Ancient Appetites Read online

  He didn't know if it was a boy or a girl, but it probably didn't matter anyway. He wondered where it was from. Not from around here, that was for sure. Nobody in this neighbourhood had a lawn, let alone an engimal to mow it. He edged closer, admiring the sweeping patterns on its humped carapace.

  'Shhh. That's it. That's a good girl. Easy now'

  Francie was good with animals. He got on well with the horses and dogs that were kept at Wildenstern Hall. The stable boys weren't let anywhere near the engimals, but he was sure he could win the lawncutter's trust. Having seen machines like this used on the estate, he knew he had to grab its tail. It should be tame enough once he got hold of it. Its little engine gave a nervous growl. It shifted from side to side, but Francie had his arms out ready to grab it if it tried to get round him.

  'Shhh. Come here to me now. That's it. I'm not goin' to hurt yeh-'

  It swivelled and he lunged for its tail. The lawncutter turned and went for his feet, and he barely got out of the way of its spinning blades in time. The machine let out a screech and came at him again, its rotating jaws snatching at his ankles.

  'Aaah!' he yelped. 'Holy Mary-!'

  Francie jumped clear of the gnashing blades and turned to run. It clipped his heel as he took off, and he thanked the good Lord that he was wearing shoes. He could hear it behind him as he ran, its blades whining with speed. Clattering round a corner, he slipped in the mud and fell hard on his side, jarring his senses and badly scraping his elbow. The lawncutter was only a few yards behind him and, with an agility born of fear, he leaped to his feet and hurled himself at the top of the high wall beside him. His fingertips caught hold and he scrambled up and onto it, flopping down to try and catch his breath. The engimal looked up at him, giving off a petty little growl and spinning its jaws in triumph.

  'Get lost!' he yelled down at it. 'Get away from me, yeh maggot! Go on!'

  It snarled back at him.

  'Go away, I'm tellin' yeh! If I have to come down there, I'll hit yeh so hard I'll make yeh cough up thrupenny bits. Away with yeh now!'

  The lawncutter was unimpressed. It crouched there, waiting for him.

  'What's all that noise there?' a voice called down from a window above them. 'There's people tryin' to sleep here. Have yiz no homes to go to?'

  The engimal flinched from the voice, its new-found savagery disappearing at the sound of another adversary. It flashed its blades once more at Francie and then scurried off down the dark street. Francie waited for a couple of minutes to be sure that it was gone. Then he climbed down and brushed down his clothes as best he could. He was plastered with mud all down his left side, and the left elbow of his shirt was torn. His elbow was bleeding and it was starting to hurt. There was no way he'd be able to get his clothes clean by the morning. He was going to be in for a right hiding from Hennessy when he got back to the stables.

  He found that the tails of his shirt had come out of his trousers and gave a start. Checking around his sides and back to be sure, he uttered an earthy curse. It was gone.

  Desperately casting his eyes around, he searched the ground where he had fallen. It wasn't there. His heart thumping, he worked his way back along the road where the lawncutter had chased him until he saw a pale square in the mud a few yards away. He could easily have missed it in the darkness. Francie picked up the folded piece of paper, wiping it down. Checking that it wasn't damaged, he tucked his shirt into his trousers, tightened his braces and slipped the large folded piece of paper back inside. He breathed a sigh of relief. It had fallen less than a foot from a stream of raw sewage that was oozing down the gutter. And he was lucky the lawncutter hadn't shredded it.

  Francie's family lived in the tenements not ten minutes from the bright lights of Sackville Street, in a Georgian house that had once been a fine building, according to his father. Fit for a lord, he said, before the Famine emptied the country, and thousands had moved to the city. Now there were eight families living in that house. Eight large families.

  Francie found his way down the gloomy lane, past the one outside toilet that served four houses, with its rusting tap where they took their water and rinsed out their privy pails. He clambered over the wall into the yard that led to the back door of his house. Somewhere a cat yowled like a hurt child. Another one answered it. Patting his shirt to make sure the folded piece of paper was still tucked into it, he lifted the latch.

