The Bone Magician (9 page)
Authors: F. E. Higgins
From where he was standing sheltering in the doorway of the Nimble Finger, Pin could easily read the discarded handbill that
lay at his feet, one of many that littered the gutters.
The Gluttonous Beast. Deodonatus Snoad – Pin spat at the mere mention of his name – had written of him recently. And the
Bone Magician . . . That could be interesting. Pin had a few pennies in his pocket – he had left Barton’s owing rent – but did he want to spend them here? The decision was made for him when a large shadow fell over him. It was Constable
Coggley.
‘And what might you be up to? You can’t hang about ’ere you know.’ He peered at Pin curiously. ‘Do I know
you?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Pin, shrinking back.
‘But I do,’ said Coggley, taking him by the chin and forcing his head upward. ‘You’re that Pin Carpue. You
can’t deny your queer eyes. What you up to now, lad. Causing trouble?’
‘No,’ said Pin indignantly, jerking his face away. He pushed against the heavy inn door and it yielded slowly.
‘Have you seen your father?’ called Coggley after him. ‘You’d better tell me if you have. He’s still a
wanted man.’
‘I know,’ muttered Pin, ‘I know,’ and he stepped inside.
The
Nimble Finger Inn was one of many taverns that had occupied the same spot on the Bridge for centuries. It was a good
spot, exactly at the halfway point, which meant people could feel that they hadn’t crossed to the other side. For if the northerners were reluctant to venture south, the southerners had no great desire to venture north. Whatever its name and
whoever its owner, one thing hadn’t changed down the years: the quality of the clientele. It was often said that if you were a visitor to Urbs Umida, all you had to do was step inside the Nimble Finger to see a true representation of everything the
City had to offer. It was all in there: the dirt, the smell and the good citizens themselves; the robbers, the swindlers, the cheats, the liars, the fakes and the forgers. Northerners and southerners alike and all treated equally by Betty Peggotty. Well,
as equally as their purses allowed.
The floor was covered with a mixture of sawdust and straw and mud and stains of a sanguinary nature. The noise was deafening –
singing, shouting, screeching, laughter. And the smells. Oh, those smells. To Pin they were like a riotous odoriferous cacophony and he breathed deeply. All the excitement of the inn came to him on the air and he savoured it. There was gambling going on,
he could smell
the tension; there was plotting afoot, he could smell the fear; and there was jollity and excitement. He smelt it all: the blood, the sweat, the salty tears, the drink, the fish from the dockworkers, and
always the exotic aroma of faraway lands from the sailors. There was even a hint of love – only a hint, mind; the Nimble Finger was not really a courting sort of place. Having inhaled his fill he turned to the man next to him.
‘The Bone Magician?’ he asked. A grunt and a gnarled finger pointed him in the direction of the far side of the tavern where
he could see a set of stairs. A man stood at the top outside an open door. Pin ascended, his curiosity awakening.
‘That’ll be sixpence,’ said the fellow on the door. ‘And you can ask a question.’
‘Whom shall I ask?’
‘Madame de Bona.’
‘Oh,’ said Pin. He could see into the room and it was already full of people.
‘Well, hand it over then,’ said the fellow impatiently. ‘They shuts the door at eight.’
Pin found himself standing at the back of a crowd in the darkened room. Feet were shuffling and muttered conversations
were going on all around him and snatches came to his alert ears.
‘I ’eard as she tells the future like, this Bona woman.’
‘I suppose she can see it, being as she’s passed over ’n’ that.’
‘’Ere, listen to this, God strike me down if I tell a lie, but Molly, you know ’er what lives opposite, well she
asked about ’er poor Fred, you know what fell in the Foedus the other day.’
‘Pushed weren’t ’e? Some finks she did it.’
‘Wotever. But she says to ’er, the Bona skelington, that ’e was ’appy and waiting for ’er. And
don’t you know, she died the next day and went to join ’im.’
‘Never! In the Foedus?’
‘Wot? Nah, not in the river, in the grave.’
‘Wotever, there’s plenty in the Foedus these days, with that fruit killer around.’
Pin squeezed through the crowd to the front where he could see a raised platform. On a low table a foot or so from the edge there was
a shallow coffin. It was roughly hewn, with a badly fitting lid, and Pin thought of Mr
Gaufridus with a smile. It wasn’t up to his exacting standards. At the back of the platform was a four-panelled screen and Pin
could see movement behind it.
Suddenly the crowd quietened. A man, dressed from head to toe in a black gown, stepped out from behind the screen. A silver brooch at
his throat pinned in place a dark velvet cloak that fell in folds from his shoulders. The heavy material, beautifully decorated with vines and fruit stitched in amber and gold, flapped around his ankles as he walked to reveal its shimmering scarlet
lining. His shoes, visible under the hem of his gown, were also of a gold fabric with a slight heel and tasselled toes that pointed upwards. With each step he took the tassels rustled quietly.
His face was concealed in the main by a large hood that fell over his forehead, shielding his eyes. His eyebrows were thick and grey
and his pale skin glowed unnaturally. He wore a moustache on his upper lip, each end waxed and carefully arranged on either side of his mouth, and a narrow white beard sprouted from the tip of his chin. His sleeves were so long that when his hands hung
at his sides, his fingernails were barely visible and his slender wrists were seen only when he stretched out his arms.
