Somebody else had seen, and the cry went up. "Revenant! Burke's back!"
He released his own breath uselessly, as Burke sat up with a snarl. The absence of a brain slowed it not at all, and the muscles were still whole enough for speed. Fergusson had borne witness to the fact that they would degrade and leave the body a crippled shambler, but in the early stages it was lack of balance rather than muscular prowess that made the things seem clumsy.
Monro turned, dropping the brain, as the corpse pushed itself from the table and flew at him. It wasted no time, and sank its teeth in to Monro's generous jowls. The old man lifted his arms, grabbing Burke's hands, but he had not the strength to push him away. "Grab it!" Fergusson yelled, hoping to jar somebody to action. The front of the crowd was too busy surging backwards, a cacophony of screams and shouts echoing around the room. They pushed towards him, not aiming for the doors at either side of the rear wall, only putting space between themselves and the horror. Some people fell, pushed down by stronger men forcing their way past. Fergusson took a cool-headed moment to marvel at the animal ferocity demonstrated by those who a moment or two ago would have considered themselves the most civilised examples of Edinburgh society. Now they were wide eyes and spittle, lashing fists and stamping feet.
They would smash him in a moment, for those nearest would not be able to resist the force of the crowd behind. "No! Seize the thing! There are enough of us to–"
The sea of flesh crashed over him, slamming him back and pounding him over and again. He collapsed to the floor, tucking his chin down and pulling his precious fingers back from crushing feet, and waited for the end.
#
On hearing the sounds of calamity within the hall, the students waiting outside had crushed towards the doors, eager to see what was about. They blocked the policemen, preventing them from rendering swift assistance to those in the hall or subduing the revenant, and were themselves blocked from entering by the panicked dignitaries attempting to flee.
Fergusson felt like an age had passed while he was on the floor, but it could not have been more than a moment or two. The police finally battered their way through and had William Burke's revenant corpse helplessly bound within moments. A single creature could be easily controlled, but nobody else in the hall had tried to tackle it.
Bruised, Fergusson limped out with the stragglers, casting a look back down at Monro. The lecturer was sitting, on the floor, pushing a towel to his ruined neck. The revenant had ripped and torn, but found only flab to savage. Monro's luck had held, and the vital arteries that it had clearly been seeking out had escaped its reach.
Fergusson gave a tight, mean smile as he turned and went looking for Alex. He wondered what opinions the professor might offer on the revenant threat now.
Chapter 37
The Revenant Man
Thursday, February 5th, 1829
Hare lay back on the cell's unmade bed and listened to the sounds of glass smashing and men shouting. The door to the cell was ajar, for he was in custody solely for his own protection. It was the safest place to bide, and at least he could stretch out. Having ridden on the outside during the coach ride from Edinburgh to Dumfries, he was sore from hunching over against the elements.
It seemed pure bad fortune that had put him on a carriage with one of the lawyers who tried to prosecute him on behalf of that big idiot's family, but he was not blind to the possibility that it had been engineered to look that way. After it had been ordained that he could not, after all, be charged for a murder that he had been prepared to stand witness to after giving King's Evidence, the lawyers who had been so determined to score points with the public for taking him down were left with bitter tastes in their mouths. Who knew what reach they had?
The police had appeared to be acting in his interests, for they had no more desire to deal with a lynch mob than he. With an old cloak wrapped round him for disguise, he had been escorted by a silent John Fisher to join the mail coach at Newington. He would ride it to Portpatrick on the west coast, and from that harbour find passage to Ireland. Fisher had refused to make eye contact with him as he climbed aboard the coach, save when it pulled away. "Goodbye, Mr Black," he had called in a loud but cheerless voice. "I wish you well home." Only when they had stopped for the night at the King's Arms in Dumfries had William realised who else was aboard. When they were in the inn he was denounced by the lawyer as the passengers gathered round the fire, and in only a few minutes the place was surrounded by a mob of growing fury. For four hours he had been penned in, until the police had made a grand show of loading up his luggage on a carriage at the front while sneaking him to a second vehicle out the back. Dumfries jail seemed the only place to put him until he could be moved on.
At one point he had announced that he was going to walk out, and let the crowd try to do whatever it was they planned for him. A young medical man had barred the door. "They'll rip you to pieces man, and feed you to the pigs."
"They won't." William did not have the words to explain what he knew. He was a walking dead man. That made him immortal. If he were fated to meet his death, then he would not twice have walked free from the noose. Bill Burke had thrown both of them to the wolves, but William had been spat back out.
He wished he could have watched Bill hang. He might have been a little sad to see it, for they had shared things nobody else could lay claim to, but he would have rejoiced, too. Until the trial was over, he had not understood in full how deliberate their downfall had been. The old woman, seen by so many in their company. Daft Jamie, a hero in the public mind. A washerwoman from Bill's own house. Compared to the all but anonymous victims Bill had once found for them, it was a miracle that they had not been caught before.
A miracle. Like him.
More glass crashed close by, and the light through the window dimmed. Somebody had put a rock through one of the lamps outside. They couldn't know what cell he was in, so it could only be coincidence that they had struck so near. It didn't matter. They could do what they liked.
