Did she have a right to complain? She had spent her own share of Donald's unwilling gift to them, had she not? If she had only been stronger, perhaps asked Bill to rebuff the windfall, then she could distance herself from the affair. Instead she had worried at the offence she might cause in her refusal. Would Maggie think she was being judged? Could a refusal earn she and Bill an eviction? As it was she had paused too long, and made an inadequate attempt to hide her misgivings. Maggie had sensed it, as had Bill. Whether or not the same could be said of William, she had no idea. His eyes were watchful, but she had no idea how gifted he was at reading other people.
Nelly, on the other hand, had always been good at understanding what went on behind the eyes of those around her. William had enjoyed the business with Donald. It had renewed him in a way she couldn't articulate, but had a clear perception of.
Thinking of the attack made her shudder, and Bill noticed, lowering his eyes. He had been out for most of the day, and the cup of whisky wasn't the first to pass his lips. She wanted to reach out to him, make him talk to her. She knew he was suffering a crisis of conscience. Bill was a good man, but however garrulous he might seem to others, speaking of personal matters was a gift he did not possess. He held tight to his feelings, and muddled through them alone. It had ever been his way, and even to this day she knew little of the family he had left behind in Ireland, other than that they had refused to join him.
Her fear was that he, too, felt judged. She wanted to reach out and stroke his hand where it rested on the table, but was afraid the pressure of his shame might cause him to burst at such a touch. What could she say to ease him? It was not her place to sit in judgement, and she had no wisdom to share. For the first time in months, she had fallen into doubt about the Lord's plan for them. How could this possibly be a part of it?
Maggie stood, leaning over the pot of stew. She gave it a stir, releasing a waft of hot scent into the candlelit kitchen. Nelly's mouth watered, and Joseph all but whimpered. "Oh," said Maggie, pausing in the act of reaching for her lodger's bowl. "There's a thing. I all but forgot that matter of business."
Joseph's eyes flicked from the bowl, to Maggie, and back. He gave a small nod.
"I wouldn't want to do it after we eat, you understand. Not with the drink flowing."
Another tiny nod.
"Well, you know that things have been slow for me and William since Old Donald's passing?"
Nod.
"I don't like to point the finger, but your own health hasn't helped the matter. People see you, and hear about Donald's illness, and join things up in ways they aren't."
"I ... do you want me to go?"
Nelly gripped the table. "Maggie, surely not? Winter's setting in. He won't last five minutes."
Maggie's eyes flared, and William gave her a lazy, unpleasant look. Drunk as he was, Bill sensed the shift, and slid his fingers over to brush hers.
Maggie laughed, though it held no joy. "Away with you both! Throw the poor man out on the streets, when he's the only fully paying customer I've got?" The emphasis was clear, but Nelly refused to avert her eyes, much as she wished to check Bill's reaction. "We all know he's not got the dropsy. He'll outlive us all, most like."
Joseph nodded, grateful. "Indeed, madam. I feel I'm just about to turn a corner."
"So you said. No, you're welcome to stay as long as you have the cash." She stirred the pot once more, refreshing the aroma. "I only wanted to ask if you'd consider moving into the room Old Donald vacated, see? Out of sight, out of mind. Might stop lodgers fleeing after a night sleeping in your company."
"I can't afford to pay more ..."
"Oh, you'll be offending me next. Rent stays the same. You're doing me a favour, after all. Besides, it's warmer upstairs. You'll be better sooner, and we all win."
Joseph smiled. "You do me more kindness than I deserve. I accept, madam."
Maggie smiled. William didn't, though he nodded.
As Joseph's bowl was finally filled with stew and placed before him, Nelly dared a look at Bill. Though he looked composed, there was a tension in his neck and shoulders that belied his inebriation. Something was wrong.
Something was very wrong indeed.
Chapter 13
Robert Knox
Wednesday, January 2nd, 1828
Knox slipped on the cobbles but, by slamming his cane down on the stone, managed to right himself before he could topple. He chose not to examine what might be beneath his feet. It was early morning, and the city wore a thin gown of frost and ice from the night before. The cold gold of the midwinter sun created stark, beautiful contrasts of light and shade between the buildings, but the arctic bite on the air gave little hope that there would be a thaw. That was to his liking. Much of the waste and effluent between, before, and within the towering tenements around them had frozen solid, sparing him the worst of the olfactory horrors he had expected to experience.
Fergusson pointed at a tenement on their left. It strove for the sky, at least six stories in height, identical in most ways to those on either side. The crush of buildings in the Old Town reminded Knox of the slave ships he had on occasion been required to inspect in South Africa. The lower galleys had been as crammed with bodies as this part of Edinburgh was with architecture, yet while there was nothing but misery and depravity on those vessels, the grandeur of the tenements could not be denied. They wallowed in the filth of the underclasses, but their grey stones remembered a time not too long ago, before the affluent New Town was built, when they housed the Scots nobility and their retinues. Since then they had been divided and further subdivided, and if his information was to be believed, many single rooms now housed entire families, the better to fill the pockets of less than scrupulous landlords.
