The Penal Colony

by Richard Herley

  On deck, Peagrim and Redfern were helping Appleton with the shackles and halyards of the mainsail. The small mizzen sail had already been hoisted a metre or so, and below his feet Routledge felt the hull and keels beginning to respond. The ketch knew what was coming next. He saw Franks’s face, lit from below, the electric glow glinting in the lenses of his spectacles. “Well, Routledge,” he said. “Are you ready?”

  Routledge did not reply. He couldn’t.

  Peagrim came aft and with a squeaking of blocks hoisted the slithering expanse of the mizzen sail.

  It went up into the night, and as it went up it filled with air and began exerting the first of its pressure on the mast and, through the mast, on the hull. The ketch, until now slack and lifeless, randomly tossed by the waves, had been transformed into a sailing boat.

  “Swig it tighter,” Appleton said. “Tighter yet.”

  Franks had one hand on the tiller, the other ready with the sheets.

  “That’s it.”

  With a glance at Routledge, Franks pushed the tiller hard over, bringing the boat’s head into the wind. Then, to Appleton, he said, “Raise the mainsail.”

  Envoi

  To avoid further conversation, Routledge put his head close to the perspex and looked out, past the reflections, beyond the drying concrete of the runway to the close turf where a radar dish was lazily revolving. After a dull day, the evening was sunny and warm. He watched an Amoco fuel tender driving past, manned by two Irishmen with houses and families no doubt in Ennis or Limerick, men who probably knew little and cared even less about anything but their own concerns; it struck him then that for people such as these Sert did not exist. And again it really felt as if his links with the island were on the point of being severed. He felt a sudden surge of nostalgia, of loneliness; he would never see Franks again or be able to thank him for this moment.

  He turned to the right, looking across the aircraft and out through the opposite window at the terminal, still expecting a police car, a last-minute dash across the tarmac, an order for extradition.

  “Are you going on after New York?” said his companion, a woman travelling alone, American, not yet middle aged. She was dark, quite pretty. Wore perfume, a wedding ring. Had brown eyes.

  Yes: he was going to Rio de Janeiro. To Brazil. “Only on an internal flight,” he said.

  “Where to?”

  Where should he say? “Baltimore.”

  “On business?”

  “No. Visiting friends.”

  Routledge looked out at the runway once more. He wondered what Franks was doing now. He wondered what all of them were doing. He thought of his days at Courtmacsherry, of Franks’s wife, of the nameless man who had driven him to Limerick. Last night he had stayed in a hotel in the city centre. This afternoon he had taken the bus out along the Ennis road to the airport. The terminal lounge had seemed full of priests, all going to New York or Boston. It had been hot and damp in there, smelling of wet raincoats. Routledge had sat by himself with a magazine, occasionally visiting the buffet for coffee. As in Limerick itself, he had felt intimidated by all the people, the noise and bustle. On the street outside his hotel he had nearly got himself run down by a taxi. Between arriving yesterday and presenting his boarding pass, he had spoken only to receptionists, to waiters and salesgirls, and to the clerk at the check-in desk. And now to this woman. She had initiated the conversation. Routledge turned back and smiled nervously.

  In her expression he saw that she found him interesting, even mysterious. He was not like the other men on the plane.

  The engines were started.

  “Your belt,” she said.

  “What?” he said, thinking she meant the one he was wearing.

  “Your seat-belt.” She nodded at the illuminated sign.

  “O yes. Thanks.”

  The pitch of the engines increased and the aircraft began slowly to move. Routledge could not prevent himself from looking again at the terminal: still no gardaí, no flashing beacons or wailing sirens. The stewardesses retreated along the aisles, checking seat-belts and hand luggage, and retired to their own seats at the rear of the cabin.

  Turning at first through a sharp angle, the big Boeing taxied across the concrete, the tyres thumping on the cracks between the slabs. The terminal was left far behind. Routledge saw a hare running across the turf beside the runway. The aircraft halted while the pilot opened the throttles. This was the moment. The last-ever moment on Irish soil. The last-ever moment on the soil of the British Isles. He thought again of Louise, living in some house he would never see; and he thought again of Christopher, his son, who in ten years’ time might also be leaving on a westward flight like this.

