Oisín McGann - Ancient Appetites

Nathaniel found himself staring into the grey, filmy eyes of a man who had once been a corpse.

'My God!' he whispered.

Gerald pushed him forward and together they approached the huddled old man. Despite his frail state, he looked extraordinarily well. His skin was dry and creased with wrinkles, but it was no longer the colour of the peat bog; blue veins were visible beneath, and bone and muscle had redeveloped to the point where he could move by himself to a small degree. His eyes were clearly working – they moved about, trying to focus on the faces around him; however, Nate doubted that the old man could see very well. It was a noble-looking face; long, with high cheekbones and a prominent brow over a narrow, hooked nose. His hair was a bleached brown, but there was an inch of black at the roots. His original hair colour was growing back.

'He said his name is Hugo,' Gerald said in a low voice. 'I haven't been able to get much sense out of him though. He's very confused – as you'd expect from someone who's been dead for centuries. The two women are awake too, but they've just been lying there babbling so far.'

Nate looked over at them, lying in their beds. He could see that their eyes were open and their lips were moving, their heads rolling weakly from side to side. The second man still lay unconscious, the slight rise and fall of his chest the only sign that he too was alive.

'Elizabeth,' the old man said abruptly in a feeble rasping voice, reaching out for the black-haired woman in the bed next to his. 'Oh, what have they done to thee? What have the beasts done?'

Nate caught him before he fell forward and gently pushed him upright. The woman turned her head and looked in the direction of the voice, mumbling incoherently.

'Do you know who this is?' Nate asked him.

'It is Elizabeth, my sister.' Hugo gestured to her with his hand. 'Is she dying?'

'Quite the opposite, in fact,' Gerald told him. 'She is…You are all making miraculous recoveries. There are four of you altogether. Can you tell us anything about the others? Can you tell us what happened to you?'

Hugo looked round at the other beds, his underdeveloped eyes squinting at the shapes.

'There is a red-haired woman and another man… a huge man,' Nate prompted him.

'Brunhilde… my younger sister,' Hugo gasped. 'And Brutus, my brother. Ahhh, Brutus… they hated him most of all. What a warrior he was! He fought like a lion before he was overcome! He must have cut down a dozen of the vermin – no… more. He was like a mighty lion.'

It was the longest speech he had uttered so far and it seemed to leave him exhausted. Gerald and Nathaniel looked at each other.

'Can you remember who attacked you?' Nate pressed the ancient man. 'You were found with gold stuffed down your throat. Can you tell us what happened?'

'Peasants,' Hugo spat, his face screwing up with hatred. 'Heretic peasants led by a mad monk. We were betrayed by our guards and by our servants. They came in the night like rats and took us in our beds.'

'Some things never change,' Gerald quipped, taking out his cigarette case.

Hugo's hand went to his throat as he struggled to remember. 'I… I fought, but the cowards had taken my sword. I was held down… Some of them wanted to burn us. Then the monk…' His voice drifted off. 'The monk said we should go into the ground. But not before they had made us suffer.'

He went quiet for a moment, tired and out of breath. His head hung as if his mind was lost in the moment of his death, centuries ago.

'We all cursed them; we showed no fear of the vermin,' he continued in his weak rasp. 'Brunhilde bit the nose off one of them, and we laughed at them then! But they hurt us… for days they put us through pain.' He paused, lifting his head. 'And then they threw us into deep holes and tossed soil on our faces.' He went silent again. 'And now we are alive again. Truly we have been blessed with a miracle. Only God himself could have done such a thing.'

'You were wearing this when we found you.' Gerald held up the gold signet ring, which had been carefully cleaned. 'Do you know what this is?'

'Of course I know. Do you take me for a fool?' Hugo grunted. 'It is my ring, passed down to me by my father and by his father before him. I am Wildenstern.'

Nate and Gerald shared another look.

'I think it's time we got Father down here,' Nate said.

B y the time the Duke arrived, with his brother Gideon and Dr Warburton in tow, Hugo had lapsed back into a weary daze; muttering nonsensically and gazing with his weak eyes at the floor. Edgar waited for a few minutes to see if there would be any further developments and then, after a few words with Gerald, he left again.

Nathaniel and Gerald struggled for the rest of the afternoon to get any more sense out of the newly awakened patients, but with no success. As evening fell, the women became more alert and stopped their mumbling, lying still instead and looking around them. Hugo asked for food and was given milk and broth, as he was still unable to chew. A servant helped spoon-feed him until he was able to manage by himself. His appetite proved to be immense and he ate bowl after bowl of the soup, washing it down with warm, sweetened milk. Soon the women were able to eat too, and with equal hunger. But they still did not say a word. There was no sign yet of Brutus regaining consciousness and Hugo often looked at him with sorrowful concern.

Nate finally went to bed and lay awake for hours, his head full of unanswered questions. When he arose the following morning, feeling drowsy and numb, he made his way straight down to the laboratory, where he found his ancestors asleep. Gerald sat by them, with dark rings around his eyes, and told his cousin that they had been sleeping for a few minutes at a time through the night, and eating with supernatural appetites.

Then they awoke again. And they began to eat once more. Nate left them and went down to breakfast. He trudged through the morning in a weary daze, only half aware of the goings-on around him. There was a new tension in the house and everybody knew its source. Those who knew of the ancestors' existence (and there were more and more of them as the gossip increased) had heard about Hugo's claim. He had the gold signet ring with the family's coat of arms as proof… and there could be no doubt that he was blessed with aurea sanitas. He even bore a resemblance to some of the portraits of old Patriarchs that hung in the main hall.

And if he was who he said he was, then the family was faced with an unprecedented problem. By right, everything around them belonged to him.

'For God's sake, nobody say anything to him,' Gideon spluttered over breakfast, spitting bits of kipper through his dyed-black beard, over his fat belly and onto his lap. He waved his heavily ringed hands about. 'We've opened a right can of worms here, and I won't have everything we've worked for being upset by some throwback turning up out of the blue like this and laying claim to our fortune. I won't have it, by the Lord Harry!'

Edgar refused to be drawn on the subject, which just made things worse. He merely sat there eating and took no part in the chatter. Nate watched him and wondered what was going through his mind.

He also tried to avoid looking at Daisy. She had been especially cool towards him since having her dress pinioned at the funeral, and he knew that she had not forgotten his insensitivity. He had been waiting for her to get her revenge and it was at this moment that she chose to strike. And she did so with dastardly cunning.