Ancient Appetites (The Wildenstern Saga Book 1)

by Oisin McGann

  Francie climbed over the fence and hurried down the hill. Hennessy would notice he was missing sooner or later; he had to be quick. At the bottom of the hill he could see the messy spread of a building site. Through the middle of it, on a raised bank of earth and stone, ran the railway tracks that would carry the Wildensterns’ private trains to and from the underground station beneath the house. The tracks disappeared into the mouth of a tunnel off to his right. There wasn’t much activity here now; the tunnel was just about finished and the tracks were almost laid. Francie had been astonished how quickly the navvies had put down the rails. Once the ground had been prepared, the sleepers were laid and then the rails positioned on top of them. A man would walk the line, making sure the gauge was right—that the tracks were the correct distance apart—and then they were nailed in place by a skilled team of men with hammers beating to a scattered rhythm.

  Waving to some of the men he knew, Francie trotted past the lines of workers with shovels, or pushing wheelbarrows full of earth, making his way to the arching, brown-brick mouth of the tunnel. The rails along the center of the gravel floor were shiny and new, gleaming in the sunlight. He followed them inside.

  The daylight cut a lopsided semicircle into the darkness before giving way, and Francie carried on into the gloom. He found the man he was looking for about a hundred yards in, down a narrow side tunnel. His name was Ned O’Keefe and he was the foreman—a squat, tough, big-chested fellow with huge hands and iron-grey whiskers on a square, weathered face. He was standing with three other men around a trestle table and they were arguing over something. They were all dressed in the typical navvy get-up of double-canvas shirts, moleskin trousers and hobnail boots. The brawny men were cleaner than normal, suggesting that they had got little done that morning.

  Francie moved closer, waiting to be noticed. He helped out with the horses down here when he could find the time, and the navvies had taken a liking to him. But Francie wasn’t here for the horses today.

  “… I hear what yer sayin’,” O’Keefe declared, “but yer talkin’ through yer arse. There’s no graves that deep. We’ve made sure o’ that.”

  “The sniffer’s never wrong, Keefo,” another man put in. “And nobody’s on for diggin’ up the dead.”

  “I don’t care what the sniffer says. The dead are all accounted for,” O’Keefe retorted. “The family knows about every grave dug in this graveyard for almost the last six hundred years and they’re all on this map. If they’re not on the map, we don’t worry about ’em. Now, yeh haven’t done a tap all day, so yeh can get back on it quick as yeh like. Nobody’s goin’ on a randy tonight until this tunnel’s broke through.”

  There were a few reluctant moans, but nobody was about to give O’Keefe any lip with the mood he was in. The foreman gave each of the other men a stony glare to reinforce his decision and then turned to find Francie standing near him.

  “Francie! How’s she cuttin’?”

  “All right, Ned. What was all that about?”

  “Ach, the sniffer’s been actin’ up. The lads’re sayin’ it’s found human bone.”

  The sniffer was an engimal the size of a terrier that walked on stalk-like legs almost as long as Francie’s. He had seen it at work and remained mystified by it. The creature could read the ground as if it were looking into glass.

  One of the other men was putting it through its paces again and he watched carefully. The navvy gave its flank a light slap and it trotted off down the tunnel. Standing at the end, it stared at the wall of stone for a minute or two. Then it came back. There was a box sitting nearby and it stuck its nose into it. Francie had seen this bit before. There were different pieces of material in the box. O’Keefe stood in the middle of the narrow tunnel and the sniffer would lay out the materials that made up the ground that it had sniffed out. The closer the material to O’Keefe’s feet, the more of it there was in the ground. Francie looked at the lumps that it had gathered. Closest was granite, then earth, then what looked like a lump of peat … and then a piece of bone.

  “See?” the man said to Francie. “Bone—plain as yeh like. Talk some sense into ’im, Francie; he’s as stubborn as a pregnant goat. There’s bodies in that ground that we don’t know about. It won’t do to go disturbin’ those at rest.”

