The Bone Magician Read online

  Pin sniffed the air. You are losing, he thought, and badly.

  At that moment the man groaned loudly and buried his face in his hands.

  ‘Pay up, Mr Ratchet,’ snarled his one-eyed opponent. He was undoubtedly a sailor, with his grimy headscarf and hooped earring. The hilt of his curved blade just showed above his belt. Ratchet dug deep into his pockets and began to tip the contents on to the table but not quickly enough. In a flash the sailor had his knife held against his throat. It certainly impressed upon his companion the need for haste. The sailor caught Pin’s eye and a slow smile spread across his weatherbeaten face. Pin ducked his head and hurried after Juno. If Ratchet smelt scared, the sailor smelt unpredictable.

  At the far end of the tavern they came upon Rudy Idolice slumped on his chair. He smelled strongly of unwashed armpits. He opened one eye, managed a black-gummed smile and held out his hand.

  ‘That’ll be sixpence apiece,’ he mumbled. ‘Your eyes will pop out of your heads,’ he claimed gruffly as his trembling fingers closed over the money. ‘I can guarantee you will never have seen the like of what you see in here.’ His voice tailed off, the monetary flicker of enthusiasm gone. The Gluttonous Beast sold itself.

  Rudy briefly indicated the warning notice from Betty Peggotty with one finger and pulled back the curtain with another. Then he practically pushed the two of them down the stairs.

  The Beast sat, or lay – it was hard to tell which on account of the dark – in his cage, behind thick iron bars just wide enough apart for a man to fit his hand through. At the front of his cage, just inside the bars, the damp earthen floor was strewn with sawdust and hay and the remains of what looked like a pig. Flies circled and landed on the rotten meat and sightless maggots could be seen moving on the torn surface. In the far corner there was a bed of straw tightly packed as if a great weight had been pressed upon it. Beside it stood a trough half filled with brackish water and covered in green mould. Outside the cage the surface of the floor was worn smooth by the feet that stood and shuffled and scraped all day. And the damp stone walls echoed the gasps and sighs of those who came to stare and to consider and to pronounce on the creature within.

  Juno and Pin stood behind the small crowd gathered in front of the cage. The Beast, however, had turned his broad hairy back on his audience and remained resolutely unmoving despite their cries of ‘Hey, Beast’ or ‘You there, with the hair’ and other greetings in a similar vein.

  ‘Perhaps he’s asleep,’ ventured one, a small chap with a large hat.

  ‘Or sulking,’ said another and he tossed a carrot through the bars which hit the creature on the shoulder. He barely flinched.

  ‘I don’t think he eats vegetables,’ said the man with the hat. He had just identified the rotting flesh in the cage.

  ‘Well, I’ve paid good money for this,’ said a third and he picked up a long stick, sharpened at one end, which was lying conveniently on the ground (one wonders if it was not placed there for this very purpose) and, to the enthusiastic cries of his male companions, and the gasps of his female, he slid it through the bars and jabbed at the Beast’s considerable rear with the pointed end. There was a slight twitch, and a fly was heard to buzz, but nothing more.

  ‘Again, Charlie,’ urged his friends. ‘Give him another poke.’ Each member of the party secretly wished that he had been the one to find the stick but was also glad in a way that he hadn’t. Charlie, now strongly aware that he must not disappoint his friends, reached in once more and poked the creature so hard that he had trouble retracting the stick. The effect was immediate.

  ‘AAAARRRGH,’ roared the Beast. In an instant he leaped up, twisted around and threw himself against the bars, causing the entire room to reverberate with the force of the impact. Charlie and his friends jumped back together, screaming and yelling, then scattered to run up the stairs. All social graces were cast aside and men and women – they were certainly not ladies and gentlemen – pushed and shoved their way to the top, dragging Juno and Pin along with them in the melee.

  The Gluttonous Beast drew himself up to his full height, some seven feet five inches, and gripped the bars with his fists and shook them. He roared again, showing a mouthful of yellow teeth and four long brown canines. Saliva pooled behind his lower teeth, ran over and dripped out of his mouth in long sticky strings.

