Resurrectionist

by James McGee

  He could hear noises, too; distant and muffled. In the darkness it was hard to pinpoint where they were coming from. There were faint mewling sounds, like an animal was in pain, soft murmurings, and now and then a wheezing sigh, like air rattling in someone’s throat.

  Suddenly, the stairs ended. Sawney felt flagstones beneath his feet. He looked down. His eyes caught a dull yellow gleam several paces ahead of him and he saw it was candlelight leaking through the gap at the bottom of a closed door. Sawney stepped forward quietly. As he did so, a low whisper sounded on the other side of the wall. The hairs on his neck lifted like stalks. He placed his ear against the door. The whisper came again, but it was impossible to make out the words.

  Sawney hesitated. The last thing he wanted to do was open the door, but he didn’t want to be trapped in the darkness either. He was still considering his options when the latch clicked up as if by its own accord and the door swung open.

  The cellar was long with a low, arched ceiling. Gloomily lit, it seemed to stretch away into the darkness like a tunnel. Pallet beds were arranged around the walls, feet facing outwards. Each was shrouded in shadow save for a pale areola cast by a stub of flickering candle set on a small wooden chest at the side of each mattress. The pallets, Sawney could just make out, were all occupied, but by whom it was difficult to tell. He could see vague shapes, some partially covered by a rough blanket, but individual features were indiscernible in the half-light.

  A long moan rose from one of the beds. The sound was full of pain. Hairs rose along Sawney’s forearms. He heard the whispers again, as indistinguishable as before. He tried to locate the source, but it was impossible. It was like listening to leaves rustling in the wind.

  Sawney found himself moving cautiously towards the nearest bed. The shallow breathing grew in volume as he edged closer. He paused by the end of the pallet. He could see the pale blur of a face, but the form beneath the blanket looked odd and stunted, not fully grown. He realized then that the person lying on the pallet had no legs. He moved towards the bedhead. The patient’s eyes were wide open and staring up at the ceiling. There was a familiar look to the man’s face, which Sawney found curiously unsettling. At first, he wasn’t sure why that was, and then realization dawned. As the shock hit him, the patient’s head turned. The mouth opened but no sound emerged. When he saw why, Sawney backed away, stifling a scream.

  He turned quickly and moved to the adjoining pallet. Here, the patient’s arm had been severed at the shoulder. The bandage that covered the stump was black with blood, as was the blanket and the edge of the mattress and the floor beneath. Sawney’s eyes lifted to the patient’s face. As it looked back at him, the breath caught in Sawney’s throat for the second time and he recoiled in horror.

  Shaking, Sawney crossed to the next bed. In this one, the lower half of the patient’s cheek and jaw had been shattered. For one awful moment, Sawney thought the man was grinning at him. But then he saw by the light of the flickering candle that only the patient’s upper row of teeth remained. They were poking out of the gums like splintered yellow pegs.

  Sawney spun away with a rising sense of panic. He looked around him. It was the same in every pallet, as far as he could see: wounded, disfigured men, the casualties of a terrible battle. Some still wore the vestiges of a uniform; a blood-smeared jacket or a pair of tattered, muddy breeches. Their injuries were horrific. Many were missing limbs. Others had terrible, gaping chest wounds. They were the ones making the wheezing sounds Sawney had heard earlier, their breathing ragged as bellows as they fought to drag air into their tortured lungs. There were men with half their faces shot away, some with deep gashes in their skulls, whether caused by sabre or shot, it was impossible to tell in the darkness.

  A movement further down the cellar caught Sawney’s eye. A figure was standing by one of the beds, dressed in a stained white shirt and dark breeches. He had his back to Sawney and was bending over the pallet, busy with some task. Sawney moved forward warily. He tried not to look at the broken bodies or the faces of the men in the beds, though he knew their eyes were following him as he made his way down the cellar to where the man in the shadows was waiting.

