The Bone Magician (3 page)

And he knew what sort lived in them, the sort who spent their money on frivolous things, for idle amusement to alleviate their boredom.
And this money was not worked for. God forbid that those perfumed men over the water with their frilled cuffs and silken breeches might have to do a day’s honest toil. And as for their good ladies, with their noses in the air and their skirts so
wide they couldn’t fit though a door, well, by all accounts, daily they took their ease, drinking tea, drawing and singing. No, their wealth in the main was inherited but that was no guarantee it was come upon honestly. Money wasn’t the only
thing the rich inherited. The duplicity of generations was in their blood. Perhaps they didn’t commit the same crimes as took place nightly over the river – the rich liked to keep their hands clean – but they still stole from their
fellow man and murdered, just in a more sophisticated way and usually with a polite smile on their faces.

‘It
might be a fine thing to live over the river,’ thought Pin, ‘but I wonder, is it better to be in a
beautiful house looking at an ugly one, or to be in an ugly house looking at a beautiful one?’

Yes, he thought, as he descended carefully to the sticky black mud below, life on this side is harsh and dirty and noisy, but for all
its unpleasantness, there was an honesty of sorts among the southerners. You knew what they were from looking at them. They couldn’t hide it beneath fine clothes and words.

The tide was out but on the turn. Pin made his way as quickly as he could to the water’s edge. It was not unusual to find
sailors’ trinkets in the mud, fallen from the ships, but tonight Pin was in a hurry and wasn’t looking. He took from his pocket a small two-handled glass phial and removed the cork. Holding one handle delicately between thumb and forefinger,
he dipped it just under the surface and dragged it along until it was full of the dark water. Then he corked it carefully and ran back to the steps.

The smell of the Foedus was renowned far and wide but, exposed to something on a daily basis, a person can get used to most things. It
was a rare day in Urbs Umida that the stench was so bad people actually remarked upon
it. There is a theory that over time native Urbs Umidians developed a sort of immunity to the smell. This theory might also account for
their apparent ability to eat rotting food with impunity. If you can’t smell it, you can’t taste it. For Pin, however, this was not the case. He had a sensitive nose and was acutely aware of the most subtle changes in the river’s
odour.

By the time Pin reached the churchyard it was snowing heavily. He passed through the gates, head down, narrowly avoiding a young girl
who was coming out. She held up her pale hands in fright. Pin caught the faintest scent as he brushed past her, sweeter than one would have expected, and felt moved to mumble an apology before going on through.

As a place of burial St Mildred’s was almost as old as the City itself. Like a bottomless pit, it held far more people below than
was indicated by the headstones above. This was not as difficult as it sounded for the earth was unusually wet and acidic. These factors combined to speed up the process of decomposition considerably. Given that the churchyard was on a hill, all these
decaying juices seeped underground down the slope into the Foedus. Just one more ingredient to add to her toxic soup. It was not
unknown for bodies to be skeletal within a matter of months – a phenomenon that was
often talked about in the Nimble Finger Inn by those in the know.

But Pin wasn’t thinking of rotting bodies as he made his way between the uneven rows of headstones. He walked purposefully until
he reached a small unmarked wooden cross. It was leaning to the left and he tried to right it with some difficulty for the earth was frozen solid. A small posy of dried white flowers, stiff with the cold, lay at the base of the cross and he picked them
up before hunkering down in the snow.

‘Well, Mother,’ he said softly, ‘I haven’t been for a while, and I’m sorry about that, but Mr Gaufridus is
keeping me busy. I’m working again tonight. You know, I’d rather do that than spend a night at Barton Gumbroot’s. He’s a sly one, always asking about Father. Is he coming back? Did he really do it? I don’t know what to
say.’

Pin paused after each question, almost as if expecting an answer, but none was forthcoming. So he sat there shivering, oblivious to the
thickening snowflakes, turning the flowers over and over in his hand.

It was almost two months ago now, back in early January, but Pin still remembered coming home that night as if it was
only yesterday. He knew as soon as he went up the stairs that something wasn’t right. He could hear excited voices and exaggerated sobbing and when he reached the landing there was a small crowd gathered outside his room. He recognized some of
their faces, the lady from the room next door, the chimney sweep from across the corridor, the washerwoman from downstairs. When Pin saw the looks on their faces he felt cold fear. He pushed through the crowd into the room to see a lifeless figure
sprawled on the floor in front of the empty fireplace. A stout man in dark clothing was leaning over the body.

‘Father?’ Pin’s voice trembled.

The man looked up and asked officiously, ‘Are you Pin Carpue?’

Pin nodded.

‘And is this your father?’ He moved to one side and the face of the dead man was fully revealed. Pin swallowed hard and
forced himself to look. ‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s my uncle, Uncle Fabian. But I do not care for him.’

‘You’re not the only one by the looks of things,’ said the man as he drew himself up to his full height and coughed
self-importantly. He took out a small black notebook and a piece of charcoal. Pin now knew him to be Mr George Coggley, the local constable.