  But now he was alone again in his stinking prison. His audience was gone with hardly a trace, only the scuff marks of their fleeing boots and heels. On the ground lay a small lace handkerchief. The creature contemplated it for a while and then pushed his forearm quite easily through the bars and picked it up. He brought it to his nose and sniffed it and within its creases he detected the faint remains of lavender. He sat down heavily, landing with a resounding thud, and stared vacantly ahead. Lavender had grown on the mountain in the springtime.

  A sudden movement from the darkness under the stairs caught the Beast’s eye and he growled lowly. A shadowy figure came fearlessly right up to the cage and stood leaning against the cool iron whispering softly, monotonously, to the creature. Whether the Beast listened or not was difficult to ascertain. He certainly gave no sign of it. Then the figure walked away, ascended the stairs and was gone. All was quiet once more except for the high-pitched drone of a fly and the rumbling of the Beast’s innards.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Lost

  Out on the street Pin and Juno caught their breath. In the short time they had been in the Nimble Finger, a thick mist had rolled off the Foedus and was spreading over the entire city, creeping slyly around corners and staying low to the ground. Juno looked at Pin anxiously and touched him on the arm.

  ‘Are you OK?’ she asked softly.

  Pin nodded, burying his hands under his armpits. ‘I didn’t think he would be so dreadful.’

  ‘Did you see the fellow hiding under the stairs?’

  ‘I did,’ replied Pin through chattering teeth. ‘Perhaps he looks after him.’

  ‘Who knows?’ said Juno. She wrapped her cloak tightly around herself, but the cold was numbing her bones. ‘I’m freezing,’ she said miserably. ‘Let’s get back.’

  Pin agreed. He had suffered many winters in Urbs Umida, but none as harsh as this. They walked briskly for a short while. Soon the fog was almost tangible in its thickness. When he looked down Pin could no longer see his feet.

  ‘If we can find the river, we can follow it,’ he said, stopping and turning slowly on the spot.

  ‘Can you not smell it?’ asked Juno. She was, as usual, a few steps ahead. ‘I thought you could smell anything.’

  ‘Of course I can smell it,’ snapped Pin. He was annoyed with himself. He should have been able to get them back to the Foedus at the very least. ‘But when the smell is all around, it’s difficult to tell which way to go. Anyway, it’s not so strong tonight.’

  And then the creaking began.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Juno uneasily.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve never heard anything like it.’

  It was a sort of groaning sound, almost human but not quite.

  ‘I think it’s coming from this direction,’ said Juno. Her voice sounded faint.

  Pin was concentrating hard. ‘Shh,’ he said. He stood and listened and sniffed. ‘I think this might be the way,’ he said finally. Juno was silent.

  ‘Juno?’ he said. Then, with irritation, ‘Juno?’

  But Juno was gone.

  Pin smelled them first, their stale, human stink of rotting flesh and pus; then he heard their breathing, rattling, consumptive, harsh inhalations. He stood where he was, blinded by the mist. Suddenly, from right beside him, a malformed hand reached out of the fog and grabbed him by the arm. In a panic he kicked out and heard a yelp, but then six, eight, maybe ten, hands had him in their grip.

  ‘Ah, what have we here?’ croaked someone in his ear.

  ‘I’m just trying to get home,’ spluttered Pin, praying that Juno was far away. A stooped man, with a face like that of a person jus
t risen from the grave, stepped in front of him.

  ‘Oh,’ he laughed and revealed at the same time five teeth, three above and two below.

  Pin waved away the fog in front of his face and he could see that he was tightly encircled by a rag-tag bunch of desperate street beggars with nothing to lose and everything to gain. Their clothes were tatters, their faces pock-marked from the pox, their sunken eyes weeping and they stank. Lord, how they stank. Tonight the fog was their friend.

  ‘I have nothing for you,’ said Pin, turning out his pockets.

  ‘No money?’ snarled the stooped man.

  Pin shook his head. ‘Truthfully, I spent it all at the Nimble Finger, to see the Beast.’

  ‘Hear that, Zeke?’ said another beggar, equally repulsive in appearance and aroma, addressing the stooped man. ‘He likes monsters.’

