The Vile Desire to Scream: A Novella (The Wildenstern Saga)

by Oisin McGann

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  The Vile Desire to Scream

  A Wildenstern Saga Novella

  Oisín McGann

  Prologue

  ENCOURAGED TO BE RUTHLESS

  Nate had a sword to Gerald’s throat when the summons came. His manservant appeared at the door of the family’s gymnasium, informing them that Nate’s sister-in-law, Daisy, had requested their company in the drawing room at their earliest convenience. The two young men listened without changing their positions—and then Gerald pulled away and lifted his saber back into guard position, his free hand raised above his shoulder. Nate adopted the same stance and then abruptly lunged in with his attack. Daisy could request all she liked. They had their priorities.

  The footman waited patiently for them to finish. The edges of the swords were not sharp, made as they were for practice, but their curved rigid blades and dulled points could still cause injuries. Nate and his cousin Gerald had not sparred together for some time. But both had been trained from childhood and what they lacked in polish, they made up for with enthusiasm. They were dressed in fencing gear, including masks and pads, but the three-foot-long cavalry sabers were solid enough to leave nasty bruises even through the protective padding. From time to time, their grunts and panting were punctuated with a cry of pain or a colorful string of curses.

  The two glided across the floor of the huge wood-paneled room, the evening sun dancing and glinting on their fast-moving blades. Nate jabbed at Gerald’s stomach. Gerald swept his cousin’s blade aside and struck Nate’s right arm. Nate swore at the stinging strike, but slipped back, sidestepped, and jammed the point of his sword into Gerald’s padded thigh. Gerald gave a yelp. The pain distracted him just long enough for Nate to smack his opponent’s sword out of the way. Then he drew the edge of his blade across Gerald’s neck in what would be a fatal blow in a real fight. Gerald let out an exasperated breath and held up his hands in surrender.

  “Your breathing’s too labored—it’s slowing you down,” Nate told him. “It’s all the smoking. And you’re spending too much time in that gloomy laboratory of yours. You need to get outside more.”

  “That’s just the kind of thing my mother would say,” Gerald retorted, pulling off his mask. “If she were in any way concerned for my welfare. Let’s find out what Daisy wants, shall we? Perhaps you can share your medical insights with her instead.”

  They placed their swords back on the wall, which held a huge assortment of blunt and edged weapons. To look at this room, one might have assumed it was part of an army barracks, if it were not for the quality of the structure and the expensive nature of the equipment. This was where the men of the Wildenstern family trained in their martial skills—skills that were vital to the survival of the Wildenstern male. In this old Irish family, the men were encouraged to be ruthless: both to their opponents in business, and to their relatives at home.

  Wildenstern men were bred to be clever and dangerous, and to trust no one—especially their own family members. This harsh view of life had served the family well. They controlled a business empire that stretched halfway around the world and enjoyed a wealth to rival the Vatican’s.

  Nate and Gerald did not care much for their clan’s traditions. Neither was very interested in their family’s enormous wealth or its massive business empire. They each had their own interests, but there was no escaping their responsibilities to the family. The summons from Daisy was sure to be a call to duty.

  Despite being close relations, the young men were quite different in appearance. Nate was tall, with an athletic build, his long handsome face colored by a life spent outdoors whenever possible. His blond hair was cut in the latest style, but was otherwise uncared for.

  Gerald was slightly smaller and more wiry in build. His face was a similar shape to Nate’s, but with paler skin, and topped with a long fringe of black hair, which was never cut often enough. He had the same blue eyes as his cousin, but with an extra sharpness that hinted at his keen, incisive intelligence.

  After a wash and a change of clothes, they headed down the corridor toward the elevator. Wildenstern Hall was thirty stories high, but that was only the part of it built recently, in the mid-nineteenth century. Situated in the hills overlooking the edge of Dublin, it was surrounded by smaller, older wings of an estate that dated back to the Norman era. As the British Empire was beginning to decline, the Wildensterns’ business empire was spreading ever wider across the world. This modern tower was ahead of its time. Its awe-inspiring height was made possible by its steel skeleton, complemented by steam-powered elevators, gas lighting on every floor, and terracotta tiles decorating its walls. Gargoyles disguised the gutters jutting from its roofs, giving the building an intimidating feel, which was entirely deliberate.

  But the looming face Wildenstern Hall showed to the world was only a faint reflection of the frightening life that went on within it, where family members continually plotted against one another, and lived in fear of assassination. Their villainous ways had also earned them a host of vicious enemies in the wider world. Death by murder was a very real threat to the men of the clan, a fact they endeavored to hide from visitors. However, a family with so many enemies treated any guest with caution—and today was to be no different.

  I

  AN EXOTIC GUEST

  Daisy Wildenstern was an expert at chitchat. It was a necessary skill for a woman in her position. It called for both imagination and stamina in order to maintain a civil, guarded, but interesting, conversation for any length of time. Having welcomed Mr. Peter Barnum into the large, well-appointed drawing room, she and Tatiana, her husband’s sister, were then obliged to engage the guest while they waited for Nate and Gerald.