  The whispers began again, soft and insistent. He now knew where they came from. They were the voices of the men around him. It was the same word, repeated over and over again: Sawney, Sawney, Sawney …

  Sawney was less than ten paces away from the figure when his ears were assaulted by a scream of such intensity it seemed to vibrate through every bone in his body. The sound hung in the air for so long, Sawney thought his eardrums would burst. He cupped his hands over his ears. As he did so, the figure standing by the bed turned. Sawney gasped. It was not the gore-soaked apron the figure was wearing that caused Sawney’s breath to catch, nor the arms that were black to the elbows or the outstretched hand wielding the blood-stained knife. It was the creature’s eyes. They were the darkest, coldest, most cruel eyes Sawney had ever seen. Sawney tore his gaze away, towards the other beds further down the room. More bodies, more patients, but somehow these looked different. It was only a fleeting impression, but to Sawney’s eyes they didn’t look real. They looked … deformed … freakish … like the poor wretches exhibited in travelling shows. The thought that speared its way into Sawney’s brain was that they did not look like men. They looked like monsters.

  As Sawney stepped back he came up against the side of the next pallet. Instinctively, Sawney flinched but he was too slow. The hand that reached out from beneath the blanket was too quick for him. Strong fingers clamped themselves around his wrist and began to squeeze. Caught in an immovable grip, Sawney began to struggle. As the scream dropped away, the whispers rose again out of the darkness.

  “Rufus … Rufus …”

  “Rufus.”

  Sawney came out of the dream, fists clenched, forehead beaded with sweat, to find Maggett looming over him, his simian brow furrowed with concern. For one awful moment Sawney thought he was still in the cellar. He shrank away from his lieutenant’s touch.

  Maggett reached out a meaty hand. “Rufus? It’s me, Maggsie.”

  At the mention of the name, Sawney blinked. He looked around. No dark cellar, no pallets, no blood. Although it hadn’t been the darkness or the blood that had disturbed Sawney so much as the faces. In each case, the face he had looked down upon had been his own. It had been like looking in a mirror.

  “Maggsie?” Sawney said, trying to keep the relief out of his voice. He wiped a hand across his face, took it away and saw the bright sheen of moisture on his palm. He closed the hand quickly and sat up. “What the bleedin’ ’ell is it?”

  The big man stepped away. His lieutenant’s eyes, Sawney saw, were bright with excitement.

  “Jesus, Maggsie, what?”

  “It’s Sal,” Maggett said. “She’s got one.”

  The girl lay bound on the bed. Her clothing was in disarray. Her skirt and petticoat, which were riding high on her thighs, were torn and stained, as were her once-white stockings. Her bodice had been pulled apart, leaving her breasts exposed. There were bruises on her face and a smear of blood on her chin, and a look of abject fear in her eyes as she stared mutely at the four men standing at the foot of the bed and the woman seated next to her, who was gently stroking her arm and smiling.

  “There, there, darlin’, quiet now. Don’t you fret none; Sal’s here.”

  The girl cringed at the touch. Tears coated her cheeks.

  “Daft girl,” Sal murmured soothingly, tracing a tearstain with the tip of her finger. “None of this would’ve happened if you ’adn’t kicked up such a fuss. I don’t know, I really don’t. Shame on you, Molly. That’s all I can say.”

  Maggett eyed the girl’s breasts. “What do you reckon, Rufus? Think she’ll do?”

  “Oh, she’ll do, all right.” Lemuel Ragg’s thin features split into a weasel grin. “In fact, she’ll do better than all right. Ain’t that so, Sammy?”

  Samuel Ragg sniggered. “You ain’t wrong there,
Lemmy. Sweet as sugar, she was. You did real good, Sal. Didn’t she, Rufus?”

  Sawney said nothing. He stared down at the girl, remembering the colonel’s stipulations. The first, Sawney recalled, had applied to the dead women. The colonel had wanted their teeth left intact. Hopefully the ruling didn’t apply to this one’s virginity, he thought, although given the girl’s vocation, it was doubtless too late for that. He wondered idly if there would ever come a time when the Raggs would be capable of keeping their cocks in their breeches for longer than it took to drain a mug of grog. As far as the colonel’s other requirements were concerned, however, the woman on the bed fit precisely: she was young and she was alive.

  “Cover her bleedin’ tits,” Sawney said.