  His family lived on the third floor, and he climbed the bare wooden steps, wincing at the familiar squeaks. He had never been embarrassed by his family's poverty before. But after nearly a year of working for the Wildensterns, he had become painfully aware of the sordid life he had grown up with. From behind the door of one of their neighbours he could hear arguing and crying. From another, the sound of a tin whistle being played with vigour. The third door he passed was hanging off its hinges, the frame splintered. There was no warmth or sound from the darkness within. The O'Malleys must have been evicted. That room would be filled soon enough by some other desperate bunch. Some of these rooms housed as many as twenty people.

  He reached his family's door, and knocked before opening it. There was only one candle lit, and his mother sat by the light, darning a hole in the elbow of a jumper. The rickety wooden chair scraped on the floor as she stood up.

  'Francis, pet! You're home! Oh, praise be to God, you're home!'

  She was always like that. Stating the obvious – and then thanking God for it.

  'Shay! Francie's home!' she cried as she rushed over to give her youngest child a smothering hug.

  'Can't I see that with my own eyes, Cathy?' came the answer from across the room.

  His father stood up from his place by the small cast-iron stove and came over, giving Francie an excuse to extricate himself from his mother's embrace. Shay looked his son in the eye and held out his hand. It still made Francie proud, to have his da shake his hand like he was a grown man. Francie was almost as tall as him now, tall enough up to see his da's bald spot under the thinning brown hair.

  But he could see the curiosity in his father's gaze too. Shay knew his son had broken rules to be here.

  'Have a seat, son,' he said. 'Sit down there and have some tea. The kettle's just boiled.'

  'Look at the state of you!' Cathy scolded her son. 'Is it swimmin' in the mud you were?'

  Taking a damp cloth, she cleaned up his bloody elbow and then wiped as much of the mud from his shirt and trousers as she could until he squirmed. Then she got on with making the tea.

  'Aren't they missin' yeh at the stables?' his father asked, giving him the shrewd eye.

  Francie shrugged.

  His mother fussed about, putting tea leaves in the teapot and pouring in the water. She made a good cup of tea, did Ma. Francie sat down at the table with his parents, sipping the hot, milky tea and taking a look around to see what had changed. Nothing much. They had neighbours who lived in worse conditions. But the room was still sparse: a threadbare rug on the bare floorboards, the stove in one corner, the table in another. There were no curtains on the window, but it was so dirty on the outside that it didn't matter. And there was the trunk that held most of the rest of their possessions, which also doubled as a bench when some of the neighbours came round for a session. The folded blankets in another corner would make the beds that his folks and older sisters slept in.

  'Where are the girls?' he asked.

  'Away working,' his da replied.

  'They both got placed in houses,' his ma added. 'Chambermaids. We don't see so much of them any more. Peggy's all the way out in Dundrum.'

  Francie was disappointed that nobody had seen fit to let him know.

  'What brings you out, son?' his father asked.

  He was a lean man with a worn, ruddy face and had little patience for prattle when something had taken his interest. Francie took a breath. He'd been dying to tell them the news, but it was nice to just sit there and talk about the little stuff.

  'You said to tell you if anything important ha
ppened up at the house,' he began. 'Anything like… y'know. Interestin'.'

  'Yeah, so?' his father nodded insistently.

  'Well, it's the first son. Master Marcus. He's dead. Was out mountain climbing and fell off, they sez. There's goin' to be a huge funeral; deffiney some time next week – it looks like Saturday, but they're not sure yet. They won't announce it for a couple of days.'

  'That's terrible,' his ma gasped, her hand to her mouth. 'God help his poor mother.'

  'His poor mother's in her grave these past eight years, woman,' Shay snapped. 'No doubt she'll be glad of his company. What else, son? There's more, isn't there?'

  Francie bit his lip and reached into his pocket. Taking the folded paper from inside his shirt, he laid it on the table. The expression on his face was a mixture of excitement and fear. He was even trembling a little.

  'What is it?' Cathy asked.

  Shay unfolded the sheet of paper and flattened it out. It took up the entire top of the table. Father and son shared a look. Francie's mother could not read.

