“Hm. These neighbours,” said Con Claffey. “How much would they want?”
“Hardly a question at all,” Tibor said. “They’re not in the freak game, it seems they supply the pinheads just out of Christian charity.”
Francis Claffey sniggered. “We’ll send them a bouquet.”
“And what else?”
Tibor wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “There’s a stone-eater wants managing.”
“I’ve a scepticism,” Con Claffey said, “about stone-eaters.”
“No, it’s right,” said Tibor. “He eats up to a peck a day. If you dunt his belly you can hear them rattle. Paid a halfpenny, he will jump up and down for you and they rattle better.”
Said Pybus—who had grown noticeably intelligent since Mary attacked him, as if all he needed was a blow to the head—“Do they not stop him up, the stones?”
“Ah,” said Tibor. “Once in three weeks he takes some opening medicine, and voids a great quantity of sand.”
“How does he do that?” said Howison.
“His stomach is equipped with a grinding mechanism.”
Howison smiled.
“Just think.” Beaming Con Claffey rubbed his hands. “All the cellars of London. A thousand cellars, and each fitted with a freak, and each freak bringing in a pound a day! Do you begin to see, Mester Howison? The potential?”
“I see it clearly,” said Howison. “But what has it to do with me?”
“The life of a freak is not long,” said Con. “Not once it has been brought to London and been worked. Now, Tibbsie, bear me out here.”
“The life of a freak is not long,” said Tibor the Terrible.
“You are thinking my master would be interested,” Howison said. He took a long and pensive pull of his ale. “He might, at that.”
“So we were thinking,” said Francis Claffey.
“So we were thinking,” his brother Con said, swooping fatly over his brother’s words, “we were thinking that if Mr. Hunter would lay out on the initial capitalising of our cellars—for which we would cut a favourable deal with our countrymen—we could give him first refusal on the corpses.”
“Mr. Hunter has no money to throw about, you understand? Besides, I don’t know that … I’m not sure that he …” Howison lapsed into silent thought.
Respectful of it, all the companions took a long drink.
In the end, Howison said, “But I’d be interested. I myself.”
For, he thinks, any corpse I come by, I can always sell on to John-o at a rate which will make me a small but interesting profit. He always has no money, but there are sources he can draw on, if I remind him early enough. Borrow from his admirers, why not? He has many. And he will always raise cash to buy the things he really wants to cut up.
John-o is interested in cutting up whatever he finds at the limits of life. He is interested in what distinguishes plants from animals, and animals from man. The latter distinction, Howison thinks, may need more than a scalpel to make it.
But he keeps such thoughts to himself. He turns back to the Irish, wreathed in smiles.
“By God, man,” said Hunter, pulling down the Giant’s eyelid.
“What is it? What do you see?”
“What do
The Giant had come out to the knock: to the peremptory rap of a man who expected the door answered. He’d thought it might be the law. I am large enough, he’d thought, to knock down the law of England. Thought it without self-promotion. Only sad fact.
Hunter had been stamping there, scrappy and mere and bluff. “I come to see how you do, Charles Byrne.”
“Go before me,” said the Giant, courteous. “There will be no charge. My minders aren’t here, and by now, I should say, I regard you almost as a personal friend.”
Hunter stepped in, and looked around. “I am afraid they have sold the tea-caddy,” said the Giant, “and all its contents. Or I could offer you …”
“No matter,” said the Scot.
He took a seat. “That one has a dint in the back,” the Giant said.
“No matter.”
“I once wept, sitting in that chair.”
“For what reason?”
“I don’t recall.”
“Your memory fails?”
“Everything fails, sir. Reason, and harvests, and the human heart.”
