The Glass God (26 page)

However, if he was oblivious to the smell emanating from the torn earth, he could hardly ignore the ground itself. Away from the railed-in path, overlooked by balconied flats and the upstairs room of a quietly churning pub, the green grass had been split apart. Mud had been thrown up with enough force to splatter third-floor windows; age-old tree roots lay tangled in the mess like broken fingers, and, as Sharon peered through her watering eyes, there was no denying it – cracked brown splinters of human bone stuck up from the mess.

The whole convulsion had left a gaping wound in the graveyard, wide enough to park a truck in, and the stench was inescapable. Mr Roding strode forward, slipping down its muddy slope until he stood in the centre of the torn hollow, testing the ground beneath him. Beneath his foot, bones crunched into dust. Rhys and Sharon hung back, and even Miles, usually a bastion of composure, shuddered as Mr Roding rummaged through the foul ground, digging with his fingertips to pull finally, from the remains, half a human femur.

He tutted.

“Lazy lazy job,” he sighed, then dropped the bone casually back into the mess. He ran his fingers over the slimy soil, sniffed at it, then sampled it delicately with the end of his pale tongue, rolling the granules around across his teeth. He spat. “No containment, that’s the problem,” he explained. When no looks of enlightenment dawned at his words, he rolled his eyes, kicking a skull to one side in order to prod a tatty rag of cloth, dyed by the centuries to the same complexion as the soil.

“We’re thinking,” Sharon’s voice was muffled behind her sleeve, “that this has something to do with Old Man Bone.”

Mr Roding jerked upright. “Old Man Bone?” he repeated. “What the hell has he got to do with it?”

“You’ve heard of him, then?”

“I’ve been a necromancer since before your
mother
was a gleam in her parents’ eyes,” he barked. “Of course I’ve bloody heard of him. He’s the watchman for the dead, the barefoot undertaker, raggedy man with his cart of skulls – he’s also supposed to be sleeping until that time when the city streets are full of the barefoot corpses of the damned, so when I say ‘what the hell’ I mean it in a more literal sense than you probably understood.”

“You’re a great comfort to me, Mr Roding.”

“You wanted my expert opinion, I’m giving it.”

“What’s your expert opinion on this?” she asked, gesturing unhopefully at the shattered earth.

Mr Roding sucked in air through the chunky gaps between his yellow teeth. “I never like to use the words ‘the dead walk’ because I think that ‘dead’ is a very difficult and overused piece of technical terminology to begin with…⁠” – the brilliance of Sharon’s patient smile was lost on the necromancer as he went on – “⁠… but I’d say you have an explosive release of pent-up mystic energy from within the walls of this pit, which is, of course, a mass grave of some three… no,
four…
hundred years old, give or take…⁠” Here he paused, took another cautious lick of soil off the end of his grimy finger, then spat it out again with the same fervour as before. “Plague pit,” he added with a grumble. “I never use plague pits, the energies are too unpredictable, the tangents too interlaced, bloody mess, and you always need to hire a truck to put it back afterwards.”

Miles cleared his throat. “I know this isn’t the time, sir, but you
have
read the current guidelines on the summoning and commanding of deceased flesh? Only there are consent forms…⁠”

“Who is this?” demanded Mr Roding, turning indignantly to Sharon.

“This is Miles,” she explained. “He’s my minion.”

Miles greeted Mr Roding with his regulation upward tilt of his chin, one respectful macho man to another. Mr Roding’s lips curled outwards, unimpressed.

“I thought Rhys was your minion.”

“No, Miles is.”

“Then what’s Rhys?”

“Rhys is my… my…⁠” she looked at the druid, who tried to beam reassuringly from behind his swollen nose and running eyes, “⁠… my IT manager,” she concluded. “But Miles is definitely my minion.”

“And why have you got a minion?” he asked.

Sharon shrugged. “Fate of the city, the dead walk, you know, seemed like good resource management for the project.”

“Oh.” Mr Roding nodded, digesting this information. “Well, that makes sense. About Old Man Bone…⁠”

“Excuse me?” A new voice, breaking the conversation with the delicacy of a feather duster over crystal glass. They turned.

The owner of the enquiry was short, a little stooped, dressed in a brown waxed coat with a tartan lining, and wearing a grey-blue woolly hat which had the battered look of a thing which had become prosthetic to him over the years. A pair of thick blue trousers ended in an even thicker pair of sensible brown boots. He was leaning for support on a large shovel, and smiled at them as they looked on.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but you seem to be standing in my grave.”