  As it turned out, however, Peter Barnum was a hunter, adventurer, and accomplished raconteur with a wealth of well-practiced and thrilling stories of derring-do, making routine chitchat unnecessary. Even before tea had been served, he had launched into tales of his adventures, much to Tatiana’s delight. The young girl had a taste for blood-curdling yarns.

  “I am sorry that I missed the chance to meet your husband, ma’am,” Barnum said, after he had finished relating his escape from a Thuggee death cult in the Himalayas. “I am told that he is an extraordinary personality. An exceedingly cultured man.”

  “That he is,” Daisy replied. “He is currently in London, in meetings with the East India Company. I would be there with him, but I was recovering from the flu when he left, and could not travel.”

  “Yes, she was jolly sick,” Tatiana piped up. “I had it too. It was ghastly! We can only hope, Mr. Barnum, that you can escape from the house uninfected. It would be the height of embarrassment if we were found to be passing diseases onto our guests.”

  Daisy restrained her desire to roll her eyes. Tatty was a bubbly, excitable girl who lived every moment with passion and reduced every issue in life to simple, black-and-white terms in accordance with her own values. With her blonde curls and rosy-cheeked cherub’s face, she looked a picture of innocence. Her tendency to speak as bluntly as she thought could come as a shock to those who didn’t know her.

  “I assure you, Miss Tatiana,” Barnum said with a solemn expression, “years of travel in the most hostile of climates has left me with a strong constitution. A dose of common influenza poses little threat.”

  Barnum was a tall, sinewy, balding Englishman with reddish-brown whiskers. He was dresse
d in a dapper suit that spoke of a certain jaunty style, but not of great wealth. A professional perhaps, but not a gentleman. There was a leathery toughness about him too, Daisy observed. Understandable, given that he was a veteran hunter.

  But she recognized the scars on his knuckles from similar ones borne by some of the men in the Wildenstern family. They came from splitting the skin on the knuckles—and one did not fight animals with one’s fists. A traveling trunk with a brass lock and corners sat on the floor by Barnum’s side.

  “And in what far corner of the world did you find the mysterious beast you have brought here today?” Tatty asked, her hands clasped together in eager anticipation.

  “Beast might be a harsh term for something so beautiful,” he sighed, patting the top of the traveling trunk. “For it is certainly not a danger to anyone. Indeed, I have found that its instinct is to protect. I discovered it in South America, in Peru. It is highly intelligent, and was devilishly difficult to capture. But once caught, it was easy to train.”

  “My brother-in-law and cousin will be keen to see it,” Daisy told him. “They are passionate in their study of engimals. I’m sure they will be along any minute now.”

  Mr. Peter Barnum had come to Wildenstern Hall with something to sell. Something that a friend of Daisy’s had assured her she would want to buy. But Daisy was reluctant to make any decision without someone to cast an expert eye over the creature in question. Which was why she was waiting on Nate and Gerald. Between them, they possessed a great deal of knowledge of and experience with the most exotic of creatures: the engimal, an organism that was as much machine as animal and came in a startling array of forms.

  Daisy was the young wife of Berto Wildenstern, Nate’s older brother. An accomplished woman, she could boast expertise in a range of abilities, but she was normally too discreet to do so. She was one of the first women ever to attend London University, where she had graduated with honors. She had helped run her father’s business, saving it from ruin, before being courted by Berto and marrying into the Wildenstern clan.

  Many felt that Berto had married beneath him. But given Daisy’s intelligence, her dark-haired beauty, and her impeccable manners—not to mention Berto’s bloody-minded insistence—the family had given its reluctant blessing to the marriage. Now she was expected to fulfill the duties of a good wife and nothing more. It was a situation she found thoroughly exasperating and one she rebelled against at every opportunity. But for the sake of appearances, she was forced to conceal her feelings in public.

  “Perhaps we could just have a peek at it, while we’re waiting?” Tatty asked, unable to contain her excitement. “Oh, Daisy, where would the harm be? Mr. Barnum assures us that the thing is fully trained!”

  It was at that moment that Nate and Gerald arrived, much to Daisy’s relief. Unfortunately, Gerald’s mother, Elvira, had also heard about Mr. Barnum’s visit and arrived along with them, pushed in her wheelchair by a handsome, muscular footman. Daisy let out a carefully silent sigh.

  Elvira was older than everyone else in the room combined. As well as being a wildly eccentric, scheming harpy, she was also corrupt, bloated as a toad, and overbearing to an unbearable degree. Confined to a wheelchair by a mixture of gout and obesity, she was deaf as a post but did not let that get in the way, using her listening trumpet to barge into any conversation she detected around her.

  Daisy made the introductions. Then for the benefit of the new arrivals, she added: “Mr. Barnum is an explorer, a hunter, and an entertainer. He has something he’d like us to see. Mr. Barnum, if you please?”

  Barnum smiled and stood up in the manner of an actor taking the stage.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for the honor of this audience. The Wildenstern family is, of course, renowned not only for their status in Irish and British society, but also for their keen eye and exacting taste when it comes to the engimal market. I believe I even see a fine example of a drawbreath at the back of the room there!”