  The engines grew louder, louder, building to a scream, and still the aircraft remained where it was. The wing below and behind Routledge’s seat stayed aligned exactly with the cracks in the runway, not moving a centimetre. He clutched his armrest. Why weren’t they moving?

  And then they were. Gathering speed, the white and yellow markings on the concrete gradually coalesced, losing their individuality, faster and faster until, as the acceleration grew, Routledge felt a push in the small of his back and knew that he was airborne.

  ——————

  About the author

  I was born in England in 1950 and educated at Watford Boys’ Grammar School and Sussex University, where my interest in natural history led me to read biology.

  My first published novel was The Stone Arrow, which was received with critical acclaim in 1978. It subsequently won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize, administered by the Royal Society of Literature in London, and was the first in a trilogy. This was followed by The Penal Colony (1987), a futuristic thriller that formed the basis of the 1994 movie No Escape, starring Ray Liotta.

  I began publishing ebooks in 2001, but the medium really took off in 2008-9, and I have self-published four more novels since then and am at work on another.

  The job of the artist – in whichever medium he or she works – is an important one, since, conscientiously practised, it helps us to make sense of ourselves and the world. Authorship is not an easy path to follow. I continue to work at the craft and marvel at its subtlety. I prefer a conventional storytelling framework. This offers the greatest potential for the writer: a reader who wants to know “what happens next” is the most receptive and stands to gain the most of all.

  Richard Herley

  My Author Page at amazon.com

  My Author Page at amazon.co.uk

  Visit my blog

  Also available at the Kindle Store

  The Stone Arrow

  Southern England, 3000 BC. Incomers, bringing agriculture from mainland Europe, are wrecking the virgin forests with slash-and-burn. The ancient territories and way of life of the native, nomadic hunter-gatherers, unchanged for millennia, are under threat.

  Political rivalry inside the village of Burh, and the farmers’ superstitions, result in an attack on a nomad tribe in its nearby summer camp.

  Tagart, the heir to the chief and at the very peak of his powers, is the only survivor.

  The farmers thought they had killed everybody. They could not have made a worse mistake.

  “This is a gripping thriller set convincingly in neolithic Sussex. Richard Herley’s first novel is crammed with archaeological detail, but all of it is subordinate to the fast-moving story of Tagart. His wife, child and tribe have been wiped out by a farming village, and we follow his dogged attempts to wreak revenge single-handedly with mixed horror and admiration. In the Stone Age, tribal loyalty is the only morality, and as Herley resurrects this time with such panache, the gruesome bits of Tagart’s vendetta seem justified.”

  — Sunday Times

  “The natural Darwinian world of which he writes with a blood-soaked passion left me gulping for air. Horridly imaginative, powerful in its refusal to avert its eyes from the results of violence, the book appeals to the blood lust in us all.”

  — Glasgow Heraldr />
  “It is in every way a remarkable achievement.”

  — Anthony Burgess

  The Flint Lord

  What is now called Britain – the Island Country – is ruled by Brennis Gehan Fifth, a kinsman of the mainland Gehans. He is losing his mind, in love with his beautiful, wayward sister, and intent on the genocide of the native nomadic tribes.

  His army swollen with foreign mercenaries, he prepares to march on the nomads’ winter camp.

  When the Shode, the nomads’ leader, is killed in a hunting accident, his likely successor dismisses the threat. Only Tagart sees the danger: but first he must challenge for the leadership to become the next Shode.

  Tagart’s courage and honour are dwarfed by the horror of what ensues. Vast, incomprehensible forces are at work, on a scale undreamt of in his – and his ancestors’ – culture.

  Civilization is being born.

  “Richard Herley … won wide critical acclaim and the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize for his first novel, The Stone Arrow, set in neolithic Sussex. Its successor is equally distinguished, a savage and breathtaking evocation, as gripping as any thriller, of an alien world.”

  — Yorkshire Post

  “… takes neolithic genocide, incest, helotry and weaponry in its fine imaginative stride … the stark action and the snows and wolf-woods of a hostile landscape are powerful feats of description.”

