The Book of Bones (8 page)

A clinging white thing swung out at me, enveloping me. A slimy, faceless thing. A ghost!

Screaming, I took a step back and collapsed into Waldo's arms. My heart was pumping like a steam engine and I was trembling uncontrollably. I couldn't get
the thing off me, it was damp and limp, sucking at my face.

“Help me.”

“You're a goose,” Waldo murmured, holding me tight. “A silly goose!”

More ghostly shapes were fluttering in the dark, careering toward me out of the shadows.

“It's attacking,” I wailed, trying to shake off the damp, clinging poltergeist.

“You're the first person ever to have been overpowered by a sheet.”

“What!?”

“This is the laundry room, Kit!” Isaac stepped forward and held his candle high, illuminating a mass of bed linen drying on clothes lines.

Something
was
thrumming in the darkness, but it was only a mechanical engine. I saw my friends' faces—they were all grinning delightedly. Even Rachel's eyes were sparkling. Embarrassed, I released myself from Waldo and thrust off the wet sheet.

“Come on,” I said briskly, turning away. “We can't stand about chatting. We've only got a little time before Mrs. Glee comes to wake us.”

I heard the others giggling behind me as I led the way down the passage. Frankly, I was not in the mood to see the funny side, for the overpowering heat, the oppressive
rattle of the steam engines and the towering iron walls were all working on my nerves. I was scared, down here in the belly of the Baker Brothers' beast. Every shadow struck me as sinister, and I knew the others felt the same, which was why they'd welcomed the chance for a laugh at my expense. Without another word I continued down the corridor, the others following. They may make light of my bravery, but I noticed no one, not even Waldo, seized the chance to take the lead.

Turning a bend, we came to a giant space. Above us reared an iron monster choking with pistons and valves pounding away in regular rhythm. Funnels and tubes stretched to the roof, different counters and dials whirred. I could make out four pistons, and cylinders spiraling away to the ends of the room, but frankly could make no sense of it all. Isaac, however, burst into enthusiastic explanation of how we were in the engine room and over there was the screw propeller, which along with its twin on the other side bore the great steamer forward. He was embarking on further explanations about cylinders and drive shafts, though we were rather bewildered, when Waldo put a stop to it.

“Come on, there must be more down here.”

It was infernally hot. Though we all wore the lightest clothes, we were perspiring and red with heat. My cheeks were on fire; sweat trickled down my back till
my blouse was damp and sticky. Unbelievably it was becoming even hotter as we moved deeper into the hold, and now a great roaring noise engulfed us and here was a red, ravenous beast.

“The stokehold,” Isaac murmured.

Young men, begrimed with dirt, stripped to their vests, were feeding the stokehold with great shovels of coal, and the beast responded by dancing red and hot. More and more black dust disappeared down the maw of the furnace. In an exhausting waltz the men fed her, scuttling crablike between huge bunkers and the two roaring fires. They were Chinese coolies for the most part, though the head stoker who was bawling orders was a Lascar. They took no notice of us, though we were practically among them. There was something hypnotic about the way they worked. As though they had worked for a long time and would continue to do so till they dropped with fatigue. Nothing else mattered down here, but the coal and the billowing flames—or so I thought.

One of the men turned. The way he looked at us, we could have been ghosts. His eyes swiveled over us, one by one, bulging with some emotion I could not understand. His teammates were working in unison, shoveling and filling, but he stood stock still, frozen to the spot. It was Rachel who sensed what was wrong.

“He's scared. The poor man's terrified.”

“Of
us
?” I said. “Why?”

“I don't know, but it's obvious he's frightened.”

“Come on, Kit! Let's get out of here.” Waldo tugged at me, and we all stumbled away, turning right and climbing up the stairs to the first floor. Here there was an iron door, which we'd ignored on our way down. Now I had to pass through, and so I seized the bolt and turned it. Isaac's candle flame showed us nothing, just empty rooms, barred and bolted with mortice and tenon locks. The smell was dank, disgusting—of ordure and something fleshily decaying.

“Probably the pens where they keep livestock,” Waldo said.

