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

by Clio Gray

  After Johannes Eck was ejected from Aquasparta by Cesi’s father he travelled all over Europe, including Spain, Germany, Sweden and Scotland recruiting members and correspondents for the Lynx, and also wrote the book on treating the ague and fever that blighted much of the Lowlands, as Joachim is posited as using.

  As far as the United Irish goes, I have kept true to as much of the history as possible, including the battles mentioned, New Ross and Vinegar Hill amongst them. Peter Finnerty (1766-ish to 1822) was a real person, a famous journalist keeping the fires alight for the United Irish and their fight against English oppression with his press in Dublin. He was imprisoned in the spring of 1798 for seditious libel, following his paper’s condemnation of the judges who had William Orr to death. He was defended by John Philpot Curran, a well-known lawyer and later a judge; despite this he was sentenced to two years in prison, during which time he stayed in correspondence with various United Irish supporters, including James MacHugo, a tobacco trader (and possible smuggler) who acted as liaison between the United Irish of Loughrea and Dublin.

  Peter later came over to England where he was imprisoned again in 1811 for several articles written about Lord Castlereagh’s treatment of Irish prisoners, which led in turn to a campaign to have Finnerty freed, a petition signed by many of the good and the great, including the poet Lord Byron. Finnerty was also invited to accompany the English Army when they took up against the French in Walcheren, with disastrous results, thousands upon thousands of men dying of disease before lifting a finger to fight.

  The khipu (or quipu or qipu) was indeed an Incan method of recording numbers and statues and the details of taxes. Approximately six hundred are extant today, and although no one knows exactly how they encoded information there has been enough study done to be almost certain that it was managed by a complicated system of numbers, using the knots, beads, colours and patterns as described. And the Lynx truly did have a fascination with South American history, and Mexico in particular, compiling a great monograph on the subject, so it is not such a great stretch that they might have come across a khipu or two – after all, the Incan Empire only finally fell in 1533, when the Spanish murdered their last ruler. And the Lynx was started in 1603, so all is possible…

  If you enjoyed The Legacy of the Lynx, you might be interested in Deadly Prospects by Clio Gray, a historical crime novel which will also be published by Urbane Publications in February 2017.

  Extract from Deadly Prospects by Clio Gray

  PART 1

  STOROFSHVOLL, ICELAND

  8.43 a.m. September 2nd 1855

  The air smelled of snow, though Lilija Indridsdottir doubted it could be so, for surely it could not fall so early, not when the ground below her feet was so warm she’d taken off the clogs she’d been wearing and slung them on a string about her neck. She looked for the dog, who was nowhere to be seen, wondered why there were no chickens pecking and chafing about the yard. She went out to the cattle to give them their feed, found them all snorting and snuffling together at the back end of the paddock, apparently unwilling to come forward as they usually did to greet her, remaining there even when she’d lugged out and loosened several bales of summer straw, scattering it enticingly about their feeding trough.

  ‘Hi!’ she shouted in encouragement, and ‘Hi!’ again, but the usual scrum was unforthcoming, and the cattle stayed resolutely where they were, milling about as much as they were able in the confines of the crowd from which they seemed unwilling to break free, hooves pawing restlessly at the mud and spilt faeces, bodies jittery and jumpy, eyes large and white-rimmed when they raised their heads. Something must have spooked them; she understood this, and looked around her, but saw nothing out of the ordinary – no strangers, no foxes, nothing. She shrugged, and left them to it, went off towards the rye field to inspect the stooks. Even at this distance she could see the huge flocks of greylags and pink-footed geese that had settled upon the field, milling and moving restlessly, rustling like the wind through autumn leaves. At their farthest end was a line of whooper swans, white necks erect, yellow bills upturned, their melancholy calls soon drowned out by the increasingly shrill crescendo of the heckle and cackle that was beginning to break out amongst the geese as they stirred and shuffled and yet did not take to wing. Again she looked about her, looked up into the sky, searched for eagles, for harriers, for anything that might have given all these animals such alarm.