  “I think you’re all bleatin’ like a flock of worried sheep,” Francie told them, because he knew they liked a bit of cheek. “I’m here because my da wanted to know if you’ll be workin’ the day of the funeral. He’s on for some cards.”

  The navvies were skilled laborers who had honed their expertise on the canals and railroads in Britain. There were many from Yorkshire and Lancashire, some from Scotland and Wales, but most of them were Irish; the Wildensterns had brought this company of men back from England to build this private railway. And the navvies had brought their wild ways with them. They were a law unto themselves and the scourge of the local villages; drinking till all hours, gambling and fighting and raising hell whenever they went on a “randy.” They could win or lose a week’s wages in one night of cards, and Francie’s father, Shay, was known as a keen gambler.

  “Sheep ’e calls us!” O’Keefe laughed. “Is this lad full o’ ginger or wha’? Sheep!” He gave Francie a thump on the shoulder. “Tell yer oul’ fella that there’ll be no work that day. If it’s cards he wants, it’s cards he’ll get—and we’ll be happy to take his money off of ’im!”

  “It’s grand for some,” Francie said. “I’ll be workin’ through for sure. What time are yez finishin’ up the day before then? Is it a holiday like?”

  “Finish at the usual time, I suppose,” O’Keefe replied. “Assumin’ we break through in this tunnel. Time enough to get dead drunk and sober by mornin’. We’ve to stand to like infantry when the coffin goes past. That young lord will be sent off like royalty.”

  Francie nodded. That was all his father needed to know. All the navvies would be up on the road to the graveyard on the day of the funeral. Which meant they wouldn’t be down in this tunnel. That was settled then—the plan was on.

  When Nate returned home, he was confronted by his irate little sister. Tatiana was demanding the ride on the monster that he had promised her, and the present she was due from Africa. She knew her rights. When it came to her turn to travel to far-off places, she informed him, he could be sure that he would not have to wait a whole day for his presents when she returned.

  He told her to meet him in Gerald’s rooms in an hour, and went to change. He was discovering that motorcycling could play havoc with one’s wardrobe. It also left insects plastered to one’s face in a most undignified way. After a quick bath, he donned a fresh outfit and made his way to his cousin’s laboratory, presents in hand.

  Gerald was his closest friend and Nate would have been forced to admit that one of the reasons for this was that Gerald was no threat to him. His cousin was thirteenth or fourteenth in line for the position of Patriarch, effectively putting him out of the running—barring some freak accident or a bloodthirsty act of mass murder that eliminated everyone in front of him.

  But then Gerald had never been interested in money. He had simple needs: a minimum amount of food, some smart clothes, a steady supply of his favorite French cigarettes and, most of all, the means to indulge in whatever studies or experiments that took his fancy. And, like Nathaniel, he did feel the urge for an occasional bit of debauchery.

  Gerald’s rooms reflected his personality. His bedroom and living room were strewn with notes, books and unwashed clothes. His laboratory, which would have comfortably housed a university science class, was kept in a state of obsessive tidiness. Nate walked down past benches covered in tools and racks of test tubes, idly trying to guess the purpose of each arcane piece of experimental apparatus as he passed it.

  Tatiana was at the far end of the room with their cousin. She was perched on a stool, peering intently at a rounded metal box that Gerald was probing with the tip of a scalpel. As he came closer, Nathaniel could see that th
e box had a stubby little leg at each corner and they were waving lazily, twitching every now and then as Gerald touched certain points with his blade. Nate put down his packages and leaned in.

  “What have you got there then?” he asked.

  They both looked up, Tatty with an air of expectation on her face as she saw the presents, Gerald looking slightly distracted.

  “I’ll show you,” he replied. “I think you’ll like this.”

  He turned the box over so that Nate could get a better look at the little engimal. Right side up, he could see it was about the size of a shoebox, with two slots on its back and a face that was little more than an eye and a vent at one end. Nate pointed to the shackle around one of its ankles and the chain that led to a ring in the wall.

  “Why the chain?” he inquired.