Mr Roding’s eyes narrowed. “
Your
grave?” he began. “I’ll have you know that I have stood in the graves of…⁠” He faltered suddenly, and seemed almost taken aback, recoiling before the smiling man as if physically struck. “Do I know you?”

“Me, sir?” asked the old man politely. “I wouldn’t think so. Do you rob graves round here at all?”

“I do not rob, I…⁠” Mr Roding paused again, unconsciously scratching a flurry of white skin flakes off his palm. “⁠… Never mind. Probably someone else. Druid! Help me out!”

Rhys reached out, wondering whether it would be rude to cover his hand with his sleeve before grasping the soggy paw offered to him. Mr Roding’s skin was damp, and felt loose on his flesh. Rhys’s shoulders began to shake with the effort of holding back a sneeze.

Sharon turned to the stranger. “You work here?” she ventured. “You tend the graves?”

“Indeed I do,” he replied, holding out a hand. “Name’s Arthur.”

Sharon’s fingers touched his and there was…

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing. A dead place where perception should have been, a void where all her senses should have told her of the things which had been, and the things which were yet to come, rushing through Arthur’s skin. Instead she felt…

… nothing at all.

The handshake lasted a second too long. Arthur smiled, and eased his cold palm out of hers. Then, turning back to the open pit, he said in a conversational tone, “They threw those who died of plague down here, back in the day. Too many bodies in the street to bother with headstones, and not enough living to pay for the cost, even if they’d had the time or inclination. Nasty time, really.”

“Arthur,” said Sharon, trying out the name in the hope it would offer an insight which, inexplicably, his touch had not. Revelation bloomed. “You know a man called Crompton?”

“The undertaker? Yes, I know him. Why?”

Mr Roding was brushing himself down, shedding as much loose skin as dirt as he patted off his trousers; but his eyes were still fixed on Arthur’s jovial face.

“He mentioned you,” Sharon replied. “Said you were an expert.”

“That’s very nice of him.”

“Said you knew about Old Man Bone.”

Arthur’s smile didn’t falter. “Oh, yes,” he breathed. “I guess I do at that. You must be with the Midnight Mayor.”

“Must we?”

He gestured with the top of his shovel towards Miles. “Man dressed all in black, necromancer wandering round a plague pit and not at midnight, a druid with…⁠” – Rhys sneezed, it happened all at once, he couldn’t contain himself, and Arthur just smiled on through – “⁠… complications, and you. What are you, if you don’t mind me asking, young lady?”

Something in Arthur’s eyes: a tightness that belied his expression of jolly optimism. “Shaman,” she answered distantly. “I’m a shaman.”

“Really? I would never have guessed.”

“It’s the feathers,” she explained. “Actually, it’s the lack of feathers. The feathers-that-ought-to-be, if you get my meaning. People have expectations. You mentioned the Midnight Mayor – did he come here?”

Arthur’s eyes glinted. “Is it too early for a pint?”

Chapter 44

And Heed the Expert’s Advice

They had a pint.

Miles bought.

Mr Roding sniffed at his drink and declared that usually, he didn’t approve of yeasty products as it did terrible things to his stomach lining; but so long as he took his tablets later, a half might be okay. Rhys sat between the gently decomposing necromancer and the firmly imposing Alderman, twisting torn-up tissue under the table top.

Evening was settling over London, a cold, damp gloom which drove all but the hardiest post-work drinkers into the pub’s noisy interior. It was a traditional London pub in all the most time-honoured ways: the table top was sticky with ancient spilt beverages, the red patterned carpet crunched occasionally with decaying crisps; the average age of the barmen was nineteen and the music was 1980s near-misses, played just loud enough to make it tricky listening to your neighbours. The lighting was yellow and low, kind to acne but cruel to the broken capillaries of the regulars’ noses; and across the surface of a fruit machine lights wound in and out of a brilliant maze, promising riches and glory in 20p denominations. Arthur the gravekeeper sat with his back to it all and heaved a sigh of satisfaction at the dark pint of beer placed before him.

“This,” he explained, daubing one finger in the thick froth, “is the drink of kings.”

