The Secrets of Blood and Bone

by Rebecca Alexander

  She sprang easily back over the gate, and landed on the broad track left in the forest for access. The car was still half a mile away, in the Forestry Commission car park, but all her senses were amplified, and the energy charged through her veins. She broke into a run, riding the energy like a wave as she had when Felix had opened a vein for her five months before, when she had suckled on his arm and filled with blood and life and heat. She was breathing harder when she got to the car but every nerve ending was awake. It was almost as if she could feel every organ working, every inch of skin reacting to the pressure of clothing or movement.

  As she rested against the car, she heard the first howl, then the next, as if he had got them howling just for her.

  Chapter 24

  The Contarini family are, it is claimed, descended from Roman emperors and comport themselves as such. The Romans did not just build temples and amphitheatres; their dabbling in dark magics and transformations are written into our folklore and legend.

  —EDWARD KELLEY, 1586, Venice

  We arrived at Contarini’s estate near Padua late upon the third day: myself and Enrico, two of Contarini’s men, and a page I had been lent to attend to my person and wardrobe. We were dusty and tired from the road, little refreshed after staying two nights in wayside inns. The host of the last had fed me some sort of meaty sausage, very full of spices which did not entirely disguise the rankness within. I ate sparingly, but that first bite lay uneasily within my stomach, and I spent much of the night bloated with the flux. Dawn saw me unhappily confined to the privy. The ride, gentle though it was, caused me some discomfort but I was feeling better by the time we arrived.

  Lord Contarini awaited me in a chamber flooded with light, reflected into the room by a pool before it, the water as still as glass. The walls were covered with silk hangings and many portraits hung between them. He greeted me as an old friend, clasping both my hands and exclaiming at my paleness.

  “Have you brought the sketch?” he asked, urgently, as he passed me a glass of wine.

  The Dannicks, some centuries before, had gained a sketch of a Roman tablet that resided with the Contarini ancestors. This drawing, and another tablet in the possession of a nobleman in Bohemia, had been my inspiration for what I have to admit was a forgery.

  “I have, my lord,” said I, as I brought it forth from its leather case as if it were, indeed, a precious artifact. Its trials upon my journey had given it an air of antiquity.

  The Bohemian stone, in several dozen pieces, was in the form of a curse. The man in the center of the slab was identified by various signs, and the curse was inscribed around him. The Dannicks’ own sketch, centuries old and faded with wear, showed the ritual on which they had based their “cure,” taken from an earlier viewing of the Contarini family treasure. What interested me was the closeness of two words. The Dannicks had long believed the word “CRUR” to mean cross, or crux, a gallows or tree of execution, or possibly the crucifix. They had interpreted the words into their ritual, which they assured me worked for some. But not it seemed for all, and especially not for their weakest child, the heir.

  I had based my image upon the original with elements from the Bohemian tablet, especially in the style of the lettering and the use of the eight-pointed star. The hunchback figure in the original sketch I merely hinted at, to suggest that most of it was lost from what I was calling “the English tablet.”

  I unrolled the parchment upon a side table, and the count immediately sat down and spread his fingers lightly over the inked marks.

  “Wonderful,” he said. “So much like our own, and yet different—what is this word?”

  I had deliberately left the C-R-U running into a crack, where letters could be assumed missing. “Our scholars are divided,” I dissembled. “Perhaps we should compare it with your own carving?”

  He glanced my way, and I was still unsure if he meant to let me see it.

  I pretended a scholarly interest, and spent a minute describing the squareness of an irrelevant letter—in my forged drawing—then talked enthusiastically about the fineness of the limestone and I bombarded the count with questions on the style of the writing, the quality of the stone and the alignments of the symbols on his own tablet. Eventually, he stood.

  “Let us compare them directly.” He looked up and Enrico came into the room. Contarini rattled off much in Italian or Venetian, the distinction eludes me. Enrico bowed, and held open the door for us, then raced before us to a high wooden door with an elaborate escutcheon. He produced a key, and scraped it in the lock with some difficulty.

  The door opened, leading to a dark corridor lined with paneling, unlike the marble inlaid walls of the villa.

  “This is part of the earlier house,” the count said. Enrico lit a lamp, its dim light turning the rest of the corridor into a tunnel of darkness. He led the way along the passageway. I was closely followed by the count, who shut and locked the door behind me. After a short walk, a flight of steps led below the ground level of the house. The air became dank, and smelled of the earth pressing in upon the dark walls. Finally, a door so low even I had to duck, and I found myself in a crypt as dark as nightfall and as cold. A flare of light and Enrico cupped his hand around his tinder until a candle spluttered into light. From this Enrico, stepping around me, lit first one branch of candles then another.

  The room, lined with slabs of crudely cut pale stone, was no more than a cellar, but it contained only one object. Against one wall, standing upon a block of wood and covered in some sort of linen, was a large irregular shape. Enrico, at the count’s command, carefully unshrouded it.

