Speaking From Among the Bones

by Alan Bradley

  Obtaining a sample of Father’s blood had been more tricky. It wasn’t until the following Monday, when he appeared at the breakfast table with a ragged little patch of toilet tissue stuck to his throat where he had cut himself shaving, that I saw a way.

  It was the morning after Dogger had suffered one of his awful midnight episodes, crying out every few minutes in a shockingly hoarse voice, followed by long, horrid periods of whimpering which were even more unnerving than his screams.

  Dogger was Father’s general factotum. His duties varied according to his capabilities. He was sometimes valet and sometimes gardener, depending upon how the winds were presently blowing in his brain. Dogger and Father had served together in the army, and together they had been imprisoned at Changi. It was something that they never spoke of, and what few details I knew of those ghastly years had been pried, bit by painful bit, from Mrs. Mullet and her husband, Alf.

  In the morning, I realized that Father had not slept—that he had stayed at Dogger’s side until the terrors subsided. Father would never normally dream of allowing himself to be seen with lavatory paper clinging to his person, and the fact that he had done so said more about his distress than he could ever put into mere words.

  It had been a simple matter to retrieve the stained scrap from the refuse container in his dressing room, but I must admit that in doing so, I’d never felt more guilty in my life.

  Our red and white corpuscles, Father’s, Feely’s, Daffy’s and mine, I had written in my notes, although I hardly wanted to believe it, are identical in size, shape, density, and coloration.

  From a battered and interestingly stained book on microscopy in Uncle Tar’s library, I knew that the corpuscles of a bat’s blood were approximately 25 percent smaller in size than those of humans.

  Even magnified a thousand times, my corpuscles were identical with those of my father and my sisters.

  At least in appearance.

  I had read, in one of the popular magazines which littered our drawing room, that human blood is identical in chemical composition to the seawater from which our remote ancestors are said to have crawled: that seawater, in fact, had sometimes been used for temporary transfusions in emergency medical situations in which the real thing was not available.

  A French researcher and artillery officer, René Quinton, had once replaced a dog’s blood with diluted seawater and found that not only did the dog live—to a ripe old age, evidently—but that within a day or two of the experiment, the dog’s body had replaced the seawater with blood!

  Both blood and seawater are composed primarily of sodium and chlorine, although not in the same proportions. Still, it was amusing to think that the stuff which flowed in our veins was little more than a solution of table salt, although, to be fair, both also contain dribs and drabs of calcium, magnesium, potassium, zinc, iron, and copper.

  For a short time, this so-called fact had made me immensely excited, suggesting, as it did, the possibility of any number of daring experiments, some of them involving humans.

  But then Science had set in.

  An extensive and carefully calibrated set of chemical tests using my own blood (I was faint for weeks) showed clearly the differences.

  I had demonstrated quite conclusively that what flowed in the veins of the de Luces was not seawater, but a different blend of the elements of creation.

  And as for Daffy’s accusation of my having a Transylvanian mother—well, that was simply ludicrous!

  My sisters had attempted, on numerous occasions, to convince me that Harriet was not my mother: that I had been adopted, or left by the Little People as a changeling, or abandoned at birth by an unknown mother who couldn’t bear the thought of weeping every day at the sight of my ugly face.

  Somehow, it would have been much more comforting to know that my sisters and I were not of the same tribe.

  Bat’s blood, indeed! That witch Daffy!

  However, all that now remained, in order to conclude my experiment in the correct scientific manner, was to add a few firsthand notes based upon my observations of the juices of an actual bat.

  And I knew precisely where to find one.

  I would get an early start in the morning.

  •THREE•

  It was one of those glorious days in March when the air was so fresh that you worshiped every whiff of it; that each breath of the intoxicating stuff created such new universes in your lungs and brain you were certain you were about to explode with sheer joy; one of those blustery days of scudding clouds and piddling showers and gum boots and wind-blown brollies that made you know you were truly alive.

  Somewhere, off to the east in the woods, a bird was singing: Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we-to-witta-woo.

