Liam and the Long Arm of the Law (open)

[Dora Lynch]

Liam and the Long Arm of the Law 1333

School. That was like being in prison to the little boy Liam. Had he not run free back in Ulster, happily picking off a bit of this off a market display where the vendors laughed and let him go? They laughed because he had been so pitiful and was not going to survive without what he scrounged at the markets. In the forest, it was worse. When there was no game to be had with his trusty sling, even a rat, young Liam looted many of the dead bodies after battle. Back in those days, it was, to quote the lad, “easy pickin.”.

As a refugee, Liam lived as he had in Ulster, from one day to the next. Off again, this time to Turas Lan, why change? Why? Well when he was adopted by Clovis and Dora Lynch, they let their new son know in no uncertain terms.”We do not take the property of others.” It had been good with him, until recent times. Until the move into Ebony Hall, out there on Byrante Row.

“I miss me friends.” Liam complained to his mum, Dora. “I just made some friends by the bookstore and now I got to start again! Do I gots to go the school, Ma? Can’t I just read natural, like Loomis does?”

“Now ye know that Loomis’ reading is one of his talents. You have got other talents, like how you can aim with your sling, your good health and more what the Almighty give you. School is a way to get a new talent, like reading and writing. Numbers and more learnings.” What the rest might be she had no idea, for school was new to the elderly Mom. “Now off with ye. Hurry off to school, be not late.” She was so proud. He was the first of their line to attend school, just like the wealthy do.

Had he not walked to school alone while living near the Bookstore? Why would he need a servant to walk along now? Liam ran the streets since he was three, living on his own at six in wartime. A walk to school was easy. It gave him time to think.

“Why do I need school? I am going to be a firewood vendor like me Da. He don’t read. Who needs history stories or numbers? I got the knowing of what coin is for what pay. That be enough to be a man. I am a good fighter, too. Maybe I will be a soldier when I grow up and fight for Turas Lan? School for that? Bah!” He spat at the cobblestone street, like he thought a man would.

The idea hit him. “I need a knife if I am gonna be a soldier.” Not a table knife or a wooden stick of a sword but a nice sharp dagger! Iffen those bullies catch me again, I am gonna cut their friggin’ ears clean off!” His kicks and solid punches to their faces and guts had got the bullies on the run before but Liam got the thought of a knife in his head and there it stayed.

On his way to school, Dora’s adopted son cut through the market-place, not caring that it might make him late. He saw the display of row upon row of nice baked breads. Turnips in baskets brushed carefully clean of the dirt from the fields. He was familiar with each seller and greeted all his Mum’s friends with a wave and that dear smile of his, a happy face dotted with freckles under a fringe of red curly hair.

Then he went onto the part of the sales area that his Ma did not go, where weapons were hawked. To one particular stall on the corner of a row, he skimmed by, his hands waving along. One second he was empty handed and the next a nice new dagger slid into his trouser side-pocket, quick as a blink. Oh yes, he was good at the game but this time his light fingers had been spotted.

“Ho there, Laddie, put it back. You been seen.” Erik was not angry but no one walks away with the sweat of his brow, his time and talent making this wonderful weapon. “Lest you can pay eight silver coin; that be the price if you be purchasing.”

Liam was about to run but he called on another of his talents, he lied. “ What? I ain’t got nothing to put back.” Side glance he spotted a slit between the stalls where it might be a good exit if he had to run.

“Me dagger, laddie. Set it back on the counter and we call that it never happen and on your way you go.”

“I don’t know what you talkin’ about!” He tried that avenue of escape.

“I seen you too!” It was one of his Ma’s friends, Old Widow Klemp. “ Dorie will beat you good if you do not return his property, boy!” She shook her finger at the now trapped little boy.

“No way.” He declared and might have got away with that except there was a clang onto the cobblestone street. The dagger had cut through his side pants leg pocket and hit the ground. Run! His instinct clicked in and he shot off for the crack between two stalls wooden sides where an adult could not follow. He was going to hide out and…well. Not.

One of the men who patrolled the marketplace, for the safety of all, simply reached out with his long arm and snagged the would be thief by the scruff of his baggy shirt, hauling Liam back out of his handy exit route.”Not so fast. You won’t get out of this so easy now, kid.”

This day, Liam Lynch did not show up at school at all.

[Peregrine Inveryne-Lamont]

There wasn't such a thing as a night without the pirate. He lived only for the midnight hour, and it's raspy hands did there find such events as the boy's. The child had started down a path, where the pirate was at the end on his way back to the beginning to see where he had gone wrong.