  — Observer

  The Earth Goddess

  The cult of the Earth Goddess is controlled throughout the vast empire of Europe by the secretive and unscrupulous Red Order, the priesthood which manipulates all power for its own ends. The land that is now called England has been annexed and the Flint Lord, its ruler, betrayed and murdered. His consort has escaped to the forest, pregnant with his son, Paoul, rightful inheritor of the Valdoe domain.

  Ignorant of his parentage, Paoul is orphaned, sold into the priesthood, and sent to the mainland citadel for instruction. His teachers predict a great destiny for him. Only later, beyond the point of no return, do his doubts begin …

  “One book that manages to get away from the beaten track is The Earth Goddess by Richard Herley … The first two books in the Pagans trilogy were a gripping vision of pre-history, a brutal forest world of ambush and enslavement. The cult of the Goddess now grips the land, operated by the sinister Red Order, a kind of sacerdotal Krypteia whose methods of indoctrination blend Zen with the public school ethos, while a young hand-picked novice begins to smell the truth.”

  — Observer

  “… a combination of archeological speculation and rich imagination …”

  — Roanoke Times & World News

  (These three books comprise the Pagans trilogy. They are available separately and in an omnibus edition.)

  Refuge

  It is twelve years on from a global plague. John Suter believes himself the sole survivor. He has gradually come to terms with his fate and has settled into a steady and self-reliant daily routine.

  One morning he finds a mutilated body in the river near his house. In his terror, Suter knows he has no choice but to investigate.

  What he discovers upstream stretches his endurance to its limits and forces him to reassess not only his own humanity, but also his place within the human family he had once believed extinct.

  Warning: This book is not suitable for minors. It contains descriptions of violence, sexual activity and satanic worship which some readers may find disturbing.

  “Great writing. The author’s ability to describe settings and details is impressive and effective, very realistic and very engrossing. His characters and the thoughts and motives he attributes to them are believable, and the dialogue is extremely natural sounding and believable (something I find to be a weakness of many fiction writers). I only enjoy stories with clear depictions of good and evil, none of that ‘everything is grey’ nonsense, and so I can recommend this book. The protagonist is intelligent, competent, independent, brave, all while making mistakes, being afraid, and doubting himself … just like heroes in real life.”

  — Charles Troje, amazon.com

  “Thanks for a great read.

  “And thanks to you, as a big reader, I now understand that a good writer without an editor can take you to places that you haven’t been before. Some parts of Refuge made me uncomfortable like no other book has before.

  “Congratulations and keep up the great work.”

  — David, a commenter at my blog

  The Tide Mill

  The setting is feudal Sussex in the thirteenth century, a landscape and society that have changed almost beyond recognition. The power of the Church is at its zenith; yet the King, ruling by divine right, is sovereign, above all.

  Ralf Grigg is the young son of a master carpenter whose business fails when Ralf is small. The family have come to live in the seaside village of Mape, where Ralf’s mother was born.

  Ralf’s solitary evening walk along the sea-wall is interrupted by the distant sight of someone – a boy of about his own age – trapped in the mud of the saltmarshes. The tide is flooding. There is no time to fetch help.

  The decision Ralf makes in that moment has profound and far-reaching consequences, not only for himself and his whole family, but for the lord of the manor, his sovereign, and the ruthless struggle for supremacy between Westminster and Rome.

  “This tale has it all: friendship, love, the aristocracy, familial obligation, the power of the church and feudal class structure. You come to know these people, you find out who they are inside. I thoroughly enjoyed this. I have become a fan of Richard Herley’s writing.”

  — Claus, amazon.com

  “If you love historical fiction, you need to acquaint yourself with Richard Herley. His novels are not only rich in detail, they’re beautifully written. His descriptions draw you in with the sounds, scents, and views of an often wild and unfriendly, but beautiful world. His nature isn’t a passive thing that you merely look at. It’s active and engaging, and always very much a part of the story. When he writes about a flock of seabirds swooping over the water, you can see and hear them.

  “His descriptions of manual skills and handcrafts, often of another time and place are thoroughly convincing and contribute to the feeling of authenticity about the periods he writes about. I think his knowledge must be based as much on his own skills as on research.