  It was the first day of spring, and Mother Nature seemed to know it.

  Gladys squeaked with delight as we rattled through the rain. Even though she was considerably older than me, she loved a good run on a damp day as much as I did. She had been manufactured at the bicycle branch of the British Small Arms factory in Birmingham before I was born, and had originally belonged to my mother, Harriet, who had named her “l’Hirondelle,” “the swallow.”

  I had rechristened her Gladys because of her happy nature.

  Gladys did not usually like to get her skirts wet, but on a day such as this, with her tires singing on the wet tarmac and the wind shoving at our backs, it was no time for prissiness.

  Spreading my arms wide so that the flaps of my yellow mackintosh became sails, I let myself be swept along on a river of wind.

  “Yaroo!” I shouted to a couple of dampish cows, who looked up at me vacantly as I sped past them in the rain.

  In the misty green light of early morning, St. Tancred’s looked like a Georgian watercolor, its tower floating eerily above the bulging churchyard as if it were a hot-air balloon casting off its moorings and bound for heaven.

  The only jarring note in the quiet scene was the scarlet van pulled up onto the cobbled walk which led to the front door. I recognized it at once as Mr. Haskins’s, the church sexton’s. Beside it, on the grass under the yews, was a gleaming black Hillman, its high polish telling me that it didn’t belong to anyone in Bishop’s Lacey.

  To the west of the church, almost hidden in the mist, a blue lorry was parked over against the chapel. A couple of battered ladders and a load of filthy weathered boards protruded from its open tailboard. George Battle, I thought. The village stonemason.

  I skidded to a stop and leaned Gladys against the worn chest tomb of one Cassandra Cottlestone, 1685–1750 (an exact contemporary of Johann Sebastian Bach, I noted).

  Sculpted in stone and sadly weathered, Cassandra lay atop her mossy tomb, her eyes closed as if she had a headache, her fingertips pressed together under her chin and a faint smug smile at the corners of her mouth. She did not look as if she minded too much being dead.

  On the base was carved:

  I didd dye

  And now doe lye

  Att churche’s door

  For euermore

  Pray for mye bodie to sleepe

  And my soule to wayke.

  I noted the two different spellings of “my,” and remembered that Daffy had once told me some far-fetched story about the Cottlestone tomb. What was it?

  My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of raised voices from the church’s porch. I walked quickly across the grass and stepped inside.

  “But a faculty was granted,” the vicar was saying. “There can be no going back now. The work is already underway.”

  “Then you must stop it,” said a large man in a dark suit. With his lumpy potato face and mane of white hair, he had the appearance of a dust mop dressed in its Sunday best. “You must put a stop to it at once.”

  “Marmaduke,” the vicar said, “the bishop has assured me on several occasions that there would be no—oh, good morning Flavia. You’re out and about early, as it were.”

  The large man swiveled his head slowly and let his light-colored eyes come to
rest on my face. He did not smile.

  “Good morning, Vicar!” I burbled. Being overly cheery at the crack of dawn is extremely upsetting to a certain kind of person, and I knew instantly that the white-haired man was one of them. “Lovely old morning, eh wot?—in spite of the rain?”

  I knew I was laying it on with a trowel but there are times when I just can’t help myself.

  “Wot?” I added for emphasis.

  “Flavia, dear,” the vicar said. “How nice to see you. I expect you’re looking for Mr. Haskins. It’s about the floral baskets, isn’t it? Yes, I thought as much. I believe he’s up the ringing chamber tidying the bell ropes and so forth. Mustn’t have chaos for Good Friday, must we?”

  Floral baskets? The vicar was including me in some little drama of his own creation. I was honored! I had barged in at an indelicate moment and he obviously wanted me to buzz off.

  The least I could do was play along. “Righty-ho, then. I thought as much. Father will be ever so glad to know the lilies are all sorted out.”

  And with that I leapt like a young gazelle onto the first step of the tower’s steep spiral staircase.

