What Knox was allowing them to join him in was an adventure into the unknown. Fergusson knew that, if they could but be patient and persevere, it might be the work they were doing now that formed the basis of books not yet written. Expecting great revelations so soon was petulant at best, damning at worst. For all he knew, this could be the beginning of a lifetime's work. It excited him, though the scale of it also filled him with terror as profound as did the revenants themselves.
After the lantern-lit gloom of the dissection rooms, even the morning light pained his eyes. His friends fared no better.
"What time is it?" Alex sounded as groggy as Fergusson felt.
"Sunrise. Must be about eight."
"God help us," said Tom. "We're supposed to be helping with his classes in a few hours."
"Nobody ever tells you about this part of great scientific endeavours. I'm exhausted," Fergusson said. Leaving the square, they climbed up to South Bridge. Some students were about, heading perhaps for the libraries to prepare for the study ahead of them, but there were others too, heading to or coming from the New Town to start their working days. A few hawkers took up their customary spots along the road, offering newspapers or snacks. One man towered over them as he shambled past. Young and barefoot, dressed in simple, coarse material, he wore a cap over his curls and a careless, idiot grin on his face.
Alex sniffed. "We should be able to cull his sort," he said. It was not an uncommon opinion among those of better class that destroying born idiots was a kindness. Fergusson was disappointed. He expected more from his fellow students. The big man represented not a failure of science and nature, but the challenge of new knowledge to be had. In that, he was not so unlike the revenants that fascinated them all. The thought triggered a memory. "Unless there are two like him in the city, this would be Daft Jamie."
"I should have heard of him?"
"I have," said Tom, as he buttoned his top coat against the morning's bite. "He's the man the revenants would not harm."
"Indeed he is." He saw from Alex's frown that he had not heard the story. "During the Cadaver Riots, so the chatter goes, that man put himself between two children and a band of revenants."
"He likely had no idea what he was doing," said Alex.
"Perhaps, but that's not how the tale is told. He grabbed a child under each arm, and retreated until his back was to a wall."
"No doubt he then set about the things, driving them away?"
"Hardly. He was as terrified as the children. Despite his size, he's more infant than man. No, the fascinating thing about the story is that, while he stood there helpless and weeping, the revenants would not approach. It was as though he was touched by some power that kept his charges and he safe that night. The creatures clearly wanted him, but could not take the final steps to seize him."
Alex snorted. "Arrant nonsense."
"Who can say? The tale has spread far and wide. Apparently, he was discovered still there by the soldiers in the small hours, the revenants held in place. Only when the soldiers tore the things apart did he drop the children. They had fallen asleep in his arms."
Tom chuckled. "A good story. Not the most unlikely I've heard from that night."
"No indeed," Alex said, giving a thoughtful glance at the giant's back.
"And so often," Fergusson added, "where folk tales spring up, they grow from a seed of truth."
"Then that one," Alex said with a smile, "may one day warrant investigation."
Chapter 12
Burke, Hare, Nelly & Maggie
Thursday, November 29th, 1827
William sat in the dirt, the night pressed over him like a filthy shawl, and drank in the hot, coppery smell of blood. It was what he needed. It consumed his thoughts, scratching away all other instincts until there were no further impulses left in him.
Above him the moon shone bright, but the light somehow failed to reach his little corner of the earth. There was cold, coarse stone at his back, and he knew he was sitting against a gravestone. Feeling the soil around him, he found it in churned disarray. Running his fingers down his naked body, he realised he was coated in mud and dirt. The grave was his own, and though he could not recall the detail of doing so, he had somehow found a way to scrabble free. Running the fingertips of his left hand over the fingernails of his right, he found them cracked and shattered, some missing altogether. That was fine. There was no pain, and he had never been sure what fingernails were for anyway.
The tang of blood taunted him, but he could not see the source.
If he had climbed from a grave, then he must first have been put in one. Despite his cramping hunger, what logic was left to him accepted that much. It was simple enough to follow the logic further. If he had been put in a grave, was it not the case that he must at some point have died? If he was dead, must there not have been a cause?
His shoulder burned, as if in answer. There had been a wound, a bite, though he struggled to recall more than that. Did it matter? He had died, been buried, and risen in hunger. What more did he need to understand, except that the hunger must be sated?
The acceptance animated him. Though he could see little, the scent on the air was trail enough to follow. William did so on hands and knees, not hearing his own piteous whining as he scrabbled over dead grass, into the thickening aroma. Soon enough he was rewarded. His questing fingers found someone lying on the grass, and he heard swift, terrified breathing. Stroking the clothed body in tender exploration, feeling the fast rise and fall of a male chest and the thundering heartbeat beneath it, he sought some exposed area to meet his needs. It occurred to him that the man made no attempt to get up and flee, but he was too deep in hunger to question this any further.
Moving up, his hands found the bare neck. When he pushed the man's cheek the head eased to the side, giving maximum exposure. Leaning in, William nuzzled the flesh, stubble dragging against his nose and lips.
He opened his mouth, pushed his teeth against flesh, and bit down hard.
