Galvanism and Ghouls

by Tilly Wallace

  “Us, my lord?” Hannah had hoped to be included when the hand was released, but she was also aware that their last attempt to work together had proved somewhat disastrous. The viscount had terminated her assistance with a terse letter.

  He dragged the newspaper closer and spoke without looking up. “It would be useful if you had the time to accompany me. If Mr Barnes proves uncooperative, your mother’s immobilisation spell might be handy.”

  “Oh.” Her presence would be useful. Surely that was high praise from the viscount. Far better to be useful than decorative, she supposed. “I shall retrieve the spell before we depart.”

  “What spell, Hannah?” her mother said as she wheeled into the little dining room.

  Hannah stood and helped her mother manoeuvre the bath chair close to the table. “Lord Wycliff suggested the immobilisation spell may be handy if we find the rest of Mr Barnes today.”

  Her mother picked up a porcelain teacup and ran a finger around its golden rim. “A brilliant suggestion. Secondary Afflicted can be difficult, since they cannot be reasoned with. I will be most curious to hear whether the hand behaves itself.”

  Lord Wycliff snapped the newspaper shut and took up his knife and fork. “Can you ride, Miss Miles? The carriage is rather cumbersome.”

  Hannah stared at her plate. Lizzie was a lovely rider, but Hannah preferred to watch from under a tree. She seemed to lack the necessary grace to hold her position aside. “Not very well or with any skill, I’m afraid.”

  He grunted. Lack of sporting ability would no doubt be recorded as a strike against her name. She would be demoted from useful to tolerable.

  “We have a small gig that might be suitable.” Her mother poured coffee for her husband. “It is little used, as Sir Hugh prefers the comfort of the carriage.”

  The viscount stared at her from under drawn brows. “I have no objection to the gig, if Miss Miles does not.”

  “No, of course not, my lord.” Except that it would be difficult to avoid him in the two-seater. Perhaps she could make Mr Barnes’ hand play chaperone and sit between them. He could pinch the viscount if he slid too close.

  “Don’t forget to use your ring, Hannah, if you require my assistance,” Seraphina said as she sipped from an empty cup.

  “I won’t forget, Mother.” Hannah twisted the ring on the smallest finger of her right hand. It was shaped like a delicate peacock feather that wrapped around her digit. Made of mage silver, it enabled her to signal to her mother that she needed to talk. Likewise, her mother could make the ring tingle if she needed to contact Hannah. Her father had a similar token from the mage, but his was shaped like a bone that encircled his finger.

  After breakfast, the viscount stalked off to see the horse harnessed to the gig while Sir Hugh helped Hannah fit a similar type of harness to the hand.

  “Now, Mr Barnes’ hand, we want to help you find the rest of your body, if you would be so kind as to cooperate.” Hannah addressed the hand as her father carried its cage to the laboratory table.

  The hand jumped from the ferret’s wheel and then scuttled to the side of the cage closest to Hannah. Two fingers curled around the bars as it pressed closer.

  Hannah held up the ensorcelled leather. “This is a magic harness, which means you cannot remove it. We want to help you, but we cannot have you running off.”

  The hand let go of the bars and dropped to the floor of the cage. He rolled over and exposed his palm.

  “Does that mean you will cooperate?” Hannah asked. The reactions of the hand really were quite extraordinary, as though she spoke to an odd little creature rather than a dismembered piece of a larger whole.

  The hand flipped back over, raised the index finger and waved it slowly up and down. The action appeared to be the equivalent of a nod of the head.

  Hannah watched the movement. “Is that a yes?”

  The finger rose up and down again.

  “I say, Hannah, this is quite remarkable. I begin to wonder that some process has made the hand a separate entity, capable of independent thought.” Her father peered into the cage to watch their latest specimen.

  “I wonder the same thing, Papa. But we will not know until we discover the rest of Mr Barnes and learn what happened to him.” She turned her attention back to the appendage, trying to establish a basis for their communication. “What is no?”

