by Des Sheridan
A further retch from Murrough drew Guion’s attention. Looking at the nobleman, he pondered the vagaries of the man’s fortunes, and how by a twist of fate they had become interlocked with his own. Murrough’s confident and impetuous nature had seen him through remarkable changes of fate since the sacking of Cashel three years ago. A staunch Protestant and Parliamentarian, he had come out of his foothold in Cork and laid waste to Munster, making himself its undisputed master. Then in 1648, a year after he had sacked the Rock of Cashel, this inveterate gambler had switched sides and declared for the King.
But the tide of power, when it turns, can turn fast. In January 1649 King Charles the First was executed. In quick succession Munster rose against Murrough and he was forced to retreat first to the mountains of Kerry and then across the Shannon into Clare. With more cows than horses and as few men, the nobleman had little to do other than wait and wonder when his luck would change. He had not yet turned forty and who knew what fate might yet bring to his table.
For Guion fate had offered an opportunity. He had ingratiated himself into the Baron’s company hearing that the he was actively planning an escape to France by ship. This was a perfect way for Guion to secure safe passage to Brittany, with his piece of the Triskell hidden in his belongings. Murrough was attracted by the thought of having a personal physician to minster to him and his family. What’s more, if rumour was to be believed, the Baron was gravitating in conscience, however late in the day, towards the Church of Rome. This offered Guion an opportunity to minister to the man’s soul. Departing into the Atlantic in winter was fraught with risk, but the odds were better than heading eastwards into the path of the advancing, merciless Parliamentarians whose message for the losing side was stark. Go to Hell under the sword or to Connaught if you were fleet of foot!
So it was that Guion joined Murrough’s entourage as it boarded the triple-masted vessel moored on the Galway quayside. Also joining them were some forty officers, making for a crowded deck, as the ship readied to pull away from the Spanish Arch on a cold December day in 1650. As Guion observed the commotion on the quays, a gust of wind blew his hair across his face, momentarily obscuring the scene. Flicking it away, he saw a flock of seagulls swoop down, pecking at the fishermen’s nets and boxes.
On the quayside the Irish were making quite a ceremony of their leaving and perhaps with good reason, as for most of the departees a return was highly unlikely. In that sense their leaving was a kind of death and there was much clasping of hands and lamentation, particularly from the female relatives who were staying. Their wails and those of the seabirds mingled together in the salt-laced breeze. The departing soldiers, for their part, cried and struck their breasts demonstratively. A public display of emotion from them was clearly expected, Guion concluded as he watched the forlorn proceedings.
At last the ship heaved to, heading out into the blue-green choppy sea. The vessel set its face, as did the men now silent and thoughtful on its decks, like flint into the Atlantic foam.
Chapter 41
Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 11 October 2014
Returning to the hunt on the third day in Santiago, they scoured the rest of the Cathedral complex and its many entrance points, looking for clues. After visiting the crypt, Luis took them to the library and showed them the famous Botafumeiro.
‘This is the largest incensory in the world’, he explained with pride. ‘And on holy days it is attached to a great pulley and swung at high speed through the void of the cathedral space, over the heads of the faithful, emitting great clouds of incense. It is quite a spectacle!’
Tara, noting it had a golden sheen, was convinced it might incorporate the component part of the Triskell, but it turned out the current censer dated only from 1851. After lunch Luis took them to the Abbey of San Martin Pinario and, when that yielded nothing, they solicited help from a female historian in the museum but she could shed no light on a spiral or Celtic motifs in Santiago.
Tara, conceding defeat in terms of scouring Santiago, was not however about to give up. Instead she changed tack and sought advice from the woman on surnames that might sound like Lally. The official was initially bemused but eventually found a large register of births from the eighteenth century and after much discussion between her and Luis in Spanish, Luis announced that the best fit in this region was the surname Lallio.
‘The problem, Tara, is that it is a very uncommon name around here so you won’t find many candidate relatives.’
