The Wanderer (27 page)

Taking a track that climbed the hillside obliquely, the two men first passed, on their right, a squat, ugly monument commemorating the life of the physicist William Thomson, then, a little further on, a sculpture of Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Hope Pattison, in military uniform and cloak. The effigy’s right arm had been broken off at shoulder and wrist, and the severed hand nestled grotesquely in its fob pocket. Nearby was the cenotaph of the Lieutenant-Colonel’s brother, the anatomist Granville Sharp Pattison. He was a rogue, to scandal and trouble what raw meat is to blowflies; he kept a loaded brace of antique
dragoons’ pistols on his desk always. In his youth, he’d consorted with resurrection men, but, unlike other surgeons forced to rely on the illicit trade in cadavers, had been quite brazen about it, and was finally indicted for body-snatching, though a ‘notproven’ verdict was recorded. Then, in 1816, he was forced to flee to the US after an affair with the wife of a colleague became public. He lived dissolute in Philadelphia a few months, before moving to Baltimore, where he was known for toping and brawling. In 1822, he returned to Britain to take up a post at London University, but his teaching was so poor, indignant students rioted in his lectures, and he was sacked. After this, he left Albion, never to return, sailed back across the Atlantic and, after a time living in a doss house in Atlantic City, playing the pipes on the boardwalk for small change, his fortunes were revived when a former colleague spotted him and found him work at a university in New York. There he lived out his final years, an anatomy lecturer, known and beloved for his flamboyance.

Bearing left after they’d passed by the anatomist’s cenotaph, Duncan and Walker trudged up a miry path, passing an ancient oak – bark scarred by the pocket-knives of young lovers – and rows of monuments – obelisks, Celtic crosses, draped urns. When they crested the hill, Walker turned, went over to a low parapet, looked down on the city sprawling beneath. Duncan crossed to join him. Most folk were abed, but a few lights glimmered here and there, in the less salubrious quarters, Duncan’s haunts; he thought of buttocks, beaten livid by his fists, strewn with clusters of bright pox pustules, smiled. Near to where he and Walker stood, gazing out at the prospect, there was a very grand mausoleum, design modelled on a Templar church: the Monteath tomb. Under its porch, a group of drinkers huddled round a bad fire of newspaper and brushwood, passing a bottle of whisky between them. Monteath, born poor, had, after coming of age, joined the East India Company, and, by dint of diligence, risen to
the rank of major. But still, his income would have been limited. Yet, when he returned to Glasgow from the subcontinent, he entered the city’s high society, a man of great wealth. No one knows quite how the Major came by his fortune, but the story goes that, one day, while watching a Maharajah’s procession, he chased after and recovered a stampeding elephant. In a howdah on the animal’s back had been a casket of precious stones; Monteath claimed it had been lost, fallen into a river, but, had, in truth, secreted it somewhere to pick up later. Duncan suspected the truth was a mite more sordid.

Walker and Duncan turned away from the prospect, went on. Ahead was an odd monument, silvered by light from the crescent moon, a sculpted likeness of a proscenium arch. It had been erected in honour of renowned theatrical entrepreneur, John Henry Alexander, who suffered a long decline and finally passed after a hocus cry of fire at one of his playhouses kindled a panic and a trample for the exits that led to sixty-five deaths. Duncan knew him best as the pioneer of the Great Gun Trick, a bullet-catching illusion.

As they went by the grim stylite Knox’s column, a darting fawn startled them; Duncan sought to curb tremors, Walker giggled. Then they walked on. Beyond the pillar were two sepulchres set a little apart from other monuments. One was squat, plain, had niches on either side of its entrance holding effigies: on the left, the Virgin, cradling the infant Christ, on the right, Mary Magdalene. Peering in, through the iron gate, Duncan saw, but dimly in the gloom, statues of a crowned woman, and, flanking her, two female angels at prayer.

But it was to the other tomb Walker led Duncan, a tomb of Moorish design, octagonal, with a domed roof, the final resting place of early travel writer, William Rae Wilson. Walker took out a key, unlocked the padlock securing the gate, pushed it open. Hinges shrieked. That trope (again). Though Gothic novels had already worn it out, Duncan, who’d not read any, jumped.
Walker giggled again. They went in. Three cartouches adorned the walls inside the mausoleum; they were water-stained, worn, their inscriptions, difficult to decipher, but Duncan could just make out the phrase, ‘Thy Saints take pleasure in her stones and favour the dust thereof.’

‘What?’