  'It's a map,' Shay said, studying it. 'A plan of the house… Wildenstern Hall.'

  'One of the lads working on the new railway gave it to me,' Francie lied. 'I just wanted to show you what it was going to be like. The railway, I mean. And what some of the house looked like. This is only one floor – not even a floor; this is just the cellar.'

  The architectural plan showed where the basement level of the house connected to the underground station; where the Wildensterns would be able to board their private train. It also showed every other room on that level, and every room was labelled.

  'This is marvellous, Francie,' Shay praised him cautiously. 'What a place this must be. Have you ever seen the like, Cathy? Look,' he said, pointing at one of the rooms. 'An armoury! What kind of family has an armoury in their home? Those Wildensterns are a breed unto themselves and no mistake. Bloody rich people!'

  'Shay!' Cathy exclaimed. 'Language!'

  'Sorry, love.'

  Francie stared into his father's eyes and discreetly tapped his finger on another room marked on the paper. Shay gazed down at the plan and exhaled quietly.

  The label for that room read 'TREASURY'.

  III

  A TAINTED HOMECOMING

  Nate and Flash could see the silhouette of Wildenstern Hall against the night sky long before they reached it. Set on a hill at the fringe of the mountains that bordered the south of the city, its jutting rooftop was the highest point on this side of the country. As Nate and his mount approached at an easy pace, he gazed up at the house and felt a welling up of homesickness. It was good to be back.

  There was no question of riding up the main road to the front gates. He could not arrive home on his new steed like a conquering hero; nothing would be said, of course, but it would be considered bad form. Instead, he took the back roads, entering the grounds through the rear gate and rolling past the cabins where the railroad crews would be sleeping, or drinking and carousing the night away. There were nearly two hundred of these labourers living here, out of sight of the main house; they were working on the private railway line that would eventually stretch from the underground station beneath the house, to Kingsbridge Station in the city. Another branch would eventually lead east to the docks of Kingstown on the coast.

  The gravel road led past the clachan of rough buildings through the woods to the manicured lawns that skirted the lavish, exotic gardens. Gas lampposts illuminated the grounds near the house, the gravel road joining a wider, cobbled thoroughfare lined with cast bronze sculptures holding flaming torches in glass shades. To the west Nate could just hear the mewling from the zoo; the cages and pits where the family had its menagerie of untameable engimals. Too savage to be useful, but kept out of curiosity and a hunger for unorthodox entertainment. Nate wondered how much of that would change once Gerald's theories could be tested.

  The cobbled drive took Nathaniel and his mount up to the yard past the stables, then further round to where deliveries were made. A wide, ornate marble staircase led up to the rear entrance. Below it, and to one side, a more utilitarian brace of double doors marked the tradesmen's entrance, and the doors to the kitchens, the storerooms, the servants' quarters and the service elevators. Further round to the right again, below a wing of the house with no windows, was another door, which led down to the dungeons, deep in the foundations. They were disused now, a relic of Norman times, when the house had started life as a keep.

  Nate gave a start, turning in the saddle, sure that he had just seen a small shadow darting across the grass and in behind the stables. He was tempted to take Flash after the figure to investigate, but he was too tired to be concerned. It was probably no threat at all; most likely just some groom returning after a frolicking with one of the housemaids.

  To refer to Wildenstern Hall as a house was a pitiful understatement, but there were few words that could do it justice. It was far too tall to be just another manor house, but too grand to be a tower. At its highest point it was thirty storeys of gothic magnificence; a monolith, a cathedral of commerce. The smaller wings around the main structure were older, but just as grand in their own way. Wildenstern Hall had grown over the generations, and now, in the mid-nineteenth century, its new size reflected the unprecedented wealth the family enjoyed.

  The lights from the courtyard only illuminated the bottom two floors; above, there was just a shape, dotted with the occasional lit window. Near the top it was difficult to distinguish them from the stars.

  'Welcome 'ome, sor,' a voice greeted him in a thick Donegal accent. 'I 'eard yeh come en. I see yev find yerself a new wee animal there, sor.'

