The Resurrectionist of Caligo

by Wendy Trimboli

  A familiar face peered up at him from one of the pillows and managed a feeble smile.

  “Celeste?” Roger approached cautiously, afraid a show of emotion might give her away. Ada’s mother lay under a coarse gray blanket. She’d changed even more since his last house call. Her now-bluish skin was stretched over nothing more than a skeleton, and she struggled to pull herself into a sitting position against the iron rails of the bed. His breath caught in his throat. “Ma,” he croaked before he could catch himself. He squeezed his eyes shut for good measure before opening them again.

  “Dr Weathersby,” she said in a hoarse, dry voice. “Thank you.”

  Roger cringed at the sound of his real name, but of course she wouldn’t know.

  “I’m Mr Starkley today, a mere surgeon,” he said, hoping Dr Lundfrigg hadn’t overheard. “And I suppose you must have another name too, Mrs…”

  “Smith,” said Celeste in her raspy undertone, with a hint of a smile. “The law-abiding widowed charwoman. Dr Lundfrigg knows, but no one else. He’s a charitable man. Not unlike you.”

  Roger knelt by her bed. “Is there anything I can do?”

  She gripped his bloodstained hand with withered, talon-like fingers. “Get it out of me.”

  “I… I don’t think anyone can.”

  “Then bleed me. Bleed it out. You can do that.”

  Glancing over his shoulder, Roger noticed that Dr Lundfrigg watched him with an alert intensity that seemed different from their time in the male ward.

  “You’ve had another look, Mr Starkley. What are your thoughts?”

  “I…” Roger’s voice failed him. The wasted image of Celeste blurred into how he remembered his mother. “She should be kept comfortable. She asked to be bled, and I don’t see the harm if it puts her mind at ease.” Again he wished he could afford ether, or another round of laudanum.

  Dr Lundfrigg stared thoughtfully into space. “Well,” he said at last, “the Khalishkans say bleeding is an obsolete travesty to science. I don’t entirely agree, but I have an alternative we might administer instead. It’s purely experimental but… you can see she has nothing to lose.”

  “Experimental?” asked Roger. “Like your mushrooms?”

  He remembered how he’d huddled at the foot of his mother’s bed during the last night of her life, overwhelmed by a misplaced conviction that he could save her, if only he could find the right tincture. During her final hours he’d dashed to druggists and apothecaries, but deep down he’d known miracles only existed in faerie stories. Of course no fanciful magic haddock would appear in a charity ward to grant him three wishes. They trafficked their magic with royal twits who didn’t need it.

  “You know how these things are,” said Dr Lundfrigg with a frown, and swiveled off the top of his cane to produce a vial of some blood-colored substance and a syringe. “Medical research is an investment in the future. She can’t be saved, but perhaps in the years to come, others will.”

  Roger nodded. He couldn’t save his mother. He couldn’t save Celeste. Even young Joe’s recovery was uncertain. But perhaps, someday, he’d have a patient he could cure. Who knew what latent power might hide inside Dr Lundfrigg’s vial? Experimentation brought advancements: ether anesthetics, fruit drops for scurvy, and inoculations against the pox. If he could contribute one thing to science, Roger wanted to ensure Ada would never die to the same illness as her ma.

  Dr. Lundfrigg squeezed his shoulder. “Now, can you demonstrate proper preoperative procedure?”

  Roger gathered his supplies: wool soaked in wine spirits, a linen tourniquet for finding the vein, and lint for swabbing blood. Celeste waved away his offer of gin. She extended her arm with a flicker of a smile.

  “Does Ada know you’re here?” he asked, binding the linen tightly around her upper arm. “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “I forbid you to tell Ada where I am.”

  “But you’re her mother.” Roger took extra care to pierce the evasive vein at her elbow with his first jab. She winced as he pushed the plunger, injecting the tincture into her bloodstream.

  “I won’t have her see me like this.” Celeste stroked strands of brittle hair from her face. “She should remember me as I was. Not carry this image with her for the rest of her life.” Her ribcage, as substantial as a wicker birdcage draped in linen, rose and fell as she sighed. “I’d rather she forgot me as quickly as possible. You make sure she does that, Dr Weathersby. If she quits her place at the laundry, give her a good smack and say it was me from beyond the grave.” Her twisted, haunting smile and glinting eyes were Ada’s. “Promise me. Promise! Or she won’t be the only ghost haunting you.”