  Sal tugged together the two halves of the girl’s bodice and patted her on the arm. “There you go, darlin’.” Sal jerked her head in the direction of the brothers. “Don’t want to give them two any more fancy ideas, do we?”

  The girl’s eyes widened with panic at the possibility. A low moan broke from her lips. It reminded Sawney of the sounds he’d heard in his dream. He turned away from the girl’s despairing gaze.

  “She’ll do,” he said.

  It was late afternoon. As he turned on to Water Lane and the path that would lead him to the Blackbird Inn, Hawkwood’s thoughts were not of the warm, welcoming hearth only a few narrow streets away, but the words of Apothecary Robert Locke.

  His daughter.

  The chill Hawkwood felt had nothing to do with the cold wind seeping down the alleyway behind him.

  Both Locke and Eden Carslow had referred to Hyde’s daughter, though neither had been expansive on the subject. Hawkwood had therefore assumed she must have died years earlier, in childhood. He’d been wrong on both counts.

  She’d fallen victim to a fever, Locke had informed him, and had passed away only three months ago, at the age of eighteen. Hawkwood recalled his conversation with Eden Carslow. The surgeon had spoken of Hyde’s involvement with the mother as a brief liaison, intimating that Hyde had not learned of the child’s existence until after her death. Obviously, that could not have been the case. Which prompted the question: when and by what means had the colonel been informed of his daughter’s existence and death?

  “Find out,” Hawkwood had told the apothecary.

  Whether the information would prove significant remained to be seen, but, given the revelations concerning the colonel’s history, Hawkwood knew it was imperative that every avenue be explored.

  Hawkwood had returned to Bow Street and directed Ezra Twigg to find out where Hyde’s daughter was buried. Once the clerk had located the grave, it would be opened. But what then? What if the exhumation did reveal another missing body? The colonel didn’t seriously believe he could raise the dead, did he? The question had been eating away at Hawkwood like a worm in an apple since leaving the hospital. It was beyond possibility, surely? Nothing more than his imagination getting the better of him, brought on by wild speculation following his conversation with an equally imaginative Robert Locke. That’s all it was. It had to be.

  He had begun to wonder if the itch between his shoulder blades might be his imagination too. He’d had it since leaving the Public Office; not continuously, but every now and then. It wasn’t anything he’d have been able to explain and it wasn’t as if the sensation was anything new. As an agent operating behind enemy lines, and as a Runner walking a thin line between light and shadow in and around London’s reeking slums, it was a condition he’d come to accept, a reminder to be always on his guard.

  Suddenly, he heard a scraping sound; metal against stone. He unbuttoned his coat.

  “Captain Hawkwood.”

  Hawkwood turned.

  The dark, solitary figure was standing behind him, several paces away, but remained motionless in the shelter of the wall.

  It was difficult to make out features. Hawkwood could see that the person was tall and lean, and there was a nonchalance in his stance that suggested an easy confidence.

  “It’s a cold end to the day, Captain.”

  “I’ve known colder,” Hawkwood said, instinctively placing the wall of the alleyway at his back.

  “Indeed. The Spanish air can be deceptively chilly, especially in the mountains.”

  Hawkwood threw a quick glance to both right and left. There was no one else in sight. It was as if he and the speaker in the shadows had the alley to themselves. “Do I know you, cully?”

  “You know of me, though we’ve not been formally introduced. I thought it time we were.”

  The speaker stepped away from the wall. His footsteps were light and almost silent. The small patch of fading daylight into which he stepped revealed his face. The dark hair was drawn back from the forehead, accentuating the sharply angled cheekbones and jawline, while the pale skin served to make the dark eyes even darker.

  And Hawkwood knew then, even before the words were spoken.

  “My name is Hyde. Colonel Titus Hyde.”

  Instinctively, Hawkwood searched the colonel’s hands for a weapon. There was nothing overt; no pistol, no knife or cudgel, nothing that posed a serious threat, though he saw immediately what had made the scraping sound he’d heard. He exhaled slowly. The colonel was leaning on a brass-tipped walking cane.

  “Come to save me the bother, have you, Colonel?”

  “Bother?”