  Once out of sight, I trudged upward, recalling that ancient stairs in castles and churches wind in a clockwise direction as you ascend, so that an attacker, climbing the stairs, is forced to hold his sword in his left hand, while the defender, fighting downwards, is able to use his right, and usually superior, hand.

  I turned back for a moment and made a few feints and thrusts at an imaginary Viking—or perhaps he was a Norman—or maybe a Goth. When it comes to the sackers and raiders I am quite hopeless.

  “Hollah!” I cried, striking a fencer’s pose, my sword arm extended. “En garde, and so forth!”

  “Blimey, Miss Flavia,” Mr. Haskins said, dropping something and putting a hand to where his heart was presumably pounding. “You gave me a fair old start.”

  I’m afraid I gave a small smirk of pride. It’s no easy matter to startle a grave-digger, especially one who, in spite of his age, was as sturdily constructed as a sailor. I suppose it was his corded arms, his knotted hands, and his bandy legs which made me think of the sea.

  “Sorry, Mr. Haskins,” I said, as I removed my mackintosh and hung it on a handy coat hook. “I should have whistled on my way up. What’s in the trunk?”

  An ancient and much-battered wooden chest stood open against the far wall, a length of rope snaking over its lip where the sexton had let it drop—rather guiltily, I thought.

  “This lot? Not much. Bunch of rubbish, really. Left over from the war.”

  I craned my neck to see round him.

  In the chest were several more lengths of rope, a folded blanket, half a pail of sand, a stirrup pump with a rotted rubber hose, a second length of India rubber hose, a rather dirt-clodded shovel, a black steel helmet with a white “W” on it, and a rubber mask.

  “Gas mask,” Mr. Haskins said, lifting the thing and holding it in the palm of his hand like Hamlet. “The ARP lads and the fire-watchers had a post up here during the war. Spent a good many nights here myself. Lonesome, like. Strange things, I used to see.”

  He had my undivided attention. “Such as?”

  “Oh, you know … mysterious lights floatin’ in the churchyard, and that.”

  Was he trying to frighten me? “You’re pulling my leg, Mr. Haskins.”

  “P’raps I am, miss … an’ p’raps I amn’t.”

  I grabbed the grotesque, goggle-eyed mask and pulled it on over my head. It stank of rubber and ancient perspiration.

  “Look, I’m an octopus!” I said, waggling my tentacles. Muffled by the mask, my words came out sounding like “Mook, mime um mocknofoof!”

  Mr. Haskins peeled the thing from my face and tossed it back into the chest.

  “Kids have died playing with them things,” he said. “Smothered ’emselves to death. They’re not meant for toys.”

  He lowered the lid of the chest, and slamming shut the brass padlock, he pocketed the key.

  “You forgot the rope,” I said.

  Giving me what I believe is called a narrow look, he dug in his pocket for the key, snapped open the hasp, and retrieved the rope from the chest.

  “Now what?” I asked, trying to look eager.

  “You’d best run along, miss,” he said. “We’ve work to do, and we don’t need the likes of you underfoot.”

  Well!

  Ordinarily, anyone who made such a remark to my face would go to the top of my short list for strychnine. A few grains in the victim’s lunch pail—probably mixed with the mustard in his Spam sandwich, which would neatly hide both the taste and the texture …

  But wait! Hadn’t he said “we”? Who was “we”?

  I knew, from hanging round the church, that Mr. Haskins usually worked alone. He called in a helper only when there was heavy lifting to be done, such as shifting fallen tombstones—at least the heavier ones, or burying someone who—

  “Saint Tancred!” I said, and made a dash for the door.

  “Hang on—” Mr. Haskins protested. “Don’t go down there!”

  But his voice was already fading behind me as I clattered down the winding stairs.

  Saint Tancred! They were opening Saint Tancred’s tomb in the crypt, and they didn’t want me butting in. That’s why the vicar had shunted me off so abruptly. Since he had directed me straight to Mr. Haskins in the tower, it didn’t make any sense, but then he hadn’t really had time to think.

  Floral baskets, indeed! Somewhere below, they were already breaking open the tomb of Saint Tancred!

