Ancient Appetites (The Wildenstern Saga Book 1)

by Oisin McGann

  “Couldn’t wait. … for the … elevator,” he explained in panting breaths. “Ran down … the stairs.”

  Nate worked it out. His cousin had obviously run full-tilt down fourteen flights of stairs and crossed from the other side of the huge building. No wonder he was out of breath.

  “They’re awake!” Gerald managed at last. “They’re talking!”

  He didn’t need to say who.

  “Well, then,” Nate replied, picking up his shirt. “Let’s go meet the ancestors.”

  He charged out of the door, dragging Gerald with him, and together they ran back up to the laboratory.

  By the time they reached it, Gerald was staggering forward on rubbery legs, wheezing like an old woman. Nate didn’t care what the doctors claimed, there was no way smoking could be good for the heart or lungs. They pushed through the door to find the room shrouded in a gloomy light, the sun having passed to the far side of the building. The lamps had yet to be lit. Sitting on a bed in the corner was a hunched figure, being supported by an uneasy-looking young footman. The figure looked frail and cold; shivering despite the blankets wrapped round his shoulders. With an achingly stiff movement, the man turned his head to look at them.

  Nathaniel found himself staring into the grey, filmy eyes of a man who had once been a corpse.

  “My God!” he whispered.

  Gerald pushed him forward and together they approached the huddled old man. Despite his frail state, he looked extraordinarily well. His skin was dry and creased with wrinkles, but it was no longer the color of the peat bog; blue veins were visible beneath, and bone and muscle had redeveloped to the point where he could move by himself to a small degree. His eyes were clearly working—they moved about, trying to focus on the faces around him; however, Nate doubted that the old man could see very well. It was a noble-looking face; long, with high cheekbones and a prominent brow over a narrow, hooked nose. His hair was a bleached brown, but there was an inch of black at the roots. His original hair color was growing back.

  “He said his name is Hugo,” Gerald said in a low voice. “I haven’t been able to get much sense out of him though. He’s very confused—as you’d expect from someone who’s been dead for centuries. The two women are awake too, but they’ve just been lying there babbling so far.”

  Nate looked over at them, lying in their beds. He could see that their eyes were open and their lips were moving, their heads rolling weakly from side to side. The second man still lay unconscious, the slight rise and fall of his chest the only sign that he too was alive.

  “Elizabeth,” the old man said abruptly in a feeble rasping voice, reaching out for the black-haired woman in the bed next to his. “Oh, what have they done to thee? What have the beasts done?”

  Nate caught him before he fell forward and gently pushed him upright. The woman turned her head and looked in the direction of the voice, mumbling incoherently.

  “Do you know who this is?” Nate asked him.

  “It is Elizabeth, my sister.” Hugo gestured to her with his hand. “Is she dying?”

  “Quite the opposite, in fact,” Gerald told him. “She is … You are all making miraculous recoveries. There are four of you altogether. Can you tell us anything about the others? Can you tell us what happened to you?”

  Hugo looked round at the other beds, his underdeveloped eyes squinting at the shapes.

  “There is a red-haired woman and another man … a huge man,” Nate prompted him.

  “Brunhilde … my younger sister,” Hugo gasped. “And Brutus, my brother. Ahhh, Brutus … they hated him most of all. What a warrior he was! He fought like a lion before he was overcome! He must have cut down a dozen of the vermin—no … more. He was like a mighty lion.”

  It was the longest speech he had uttered so far and it seemed to leave him exhausted. Gerald and Nathaniel looked at each other.

  “Can you remember who attacked you?” Nate pressed the ancient man. “You were found with gold stuffed down your throat. Can you tell us what happened?”

  “Peasants,” Hugo spat, his face screwing up with hatred. “Heretic peasants led by a mad monk. We were betrayed by our guards and by our servants. They came in the night like rats and took us in our beds.”

  “Some things never change,” Gerald quipped, taking out his cigarette case.

