novelraw Chapter 112: The Gale Lion
Chapter 112: The Gale Lion
When Lin Jie and Julian returned to Dublin city by carriage, the sky had already turned gloomy.
Thick gray clouds hung low over the city, foretelling a late autumn downpour was imminent.
The somber, oppressive weather perfectly accentuated their urgent and uncertain mood.
Their destination, the Temple Bar District, was located on the south bank of the Liffey River, the ancient and paradoxically charming heart of Dublin.
During the day, it was a Bohemian paradise where artists, writers, and scholars sought inspiration;
after nightfall, it transformed into a city vortex of raucous chaos, permeated with the scent of alcohol and hormones.
Beneath the surface of this vortex lurked the turbulent and dangerous political undercurrents of Dublin, and indeed, all of Ireland.
The carriage stopped at the entrance of a narrow alley, just wide enough for one vehicle to pass.
The coachman was a local contact arranged by Professor O'Donoghue, a taciturn and reliable ally.
He gave a meaningful nod to the two men inside the carriage, then tightened the reins and waited quietly in place.
Lin Jie and Julian stepped down from the carriage, immediately engulfed by a rich, complex aura of life.From a distant pub came the melodious yet sorrowful strains of a traditional Irish bagpipe tune, while nearby, the drunken clamor and loud arguments of patrons, a mix of Gaelic and English, filled the air.
This was the untamed heart of the Irish national spirit.
Every cobblestone and every soot-blackened red brick wall, weathered by time, narrated the thousand-year epic of national suffering and struggle.
The two of them were no longer dressed as the scholar and secretary from before.
Julian had changed into a plain, worn dark brown tweed jacket, his artist's long hair deliberately mussed.
He looked like a poor, idealistic folk scholar from the French countryside, come to Dublin in search of Celtic cultural roots.
Lin Jie, meanwhile, had stripped away any trace of refinement.
He wore a stiffly starched, cheap gray shirt, over which was a coarse gray woolen waistcoat stained with unidentifiable marks.
His delicate East Asian features were a conspicuous label in this predominantly white area, yet in this chaotic, bottom-tier, "borderless" environment, they paradoxically seemed more harmonious than within the rigid hierarchy of the "upper-class" Traveler's Club.
He looked like a silent foreign follower brought back from a distant colony by an idealistic French scholar.
The antique shop named "Gaelic Lion" was hidden deep within a Fleet Street alley at the core of the Temple Bar District.
Its facade was extremely inconspicuous.
A weathered wooden sign with faded lettering hung on the paint-peeling dark green shop door.
The display window held no eye-catching tourist souvenirs, but was instead cluttered with dust-covered, neglected antiques—rusted fragments of chainmail, broken Celtic crosses, and several old Gaelic books with tattered covers.
The entire shop exuded an aloof "keep out" aura, rejecting tourists.
It awaited not ordinary customers, but those who could truly decipher the hidden code behind it, its own people.
Julian took a deep breath.
He knew the performance to come would test his scholarly acting skills and his profound understanding of the complex, contradictory Irish national psyche.
He gently pushed open the protesting shop door and led Lin Jie into this unknown lion's den.
Inside was even darker and more cramped than outside.
The narrow space was crammed full with mismatched old furniture piled high with clutter, making it difficult to find footing.
At the very back of this treasure trove, chaotic as a junkyard, behind a counter, sat the shopkeeper.
He was a man in his fifties, built solid and stout like a legendary dwarf.
He had a striking head of fiery red hair and a red beard.
His face bore the typical Celtic high cheekbones and deep-set eyes;
a pair of sharp, small gray-green eyes scrutinized the two uninvited guests from behind a pair of reading glasses.
In his hands, he was repeatedly polishing a rugged Irish shortsword bearing the marks of ancient warfare with a piece of deerskin.
This man was the owner of the "Gaelic Lion" antique shop, also Dublin's famous radical Gaelic cultural revivalist, Finn McCool.
He had named himself after the greatest legendary hero in Irish mythology.
"Good afternoon, gentlemen," Finn's voice was hoarse and powerful, carrying a thick Dublin working-class accent. "This shop does not welcome tourists. If you're looking for stupid souvenirs printed with shamrocks, please exit, turn left, and walk a hundred yards. You'll find everything you want there."
His words were an undisguised dismissal.
"We are not tourists, Mr. McCool," Julian slowly removed his hat, replying in slightly halting but accurate and respectful Gaelic. "We are pilgrims who have come seeking the lost footprints of the great sages of old."
Finn's hand, polishing the shortsword, paused.
His sharp little eyes lifted from above his reading glasses, re-examining the Frenchman who could speak Gaelic.
Wariness remained, but a faint flicker of curiosity reserved for one's own kind had quietly surfaced.
"My name is Julian," Julian continued in Gaelic, his voice sincere and humble. "This is my friend and companion, Lin. We hail from the Brittany peninsula in France. My ancestors were also once a branch of the great Celtic people."
"We have come to this Emerald Isle not for sightseeing, but to reclaim the true history that was ruthlessly erased, altered, and defiled from our shared ancestral memory by the Romans and the Anglo-Saxons."
His words were skillfully chosen.
He did not directly mention independence or rebellion, but instead approached from the grand perspective of pan-Celtic cultural identity, positioning himself not as a mere foreigner, but as a long-lost distant relative.
The ice on Finn's face thawed slightly.
He set down the shortsword. "Brittany... yes, I've heard of it. The people there speak an ancient language similar to ours."
"So then, Mr. 'Pilgrim' from Brittany, what do you wish to find in my broken-down shop that holds only the remnants of history?"
"We are searching for a song," Lin Jie spoke up at this precise moment.
He said, "A lost lament of betrayal and vengeance, said to have been composed by the greatest bard of three hundred years ago, the 'Blind-Eyed' Tarlough."
If Julian's cultural identity was the wedge to crack open Finn's defenses, then Lin Jie's direct mention of the name "Blind-Eyed" Tarlough—a name laden with tragedy and nationalist sentiment—was the key turning in the lock.
Finn's gray-green eyes contracted sharply.
A massive, oppressive aura of danger erupted from his stocky frame.
He no longer seemed like a stodgy antique shop owner;
in that moment, he transformed back into the true "Gaelic Lion" who dared to pass secret messages for Fenian Brotherhood members right under the noses of the English police.
"Who are you people?!" His voice grew low, harboring the dangerous fury before a volcanic eruption. "Where did you hear that name?!"
*Bang!*
As his words fell, the shop door was violently kicked open from the outside.
Three tall, grim-faced Irish burly men blocked the only exit. They wore dockworker clothing, but their eyes held a coldness that didn't match their attire.
The leader, a man with a fierce scar on his cheek, gave Finn a slow nod, then fixed Lin Jie and Julian with a menacing glare.
"Our academic visit today is proving more lively than anticipated," Julian said, looking at the three uninvited guests. His scholarly face showed no fear;
instead, it became animated with excitement.