The Bone Magician (4 page)

After his narrow escape at the School of Anatomy, Goddfrey was determined that what had so nearly happened to him would not happen to
anyone else. He became an apprentice to the local undertaker and took over the business when his master died. Over the next few years Goddfrey Gaufridus gained a reputation as a man
who could be trusted not to bury the
living. This was chiefly because he put a great deal of time and effort into ascertaining that his charges were most definitely dead in the first place.

This might sound a little odd, but it must be remembered that in Goddfrey’s day it was not as easy as you might think to determine
that a person had actually departed this life for good. Apart from looking for breath on a mirror or listening to an often indeterminate heartbeat, there was little else a physician could do. Many times as he lay in his seemingly unconscious state had
Goddfrey mused that if only someone had invented some mechanism, some sort of tool, that could indicate whether or not he was alive, then he would not have suffered as he did. He vowed that if he ever revived he would be that person.

So that is what he set out to do. But inventing and undertaking at the same time proved to be quite burdensome, so Goddfrey decided that
he needed an assistant, and he put a small card in the window. Pin, by virtue of the fact that he could read – a skill passed on by his mother – was the only applicant for the job.

On the appointed day, Mr Gaufridus took Pin on a tour of the premises. The shop at street level had on display both
the most expensive and the cheapest of Mr Gaufridus’s coffin models, readily distinguished one from the other by the gloss or lack of it on the wood and the fittings. In a large double-fronted cupboard he kept a
selection of goods available to hire for the funeral, including palls, dark suits, veils and black gloves, horse plumes, invitation cards for the ceremony and a tray of funeral rings in the shape, naturally, of a skull.

Mr Gaufridus then led Pin downstairs to a basement room where other coffins in a variety of shapes and sizes and colours, and at varying
stages of completion, stood against every available wall. In the middle of the room was a substantial workbench, scattered with hammers, nails, lathes and all manner of carpentry tools. The floor was covered with wood shavings and curls and sawdust. The
walls were adorned with a huge array of brass and metal fixings, hinges, rims, name plates, handles and all the coffin paraphernalia you could think of.

All this looked perfectly normal to Pin and when Mr Gaufridus led him to another room, he could not be blamed for expecting more of the
same.

‘Here we are,’ Goddfrey had said proudly, opening the door. ‘The
Cella
Moribundi.
The waiting room of the dead.’

Pin stood in the
doorway and looked in. The concept of a
Cella Moribundi
, a room
where the dead lay before being buried, was by no means alien to him or any other Urbs Umidian. It was a long-held tradition in the City, of now unknown origin, that a body must lie for three days and nights before burial. There was a saying in Urbs
Umida: ‘If in doubt, see three days out.’ Pin thought back to his mother’s death and the long hours he and his father had spent sitting with her corpse in their lodging house. They had not been able to afford Mr Gaufridus.

The room itself was smaller than the workshop and considerably cooler. In the centre there was a high table (vacant at that time) above
which was suspended a peculiar mechanism consisting of strings and cogs, wheels and levers, and a recently oiled chain. There were numerous shelves and a set of narrow scientific drawers, displayed above which was a collection of what could only be
described as instruments of torture.

‘What on earth is all this?’ asked Pin, looking around in amazement. This was unlike any
Cella Moribundi
he had ever heard of.

Goddfrey frowned, by which I mean his left and right eyebrows moved fractionally towards each other.

‘‘‘All this’’ as you put it, is the
result of years of work on my part for the benefit of
the living and the dead.’

Pin was hardly any more enlightened.

‘Er, how?’

‘My dear boy,’ said Goddfrey through his gritted teeth, ‘imagine the most terrible thing you can and then think how it
would be if it was ten times worse.’

Pin thought for a moment. ‘To fall in the Foedus and to swallow some of her water,’ he said with a degree of prescience.

‘Hmm,’ murmured Mr Gaufridus, ‘that indeed is a terrible thing, but can you imagine something worse?’

Pin could – it involved Barton Gumbroot – and he told him, but it still wasn’t quite bad enough. Finally Mr Gaufridus
leaned close and supplied the answer, in the form of a question.

‘Boy, can you imagine anything worse than being
buried alive
?’

Pin felt a shiver ripple down his spine and he shook his head. Mr Gaufridus appeared not to be watching because he continued unabated,
circling the table and waving his arms about in a manner that was at odds with his expression.

‘Imagine
waking from a peaceful sleep to find yourself in complete and utter darkness. You reach out for the candle
that you know is on the table beside you, but your hand is halted in mid-air by something hard on every side. You try to move but you can barely turn over. Confusion sets in before the terrible realization that this isn’t a dream, that you
aren’t in bed, but
in your coffin
.’

Pin’s teeth began to chatter. The temperature really was significantly lower in this room. Mr Gaufridus, however, showed no sign
of stopping. Not a trace of emotion was evident on his face, but his eyes seemed to sparkle. There is no denying that he derived a strange sort of pleasure from reliving in part the nightmare of his youthful ordeal.

