Heaven's Bones (4 page)

Meaningless syllables—gibberish.

Then, picking them apart, sound by sound. So unfamiliar, a language he didn't even speak. And yet, when he pulled the words apart and crawled inside them, a rat burrowing in straw, he began to understand.

A little twist …

… and I'd have it
.

Something desirous there, something composed of want and fear. Hunger, as well—the insistent demands of the belly when there's no money for food, and your woman hungers, and your children hunger, and everyday they look at you with hope and disappointment.

More, a flicker of boldness, wanting only a little push.

A little twist …

Something bright and sharp in there, a bright shank, just right for a sudden thrust and you're three streets away before anyone knows anything's wrong.

… and I'd have it
.

Something heavy there, coins clanking together in a pouch, meaning so much more than that soft clink—a warm bed, food in the belly.

From inside the thought Tibor made an effort and flexed. Such a little thing, and life so cheap, a coin thrust back and forth across a table. First
he
has it, and then
she
has it, why shouldn't
you
have your turn?

Twist the knife and take it
. Tibor couldn't speak out loud, not yet. He made his thoughts a vine and coiled around the mind that lay so exposed before him.

And someone did twist and take, and ran away with a coin-purse heavy and soft in the hand and scarlet blossoming behind, a life lost behind, and Tibor fell away again, fell into the rivers of Mist and oblivion.

But, still, a fleeting thought.
I did it, and I'll do it again. I made one man kill another. I have all the time in the world, dear sister, do you hear me?

All the time in the world. And I will prevail
.

Cornwall, Summer 1867

“How long has he been in there?” Meadows indicated the library door with a twitch of his head and Simpson pursed his lips at the liberty. But everything was topsy-turvy after the tragedy in London.

Simpson couldn't help thinking that if the mistress had been in Cornwall, where she belonged, all might have gone smoothly. And he found it hard to fault Meadows for impropriety after the event that shattered the household.

“All last night, as far as I know,” he replied in hushed tones. “And all this day as well.”

“ 'Tisn't a healthy place for him to be,” said Meadows. “Morbid, all those dusty old books. He needs exercise and fresh air.”

Simpson shook his head at Meadows as he passed on, busy at his duties, but despite the young man's impertinence he had to agree with him. Dr. Robarts had been drawn to the library since his return to Bryani House, ensconcing himself there like an owl in an attic. Simpson had looked at some of the books before, when he was dusting or seeing to the bi-annual airing of each room of Bryani House, and while they might be considered scholarly enough he thought them grim and, in some cases, bordering on obscene.

He paused before the heavy oak door and its polished brass knob, considering bringing the master some tea, if only to stir him out of his funk. But it was early yet, and Dr. Robarts would see through all subterfuge.

Perhaps he had gone to sleep. More than once in the past week Simpson woke to the sound of pacing, and when he investigated, candle in hand, it was always Dr. Robarts walking, back and forth, as if mindless repetitive action could numb him.

No sound came from within. Let the poor man sleep, then.

Bryani House was an inheritance from Robarts' uncle, Yorick Sebastian Robarts, who died unmarried and therefore without legitimate issue—or any issue, as far as Robarts was ever able to determine. As the estate was entailed and Robarts the nearest male heir, after his father, it was a
fait accompli
that he would inherit—but he and the old man always got along exceptionally well regardless of considerations of property.

Taking nothing for granted, Sebastian Robarts' parents had taken the precaution of naming him after his uncle.

“You were almost Yorick,” Robarts' mother told him once. “But I just couldn't do it; I begged and pleaded with your father not to do such a dreadful thing to his only child. Eventually he did listen to reason, but it was hard going for a little while there.”

But mostly the man and the boy found a kinship because little Sebastian, on visits to his bachelor uncle, fell in love with the library. Since Yorick Robarts was in love with his library too, it gave them both one great principle on which they could agree.

It wasn't so much the library, of course—although it was a pleasant enough room, with high windows, rich wood paneling, comfortable armchairs, a massive desk on which one could spread out all manner of papers, and a great globe fixed in the center, formed of puzzle-pieces carved of semi-precious stones depicting continents and seas. It was the books.

Yorick Robarts was a well-respected scholar in his time, his collection of books famous in his particular academic circle. Students and scholars from around the world still petitioned to be allowed to come for a day, or even just an afternoon, to browse among Uncle Yorick's tomes.

Uncle Yorick had studied for the church at University, and although he had never entered orders—nor needed a living, as his wealth made him independent—along the way he had developed a taste for anthropology of an increasingly esoteric sort.

He became, in short, fascinated with angels, and their obverse side, demons. From the not-unusual study of Cherubim and Seraphim that any respectable student of religion might make, he ventured into the foreign, the exotic, and in some cases, the forbidden. It was natural to examine the heavenly creatures described in Mohammedanism, for they closely resembled those of Christianity. From that leaping-off point he discovered the Devas of Buddhism, and the Apsaras of the Hindu. And demons too, for were they not the mirror-side of angels? He learned about the angels that govern every hour, and the demon
of Friday, and the hundreds of names that Lilith bore across the centuries in all the secret places that she lived. He traveled to Persia and to places in Asia not marked on any maps, and ventured into temples in India where no white man had ever dreamed of going.