  It was far better preserved than I had expected, and I could almost smell the old magic oozing from it. Unlike the Bohemian carving, which had lain in the elements even after it was smashed, the rectangular stone was only cracked in places, not weathered away. It had probably formed part of a pediment in some Roman nobleman’s villa, the ornamental panel over a principal doorway perhaps. The central character, the hunched man, was in fact one of two figures, one unaccountably lost in the Dannicks’ old sketch. One was leaning forward, and it almost looked as if some creature were emerging from his back, his face elongated into the most tormented scream. His fingers, too, were contorted into claws. This was not the transformation of a man into a superman, as Lord Dannick believed, but the debasing of a man into a beast.

  The word “crur” was still there, but a gap between the letters “u” and “r” was filled by a character so small it looked as if it had been added afterward, as if the sculptor had accidentally left out a letter then corrected himself. A tiny circle was set between the letters, showing me the word cruor was intended. The Dannicks had believed for hundreds of years that the ritual demanded the use of a crucifix, authenticating it in their minds as a Christian ritual unique to their bloodline. But cruor was the Latin word for blood. Whatever this ritual was intended to do there was nothing Christian about it.

  I leaned forward to examine the smaller figure, curled upon the ground, the face carved in a few lines suggesting sleep. It was missing a leg, and as I ran my fingers over it, holding a lamp aloft, I realized that it was not a man at all. It was a half-eaten child.

  I tried to mask my emotion by bending forward as if examining a word.

  “Fascinating. So much is similar,” I said, “yet so is much different. This star, for example?” I pointed to my fictional element, knowing my host to be well versed in magics. “This is a design often seen in curses.”

  He nodded to me, pointing something out in a low voice to Enrico.

  I stood back up, smiling at my host. “The tablet is finer even than Lord Dannick’s,” I said, for a little flattery will often open doors that politeness will not. “And seems related in purpose.”

  Contarini held my sketch closer to the branch of candles, careful not to drip tallow upon it. “Yet there is a sense that this is a curse?”

  I nodded sagely, as if I believed it. “The Dannicks see the ritual—for I nee
d not tell you the tablet describes a powerful magic—as both a boon and a curse.” No lie there, what magic did not have both elements within it?

  “Well, this sketch will keep our scholars’ minds at work for months, Master Kelley, and I thank you for that.”

  “May I—?” I asked, waving a hand at the tablet.

  “Certainly. Enrico will assist.” He turned to Enrico and another wave of the fluid language rolled over me.

  I pulled out the small leather wallet in which I kept my pens and ink pots, iron oak gall and verdigris. It also held my small pot of invisible ink within a secret compartment in the lid of my bottle. I made much of sharpening my pen, and unrolling my vellum. I knew that to a trained eye one sketch might resemble the other, and decided to draw badly but retain as much detail as possible within my memory. Indeed, the most important message might be within the single word cruor.

  My lord left and Enrico and I bowed deeply to his departure, then the two of us were left in the dark place. We looked at each other for a long moment, and I hope he was as much pleased by my company as I was by his. A modest man, with a keen interest in the tablet and my interpretation, he asked questions in precise Latin, and pointed out details and held the light for me. I asked questions, innocent sounding though I intended them to be, about the Contarinis. He answered politely, giving little away save his utter loyalty to his master. He seemed a quiet man, one whose eyes were keener than mine, and I asked him several times to examine finer details of the carving. Over time, he grew more talkative. I learned he was the son of one of the Venetian traders, an Abyssinian or Ethiopian, as they call themselves. His father wished him to learn the languages of the Venetians and the Turks, and Contarini offered the best opportunity. The boy was brought up as a playmate for Contarini’s own children, and raised with the same tutors and advantages. I contrasted his early childhood with mine own, the constant stigma of my birth and poverty upon me, yet we had both been raised by the keenness of our wits and the cultivation of our betters.

  I stood back and observed the tablet. “I am still unclear…” I said, in part truthfully. “The purpose of the ritual, you say, is a healing one?”

  “So I understand it.” Enrico seemed enlivened by some excitement, some passion within. “The ritual gives health and long life to the recipient.”

  Such was true, I thought, of the Dannicks. Though without the ritual, their sons withered like unpicked fruit in winter winds.

  “Lord Contarini is a great man,” I ventured, pretending to study a tiny crack as if it were part of the carving. “A fine master.”

  That was sufficient to unlock the careful tongue of the Moor. He described a man who rode to the hunt all day and into the night until his grooms swooned in their saddles. Who had fathered many children upon first one wife then a second, the first, I imagine, worn unto death. He had a library of hundreds of books, some written in his own hand, and was visited by scholars from all over Europe.

  While he talked, I fumbled with my pen, dropped it, and picked up another. Dipping it in my secret ink within my pot lid, I added a quick note in English of the exact wording upon the tablet. Fussing about the nib, I exchanged it for the first and carried on sketching.

  “You are a favored servant,” I observed. “I would have thought you a family member.”

  The man’s chest swelled with some peacocking hubris. “I am to be admitted to the circle,” he confided, then halted, as though he had said something he ought not.

  “Indeed!” I exclaimed, as if I knew what of he spoke. “Then I was right, you are almost family.”