Knox had been through the Old Town before, and had not returned to marvel at the edifices of the past. The building that they made for was distinct from its neighbours in one way. Around the door and windows of the ground floor soot blackened the stone, smearing upwards where flames had billowed out to lick towards the higher levels. Knox stopped in the road, ignoring the other gawkers who had slowed to see the aftermath of the blaze. The building had burned in the early hours. "The fire remained on the ground level?"
Fergusson nodded. "It seems there was little in the communal stairwell to encourage it upwards."
"Yet none survived?"
"The smoke was less considerate. Two men jumped from the first floor, at the rear, abandoning their families. The first broke both his own back and his friend's fall."
"You have spoken to the survivor?"
"I haven't been able to find him. Somebody told me he was with friends, but nobody seems to know who or where."
Knox pursed his lips. "Then we do not know whether it was the smoke that caused them to flee so dramatically, or something else. Nobody else ran?"
"It was five in the morning, after the bells and revels. I doubt many would even have been conscious."
"There are worse deaths, I suppose. Can we get inside?" He stepped on to the pavement, close to the door of the tenement block.
Fergusson put a hand on his arm. "I would caution against it, sir. The police have surmised that the structure is sound, but I suspect that is mostly guesswork."
Knox frowned. There was little to be gained from the expedition if he could not obtain access to the site. "And how certain are you that when the smoke sent them to their deaths, the residents rose again as revenants."
"I have spoken to an officer who attended the scene, sir. He was among the first to see one stagger out. It was charred, a body from the ground floor, and walked stiffly. Yet its purpose was as clear as any other that has been seen, for it lurched directly at the crowd upon discovering them. Fortunately the night watch officers were already on hand at that point. They had the presence of mind to block the doors with detritus after they crippled the first escapee. Another tried to fall onto the crowd from a fourth floor window. It missed, thank goodness, and shattered its legs and s
pine on impact. That failed to prevent it from dragging itself towards the nearest living bodies, but again the watch intervened."
Knox sniffed. "No doubt both have been burned to ash by now. What of those left inside?"
"Fifty-two men, women, and children, identified by the soldiers who went in when the fire died."
"Dead?"
"Undead."
Knox shook his head, watching a coal cart go by. There were few deliveries, and the bagmen who would usually carry coarse sacks of their stock into homes sat in silence on the back, wrapped up in scarves and thick coats. Coal was a luxury which few around these parts could avail themselves of, and it was only the savage shock of the Scottish January that made the carts try the poorer parts of town at all. During the summer there were more urgent concerns for the poor to waste their few pennies on, but the winter killed hundreds each year. "Dozens of revenants, in one building. Can we be certain they were not there before, that this was not some sort of ... nest?"
"We can, sir. It may not appear much to us, but this is a busy community. The occupants were well known around here. A journeyman shoemaker, two slipper makers, their families, a widow who keeps a small shop down the way, their families ... it would have been noted sir, had they not been seen awhile."
Knox nodded, grateful for his assistant's understanding of how this alien sector of society operated. "Come," he said. "There is little more here for us at the present." Turning, he began to walk back along the street, ignoring the questioning stares of the locals who had stepped from their own homes to see their gentleman caller. Fergusson fell in beside him. "Your instincts are admirable, Mr Fergusson. There is no fault in endeavouring to take a holistic approach in our study of these abominations. While the knife may one day reveal to us how they function, it is only enhanced by observations of how they came to be." Fergusson nodded, his pleasure obvious. "How is it, do you think, that every soul in that one building rose so soon after their deaths? Do we know how the fire began?"
"Does it matter? I am not aware that the officers who attended the scene thought it worthy of investigation. A stray candle perhaps, knocked over during the night's revelry, not noticed until it was too late."
"Perhaps." Knox saw his transport at the end of the street where they had left it, and raised his arm to summon the driver. They waited as the horse pulled the closed carriage towards them. "Or perhaps the causes of both fire and undead infestation are more closely linked. Although we have seen little evidence since, what we know from the riots suggests that some of the newly risen dead were in fact victims of the first creatures, who had been bitten in the chaos. We have hypothesised that this is how they breed, for they have no other functioning reproductive capability." Fergusson nodded, rubbing his hands together against the chill. "So then, let us suppose that a revenant found its way inside, to the ground floor. Driven by its insatiable appetite, it slaughters the lower inhabitants, and perhaps in the struggle a candle is overturned as you say. While the blaze takes hold, the revenant investigates the upper levels. In the confusion and darkness, with no way to escape through the rampaging fires below, the sleepy residents would be as lambs to the slaughter." Fergusson nodded, but with less surety than before. "You see a flaw in my reasoning?" His apprentice hesitated, glancing at his own feet. "Speak up, boy."
"I see two, sir, on what facts I know. I am told that the only bodies discovered were those who resided there."
"Then perhaps it effected an escape before the soldiers arrived."
"Perhaps, sir. The authorities seem to think much as you. The man I spoke to is not certain though."
"Has he a reason to doubt?"