There were an awful lot of these empty pens. We walked past one after another, iron cages with wire-mesh walls and doors. Some of them had iron hooks embedded in the walls, which I guessed were for tethering cattle. The floors had been hosed clean, but here and there was still a bit of straw or a dark spot—dried blood, I guessed. They were gruesome things, these cages. I felt sick that I could have eaten animals kept in these conditions.

“I'm definitely off meat for now,” Rachel murmured. “What do you call those people who only eat carrots and things?”

“Vegetarians,” said Isaac, his voice sounding sick and muffled.

“I'm turning vegetarian.”

“Me too,” I said, hurriedly pushing onward. Finally, thank goodness, we were past the cages and into something else. This was a huge cargo hold full of cases and boxes stacked in careful order. Here was something far more cheerful. Bottles of Champagne marked “Oudinot” and over there dozens upon dozens of boxes of potted meats—mustard, calves-foot jelly and pale ale. Every dainty that the homesick imperialist could crave. In another section were stout oak boxes, banded and locked with bronze clasps.

“Can you open one of those?” I asked Isaac. “They look important.”

He had already bent down and was fiddling away with his bits of wire. The lock clicked open. I seized it and Waldo yanked open the container. Not easy, as it was heavy. Inside was a puzzling sight: the chest was subdivided into numerous partitions, each of which contained a ball the size of an apple, wrapped in fine material. The balls gave off a pungent, sickly sweet smell.

“Mothballs?” Rachel burst out. “Why do they lock up their mothballs? They aren't made of gold.”

I didn't answer, although I already knew. Judging from Waldo and Isaac's sudden silence, they too had guessed what the chests contained.

“Come on. Nothing important,” I said, backing away
from the chest. “Lock it back up, Isaac. Let's get out of here.”

But Rachel let out a little gasp and I knew she had guessed. “I know what it is,” she said, her voice steady. “You don't have to protect me. It's opium from India—smuggled for all those poor Chinese who are addicted to it.”

Waldo had put his hands in his pockets and stood slouching. “Girls,” he said, adopting a lordly tone, “you have to understand something.”

“What?” I snapped.

“This is business. Pure business. Opium is sold to the Chinese because they want it. We do nothing wrong in trading freely in it, for we receive tea in return. Opium is a huge business worth millions of pounds a year. Some say it is the biggest contributor to the Empire's coffers. Many of our merchant princes made their fortunes in it.”

“It brings such misery,” Rachel said quietly. “I've heard people sicken on it. Lose interest in all work and suchlike—and can die within a few years.”

“It is the Chinaman's choice after all. If a fool chooses to take poison, you cannot blame the man who sold it to him,” Waldo declared.

This was true enough. But somehow I didn't feel easy as we left that place, walking back through the great empty pens. Waldo may have talked with such confidence about the benefits to trade of opium, but
I don't think he had made the full connection. Now I finally understood the purpose of this steamer. It wasn't merely to ship luxuries for the gentleman of the Orient. It wasn't just to provide the great merchants of Dent and Son and Jardine Matheson with duck liver pâté and foie gras. It was a ship that traded in flesh. In Bombay the
Mandalay
had picked up opium; now we were sailing through the Malacca Straits with it. We would take this cargo to Shanghai, exchange it for silver—and then fill those great pens with bonded laborers for the factories and railroads of the New World.

I had made a mistake. The cages were not used to transport animals. The iron rings in the walls weren't to hook cattle, but to punish disobedient slaves. Those dark patches on the walls could well be dried blood.

Human blood.

Up on the quarter-deck I heard it again. The wailing had first woken me back in the Bakers' fortress, Hadden Castle. Those cries of distress had punctuated my dreams on the long weeks of this voyage. I heard it again now as we silently returned to our quarters. I didn't know about the others, but I was desperate to get back to our cabin. I longed for clean white sheets and a chance to close my eyes and rid my mind of the disturbing images we'd seen down below.

That awful crying.

I had thought I had dreamed it up, that it was a figment of my imagination. I had thought the wailing was made by a ghost. But now I heard it quite clearly, coming from behind an iron door.

