by Ewan Lawrie
A conversation was in progress: it was audible but seemed to be in frequencies that I was unable to hear as speech. It sounded like what some fanciful whalers had once described to me as the Song of Leviathan. As though such monsters could sing. The rhythm of my heart was erratic; my head seemed to expand and contract in sympathy. When the beat was rapid, I heard snatches of the conversation. Miss Pardoner held a flask of some kind and I heard her say, ‘Digitalis.’
The professor’s answer was lost in a clap of thunder. The brightest light I had ever seen seemed to follow it after only a moment.
I saw Miss Pardoner move towards my body on the table, lift the face-plate slightly with what must have been an injured finger and pour the contents of the flask into my mouth. It was very strange to taste extract of witches’ gloves whilst viewing it being poured into the body on the table, but not half so strange as the intolerable pain I felt in my chest.
Chapter Fifty
Within and without, as above so below, a coruscating light, scenes from childhood and youth: these were no description of my experience – and neither did any bearded keeper of the keys turn me back from any gate. The sensation of floating above my corporeal form had ceased with the first spasm of my heart. Far from feeling weightless, I felt heavier than the soul of Job. There was a feeling of disconnection, but I could not see in any case; perhaps I had ceased to hear. The smell of violets mingled with the most intimate scent of a woman. I felt a huge jolt and someone, Miss Pardoner perhaps, re-moved the mask from my face.
There was a bitter metallic taste in my mouth; the quite pleasant admixture of odours had been replaced by sour ammonia. The wet cloth of my trousers accounted for this; it might have been worse. My torso felt as though I had fallen beneath the hooves of a post coach pair. I could not speak; my eyes had not yet become used to the ambient light. Turning my head to the left, I saw the professor, a demented gleam in his eye. He turned to Maccabi and Miss Pardoner. ‘He lives!’
Whether he shouted this in triumph or delirium, I did not know. Maccabi’s face wore a decided smirk. Miss Pardoner’s expression told only of the most astonished incredulity.
It was pleasing to know that my time on earth was not yet over; I had only wished, however, that it were somewhat less painful in that moment.
Miss Pardoner, in a voice less confident than ever I had heard from her, exclaimed, ‘It is done, a resurrected man. A wonder of the age... it can be... I could... ’
Maccabi’s roll of the eyes should have meant something to me, but it did not. I found my tongue.
‘Let me up!’
Miss Pardoner pulled a pistol from some part of her attire and instructed Maccabi to loosen the bonds. Once he had done so, I found I was unable to sit up without assistance.
‘Perhaps the pistol is unnecessary, Ellen.’
The barrel did not waver.
‘There are people you must meet, Mr Moffat,’ she said.
‘There is time enough for that, Ellen.’ The dwarf, eyes darting hither and yon, continued. ‘I would prefer to spend a few days examining the phenomenon.’
Maccabi finally tired of my efforts to rise and helped me to a sitting position. A few moments passed before I was able to speak.
‘Very well, Professor. I am at your disposal. It seems I am incapable of flight in any case.’
I began a coughing fit that I thought might ruin all their plans.
The bed was uncomfortable, or I felt uncomfortable in it, for it was not mine. The giant mute had been summoned by some means or other to the underground room and had carried me pick-a-back into the house, up the staircase, and onto the bed in which Edgar Allan had died. In truth, I was not so incapacitated as to have needed this assistance, but it suited me to appear to be so. All the same, it took more than a few minutes – and several unsuccessful attempts – to set foot on the floorboards. Moving silently was also difficult; stifling the grunts of pain as I moved required considerable fortitude.
The door was locked. As I released the handle, the door rattled with a sound like a tree trunk being battered against it. I surmised that the behemoth Bill had been stationed to guard against my egress. Retreating to the bed, I attempted to consider my position. It was quite fruitless – my mind wandered to the most inconsequential matters. For example, it occurred to me that it was strange that the landlord of the Coble Inn and his sibling suffered both from gigantism and an inability to speak. Of course, John Bill, former fisherman and lately publican, had lost the power to speak after a dreadful trauma; I wondered if his brother had ever possessed the power of speech. The suspicion that perhaps the former condition had been caused by an excess of consanguinity did occur to me.