‘What agonies you would suffer, lying there, hardly able to move. Doubtless you would try to stay calm, to conserve the air,
because you would still hope that someone was going to find you. But as the hours, the days passed by, you would realize that no one can hear your shouts, your screams, your sobs. Imagine knowing that only two fates await you – death by lack of
oxygen or death by starvation. You would clutch at your throat, gasping for every breath. Then as the final hours went by you would
be gripped by hunger that can never be sated and by a terrible thirst that cannot be
quenched.’

He turned to Pin. ‘Tell me, can you imagine anything worse than that?’

Pin, convinced that Mr Gaufridus must be planning to bury him alive, was backing towards the door.

‘I . . . I can’t,’ he replied.

‘Good,’ said Mr Gaufridus, ‘then you will understand why I have made ‘‘all this’’. True, there
are those out there who build coffins with alarms and bells and flags, but not I. It is too late to ring a bell when you are buried. The damage has been done, not to your body but to your head. I, Goddfrey Gaufridus, have addressed the real root of the
problem.’

‘Which is?’ asked Pin shakily, still eyeing this strangely cool character with deep suspicion.

‘That a person should be dead before he is buried.’

‘Oh,’ said Pin. So he is
not
going to bury me alive, he thought, but it was little
comfort.

Mr Gaufridus continued. ‘You will, in the course of your employment with me, have to know how to use all of this apparatus.’
As he spoke he took Pin by the elbow
and manoeuvred him towards the table. ‘Perhaps you could oblige?’ he said, and he helped Pin up and laid him down.

‘This is one of the first machines I ever designed and I have to say I am very pleased with it.’ He pulled off Pin’s
boot and sock and slipped a ring of leather around his big toe and tightened it. Poor Pin, his suspicion now replaced by utter bewilderment, tried to raise himself up on his elbows, but Mr Gaufridus, oblivious to his discomfort, pushed him back down.

‘Do you think if you were merely asleep that this might wake you?’

As he spoke Mr Gaufridus reached up and began rhythmically pulling down on the overhead handle. The cogs and wheels began to turn and
Pin’s foot started jerking violently upwards in a terrible syncopation.

‘It might,’ said Pin, raising his voice to be heard above the creaking hinges and the rattling of the chain. ‘But I am
sure that I would have to be in a
very
deep sleep for someone to think I was dead in the first place.’

‘Hmm.’ Mr Gaufridus was thoughtful. It was rare he had the opportunity to test his inventions on a live body and he intended
to make the most of it. ‘Then let us try this,’ he declared. He opened a slim drawer in the chest
behind him and withdrew a rather long needle with which he poked, quite firmly it must be said, the exposed
sole of Pin’s foot.

‘Aaaarrrgh,’ shouted Pin, and he leaped off the table, forgetting that he was still attached to the toe-pulling machine. The
result could have been catastrophic except that Mr Gaufridus grabbed him before he could bring the whole machine down from the ceiling. Wordlessly, though tutting occasionally, Mr Gaufridus extricated him from the tangle of leather and strings and
chains. After that Pin declined to take part in any more demonstrations, refusing the tongue-yanker with a firmly closed mouth, and insisted that Mr Gaufridus merely
tell
him about the equipment. Whether he was
disappointed or angry, or even equivocal about the matter, could not be gleaned from Mr Gaufridus’s visage, but he agreed to Pin’s terms and the two of them then spent the next hour examining all sorts of instruments and devices designed to
ensure that the deceased was just that, and not sleeping or in a coma or drunk.

The devices were many and varied. It seemed that Mr Gaufridus had run the gamut of pain-inducing practices that might be usefully
employed to waken the dead. These
stretched from the uncomfortable – toe-pulling and ear-tugging – to the rather more painful – knuckle-whacking and shouting in the ear – to the unimaginably
excruciating, details of which can be found in Mr Gaufridus’s book on the subject,
Dead or Alive?
(a few copies remain in legible condition). Even the waters of the Foedus were put to good use. When bottled
they increased beyond recognition in strength and odour, and Mr Gaufridus was quite sure that one whiff was enough to wake the dead. As he went from one invention to another, Mr Gaufridus expounded his theory that a dead body should be lighter than a
live one on account of the soul having left it.

‘How much would a soul weigh?’ asked Pin.

‘A very good question, young man,’ said Mr Gaufridus. ‘It is easy enough to construct a set of scales, of course, but
to have a person on them at the exact moment life leaves their body, that is the difficulty.’

Pin was confident by now that Mr Gaufridus was just the sort of person to solve such a problem. By the end of the morning, despite his
initial doubts, Pin had to admire Mr Gaufridus’s determination that none should be buried alive. It was a lofty ideal indeed. Mr Gaufridus, encouraged
by Pin’s curiosity and intelligent questioning, was happy
to offer him the job.

‘Apart from watching bodies,’ asked Pin, ‘what else exactly will I be doing?’

Mr Gaufridus thought for a moment. ‘All sorts, my dear fellow, all sorts.’