  Mistaking my words for knowledge, he hesitated, spending a moment pinching out a sputtering wick, and relighting the candle. “I have waited for many full moons, for the auguries to be favorable.”

  This was familiar ground. Much magic can only succeed at the fullest, or at the death of the moon. “Tonight it is at its brightest.”

  He could barely control his excitement, hopping from one foot to another. “It is for I, and one other,” he said, in a rush, as if he had tried to keep it back. “The grandson of Lord Contarini’s brother.”

  Some tiny bell of question rang in my mind, but, distracted by my task, I could not pursue it.

  “Is there a ceremony? I would be honored to attend,” I said.

  His face fell. “I believe it is just for the circle themselves. I have never attended one, indeed, all the servants are locked within an upper chamber during those nights. The sound of the hunt keeps us all awake.”

  “The hunt?” I tried to exactly capture the angle of a design I did not recognize.

  “The circle celebrates with a hunt around the estate. All peasants and their animals are commanded to lock themselves within from dusk to dawn.”

  “They hunt with dogs?” I was not much interested, but allowed the information to flow over me. You never know what will be revealed as useful, or even crucial. Like this single word that I pondered over.

  “I think not.” The man hesitated, and then his voice dropped to a whisper. “The legend is that the wolves from the mountains come down and hunt with the lords and the ladies, like great hounds, utterly subservient to their masters.”

  “That would be a sight to see,” I said. Rumors, legends, myths. Likely his lordship had some compound where he bred the most savage hounds that might not be released upon the local farmers and their stock. I had known a farmer’s children mauled by dogs hunted even by the queen’s court.

  He stopped, as if he had spoken too much. Instead, he pointed to a tiny dot and asked if it had significance. I copied it with great care, even though I thought it merely a chip on the stone of its great age. His conversation turned to the tablet, and I wondered at his remark that Contarini, surely the eldest son, had a brother who was a grandfather. Contarini was, perhaps, forty years old, perhaps younger, and I speculated that they marry their children young in these parts.

  Chapter 25

  PRESENT DAY: BEE COTTAGE, LAKE DISTRICT

  So much life is born of death, the body seethes with it. Beetles and fly larvae, birds, rats, microbes in great sheets wander under the skin, making it slide away from muscle. The bloated belly has long since burst in a kaleidoscope of greens and purples, rank blood splashed around and supped by plants, greedy for the rich juices.

  When Jack pulled the car onto the verge outside the house Felix was loading a bag into his car. Her heart started racing. She jumped out of the car.

  “You’re going?”

  He started to smile, then his eyes trailed to her mouth, and a frown started gathering on his forehead. “Just getting something for Sadie. I thought you were going to investigate the wolf enclosure.”

  “Yes, I did, but…” She looked up at him, feeling the sting of the split in her lip. Now she knew what she wanted, and intense though the feeling was for the wolf man—lust, probably—it was just an echo of the complex feelings she had for Felix.

  Felix closed the boot of his car and paused, hand on the lock. “What have you been doing?”

  “Thinking about what you said. About this woman—”

  He sighed. “Jack, you told me there was nothing between us—could never be. You sent me away.”

  She looked at her feet. “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe something is possible with you and me—I just don’t know what I feel for you.”

  He reached a hand for her, and she considered it. Brown, strong fingers, tendons sliding under the skin at his wrist. She knew it so well. Her feet moved without her thinking about it, until she was close enough to feel his breath on her hair. She looked up, suddenly curious. The attraction she felt, so much stronger since she had taken his blood, was irresistible.

  She reached for his wool sweater, grasping handfuls of it in an effort to recreate the chemistry with Powell.

  “What’s happened?” He slid his hands over hers, the warm roughness of his skin catching the breath in the back of her throat. “What’s changed?”

  “I’m alive, Felix. Fin
ally, I feel like a healthy adult, not a sickly child.” She smiled up at him, seeing the dark green and amber flecks in his eyes. “I want to be treated like one.” The words rolled in her mind, unfamiliar concepts.

  He squeezed her hands tightly, and a smile lifted one side of his mouth. “What happened to ‘I’m not ready’?”

  Her smile faded as she recalled the confusion he created in her. An approach from him normally sent her running back to the solitary place she had lived in since childhood, to work on rebuilding the walls he’d eroded. “Something happened.”

  He released her hands and one finger brushed the split part of her lip. “What?”

  “Something that made me think of you.” She let go of his jumper and stepped back, suddenly shy. “The man who keeps the wolves, Powell, has seven animals up there. He’s keeping them for Sir Henry. I think they are doing some sort of experiment there with what he thinks of as their ‘savage nature,’ but that doesn’t make sense.”

  “You think it’s something to do with the werewolf myth?” He rested his hands on her shoulders. “Maggie told me about the howling. There are myths of animal cults all over the world, but there’s no evidence at all of werewolves.”

  “Maggie said there were spells.”

  He nodded. “The Romans created rituals they believed would change someone into a half wolf at the full moon. Witches were sometimes accused of transforming into animals in medieval Europe as well. They were supposed to use rituals to awaken some inner strength or quality and enhance it.”