Men stomped along the corridor, and he craned his neck to watch the conscripts pass. They wore plain clothes, dirty from a day at their respective jobs. A hundred men had been sworn in just an hour or two ago, to protect the jail. He wondered why the newly appointed officers would be any more inclined to protect him than their fellows in the mob from which they had been plucked. Money, he supposed. It had been enough to drive Bill to aid him, though the man's heart had never been in it. His newspaper confessions had taught the world how much they had to fear in William Hare, and they would destroy him if they only could. That caused no fear in him, despite the riot in his name. He felt only a cold eagerness to begin anew elsewhere. Bill had made his work harder, but such outcry could not last forever.
He sat up and stretched. Somewhere in the building a dog, one of those yappy terrier things, barked along to the madness. A man screamed outside, cutting through the shouts and the crash of improvised weapons. He imagined shovels and hoes held aloft in righteous rage. It would have made him smile, if anything could, that people were trying to hoe him to death.
Maggie was long gone already, as was his son. He was idly curious to where they might be, but only because he had too much time on his hands. She had been released before him, as she had not been named in the failed private prosecution, and had made it out of Edinburgh to Glasgow under an assumed name. Some papers had reported an incident there in which she had been recognised and mobbed in the street, and like him had been rescued by police officers who would by far have preferred to stay out of it. After that, there was no word of her. The reporters speculated that she had been in Glasgow seeking passage to Ireland, and that was likely. Nobody mentioned a baby.
They were complications, and he was glad to be rid of them. Maggie, too, was hard-driven by the scent of money, and he wondered how long he could have continued making revenants in secret, perhaps releasing them into the city at night, if she had not thrilled so at the monies Doctor Knox had offered. As for t
he child, what use was it to him? None that he could see.
More glass shattered, probably a window. The siege was an annoyance, slowing him down. He had a need now, a gift to share, and it was frustrating to be holed up when he should be at large. He wondered what name he would use next. Hare was used up. There were people with long memories who would squint at him curiously if he used it again. Perhaps he would accept the gift offered by John Fisher as he boarded the coach. Mr Black. William Black.
Black.
It played well with him.
With no sign of the riot ending, he lay back and closed his eyes. Fires burned and rocks bashed off the walls as he closed his eyes and slept.
#
Somebody kicked him awake, and he was on his feet with his hands around the man's neck before he remembered where he was. His attacker was a fat man, bald but rough in the face. William shoved him back against the wall and squeezed with his hands. It was not Burke's way, the slow press of the chest until life stopped, but it was more satisfying.
The stone cell was lit by a lantern next to the bed, and he saw that the man was uniformed. He let go and stepped back. The fat man bent forward, coughing. "Aye," he said, as he got his breath back. "Reckon you can have that one, for the good it'll do you."
William stilled, and nodded. "Long night. Surprised." It was quiet outside. "Is it over?"
"Not likely, but mobs need to sleep just like everyone else. Long as you're in here though, I'm going to need to keep paying extra men to keep the peace, and taking damage we can't afford to fix. So you're going, while there's a lull."
He led them out of the cell, down quiet corridors to a door set between two windows. Both were smashed, and the glass crunched as they stepped through it. "There's a coach outside. Get straight in, and good riddance to you."
"My luggage."
"God's sake, man! It could start up again any minute. Send for it, whenever you get where you're going. Best I can do."
"I'm going to Portpatrick."
The fat man laughed. "Aye, and I should let you. Word's out though, Mr Hare. Who you are. Where you are. Where your coach was headed. You won't make it a mile, and I won't put my men at risk escorting you. We'll put you at safe difference from town, and then you're on your own."
William nodded. There was no real reason for him to return to Ireland. It had not even been his suggestion to do so. Fisher just wanted him out of Scotland. "Take me South."
"The border, eh? Aye, that suits me well. Cross it and begone. Let the English have you. Ready?" His protector gave the door a swift yank and stepped outside. William followed. They were at the side of the building, and save for the one horse carriage waiting for them they were alone. The only light came from the lantern beside the driver, who glared at him and played with his whip suggestively.
"Not a police carriage."
"Thought this would be less likely to be noticed. Faster too, if it comes to it." William nodded, noting the sleek, strong build of the horse. He put a foot on the step and pulled the door open. "Well. You're welcome," said the fat man. "Think nothing else of it."
William slammed the door.
#
They rolled in the dirt at the side of the Annan Road, at the base of a steep wooded rise some four miles out from Dumfries. The driver was a tall, stocky man, but he had not been prepared for William's speed or tenacity. As soon as the coach drew to a stop, he had thought back to the foul expression on the driver's face and known what was to come. When the door had opened, the driver perhaps assuming that in the dark and with the rocking of the carriage he would have dozed off, William flew at him. They crashed to the ground, the horse snorting with alarm. The driver took the brunt of the landing, which winded him and cracked something inside, perhaps a rib. Then they wrestled. A crude cleaver had flown from the man's hand as they fell, but William did not trouble himself to reach for it. He knew how this would go.