  Her eyes traced the lines of the hills that surrounded the valley, and then she saw it, saw the great dark burst of ash that was coming out from Hekla’s summit, rising like a thundercloud, bright flicks here and there of burning embers and pumice, moving and dancing in the currents made by the heat that was coming up from beneath. She stared at the silent spectacle, a quick short gasp escaping her lungs as her blood began to thud beneath her skin, her mouth as dry as the straw she had just loosened for the cattle, her hands shaking, moving involuntarily towards her throat. The darkness moved as she watched it, grew and spread, went up in a great plume above Hekla’s craggy neck, a sound like breaking thunder just then reaching her ears, and that was when she ran, her clogs flying off from her neck on their string as she covered the ground, realising only now why it felt so warm beneath her feet, cutting her soles on the stones and gravel as she ran and ran, the sounds of her livestock now unbearable, the shrieking of the cattle, the grackling of the geese which all of a sudden rose up and shook the air with the concerted effort of their wings, went up as one, went as a throng, before starting to separate into desperate single ribbons as one phalanx met another, and the superheated ash began to darken their outspread feathers, caught their wings alight as they tried to navigate the unfathomable darkness that had descended upon them with no moon, no stars to guide them, and one by one, they began to fall out of the sky.

  Lilija Indridsdottir did not stop; she heard the plunking of birds hitting the ground all about her but could not see them. The sun had disappeared, and her world reduced to twilight in a moment, the only light coming from the embers that had embedded themselves into her clothes, into her skin, and from the bright halo about her head as her hair began to singe and then to burn. She could no longer see the path that led down to the village, but was pushed on by her own blind momentum headlong into a rock that broke her foot with its contact; she heard the crack of her bones even as the impact knocked her sideways, sent her off into a skid further on down the hillside, sliding into something warm and wet as cattle-shit, though she could smell nothing except the sulphur of Hekla exploding somewhere up above her, and knew now why the old folk called that mountain the gateway into hell.

  Birds were falling indiscriminately all about her, all kinds, not just geese, but sparrows too, buntings, larks, thrushes, many still alive as they hit the ground, though not for long. A swan crashed down two yards to her right, neck bent and contorted like a gorse root in the hearth, tail feathers flaming, ash- blackened wings still beating, beating, as it tried in desperation to clear the ground, its white burned into black, its flight turned into immobility. Lilija reached out a futile hand towards it, but stopped mid-stretch; she could hear a kind of arrhythmic thumping and struggled to understand this new thing, the message of the beating drum, and then the sweat broke out upon her forehead, making grey rivulets through the ash there as she realised what it must be. She struggled to stand but could not, and instead flailed out with her hands, caught her wrist on a boulder and began to drag herself towards it, heaved with all her might to gain its protection, curled herself up tight against its solidity, beneath the slight overhang, an acorn trying to squeeze itself back inside its cup. And then they came, several score of steers and milkers broken free from their paddock, stampeding headlong away from the farm, down the hill towards the river. She could feel them coming, feel their movement in the ground, in the soil and in the bones that were shuddering within her skin, and then they were on her, passing over her in a chaos of tangled legs and panicked hooves, several tumbling as they hit the obstacl
e of the rock scree, crashing into their neighbours, tripping up the ones that came on behind. A hoof caught Lilija on the shoulder with the strength of a sledgehammer swung onto a fencepost, smashing a clavicle, breaking an elbow, and she whimpered as she tried to pull herself further inward, terrified by the burning of the ash, the thickening dust, the mud scooped up by the fleeing cattle, the snorts and bellows of those still running, the anguished screams and cries of those that had been brought down, and she felt the weight of them all around her as they crashed into the earth, felt her world breaking a little more with every fall.