  'Hennessy.' Nate smiled wearily at the lithe middle-aged man with the enormous white sideburns who stood before him. 'Yes, it's a fine brute, isn't it? Its name is "Flash". Would you find it a stall, and water it for me? And I'll need a saddle. Whatever fits for now, but have one ordered to measure as soon as possible please.'

  He climbed off the velocycle, and Hennessy went to take one of its horns. It snarled its engine at him, making him jump.

  'Ah.' Nate raised his hand. 'Perhaps I should put it to bed myself. You lead, and I'll follow.'

  With the velocycle ensconced in a comfortable, straw-strewn stall, complete with water trough, Nate bade the head groom goodnight and trudged across the yard to the house. He took his mucky boots off by the door and walked in through the servants' entrance, causing alarm among some unfortunate members of staff who had been relaxing, thinking themselves safe from the eyes of their masters. He handed the boots to one of the young kitchen boys playing marbles in the corner, confident that his footwear would be spotless within the hour, and waved to the cook, who was tucking into the leftovers of an expensive dessert normally reserved for them upstairs. He ignored the flustered parlourmaid who was warming her bare feet on the lap of a helpful pageboy.

  Nathaniel did not feel ready to greet his whole family – and particularly not his father. Nobody would voice their suspicions, but they would all be thinking the same thing. It was an incredible coincidence that he had arrived home on the same day that Marcus had died. Too much of a coincidence.

  The men would be in the smoking room now that dinner was over, and the women would have retired to their own recreations. His arrival would be greeted with more fuss and bother than he could bear. He took the servants' mechanical lift up to the residential floors, and watched the brass needle turn as the lift rose. The elevator car stopped with a barely perceptible settling, built to limit any noise that might disturb the family. The doors opened with a quiet slide, and he stole down the rich pile carpet of the sumptuous, gas-lit hallway to his sister's room.

  Tatiana's maid was fast asleep in an armchair outside the door. She shouldn't have been napping – there was no way that Tatiana would be asleep yet. He tapped gently on the door. The maid woke with a shudder, but Nate put a finger to his lips and waved at her not to get up.

  'Who is it?' a voice chirped from inside. />
  He opened the door and poked his head in.

  'A great big pirate, come to steal you off to Africa!'

  His fourteen-year-old sister, Tatiana, threw her book down, jumped off her bed and rushed over to the door.

  'Oh, Nate!' she exclaimed, pulling him into the room. 'You're back! Oh, it's so-' She stopped in mid-sentence. 'You do know about… about Marcus?'

  He nodded. She buried her face in his chest, wrapping her arms around him. Despite her ongoing attempts to act more like a lady, she could never contain her wild emotions. He found it as endearing as ever. Nate knew that Tatiana would never believe him capable of killing their brother and he drew great comfort from that. Tears were welling in her eyes when she pulled her face out to gaze up at him.

  'I still can't believe it,' she said in a small voice. 'It's so terrible.'

  Her forehead thumped back against his chest, mussing her wavy blonde hair.

  'I know I should be grief-stricken. I've read all about how it should feel, and yet… I don't…' She sniffed. 'I should be so poorly that I must take to my bed. I'm supposed to be overcome with heartache. But I hardly feel anything, really. I mean, I feel sad that I don't feel sad, if you know what I mean… but… Oh, Nate.' She lifted her face to meet his eyes again, and whispered in a frightened voice, 'Do you think I'm evil?'

  He smiled and took a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe her eyes, brushing her blonde locks off her face.

  'Of course you're not evil, Tatty. Don't be so melodramatic. You don't have a wicked bone in your body. You're just overwhelmed, that's all.'

  'Thank God,' she breathed. 'I was so worried.' She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. 'Let's sit down. There's so much you have to tell me.'

  They sat down together on the edge of her bed as they had done since they were children. Nate cast his eyes around the room, which was lit on either side by two small lamps with stained glass shades. Little had changed. There was the pink and gold floral wallpaper, the matching curtains and the ornately dressed four-poster bed that must be getting a bit small for Tatiana now. One corner was completely given over to her collection of porcelain dolls, with their fashionable dresses, and her favourite stuffed bears.