A roll placed him back on top of the man, and he locked his legs, stopping them from going further. He punched the man's groin, eliciting a squeal that would have shamed a piglet. Though the driver tensed, the fight had gone from him and William seized his throat and squeezed. His thumbs pushed hard, and he watched the man's eyes bulge and his face redden. The blows he landed on William's shoulders and chest were fading efforts. When his mouth opened in a gasp for air, William ducked close and spat into his throat.
Another minute and the man ceased struggling. William stayed where he was, crushing cartilage beneath his fingers. Eventually he released his hold and stood, dusting down his clothes and taking a deep breath to steady himself. When he was ready he took hold of the driver's legs and dragged him into the wood, out of sight of the road. He did nothing more to hide it. Soon, it would walk again.
The horse stamped, impatient. William slammed the carriage door closed and climbed up to the driver's seat, finding the whip laying across it.
He could go anywhere he pleased. They had crossed other roads already, and there would be more junctions on the route down to Gretna and England. Should he cross the border? England had yet to witness the dead rise up among its people, and he felt a strong urge to remedy that. He could continue on his way to Carlisle, then after a while make his way to other cities. He did not in truth know the lie of England, save that London was far in the south. Were such places as Newcastle or Birmingham on the way? Somewhere would be.
Yet he was not done with Scotland, either. Glasgow, a more crowded cesspool even than Edinburgh, would be fertile ground for the violence and terror he owned.
There was no rush. He was immortal now, and could gift each city in turn their own cadaver riots. For most of his life, he had been a nobody. Being feared by the few who knew him seemed a small and worthless thing now that he knew how much more he could offer. Bill had shown him the way, made them aware of him through those newspapers he so enjoyed talking to. Edinburgh feared him. As soon as they had known he was there, the people of Dumfries had risen up in their hundreds to chase him off. He had become more than William Hare. He had a dark, immortal legend that would spread with each city he touched.
The Revenant Man stirred the horse to life, and picked his destination.
The Old Man & The Wretch (cont.)
Tuesday, December 9th, 1862
The blind wretch with the alkali burns pocking his face shuffled into the study without being asked, somehow finding it by trailing a filthy hand along the wall. His fingertips left greasy brown stains that Knox did not wish to know the origin of. His heart, so recently brought back from the brink of catastrophe, began to putter erratically.
Knox took one further look at himself in the mirror, an elderly thing with fearful weakness in his good eye and a bowed spine, then followed.
"I never knew which of you was which." He closed the study door behind him. "William and Joseph, you called yourselves. When the truth came out so explosively, and with you each named William, I have never been able to establish which face matched which villain. Your likenesses have been captured, so I'm given to understand. There are busts of you somewhere about the University of Edinburgh. Burke's visage, captured in death. Your own ... you allowed a plaster mask to be made of your features while in prison, I believe?" Hare chuckled, breath gusting out in a foul wave, redolent of sewage and death. Knox raised a scented handkerchief to his nose, but the infusion of rose petals to the brew served only to highlight its abhorrence. "Well, now I know. William Hare. The Revenant Man himself. Every rumour of your survival reaches me, you know? Every supposed sighting. The world at large appears to believe that I care."
Hare sat, and pulled a knife from somewhere within his rags. It had a small, weathered blade, but Knox noted that it was scalpel sharp. "You ended me."
Knox sat too, on a chair closer to the fire. A coldness was spreading through his extremities, his legs and arms frosting from within. "I did no such thing."
"There's a cure. A vacation. Something."
Knox gave a single laugh, then froze as th
e spasm of his lungs turned into something more profound. His chest was seized in a mighty fist. He drew in breath with care, ignoring the pain, letting the air fill him despite it. "Vaccination. You do me much credit, but you are incorrect."
"That's why you bought them. You wanted to stop me."
Spots danced in front of Knox's eyes, so that it looked as though a swarm of flies were buzzing about his guest. Perhaps they were. "That quest ended long ago. I tried for a time, after the trial, but even I recognise futility when it is upon me. I could not work, with the world attuned to my every doing."
"Not you?"
"Not even my science. It is the virologists who are at fault, the new discipline of the microscopic. They are the ones who identified the weird, propagating life within the revenant corpse. They are the ones who have developed the vaccines and inoculations that have rendered you obsolete." He remembered wondering about a seed, something passed from revenant to man in a bite. Closer than he could have imagined, though it had been many years before viruses had been identified and evidenced. The revenant virus did not even need a bite to transmit. Knox remembered the Old Town as it was when he last walked it. So many poor, packed down amongst the sewage, stagnant water, and filth.
"Some still rise."
"When you kill and infect them? Yes. I gather they are few, and swiftly put down. Within a generation there will be no man or woman on these isles who does not have protection coursing through them." There was a pounding in his head, and his neck wanted to clench against the pressure pushing up from his chest. No time for visualisation now. He would survive this, or not. "Is that for me?" He twitched a hand in the direction of the knife. Hare shook his head. "It would be a worthless gesture. Needless to say, I am myself vaccinated against your little presents. You cannot force me to rise."
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