  Hugo’s hand went to his throat as he struggled to remember. “I … I fought, but the cowards had taken my sword. I was held down … Some of them wanted to burn us. Then the monk …” His voice drifted off. “The monk said we should go into the ground. But not before they had made us suffer.”

  He went quiet for a moment, tired and out of breath. His head hung as if his mind was lost in the moment of his death, centuries ago.

  “We all cursed them; we showed no fear of the vermin,” he continued in his weak rasp. “Brunhilde bit the nose off one of them, and we laughed at them then! But they hurt us … for days they put us through pain.” He paused, lifting his head. “And then they threw us into deep holes and tossed soil on our faces.” He went silent again. “And now we are alive again. Truly we have been blessed with a miracle. Only God himself could have done such a thing.”

  “You were wearing this when we found you.” Gerald held up the gold signet ring, which had been carefully cleaned. “Do you know what this is?”

  “Of course I know. Do you take me for a fool?” Hugo grunted. “It is my ring, passed down to me by my father and by his father before him. I am Wildenstern.”

  Nate and Gerald shared another look.

  “I think it’s time we got Father down here,” Nate said.

  XVIII

  “A RIGHT CAN OF WORMS”

  BY THE TIME the Duke arrived, with his brother Gideon and Dr. Warburton in tow, Hugo had lapsed back into a weary daze; muttering nonsensically and gazing with his weak eyes at the floor. Edgar waited for a few minutes to see if there would be any further developments and then, after a few words with Gerald, he left again.

  Nathaniel and Gerald struggled for the rest of the afternoon to get any more sense out of the newly awakened patients, but with no success. As evening fell, the women became more alert and stopped their mumbling, lying still instead and looking around them. Hugo asked for food and was given milk and broth, as he was still unable to chew. A servant helped spoon-feed him until he was able to manage by himself. His appetite proved to be immense and he ate bowl after bowl of the soup, washing it down with warm, sweetened milk. Soon the women were able to eat too, and with equal hunger. But they still did not say a word. There was no sign yet of Brutus regaining consciousness and Hugo often looked at him with sorrowful concern.

  Nate finally went to bed and lay awake for hours, his head full of unanswered questions. When he arose the following morning, feeling drowsy and numb, he made his way straight down to the laboratory, where he found his ancestors asleep. Gerald sat by them, with dark rings around his eyes, and told his cousin that they had been sleeping for a few minutes at a time through the night, and eating with supernatural appetites.

  Then they awoke again. And they began to eat once more. Nate left them and went down to breakfast. He trudged through the morning in a weary daze, only half aware of the goings-on around him. There was a new tension in the house and everybody knew its source. Those who knew of the ancestors’ existence (and there were more and more of them as the gossip increased) had heard about Hugo’s claim. He had the gold signet ring with the family’s coat of arms as proof … and there could be no doubt that he was blessed with aurea sanitas. He even bore a resemblance to some of the portraits of old Patriarchs that hung in the main hall.

  And if he was who he said he was, then the family was faced with an unprecedented problem. By right, everything around them belonged to him.

  “For God’s sake, nobody say anything to him,” Gideon spluttered over breakfast, spitting bits of kipper through his dyed-black beard, over his fat belly and onto his lap. He waved his heavily ringed hands about. “We’ve open
ed a right can of worms here, and I won’t have everything we’ve worked for being upset by some throwback turning up out of the blue like this and laying claim to our fortune. I won’t have it, by the Lord Harry!”

  Edgar refused to be drawn on the subject, which just made things worse. He merely sat there eating and took no part in the chatter. Nate watched him and wondered what was going through his mind.

  He also tried to avoid looking at Daisy. She had been especially cool towards him since having her dress pinioned at the funeral, and he knew that she had not forgotten his insensitivity. He had been waiting for her to get her revenge and it was at this moment that she chose to strike. And she did so with dastardly cunning.

