The Bone Magician (24 page)

And that was when I was fit to kill her.

Pin watched as Juno scraped uselessly at the frozen earth around his mother’s grave. Her trunk and a brown bag lay
on the ground beside her. His heart was like a rock and his jaw was set firm. Every muscle in his body was taut.

‘Juno.’

Startled she dropped the spade and turned her head quickly. When she saw him she looked shocked. She got to her feet.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I could ask you the same thing,’ said Pin. ‘As for me, I came to tell you that I’ve found out your secret.
It’s the potion, isn’t it? It makes you see what you want to see. And the juniper unguent, in the locket, it clears your head. That’s why you use it, you and Benedict, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Juno.

‘So why did you run off like that? And what are you doing here?’

‘It’s not what you think,’ said Juno, confused by the harshness of his tone. ‘I can explain it all.’ Her
face was ghostly, her hands were trembling.

‘I thought you were my friend.’

‘I am your friend. That’s why I’m here. Can’t you see? I’m trying to make it right.’

‘How can you make it right?’

‘By putting things back where they were.’

‘How can you do that when I have it?’

Juno looked thoroughly bewildered. ‘Pin, what are you talking about?’

‘The locket, you fool.
The one you stole from my own mother’s grave
.’ And
he pulled it from his pocket and swung it in front of her. ‘What happened to the silver chain? Did you sell it?’

Juno’s hand went automatically to her neck even though she knew the string would not be there. ‘My locket! Where did you
find it?’

‘
Your
locket?’ Pin almost spat with fury. ‘This is my mother’s
locket. You stole it from her dead neck. I can’t believe it, you’re just a lousy grave robber.’

‘But it’s mine,’ insisted Juno. ‘Look at the back.’

Pin held up the locket and there, clearly visible in the moonlight, were the initials J C.

‘They’re my mother’s initials,’ he said. ‘Jocelyn Carpue.’

Juno stared him straight in the face. ‘Or Juno Catch-pole.’ Her voice was cold and low.

Pin sneered. ‘Your name is Juno Pantagus. Benedict is
your uncle.’ But even as he said
the words his voice faltered. Suddenly he wasn’t so confident.

‘Benedict is not my uncle,’ she said evenly. ‘We just say that he is. It sounds better that we are related. After
all, our ‘‘magic’’ is inherited.’

Pin staggered and sank to the ground, his head in his hands. ‘Oh Juno, I’m so sorry. I should have trusted you. But what
was I supposed to think? My mother was buried with a silver locket, her last piece of jewellery.’ He looked up in despair. ‘Why are you here? What are you digging for?’

‘Pin,’ said Juno slowly, ‘I’ve got to tell you the truth.’

‘The truth? What do you mean? I know everything. Just give me another chance. We can still go together. You can be the Bone
Magician and I’ll be your assistant—’

‘Stop,’ commanded Juno, and Pin quietened. ‘I want you to come with me, of course I do, but you have to know
something first. I’m here because I was trying to put something back. I know it was stupid, idiotic, but I had to try. I couldn’t live with myself otherwise.’ She picked up the brown bag and offered it to Pin.

‘This is yours, by right.’

Slowly and with shaking hands Pin took the bag. He
knelt on the ground and pulled apart the strings
and turned it upside down. There tumbled out before him a pile of dry bones. But still he didn’t understand. And there was something else, a brown skull, with wispy hair, that rolled out and stopped at his feet.

‘Madame de Bona?’ he whispered.

‘No,’ said Juno. ‘Your mother.’

‘My mother died when I was very young. I have no memory of her at all, it was my father who brought me up. He was a
physician in a town not far from here. He did well enough, and he taught me everything he knew. About the healing properties of herbs and spices. About how to make unguents and tonics and potions, how to apply cups and leeches. And he showed me how to
make the
Credo
potion,
the one I use at the raisings. You’re right to think it’s the key. It’s a suggestible potion, you see. It frees the mind to see what it
wants to see. All you have to do is focus on what you wish for and when you inhale the potion, it allows you to experience your dreams. Only for a little while, though, but long enough. All those people who came to see Madame de Bona, in their hearts
they wanted to believe that she could come back to life. And because that’s what they desired, that’s what they got. As for their questions, they already knew the answers they wanted, but it felt better to hear them from someone else, even if
it was a skeleton. You’re right about the juniper unguent in the locket too. It protects you from the
Credo
potion.

‘Anyway, we did well enough. People were grateful to my father for curing their ills and they paid him good money. They even
left him some when they died. But then a rumour started that he had become greedy, that he was killing people for their money. And not long after that he was murdered, by trickery.