"From what he saw, while he helped to cripple and then destroy the revenants they found, not a single one of them was seen to have a bite mark, scratch, or other injury beyond the occasional burn. As I understand it, the smoke killed them all. None of them were attacked, until the military had at them."
As the horse pulled up next to them with a snort, its breath freezing on the air, Knox stared at his young friend, speechless at last.
#
"I took the liberty of stoking the fire in the study, sir," his butler said as he closed the door on the cold night. "May I get you some refreshments?"
"Excellent idea. Some brandy, McCrimmon, to take the chill off." As his servant departed, Knox opened the door to the study, enjoying the rush of warmth that fell over him. The frost patterns on the windows were melting away, leaving strange, moist memories of what they might have been just half an hour ago.
Settling into his chair, he waited until McCrimmon delivered the brandy and made his usual discreet exit, sealing him in with his thoughts. Mary was away for the day, taking the children to see his brother across town. She had demurred when he made his excuses, neither challenging him nor declaring herself entirely pleased. He would make it up to her. She knew how consumed he was by his work, and while she might not know the details of his labors, she remembered her own fear on the night of the riots. With Knox all but dragged out of bed by armed men, she had been left with only McCrimmon and the maids to secure the ground floor. Knox had never given her a full account of that long and arduous night, the horrors he had been thrown up against, and she had never asked. She knew that his work might be enough to forever banish the creatures that had scraped at their back door, and that was enough to satisfy her.
Knox sipped the brandy, his fingers throbbing as some little heat returned to them. The warmth turned his thoughts back to the burned out ground floor of the tenement. That a revenant had stumbled out from it, flesh charred and rigid, did not surprise him. From his own investigations, he knew that they could suffer enormous damage without apparent effect. It took but a few viable strands of muscular tissue for an entire limb to remain mobile. The reality of the underlying situation was more complex. The creatures felt no pain, and he had yet to detect any nerve activity at all in the degrading specimen he had at the school. It was not the case that the creatures were ignoring great injury thanks to some superhuman gift of endurance. Rather, without a functioning nervous system, those injuries were never relayed to the brain, and so caused no reaction. Sever the muscles through, and the creature's movements would be hampered in a corresponding manner. Yet until it lost the use of a limb, it might not even be aware that you were inflicting any damage at all.
As had become his custom, Knox turned to his desk and the locked cabinet beside it. The pretence at resisting temptation whiled away a few moments, and another sip of brandy, before he rose and approached it. With a glance at the door to ensure it had been properly closed, he slipped the key from his pocket and crouched down. Although he knew well what he would see, for there had yet to be any sign of deviation in its condition since he had placed it there, he could not stifle a thrill of guilty anticipation.
The tiny key slid into the lock, and he cracked open the door. The jar sat inside, the head resting on the glass bottom, drowned in formaldehyde. There had been a suggestion by one of his students, Miller perhaps, that when they removed the old revenant's brain they should preserve it in an oxygenated solution of salts, the better to preserve whatever activity might yet be occurring within. Knox had decided otherwise, and taken the head whole. It mattered little what was occurring within the pink-grey mass of the brain inside. The body had not seemed to mind its head being removed, and had still twitched and fought with a startling eagerness. Knox did not know what had possessed him to bring the head home, but now that it was ensconced in his cupboard it provided a focus when he turned his attention to the revenants.
He chuckled, closing the cabinet door. When was his attention fixed anywhere else, these days? For every tiny discovery he made, more mystery awaited him around the corner. Every time he managed to tie two threads of their workings together with logic, the impossible leaped out to undo his knots.
Pulling out the high-backed chair tucked beneath the desk, he took a seat and slid some of the unmarked paper scattered across it so that it was
in front of him. It was his intention to pen an article calling on the city leaders to preserve some of the revenants that would doubtless be discovered in the coming months, and allow a selection of the medical fraternity's most skilled anatomists access to them. It was part of the strategy he had agreed upon with Syme. Knox would state the facts in bold, provocative language that even the common man might understand, and the others would follow up with letters of support over subsequent days. While many more plebeian eyes would scan these missives than was necessary, they hoped that those in power might take particular note of the support Knox was being afforded by people otherwise well known to be his rivals. They chased any extra weight their arguments might be afforded with fanaticism.
Again, he wondered whether he was alone in the attempt to advance knowledge ahead of what he believed to be an inevitable shift of opinion in their favour. Was Syme even now taking advantage of the academic break to delve into a revenant of his own? Resting his elbows on the desk, Knox gazed out of the window at a gentleman strolling past outside, wrapped in thick layers against the savage attentions of the season. Did it matter if Syme or any others were performing such studies? Knox knew his intellect and ability exceeded all others in his field. If another were making investigations, they could not yet have amassed even the limited data Knox had acquired. So he must hope. With a sigh, he picked up his pen and began to write.
As his words filled the blankness of the paper with fresh notes, his newest question turned over in the back of his mind like a piglet on the roast. There had been no bites. Everyone in the building, known to have been recently among the living, rose again after their deaths, but there had been no bites.
How could that possibly be?
Chapter 14
Burke & Hare
Saturday, January 5th, 1828
The Flesh Market Page 12