"Now what's all this fuss about?" He spoke with a smile to the merchant, who so sought after the boy who clung to his knife, and the eyes of the man came close to the pirate's.

"He stole from me!" the price would be his head in some states, but this one wasn't so willing to part with the child's life, "Stole the knife!"


Peregrine would smirk to the man, then looking down to the boy, "Knives m'friend are not something you take..they are gifts. All good knives are gifts." From the small of his back he reached to the bone handle of the dagger, best used for hunting, the blade thickest at the end. "Trade me eh?" Scoundrel.

[Dora Lynch]

Friday's Child

"Friday's child is full of woe."....B.L. Farjeon

“Come quick Dorie!” Widow Kent pounded at the door of Ebony Hall, for she alone was not hesitant to go to Byrante Row and find Liam’s parent. “Yer lad has been took by the law man! In the market! Come on a run! They say he stole a knife!” Flora Kent slumped and sat on the stoop until Dora came flying out the door, little Loomis at her heel.

“Stay, keep Janice company, Loomis. I will be back soon, I need to fetch your brother back.” Back from school? The youngest boy did not understand. Why would anyone miss even a moment of school? Loomis felt like crying but he did not. He wanted to run after his Mum and be there when she found Liam, but he reatrained that urge. He was not going to disturb Mistress Janice at her studies, What to do? Loomis Adam resorted to the forbidden. He sucked his thumb and got his face into rain cloud mode, ready to cry salty tears any moment now.

Dora had been changing clothes to go to the market and was caught in the process. She grabbed up the drawstring leather coin purse she had for the trip and simply ran as she was. Her hair strealing down her back, unbraided gave her the look of a person pursued. Holding her skirts knee high, Dorie ran her bare feet slap slap on the cobblestone streets, to the market. She gasped for breath, not from the run but for fear. “Lordy know what happen to a little child in prison!” All she knew was what it had been back in Ulster, in Aberdeen and that drove her frantic. She arrived at the Marketplace in record time and scanned the vegetable stalls for any sign of Liam. The child should not have been near the market as it was not on the way to school. It was, that if you consider the child made up his own route.

“Have you seen Liam?” she asked of the Veiled Scribe, writer of the love notes for such as Dora.

Aurilla looked up from her work and paused the quill in mid air. “ The red hair one? I saw him head to the arms area. You know how boys like to look at such things.” It was meant to calm Dora, but instead, it gave the old Mum cold chills.

Back in the forest, she recalled a very little Liam begging her to teach him to use a sling so he might slay the enemy with a rock, as David had done. She herself made the sling and showed him to use it. Last night, she overheard him tell Loomis that they will grow up to be soldiers and fight bullies with big clubs and sharp knives. What did Liam do?

“Dora?” Aurilla stood and gently offered her shawl to the distraught Mum. “ Here. You will be more comfortable with this on.”

“Oh? I thank you.” She was numb, so much that being in the market with only her shift for a blouse with her full skirts, it did not embarrass her. Dorie wrapped herself in the fringed shoulder cover and marched on into the Arms and Armor Court.

A milling about crowd centered about the knife and sword display and there were all sorts of shouts from the mob. “Get his father here! Let him pay up cash, then let the lad go.” “Put the Irisher in the gaol! Eye I had enough o that sort!” “Beat him! Were it my son I would!” “Red hair be the devil sign!”

Dora elbowed her way into the center of the crowd where Liam, the Law man, the knife seller stood talking to one she recognized. Pere! Not only was here, but he was talking to the knife seller. Dora managed to get over to where Liam was, sullen and quiet. She listened to what the pirate was saying.

[Peregrine Inveryne-Lamont]

Peregrine would pay the man, with money earned from the blood that ran through the man's veins, but he would simply replace the blade at the small of his back, and let the boy keep his own. How many lives had been turned on this street alone with such a hilt?

"Look..no harm." His ocean eyes would scan the crowd landing silently within Dora's own, and a hand came to pull the boy closer, keeping him there by a firm yet comforting hand. " We were just on her way to dock, I think he was worried he wouldn't have a knife to help me cut down the old rig. Because, that's how we earn things in life..work, Right Liam?"

There was indeed a heart of gold under his chest, the rib cages simply refused to hold it in any longer. Dora was a dear friend, who gambled her life with her leather shoes, how could the boy ever learn? A smirk passed over his lips as he offered a wink to the older woman, perhaps he would have to have a talk with her.


When the crowd came to pass, the event over Peregrine crossed his arms over his chest and stood facing Dora, with her son still at his side.

"Can I kidnap him for a while?"

[Dora Lynch]

"Can I kidnap him for a while?"