‘Of course everything changed for me then. People began to say that I might have had a hand in my father’s scheming and
life became impossible. You know how it is to be treated like a criminal even when you are innocent.
I suffered in the same way. So I left the town and came to Urbs Umida. I found out soon enough that it is a lonely and
cruel place and I did not fare too well. I had taken to sheltering in the churchyard at night. I felt safe there. Pickpockets and thieves tend to ply their trade among the living, not the dead. As for grave robbers and body snatchers, well, they were too
busy to take any notice of a pauper girl trying to sleep. When I first saw Benedict I thought he was just another one of them. I came upon him, digging up a grave, towards the end of last summer.’

‘My mother’s?’ said Pin softly and Juno nodded.

‘‘‘If you’re looking for a body then that’s the wrong grave,’’ I said to him.
‘‘Been dead six months. It’ll only be bones.’’

‘‘‘That’s what I want,’’ he said.

‘‘‘Bones? What do you want bones for?’’

‘He stood up and looked at me. I could tell that he was old, too old for digging.

‘‘‘You look like a strong lass,’’ he said. ‘‘Help me out here. This’ll be the death of
me.’’

‘I didn’t move. He understood well enough. We agreed on a shilling and I took the spade. It wasn’t that hard. The
ground was soft after a rainfall, the earth was loose
enough, and he’d done most of the work already. It wasn’t long before I had the coffin unearthed. And I was right, only bones. Benedict seemed
pleased.’

‘What about her locket?’ asked Pin suddenly.

‘There was nothing, believe me,’ said Juno softly. ‘I swear it. I think that perhaps the grave had already been
robbed. The coffin lid was not nailed down.’ She looked at Pin. ‘Is this too much for you? Do you want me to stop?’

He shook his head. ‘No, I want to know everything.’

‘Well, Benedict put the bones into the bag and made ready to go. I was intrigued and I asked him what he was going to do with
them. He said that he had thought of a way to make money. He was going to travel with the skeleton and exhibit her as a sort of soothsayer who could tell fortunes.

‘‘‘And how is she going to do that?’’ I asked. ‘‘She is dead.’’

‘‘‘I thought perhaps I could throw my voice,’’ he said.

‘I laughed. I told him the whole idea was preposterous and that it could never work.

‘Benedict was a little put out. ‘‘Do you have a better idea?’’

‘‘‘In fact I do,’’ I said and I told him about the
Credo
potion. I was certain that we could use it to our advantage. Together Benedict and I hatched our plan. He would be the Bone Magician and I would make the potion and do the voices. That’s why I wore such a long
hood, so people couldn’t see that Madame de Bona’s voice was actually mine. No one was looking at me anyway. We left the City and travelled all over the country. It suited me well enough. We made money, especially from private raisings, and
as we went from place to place I made enquiries about the man who murdered my father. And sometimes, just once or twice, we were close to him, but always we were too late.’

‘But what about all the questions?’ asked Pin. ‘How did you know what to say?’

Juno smiled. ‘I became quite skilled at answering questions without actually saying anything. You should know, Pin. You asked
Madame de Bona about your father. I hardly told you anything helpful, but when you’re under the influence of the
Credo
potion anything I say sounds plausible. All those exhortations to Hades, master of the
shades of the dead. It means nothing. It’s all for show. The only thing that really matters is the potion.

‘But things have changed. Benedict’s health started to
fail and I still hadn’t
found the man I was looking for. And other things were troubling me too. I began to feel that what we were doing wasn’t right. When I heard the same questions being asked of Madame de Bona over and over again, I realized that I was cheating these
people, influencing their minds with my potion and telling them what they wanted to hear, lies disguised as the truth. I said to Benedict that I didn’t want to do any more private raisings and we agreed that Sybil would be the last one. Mr Belding
wasn’t just a curious spectator who came to be entertained. He was a desperate man. That was the hardest thing I have ever done, maybe the cruellest, pretending to forgive him.’

‘Is that why you don’t want to take Madame de Bona with you when you leave the City?’ asked Pin. He couldn’t
bring himself to say ‘my mother’.

‘Partly,’ said Juno. ‘But I only made my mind up for definite tonight, when I saw the white flower in your
handkerchief. You said you found it on your mother’s grave.’

Pin nodded slowly. ‘But what’s that go to do with anything?’

By now Juno was speaking between wrenching sobs.
‘You see, Pin, I put the flowers on her
grave, only I didn’t know who she was then. When I found out tonight I couldn’t believe what I had done. How could I take Madame de Bona,
your mother
, with me after that? I decided to leave without you
– cowardly, I know, but I was in shock. I’ve tried to make it right, to put her back. But I can’t. The ground is too hard.’

Juno looked at Pin through glassy, red-rimmed eyes. ‘Can you ever forgive me?’ she whispered. ‘It’s a terrible
thing I’ve done.’

Pin stood up shakily and went to Juno and put his arms around her. ‘Of course I forgive you. I can’t say it doesn’t
hurt, but you weren’t to know. And you were trying to make things right.’

‘Here,’ said Juno. She handed him a posy of dried white flowers. ‘Daisies from the Moiraean Mountains. I was going
to put them in the coffin. They mean ‘‘sorry’’.’