  The finger moved from side to side in a gesture long familiar to Hannah. Her mother had used it often when Hannah was a child to tell her no—usually sneaking an extra biscuit from a plate.

  “Thank you, that is most useful.” Others would consider it odd to talk to a hand, but Hannah had been born into an unusual world where her mother made the impossible seem commonplace. What other child had hedges turn into puppetry or enjoyed lullabies sung by birds?

  Her father opened the cage. Hannah lifted the hand out, set it on the table, and fitted the harness. He perched on her forearm, rather like an enormous spider.

  Sir Hugh chuckled at the sight. “Have a good day, my girl. I look forward to hearing about your adventures on your return.”

  The index finger pointed toward the door and the rest flexed up and down, as though it bounced with anticipation.

  Hannah carried the hand through the house and out the back. She kept the fingers of her right hand curled in the lead and her left forearm outstretched as though she carried a hunting bird.

  Lord Wycliff stood next to the sturdy chestnut harnessed to the gig. The viscount narrowed his dark eyes at her. “Should it be out of the cage?”

  He held out a gloved hand to help her into the gig while scowling at her new accessory. The hand scuttled up Hannah’s arm and behind her neck to sit on the shoulder farthest from the viscount. He now impersonated a parrot.

  The gig dipped to one side as Wycliff climbed in and took up the reins.

  “The harness is ensorcelled and cannot be removed by the same hand as that wearing it. Besides, Mr Barnes’ hand has promised to cooperate in finding the rest of him.” It was a curious feeling to have a man’s hand on her shoulder. If the rest of the body had been attached, it would have been wholly inappropriate and a shockingly familiar thing to do. Yet remove hand from body and the part was allowed liberties not available to the whole.

  Or should Hannah scold him and make him sit on the seat?

  Lord Wycliff clucked his tongue and the horse walked out. From the gate they turned toward London and he urged the equine to a trot.

  Hannah moved the hand to her lap, but somehow that seemed even more inappropriate. In her mind she imagined he was a type of miniature dog, which made the familiarity more bearable.

  “What direction, Mr Barnes’ hand?” she asked.

  The index finger pointed to the southeast.

  “It is working, Lord Wycliff. The hand is leading us to something.” The day was turning into an exciting excursion following the Unnatural compass. What treasure would they find at the end of the trail? If it were something unpleasant, Hannah had the immobilisation spell tucked into her stays.

  Lord Wycliff guided the horse around the western end of Hyde Park and down through Kensington. “Might I ask you, Miss Miles, about the secondary Afflicted? Your father made mention of the footman and cloakroom attendant murdered by Rowley as having been handled appropriately, unlike Mr Barnes. What exactly is the appropriate method in such circumstances?”

  Hannah tightened her grip on the metal lead and stared at the hand on her knee. The skin her father had stitched together over the wrist had healed and covered the tendons, nerves, and arteries. She didn’t want to upset Mr Barnes’ appendage with such a topic of conversation and risk it leaping from the gig.

  “Their bodies were cremated and their ashes sealed before being interred in the Repository of Forgotten Things,” she murmured.

  Wycliff glanced at her, then returned his attention to the road ahead. “How odd that they were consigned to a funeral pyre but no other Afflicted were. Is it because those two were lowborn
servants and the Afflicted whom you so vehemently protect are nobles?”

  Heat flowed through Hannah and she fixed his profile with an unblinking stare. “You assume wrongly, my lord. Secondary Afflicted are in every sense mindless shambling creatures that cannot be reasoned with, for their minds have been stolen from them. They are driven by their hunger and are a danger to society.”

  Hannah dropped her gaze to the hand, wondering if she ought to apologise to him. He showed none of the customary characteristics of the secondary Afflicted. What if her father was wrong about them? But she had seen secondary Afflicted herself and the memory was a nightmare she wished she could erase.

  At a crossroads, Wycliff steered the horse to the southeast. “Could they not be interred and fed a daily allotment, like the nobles in the Repository?”

  Mr Barnes’ hand sat still and unmoving, apart from a directional point at each crossroad. How much did he understand and why did he appear so alert? Questions swirled in Hannah’s mind that relied on finding the rest of Mr Barnes before they could be answered.