  They all turned to see the machine-like creature, about the size of a badger, with a bristly metallic pelt. It had a triangular head, extended from a long, snake-like neck. Wire whiskers stretched out from around its wide mouth. Its eyes were set on either side of its head. Drawbreaths were dull-witted creatures with wheels for feet. They liked nothing more than to crawl back and forth over a thick carpet, sucking the dust and dirt from it. But like all breeds of engimals, they were extremely rare and expensive, and only the very wealthiest homes could hope to afford one.

  The drawbreath raised its head, alarmed to have suddenly become the center of attention. It scuttled behind a sofa and carried on greedily combing the carpet.

  “Dreadful, skulking creature!” Elvira exclaimed. “It is not supposed to be in the room when the family is present!”

  “Don’t be mean to it, Auntie,” Tatty protested. “It doesn’t know any better. Besides, I quite like having it about. It’s like a cat—but useful.”

  “And I saw your gardeners leading those lawncutters across the grass on my way in. And as for that mighty bull-razer in the paddock—a majestic beast!” Barnum gestured toward the window. He bowed his head toward Nate and Gerald. “Not to mention, of course, the famous Beast of Glenmalure, captured by your valiant efforts in the Wicklow Mountains. How I would love to have witnessed that hunt!”

  With Gerald’s help, Nate had tracked and captured a wild velocycle that had terrorized the mountains for generations. Nate had spent time in Africa, studying and trapping some of the wildest engimals in the world. Now, he rode the velocycle like a horse. He was notorious for racing the belligerent creature recklessly along the roads, crisscrossing Wildenstern land, and through the streets of Dublin.

  “Yes, yes,” Nate waved the compliment away impatiently. “It’s in the stables, even as we speak, waiting eagerly for its evening run. Shall we get to the point? What have you got to show us?”

  “Pardon my brother-in-law, Mr. Barnum,” Daisy said gently. “His manners are like gloves—only worn occasionally and often mislaid. Please continue your presentation.”

  Barnum gave her an ingratiating smile.

  “Then I will waste no more time. Let me introduce to you … a creature like no other. I call it … the trans-portmanteau.”

  He opened the traveling trunk at his side and pulled out a large object. It was a similar shape to the trunk itself and only a little smaller, but with rounded corners. It was a bronze color, with tangled plantlike markings on its surface in a darker shade of the metal. From the way he handled it, the container was obviously very light. They all expected him to open this up and remove something else. But instead, he placed the container in the space in the middle of the floor and stood back. He beamed at them as if he had just presented the crown jewels.

  “Splendid—it’s a box,” Gerald observed.

  “I assure you, sir,” Barnum said, “it is far more than a box.”

  He clicked his fingers. With a sound like the pages of a book being flipped, the bronze box unfolded itself. On the inside, it was a dark, but shimmering silver. The entire container was a single sheet of wafer-thin, intelligent metal. It immediately turned its mirrored surface toward the window.

  “It feeds on sunlight, like a leaf-light,” Nate said. “But it’s much bigger, more sturdy. You’re right, Barnum. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”

  “But what does it do?” Gerald pressed its owner. He was the scientist in the family, obsessed with discovering how engimals worked. “I have always been of the belief that every engimal has a purpose—a use to mankind. What is this creature’s role?”

  “It has many uses,” Barnum told them. “Though it is particularly well-suited to meeting the needs of a woman who wishes to travel in comfort and convenience. It can make itself airtight and waterproof. Its surface can be rendered almost frictionless. You can slide it along the ground as if it were on wheels. As a traveling
trunk, it has almost no weight. It weighs only as much as its contents. But that is just the beginning. Please observe.”

  He clapped his hands twice. The trans-portmanteau folded itself to create the shape of table, with a section of its mirrored surface standing up at the back.

  “Here, it has created a simple, but elegant, dressing table, complete with mirror.”

  Barnum clapped his hands three times. The trans-portmanteau unfolded to its full size, stood on one edge and bent itself in three folds.

  “Here,” he waved like a circus ringmaster, “it has created a screen behind which one can change one’s clothes in complete privacy.”

  Daisy was quite taken with it. To her, it was both beautiful and eminently useful, a combination that she sought in all her possessions. Nate stood up and walked around it, studying it carefully. He glanced over at Gerald, who shrugged and nodded.

  “It is a fine engimal and appears to be in good health,” Nate said. “A traveling trunk, a dressing table, a screen … and probably more uses besides, if it can be trained to adopt them. A winning combination. But what is it worth?”

  “This is unseemly, sir!” Elvira cried, brandishing her listening trumpet at Barnum. “One does not undress in the presence of an engimal. It would be the height of impropriety!”

  “Oh, that’s unfair, Auntie!” Tatty protested. “It’s no different from undressing in front of animals, and I do so in front of the spaniels all the time. It means nothing to them.”

  “That’s more information than Mr. Barnum needed, I’m sure,” Daisy commented softly.

  “You are too young yet to take part in these proceedings, Tatiana!” Elvira snapped across at the girl, waving her listening trumpet in a menacing fashion. “Spaniels and engimals are not the same thing. And you should know by now that neither should compromise a woman’s modesty. One does not know what kind of obscenities pass through the minds of either creature!”