  In the river beyond the village, seven fishing vessels had not long been pushed from the pier to take advantage of the outrunning tide. Above the creaking of their oars, of wood on water, of ropes being pulled through badly oiled winches, sails rising up into the wind, the sailors heard other sounds, and looked up to see the vast cloud that was spewing out of Hekla. It came at them with the speed of an avalanche, a great black tongue unfurling down the mountain towards them, wiping out the morning as it blackened every stone, every field, every roof, every blade of grass, doused the day completely, subsumed them into night. Every man on every boat began to shout, to call out incoherent instructions or pleas, some tugging at the rudder ropes, unable to gauge direction, sails coming crashing down as knots were left incomplete, untied, everything unravelling, and soon came the crash and splinter of wood on wood as one boat ploughed into another, forced a third into what they called the Shallows, a sandbank at the river’s middle where the tide insisted on depositing tree boles, rocks and boulders, after every winter’s storm.

  The air about them thickened, darkened, and men began to fling themselves into the water, lashing out for bank or pier, hurled on by thoughts of wives or children, treasured livestock or possessions, the water beginning to crust about them, sizzling and boiling with the fling of molten rocks, scalding their arms, their faces, the ash clogging their clothes and hair and lungs, weighing them down, narrowing their vision, constricting their breath. Into the cauldron went Lilija’s brother, tripping up the man they’d called the Bean Counter, who went headfirst in behind him.

  And then above all the pandemonium, the crack of wood, the panicked shouts, the clashing of oars, the splashing of men in the water, the crashing of unsupported rigging, above it all there came another sound as of a bell at the starting of its tolling, a bell so vast, and its peal so low, that it came first as a vibration, making the smoother surface of the downstream water begin to shiver as the air compressed and began to move in gusty, unaccustomed ways, pocking at the sails that were still erect, growing in strength, as every tolling bell will do, until the noise of it was vast enough to become the whole world, as if every boulder on every hillside had begun to shift and roll, as if the earth itself was roaring. Hekla yawned and then was woken, breathed out another mighty exhalation, a new turret of burning ash that rose then fell towards its southern slopes, spat out a tarred-black rain that leached the light from the sky, swallowed the sun; released it, grey and greasy, for seven long and weary months into Storofshvoll’s future, vomiting out the last plume of ash from its cracked and broken summit, the last eruption of Hekla, at least, in the lifetime of Lilija Indridsdottir and her village.

  September 2nd 1855, it had started. Nine o’clock in the morning, almost to the second.

  April 5th 1856, when the last plume died. Seventeen minutes past three.

  Storofshvoll grey as granite, an uninhabitable tundra, everything buried beneath half a year of Hekla’s winter-compacted ash.

  Spring-time, early 1859

  Three years now since the eruption, three years with no more ash but plenty of storms, welcomed where they had once been cursed, sweeping away the worst of the loose ash with their wind and their rain and their ice and their snow, lifting it up in great black maelstroms and carrying it out to sea, dropping its dark ruin onto Scotland, England, France and Spain, wherever the winds took their way.

  Tiny pinpricks of grass were beginning to struggle up through the new grey soil; previously buried farmsteads began to re-emerge roof tile by roof tile, timber by timber, then wall by wall, an inch of plank here, a foot of plank there, as they were washed free by wind and rain, storm and spate, as ice and snow gave way to successive springs, and the small brief blooms of the intervening summers.

  Another spring, this time in 1860, and now several of the original, surviving villagers returned, began to dig out the old homesteads in earnest, abandoning those too badly damaged, concentrating their excavations on the few that appeared intact and airtight, hammering away at the outer crust with picks and shovels until they had broken through the pumice casing, finding a chink, a window, a doorway, inside. And when they finally gained ingress, it was like walking through the interior of a blown egg, a going from day and into twilight, out of noise into utter quiet. A thin layer of ash covered every surface, every boot that stood by every door, every coat that had been slung on every hook, every piece of fish that still lay in the smoke-holes dug into the inglenooks by long-dead fires, every piece of fur and blanket that lay on every bed, every pot and pan that hung from every hook in every ceiling, every cheese and jar that stood on every shelf in every pantry. All was as it had been before, yet had undergone a subtle transformation, a kind of quiet sleeping, a hibernation that felt as if it could have gone on without end, and gave the eerie sense that it belonged to an entirely separate world that was neither waiting for, nor wanting, anything to change.