And he brought back treasures—not the gold or jewels that some men sought to plunder in those exotic climes, but books, scrolls, papyri—some of them new-penned by scribes remembering what their masters taught them, others unimaginably ancient. He filled the library at Bryani House with these tomes and documents, and soon the scholars found him. They came from Oxford, from Cambridge, from the universities of Europe and America. Priests came from the Vatican to clarify some obscure doctrinal matter, and amateur gentlemen scholars wrote to beg an hour in that vault of knowledge.

One memorable summer a little brown wizened man had come to the door of Bryani House, accompanied by a phalanx of shaven-headed attendants dressed as he was, in yellow robes, some of whom walked before him, brushing at the ground with feather switches. Another shiny-pated brown man, dressed in Saville Row's best, acted as translator, asking diffidently if the
Arahant
visiting from India might be permitted some time in the honored English gentleman's library? The sage was immediately permitted entry, where he asked for and was shown a scrap of parchment that Yorick Robarts and all the scholars of England had never been able to translate—an insignificant-looking fragment that consisted of one sinuous symbol written in a queer, grainy-looking, deep green ink.

The
Arahant
examined this fragment closely, being careful not to touch it, and clapped his hands with a gleeful expression. He then bowed deeply to his bewildered host and took leave, followed by the Saville Row gent and a double line of monks. Yorick Robarts never knew what the little holy man sought, but a month later a parcel was delivered, containing a small but near-flawless emerald of unmatchable color.

Sebastian Robarts remembered many such incidents in his uncle's house—now his. They all seemed so long ago—before his medical studies had occupied his whole being—and then there was Margaret, and happiness.

And then that nightmare in London, and everything precious ripped away.

The days of his childhood seemed no more than a dream, or a story told another child to quiet him, or to lull him to sleep.

He wondered if he'd ever sleep again.

Robarts realized he had been staring at the bookshelf for—how long? He couldn't remember. Over an hour at least. Or had it been the whole morning? Surely the shadows had moved across the room from their sunrise to afternoon positions.

But he hadn't really been staring at the bookshelf so much as one particular book. Its spine, gold letters on age-darkened leather, looked familiar.

His eyes narrowed and he rose, walking through the dust motes that floated like bits of gold in the afternoon sun. He knew that book.

His fingers caressed the old leather. Of course—now he remembered. As a child given free rein in his uncle's house he had been fascinated with this book—Wormius'
Treatise on Angels
. He eased it carefully from his place, as if still conscious of Uncle Yorick's eye on him, making sure he wasn't cracking the spine or dog-earing the leather.

The book seemed a lot lighter nowadays, of course. Twenty years ago he'd had to carry it two-handed, carefully place it down on the massive library desk. Now he could balance it in one hand, picking through the pages with the other.

Ah yes—there was the appeal—the pictures. Half of the
Treatise
was text that was rather dense and convoluted for a child, but the remainder consisted of beautiful hand-painted illustrations of angels and demons and all manner of winged creatures. The thick, soft paper beneath his fingertips seemed to slow time, to halt it and make it run backward, and he could almost swear that if he looked up he would see a small boy at the table, in a short coat and a round collar, poring over the book in front of him.

The pictures were as beautiful as he remembered them, their colors at once rich and subtle, and he could see now with a mature eye the skill and technique that went into making them.

There—that had been one of his favorites. An angel, pinning a sinuous creature that was either a dragon or an enormous snake to the ground with a spear. Her—Robarts had always thought of the angel as female—her wings were outspread and the artist had delineated each feather, twisting against the air, as if the wings were beating hard to keep her aloft. Her arms were muscular, and strained against the writhing of the beast below.

The creature itself was a work of art; each scale shaded its own particular color of green. It looked like a great twisted belt of tourmalines, turning around on itself in its death-agony, reaching one scythe-like claw in an effort to gut the angel that transfixed it.

What attracted him was the odd contrast of violence and tranquility in the print—although now, as he looked closer, it seemed more that it was a watercolor that had been tipped into the book. The power in the angel's arms, her beating wings, the impaled serpent all bespoke death and grim determination. But the angel's face, her wide gray eyes, and the strong lines of her features, her expression—it was calm, quiet, and a little sad, as if she grieved for the beast even as she killed it.

There was something heartbreaking about the peace in that face, what it had witnessed, what it foresaw.

That face.

With a shock he realized it was Margaret's face.

Not exactly; of course not exactly. He could not pretend to himself that Margaret's portrait was painted there.

But the expression, that look of sad peace, as if she understood everything, the hope of joy, the inevitability of sorrow. It was what he first noticed about her, what he most cherished.

And he would never see it again.

Her body and her baby lay rotting in Trinity Cemetery.