Sharon made herself smile. She would have liked a drink, but staying awake was proving a challenge and somehow, she felt, as deputy Midnight Mayor she was still on duty. So she cradled an orange juice, whose contents were two parts ice to five parts acid to one part remnant of the colour orange, and trod on her own toes under the table in an effort to remain awake. “So Swift came to see you?”

“Is that his name? Matthew, wasn’t it?” Arthur took a slurp of beer, leaving a white moustache across his top lip. He grinned, running his tongue round to catch the drops.

“Matthew Swift,” offered Miles. “One hundred and twenty-seventh Midnight Mayor, protector of the city, guardian of the night – him?”

“Jesus, he was all that? Looked like just some bloke.”

“You clearly know about him, about… what he does?” pressed the Alderman.

“Well, yes, used to dabble a bit myself,” said Arthur. “Long time ago. Picked up a few tricks, though never did go down the necromancy route,” he added, tipping his drink at Mr Roding, whose eyebrows dipped in reply. “I volunteer at Bunhill Fields now because I think it’s a bit of calm in a busy part of town. I also do tours of Highgate West cemetery, and I thought about going for blue badge tour guide, but they said I was too old to do the course. ‘Not worth my time.’ There’s an assumption in this society that once you reach fifty-five your brain is somehow inadequate!”

“Do you get patronised?” interrupted Mr Roding. “My newsagent has started asking me if I’ll get home all right! Me! And my neighbour tells me to ‘ease off a little’. I was looking forward to being old enough to tell people to piss off, but turns out all that happens if you speak your mind is people tell you your mind must be broken.”

“God, I know, and I’ll tell you something else…⁠”

“What did Swift want?” Sharon cut in, before the two gentlemen could swell up indignantly in unison.

Arthur shrugged. “Same as you, I imagine. Wanted to know about Old Man Bone.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“The truth, or at least that part that I understand of it. Ancient spirit of the dead, the unwashed one, raggedy man, he-who-walks-barefoot-upon-the-earth, all that. Most people would’ve been just interested, but this Matthew fella, he sat there looking worried.” There was an alert gleam in Arthur’s eye, brighter than the lights humming dimly around the walls of the raggedy room. “Something… hasn’t happened to him, has it? Only I can’t help seeing that you fine people are looking worried, too, and if Matthew was perfectly fine, maybe he’d have told you all this himself…⁠?” Arthur let the thought trail away, waiting for answer.

“He’s… having a rough day,” Sharon said. “But I’m sure he’ll be okay.”

“Really?” Arthur’s face turned covertly to one side, listening to all the things Sharon was not saying out loud. “Look,” he added, “I don’t know what Crompton said. But if there’s a problem with Old Man Bone, then I’ll tell you what I told Swift – it’ll take more than just a Midnight Mayor to do the fixing.”

“How about his deputy?”

Arthur spluttered, mid-gulp, and self-consciously wiped the detritus away from his mouth. “A deputy Midnight Mayor?” he cackled. “Well, it’s a nice idea, good bit of administration I suppose; but it doesn’t mean anything, does it? No power, no magic, probably not even a pension plan, knowing the Aldermen…⁠” – Miles avoided both Sharon and Arthur’s enquiring glances – “⁠… just a great big mess and no way to clean it up! If there’s a deputy Midnight Mayor out there, then good luck to him!”

Sharon just about managed to mumble, “Did Swift say anything to you about a rusty blade? Or an umbrella?”

“Sorry, love,” said Arthur. “He asked about the blade, of course – Old Man Bone’s blade, the rusted needle – but I just told him what I tell anyone. It’s a legend. Myth. Crompton seems to think it’s important, part of the ritual; but I don’t know if I believe it. Seems more… symbolic to me, than actually magical. And there wasn’t any discussion of an umbrella either.”

“Did he say anything at all?” persisted Sharon. “Anything stick in your memory?”

Arthur’s eyes turned upwards, as if searching the ceiling for inspiration. “Sorry. He mostly just looked worried. This was before the ground was opening up, but maybe worried was just how he looked?”

“He was quite concerned,” admitted Rhys. “But I suppose I never met him when he wasn’t being professional. I mean, professionally Midnight Mayor, which I suppose means it was his job to be worried, so actually, maybe he’s not naturally worried, maybe it was just…⁠” He became aware of eyes on him. “It looks like a high-stress job,” he suggested. “And being his deputy is definitely a high-stress job, I think.”

Arthur’s eyes widened. “Good God!” he blurted, staring incredulously at Rhys. “It’s not you, is it?”