  She turned her thoughts back to the disagreement with the viscount and the nobles interred in the Repository. “Those Afflicted are held securely because we believe they can eventually be cured. What future awaits a person with no brain if we can restore their heartbeat but never their mind?”

  Now the finger pointed straight out and Wycliff guided them toward Chelsea. “Yet it remains that only servants are cremated.”

  “Unfortunately, that is not true. As you are aware, when the French curse first struck, two nobles who became Afflicted were driven to murder by their insatiable hunger. They killed relatives in their homes and were quickly seized and interred for the safety of Londoners. Their victims were monitored for any potential side effects and when they arose, my parents tried for some months to stabilise their conditions. But their appetites were monstrous and without relent. In the end my father had to issue the order for them to be taken to a funeral pyre. It was a horrible sight.” Hannah swallowed and closed her eyes at the memory that swam before her.

  She would never forget the cries of the wretched creatures as they were immolated, chained to pillars so they could not escape. Her mother had been unable to find a spell to ease their suffering; she could only increase the intensity of the fire to consume every part of the victims, killed twice over.

  Lord Wycliff made that grunting noise and turned his attention to the passing fields. “You keep noble murderers sustained, but not their victims.”

  “Have you seen someone burned alive, my lord? Do I need to describe the process in detail to convince you that those present that day believe that even one person sent to such a death is one too many? After that horrendous day, the protocol was enacted that in the rare event of any secondary Afflicted being created, they were to be cremated before they arose, so that they did not suffer. But what do we do with the Afflicted who commit heinous crimes? As terrible as their crimes may be, we will not commit another heinous act by consigning them to the flames whilst they retain their minds.”

  He barked a short laugh and then turned to her. “Why, Miss Miles, unless I am mistaken, I believe you are advocating keeping them alive long enough to find a cure, so that they might be executed for their crimes. Since any Afflicted can make more of these cursed creatures, should they not all be locked away for the safety of society?”

  Hannah stared at the hand in her lap. He didn’t seem capable of creating more shambling, mindless creatures. But she should be on her guard, lest he try to remove her mind one day. “All men are capable of murder, my lord. Should we lock everyone of your sex away to keep women and children safe from murderous masculine impulses? Having the capacity and the inclination are two separate issues.”

  His black eyes were unreadable as he regarded her for a silent minute. “Fair point, Miss Miles. Most men can behave at least as though they are half civilised without giving way to their baser impulses. This raises another question—if secondary Afflicted are mindless, shambling monsters, why is this hand so active?”

  “That I do not know.” Even the colour of the flesh seemed healthy, which was remarkable given that the body had spent some time in the Thames after Mr Barnes’ murder. “I can only hypothesise that there is another factor at play here responsible for the hand’s condition.”

  “More of the dark arts?” he asked.

  Hannah couldn’t stop the shudder that ran through her body. Dark arts created the Afflicted. Did more magic explain why the hand acted like an independent, thinking creature? “We will not know until we discover what happened to the rest of Mr Barnes.”

  She studied the homes they passed and wondered at the lives of the inhabitants. The jostling in her lap brought Hannah’s attention back to the hand.

  Lord Wycliff halted the horse. “It seems agitated here.”

  The finger pointed to a particular property across the road from where they had stopped. A tall clipped hedge encircled the perimeter. A narrow opening in the hedge allowed for an iron archway and gate. Beyond sat a windowless red brick building. At one end, a large chimney—disproportionately large compared to the rest of the structure—pointed to the sky.

  “What is this place?” Lord Wycliff climbed down from the gig and offered his gloved hand to Hannah.

  Hannah hopped to the ground and walked to the locked gate. “This is the crematorium. There are a few rare aftermages with the gift of pyromancy who can generate sufficient heat to burn remains. This place is used by some hospitals instead of mass graves for the unknown and unwanted.”

  Hannah stared at the red brick building and let out a sigh. She wanted to say damn, but that would be unladylike even though it summed up her frustration. If the rest of Mr Barnes had been consigned to such a fire, they would never know what happened.