  “The heart of The Tide Mill is about the intersection of the lives of serfs, free men, and nobles. Characters defy their ordained destinies, suffer the consequences, or reap the rewards. Nothing about this life is easy, even for the highborn, who have to balance the opposing demands of their king and the church. The characters struggle against each other, and against nature, mostly in the form of the sea that edges the village. Most of all, they struggle against themselves. Two threads wind through the story, the forbidden love of two people from different social classes, and the construction of a new kind of mill that attracts the greedy attention of the Church.”

  — C S McClellan, Smashwords

  The Drowning

  May 1944: dawn in the Bay of Biscay. A U-boat lies crippled on the seabed. Within earshot of the warship that sank her, a solitary survivor breaks the surface. Injured, in shock, hypothermic, his life-vest torn, he cries out for help.

  The captain is on the bridge and brings his binoculars to bear.

  The order he gives sets off a train of consequences reaching down through the landscape of post-war, post-colonial Britain, changing not only his own life and the lives of his men, but those of civilians ashore and of children yet unborn.

  Spanning seventy years, set in England and in Nigeria during the Biafran crisis, this is a sweeping, compulsive story about conscience and selfishness and the far-reaching damage that cruelty can do.

  “I read this book a second time before sitting down to write a review, simply because I didn’t trust my flood of first impressions after the first run-through. Having finished it again, with six months in between to digest its conte
nts, I feel I can safely say that The Drowning is one of my five favorite novels. I found it spellbinding, poignant, painful, joyful, and ultimately uplifting, and I give it my highest possible recommendation.

  “I was unprepared for a book like this from Richard Herley. His early work – which I love – does nothing to prepare the reader for The Drowning. Books such as The Penal Colony, The Pagans, and Refuge are all smart, thrilling, and immaculately researched and written, but they don’t approach the sheer ambition of The Drowning. Only The Tide Mill, which immediately precedes this book in Herley’s fiction catalog, and shares several key themes with it, rivals it in reach and scope. …”

  — Ben Duffy, GoodReads

  Darling Brenda

  This is a very black comedy indeed – but it is also a story of innocence, redemption and, above all, love.

  The setting is England in 1955. Nigel Dodd is 23. Still living at his parents’ home, he is heir to the family business, a thriving estate agency. Unknown to Nigel, his father is embroiled in an ambitious and crooked land deal involving corrupt politicians at the County Council.

  Brenda Vale is 26, a nurse, highly intelligent and extremely pretty, with a newly acquired German girlfriend named Grete. One of Brenda’s unrealized ambitions is to “find and marry some pliable man with money”. Circumstances bring her into the Dodd household; Grete’s permission to stay in the UK unexpectedly runs out, and suddenly Brenda is in need of hard cash and plenty of it.

  Nigel could hardly be more pliable. Nor could he be more infatuated. The future looks black for him and bright for Brenda and Grete: but looks can be deceptive, and when the land deal goes horribly wrong Brenda must use all her wiles to keep her scheme on track.

  Press opinion of The Penal Colony

  Herley follows his successful trilogy The Pagans with an intriguing, ultimately uplifting novel of man’s capacity for salvation, a twist on Lord of the Flies. In a not-too-distant future, the British government has relegated murderers, rapists, and others of society’s outcasts to the wild island of Sert, off the coast of Cornwall. Overseen only by satellite technology, the 500 men on the island have divided themselves into two communities: “the village” and “outside”. The village contains the most intelligent men who, rather than succumb to the savagery rampant outside its borders, try to retain what they can of civilization. “Outside” is ruled by two warring clans that despise and envy the villagers. Routledge, wrongly convicted of a sex murder, is told that he must spend a week “outside”; if he survives, he will be accepted as a member of the village. He quickly learns the meaning of survival and in the process, like the men in the village, he rediscovers dignity, respect for others and the moral satisfaction of working together for the common good. When the warring gangs outside finally combine for an all-out attack on the village, its leader, Franks, and the village council reveal a desperate but ingenious escape plan, and this fast-moving, intelligent thriller goes into top gear.