"He's ready. Warmed his bones. Had a dram."
Bill looked at the glass, and his guts cramped. "I thought she had the last of it?"
"Saved a drop."
Bill glared at him, but it didn't really matter. There wasn't enough whisky in the world to make this right. "Come on, then. Time to get you abed." The boy didn't respond, so he bent over him and took his free hand, taking the glass from the other and passing it to William. He would remember this one, he knew. He was too sober. So many of the others were phantoms in his head, strange blurs of might-have-beens and must-have-dones, but not this little boy and his dear old grandmother.
He led the boy, William trotting eager at his heel, to the bedroom, and pushed him down to sit on the bed. The boy looked at him at last, stupid eyes shining wet in the warm light from the lamp. Bill sat next to him, feeling the old woman's bulk beneath the straw.
The boy nodded, as though he knew. Dull eyes, kind but not blind. Dull, kind eyes.
He remembered the way the boy had clutched the glass. Soon, his eyes would be hungry.
"Come here, lad," he said. "Give your uncle Bill a hug."
#
"I'm going away for a bit," he said.
William didn't react for a moment, then he looked round. It was a slow movement, lazy, but it carried weight. He didn't say anything, but he stopped walking. His horse stopped obediently beside him. They were leading the nag through the Grassmarket, a barrel made for two perched on the cart. Acquiring the horse had been Bill's suggestion, or so he thought, made one drunken evening. Why break their backs, or call in porters who could throw suspicion their way, when they could hook up a horse just as easily?
They had wanted to move the old woman and the boy the previous evening, but there was no trace of Davey Paterson in any of the usual haunts or at his home. Frustrated, they had taken to an inn, the fresh undead sealed safe in a barrel, and drank their troubles away. Bill could detect no trace of guilt in William, but the boy's eyes had started staring at him from the depths of his own imagination almost before the child stopped breathing. Twelve, if he was a day. William wasn't a father. He couldn't know.
Was it fair to call himself a father when his kiddies were so far away, and so long ago? Probably not, but the grog summoned up feelings whether he was entitled to them or not. Often, he was glad. When it hurt to think about them, it made him feel less the monster for leaving them in the first place.
Perhaps he was being unkind to William. Though he gave every appearance of having no doubts, no conscience to speak of, he had drank far more than usual, matching even Bill's own mighty pace. Now, with the Grassmarket busying about them, they both had raging hangovers. William had been out early, and finally run Paterson to ground. If they could make delivery before the first classes at ten then the Doctor would receive them. If not, they would be chased away until darkness fell.
"Away?" William repeated it, and made it a challenge.
Bill clapped his hands, making a show of rubbing them for warmth even though it was a fine summer morning. "Aye. Falkirk. Family. You know how it is." William stared, and Bill wondered whether he actually had any idea at all. The uncomfortable realisation settled on him that the young man knew a great deal more about he and Nelly's life and family than the other way around. "Nelly's lot are up that way. Been a year since we saw them. High time."
"Her idea?"
"Mine," it seemed suddenly important to make that clear, though he could not articulate why. "My idea, William. It will be good to get away. Take a break."
His eyes narrowed. "Business is good."
"Always is. No shortage of shots for the Doctor. That's not going to change just because we take a breather for a couple of weeks. You can't slave yourself to pennies."
Time slowed as he waited for a response, while women scurried by with laundry baskets on their heads, dogs barking them up the way. He realised that he was asking for permission. As much as he resented having to do so, he couldn't stop his inner voice's silent plea. Please, William. Just let me go. Please.
Hare gave a sharp nod. "You'll be back." It was a command, not a question.
"To be sure. Just a visit to see her family. I need it, William. Last night ..." He dropped his voice to a whisper, leaning forward to make himself heard. "Well, Jesus, he was a babe."
"Sure and he was," Hare said, relaxing a little. "Maybe we stay away from the kiddies in future."
Bill smiled, just as his soul screamed at the easy acknowledgement of it. "That'd be a weight off these shoulders, no mistake."
There was a shout behind them, another cart wanting them to get moving. "Come on boys, time waits for no man!"
Hare sneered back and jerked the reins. The horse didn't move. Bill rolled his eyes, and Hare jerked again. The horse snorted, hot breath blasting both of them, but held its ground. Now there was more than one cart behind them, and they were drawing attention. Bill felt a tiny touch of panic. There were eyes on them. People who might remember them passing. He wanted to climb onto the cart and throw himself over the barrel, as if he could hide it with his own body. Instead he grabbed the other side of the horse's bit and pulled. The horse pulled back, and he stumbled.
"Mister!" A dirt-smeared boy, not much older than the little revenant in the barrel, ran up and prodded the beast's flank as his friends looked on and giggled. "Nag's the boss of you, mister!"
He swatted at the boy with his cap. "Away with you!"
"Come on to Christ! You think you own the road?" The driver behind was growing more impatient.
"Not us," Bill called, trying to seem jolly but coming across shrill. "Tell it to the nag. She's minded to like it where she is," he paused as Hare took a stick to the beast's flank, the harsh whack drawing more eyes to them, but that just made it dig its heels in and shriek at them.