He said it aloud.

Walker turned to him, sneered.

The floor of the tomb was strewn with the leavings of opium eaters and louts: empty vials, empty bottles, lewd scrawls, among them a sketch of Zeus’s possession, as a bull, of Europa, that, though crude, had an anatomical fidelity that made Duncan flush, jaded as he was. Sweeping the dross aside, Walker cleared off a trapdoor, then lifted it, let it crash open. A stink rose up. He took an oil lantern from his bag, lit its wick with a match, turned the flame up, held it over the hatch. By its glimmer, Duncan saw a deep shaft sunk into the knoll, rusty iron rungs bolted to the rock. Then Walker spoke, the first words to pass between the two men since they met at the gate.

‘We’re going to need another snifter. Steady our nerves.’

Duncan gulped down the brandy when it was passed to him. The boneyard at night had unnerved him. And now there was the stench wafting from the hatch. And a low snickering; he thought he could hear a low snickering rising with the fetor. He shook.

‘I’ve changed my mind. I’m not interested in seeing these riches. In fact, I don’t believe there are any to be had.’

‘Oh, there are.’

‘So you say, but…’

Walker seized Duncan’s wrist in his bony grasp.

‘Are you a coward?’ he hissed.

‘No.’

The drunk let go, was jovial again.

‘Well, in that case…’

He gestured at the pit.

The two men clambered down into the stink and the murk. After a while, they reached the foot of the ladder. Before them was a low dank tunnel. They stumbled on in the half-light, Walker in front, Duncan following. Duncan used his handkerchief to cover his mouth and nose against the high, cloying stench, but still choked. Walker capered, gurned, whistled cracked reels. The passages they took sloped down.

‘Where are the treasures? Why are we heading deeper?’

‘I told you, the upper levels have already been pillaged.’

It grew warm, close, Duncan began to sweat. He paused to take off his heavy overcoat. As he fumbled with its buttons, Walker, standing a little way ahead, turned, sniggered.

‘Lasciate ogne speranza,’ he chanted.

Then he cackled, winked, plucked off his periwig, bowed low, pointed to his mangy pate.

‘The bones of my skull never fused. Look.’

He prodded with his fingers, dug with dirty talons, peeled back a flap of scalp. There was a gape beneath. A little clear liquid seeped, but there was no blood. Duncan thought he saw maggots squirming in the brainpan, but then Walker stood, put his wig back on.

Duncan gagged.

Walker grinned at him, then opened the lantern, pinched out the flame.

When running his rigged card games, Duncan would sometimes play blindfold, claiming he could still best all-comers. A ruse; the blindfold would be tied by a plant, tied slightly askew, giving Duncan sight of the cards with one eye. Once, though, the plant, drunk, missed his cue, and someone else came up, tied the blindfold, tied it tight. That was a smothering dark, but the dark of the catacombs then was even starker; it was as if it hadn’t been the light that had been put out, but Duncan’s eyes.

There was no sound. He called out, frantic, began groping his way along the tunnel, not even sure if he was heading up,
towards the ladder, or further into the ravelled passageways.

Then, after some time had passed, he saw a faint glow a little way off, made towards it. As he approached, though, it ebbed from him. He stumbled, staggered after it. Soon he was wrapped in a shroud of filmy spiders’ webs. Then he struck his head on a jutting rock, laid open his brow. Blood ran into his eyes, stung.

He blundered onto a steep scree, his feet went from under him, and he slid, then dropped, landed hard on dank rock scattered with potsherds. The air knocked from his lungs, he lay there gasping, a landed fish. His ankle hurt; he gently prodded the joint; it was sprained, swelling. He felt round him, crawled about a bit. Then his fingers closed on something; it was cloth, greasy, an oil slicker; he reached into the pockets, turned up a candle stub and a single match. Striking the match against the sole of his boot, he lit the stub.

By the fitful flame, Duncan saw he was at one edge of a vast cavern. The far side and the ceiling were lost to gloom. The near wall was slick grey rock, starred with strange pale fungi. A little distance away, towards the centre of the cave, was what looked like a cromlech, two upright stones supporting a large slab. It wasn’t potsherds strewing the floor, but bones, some old, yellowing, others stark white, with scraps of pink meat still clinging. Duncan saw, among them, the skulls of animals, the skulls of cattle, sheep, and swine, one he thought was a large dog’s, or possibly a badger’s, a stag’s, with branching antlers, and what he guessed to be a crocodile’s. But there were human skulls too. A great many human skulls.