  The vestibule, when I reached it, was empty. The vicar and the white-haired stranger had vanished.

  To my left was the entry to the crypt, a heavy, wooden door in the Gothic style, its curved frame an arched, disapproving eyebrow of stone. I pushed it open and made my way quietly down the stairs.

  At the bottom, a string of small, bare electric bulbs, which had been strung temporarily from the low roof, led off in the distance toward the front of the church, their feeble yellowish gleam only making the surrounding shadows darker.

  I had been down here just once before, upon the occasion of a winter’s evening game of hide-and-seek with the St. Tancred’s Girl Guides. That, of course, had been before my dishonorable discharge from the troop. Still, even after all this time, I couldn’t help thinking of Delorna Higginson, and how long it had taken them to make her stop screaming and foaming at the mouth.

  Ahead of me now, lurking in the darkness, crouched the hulking heap of scrap metal that was the church’s furnace.

  I edged uneasily round it, not willing to turn my back to the thing.

  Manufactured by Deacon and Bromwell in 1851 and shown at the Great Exhibition, this famously unpredictable monstrosity squatted in the bowels of St. Tancred’s like the giant squid that attacked Captain Nemo’s submarine, Nautilus, in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the tin tentacles of its ducts snaking off in all directions, its two round windows of isinglass in the cast-iron door glowing like a pair of savage red eyes.

  Dick Plews, the village plumber, had for years been having what the vicar called “an affair of the heart” with the brute, but even I knew that to be sadly optimistic. Dick was afraid of the thing, and everybody in Bishop’s Lacey knew it.

  Sometimes, during services, especially in the long silences as we settled for the sermon, a stream of four-letter words would come drifting up through the hot air ducts—words that we all knew, but pretended not to.

  I shuddered and moved on.

  On both sides of me now were bricked-up arches. Behind them—stacked like cordwood, according to Mr. Haskins—were the crumbling coffins of those villagers who had gone before us into death, including a good many defunct de Luces.

  I must admit that there were times when I wished I could hoist those dry, papery ancestors of mine out of their niches for a good old face-to-face—not just to see how they compared with their darkened oil portraits which still hung at Buckshaw, but als
o to satisfy my private pleasure in confronting the occasional corpse.

  Only Dogger was aware of this unusual enthusiasm of mine, and he had assured me that it was because in tackling the dead, the pleasure of learning outweighs the pain.

  Aristotle, he assured me, had shared my keenness for cadavers.

  Dear old Dogger! How he sets my mind at ease.

  Now I could hear voices. I was directly underneath the apse.

  “Easy!” someone was saying in the gloom ahead of me. “Easy now, Tommy lad.”

  A dark shadow leapt across the wall as if someone had switched on a torch.

  “Steady on! Steady on! Where’s Haskins with that bloody rope? Pardon my French, Vicar.”

  The vicar was silhouetted in an open archway, his back to me. I craned my neck to peer round him.

  On the far wall of the small chamber, a large, rectangular stone had been pried from the wall and pivoted outwards. One end of it was now being supported on a wooden sawhorse, while the other still rested on the lip of the stone below. Behind the stone were visible a couple of inches of cold darkness.

  Four workmen—all of them strangers, except for George Battle—stood at the ready.

  As I moved in for a closer look, I bumped against the vicar’s elbow.

  “Good heavens, Flavia!” the vicar exclaimed with a start, his eyes huge in the strange light. “I almost leaped out of my skin, dear girl. I didn’t know you were there. You oughtn’t to be down here. Far too dangerous. If your father hears of it, he’ll have my head on a platter.”

  Saint John the Baptist flashed into my mind.

  “Sorry, Vicar,” I said. “I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s just that, since Saint Tancred is my namesake, I wanted to be the first to see his blessed old bones.”

  The vicar stared at me blankly.

  “Flavia Tancreda de Luce,” I reminded him, injecting a dollop of fake reverence into my voice, folding my hands modestly across my chest, and casting my eyes downward, a trick I had picked up by watching Feely at her devotions.