"Bloody Irish!" That cry came from further back. William dropped his stick, and Bill was in time to grab his arm before he could pull a knife and find the Scot who had shouted.
His timing was perfect. "What's going on here, then?" A police officer ambled up, and Bill felt as though the blood was draining out of him. Even William looked alarmed, his own eyes darting straight to their hungry cargo like some kind of signpost. Bill wanted to freeze, to think, but there was no time.
"Morning to you. We've a stubborn beast here, and a timely delivery to make. Don't know what's got into the thing."
The officer patted the horse's nose, and gave an exploratory tug of the reins. She gave him no more respect to his gentler approach than she had William and his stick. Bill's headache throbbed, and he didn't know whether his mouth was dry with fear or whether it was just his hangover settling in. "Aye, they get like this sometimes," the officer said, as though it were the most sage and salient observation any man could make.
"Don't suppose you'd be knowing the secret of ungetting them? Not much with horses, myself."
"Need to let 'em be a while, and start over." At least the shouts had stopped. The officer had been noted, and nobody needed the additional aggravation of some badge-bearing thug stamping on their day for the fun of it. The officer looked up at the barrel with rheumy eyes. "Just the one barrel?" Bill wasn't sure how to answer without causing offence. The cart was a flat platform on wheels, with a barrel sitting on it and nowhere to hide extras. He wondered if the man was going blind. He nodded. "Big cart for a little cargo, isn't it?"
"We don't have a wide selection of carts to choose from. Just this one. It does the trick."
The officer gave him a contemplative look, and waved a way a fly that was buzzing around his ears. "Timely delivery, you say?"
"To be sure. Good money if we're there by ten."
There was a bang from the barrel. A kick. It seemed to echo down the great rectangle of the Grassmarket and back, like the dull thud of the trap opening beneath the gallows.
The watchman didn't flinch. William kicked a wheel, sending out another thud, a poor attempt at cover. "You'll forgive my partner his temper,
officer. That bonus is slipping away with the minutes."
The man nodded, and waited. Bill understood, and held back a sigh of relief. He fished in his pocket, found some shillings, and slid them onto the edge of the cart. He turned his back, looking up the street. A porter with a handcart was passing, and he waved him to come over.
When he turned back, the shillings were gone. "How would it be, officer, if I took our cargo on with this fellow's help? My friend here can try and convince this daft old mare that there are places it would rather be than your road."
The officer nodded. "That would suit me well. I'll keep the traffic moving round him until he can get her on the move again. Time that's done, well, I can probably take myself to the Hart for some lunch. A small good fortune has recently come my way." He put emphasis on 'small,' but didn't seem too displeased. Of all the things he could be doing, waving some carts around some other carts on a sunny day was probably not the worst. Bill and the porter heaved the barrel down and into the handcart. As they started away he turned once to see an exasperated William still yanking at his animal, then took their killings for the doctor's examination.
#
As usual, Doctor Knox had not presented himself in person. The smartest of his assistants met him and examined the bodies. He wasn't pleased. In the night the boy had chewed through the grandmother's arm in the bid for escape. Spoiled goods, the assistant said. Should have packed them separate. Bill took fourteen pounds for the pair and fled. When they were unpacked he had seen the boy's snarling face smeared with gore from his grandmother, and that was the last image he wanted lodged in his brain.
When he got back to Tanner's Close, he found William in the stable. The cart was packed away. The horse was on its side in the straw, two bullet holes in her head. William's mouth was twisted in anger, and Bill would not have traded places with whoever sold him that horse for all the world.
"Nag's no good to anyone."
Bill forced a smile. "Not anymore," he said brightly.
As he counted out the money between them, he wondered when William had acquired a firearm.
Chapter 22
Robert Knox
Monday, July 7th, 1828
The summer storm smashed at the study windows, sluicing ribbons of rainwater across the glass that distorted the glow of the street lamp on the street. The fire blazed, but the ferocity of the winds outside made it seem a feeble thing. Knox had donned his coat, for the breeze eking in from the rattled window frames had brought the winter back from the dead to chill him.
Papers were arranged across his desk in neat piles. On the left, the crisp handwritten notes of his initial observations of the first revenant. The piles that followed, one for each of the subsequent bodies delivered to him, traced not only his experiments over time, but also his state of mind. In each his handwriting fractured further, until the latest, which was illegible even to his own eye. The exhausted scribbles could be understood only through the memory of writing them in the first place. That was best. Some of the notions he had followed in the desperate search for enlightenment were not ones that he wished to commit to posterity.
Clashing shadows played across the room from the fire and his lamps, giving form and life to objects that had none. The door to the study was locked, and on one corner of the desk he had placed the jar containing the first revenant's head. The creature's skin and muscles, preserved still, never ceased in their own motion, at least not while he was present. The mouth and tongue moved ceaselessly, as though they could bite their way through preservative preparations, glass, and air until they reached him. He wondered whether it stilled when he was absent. Was it only active in the presence of a living body? He had no way to explore the idea. If being close enough to watch it caused it to animate, how could he observe what it might do when he was not close enough to watch? He pulled a fresh sheet of paper out, and wrote it down. What does it do when I am not close enough to see? He stared at the words, a corner of his mouth turning up at the absurdity of it.
