Ancient Appetites

by Oisin McGann

  'You will learn as much as you can from him. Then you will go to America and take up the reins there. And by the time I shuffle off this mortal coil – and we can only hope that is after you have aged enough to have developed some sense of propriety – you will take over the company that has made this family what it is today.

  'Roberto is the Heir, through this capricious act of fate. But given that he is a feckless dandy wastrel with less sense than God gave a giggling dolly-mop, it falls to you to shoulder Marcus's responsibilities. And you will. You will do your duty. Do I make myself clear?'

  Nathaniel was trembling with suppressed rage and frustration. It wasn't right. The old man had all but ignored him for most of his life. Everything had always been about Marcus. Edgar had never given a damn about the rest of his children – Nate had never understood why. And now he was expected to step into this role that had been shaped for his favoured brother, and give up all his own hopes and ambitions. It wasn't right.

  'Do I make myself clear?!' Edgar bellowed.

  The brooding dogs in front of his desk flinched. The two Maasai servants did not.

  'Yes!' Nathaniel shouted back, with tears in his eyes. Then, more quietly, he added: 'Yes. Yes, I understand.'

  'That will be all,' his father said.

  He eased his bulk down into his seat and opened a thick leather-bound accounts ledger.

  Dismissed as if he were a lowly servant, Nate stood listlessly for a moment, staring into space. Then he turned and walked unsteadily to the door, stepping over the reclining hound that blocked his path. He glanced back once at his father, but Edgar paid him no more attention, the tip of his crab claw tracing columns of figures in the book.

  Nathaniel closed the door behind him. At the far end of the corridor was a window, and he made his way slowly towards it. It faced south, and looking out and down, he saw the grounds: the beautiful gardens, the woods beyond, and the hills that stretched away to the horizon. And far below, the roofs of the surrounding buildings. His eyes fell on the grey slate tiles of the stables, and he suddenly knew what he had to do.

  VI

  A DISCUSSION ABOUT FAMILY TRADITIONS

  Melancholy Wildenstern, or Daisy, as she was better known, sat with her husband in the breakfast room. She was drawing him as he sat there, staring into the fire and fretting away to himself. The sliding, squeaking of the charcoal was the only sound that could be heard, apart from the crackling blaze in the fireplace.

  'Do you have to do that now?' Roberto asked, playing with the watch chain that dangled from his waistcoat pocket.

  'Would you rather I just sat here and brooded with you?'

  'Well, yes I would, frankly.' He frowned at her for a moment. 'You're not even getting my best side.'

  'Then move, darling.'

  Silence again, while the charcoal traced Berto's contours.

  'The old cove just doesn't listen,' he said at last when he realized she was not going to offer any comfort. 'I don't want to be the Heir! 1 don't even want to manage the estates. It's a soul-destroying job and I have no interest in it – it'll bore me senseless. And we do such horrible things to the peasants sometimes. Debt collecting! Evictions! I haven't the heart for it, Daisy'

  Daisy knew it. That was one of qualities she loved in him. He was the gentlest man she'd ever known. An extraordinary thing, when one considered his upbringing. She wondered if this was the right time to bring up her suspicions about Nathaniel. Roberto's younger brother was not so gentle. And everybody knew who would wield the real power in the family now that Marcus was dead. Berto had always claimed that he and Nate were eager for Marcus to marry, so that their big brother would have a son and take them out of the running for Patriarch if anything happened to him. But Daisy suspected Nate had more ambition than that.

  'I've no head for numbers either,' Berto grumbled. 'I'll never keep track of everything. Do you think Father would notice if I just sold all the land and bought myself a little island in the Indian Ocean? I quite fancy Madagascar.'

  'I've said I'd help you with managing the books,' she told him as she shaded the creases on the arm of his jacket. 'And you'll have accountants to deal with all the little details. It won't be all that hard, you know.'

  Daisy had mastered all the skills required to become a good wife. Drawing, painting, poetry, music, croquet, crochet, embroidery, interior decoration and domestic management; there was little that she couldn't do if she put her mind to it. She had a keen eye for fashion and could maintain a polite conversation with tedious house guests for hours, before forcefully ejecting them from her home in such a way that they would sing praises about her hospitality. And she was so incredibly bored by it all.

  Before her marriage she had been one of the first women – and possibly the youngest – ever to attend London University and had graduated with honours. For nearly a year she had helped to run the accounts office for her father's cotton mills, and saw for herself how his gambling debts were costing him dear. He had come close to losing everything. Roberto Wildenstern had been courting her by this time and, with her father facing ruin, Daisy did some simple arithmetic and then did what any good daughter should. She married into money.