  “It’s not house-trained yet,” Gerald told him. “Keeps running off the table. Stupid thing just falls over the edge and smacks against the floor. Every time. More guts than sense.” He glanced up at Nate. “A bit like you, really.”

  “Ha ha.”

  Gerald held up his finger and Tatiana clutched his sleeve.

  “Oh! Can I do it? Please?” she begged, bouncing up and down on her stool.

  “Of course you can, Princess. But don’t tease it.”

  There was a loaf of bread on a breadboard behind Gerald, and Tatty reached over and cut a slice. She dangled the slice over one of the slots in the little engimal’s back. The creature jiggled excitedly, trying to jump up and get the bread. Its chain clinked with each hop.

  “It eats bread?” Nate grew more curious. He had never seen this before.

  “No.” Tatty shook her head. “Watch!”

  She dropped the slice of bread into one of the slots. The engimal gave a sensual shudder and went still for moment. An orange glow emitted from the slot, along with a wisp of steam. Then the slice of bread popped back up and Tatiana snatched at it. She gasped, quickly passing it from one hand to the other, and then tossed it to Nate. He caught it, held it and yelped as heat burned his fingertips.

  “It’s toasted it!” he exclaimed, delighted.

  “Instantly.” Gerald smiled. “And it can heat muffins too. I haven’t figured out if it has other talents, but we’ll see soon enough. It’ll all form part of my thesis: “A Demonstration of the Correlation Between Engimal Form, Nature and Function in Relation to The Origin of Species.” It’s going to make me famous, don’t you know.”

  “Not unless you shorten the title,” Tatty sniffed.

  Nate examined the toast, turning it over. “It’s done both sides,” he said in a disappointed voice.

  “Barbaric, I know.” Gerald shrugged, fondly petting the toast-maker. “But I’m sure it can be trained.”

  Nathaniel’s stomach rumbled to remind him that he hadn’t eaten since the previous afternoon. Tatiana’s face reminded him that he had other duties to perform first.

  “I suppose you’ll want your presents then?” he sighed. “Gerald first, I think.”

  “You’re so mean!” Tatty snapped, scowling and folding her arms.

  Nathaniel handed his cousin the larger of the two packages, an oval shape wrapped in brown paper and twine. Gerald smiled and cut the string with his scalpel, carefully pulling off the brown paper.

  “A shield,” he murmured softly.

  It was a piece of tanned skin stretched over a leaf-shaped wooden frame. There were two columns of symbols on its outer face.

  “Bit flimsy for fighting,” Gerald mused.

  “It’s a medicine shield,” Nate informed him. “I got it from a witch-doctor. Thought you might find the story interesting. The skin is supposed to be that of an ancient medicine man who was flayed alive for offending the gods—”

  “That’s disgusting,” Tatty burst out.

  “The symbols were a decoration on his back. They are said to hold the secret key to a language only he understood,” Nate continued. “Take a closer look.”

  “These look like mathaumaturgical symbols,” Gerald muttered, running his fingertip down the column on the right.

  Mathaumaturgy was a relatively new science that was attempting to explain magic and the supernatural—or even to determine whether they existed at all—through the use of mathematics.

  “They’re different, but close … But what are these?” Gerald went on, pointing at the column of over a hundred markings on the left. “They look like I’s and O’s.”

  “Or ones and noughts,” Nate agreed. “I don’t know. Thought you might be able to tell me.”

  “Could be nothing.” Gerald held it up to the light from the tall windows. “Or it could be the key to the whole mathaumaturgical mystery. What did you trade for it?”

  “A shaving mirror.”

  “A hard bargain.” Gerald looked sideways at him.

  “He wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.”

  Tatiana looked fit to explode with impatience while Nate pretended to look at Gerald’s shield for a while longer. Her eyes bulged at the other package.

  “And I have something really special for you!” Nate smiled, finally handing it to her.

