The Bone Magician (23 page)
Authors: F. E. Higgins
Shortly afterwards Mr Gaufridus was seated at Mrs Hoadswood’s table enjoying her generous hospitality. He was
still panting from the effort of chasing Pin and Juno all the way to Squid’s Gate Alley, not to mention the wrestling match in the snow. Pin, Beag, Juno and Aluph had all apologized, and Mr Gaufridus had been most gracious, if deadpan, in his
acceptance. Benedict, who had not actually taken part in the capture, merely watching from the sidelines, was examining the Friction Stick.
‘That’s an old one,’ said Mr Gaufridus, setting down his ale. ‘I made it as an aid to my work. But then I
thought it might have other uses, so I decided to sell them through the
Chronicle
. It was only this evening that I realized
perhaps the two, the Friction Stick and the Silver
Apple Killer, might be connected. That’s why I came back to the shop.’
‘How many have you sold?’ asked Aluph.
‘Oh, not many,’ said Mr Gaufridus. ‘Three or four perhaps, but I cannot tell you to whom.’
‘Why ever not?’ asked Pin in despair. ‘One of your customers must be the Silver Apple Killer.’
‘I know why not,’ said Aluph slowly. ‘The Friction Sticks are sold via the
Chronicle
. When I purchased mine I left the cash and was given a ticket. All I had to do to collect the stick was to hand over the ticket. I never gave my name.’
‘And if you were intending to use it for murder you wouldn’t have given your real name anyway,’ said Benedict.
‘How disappointing.’
Mr Gaufridus stood up and brushed himself down. ‘I’m sorry I can’t be of more help.’
‘You look awful,’ said Pin, noticing for the first time how dishevelled he was. And what was that glistening streak across
his head?
‘Oh, it’s been a night and a half,’ said Mrs Hoadswood. ‘Poor Mr Buncombe has had a terrible time
too.’
‘Oh
yes,’ said Aluph, ready to take up exactly where he left off previously. ‘I was with your friend
Deodonatus Snoad.’
‘He’s no friend of mine,’ snorted Pin, still staring intently at Aluph’s forehead.
‘I went to read his bumps,’ continued Aluph, ‘and what an unpleasant experience that was. He had the most peculiar
lump on the side of his head, enormous.’
Beag looked at Pin and then at Aluph and then at Pin again. It was as if a light had come on in his head. ‘By the holy!’ he
exclaimed.
‘Fiends!’ said Pin simultaneously.
‘Aluph, where exactly was this lump?’ asked Beag.
‘On his head, I told you.’ Aluph was a little irritated by these interruptions.
‘Right or left?’ asked Pin urgently.
Mrs Hoadswood looked up from her pot and Benedict set down the Friction Stick.
Aluph thought for moment. ‘On the right.’
‘Your right or his right?’
‘Both,’ said Aluph. ‘I was behind him. Why?’
‘My potato,’ breathed Beag triumphantly.
Pin reached
out and ran his finger across Aluph’s forehead and held it up in front of him. ‘And
look—’
‘By Jove,’ whispered Aluph, and his face drained, ‘and by Zeus.’
For Pin’s finger gleamed with silver.
–Aristotle
Deodonatus Snoad pulled his cloak tight at the neck and wrapped his scarf around his face. His hat was right down over
his ears. The wind had taken on an almost evil chill that cut through bare skin and froze your bones to the marrow. The snow had turned to solid ice on the pavements and the soupy sludge that normally ran slowly down the centre of the road had, like the
Foedus, thickened with the cold so much that it no longer flowed.
‘Lord above,’ muttered Deodonatus, and his breath froze instantly on the inside of his scarf. Despite such an exhortation,
it would be wrong to think that Deodonatus had any belief in a Higher Being. He had concluded long
ago that life as he knew it proved without doubt that God did not exist. Human existence was merely a pot of random luck
from which was ladled, with complete disinterest, a spoonful of good, bad or indifferent.
It was Aluph Buncombe who had helped him decide in the end. He didn’t quite know what had come over him, to show himself to a fool
like Buncombe. It was a long time since he had revealed himself in such a way. ‘I suppose I just wanted to know for sure,’ he thought sadly, ‘to see whether anything had changed.’
He scurried along, a little like a rat, close to the wall and then crossed the road to the Bridge and went on to the Nimble Finger. He
walked quickly across the back of the inn, stopping only to loosen his scarf before addressing Rudy Idolice who sat as usual in his chair beside the curtain.
‘I’m here to see the Gluttonous Beast.’
Rudy, half asleep, didn’t look up. ‘That’ll be sixpence.’
‘I do not have to pay,’ said Deodonatus quietly.
‘Wot?’ Now Rudy was wide awake. He shuffled upright in the chair. ‘Oh, it’s you. Same difference. Everyone has
to pay, no matter how often you’ve been.’
‘But I’m your best customer,’ said Deodonatus
throatily. ‘You’ve
benefited greatly from me – now it’s my turn, don’t you think, my old friend?’ He pulled aside his scarf and grabbed Rudy by the throat, drawing him up to his face. Rudy was rendered momentarily speechless, then his eyes grew wide
and his befuddled brain cleared.
‘Bloody ‘ell,’ he said. ‘It’s Mr Hideous!’
Deodonatus smiled crookedly and with his free hand he reached into Rudy’s waistcoat pocket and withdrew a large iron key. Then he
threw Rudy roughly to the floor, where he lay quite still, and descended into the cellar.