  “I assume you’re here to surrender yourself?”

  “Ah now, wouldn’t that be convenient?” A smile formed a thin gash in the pale face. Hawkwood’s hand slipped inside his coat.

  “No, Captain. Still, if you please.”

  In one fast and fluid flick of the wrist, the colonel pulled the two halves of the cane apart to expose the sliver of edged steel concealed within.

  God, the man was quick!

  Hawkwood looked down. The point of the blade hovered an inch from his heart.

  Keeping the blade against Hawkwood’s chest, Hyde lifted the empty scabbard and tapped Hawkwood’s raised arm. “Hand away from your coat, Captain, if you please.”

  Hawkwood did as he was told.

  “Excellent. Still responding well to orders. Once a soldier, eh?”

  “Only when a lunatic’s pointing his sword at me,” Hawkwood said. “You do know you’re a lunatic, don’t you, Colonel? Apothecary Locke wasn’t certain.”

  A shadow moved across the sharp-etched features. “Ah, Apothecary Locke. How is he? Capable fellow, in his own way, though a trifle slow on the uptake sometimes. He’s recovered from the shock, I trust?”

  Hawkwood said nothing.

  “I’ve heard you’re considered a capable man, too, Captain. It’s why I wanted to take a good look at you. I confess when I heard a police officer was on my trail, I didn’t expect to encounter someone quite so … energetic. I thought I’d covered my tracks remarkably well. It would appear I was wrong.”

  “Don’t be too downhearted, Colonel. In the scheme of things, you didn’t do too badly. If you made an error, it was in trying a little too hard.”

  “You’re referring to the fire? You could be right. It was a mite theatrical. The groundlings do like a good show, though.” The tip of the sword traced a small circle on Hawkwood’s breast. “But what do we do now? That’s the question, isn’t it?”

  “Give yourself up, Colonel. It’s your only choice. You’ll probably end up back in Bedlam. You might even get away with the murders and escape the hangman. You’re insane. They’ve got the papers to prove it. They’ll most likely give you your old rooms back. It’ll be as if you never went away.”

  “My work’s not finished. There’s still too much to do.”

  “Your daughter’s dead, Colonel. You can’t bring her back.”

  Hyde stiffened. It was only the second time his face had betrayed emotion. “You won’t be able to stop me trying, Captain.”

  Hawkwood was already pivoting as Hyde drew the blade back for the killing thrust, but he knew he’d left it far too late and felt th
e fibres part as the tip of the blade pierced the lining of his coat. And then, incredibly, the blade was turning away. Hawkwood heard Hyde grunt with surprise as the sword tip met resistance. As the blade was withdrawn for a second attempt, Hawkwood thrust himself aside, hauled open his coat and reached for his baton. It was the only weapon he carried, apart from the knife in his boot, and he went for it because it was the closest to hand.

  As he clawed the tipstaff free, his spine slammed into the wall of the alleyway. He grunted with pain, saw the blade coming at him again, and scythed the tipstaff to intercept the sword point. For the second time, the baton saved him. But he had forgotten the scabbard held in Hyde’s other hand. Locke had told him about the colonel’s reputation as a swordsman. He had only himself to blame. The edge of the scabbard cracked against his wrist. Pain seared through the joint, numbing nerve endings. The tipstaff fell from his grip and clattered on to the cobblestones. Hawkwood swore and threw himself backwards. The tip of the sword slashed towards his face and he felt his flesh open as the point of the blade pared across his exposed cheek, missing his eye by a hair’s breadth before gouging a groove in the brickwork behind him.

  As Hawkwood’s body careered off the wall and went down, the colonel was on the attack once more. The man’s sense of balance was astonishing. It was as if he was using the sword and scabbard as counterweights to keep him upright. As he hit the ground, Hawkwood was rolling, but the heavy coat which had provided protection only seconds earlier had now become a hindrance, hampering his movements. He saw Hyde coming in, recognized the determination on the gaunt face, and he knew that without the baton he was defenceless. He groped for the knife in his boot, knowing it was futile. As his fingers brushed the top of his calf, the colonel lunged towards him, sword raised.