Then a second person came around the screen, also hooded and cloaked, in a dark cloth of plain weave, its only ornament
being the gold toggles that fastened it. The figure stepped gracefully from the platform and began walking slowly through the audience, swinging a peardrop bottle on a silver chain rhythmically back and forth. A smoky mist of sweet perfume curled upwards
in a lazy spiral from its slender neck. Pin’s heart began to race and his knees began to shake. He knew that smell.
‘Welcome, all,’ said the man finally. ‘My name is Benedict Pantagus and I am the Bone Magician.’
I sit at this very moment in a dark corner in the Nimble Finger. I have pennies enough for a small ale and I have secured
an uneven table whereupon I am endeavouring to write an account of the night’s entertainment. What a city of trickery this is! Only days ago I thought I had seen the strangest it could offer. I had not considered there could be more. And now, such
a night I’ve had in the Nimble Finger, confronted once more by the people who drugged me and left me insensible in the Cella Moribundi. Can you imagine how I felt when I realized who they were? I should have been riven with fury, but instead, with
every inhalation of the aromas in the room, I was suffused with peace and calm to bear witness
again, upright and awake this time, to a most intriguing performance. And this is what I saw.
Mr Pantagus, after his introduction, returned to the head of the coffin.
‘My good people,’ he said, ‘a Bone Magician is born, not made. I have inherited my skills with the dead from a long line
of Bone Magicians. I from my father, and he from his, and he from his. And so it goes on through the centuries right back to ancient times. The world might be a different place today, with the advance of philosophies and sciences, but be assured, there
is still room in this day and age for those of us who can bring the dead back to life
.’
At this there was a ripple of assenting murmurs. Mr Pantagus gestured towards the coffin
.
‘I am a privileged man. I have been charged with the care of this coffin within which lies the skeleton of one Madame Celestine de
Bona. I ask now that you remain silent while I perform the ceremony that will bring about her revitalization.’
Juno, whom I now knew the second figure to be, quenched the candles around the walls, leaving for light
only the four thick beeswax pillars on tall iron holders, one at each corner of the platform. Mr Pantagus removed the lid of the coffin and laid it aside. Then, by means of a series of internal latches, he dropped each side of the coffin
to rest flat on the table, exposing the box’s grisly contents.
A hush descended on the room and we all leaned forward as one, our curiosity stronger than our fear, to see more clearly what it was before
us. For there, in full view of this awestruck crowd, lay the arid brown bones of Madame de Bona.
I watched, awash in a confusion of emotions, open-mouthed in amazement, as Benedict Pantagus began a series of actions that I
recognized immediately as identical to those I had witnessed so recently in the Cella Moribundi. And I smelled again cinnamon and myrrh, anise and artemisia, as I waited with mounting excitement for the inevitable.
The skeleton began to stir.
A shudder went through the fleshless frame from skull to toe, rattling its bones. Its jaw hung open slightly and its grinning mouth emitted
a whining groan, the like of
which I had only imagined in my nightmares but had never thought to hear. The crowd gasped and shrank away from the vile unearthly creature before them. There was a shrill cry at the back of
the room and a young lady collapsed. Such was the entrancement of the people that she was left to come to on her own on the flo or.
If, as Mr Pantagus claimed, the skeleton had been a lady, little remained to indicate this except perhaps to the eye of an expert
. She rose slowly, like a ship on the swell of a wave, and came forward until she was sitting bolt upright. She placed her hands on the coffin sides for support, her long bony fingers clicking on the wood. Finally she opened her
surprisingly toothy jaws fully in what appeared to be a yawn.
Mr Pantagus had our full attention as his deep and sonorous voice resonated in the tense atmosphere
.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you the revitalized bones of Madame Celestine de Bona
.’
We took this as our cue to applaud, doing so loudly and with an unfettered enthusiasm. Mr Pantagus’s beard twitched and I believe he
smiled briefly.
‘My thanks,’ he said graciously and he gave a shallow bow. ‘Now let us move quickly on to our real
purpose. Madame de Bona, alive and well as she appears, will not be with us for long
. As you are aware, your sixpence allows one question. Perhaps you wish to know the fate of a loved one who has also passed over to the
other side
. Or maybe you have a question about yourself. Whatever the problem, Madame de Bona will attempt to provide the answer.’
The people murmured to one another, too nervous to speak directly to this strange Bone Magician and his skeleton friend
.
‘Surely you are not shy?’ he asked, almost playfully. ‘Please, consider the feelings of Madame de Bona. When she was
alive she was one of the world’s greatest sooth sayers. Do not deny her the pleasure of doing the same from beyond the grave
.’
His entreaty seemed to work and a young man shuffled forward. His cheeks were flushed
. ‘Is it true
that she, Madame de Bona, can foretell the future?’
A revitalized body is blessed with foresight, indeed,’‘ replied Mr Pantagus. ‘Have you a question for her?’
‘Tell me,
Madame de Bona,’ he said nervously, ‘will I ever fall in love?’
The silence was so thick it could have been split in two with an axe. Madame de Bona cocked her head to one side and it was easy to imagine
that if there had been eyeballs in those sockets, they would have been rolled towards heaven in contemplation. She leaned ever so slightly in the young man’s direction and replied in a voice that surely came only from the underworld,
‘Yes.’
This single word excited the crowd greatly. I cannot deny that I too was quite moved, and the lad was pulled back roughly before he had a
chance to say another word (I would have asked ‘when?’) by a large rotund man who went right up to the platform and put out his hand.