“Be me guest.” She exhaled and tried to get her breath back from the run. “I swear this one need a man’s teaching. I try and I try but this child don’t seem to get it. We work our way in this world.” Dorie clutched the scribe’s shawl up around her neck. She did not want anyone, expecially Peregrine see her like this, not quite dressed and her hair bedraggled. This was nothing to the shame she felt as she was forced to admit that she had not guided Liam in the ways of right, not quite yet.


“Peregrine is me friend, Liam. You can go with him do some real work. I thank you good sir, for allowing me boy to go to work. He tell me he does not want schooling, so to work it be.” With one hand on her shawl and the other on the shoulder of her son, Mistress Lynch urged the boy forward, to accompany Pere. Of course Dora knew it was perhaps one day that she was sending the lad off to do.

“Pere? How can I thank ye? It has been hard since me Clovis went off; he were good with the child and kept him occupied and out o mischief. True, I been so caught up in Mistress Janice’s care, I might of missed some of the larks the lad was up to. This here had woke me up. “

As Liam walked away with Pere, Dora took her market coin purse and went to do the shopping, barefoot and still not really dressed for public appearance. She mumbled a prayer that just came to her lips and slipped on out, into the air and into the Almighty’s ear. “Please let me boy know that good come from work and there is good in each of us. And Lord? Thank ye for Pere. And do not let him know that I love him. Tis a secret between you and me. “ She walked tall and sure of her step, while market folk simply stared at the old woman with unbound hair barefooting it back to Ebony hall, market basket on each arm.

[Peregrine Inveryne-Lamont]

He had spent a lifetime at sea, where the wild could not be tamed, and still to this day that uncharted territory remained somewhere in his gaze. A smile to Dora, he took her son who went so willingly as if he were a siren pulling him to the shore. The weather was cold, and even a tailor's best coat could not block such a wind.

"Here.." Peregrine pulled back his coat, the coat of a captain that displayed the Griffin so proudly across the shoulders and turned it over the boy's shoulder's. They were midway through their work, and the frozen child would be seated inside the cabin where a fire was warm and welcome.

Lomis would watch with wide eyes as the once pirate went over by the small box of burning coals to poke them back to life,

"There is more then just the sea to being a sailor boy." He spoke over his shoulder at the son who would find himself a warm cup of tea; Ada's special blend. "You have to love it, love the life, and many come to depend on you. They are hungry you take it, but there is nothing like working for your wager. There is a pride to start from the bottom and make your way up. Some are born to it." His eyes went to the small space that had become his step-son's own quarters when he spent the night on the ship with him during the warmer months. Pere had not the heart to move it, as often on his travels he thought of the Campbell born Lamont, and it made his lonely nights seem a little less important. Honey, wasn't allowed on Daddy's ship yet, but this summer come she would be the right age.


By the end of the day Dora's son was very worn, polished from the good bit of work, and asleep over the pirate's shoulder before he returned to the Lady's door. He prayed he walked the straight line, kept with his schooling and on the side of justice, but a darker part of him would also see him through the evils to come.

[Dora Lynch]

Mistress Lynch was standing outside of the main entrance to Ebony Hall, waiting for her son to return at the work day's end. There came Pere, a bundle that was her asleep son slung over his shoulder.

“Here, let me take him.” Dora took the tired, dead asleep Liam in her arms, little and light for his age. “ He done a day’s work today, he did.” She chuckled as she shifted the little boy ready to take him into Ebony Hall, and put him to bed for the night. “I wager he will go back to school eager for the chance to sit down.”

“I thank ye from the bottom of me heart, Peregrine. The lad don’t listen to me well these days, since his Da has been gone overlong. I forgot how Liam missed doing real work, like at the firewood bin and in the fields at home. I will be needing to get him tired every day, so he can set still long enough for his schooling. “ Dorie would ask what he might do at home, in Ebony Hall, that would use up some of Liam's extra energy.

The next day, clean and hair combed, Liam Lynch walked to school by the shortest route, nowhere near the marketplace. His eyes were still bleary and the chill from being on Pere’s ship in winter still hung heavy, like his sore arms and weariness. “I suppose it will not hurt if I know reading and writing and some numbers. Ship Captains need such to count their profits.”

Yesterday, Liam wanted to be a soldier. Today his dream was going out to sea. Yes, he knew that meant hard work and starting at the bottom. The question is does Liam Lynch have what it takes to succeed in business. Oh he does that, but what sort of business will that be?

If Pere had not happened by when he did, the long arm of the law had the child in its grip, and the lad would not have the choice to change his ways. The light fingered game Liam once played lifting items from market stalls has to end. And end it did.