  ‘Well, ain’t that lucky for you, lad,’ Zeke sneered. ‘You see, it’s a terrible thing to be judged on how you look. We may be ugly on the outside, but on the inside –’ he paused and came so close that his and Pin’s nose were almost touching – ‘we’re even uglier!’

  The beggars closed in, drooling and salivating and laughing. Pin started to struggle, but their wiry arms were like vices around his wrists and arms and ankles.

  ‘Take him to the lair,’ spat Zeke. ‘I’m hungry.’

  ‘Stop!’

  The voice, a man’s, came from behind them. They did stop, but when they saw for whom, they laughed even louder for the speaker was not a man of any great substance and, to Pin’s dismay, he leaned on a cane.

  ‘A lame duck,’ said Zeke. ‘Go home or we’ll have to roast you too!’

  ‘Don’t turn your back on me,’ said the man. His voice was hard.

  ‘Why not? What are you going to do?’

  There was a whirring and a clicking and without warning the stranger darted forward and poked the beggar with his cane. There was a crackling noise, a puff of smoke and Zeke screeched and fell to the ground. The beggars stood motionless and open-mouthed for a second then scattered. A moment later Zeke himself came to and crawled away, moaning, into the fog.

  Pin was shaking as he turned to the stranger. ‘You saved my life.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said the man.

  ‘How can I ever thank you?’

  ‘Never mind that,’ said the stranger. ‘I’m going to the Bridge. Is that any help to you?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Pin gratefully. ‘I know my way from there.’

  ‘It’s closer than you think,’ said the man. ‘I know this city well, fog or no fog.’ He took off quickly, leaving a trail of holes in the snow with his cane.

  ‘I thought I knew the City too,’ murmured Pin ruefully.

  ‘I believe you saw the Beast tonight,’ said the man, though not conversationally, more to confirm what he already knew.

  ‘Yes, I did,’ replied Pin, somewhat surprised. ‘How did you know?’

  Pin supposed he mustn’t have heard for he did not reply. They walked along briskly, their crunching footsteps accompanied by the strange groaning and creaking noises that echoed in the streets. The fog seemed to be thinning at last and Pin realized that the bright spots he could now see were from the street lights and taverns on the Bridge. They had reached the Foedus. Pin began to feel safe again.

  ‘I know my way from here,’ said Pin with audible relief. He stood on the bank, his back to the river. ‘Let me thank you again.’ He went to offer his hand but was suddenly distracted. The groaning sounds had stopped as suddenly as they had started and the whole atmosphere was lighter.

  ‘Listen!’ he said. ‘The groaning noise has stopped.’ But the stranger was preoccupied, fiddling with his cane.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Pin curiously, ‘what was it you did with that cane?’

  The man looked up and took a step towards him. Pin concluded from his odour that he didn’t wash as often as he should.

  ‘Well,’ came the reply, ‘it’s a real shame you saw that.’

  ‘Why?’ Suddenly Pin’s confidence in this odd saviour wavered.

  ‘Because it’s my little secret.’

  ‘I can keep a secret,’ said Pin, backing away slowly until his heels came up against the wall that ran along the riverbank.

  ‘I am sure you can.’

  Without warning the man ran forward and shoved his hand roughly into Pin’s pocket.

  ‘Hey,’ protested Pin, but before he could say anything more there was a whirring and a clicking and he felt an explosive impact on his chest followed by a shock like a lightning strike. He jerked backwards and flipped over the wall. He felt himself falling. Time slowed. It seemed such a long way down to the river.

  ‘I can’t smell the Foedus any more,’ he realized just before everything went black.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Saved

  ‘Give ush a shpud, then,’ slurred the young fellow pulling at Beag’s sleeve and following him out of the Nimble Finger. Beag shook his head and tried to walk away. He had been enjoying a quiet jug in a corner when the youth had recognized him as the Potato Thrower and accosted him. The cold, still air seemed to have no effect on the young fellow’s inebriated state and he hiccuped loudly and swayed violently, dipping low in apparent defiance of gravity.

  ‘I’ll show yer how to shrow it.’