He stood, then began to pace through the moving shadows. That was what the revenants were. Dark shapes, moving in a parody of life. Somewhere, there was a blaze, a root cause of which the revenant was just a symptom. He had dug through flesh in search of that cause, but found nothing. At his worst moments he had almost concluded a supernatural cause, something entirely external that his skills could never hope to trace. An atheist himself--for it was difficult to cling to myths and fables when tearing apart the world and its workings and finding no trace of magic in its mechanics--he understood now the allure of ignorance, of abandoning the complexities of understanding for fables and fairy tales. He would not succumb. There was no supernatural power at work. The blaze that set these bodies twitching could only come from somewhere within. To have a physical effect, there must be contact. Why couldn't he find it?
He approached the specimen jar. The head sat on the base, tilted with one ear pressed to the clear wall of its prison. Its eyes never left him. He brushed a finger against the glass, and it clacked its teeth in frustration. Why was it so hungry, with no stomach to feed? Even if he had not separated head from body, the stomach would be a decaying sack, unable to process sustenance. He had attempted to feed one of the subjects fresh red meat, but dead flesh held no interest for it. Nor would they be tempted by non-human offerings. A terrified cat had been left overnight in a dissecting room with one of the creatures. When they opened the door the following evening, it had shot out between their feet, driven to panic by the presence of the thing it was trapped with, but completely unharmed.
If it had no urge to feed, one of the central defining characteristics of all animals, was it even correct to categorise it as one at all? He sat back at his desk, and drew the paper back to him.
They do not feed in order to derive operative energy, and so why do they bite? And how do they power themselves? Could it be that the creatures share attributes more recognisable to the botanist than an anatomist such as I? Is their vile energy absorbed in some manner not yet perceived from the environment in which they find themselves? Should we link the source of their constant attempts to bite and scratch us as something else entirely?
He paused, tentative.
My knowledge of the botanical arts is entirely inadequate, yet I have read that they are not so far from animals in their basic drives. With sustenance not an active concern, they instead devote their passive energies to reproduction, the cycle of spore and seed. If the revenants do not need food to survive, could their aggressive shamble through the world be motivated by reproduction?
He stared at the thing in the jar, a flicker of excitement in him. Seed and spore. How did they reproduce? At first it had been assumed that only those it bit would die and rise again. There had been some small evidence for this during the cadaver riots, where some people attacked and killed during the initial surge were walking again later the same evening. Could it be that the bite planted some form of seed?
Yet many others who had been bitten had made a full recovery, and were living out their lives as they had before. Of the subjects that had been brought to him by his new suppliers, only the first had shown scars that suggested it had been attacked, and they were long healed. The rest had died of some other cause, irrelevant to his investigation, for their bodies were unmarred. There were the bodies from the house fire in January to consider also. If Fergusson's source were to be believed, the majority of those bodies had also been free of the revenant's bite, yet that had not prevented them arising in undeath.
No, the seed thesis was sound only if the full scope of the evidence were ignored. Another foul temptation, that of making the facts fit the theory instead of deriving a theory from facts. Science was rife with such laziness, and he would not allow himself to indulge it.
Not a seed then.
It galled him to admit it to himself, but he needed another perspective. Fergusson, Miller, and Jones were able assistants, but no matter how he pushed them, they resisted the final ste
ps to true independent thought. It was an experienced mind he needed, and there were only so many qualified persons he might approach.
Decided, he stood and found the sacking he had wrapped the jar in when he had first transported it from the school. After carefully covering it once more, tying it off with string to hold the warp in place, he unlocked the study door and summoned McCrimmon to arrange a cab through the storm.
#
Even in the storm, the clean spacing of New Town's modern square buildings caused Knox to unclench. He both admired and resented the place. Many eminent doctors and academics had moved into the area, but as much as following them would reflect well on his status and position, he feared his work could only suffer from such a move. Could his fierce drive to find order in all things be sustained in such regulated surroundings? Without immersion in chaos, and all its frustrations, how could complacency be avoided? He feared the New Town would neuter him.
The house he sought was grand, and he was ushered inside by the servants and asked to wait in a bright, high-ceilinged smoking room. Where the storm was master at his own home, oppressing the atmosphere and invading his sanctuary, here it was held back. While it whirled outside, the walls and windows were stalwart in preventing it access.
He placed the wrapped jar on the floor by the fire, and warmed his hands until he heard somebody enter behind him. "Robert," said Syme, closing the door behind him. "Welcome to my home."
"James," he said, turning. "I apologise for the hour."
"Not at all." The thin man was still dressed from the day. "I have been engaged in some planning. Have you been before? I don't think I've seen you at my gatherings."
Dry affairs, by all accounts, hosted primarily as a means by which Syme could toady to whoever could best further his current interests. "I do not believe I have been invited."
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