“Someone's crying!” I said, halting. “Over there.”

The others had frozen too. For some reason, I had never mentioned the wailing. No one had. But now from my friends' faces I realized that I wasn't the only one to have heard it. Isaac got out his lock-pick and went
to work. The Chubb lock clicked loose and the door opened a fraction.

The cabin was dark, an apish shape looming in the corner. The wailing stopped for a second as we entered, then resumed, as high pitched as the whine of a boiling kettle. I could sense shuffling. Something was looking at us.

“Hurry!” I snapped to Isaac, who was fumbling with the damp matches to light a new candle.

There was a smell of sulfur but no light. Isaac finally managed to strike a match, a weak flame. Our wavering candlelight illuminated the scene.

A Chinese child propped on pillows. A waif, no more than seven or eight or nine years old. Its shrunken limbs were shrouded by a white sheet. The face was wide with delicate lips and slanting, almond-shaped eyes. Sick eyes, full of a milky pus in which magnified pupils hung dark. I was reminded of Pippin, the Baker Brothers' poisoned Labrador.

Awful as that had been, this was far worse. Repelled, but consumed by curiosity, I moved closer.

The child's skull had been shaved bald as an egg. Black lines had been painted on the scalp, dividing it into wavy, irregular sections, each of which was numbered. Some of the sections were filled with spidery writing. MORALITY fitted into 21, TIME into 31, PERCEPTION into 27. It
was hard to make out the writing for a contraption had been fitted over the head. It was a cage, made of wide copper bands, held together by thick bolts. Probes went down to the head and curly wires connected the
thing
to another contraption, which stood on a tripod near the bed. There were batteries gleaming on the tripod—and it was making a hissing sound as needles moved.

“What abomination is this?” Rachel asked in an agonized whisper.

No one replied. We were all silenced by horror.

The child was looking at us, but without
seeing
. That awful wailing whistle had halted when we came with our candle into the room. But now it started again, redoubled. A chill entered us, which blew away the tropical heat and enfolded our bones in ice.

“I think I can guess,” Isaac said at last, staring at the conscious sleeper.

“What is it?”

“Phrenology.”

“What?”

“You know, bumpology. They call themselves scientists, those quacks who believe they can read people's minds by the bumps on their heads.”

“I've heard of it,” said Waldo. “I think my mother is keen on it—”

“She would be,” Isaac interrupted scornfully. He
pointed to a pair of cruel-looking metal tongs that had a measuring scale along one axis. “That's a craniometer. Spiritualists and phrenologists often work together. They think they're uncovering the secrets of the mind.”

“How?” Rachel asked.

“I don't know,” Isaac shrugged. “They think one bump on the head means you are good at words, another that you're a vicious criminal. It's all nonsense.”

“They're treating this child like a lab rat!” hissed Waldo. “They're experimenting on a living
human
, in the name of this phrenology thing!”

I didn't care what it was called. I wanted it to stop. It was awful, the child's cry. Despairing, but at the same time automatic, like a whistle. Punctuated all along by the busy chitchattering of the needle in that bed of wires and batteries attached to the dummy-shaped tripod. Call it science or progress or what you will, this smelt of evil. I sat down on the bed. As I came closer I saw it was a girl, who continued to gaze forward, immobile, unknowing. Gently I drew down the sheet and took her hand, which was lying limp, crossed over her chest. Her hand was frozen, a lump of ice. She didn't resist or show any sign that she felt me pressing her fingers, willing her to life.

Suddenly, the girl sat forward on her pillows, struggling for air. Like someone drowning who, gasping, breaks the surface of the water. Every muscle, every nerve in her
body was tense. I could feel her fingers rigid as metal. Her eyes were drilling into mine—
seeing
. I backed away because her eyes were disconcerting. I noticed one was gray, the other green.

She spoke rapidly, her mouth moving in a gabble of Mandarin Chinese. At least that is what I believe it was, for we understood not a single word. Even Isaac, who is brilliant with languages, shook his head.

“No,” I said, my voice breaking. “I can't speak your tongue.”