  Beag sighed heavily and turned to take a look at his challenger. Was this really his destiny? Sometimes he thought that the torture he endured that night on the Cathaoir Feasa was far preferable to the pain he felt daily in this city every time he had to throw a potato. With a resigned sigh he reached into his pocket and took out a large Hickory Red. He rolled it between his hands to remove the dirt – it impeded its progress through the air – as he contemplated what to do. ‘Very well,’ he said finally and knelt to draw a line in the snow. As he did so he saw something through the drunken fellow’s legs (they were widely splayed to aid balance) that made him cry out.

  ‘By the holy!’ he muttered. Were his eyes deceiving him? He had just witnessed someone falling into the Foedus. ‘Hey!’ Beag shouted, leaping up and breaking into a run. ‘What in the name of the seven saints is going on?’

  A man was looking into the river, but at the sound of Beag’s cry he too began to run. Beag picked up the pace, but he knew he wouldn’t catch him now. He skidded to a halt, reached back and tossed the potato with all his might. He watched, with immense satisfaction, as it whistled through the air, spinning as it went, and hit the fleeing fellow with a resounding thump on the right side of the head. It nearly felled him, and he staggered badly but picked himself up and disappeared into the night. Beag rushed to the wall and looked over.

  ‘Holy Bally Hooley,’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s Pin.’

  Pin was thoroughly confused. He knew he wasn’t awake, but neither was he asleep. He knew he had fallen into the Foedus, but he wasn’t wet. In fact, he was as warm as a toasted heel. He decided he must be in heaven and had no desire to return from this peaceful world wherein he lay. But those voices, those harsh voices, persisted. He wanted them to go away, but they carried on like a shower of pebbles against a window pane.

  ‘Can’t you do something? I thought you were a corpse raiser,’ said one.

  ‘I deal with dead bodies. This one is still alive,’ said another.

  ‘But he’s not moving,’ a third voice came into the conversation.

  ‘Perhaps he’s just asleep.’

  ‘Why don’t we try a sharp needle in his foot? Isn’t that what he does for Mr Gaufridus?’

  ‘I’m sure he said something about a quill up the right nostril. That might bring him round.’

  ‘Where else could we stick something sharp? How about—’

  ‘Juno, don’t you have something in that room of yours that’d help? I know you’ve got herbs up there. I’ve smelled ’em enough times, burning at night.’

  ‘I . . . I might have something. I’ll go to look.’

  Ah, peace again. Pin savoured it, but it was short-l
ived. The voices started up again and his head was beginning to ache.

  ‘What have you got there?’

  ‘It’s a sort of potion. It might help.’

  Pin felt something cold under his nose and then he was subject to a vicious aromatic assault. He was brought round with a violent jolt and a cough and a sneeze and the next thing he knew he was awake and upright and surrounded by four relieved faces. Each had a hand over his or her mouth and nose.

  ‘Oh, thank goodness,’ said Mrs Hoadswood through her hanky. ‘Well done, Juno.’

  ‘What was that stuff?’ asked Beag.

  ‘It’s Foedus water,’ said Pin, still choking. ‘It’d wake the dead, all right.’

  A little while later, Pin was sitting in front of the kitchen fire supping warm soup. His head was throbbing, but if he kept his brown eye closed it seemed to bring some relief. With his green eye he saw Juno standing in front of him. Her lips were drained of colour and she was shaking.

  ‘Where on earth did you get to?’ she asked crossly. ‘One minute you were there and the next you were gone.’

  ‘You disappeared too,’ said Pin indignantly. ‘How did you get back?

  Juno looked repentant. ‘I’m sorry. When I couldn’t find you I just kept walking and by sheer luck I ended up in Squid’s Gate Alley.’

  Mrs Hoadswood tutted. ‘You don’t know just how lucky you are,’ she said. ‘These fogs aren’t to be taken lightly.’

  ‘She’s a devil, all right,’ said Beag grimly, interrupting.

  ‘Who is?’ asked Pin and Juno in unison.

  ‘The river. She can whip up a fog in the space of a minute. The whole city was thick with it. There’s a song about her, you know. It’s called She Sucked Him Under.’

  Before anyone could stop him Beag drew a deep breath and launched, with great enthusiasm, into the first verse:

  ‘Old Johnny Samson,