Ancient Appetites (8 page)

The crew were a motley lot, rough but thoroughly competent. It was strange to see so many foreign-looking faces here – he had grown used to a more exotic mix on his travels, but Dublin was still such a small, insular place. Here on the quays, however, you could find all sorts. Ships' crews were often made up of all manner of races – captains took good crewmen wherever they could get them. Sometimes by force, if necessary.

The
Banshee's
captain would be loyal to the family, but the ship's second mate had become a close friend and Nathaniel was sure the officer would hide him on board until they had sailed far enough out that they couldn't turn back. He could be gone before the family found him.

And yet as he gazed up at the ship, Nate knew he couldn't leave. There was something rotten in the heart of his family; his brother was dead and he had to find out why. If he had two months before he had to depart for America, then that would have to be long enough. He could still cut and run after that. He had loved Marcus, but he would not spend the rest of his years living his brother's life. And besides, there was one other thing to consider: if Nathaniel were to take his brother's place, whoever killed Marcus would be bound to come after him next.

F
rancie took the shortcut through the graveyard, running across the carpet of soft grass past one monumental gravestone after another. The Wildensterns didn't do anything by halves, and their headstones were no exception. Giant stone crosses, door-sized slabs of intricately carved marble, looming sculptures of angels with their wings spread, all marked with Roman numerals or Celtic scrollwork or decoration from any period of the family's six-hundred-year history in Ireland.

The memorials cast long, gothic shadows over the grass in the clear morning sunlight, and Francie was struck by the thought that all the family's ancestors, lying there beneath his feet, were somehow watching him. Some frightened part of him wondered if they knew what he and his father were about. There had always been talk that the Wildensterns weren't natural. Their towering manor was often talked about in the hushed tones that might normally have been reserved for the likes of the Tower of London . . . or perhaps a haunted house.

He looked up just as he passed under the shadowy wings of a stone angel and its empty eyes filled him with dread. He ran faster, eager to be free of these menacing shapes. As he passed along the side of the small church – built especially by and for the family – he slowed and turned to look back. Each of these huge monuments could have paid for the kind of house his family inhabited in Dublin. But here they were instead, as if the dead had tried to keep hold of their money for as long as they could after their deaths. He remembered how his mother had told him stories of foreign kings from the East, who were buried with all their wealth and all their servants. To serve their masters again in the afterlife.

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 centre 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 labourers 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 favourite 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 the 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 enquired.

'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 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.