Robert could hear the trepidation in Luis’ voice but Tara professed herself well pleased. It narrowed down the search. She frog marched Luis into a nearby coffee shop and, armed with a local directory, they set about ringing the Lallio surnames in it. Robert was grateful in one respect; it was good to sit down after all the tramping about.
There were eleven people with the surname Lallio in the listing. Whenever the call was answered Luis relayed Tara’s cover story about how she was an Irishwoman tracking down relatives of a family member, Donovan Triskell Lally, who came to Santiago in the late seventeenth century and settled here. Luis had to deal with some fairly incredulous and not always polite responses, but he carried on manfully and in each case left Tara’s contact details, care of the Parador, just in case. In four instances there was no one there, so he left answer messages. Tara was visibly disappointed that they had not struck lucky immediately but said gamely,
‘OK, now we wait and see who gets back to us’.
The shattered expression on her face told a different story. Robert admired her thoroughness and tenacity in exploring options, but he found himself wondering what they might do if they didn’t get a lead soon. They couldn’t trawl the whole of Spain. He was also starting to worry about Tara. Perhaps she had expected a speedy breakthrough but after three days they had got nowhere, and her mood was visibly suffering. A few times he caught her unawares, biting her nails. And he had noticed yesterday that she was taking anti-depressants again.
Returning to the hotel early at four p.m. Tara, citing a headache, had gone to her room to sleep. Trying to sound positive, he called after her that he would work up options for the following day but she didn’t turn around. Perhaps she hadn’t heard. He knew what he needed right now and headed for the bar. As he sipped a drink he wondered where to go next. In Maynooth the idea of a following a treasure trail seemed exciting, but a few days in a sweltering city centre was enough to change anyone’s mind. Tara was no longer easy company, her mood becoming increasingly obsessive and demanding. He doubted Luis would suffer it for much longer. As for himself, Robert remained fascinated by Tara and, in some strange way, sensed his destiny was tied into the Triskell as well. But he was also a realist. If things didn’t make sense at some point soon, they would have to abandon the quest here and try elsewhere.
Checking his e-mails, he used a secure website to communicate with Mac and Brian. The breeze was bringing up goose bumps on his arm as the cool of evening arrived at last. Looking at his watch, he realised that Tara would be down soon, and his spirits lifted. When she was around he wanted to look after her and when she was away he looked forward to her company again. In general with women short-lived affairs were the norm for Robert, relationships of convenience to meet his sexual needs. After a month or two he invariably got bored. But the interest he felt in this woman was different. She both attracted and intrigued him. She was beautiful to watch, but also mercurial and at times aloof, not inviting or allowing intimacy. Sometimes she appeared distracted and tended not to share what might be troubling her. He didn’t know where this friendship would take him, but one thing was clear - he was starting to feel increasingly responsible for her. He couldn’t just walk away, that he knew.
Chapter 42
Dorking, UK, 13 October 2014
‘There, that’s it, that’s the house,’ cried Dries excitedly over his shoulder from the driver’s seat. Dries was the latest and youngest recruit to the gang. Erik had come across him when he was in prison and had taken him und
er his wing. Dries had pulled the hired Lexus up a short distance down the road in the leafy suburb of Dorking.
Pascal’s thoughts went back to the priest. The man had impressed him. He had been brave, but like anyone he had his pain threshold and Pascal had found it. When he wouldn’t co-operate Pascal had gagged him and carved a Triskell onto the man’s bare chest with his ivory-handled knife. The man began to talk and from that moment Pascal had felt back in the driving seat in his pursuit of the Triskell. Before long the priest admitted the existence of a poem, just as Patrick Deargal had claimed, and told them where to find his copy. Pascal was astonished at the richness of the imagery in the poem although he couldn’t decipher much of it. So, knife in hand, he set about carving deeper into the man’s bloodied chest further until the priest offered up an explanation of the text.