  “It seems to me, Father,” she addressed the Duke with a thoughtful air, “that what we must do is ensure that Hugo and his sisters are kept occupied with civilized pursuits. They have a lot to learn about our world, and the more we fill their time with less martial and more … contemplative matters, the better it will be for all concerned.

  “There is so much they must be taught about our history, politics and the new geography of our world, not to mention all the ins and outs of the family business. And we could lighten the academic load by supplementing their tuition with pleasurable occupations such as botany, music, painting. I think poetry would be most beneficial. All things that would keep their minds off thoughts of advancing their positions.

  “But this tuition would have to be carried out by someone whose position—and character—would hold Hugo’s respect. Someone whose education and worldly experience are up to the task.”

  She paused before delivering her masterstroke.

  “Someone like … Nathaniel, for instance.”

  Nate sat frozen for a moment, but then stammered a defense:

  “I … I have far too much to do with learning the business in America without—”

  “It will give you an excellent sense of perspective,” Edgar cut him off. “The prospect of teaching a subject can be an effective way to motivate learning it. A capital idea, Melancholy. Thank you.”

  Nate’s nails clawed the underside of the table as that conniving, calculating cow gave him her sweetest smile.

  The thirty family members who had attended breakfast broke up into various factions afterwards and went their separate ways.

  Nate was finishing a second round of toast after everyone had gone when a footman came in holding an envelope on a silver platter. Nate opened it and found a note inside, written by someone with an obvious fondness for capital letters. It read:

  Master Nathaniel,

  We have Found a man We Believe is Connected with the Assault on the Funeral. We will have him in Custody by Lunchtime and We would be Greatly Obliged if You would Elect to Join us Below Stairs in the South Wing at Your Earliest Convenience.

  Yours Respectfully,

  Patrick Slattery

  Nate felt his pulse quicken. They had found one of the bombers. He read the note again in puzzlement. He did not understand where he was supposed to meet the bailiff—there were no servants’ quarters in the south wing. Then he realized what he was reading—Slattery did not mean the servants’ quarters. He meant the dungeons.

  In spite of the unbearable curiosity he was feeling about Slattery’s exploits, Nathaniel kept his promise and showed up at Silas’s office at around eleven. Just as he feared, the accountant had a pile of ledgers sitting on his desk, in a room filled with more ledgers, books, folders and filing cabinets. Every piece of information regarding the Wildenstern empire was diligently laid out; categorized, alphabetized and, where applicable, filed in numeric or chronological order. Nate regarded the large room with a growing sense of dread.

  “Good morning,” Silas said, beckoning him in.

  The slight young man always gave the impression of being ill-at-ease around people and this morning was no exception. He spoke very quickly, avoided eye contact and his hands fidgeted constantly.

  “We’ll just go over the basics today, to give you an overview of the various businesses. I’ll try and keep it simple, as I know you’ll have very little grasp of financial matters. Despite the fact that we’re one of the wealthiest families in the world, I’ve found most of the family members know little or nothing about money.”

  “What makes you say that?” Nate retorted. “I know plenty about money. I spend it all the time.”

  “Really?” Silas asked. “Then perhaps you can tell me how much you’d pay for a pint of milk?”

  Nate hesitated for a moment and then shrugged, shaking his head.

  “A loaf of bread?”

  Another shrug.

  “A horse?” Silas persisted. “A decent hat? A pound of sugar? A pistol? A pint of beer—”

  “You can get a pint of beer for as little as a penny,” Nate told him. “But it’s worth paying more for the good stuff.”

  “Yes, well …” Silas sighed. “Let’s see if we can expand your horizons a bit, shall we?”

  And so it began. Nate reluctantly sat down beside Silas at the desk and together they began to pour through the books of figures. It was true, he discovered: he knew next to nothing about the family business. As the Heir, Marcus had taken on so much responsibility so readily that Nathaniel and Roberto had not been trusted with any at all. Nor had they looked for it. They had been happy to live their lives and indulge their passions without any thought to where their money was coming from.