Such nugatory ramblings kept me from devising any sort of plan of action, much less escape. The concoctions thatI had ingested, both voluntarily and under duress, must have affected me greatly, for I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
The hand at my throat belonged to Ellen Pardoner. The restorative powers of sleep had had little effect against my condition, for the start I gave was quite weak enough to convince her that I was of little danger to her person. She was in the company of Maccabi. Circumstance appeared to be conspiring against encountering anyone alone, save the mute. I hoped very much indeed that this was some indication of the trust, or lack of it, between my captors.
‘Can you sit up, Moffat?’ she asked.
My grunts were the only answer I could offer, as I demonstrated the physical proof that I could. Perhaps my inability to devise a stratagem for an escape was not so great a blow after all.
‘Have you a drink?’ I managed at last.
She laughed. ‘Are you sure you’d like what we offer?’
Maccabi produced a silver flask, such as a huntsman might take with him in pursuit of the fox.
She took it from him, and took a manly draught. Maccabi cleared his throat. ‘Of course, Ellen might easily have taken a prophylaxis for any drug that it might contain.’
I had already taken the silver vessel.
‘Indeed she might, but I am past caring.’
My own consumption was the equal of Miss Pardoner’s, although the gasping that ensued had been entirely dissimilar to her own short intake of breath in reaction to the cognac. In any case, I believed Maccabi had been offering an explanation for the matter of the white pawn, rather than any warning. Evidently, they had a use for me yet.
Whatever the restorative potential of sleep might have been, the spirit of the grape evinced more of it. Admittedly the gasping had inflamed my thorax somewhat, but my mental faculties had enjoyed a most welcome amelioration.
‘So, I am returned from the dead. What now, Miss Pardoner?’
I cast a brief look at Maccabi: he seemed to find the floorboards most interesting.
‘You are Rudolf’s, if we can keep you from the professor’s laboratory table,’ she replied.
‘Rudolf’s? Are we not all masters of our own destiny?’ I asked.
She laughed. ‘Who here – or anywhere – is not the puppet of another?’
‘And to what purpose? Whose is this marionette?’
I made a ridiculous face and jerked my arms.
Ellen Pardoner looked down the not inconsiderable length of her nose.
‘There are things you do not know. Rudolf will explain. ’ She was looking into the distance at some far-off possibility.
‘Do you really think I will have any part of some crackpot scheme headed by a known fraud?’ I asked.
‘There is something of a pious fraud involved,’ Miss Pardoner allowed.
Maccabi coughed. ‘Perhaps we could leave you to the professor?’
My own feeling was that I was more than a match for the dwarf in strength and cunning, if not in intellect. However, even such allies as these two might be, I thought, were at least temporarily of use.
‘So? When cometh the hosannas and palm-fronds?’
I almost touched the raven-shaped bell pull, but Miss Pardoner slapped my hand aw
ay from it.
‘Quite so,’ I sneered. ‘Indeed, it seems I am more valuable than a reporter. I am giddy with pride at so high an estimation of my worth.’
‘What is it you want? I can send Maccabi,’ she offered.
I was somewhat taken aback that she had allowed me to isolate them so easily. There must have been some triumph visible in my expression, for she added, ‘In fact, we shall both go, the more quickly to attend to your desires.’
Forbearing to mention that I was in no fit state to take literal advantage of such an offer, I merely requested some broth and bread.
