  Just one word from Greta to make it the best it could be.

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  The Accademia dei Lincei was founded in 1603 by Federico Cesi when he was eighteen, against the express wishes of his godfearing father who went out of his way to try to destroy it. The initial four members were all under t
wenty six: Francesco Stelluti, Anastasio de Filiis, Johannes Eck (also known as Johannes Heckius or van Heeck) and Federico Cesi. Walter Peat, though, is entirely fictional. The details about Aquasparta and the fossilised wood are all well documented, as is the dispersal of the Lynx Papers following Federico’s death in 1630.

  Federico did issue his founding members with rings, emblems and secret or Academic names as given in the text. And they did use cryptographic forms of writing to communicate with each other, which further fuelled Cesi’s father’s paranoia about their activities, and convinced him that Johannes Eck, in particular, was trying to convert his son to Protestantism. A bizarre charge, as Eck was keenly Catholic and had left Protestant Deventer precisely because of it, but nevertheless Cesi’s father had Eck accused of heresy. That Eck was also in prison, convicted of murdering his pharmacist, is also true, as is the fact that it was Cesi and his companions who convinced the authorities that he was a valuable enough medical man and scientist to be released into their care.

  Galileo came to Rome in 1611 and Federico Cesi laid on a huge feast for him, after which Galileo went on to join the Lynx and had many of his most important works published by their press, including the infamous letters that ended with him accused of heresy. He was born in 1564 and died twelve years after Cesi did, Cesi dying young, in 1630 and Galileo twelve years later in 1642, by which time he was still under house arrest and the supervision of the Inquisition, and also by then almost completely blind.

  Cardinal Maffeo Barberini was indeed a great supporter of Prince Cesi and the Lynx, and also of Galileo in his early days, before the Copernican Hersey declaration of 1616. He became Pope Urban VIII in 1623, and Cesi’s and Stelluti’s monogram on bees was dedicated to him as stated, and was the first printed book to include illustrations taken from microscopic observations. The Melissagraphia is one of the rarest books in the world today, only two known copies are still in existence.