  “If we assume that Mr Barnes ended up here, how did his hand escape?” Lord Wycliff peered through the gate at the building and then at the dark green hedge.

  “The hand is small and lively. It is not inconceivable that he escaped the same way as a rat might. There is another gate on the other side large enough to admit a cart, when remains are brought here under the cover of night. Perhaps the hand jumped free when the bodies were being moved.” As Hannah spoke, the hand climbed her arm to settle on her shoulder once more. He uncurled a lock of her hair to latch a finger onto to anchor his position.

  They left the gig and walked along the road, taking a corner down a narrower lane. Here the dense hedge parted to allow two larger locked gates, sufficient to let a cart through. The gravel drive led to double barn doors painted black in the rear of the building. The lawn on this side appeared to have a substantial mole problem. Mounds of earth made a random pattern across the grass.

  The hand became agitated, bouncing up and down on Hannah’s shoulder as he pointed to a grouping of mounds that were exposed earth. No grass had yet crept over these.

  “I think we have found the rest of Mr Barnes.” She reached up and patted the hand.

  “It would appear his ashes are interred beneath one of those lumps.” Wycliff took off his top hat and ran a hand through his hair. Then he turned back to the road.

  Hannah followed. He seemed like a dog on a scent as his head swung from side to side. He stopped to stare at the Thames, visible on the other side of the road. “It is possible that the limb dragged itself through the hedge, across the road, and then made its way into the water and drifted to where it came ashore at Neat House Gardens.”

  As they stood by the road pondering past events, a curricle drawn by two smart matched bays came to a halt. The well-dressed driver peered at Hannah. “Miss Miles, I did not expect to find you lingering on the side of the road. Do you require assistance?”

  Hannah walked closer to the sporting carriage with its glossy black paint. “Good day, Lord Dunkeith. I am assisting Lord Wycliff with a matter that has brought us here.”

  The hand scuttled around behind her neck, clinging to her nape like a limp
et.

  Lord Dunkeith turned his wide smile on Hannah. “You appear to have something on your neck, Miss Miles. Is it a new pet?”

  As Hannah reached up, the hand pressed into her neck and tugged the edge of her bonnet over himself. For some reason he didn’t want to show himself to anyone else. “It is a curiosity from my father’s laboratory that is rather shy.”

  Before Lord Dunkeith could open his mouth to ask another question, Viscount Wycliff rested a hand on the curricle and asked one of his own. “It is most fortuitous to encounter you, Dunkeith. Do you obtain corpses to conduct your research in private?”

  The smile disappeared from the handsome lord’s face and his attention was dragged from the creature sheltering under Hannah’s bonnet to the viscount. “That’s a rather forward question, Wycliff.”

  The viscount pressed a finger against the paintwork of the curricle and left a tiny smudge. “I am seeking information about a body that was missing a goodly portion of its skull and brain. Has it passed through your laboratory in the last month or so?”

  “I work in potions for ailments, sir. I am not aware of any potion that can restore a brain and head. Now, if you will excuse me, I have much to do in the Physic Garden.” He touched the brim of his hat to Hannah and then cracked the reins. The horses trotted on down the road.

  Wycliff untied their horse’s reins from around the brake of the gig. “That was rather abrupt—almost as though he didn’t want to answer my questions.”

  Hannah watched the curricle bowl down the road and disappear around a curve. Most people didn’t want to answer the viscount’s questions. “Perhaps he is truly otherwise engaged. And as he stated, his is the study of potions, not surgical procedures.”

  She settled on the hard seat and pried the hand’s fingers off her nape to move him back to her shoulder. If they gave the limb a pencil, could he write his story and unveil how he had escaped the crematorium? Or tell them who had stitched him to a stranger’s forearm?

  “I have traced the corpse from Bunhill Fields. The body snatcher delivered him to a medical man waiting in the Chelsea fields, but he gave the false name of Smith and my informant could not describe him.” Wycliff climbed into the gig and turned the horse and vehicle around.