Not far off was an entrance to a tunnel. Duncan staggered to his feet and hobbled towards it. But didn’t get far before the flame went out. He limped on. Then heard a low gurgling close by.

‘Who’s there?’

There was silence a moment, then the blackness dinned in his ears: a tumult of snarls, gibbers, howls, sobs, yowls, yawps, yatters, yammers, pules, whickers, wails, shrieks, moans,
groans…

He sensed lurkers in the dark, put out his hands to fend them off, felt cold yielding slimy flesh, rough scaly hide, matted greasy fur. Retching, he backed away. Then turned and ran, ankle pangs dulled by fear.

All Duncan could ever dig up of that flight were sherds, fragments. His right arm felt dull, leaden, as if touching the vile things had corrupted. There was a low narrow passage, chocked with clay; Duncan had to lie, squirm, kick, fight, dislocated his left wrist. Hordes of black rats. A flooded tunnel, frigid water that chilled his very bones. A fraught painful clamber up a chimney. The half-rotted carcass of some thing that could not, should not be. A rotten rickety plank crossing an abyssal chasm.

Then, much later, he ran out into the open air, from a mausoleum at the foot of Necropolis knoll, almost careering into a granite monument, a memorial to nineteen firemen who died when a blazing whisky bond they were dousing exploded. He was in great pain, his clothes were filthy and tattered.

Sitting calmly on a nearby gravestone, swinging his feet, drinking from his hipflask, was Walker.

‘Where did you go?’ he asked. Grinned, winked.

Duncan hurled himself at the sot, fists flailing, but he was weak, a wreck. Walker snickered, then struck out; a blow that, despite Walker’s scrawny build, was brute, felled Duncan.

The antic sot then hopped down from the headstone, stood over Duncan, seemed to swell, blotted out the sky.

‘He can’t have entered that place, then,’ Walker mused, prodding Duncan in the ribs with his boot. ‘No constitution could stand that. Nevertheless, something happened, that much is clear.’

He peered down a moment longer, shrugged, then sauntered away, whistling a jaunty air.

Duncan waited till he’d gone, got unsteadily to his feet, limped off.

Over the next few dread-ridden days, Duncan’s arm grew weaker, began to stink. He was forced, finally, to seek the counsel of a medic. The doctor diagnosed necrosis due to some form of blood poisoning, advised the only course was amputation. Duncan found a surgeon to perform the operation, then, following a hasty convalescence, went down one morning, early, to the docks, carrying a small bundle of clothes, and, as a sole memento of his life hitherto, the beautifully crafted glass eye from the Cartesian devil homunculus. He sought a ship sailing for North America that would hire him on, dislimbed though he was, perhaps a vessel needing to cast off urgently, or one engaged in an illicit trade. Fate, that had been so cruel to him, smiled on him that day, for it wasn’t long before he found a craft to take him, a tea clipper whose captain was in a great hurry to get under way.

IX

I’ve been writing in a frenzy, frantic, but with only part of my brain: the rest listens for footfalls, scents for pipesmoke; I wait for the office door to be forced, splinter, the filing cabinet to topple.

A lone blowfly drowsily circles the bulb, on occasion blundering into it, singeing its wings. The light wavers now, dims; the fuel in the generator’s reservoir is running low.

We’ve been without food several days, shared the last of our water yesterday morning. I’m feverish, tremble, my stomach is shrivelled, pangs. But the tribeswoman suffers the worse: she’s weak, gaunt, the healthy dusk hue of her skin’s faded wan, her dark lips are cracked, her tongue, black and swollen; she lies listless, stretched out on a pallet improvised from our outer clothing – we’ve stripped off, it’s stifling down here. She’s not acted as my scrivener for some time now. She’s dying, and it’s my fault; I’m heartsick. Though, I have to own, part of me envies her; I’d rather die of thirst and hunger than in the dread way I must.

My fate is sure, when it will come is not; my fervent hope is that I’m granted time to finish my narrative, to bring my tale to a meet end, and, to that end, I type fast, as fast as I can without the typebars jamming. But, though it’s what I truly wish to tell, I weary of the central strand of my tale for the moment, and, try as I might, can’t force myself to go on with it. So, for respite, of a kind, I’ll now relate the tribeswoman’s and my exploration of the Ark’s hold, after we were first forced below decks. And it will enable you, my reader, to understand our terror, understand why we won’t thread those ways without a light source, not even to seek water or food to lessen our sufferings.