  Roger nodded, unable to find his voice. He withdrew the needle. Thick, black blood trickled down her arm.

  “This may sting.” He swabbed her arm with the wine spirits.

  “I feel better already,” she murmured.

  “You should.” Dr Lundfrigg’s voice was pinched with excitement. “My young lancet here doesn’t believe in magic. But perhaps he’ll be eating his words in the days to come.”

  25

  “Not all acquaintances are worth revisiting,” remarked the emperor as they arrived in Suet Street. He assisted Sibylla out of the carriage. She had no grounds to argue, and so remained silent.

  The setting sun cast gloomy shadows across the shopfronts. She looked up at the face of the butcher’s shop. The building tilted to the right, and rivulets of bloodied water collected in cracks along the footpath. She took care to step over a red puddle. A string of piglets dangled in the window, cut from snout to tail and splayed to show their cavernous, eviscerated bellies.

  The emperor followed her to a side door and shoved it open. It made a sound like wood being forced through a cheese grater. In the gloom, they could make out the bottom of a staircase. Sibylla covered her nose. The smell of old meat wafted through chinks in the wood, and the stairs, green with mold, hadn’t known soap and water in decades.

  Just as Sibylla considered brightening her blood into its soft blue glow, the emperor lit a match. He ascended the stairs until he found a rat-gnawed candle in a broken sconce. He grimaced, then turned toward her with a reassuring smile. Sibylla had been afraid she’d never find Roger. Now she wasn’t sure she wanted to. Still, she had an obligation. She’d sworn never to take a Straybound, and she needed to know she’d broken her promise to save the life of an innocent man.

  Sibylla led the way up stairs so narrow her skirts scraped the walls on either side. When they reached the uppermost landing, the emperor squeezed past her.

  “Allow me.”

  As no thief would have bothered with such a place, the emperor had little trouble forcing entry into the tiny attic room. Sibylla gathered her skirts against her body, not wanting to touch a thing. The last gasps of light from a filthy window revealed a sloped ceiling streaked with mold. Wads of soiled clothing lay strewn on a tiny cot beside a jumble of rubbish that belonged in a burn pit.

  “How amusing.” The emperor’s fingers brushed the grip of his sword.

  Sibylla saw nothing amusing in the absolute disrepair of the cramped garret. Amorphous shapes floating in apothecary jars lined makeshift shelves. As her eyes swept the darkest corner, her body tensed, and her tongue curled to whistle-click. A dark thing loomed in the shadow – some faceless creature.

  It perched on a table made of old crates, with a mop of tar-black hair half-concealing a pinched, skeletal face. If not for the threadbare dress, the malnourished body could have been mistaken for a boy’s. A corpse? Sibylla covered her mouth and fought down a retch. She spun about and hoisted her skirts to flee.

  “You don’t want to ask her questions?” The emperor pointed at the creature, his eyebrows raised.

  Sibylla’s eyes popped wide. “You mean it’s…” She looked again. The thing tossed its head, swinging its hair back. It looked ready to spring at them.

  The emperor drew his sword, a curious smile on his lips. He winked at Sibylla a
nd approached the girl. “There’s one sure way to test for ghosts.”

  “Wait.” Sibylla threw out her hands as the emperor pointed the blade at the girl’s feet.

  The girl shrieked, banging her head against the slanted roof. She sprang off the crates on nimble limbs and scurried to the corner behind the cot. Her eyes locked on the window but the emperor blocked her escape.

  “So this is a Myrcnian dormouse.” Having brought the girl to life, the emperor moved to a flanking position.

  The girl bared her teeth and hissed. Her eyes darted from Sibylla to the emperor, as if intent on avoiding the fate of the slaughtered pigs downstairs. Anxious that this grimy pixie might attack her next, Sibylla grabbed one of the stout apothecary jars and hefted it over her head.

  The girl’s wild eyes fastened onto Sibylla. “Put down that jar!” she screeched. “Don’t hurt it!” She crouched with her hands before her face.

  “Hurt what?” Sibylla paused, ensuring the girl wasn’t somehow tricking her, then peered at the jar. A shape undulated inside, like a lady’s bell-sleeve in a breeze. A faint blue glow shone through the glass.

