The Life and Times of Lukitt Bachmann
Lukitt Bachmann is waiting in his Lanterne de Mortes, a Tower of the Dead, in the middle of a cemetery.
He’s had a complicated life: son of a Herrnhuter Brother thrown out of his sect; help-meet to a pastor; sailor; fisherman; boar-hunter; and student and lecturer, exploring the varied histories of the Knights Teutonic and the bone-chapels their descendants left behind them.
He has become an assassin and a murderer, learned the terrible highs and lows of friendships made and lost, and is awaiting now his last remaining friend to set him free so he can put right past wrongs.
As Lukitt is let loose on a world gone mad, can this avenging angel finally find solace for his soul?
Extract
Drudgery for the Bachmann family then, for all three – when Lukitt was old enough: put to work in the fields, to look after the sheep, the goats, the cattle, the dairy, the crops, and the bees Hermistus cares far more about than he does them.
Lukitt ten when mother and father engineer his escape, get him down the valley, having previously fixed him employment skivvying for the pastor in the small village surrounding the Seiden See in return for bed and board, a place in the school.
The journey from the farm in Gargellan to Seiden See the beginnings of Lukitt’s awakening, for oh, he’d never seen anything more perfect than he was seeing now as mother and father bundled him onto their cart and hied him away down the track at dawn, Lukitt spying the black-blown skins of puffballs, wondering at small pillow-fights of feathers left by swoops of harriers and buzzards, sees countless dew strung spider-webs shivering in the breeze as the cart’s wheels roll by. And then the real reveal: turning a corner, seeing blue-green hills rolling down from every side, the lake at their base as round as a coin, still and serene, hand-mirror of the clouds, not a breath nor ripple of wind to disturb its surface. Scatter of houses hemming its western arc, green roofs shimmering in the sun, walls washed blue by the water’s reflections, small jetties leading out into the lake. Beyond them the church, on a small mound of green, its manse tacked on like a forgotten pocket.
Thank you, Clio Gray and Love Books Group Tours.
About the author
Clio was born in Yorkshire, spent her later childhood in Devon before returning to Yorkshire to go to university. For the last twenty-five years she has lived in the Scottish Highlands where she intends to remain. She eschewed the usual route of marriage, mortgage, children, and instead spent her working life in libraries, filling her home with books and sharing that home with dogs. She began writing for personal amusement in the late nineties, then began entering short story competitions, getting shortlisted and then winning, which led directly to a publication deal with Headline. Her book, The Anatomist’s Dream, was nominated for the Man Booker 2015 and longlisted for the Bailey’s Prize in 2016.
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website : cliogray.com
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