  It wasn't that Daisy didn't love her husband. She could have done a lot worse. Berto was kind, considerate and sensitive; an amusing and entertaining companion. He would read her poetry and sing to her. He took her rowing on lakes on long summer afternoons.

  But he lacked ambition. He had a wonderful way with people – he was warm and witty and had scores of friends – and that seemed to be all that mattered to him. He paid no attention to all the plotting and back-stabbing that went on in the Wildenstern family, preferring instead to laugh at their vanities and taking a perverse delight in infuriating his father at every opportunity. There were times when she suspected he had only courted her because the family considered her to be nouveau riche and therefore unsuitable for him.

  She would never forget the month of torture when he decided to teach himself the trumpet – deliberately choosing a small room directly below his father's study to practise. Thankfully he stopped when the Patriarch finally responded by having the room's doorway bricked up… with Berto's trumpet still inside.

  There was a less frivolous side to Berto too. She knew he had secrets; there were times when she detected shame in his voice when she innocently enquired where he'd been. She wondered if there were things about this unusual family that he still had not told her.

  'Where's Tatty?' Berto asked abruptly, hoping for some more sympathetic company.

  'She's out playing with the spaniels,' Daisy replied. 'I think she's looking for a way to sneak in and see the beast.'

  'I think I'll go and join her.'

  'Just let me finish your shoes first.'

  He was a devil to draw. He fidgeted constantly and kept heaving great sighs. Looking over at her, he tilted his head to one side. She glanced up at him and then back at the paper. The drawing was almost finished. It wasn't one of her best.

  'I know what you're thinking,' he said.

  'I have no doubt.'

  'You're thinking that Nate had something to do with Marcus's death,' Berto told her solemnly. 'He hadn't.'

  Daisy laid the board on her lap and met her husband's gaze.

  'I wasn't thinking that,' she said. 'But now that you've brought it up, perhaps we should talk about it. You have a rather… special family, Berto.'

  'I like to think so.'

  'You know what I mean,' she retorted impatiently. 'There aren't many families that encourage murder. They say Marcus's death was an accident, but who really knows? Isn't that what you do here? Somebody does away with somebody else and it's all covered up? Your so-called "Rules of Ascension"?'

  'That's old hat.' Berto waved his hand dismissively. 'It hasn't happened in years… decades.'

  'How do you know?' she persisted. 'How many of your relatives have kicked the bucket under mysterious circumstances? But that's not the point, Berto. Th
e point is that this is Marcus we're talking about. He was the Heir. He dies, and the whole family changes. And who benefits most? Nathaniel, that's who. Everybody knew he'd be put in charge of things if anything happened to Marcus. How can you not be suspicious?'

  'But I'm the Heir now!' Berto protested. 'And Nate just wouldn't… he just wouldn't do that, Daisy. I was next in line, so I had most to gain. You might as well be suspicious of me!'

  'Oh, Berto, who's going to suspect you of murder?' She put the drawing board down, gathered the bulky folds of her tiered skirt and moved over to the chair next to him, taking his hand. 'You wouldn't hurt a fly.'

  'I might,' he sniffed.

  Daisy smiled despite herself, but she worried that Berto's loyalty to his brother might be blinding him. He always took Nate's side when she criticized him.

  'Nate's not like you,' she said softly. 'He's cut from the same cloth as the rest of this family. They're all-'

  'We're all dastardly sinners, bent on villainy!' Gerald declared, striding into the room.

  He flopped into the chair beside Daisy, giving her a friendly peck on the cheek. Tatiana followed him in with two gormless-looking King Charles spaniels trotting at her heels.

  'There's only so long you can look at a velocycle lounging in a stable,' Gerald sighed. 'I've tried to explain why I'm a scientific genius, but the audience only wanted to hear about the action. Without the star himself, they lost interest. Where's he got to?'

  Roberto pointed at the ceiling. 'I'm to handle the Irish estates,' he said glumly 'It's a brush-off, thank God. I'm sure he's going to get lumbered with the business in America.'

  'That'll go down well-'

  Gerald was cut off by the snarl of an engine from outside. There came the sound of panicking horses and a door slammed against a wall. They all rushed to the French windows. Nathaniel was racing from the stables on the back of his velocycle, tearing along the cobbled road that led around to the front of the house. In seconds he had disappeared from sight, a light cloud of dust settling in his wake, and the roar of his mount fading into the distance.

  'He took the news well, then,' Daisy commented.

  'My God,' Gerald breathed. 'He took off like the hounds of hell were at his heels.'

  'Well, he had been talking to the old man,' Berto said.