  The men who crashed into these silent worlds felt like stomp-pigs, large and loud, intolerably intrusive, and they did not stay long, at least not the first time. It was the women who came in later who broke the spell of these abandoned burrows, stirred them up with their brooms and cloths and dusters, brought in great pails of water and washing soda and wiped away the secret lives of these abandoned rooms and replaced them with their own normality, brought in with the noise of toil and graft, their clicking knee-joints, and the scrub, scrub, scrubbing of their brushes.

  Amongst these women was Lilija Indridsdottir, a lopsided version of the woman she had been before, with one shoulder angled towards the sky, the other dipped towards the ground, right arm stuck in an awkward crook at an elbow that gave her no mobility, her left foot splayed, every bone broken in it and badly mended, flat as a frog’s. She’d not been able to help with the harder work, and spent most of her hours down at the pier, sorting through what had been salvaged from the boats that had been wrecked upon the shallows, bones and possessions and trade-wares entangled as if in a beavers’ dam, encased in a shell of ash that only the ever-flowing water of the last few years had been able to breach.

  The population of Storofshvoll had been more than decimated, and less than a tenth of its surviving members elected to return; all others chose to stay where they had taken refuge with outlying relatives, or had already migrated into Reykjavik where they had decided to make their new home. The ones who chose to return and stay spent all their time repairing pumps, harrowing fields, digging out old crop cellars, living on whatever sacks of grain, dried peas, beets and roots had been found beneath the old houses they had managed to excavate from the ash, still preserved, just as they had been five years before.

  At the end of the summer of 1860 these few survivors, Lilija amongst them, moved back into what they had dug out of the ruins, broken and blackened constructions they unimaginatively christened the New Storofshvoll, and made their own constitution, the basic tenet of which was Give help where help is needed.

  And there is no better foundation on which to build a new society, no matter how small.

  The citizens of New Storofshvoll came across some disturbing sights during the following months of excavation, especially when they began to dig out several of the farms on the outlying slopes of the village, where the ash from Hekla must first have fallen; they found people inside them, friends and relatives, who had been unable to get out in time, who had been suffocated, baked alive, by the smoke and ash that
had poured in through their open windows, through open doorways, down chimney flues, through cracks in the roof, gaps in the wall joists.

  One such family was discovered huddled in a heap in the middle of the room, bodies and clothes intact and discernible, eyes closed, arms around each other’s shoulders. The outside men who had dug into this desolation did not speak, but withdrew by common and tacit consent and retreated, one of them taking up a wooden tablet from the pile they had ready, someone taking his knife from his belt and carving out the names into the wood of those within, before hammering it into the ground outside, and moving on. Maybe one, maybe more, of these men would return later, anyone related to that lost family, or a neighbour who had known them well, to shovel in as much ash as they could through the windows or doors they had opened during their earlier expeditions, trying to make of it more of a burial, more of a grave, than it already was.

  It was different with the bits and bobs of bodies they discovered tangled in the wreck-heaps stranded on the Shallows, because they were only scraps of bone and tatters, flesh and clothes having long since been devoured by sea or fish, or by the acid of the ash that had plummeted down upon them. Nothing much of the remains of those who had been on the boats marked out one man’s body or belongings from another, so instead the decision was made to collect together every bone, every rag, every button, every scrap of paper, of leather, everything collected at the edge of the site of the new cemetery, the old one having disappeared without a trace.

  It fell to Lilija Indridsdottir, with her gammy shoulder and splayed-out foot, to sort through this pile of dead men’s detritus, a fortuitous decision, because it had been in her barn that the man had bided, giving her and her brother a bit of extra rent, a bit to gossip about, and also because she was the only person in the whole of the world who knew where he’d been going, and why, on the morning the sky had exploded.