He would have gone further, much further, but Le Vache had intervened and stopped him. It was the first occasion Jean had ever stood up to Pascal. He protested that, holed up as they were in the priest’s rooms, they could be discovered at any moment. What’s more leaving a trail of mutilated corpses in their wake was too reckless. Pascal had laughed at that, but had demurred. Erik had finished the priest off with a bullet to the head from a gun with a silencer on it. Pascal knew that Shay’s murder had been over the top because he couldn’t resist showing off and laying on thick the references to Irish mythology. Also the Other One had played his part. It was the first time the Avatar had appeared unbidden and in the absence of Freya’s mediumship - and his presence had transformed Pascal’s experience. He also saw that the Other One had started to affect Erik and Theo and influence their behaviour. Of course the murder had shocked people, but Pascal had no regrets. They needed to see things the way he did. In his world that sort of behaviour would be commonplace, because he lived to exercise power and he enjoyed cruelty. He also believed that to be like an ancient Celt, you had to act like them. Inhabit the fur as it were. But, at Maynooth, Pascal had accepted that Jean had a point. Murdering someone in an isolated cave, as against a university boarding college, was not the same thing.
What Pascal wasn’t to know was that the priest had outsmarted him. He had withheld the identity of the four visitors to Ormond Castle all those centuries ago. Pascal thought he had broken the Jesuit but in fact the man had had partly outfoxed him, although it had still cost him his life.
And now they had a new informant to meet. Lowering the electric window on the Lexus, Pascal pulled on a cheroot and took in the setting. The houses were detached and modern, each one different in layout, and all well-landscaped with trees and shrubbery that afforded each dwelling a high degree of privacy. Built in traditional red brick, some with faux half-timbering to add an antique effect, they were quite attractive, he thought, in a bourgeois sort of way. And you would need a good few euros to buy one, Pascal surmised, which Mr James Gascoyne–Cribb wouldn’t get from his employment at Arundel Castle. Aristocrats, wherever you went, were notoriously parsimonious and he didn’t expect the Howard family would be any different. He deduced accordingly that Gascoyne–Cribb must have inherited family money.
They had decoded the link to the Howard family quickly. It was plain enough, only one family in seventeenth century England met the description. The Earl Marshal is one of the Great Offices of the British monarchy. He organises the funeral of the monarch and plans arrangements for the accession and coronation of the successor. He is the most senior of Lords after the Royal Dukes and the position of Earl Marshal is a hereditary position occupied by the Duke of Norfolk. And despite the fact that the Dukes of Norfolk were Catholic sympathisers and often treacherous, nonetheless they had held onto this role since the time of the Plantagenet kings. Pascal was impressed.
Beyond that the English link had foxed them at first because, after identifying William Howard through a paper published by the dead priest, the trail went totally cold. Le Vache proposed employing an historian to do the leg work for them, but Pascal was too impatient for that. He ordered his people to find out who worked for the Howard family today, and that had led them to James Peregrine Gascoyne-Cribb, esq. His alma mater was firstly Charterhouse School, followed by a First Class Honours degree at Oxford University, and now he was ensconced as historian and archivist to His Grace, Jocelyn Fitzalan-Howard, 19th Duke of Norfolk, and 18th Earl of Arundel.
‘Right,’ said Pascal tossing the butt of the cheroot out of the window. ‘Let’s go and make friends with the historian. Dries, you cover the grounds at the back.’
Chapter 43
Ponferrada, Spain, 12 October 2014
The man sat at a table outside the bar, two tables away from Robert and Tara. He was dressed in a beige linen suit, which was rather crumpled and dusty by this point in the day. A battered brown, broad-rimmed, leather hat occupied the chair next to his. Ostensibly reading his newspaper he was in fact observing the couple keenly through his dark shades. That morning he had bribed the doorman at the Parador to point them out to him as they emerged from the hotel. They had set off in their hire car and he had trailed them in his battered old SEAT Cordoba. He had no idea where they were going, as they drove south on the AP53, but at Lalin they cut off eastwards on smaller roads and he had to drop back periodically to ensure they didn’t become aware of his presence. Eventually he guessed they were heading for Ponferrada, and so it proved.