  Tatty breathed again and then put on her best attempt at a reserved smile, clasping her hands together. The package was tall and round and wrapped in a more delicate, Oriental paper. Tatiana put it on the table and began to tentatively pull at the string that bound it. But her excitement got the better of her and she ended up tearing the paper to shreds to expose a large birdcage.

  Sitting on the perch was the oddest bird she had ever seen. Like the toast-maker, it was an engimal but, unlike other engimals, it was actually shaped like a creature of flesh and blood. It was blue and silver, with a white breast, a copper-colored beak and bright orange eyes. It appeared to be made of a mixture of metal and some other, softer material.

  “It’s beautiful,” Tatiana whispered. Oh, thank you, Nate. It’s so beautiful. Can it fly?”

  “Absolutely,” he replied. “But don’t let it out just yet. It has to bond with you first.”

  “Mm hmm.” His sister’s attention was firmly fixed on the creature, which was little bigger than her fist.

  “Did you catch it?” she asked.

  “No, I had to buy this one.”

  “Must’ve cost a bloody fortune,” Gerald muttered under his breath.

  Nate nodded grimly.

  “Can it sing?” Tatiana turned to look up at him.

  “Yes, it’s trained to obey some key words,” Nate said. He leaned and whispered something in her ear. “But before you use it, I should warn you—”

  “Songbird, sing!” Tatty cried, clapping her hands.

  The petite little bird opened its beak, but instead of a melodic birdsong, a noise erupted from its tiny frame that had Tatty and Gerald recoiling in shock. A yowling cacophony like a quartet of hoarse violins trapped in the depths of hell carried across the room on a rolling, gyrating drumbeat. The bird flapped its wings happily as the deafening clamor bellowed from its beak.

  Nate darted forward, cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted something to it. The bird fell silent again, looking slightly disappointed.

  “Good God!” Gerald exclaimed. “What on earth was that racket?”

  “It has an unusual repertoire,” Nathaniel explained to his sister. “You have to learn how to use it. It took me a while … And you should have heard the abuse I got aboard ship until I got the hang of it.”

  Tatiana was wearing that mixed expression of horror and fascination peculiar to girls of a certain age. She didn’t speak for a full minute, staring fixedly at the bird.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” she said at last, “I think I’ll take it to my room.”

  “By all means.” Gerald waved her away. “Take the little menace as far away as you like.”

  Nathaniel waited until his sister had left before speaking again. Gerald was touching the side of his head tenderly.

  “I’ve got a buzzing sound in my ears,” he complained. “T
hat thing could have deafened us all.”

  “I’ve got a favor to ask,” Nate said to him.

  “Well, ask it then.”

  “You’re in … what—the third year of medical school?”

  “I may jump up to fourth,” Gerald said modestly. “The others are very slow.”

  Gerald was a genius; everyone who knew him knew that. He was less than two years older than Nate, but several years ahead in education and, as he delighted in pointing out, in evolutionary development.

  “Have you done any autopsies yet?” Nate prompted him. “Anything like that? I want you to come and see Marcus’s body before they finish fixing it up.”

  Gerald looked at him and sighed.

  “Nate. Warburton’s already examined it. He said there was no foul play.”

  “I want to see for myself … And I need you to help me,” Nate pressed him. “You’ll see things I won’t. Please, Gerald. You know Warburton’s half blind, and nobody’s taking this seriously enough.”

  Gerald stroked the surface of the shield, avoiding his cousin’s gaze.

  “Maybe you should be thankful for that, Nate. If they did find something, you know who’d be first to be blamed. Berto’s been sidelined—as we all knew he would be. You’ll control the money when the old man’s dead. The fingers will point at you. I mean, nobody would do anything about it, of course. That’s the Wildenstern way. But everybody’s feelings are a bit raw at the moment. Maybe it’s better left alone.”

  Nathaniel stared hard at him. He knew his face had turned red.

  “You don’t think I had anything to do with this, do you?” he asked quietly.

  “Of course not, old chap,” Gerald assured him, smiling slightly. “But maybe you shouldn’t stir things up. After all, if you didn’t do it, who did? Not Berto, that’s for certain.”