Chapter Fifty-one
They left. The two did indeed make a handsome pair. Even so, it was plain to see that, of late, Maccabi adopted the moon-calf manner much less often in the lady’s presence. I stared at the ceiling, counting cracks as numerous as a crone’s wrinkles, hoping that some peace might engender the tiniest inkling of a plan. It was not to be so. The swinging of the door on its protesting hinges presaged the damnable dwarf’s entrance in the most bumptious manner: ‘Moffat! Does it feel strange! Another’s skin? Or your own? The tingle of electricity fills you, does it? Are you animated by the vital spark?’
His enthusiasm was giving me a headache to accompany the pain in my thoracic region.
‘No,’ I replied and attempted to reassume a supine position, in the hope of feigning sleep sufficiently well to rid myself of the pest.
Needless to say, respite was not so easily come by. The midget withdrew a miniature wooden mallet from a pocket in his frock coat. Despite his earlier deriding of Leared’s invention, the gutta-percha contraption was draped around his neck like some badge of office. He made no use of this, however, contenting himself merely with a manic tapping of various joints and limbs, all the while muttering ‘remarkable’ or ‘astounding’ as each word took his fancy.
The man must have been possessed of the most overweening conceit to have believed that he had truly brought a man back from the dead. Resurrection was as foolish a concept as a trip to the moon.
Finally, the dwarf had garnered sufficient information – or merely tired of its gathering – for he secreted the gavel-like object about his person, clasped his hands behind his back and began pacing the room. It seemed he was rehearsing some lecture to be presented to some body academic at some future time. Given the content and the rambling nature of its delivery, that future seemed far off indeed.
In fact, I heard only snatches of it. The simulation of sleep translated itself into an intermittent dozing and the professor’s words intermingled with dreams that seemed no more bizarre than any event that had thus far come to pass in Gibbous House.
While I dreamed of floating in some ill-defined body of water, the midget evoked the names of Galvani and Faraday, promising that his work would be accepted as both culmination and revelation of the true purposes of these men. At some point he passed into the realms of theology: he cried out to Rosenkreuz to acknowledge him as his true interpreter. I was just near enough to the surface of the Lethe to reflect that Science and Religion, whether in collision or collusion, was a dangerous combination.
The mouth of the whale was closing over me when I awoke with a start. I should have laughed had I not been fighting for my life. For some reason, the dwarf had pulled a chair up to the side of the bed and was attempting to stifle me with a bolster. Shoving him away with as much force as I could muster, I bellowed, ‘Are you mad, sir? Have you not just performed the marvellous feat of reanimation on my own self? Do you think to murder me now?’
He had the look of a sulking child. ‘I had it in mind to try again.’
It cost me a great deal to get myself upright and throw him out of the room. I followed him, since the door might be re-secured later and no giant sentinel stood without. After an initial, vain attempt to pursue him down the stairs, I contented myself with following him at slightly more than invalid pace to the dining room. As he passed through the doors, I heard raised voices emerging from that room. By the time I had made my way there, a civilised company of not three, but four persons was there to greet me.
A man as tall as myself stood next to Maccabi, who was an inch or two taller than the both of us. He was as dark as Jedediah was blond, and dressed in quality cloth, all of it black save the cotton of his shirt. He was a handsome-looking gentleman. He raised his eyebrows at Ellen, Jedediah and his half-brother, then held out a hand to me. ‘Rudolf, Rudolf... Jedermann, why not? I am pleased to make your acquaintance once again.’
‘Again?’
‘I had thought you quite cured of the mania, last time we met,’ he said.
So he had, and there was no mystery as to the means by which such a man might have convinced the Medical Superintendent of Edinburgh’s Model Asylum to release a man whom he knew to be either mad or a murderer.
The professor seemed unable to stand still in his half-brother’s presence, now scuttling to the long board, now walking over to stare at something most compelling in the wainscoting.
‘Get us all something for our throats, Enoch,’ I said.
He gave a movement of the shoulders as though trying to shake off something unpleasant that had fallen from the sky.
‘Port?’ he asked.
Miss Pardoner, naturally, replied in the affirmative. Maccabi nodded his assent. Rudolf Jedermann uttered the word ‘Magenwasser!’