Deodonatus was awash with a feeling of something like contentment, as if he had come to the end of a long journey. He
knew that what he was about to see was far more repulsive than he ever was (at least that was what he liked to think: Aluph’s inadvertent comparison had upset him quite badly). He could hear the snuffling of the Beast in the darkness. He went to
the front of the cage and looked in. The Beast was at the back. Deodonatus began talking to him softly, and slowly the creature shuffled forward, a bone in one hand, a piece of meat in the other and a mouthful of something else. He came forward, stopping
a foot or
two short of the bars, and looked straight at Deodonatus, sniffing the air like a dog.
‘Hello, my old friend,’ said Deodonatus softly. ‘I’ve got good news. After all these weeks of coming in here
to see you, to bring you some comfort, I finally know what I’ve got to do. I’m only sorry it’s taken so long. You see, I know how you feel. Haven’t I been in a cage myself? Trapped behind bars not of my own making. I’ve
tried to help you, in my own way, but I made a mistake. I could have gone on forever. Those people out there, they are never going to understand. They could fall into the Foedus one and all and still they wouldn’t know why. But it doesn’t
matter now. Tonight your torture is over. I am going to save you. You will be free to avenge your tormentors.’
He took the key and placed it in the lock. The Beast’s ears pricked up at the sound and his heart quickened. He sidled right up
to the front of the cage, to face this man who had tormented him with his whispering for so long. Then, choosing his moment, with lightning speed he pushed his arm through the bars and took Deodonatus’s stubby neck in his hand and squeezed it the
way he squeezed flesh off a bone. When he finally let go,
Deodonatus Snoad slid down the outside of the cage and lay deathly still.
The Gluttonous Beast wasted no time. How often he had dreamed of this! Bending his wrist he deftly turned the key and opened the door.
He knelt beside his motionless tormentor and took his scarf and wrapped it around his own neck. Next he yanked off the hat and put it on his own head, pulling it down until it fitted tightly and tucking his ears in. With a little more difficulty he
relieved Deodonatus of his cloak and wrestled it awkwardly over his shoulders. He looked down at Deodonatus and reached out to touch his glistening silver hair. Then he looked up the stairs and stretched his lips in what could only be described as a sly
grin.
Shortly afterwards the Gluttonous Beast slipped quietly through the tavern. He paid no attention to the crowds in the
bar, and they paid no attention to him. Outside on the pavement he stopped and sniffed the air. How refreshing it was. All that talk of the stinking river, he could hardly smell it at all! He turned into the alley at the side of the Nimble Finger and
loped, quite gracefully it must be said,
towards the river. Then, remarkably nimbly for a beast of his size and girth, he leaped over the wall, turning on one hand to drop lightly on to the ice. Then with barely a
backward glance he slid away on his flat leathery feet towards the coast, using Deodonatus’s cane as a sort of ski-stick.
Something utterly dreadful has happened, a betrayal of the very worst kind. I can still hardly believe it. Juno has gone
and right now I am so full of hate for her that I don’t know what I would do if she returned. But I vow to find her, even if she has left this city. For I have to know if it’s true.
The last time I saw her was in the kitchen when she gave me my handkerchief back.
And this is yours too,’ she said, handing me a small‘ white flower. ‘It was in your hanky.’
I was a little embarrassed. ‘It’s one of the flowers
I found on my mother’s
grave,’ I explained. ‘I put them in my pocket and forgot about them.’
I remember thinking at the time that she looked at me strangely. I thought she was going to say something else, but then Aluph started
talking about Deodonatus and I turned to listen. By the time he finished his remarkable account Juno was gone.
I went to her room, but there was no sign of her. I looked under the bed and was shocked to see that her trunk was gone too. I could
think of only one reason why she would take it
:
she was not coming back. I sat down, utterly confused. Only an hour or two earlier, at Mr Gaufridus’s, she seemed to hint that she wanted the two of us to travel
together. And now this
. Perhaps she discovered I had looked in her trunk, but surely she would have talked to me first, not just taken off.
As I sat there a movement up in the corner caught my eye. It was the brown spider and he was shaking his web as manically as ever. I had
thought him merely part of my dream after I sniffed the potion. Maybe it’s Juno’s herbs, I mused
. They’ve addled his brains.
And
that was the moment when everything began to fall into place.
‘The potion!’ I shouted, jumping to my feet. ‘The potion in the peardrop bottle. It makes you see things.’
It explained everything. The potion made me see my father and my mother although I knew it couldn’t be real. Sybil and Madame de
Bona, they came to life because Juno had swung the potion around the room. But what about the old man over the river, why didn’t I see him revive? Because I was hidden in the linen chest. I had a cloth around my mouth and nose so I couldn’t
smell the potion
.
The brothers smelt it, though, and the mother. And they thought their father had come back to life. They asked him about money, but it
was
Juno’s
voice I heard in reply, because she was the voice of the dead. And of course she didn’t know where the money was.
The answers were coming thick and fast now. What of the unguent? What part did it play? I remembered how it cleared Juno’s head
earlier this evening. ‘Of course,’ I said out loud. ‘They use it to protect themselves from the effects of the potion
.’
I laughed.
It was all so simple. Juno was right
:
the answer really was under my nose
all the time.
Now that I had solved the puzzle, I was even more anxious to see her. Despite her absence I could still smell her; the scent of juniper
was strong in the room, suspiciously so, I thought. In fact, easily as strong as when she was with me. I sniffed again and followed my nose, like a dog, down to the floor. It was definitely at its most pungent under the bed and when I saw the string I
knew why. I pulled it out and held it up and looked at the tarnished locket that swung before me. I opened it with my fingernail and saw within the yellow juniper unguent. I sniffed it cautiously and in an instant my head cleared and everything around me
was as sharp as a newly cut quill.
‘Where have you gone?’ I whispered as I turned the locket over in my hand. There were two letters engraved on the back.