The meat resisted less than he had anticipated, though the man gave a howl of fear and agony. William barely heard it as he shook his head, tearing the chunk of meat free from the last clinging strips of skin and ligament binding it to his victim. Blood filled his mouth, and though he could neither taste it nor feel its warmth, it was right. Absolutely right. Swallowing without chewing, he waited for the hunger to fade.
Except that it did not fade. It intensified, even while the meat was heavy on his belly. Panicked now, William took another bite, begetting another scream, forcing meat and blood down his gullet as he wondered why that cry sounded so familiar.
The need intensified, but before he could bite down again the light at last found him. Raising his head, he saw he was in an overgrown graveyard. Rats scurried around him but kept out of reach, knowing him for what he was, seeking only the best positions from which to beat their peers to the body on the ground when he had finished.
Looking down, he saw his victim's face for the first time, and flinched as Bill Burke made furious accusations with terrified eyes.
#
William woke with slow ease. It was not the first time the dream had come to him in the nights since being bitten, and it no longer filled him with confusion and dread. Sitting up in bed, relishing having slept late again, he rubbed his temples. While he was not a man taken to flights of fancy, he knew the dream had significance, that he was trying to tell himself something as he slept. Rubbing his shoulder, which was healing nicely beneath the bandaging, he thought he might have a very good idea of what that message was.
Maggie had already risen, and was probably downstairs cleaning, so he lay back again. This week, for the first time in months, he had money enough in his pocket not to need to seek out work. Maggie was content in that, and it gave him time to think.
His experiences with Old Donald had left him a changed man. As he traced the shape of the bite beneath the torn cotton that wrapped it, he began to understand just how deep those changes ran.
<
br /> #
Bill clawed to consciousness, throat dry and sore, sweating despite the chill in the air beyond his blankets. The hangover was an obscenity. Gagging, trying to keep down whatever remained in his stomach, he curled up on his side and put his face to the straw-filled mattress. It smelled of whisky-sweat, and he sat up in despair, trying to get away from it.
It was the third day in a row he had woken in such a state, and he again proved master of his roiling stomach. Though the world swam, he steadied himself through it until things began to look normal again. Squinting up at the window, he tried to estimate the time. Late, he guessed. Maybe even noon.
Nelly would have been up hours ago. Guilt creeped through him. Though she said nothing to him on the matter, her disapproval both of what he had done and how he had comported himself in the days since was evident. While it was hard for her to criticise in light of the help he had been giving to William, who continued not to object to their low-rent occupancy, in her eyes he was less than he had been.
Swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, he found clean clothes waiting for him, folded in a neat little bundle on the floor. While he might never be able to offer her the riches she deserved, she ensured they would never look like paupers. Picking the bundle up, determined not to provoke his stomach further with sharp action, he began to dress.
It was the money, he was sure, that had softened her reaction. At first she had been appalled at what he and William had done, unwilling to listen to excuses about Donald being dead anyway, of salvaging something from tragedy. A part of it was terror at the inadvertent danger Bill had put himself in when the corpse awoke, but the remainder was revulsion. She felt that Bill had violated the man.
That hadn't stopped her from spending a good share of the money on new clothes for each of them. In the end, William had given him six pounds, and kept the balance for himself. Bill could have spoken up, complained that while William had suffered the worst injuries it was he who had found a buyer, but it felt churlish. It was more than he earned in a month, for a day's work. Who had he hurt, to gain it? Old Donald's soul was long gone from the corpse when they moved it, and did it really count as desecration when a body thrashed about in unlife? Had they reported it to the police, they would have burned the body without any of the rites and rituals of a funeral. It had been a messy business, but in the end he had done no harm.
Limping to the door, wondering what he had done the previous night to bruise his hip so, he opened the door and listened. The house was quiet. That pleased him, gave him time to get rid of the worst of the hangover, and he started down the stairs.
Of course, he had doubts about what he had done. Accepting Knox's coin had washed such doubts away on Saturday evening, but the cold light of the following day had brought them sweeping back. That was fine. What kind of man would he be, if he committed such an act and felt nothing at all?
Why, you'd be William Hare of course, he told himself, but shut that part of him down, for fear that William might somehow hear it.
Feeling remorse was fine, even if he accepted that during the birth of the revenant Donald's body ceased as a human being and changed into something else. What hurt him the most, making him drink perhaps a little more whisky than was good for him, was wondering which had happened first.
Had they opened Donald's casket, not knowing that a horror was in the making?
Or had they opened Donald's casket, and in doing so made a horror?
Nobody knew what created the creatures, what turned one man into a revenant but let another rot in peace, and William would say nothing about his moments alone in the room before the corpse attacked him. Many speculated that only damned souls turned into the creatures when they died. Did forcing open a man's casket, preparing most certainly to desecrate his body--for an anatomist would have no other use for it--damn their soul and deny them entry to heaven?
Bill squeezed his eyes closed against the question, but it didn't stop it from popping around in his mind. Had he and William damned the old soldier to hell, and created the demon that attacked them?