  “The moonstar jelly.”

  A blue ripple of Sibylla’s own light moved down the length of her arm. Her skin prickled. She concentrated and imagined stuffing the glow in a clay jug and hammering in the cork. The prickle subsided. Disaster averted.

  She lowered the jar, and her nerves relaxed. “Why in the world would he collect something like this?”

  The girl snatched the jar away and replaced it on the shelf with care. “Well, he ain’t here. We ain’t got nothing to steal neither.”

  “That one can tell by the look of the place,” the emperor offered politely.

  Sibylla stepped closer. Despite the girl’s bravado, her shiver betrayed real fear. “You’re too clever to belong to Roger. And too old.”

  “I don’t belong to no one.”

  “Not by the look of it, you don’t. Is this where you live?”

  “I haunt the sack-’em-up man. Plus folks fool enough to stop by.” “The sack-’em-up man? That’s what you call him. How delightful.” Sibylla gave a sardonic smile. “Do you know when this… sack-’em-up man will return?”

  The girl shrugged.

  After all her efforts, Sibylla had ruined everything to gain utterly nothing. She readjusted a raven skull that teetered on the edge of the shelf. Still, there was something of Roger here amongst this collection of curiosities, which included the girl.

  “He was a scullion at your age, you know. He worked in a kitchen,” she added, registering the girl’s confusion. “He would crawl inside the biggest pots to get them clean, and even scrubbed a floor or two. Though you wouldn’t guess by the look of this place, would you?”

  “He always cleans the blood off his tools. Cleans ’em twice, once in water and once in gin. Also his teeth. He’s got a jar of teeth up there. New ones get a good scrubbing when he brings ’em home. And sometimes he has hot cross buns.”

  Sibylla was at a loss. This Roger, the one with books and curiosities, who gave away food and shelter to a starving girl, was the one she wanted to remember. Yet, the disgusting room, the frightful mask, the bones and teeth and corpses… That Roger troubled her. Even now, she didn’t know which she’d be Binding tomorrow.

  A man or a murderer.

  She pushed the thought away. A mosaic of seashells caught her eye, cockleshells and limpets pushed into the surface of a clay pot. That was the kind of thing that belonged to the Roger she remembered.

  “He could never say no to whelks,” she said aloud.

  “Say no to what?” The girl had come up beside her and tapped a fingernail on one of the seashells. “What’s whelks? Are they a bun?”

  “Pickled whelks. A whelk lives in the sea in a shell like a palace, and fishermen catch them in baskets. We used to stuff our faces with them on Fraycable Street, by the pier. Yams, too. He could always pick the sweetest ones, even when the vendor tried to coax him to choose differently. I thought it was his magical gift for a while. But then, he can be pretty lost in his head most of the time. Is that why you’re alone here?”

  “He hasn’t come in a while.”

  “Perhaps it’s better that way.” Guilty or not, a Straybound wasn’t the proper caretaker for a child.

  The girl timidly stroked a fold of Sibylla’s gown. “Are you Queen of the Crumpets?”

  “More of a princess than a queen,” explained Sibylla, as the emperor coughed over his laugh. At least one person had been entertained this afternoon. “Though I do like a nice buttery crumpet.”

  “Should I tell him you stopped by?”

  Sibylla studied her again but couldn’t find much of Roger in her face. The waif looked one biscuit away from starvation. But was she really too old to be his? Sibylla hadn’t spent enough time around children to tell their ages.

  She pulled the locket Harrod had given her from her bodice and held it, suspended by its silver chain. She let a glow well up from her inner core to the surface of her skin. Now they could see despite the growing dusk.

  The girl backed away from Sibylla’s intensifying glow, but then inched forward, arm outstretched.“You’re a moonstar,” she whispered, and dared to touch the skin of Sibylla’s hand.

  Sibylla opened the locket to show the girl a bit of parchment framed inside – an inked portrait.

  “That’s the sack-’em-up man.” The girl leaned in to get a better look. “’Cept he never looked so pretty, not no ways, not even after a shave.”

  “Perhaps I embellished a little,” Sibylla wanly smiled. She took the girl’s arm, feeling her tremble though she didn’t scream. Snapping the locket shut, Sibylla placed it in the girl’s hand.