  The scale of the Wildenstern business was astounding, and as he listened, he understood for the first time the kind of power the family could wield … and why some members were so bloodthirsty in their attempts to control it. Silas droned on, his hands restlessly flicking through the pages. But Nate’s mind was already running along a different track, trying to piece together the puzzle of his brother’s death. He was still skeptical about the idea of a Fenian mastermind cooking up diabolical schemes against them. It seemed hard to believe the rebels could have pulled off such a subtle murder. But his family were trained to do this kind of thing.

  “… We are the single biggest owner of property in Ireland, of course,” Silas was saying, “as well as retaining several large estates on mainland Britain. But the income from all these pale in comparison to our profits from the North America Trading Company …”

  Different relatives controlled different areas of the Company, Nate knew. But Marcus was in effective command, and with his death, everyone would change rank. Many of them would move up a notch. There were dozens of people with a reason to kill him.

  “… Up until the American War of Independence we controlled all the trade with the United States,” Silas went on. “After that, we lost our monopoly unfortunately, but we still ran all the major shipyards and a majority of the ports, so many of the Atlantic trade routes are still under our control. The North America Trading Company ships everything from maize to cotton, horses to fashion items, as well as doing a healthy trade in coffee and tobacco …”

  But anybody who tried to kill Marcus and failed would be faced with a powerful and resourceful young man who would waste no time in taking his revenge. It would have to have been someone who could afford to take the risk and also someone who would get the greatest benefit. Nate began to list off the suspects in his mind: himself, obviously, then Roberto and Daisy, and after them, Gideon and Eunice. And after them, it could be any of their children—most of whom Nate despised and would have suspected on principle anyway. For the sake of argument, he included Gerald and Silas—although their positions would hardly change at all—and also Tatiana, because he hated to leave her out of anything. And then there was the possibility it had been one of the servants … His mind went back to what Hugo had said. They had been betrayed by their servants. And Slattery believed there was a spy in the house—he was reminded of the bailiff’s note. Perhaps they would soon find out who that spy was. His eyes fell on one of the books on the desk. It was the wage record for the house staff.

  “… America is a veritable treas
ure trove of resources,” Silas was explaining. “And then there’s the cheap labor, of course. As you know, slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1833. But it is still alive and well in America—particularly the South, where most of our estates and factories are located. There has been talk of a civil war over the whole slavery business, but your father thinks it’s all balderdash. I’m inclined to agree. Americans talk a lot of rot sometimes.”

  Now that he thought about it, Nate realized it would be all too easy to get a spy into the Wildenstern home. They had a staff of over a hundred; he couldn’t say exactly how many. He knew hardly any of their names, and he was on better terms with many of the servants than most of the other family members. These people guarded them, fed them, dressed them and made their beds for them. The senior servants like Clancy and McDonald the butler were trained from childhood, but for the lower-level positions … well, as long as they had good references and did their work properly they could move around the house without suspicion. There was no way of telling if they were rebel sympathizers or not.

  “To protect our business out on the seas, the Company has the power to commandeer vessels of the Royal Navy,” Silas continued. “But this is rarely necessary—most of our ships are extremely well armed. We can also draft in armies here in Ireland to deal with any insurrection. Although I suspect Irish soldiers would be more trouble than they’re worth —which is why we have so many British troops at our disposal …”

  There could be dozens of assassins in the house and we might never know, Nate was thinking. They could murder us all in our beds.

  “… Not that the British government is completely on our side either,” Silas added, speaking too quickly now as he grew more animated, still unaware that Nate was hardly listening. “They are constantly trying to place limits on our power, and there is a new and disturbing wave of liberal thought sweeping through Britain, a growing movement of bleeding-heart lawmakers who think we would have less of a problem with the rebels if we did more to raise the poor out of their “misery.” As if you can reason with bloodthirsty lunatics …”