Oisín McGann - Ancient Appetites

'But there is one more thing to consider,' he went on. 'Because if this man here was a Wildenstern Patriarch – though evidently not a popular one – and he regains his faculties, then he will be by far the oldest living male in the family line.'

Clancy turned to look at Nate and Gerald. He could see that with everything that had gone on, they had not even considered this.

'He could claim the family' Nate said. 'He could take over from Father.'

Outside, dawn was starting to creep across the eastern sky.

Francie shifted around restlessly in the narrow bed, unable to settle. Beside him, his bedmate, Patrick, tugged angrily on the thin blanket.

'Francie, will yeh stop yer fiddlin'!' he muttered. 'Some of us're tryin' to sleep, y'know!'

Heaving a frustrated sigh, Francie rolled out of bed and felt around in the dark for his clothes, which lay in an untidy pile on the floor. He was half dead with exhaustion but knew he was not going to sleep. He had been unable to doze for more than an hour at a time since the explosion. His nerves were raw, he felt sick and he was cold all the time. Memories of the disaster and the men who had died constantly forced their way into his thoughts. Guilt and fear washed over him in waves. This was the third night now and still he couldn't find peace.

It was still raining outside; the storm had been blowing for two nights and there had been less work to do. Normally he would have been happy about this, but now he found that work offered the only relief for his uneasy mind. He couldn't light the lamp with all the others asleep, and in his weary daze he managed to pull both braces onto one shoulder and put his hat on backwards before he straightened himself out.

Hugging his coat tightly around him against the night's chill, he crept down to the hay stalls at the far end of the long attic, opened the trap door and, hanging from the ledge, dropped down into the darkness and the pile of hay that lay below. Brushing himself down, he walked through the stable, listening to the breathing of the horses. Some of them were awake, moving nervously as the storm blustered overhead.

He had returned to the stables after the explosion looking as if he'd been buried alive. There was no way he would have been able to wash his clothes in time, and he only had a spare shirt; no other trousers, boots or jacket. He had considered fleeing the grounds, but his father's words had stayed with him. They had to act normal. Francie had still been trying to come up with an excuse for the state of his clothes when Hennessy had walked in. The old man had taken one look at him, strode forward and wrapped his arms around him, hugging him tightly.

'Francie, little Francie,' the old man had cried. 'We thought yeh were dead when we couldn't find yeh. Thank God yer all right!'

That was when Francie had found out about what had happened at the cemetery. Hennessy – who, despite his gruff manner, was very protective of his lads – assumed that the stable boy was in a state because he had been in the wrong place in the graveyard when the ground erupted. And Francie let him go on thinking that.

His eyes were adjusting to the gloom and he ran his fingers along the wooden walls of the stalls. Being with the animals relaxed him a little and he whispered comforting words to some of them, reaching over to stroke their noses. He had been visiting the new engimal regularly and was making his way towards the velocycles stall when a sound from ahead of him made him start. A tall figure had come from nowhere and was walking through the darkness towards him. The man had a candle in his hand, but the light had not yet reached Francie. Not wanting to explain why he was up and about, he carefully opened the nearest door and slipped in. A warm damp nose nuzzled his ear and he reached up to scratch the horse's chin.

The glow from the candle passed over his head and he heard the side door of the building open.

'There you are. You're late,' a man said softly.

He spoke like a gentleman and Francie assumed it was one of the Wildensterns. He couldn't tell which one.

'Sorry sor,' Old Hennessy's voice replied. 'There wuz a watchman out on the lawn.'

'You don't have to call me "sir" here, when there's nobody around,' the gentleman chided him warmly. 'But you're right. All this new security's going to make things difficult. The place has turned into a bloody barracks since the attack on the funeral. The inside of the house is almost as bad, what with our efforts to raise the dead and all that. We'll just have to concoct an excuse for you to move around with more freedom. Leave it with me; I'll come up with something.'

'Aye,' Hennessy replied.

'And for God's sake, don't get caught by any of those thugs standing guard. They'll shoot on sight they're so on edge at the moment. Don't do anything to make them suspicious – we're taking enough chances as it is. The family will cover up my crimes, but they won't forgive you yours. Come on, let's get out of here…'

The door opened and the sound of the storm drowned out the rest of the conversation. The door closed quietly and the light disappeared. Francie peeked over the wall to check they were gone and then came out of the stall. His mind was filled with questions: Who was the stranger? What was Hennessy doing talking to him in the stable in the middle of the night? What were they up to? What did the stranger mean about raising the dead? But the question that was really nagging him was how the gentleman had got in. If he'd come in through the big double doors at the front, Francie was certain that he would have seen him. Creeping down to the front of the building, he felt the ground at the door. It was dry. The doors had not been opened.

He straightened up and looked around at the stone walls on either side. Some of the older lads said that Wildenstern Hall was riddled with secret passages. Francie wondered if it was true – and if one of those passages happened to lead to the stables.

N athaniel lay awake, staring at the ceiling. Even in the dark, he could see the coving around the edges and the oil painting that hung above his bed. It portrayed an eight-wheeled behemoth found in North America, now living in the Wildensterns' zoo. Gazing at it upside down, he remembered the excitement of seeing it when it had first arrived, tugging at its chains, steaming belligerently and snarling at everyone. He was thirteen and it had been the scariest, most exciting thing he had ever experienced.

Until the night a corpse had bitten his hand. The graze from the velocycle accident had almost fully healed, but he could still feel the brush of those teeth over his raw flesh. He was unable to get the bog bodies off his mind.

And he still was no closer to finding that goddamned, bloody Babylon either. Thinking the message might have been a code, he had broken the letters up and tried re-form them into other words, but it did not seem to be an anagram – nor, for that matter, was it a numerical code or any other system of encryption that he or Gerald could think of. But then, how could they tell without some kind of key?

He had questioned Winters at length, but with no satisfaction. The footman was telling the same story as everyone else. It could be the truth, or it could be Edgar forcing the servants to maintain a cover-up according to the Rules of Ascension. Nate's father didn't trust him enough yet to share those kinds of responsibilities.

But Nate was sure now that the message wasn't a code. Babylon was not where it should have been and he had several servants trying to find out what had happened to it. And anyway, what did the message mean? If he found Babylon, how would it lead him to Marcus's killer? Was the little scamp carrying another note? Was the murderer to be found in the same place? Did it even have anything to do with the murder at all?