The dwarf seemed hard put to control a cringe. I myself felt a flutter, but only at the memory of the taste of the foul schnapps. Perhaps my feelings were all too visible, for I was presented with a glass of port.
The stranger drew himself to his full height, lifted his tumbler and declaimed ‘Zum Wohl!’
A snigger escaped me as I saw the self-same ritual repeated in miniature by Enoch. He must have been looking at me, although it was hard to tell with his eyes so slit-like. There was room enough for hatred to seep forth, however. The taller Jedermann looked at me expectantly: I raised my glass and sipped a little of the ruby liquid.
Rudolf turned to his half-brother after the briefest of glances at Miss Pardoner.
‘Has he been told?’
‘What should he be told?’ asked the midget.
Without taking his eyes from the professor, Rudolf hissed, ‘Tell him, Esther.’
Miss Pardoner sighed. ‘I have tried, sir. Are you sure this is the man? He is so uncommon dull. Perhaps if you your-self explained?’
The young woman avoided my eye.
‘Very well.’ Jedermann let out a sigh of his own.
‘Moffat, it is a long story – as old as... well. Will you listen?’
‘Perhaps I might, if a further port is forthcoming.’
Rudolf flicked a hand toward Enoch, who recharged my glass, spilling only a few droplets on my shoes.
‘Who am I, Mr Moffat?’ he began, although clearly expecting no answer. He looked into the far distance for a moment before continuing.
‘Am I the son of a European prince? Am I an imposter, able to convince people of most unlikely truths? I come from a family of remarkable longevity. I have told people that I am five hundred years old. It is a useful lie. Others have used it before.’
At this point, Miss Pardoner and the professor nodded, clearly familiar with these words.
‘Are we meant to die? Three score and ten seem hardly sufficient to learn all there is to know, don’t you think? Wandering and persecution? We have wandered longer than my brother Enoch’s namesake, yet we are still outsiders.’
He gave me a pointed look. Presumably my yawning had irked him.
‘My brother is a great scholar, Mr Moffat. He believes that resurrection is possible. I know that it is not.’
The professor started, but his half-brother held up a hand and stilled him.
He had come so close as to allow spittle to fleck my chin. Stepping back, he took a shuddering breath. ‘There are legends. Folk tales of most unlikely longevity in the Carpathians, but by no means restricted to such places. These fictions are to be encoura
ged, Mr Moffat. Do you know why?’
I shook my head, uncertain whether I was talking to an abject Bedlamite or the greatest mind since Da Vinci.
‘Imagine someone, from an ancient family perhaps, who lives an extraordinarily long life. Not a half a millennium, no, of course not. But, let us say, for argument’s sake, one hundred years. Two? In our scientific world, our world of ‘investigative experimentation’, would not members of such a family become the subjects of terrible tortures in the name of science? You, Mr Moffat, will save such people from this fate.’
Regrettably, I wasted some of the port by ejecting it through my nostrils.
Rudolf, or whoever he might really have been, raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh, I do not mean my brother’s ridiculous experiments. A Moffat died in Edinburgh, did he not? But even so, you are here yet.’
Maccabi appeared to be examining the cornices of the room. Miss Pardoner’s eyes showed white all around the iris. The professor looked as though he believed Cain a suitable figure for emulation.
‘I care not for science and proofs, Mr Moffat,’ he continued. ‘In the final account, the word will do. There is no intention in numbers, they are what they are. Would that everything in this world were so. I live as if it were. It has much to recommend it.’
I poured my own port; the dwarf appeared to be in the grip of some apoplexy.
The professor, having exhausted himself with his fit, collapsed in a swoon. Miss Pardoner rang the cracked bell, which this time summoned, quite unsupervised, the twin naturals. These two bore the academic away – to their credit– with the minimum of capering, just one ill-advised skip that caused the huge dome of the professor’s pate to meet with the door frame.