When his wife had told him about the phone call, it had come as a bolt out of the blue, that catapulted him back over the decades. His father, Tadeo, had tutored him, from the age of nine, to take on the role of protecting the treasure. As a boy, Leandro’s eyes had opened wide with amazement as his father’s hushed voice recounted the secret family history on the paternal side. He regaled the boy with tales of heroic ancestors, including Donovan, Ferdinand, and more recently Tadeo’s own father, Luis, who had fought the fascists in the Spanish Civil War. He had ended up hiding in the hills above Vigo until 1944 when the Civil Guard had tracked him and his comrades down and shot him dead. Leandro’s father recalled walking in the funeral behind the horse-drawn hearse that carried his father’s coffin as it clattered through the cobbled streets of the town. Tadeo admonished Leandro not to repeat any of it to his mother and the boy had sworn enthusiastically to dedicate himself to the Triskell’s protection.
But that was a long time ago, in Franco’s Spain, when so many things were different and so many people, like his family, were desperately poor. When Tadeo, jailed for Galician activist offences, had died a political prisoner in jail in the nineteen-eighties at the young age of fifty six, Leandro decided to move on in life. It seemed to the teenager that his father’s idealism had cost the family dear and Leandro didn’t want to follow in his footsteps. While he stuck to his trade as a mechanic in Vigo, better times had eventually arrived and he had got a job in the Peugeot-Citroen car factory. It paid well and he had married Inez and pursued a good material life. Without too much success it was true, but that was luck for you. These days he worked for a small car repair business near where he lived. Anyway a daily newspaper and a beer kept him happy enough.
For years he scarcely thought of the Triskell and, not having a son, he was not sure what would become of it when he died. He vaguely thought about bequeathing it as a curiosity to the museum in Santiago. Not that he had ever written a will. Then in the last month the Triskell had figured unexpectedly in his dreams. They were strange, unsettling dreams, with a woman’s face recurring in them, a strikingly beautiful woman.
So his heart had thumped as Inez recounted the phone message, his blood pressure soaring and he had snapped at his wife. Of course he didn’t have Irish relatives! Wouldn’t he have told her if he had, he blustered. But inner turmoil gripped him, a confused mix of anxiety and excitement. Who was this woman and how had she found him? After dinner he had gone out as usual for his evening drink but instead of going to his local bar he had headed for the internet café. He felt awkward using it, as it was where the local boys went to sneak a look at porn sites.
>
‘The missus gone on strike has she?’ Carlos jibed him as he entered.
‘Just looking at holiday options,’ he replied with a jovial laugh, though he knew his face had reddened. When he googled the name Ruane and was linked to coverage of Rosnaree, his heart nearly stopped. So it was all true, everything his father had told him! And the woman must be on the trail of the Triskell. Leandro was not a brave man and he was torn between the desire to contact the woman and fear of what might happen if he did. So he decided to observe her first.
Chapter 44
Atlantic Ocean, December 1650
In the days that followed the warship carrying Guion and Murrough made slow passage southwards down the west coast of Ireland, across the Bristol Channel and around Land’s End, opposed at every move by the prevailing westerlies which came rolling up from the south-west. A so-called ‘third-rater’ the vessel could move swiftly and outrun the Moorish pirates who were plaguing the English Channel, although even they hopefully knew better than to ply their trade in deepest winter. More importantly, the ship was built for winter sailing and they were to have their fair share of storms on the journey.
During the trip, Guion played on the Baron’s unquiet conscience, emphasising to him the forgiving nature of Catholicism, which would embrace a repentant sinner. The Baron brought the same calculated hesitancy to his religious convictions as he did to his political loyalties. A great analyst, he liked to look at issues from all sides and test them out thoroughly before committing himself. Yet, leaving aside self-interest, Guion knew that there was a serious side to the Baron’s thinking on matters of conscience. Guion, not for the first time, remarked to himself how likeable a man the Baron was, however terrible his misdeeds. And Murrough was a good companion, always talkative and thinking through issues out loud. A great raconteur, during the long days at sea he regaled Guion with tales of adventure as a young soldier in the Spanish Army in Italy during the sixteen-thirties.