Ancient Appetites

always did when he was nervous.

'Yes,' Gerald grunted as he lit up a cigarette. 'And if I were you, I'd sleep with the door booby-trapped, a pistol under the pillow and the lights on for a while.'

'No change there, then,' Nate replied. 'It's good to be home.'

Leaving Gerald back at his laboratory, he returned to his rooms alone. Nate sat in his living room, lost in thought. He had always quite liked Warburton. He remembered once, when he was a child, Edgar had insisted that his sons should join the fox hunt; Warburton had argued against it – Nathaniel was only six and barely able to ride. It was brave of the doctor to even try taking on the Duke, but Edgar was having none of it. Out in the countryside in the rain, Nate had been thrown from his horse and broken his leg. Warburton had stayed with him, accompanied by one of Edgar's Maasai servants, while some others went to fetch a brougham to carry him home. The Duke had carried on with the hunt.

Sheltering from the rain under a tree, the towering black footman had held the injured young boy in his arms and kept him warm. Nate had been fascinated by the man's dark skin, wanting to touch it and feel its warmth. To keep the child's mind off the pain, the footman had told him stories of Africa; of its wild animals and engimals, of the strange people and the incomparable beauty of its landscapes. Nate was in no doubt that he had become obsessed with Africa and its engimals because of that day.

He called to memory the Maasai he had met in Kenya. The men were magnificent fellows; they wore ochre on their bodies sometimes and had beads in their hair, and checked blankets flung over their shoulders. The warriors were known as moran, and their bravery was the stuff of legend; they fought with a heavy-balled club and used it to deadly effect. The tribes wandered the land with their cattle, living simple lives. Nate recalled how he had suffered pangs of jealousy when he had seen the closeness of their families.

He didn't know until much later that the Maasai servant who comforted him that day under the tree had been stolen from his own home as a child, and would have known little more about the Dark Continent than Nathaniel. The man must have read about it in books. Cradled in his arms, Nate had never even thought to ask the man his name. One rarely did with servants. But Dr Warburton had reminded him to thank the servant and had shown his own appreciation with a curt nod – something the Duke would never have done.

A diffident knock on the door woke him from his daydreaming. Nate responded and Clancy stepped in.

Winters is here with a message for you, sir. He says he was instructed to give it to you personally.'

Nate sat up, his interest aroused. Winters was Marcus's manservant, and would already have been questioned about the circumstances surrounding his master's death, but Nate was determined to go over every detail again himself. This was as good a time as any.

'Show him in.'

Clancy left without another word, leaving Nate alone with Winters. He could not have been more different from Clancy in appearance: tall and thin with refined good looks, he moved like a dancer. His face was expressionless; if Nate hadn't known, it would have been impossible to tell that the man had lost a beloved master only a few days before. That was how good a servant he was.

'Good afternoon, sir,' he said softly, bowing his head. 'Master Marcus asked me to give this to you in the event of his untimely death, sir.'

He handed Nathaniel an envelope.

'And you're only giving it to me now?' Nate asked.

'My apologies, sir, but Master Marcus made it very clear that you were to receive it alone.'

His heart pounding, Nate ushered the footman into his living room and tore open the envelope. There was a folded piece of notepaper inside. This was it, he was sure. The key to explaining Marcus's death. His eyes flicked down over it. Written on the paper in Marcus's neat, flowing script, were the words:

Find Babylon

He did not realize he was holding his breath until he let out a yell of frustration.

'That's it?! Those are his last words? What the bloody hell's Babylon got to do with anything?'

'I'm sure I wouldn't know, sir,' Winters replied.

X

A VERY GRAND FUNERAL

Daisy Wildenstern was no stranger to death. With all the new steam-driven machines, industrial accidents were becoming a new and increasingly common way for poorer people to pass on into the next world, while common illnesses and poor nutrition still claimed huge numbers of their children every year. The Grim Reaper showed a stubborn defiance of modern medicine, striking down even the noblest members of society with terrifying diseases such as typhoid, smallpox and tuberculosis. Funerals were a common sight in Victorian Ireland.

And they were expensive. Daisy's father was a self-made man, a former draper's assistant who had started with next to nothing and gone on to make his fortune. She remembered when one of her older sisters had died of influenza at the age of twelve, the family had nearly bankrupted itself to pay for a decent Christian funeral. Society judged people on how they buried their dead. Struggling families would often go hungry so they could put money aside in case their children should die. Anything to avoid the disgrace of a pauper's burial.

Perhaps it was because of her humble origins that Daisy felt uncomfortable sitting in the coach with her husband as it followed the hearse from the house to the family's church. Or perhaps it was the obscene, overwhelming pomp with which the Wildensterns were burying their favourite son.

For a start, the coaches for carrying the mourners were completely unnecessary. The road that wound round the hill from the house to the church was little more than a mile long – an easy walk, and one that Daisy did every Sunday unless there was inclement weather. She could have walked it faster too, but a more rapid procession would have given the spectators less to see. The lampposts that stood along the road were hung with wreaths and under them, standing along each side in orderly lines, were the workmen from the railroad – the 'navvies', as they were called. They were a strange breed – a culture unto themselves, dressed in velveteen coats, their felt hats held to their chests as the funeral procession passed.

The hearse resembled some kind of devil's flowerbed, laden with elaborate wreaths and black velvet and dressed with a mass of black ostrich feathers. The horses too wore sprays of the bushy plumage. The coffin was barely visible through the glass sides, but Daisy knew it had cost more than most middle-class people made in a year. Attendants walked solemnly alongside the coaches, wearing long black tail coats, tall-crowned hats and black gloves. The whole procession was led by mutes dressed in gowns and carrying wands. Marcus was being laid to rest with all the ceremony of a state funeral. Daisy wondered if Queen Victoria – when she eventually gave up the ghost – would be treated with such honour.

There must have been a thousand people lining the road and around the church, come to pay their respects. Even the weather seemed to have submitted to the Wildensterns' grief, with swollen grey clouds hanging in a brooding sky. Daisy had been given an ostrich-feather fan with a tortoiseshell handle and she waved it in front of her. She wished for rain, if only to clear the muggy air.

Along the edges of the crowd were armed guards, and she knew there were more dressed in plain clothes among the spectators. Most of the important men of Ireland were gathered here today and many feared an attack by the new rebel organization that had emerged recently – the so-called 'Fenians', named after the legendary Irish warriors, the Fianna. To her it seemed slightly absurd; the family had marginally less power than God in this country and the greatest threats to their safety were their own relatives. But she still found herself feeling nervous. If Marcus's death had not been an accident, whoever had done away with him might well have their sights set on Roberto.

She sat in the lead mourner's coach with her husband and Edgar. There were no horses drawing this vehicle; instead, four velocycles pulled at the harness, trained to move with their engines silenced. None were as