The Medieval Murderers - King Arthur's Bones

‘So my perverting the true cause of science is acceptable now that it may be of some use to you, Augustus.’

‘Yes, well… we will say no more about that. I suppose you can salvage some knowledge from the depredations of the smart set. Knowledge you can now put to good use by telling me how old these bones are.’

Once again he pushed the canvas sack towards Malinferno. Joe picked it up, and the contents rattled against each other as he hefted the sack over his shoulder.

‘I will give you my considered opinion as to whether they are as old as an Egyptian pharaoh or as recent as something snatched from a grave by the Borough Gang.’

Malinferno’s naming of the best-known gang of bodysnatchers caused Bromhead to glance around nervously. As a man of limited stature, and odd proportions, it was quite possible he was already on some surgeon’s list. There was nothing that such eminent medical men as Astley Cooper liked more than giants and dwarfs to anatomize. And the Borough Gang served their voracious needs. Bromhead’s room, with its dark corners and strange funereal collections of stones and bones, suddenly felt an unpleasant place in which to be. Malinferno laughed at his friend’s frisson of fear, but in truth he too felt a cold finger of horror travel up his spine. The Borough Gang was not one to mess with, especially if you might be on their shopping list. For once, Malinferno gave private thanks for his nondescript appearance. He hurried from the antiquarian’s lodgings and back across the Thames. He deposited the bones in his own rooms, giving them only a cursory glance before resorting once more to the south side of the river Thames. And the gin-shops of Tooley Street, where his meagre funds would stretch further. There he encountered the rat-featured Kitten, and in a rash moment smuggled her into his rooms.

Now he was faced with the task of retrieving the thighbone from her grasp and smuggling her back out of the house without Mrs Stanhope, his landlady, spotting her. He slid from under the bedclothes and, pulling his shirt down to cover his privates, he nervously approached the bawd, who was now giggling and poking at him with the large bone. Malinferno noted, not for the first time, that it was unusually long, and probably had belonged to a man who had stood more than six feet tall when he was alive. And it was all the more capable of braining him if Kitten swung it in the wrong direction.

‘Now, come on, Kit. Don’t be silly. You have to go now.’

‘Not until you have paid me, James.’

‘Joe, the name is Joe. And I have paid you. In advance in the gin-shop where I picked you up.’

The girl poked him even harder in the chest.

‘Yes, but then I didn’t know you was a resurrection man, with bones hidden in your place. You’ll have to pay me to keep my mouth shut now, James.’

Malinferno cringed. Now he was being accused of being a sack-’em-up man himself. And the tart couldn’t even get his name right. He would have to deal with this quickly, or Mrs Stanhope would be woken up by the sound of the altercation. And then he would be out on the street. His landlady did not like women in her gentlemen’s rooms. He turned away from Kitten and began to pull on his long breeches, which had lain on the floor after being cast there the previous night in the heat of passion.

‘Very well, Kit. Whatever you say. But I shall have to pass your name on to Ben Crouch. He doesn’t like people poking their noses into his trade.’

On hearing the name of the legendary leader of the Borough Gang of bodysnatchers, Kitten went limp. She dropped the bone to the floor and scrabbled for her clothes.

‘No, that’s no trouble, sir. I was only joking. You can have this one on me. No need for Mr Crouch to know about it, is there?’

She didn’t wait for Joe to answer but disappeared from his room faster than the rat that had stood on his chest that other morning. The only difference was that Kitten used the door, rather than the hole in the wainscoting. Malinferno breathed a sigh of relief and picked up the long leg-bone.

Once again he wondered how Bromhead could be so uncertain of its origins. Though Joe couldn’t tell a newly buried bone from a pharaoh’s, he wasn’t about to tell Bromhead that. Probably this skeleton was no more than a hundred or so years old. The location of its discovery should have told the antiquarian whose bones they were likely to be. If they had been dug up anywhere on the edge of the Cornish border, then they were probably the remains of some cavalier or roundhead who had met his end at one of the battles of Lostwithiel. By Joe’s reckoning, that put the death in the year 1642 or 1644. There was no possibility that the bones had the age of the few mummified remains from Egypt that Malinferno had had the privilege to examine. But if Bromhead was so deceived as to wish the bones were as old as a mummy’s, who on earth did he think they belonged to?

Malinferno had no more time, however, to ponder the eccentricities of Augustus Bromhead. He had an important meeting with a personage he had long wished to talk to. Someone who had actually been to Egypt and seen first hand treasures of which Malinferno had only heard tell. The problem was the man was French, and England’s recent skirmish with that nation, and Napoleon Bonaparte in particular, had made it well-nigh impossible to speak to Monsieur Jean-Claude Casteix. But now Bonaparte was safely in exile on St Helena, the English mood had changed. Frenchmen were not viewed with such suspicion as before. In fact some members of the establishment had developed almost a fondness for their old enemy, Napoleon. Which suited Malinferno well, because Monsieur Casteix was not only French but a close associate of Bonaparte’s from his Egyptian expedition of 1798. He had been one of the savants who accompanied Bonaparte on his campaign, and he had accumulated a large collection of artefacts. The problem was that, when the French forces had capitulated to the British in 1801, General Hutchinson had cast covetous eyes on the savants’ collection of antiquities. Which had included the Rosetta Stone, reputedly the key to Egyptian hieroglyphics and most Egyptologists’ Holy Grail.

Malinferno had ideas about deciphering the stone, and enhancing his own glory in the field. But first he had to speak to Jean-Claude Casteix, who twenty years ago had refused to be parted from the collection plundered by the British, and who had come to England with it. Today was the day he had finally got himself an interview with the great man, and he didn’t propose to miss it. Despite a sick headache, resulting from his anxious imbibing of too much gin the previous night, he hastened to dress. Though his shirt was a little grubby from the night before, he thought it would suffice if he wore his best double-breasted waistcoat and a clean cravat over it. The problem was his fingers were too shaky to tie his linen in the latest fashion. And when he had managed it, it lay flat and irregular beneath his chin like a soiled napkin.

‘Damn! It will have to do for now. Or I shall miss my chance with Casteix.’

He cast around for his Hessian boots, which had been discarded the previous evening at the height of his passion.

‘Double damn. I shall have to go barefoot if I don’t find them soon.’

He realized it was a clear indication of his anxiety that he was talking to himself in this way, and he resolved to stop up his mutterings. Finally, tight-lipped, he found his boots behind the aged chaise longue beneath the window. For a moment he had an image of Kitten drunkenly yanking his boots off and collapsing behind the chaise longue in a flurry of muslin and bare thighs. His sick headache gave a vigorous twinge, and he closed his eyes on the scene. Sitting down abruptly before his dizzy swoon tipped him over, he took a deep breath and yanked on his boots. At least his tall hat and Garrick overcoat did not require hunting for. They hung in their usual place on the back of the door. He pulled the coat on and slapped the hat rakishly on his head. It was only on an impulse that he then picked up the long bone Kitten had been waving at him and stuffed it in the capacious pocket of his Garrick. No harm in the great savant confirming it as being of no great age. He hurried down the creaky staircase and out into Creechurch Lane.