‘What happened to him?’ asked Pin.

‘Strangled, more’n likely,’ said Coggley. ‘His eyes are near out of his head. Where is your father,
son?’

‘I don’t know,’ replied Pin cautiously. He looked around at the people all staring at him.

‘If you know where he is, you must tell me, otherwise you’ll be in trouble.’

‘Why?’

‘Cos we reckons it’s ’im what done this,’ chipped in the washerwoman almost gleefully. ‘’E was seen
runnin’ orf.’
She had never liked Pin or his father, the way they considered themselves above everyone else. As for his mother, who did she think she was, God rest her soul, coming over the Bridge to live
here? There was no place for northerners on this side of the river. They just didn’t fit in.

‘Running away from the scene of a crime,’ admonished Constable Coggley. ‘He’s our man.’

‘I knew he’d come to a bad end,’ muttered someone else. ‘Allus the same wiv these people, ideas above ’is
station, never done no one any good.’

Pin stood in the midst of the mumblings and accusations, speechless and bemused. Right now he hated them all, with their sly looks and
snide remarks. He knew what they thought of his father. It was as plain as the crooked noses and squint eyes on their ugly faces. Pin had learned early that he was different. The children on the street teased him relentlessly, because his mother was from
a wealthy family, because she spoke with the soft vowels of the north and not the harsh grating voices of the southerners. But what they resented most of all was that the Carpues claimed to be poor, just like the rest of them. What nonsense, they
exclaimed! How could a lady with
such manners and airs not have money? And what other reason would Oscar Carpue possibly have for marrying her? It didn’t help that Uncle Fabian kept turning up dressed in his finery
(though his pockets were empty). Oscar had sent him away time and time again. ‘We have nothing for you,’ he said.

The torment had continued even after his mother’s death the previous year. After that people chose to resent the fact that Oscar
Carpue wouldn’t share his inheritance with his neighbours. ‘I have no inheritance,’ he told them more than once. ‘I’m only a carpenter. We’re penniless.’

But he never convinced them, and now Fabian was dead, murdered, and once again fingers were pointing at Oscar Carpue. Pin spent the next
week scouring the streets day and night, but there was no sign of his father and no word from him. The week after that Pin had to leave the lodging house. Not only could he no longer afford it on his own, but neither was he welcome. He spent ten
miserable days looking for work, finally taken on by Mr Gaufridus. Thus he was able to take a room at Barton’s, though it was his greatest desire to leave there . . .

In a city where merely to be born was considered the first step towards dying, it is fair to say that Goddfrey
Gaufridus, coffin maker and undertaker, had a relationship with death that was closer than most.

Although the business of undertaking was generally considered profitable (customers were guaranteed), Goddfrey hadn’t always
wished to deal so closely with the dead. At the age of fifteen Goddfrey was struck down by a mysterious illness, which rendered him incapable of speech or movement for nearly three months. He spent those three months lying on his back in bed. After a
week his mother and father, realizing his was a condition that might be permanent, thought it best to carry on as normal.

Worn out by the torture of being able to do little other than think (and what thoughts he had in those drear months!)
Goddfrey
fell asleep one night and didn’t wake up. By the third day his mother was quite convinced that he was dead.

She asked Goddfrey’s father to the room and they stood over him for some ten minutes. ‘I believe he is gone,’ said Mr
Gaufridus, and they called upon their neighbour to confirm this, the physician being too expensive, and then arranged the burial.

As was often the case at that time, and luckily for Goddfrey, the undertaker proved to be rather less than honest; he quietly sold the
boy’s still unmoving body to the Urbs Umida School of Anatomy and Surgical Procedures and buried a sand-filled coffin. On the fifth day of his sleep, Goddfrey, fully rested by now, awoke to find himself flat out on the surgeon’s table in an
exhibition theatre. A shining scalpel was suspended above his head and the surgeon was just about to plunge the blade into his chest (strangely enough it was the way the light reflected off the blade that made the greatest impression on Goddfrey and in
later years similar flickering light brought back uncomfortable memories), and thus stimulated, Goddfrey
summoned up every ounce of strength he had and managed to emit a whistle.

‘I think your corpse is alive,’ shouted one of the audience, a medical student who had just further confirmed his reputation
for stating the obvious. Goddfrey was taken home to his grieving parents who, failing to understand how he made the transition from the grave to the surgeon’s table, nevertheless welcomed him with open arms. It wasn’t exactly the journey they
had thought ahead of him, but they preferred not to think on it for too long, and within a couple of days he was back to his old self.

Well, not quite. The strange disease had one legacy: facial paralysis. Poor Goddfrey had only limited use of his facial muscles with the
result that his expression (sleepy) was now constant. He could neither smile nor frown, laugh nor cry – at least not in a way that was immediately obvious – and he could only speak through gritted teeth.