2
My hands were shaking when I opened the box, it was filled with sheafs of paper, brown with age and charred at the edges .Apart from a couple of medals and seeming religious medallions there was naught else in the box.
I carefully unfolded the sheaf of paper and could see that there were pages and pages filled with the meticulous copperplate script ,minute in size but clearly discernable.
I returned to my room to fetch my reading glasses ,sandwiches ,flask and smoking materials; this promised to a long read.
Settling myself down in the chair by my charges bed ,I unfolded the pages and began to read???
????This is the journal of Kerrigan J.Keegan 1898
div>
I was taken on the barquentine ?Mudskipper? as third mate, being my fathers ship ,I would be trained on the job rather than be sent to a sea training school,father maintained that officers trained in this manner had a greater understanding of the sea .I think he did it to save money.
We were carrying the usual cargo of Garston mud to Chile ,a journey that our vessels had been making since the Spanish first settled South America.
The Spaniards ,as the Romans before them (and some said the ancient Greeks too) used the fabulous mud in their brickmaking. Our company had many ships plying this trade and Garston had become a wealthy little town. It had been trading non stop since the Romans occupied Britain in the first century of the Christian Era. When they came to the north of the country they settled in Chester from where they sent surveyors to the surrounding territories, sailing down the river ,now called the Mersey ,they found the natives on the northern shore by the hamlet of Oglet to be of a friendly disposition and noted ,that unlike the neighbouring tribes ,the Oglet tribe lived in brick houses. Brick of a wondrous kind, it was smooth and hardy ,light and durable. When the surveyors enquired whence the bricks originated the natives pointed to a little settlement further downriver, a place they called Gar Stone, the place of brick.
Those ancient surveyors made their way along the shore towards the rising spirals of smoke where they found a clearing close to the shore. In it were some crude kilns around which were stacks of newly made brick. They had never seen such handiwork ,whereas these Latins were masters of stone and marble, these men of Gar Stone were surely brickmakers of the first order.
It was not long before the Gar Stonians became aware of the Romans presence and they surrounded them , never having seen such finely dressed people before.
Soon an older man appeared and he was brought to the Romans ,who could see that he was the chief. Putting his arms across his chest ,he half bowed before them and said ?I am Kee Ghan ,the leader of these peoples, what is the nature of your visit to us? The Romans replied that they were looking for places that could offer good trading conditions that would help consolidate the relations between them and the natives. The old chief then asked if what they saw pleased them and they replied that they were mightily pleased ,the Gar Stone bricks would be ideal for building homes for the Roman Empire.
A great feast was held in honour of the illustrious visitors to commence the beginning of a trading relationship that has lasted near two thousand years.
My family grew rich and so did our people, we might have been richer but when the Roman Empire collapsed so did the need for our bricks. The Goths , Picts ,Jutes ,Vikings ,Saxons and Angled despised our handiwork and used daub and wattle or wood and straw. The Druids banned our brickmaking on pain of death and drove us underground ,literally. And thus was born the secret society which carried on the arcane ways, the Brotherhood of Mudmen.
They met only on night of the full moon so that no lamps were required to carry out their rituals, These brave men , prevented from creating the bricks that had brought them wealth ,then devised a plan that would help restore the fortunes of their beloved town . They would make the bricks elsewhere. With the coming of the Christian missionaries from the new kingdom of Rome ,they were able to rekindle the contacts that they had had with their ancient trading partners. A monastery was settled on the shores of the river and ,on the Abbots own vessels ,some of the Brethren of the Order of Mudmen were despatched abroad to Rome and Constantinople to set up brickworks. What those brickworks needed was mud ,the mud of Gar Stone. And so commenced a new golden age, as paganism and vandalism passed into history, the New Holy Roman Empire came into being ,and the churches it built were made of brick ,brick that was made from the finest mud available. The mud of Garston. Note its name ,one word not two.
The Brotherhood prospered and created new orders , the Illuminati, an ultra secret order that brought together the greatest thinkers of the day, the head of the order was always a member of the oldest of Garstons families, the Keegans.
Now in charge of shipping the Mud ,they never brought their vessels back empty but brought back silks and carpets ,sandalwood and ebony and all those other exotic spices .Ships of every nation lay at anchor waiting to discharge their treasures before they went away laden with the greater treasure, Garston mud!
As these ships sailed out toward the Irish sea ,they had to pass that other settlement near the rivermouth ,Larpool, a place that was feared by most mariners for there lived the villainous Scousers, a race of pirates who were not above luring the incoming vessels with false beacons which caused them to be stranded on the hostile shore. Thus many Liverpudlian families became enriched by such nefarious deeds Ship captains knew well enough to stay midriver to avoid that noisome place. The natives were so uncultured.
Bookmarks