  'Where do you think he's going?' Daisy wondered aloud.

  'If I were him,' Berto replied, turning away from the window, 'I'd go straight back to bloody Africa.'

  'He still hasn't given us our presents,' Tatiana said.

  Nathaniel squinted into the wind, urging Flash on ever faster. Gritting his teeth, he ached to put as much distance as possible between himself and his home. He would not become a slave to his father's wishes. If he had to leave Ireland and spend the rest of his life as a wanderer, then so be it. The velocycle revelled in its speed, its engine bellowing in the fresh morning air. They sped down from the hills, through the villages of Woodtown and Ballyboden, towards Rathfarnham, past dry-stone walls, cabins and country houses, overtaking coaches and wagons, and frightening horses. Mud spattered in their wake; young boys looked on, shouting and whooping. Men leaned on their shovels or against their carts, shaking their heads at the reckless, rich young scoundrel on his extravagant toy. Women tutted in disgusted fashion, and girls gazed on with a mixture of shock and wonder.

  It was too much of a coincidence that he had come back on the same day that Marcus had been killed. Nobody would believe that he didn't have a hand in it. Memories of his brother sent a wave of bitterness through him and he leaned forward, the wind whipping the breath from his mouth.

  Through Rathgar and Rathmines the rider and his mount raced, sending people running from their path, the machine cornering dangerously and accelerating so hard its front wheel lifted. And it reared as it rolled, roaring down the street on its back wheel.

  He should have ignored Gerald's letter and stayed with Herne in Africa. He had been happier there than at any other time in his life. Maybe Roberto would have been given the business if he hadn't come back. If Daisy had been involved in the murder, had that been her plan all along? Had she counted on the fact that he wouldn't come home? The family had never been short of conniving women who achieved their ambitions through their menfolk; she certainly had Berto wrapped around her little finger.

  At the Grand Canal they turned right, following it towards the river. They skirted past the horses drawing the barges of freight, turning left over the bridge at Grand Canal Quay and along by the feet of the factories and warehouses that lined the dock. They slowed here, struggling to get through the throng of stevedores unloading the barges. The men here were not the types to be intimidated by some young strip of a lad on a fancy engimal. Nate weaved carefully through the workers, around wagons and stacks of crates and barrels, and piles of coal.

  Daisy was not the only one he suspected. The family was full of back-stabbing curs who would stop at nothing to advance their position. His Uncle Gideon, Edgar's only remaining brother, was one of the worst. He wanted control of the business so badly it drove him mad. He hated Marcus and had always been jealous of him. But Gideon was a coward at heart and Nate found it hard to believe he would dare to take on Edgar's eldest son… he was scared of Marcus and absolutely terrified of Edgar. The same went for Gideon's scheming wife. If they were involved, they couldn't have done it on their own.

  Nathaniel and Flash followed a muddy alley through a fish market to the quays that lined the Liffey, where ships that came in from the sea along Dublin's river moored to disgorge their cargoes. Nate wrinkled his nose. The docks had lost none of their stink. He found it hard to believe anybody could work their whole lives here. There were a hundred smells; but above the pungent odour of fish, damp wood and fresh tar, there was the ever-present stench of the sewage-ridden river itself.

  The cobbled streets in this part of town attracted all kinds. Businessmen checked their deliveries of freight while customs officers inspected their manifests; vagabond sailors drunk on beer or grog wandered from one brown-brick pub to the next, looking for work or looking to avoid it. Nate's velocycle drew attention wherever he went. He knew that they had never seen its like in this town. There were a few domestic engimals to be seen along the quays, but nothing compared to Flash. As he passed each ship, sailors and dockers turned to gaze at him and his machine. Gulls and crows and other opportunistic birds circled overhead, hard shapes against a murky grey sky, waiting to pounce on scraps of fish or whatever else they could find.

  The tarred-wood hulls of the boats creaked and groaned gently, and Nate could see men on the decks and in the rigging carrying out maintenance, changing ropes and repairing sails. But he knew most of the crews would be in the pubs here and in town, spending their hard-earned money as fast as they could before they set sail again.

  The ship he was looking for was still in dock, as he knew it would be. The Banshee was a clipper; a square-rigged merchantman about 240 feet long, with three decks, three masts and a spread of canvas in full sail that was nearly a hundred feet wide. Owned by his father's company, this was the boat that had brought him home from Africa. The company had many of these kinds of ships, but he had grown to love this one. His heart lifted at the sight of it.

  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 r
otten 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.

  VII

  A GRAVE DISAGREEMENT ABOUT BONES

  Francie 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.