  The girl stared wide-eyed like she’d met a ghost. “You’re giving this to me?” She scrunched her brow. “Why?”

  “Because I want to.” Sibylla had spent the afternoon looking for someone who might say a kind word about Roger, and she’d found only one. She straightened herself, nodding to the emperor to signal her intent to depart. “I won’t be angry if you pawn it. Would you tell me your name?”

  The girl couldn’t decide where to look. “It’s Ada, miss, but the sack-’em-up man calls me Ghostofmary.”

  The yellow smudge of a gaslamp shone in from the street below. The emperor no doubt had witnessed everything for what it was. A princess would never have set foot inside this garret for a boy she’d merely tutored. She’d given away her secrets, and her own reputation. Perhaps Mr Maokin’s orchid water, meant to lay bare her concealments, was magic after all.

  Sibylla wiped grime from the girl’s cheek. “You shouldn’t stay here, Ada. You’ll get dirty.”

  “I’m fine, miss.”

  Sibylla tucked a rogue strand of Ada’s hair behind her ear. She could barely keep her voice even as she forced her eyes to meet the emperor’s. “We should go.”

  Ada gave the emperor a wide berth as he escorted Sibylla from the room. The glow in Sibylla’s skin had faded, but the candle provided light enough for her to lead the way down the narrow stairwell. At the sound of creaking footfalls on the landing below, she stopped.

  A man ascended toward her, carrying a candle that illuminated his face.

  Roger.

  She steadied her hand against the wall. Sideburns outlined his jaw, and his unruly hair had fallen over his forehead. Fading bruises marred his nose and cheek, and his jinxed eyes. Lost in thought, he looked straight past her. Had he always looked so frowzy? No, he’d been dashing and kind once.

  “Mr Weathersby, home at last.” She swallowed the bile of her resentment. Why lose her temper now? Yet her face flared hot.

  The stairs were only wide enough for one. Roger paused a few steps below her. His eyes focused and his brow creased – the look of a man hunting the stacks of a dusty library for the volume to complete his mental encyclopedia.

  “Sibet?”

  “Do I look like the butcher’s daughter?”

  Roge
r glanced past her at the emperor, who stood on the stairs behind her. “If I’d known you was gracing my humble abode, I’d have cleaned it up some.” His insolent grin faltered. “Or, you know, burned it down.”

  The stale air around her grew pungent with gin. How dare he make light of everything! She wanted explanations and apologies, not glib jokes better suited for old schoolmates. In her pursuit of him, she’d lost more than she cared to admit. If the emperor let one word slip to the queen, Sibylla would be hauled off to the dungeon in Hangman’s Tower, left to molder beside the bones of Celia the Devout’s apostate sister. She’d come looking for a medical student, unfairly accused, not this man dredged from the Mudtyne. They were not friends. This was not a social visit.

  “You must know all that I’ve seen and heard.” Sibylla’s words came out in a furious rasp. “Horrors on horrors. And all centered on you. I wanted to look you in the eyes before the Binding, and now I rather wish I hadn’t.”

  Roger’s candle guttered in the gale of her words. The shadows deepened on his face. He was a stranger to her.

  “What lies has Harrod been feeding you?” His eyes flashed for a moment, then he ducked his head in a half-bow as if to make up for his impertinence. “I honor my debts. I am your humble servant, Sibet.” He did not sound humble at all.

  “You’re no servant of mine,” Sibylla hissed. “Truly innocent men don’t rob graves so they can visit prostitutes. Or keep stray girls as pets. Or have ballads written about their disgusting crimes. No, Dodge. You did something to get where you are, a murderer in name or deed, tied to me by a contract signed in blood. But I don’t want a broken tool.”

  “A murderer? A tool?” he spat. “I might be many things – foolish, rash, penniless – but I’m no murderer. I set a lad’s shin today, and tonight I’ll be drudging on my hands and knees to polish Harrod’s floor. Now you ride up on your high horse and presume to mock my situation? After all I’ve been through?” His gestures had taken on a wild, almost threatening quality. “What a priggish thing to say.” He stopped. His tone changed as if a new thought had hit him. “My letter. Is that what this is about? You think I’m guilty. And here I thought you knew me better than that.” He swayed, and for a moment she thought he might fall to his knees. “You should have just let me hang.”