He stumbled to the door, then out to the street, looking for the nearest bar and the only hangover cure that kept the questions away.
#
There was no doubting that business was bad, worse even than the year before in the shadow of the Cadaver Riots. Maggie was under no doubt about the reason. Old Donald had died under her roof. Though she was not at fault and knew it, the wagging of tongues declared otherwise, and the human tongue was a powerful force. Another day, Maggie would have scowled her way through the drizzle falling down on her as she carried ingredients for the night's meal down Tanner's Close, conscious of the long winter ahead if what few lodgers she might normally look for in the cold months were warned away. Now she felt free of that responsibility, and it was her William who had brought that freedom to her.
Instead of grunting at those she passed by, friends and strangers alike, she greeted every one of them with a smile. They didn't know the cause, though she was sure that many remarked it odd. Maggie knew she was considered a dour and formidable woman. It worried her not at all that her improved disposition fed the tongues one more thing to wag over. William was looking out for her, for both of them, and it took much weight from her shoulders that the responsibility was no longer hers alone.
Since their first meeting, William had both scared and thrilled her. She was not blind to the caged violence that kept a constant vigil in him, and though she would tell nobody else of it, that very violence had been the thing that drew her. There was a thrill to being with a man like that, somebody feared, who none would cross. The thrill only heightened when she saw it first hand. On the night of the riots he had been more demon than the things on the streets, and it had kept her safe. Those times when his temper burst free and she was the only one available to vent upon? Sometimes he spared her, and the thrill of the aftermath, knowing what almost was, made her girlish with gratitude and relief. The times he didn't? Never pleasant, but a necessary reminder of what he was, and why she was his.
Where she had been content before, she now wondered for the first time what the future might hold for them. Until a few days ago he had struggled to find ways to provide, and it was Maggie and the lodging house which kept them going. Both knew it, and she had forgiven him his youth and hoped he would grow into his responsibilities. When he sold Donald's body to recoup their losses, he had shown his capabilities, the lengths he might go to for their future. To even think of turning disaster to profit--more profit than a fortnight of providing for a full house--demonstrated a wit she had not known him capable of. Bill had helped, but it was William who came up with the idea, fought off the revenant, and brought back the cash. That he had been so generous in offering Bill a good share irked her, for their friend was already well in their debt, but that decision was not hers and she would be foolish to challenge it.
Knowing William had fought a revenant did not trouble her at all. It was the second time he had proven a match for the demons, and if it came to a third she knew where her money would sit.
Arms full, she nudged the door of the lodging house open with her hip, and was greeted by a hacking cough from the far end of the room. Joseph, her one remaining customer, and the second reason business was slow. What few new guests she had welcomed through the door had left the next day. Corpses one week, illness the next. People were seeing things that weren't there. Joseph was in a poor way, but different from whatever had taken Old Donald.
"How are you today, Joseph?"
The man looked up, and his face showed an extra five years that had not been visible the evening before. "Could be turning a corner, Maggie. Could be on the mend."
She doubted it, but smiled anyway. Walking past, to the kitchen at the back of the house, she stopped next to him, struck by a thought. "There's a thing. How would it be if you joined us for dinner tonight? I've picked up some rabbit, good meat and fresh. Should be good stew."
Joseph
shook his head. "I have nothing left to pay for it with, I'm afraid. I will have to decline, with the sincerest apologies." Maggie usually charged for an evening meal, those times when she offered one. It wasn't usually worth doing unless there were a few guests with coins around to join in. For the past week, Joseph had been subsisting on the porridge she doled out in the morning, part of the basic price of a bed.
"Away with you," she said. "It's an invitation, not sales patter. You're not a well man, and the least I can do is put one decent meal in you. Might be the making of you yet."
Joseph's face lightened, and she thought there might be a tear in his eye. "Madam, you're too kind. I've always said so, and when I'm on my feet I'll declare it to the whole of West Port."
She waved him away. "A couple of hours then," she said, as he fell into another bout of racking coughs and sank back onto the bed. "And over dinner, there's something else we can discuss. Might be a kindness to both of us."
He nodded, unable to speak, and she took the food through to the kitchen to prepare.
#
William raised his cup. "To good fortune, however it lands in your lap."
Nelly tried to smile, and sipped her whisky, aware of Maggie's eyes on her from across the small round table in the kitchen. Where William took a mouthful of spirit, Bill, sitting on her left, downed his and grinned. On her right, Joseph drank hard too, though his eyes were on the pot of stew in the centre of the table. The poor man hadn't eaten anything of substance in days, and in that moment little else existed for him but the aroma of rabbit and vegetables.
Maggie finished her own cup and banged it down on the table. "Well, I think it's almost time we took our vittles, wouldn't you say?" Joseph nodded, face pathetic, and Nelly wondered whether her landlady knew how much she was torturing him. She hoped not, and the week before would have argued with anybody who tried to say otherwise. Now, after watching the woman revel over the last few days in monies gained through a man's death, she was less sure.
The Flesh Market Page 11
