Ancient Appetites

The jaw suddenly clamped shut on his hand. He let out a terrified scream and pulled his hand out. The grip was feeble and he freed himself easily, but he screeched again for good measure.

'Jesus!' he cried. 'Jesus Bloody Christ! What the bloody hell…?'

Nate started hyperventilating, but Gerald was ignoring him completely. Seizing a small pair of tongs from another bench, he rushed over to the body and tipped back the crushed head. He reached down into the mouth with the tongs and pulled out the last coin. The leathery corpse coughed and drew a weak, ragged breath.

'Get me a bellows and the galvanizing apparatus from the cupboard over there!' Gerald yelled at his cousin.

'It… it bloody bit me, Gerald!'

'It was a gag reflex,' Gerald barked at him. 'He was trying to breathe.'

He turned and stared at Nate with a strange light in his eyes, his face like that of a saint struck by a divine vision. Lightning shocked the room white again and thunder crashed against the windows.

'He's alive,' Gerald said in a hoarse gasp. 'It's impossible… completely impossible. But he's alive!

Nathaniel gazed in utter disbelief at his friend. For a moment he was sure that Gerald had lost his mind. But then he looked at his own hand and saw that it was bleeding again. The bog body took another wheezing breath and Nate saw the chest rise and fall almost imperceptibly. He and Gerald looked at each other. And then they turned to look at the other three corpses.

It was to be the longest night of their lives. As Gerald tried to resuscitate the reanimated man, Nathaniel probed the throats of the other three bodies. Each one was jammed with coins or gold jewellery. Moments after he had gingerly cleared each blockage, he heard the dry rasp of air from desiccated lungs. The butler, MacDonald, was summoned, along with Clancy and a small cadre of the most trusted servants. The entire floor of the building was sealed off and Edgar was informed.

The Patriarch limped down to the laboratory on his cane, wearing a dressing gown over his nightshirt and flanked by his Maasai footmen. Standing over the revived cadavers, he watched as servants used bellows to gently push air into the lungs of the bog bodies whenever they failed to breathe by themselves – but breathe they did. He listened dispassionately as Gerald explained what had happened.

'How is this possible?' he asked at last.

'I… I could only guess… theorize, sir,' Gerald replied nervously. 'Nothing like this has ever happened before. There is no precedent.'

'Then theorize, damn it, man.' Edgar scowled. 'We have dead bodies drawing breath before our eyes! Tell me how this can be!'

'There must have been some kernel of life left in them,' Gerald stammered, running his hand through his hair. 'I don't know how, Uncle. Some animals hibernate for long periods – but they still need to breathe. Insects can lie dormant, sometimes for years… but… I don't know. It's almost as if these preserved bodies are like the dried husk of a seed that can still sprout leaves. Clearly, aurea sanitas is at work here… but I… I've never ever heard of anything like this. It shouldn't be possible.'

Edgar sniffed loudly, clearly unsatisfied with the explanation.

'Are they capable of recovering? Will they be able to speak – to walk?'

'I don't know, Uncle.'

The Patriarch turned his attention back to the bog bodies.

'Will they be able to have children?'

Gerald shrugged helplessly, baffled by the question.

'We'll see if Warburton can tell us any more,' Edgar grunted.

'If he can, then he'd be lying!' Gerald retorted, more aggressively than he'd meant to. Composing himself, he added: 'There is nothing in the world of medicine to prepare someone for this situation, Uncle. Let me continue to work on them and see what can be done. Please! If I need assistance, I will be the first to say it.'

Edgar stared at him for what seemed like an age… and then nodded. Turning to the room at large, he gestured to Gerald's four new patients.

'Not a whisper of what is happening here must go beyond these walls. Of the servants, only you here are to know of it. I do not need to tell you what will happen to you if utter so much as a word of it. As for the family, we will include only those closest to me, and whatever scientific minds Gerald feels might be needed.

'Gerald, you will be responsible for their treatment and also for uncovering their past. If this man was a Patriarch, I want to know which one. There are too many questions unanswered here.'

With that, he walked out of the room. Gerald looked over at Nathaniel and gave a tired but triumphant smile.

And so the work began. Gerald wrote out a list of the things he needed and men were dispatched to find them. Two footmen stood by each body, ready with a bellows in case their breathing failed. Using a stethoscope, Gerald discovered weak, thready and painfully slow heartbeats and listened to lungs that sounded like brittle paper bags. He inserted gold needles into key aurea sanitas points over each body and connected them via wires to a galvanizing apparatus that ran a low-voltage electrical current into the leathery flesh. This was a technique he had pioneered which had been proven to stimulate aurea sanitas's, recuperative properties.

Using an eyedropper, he dripped water into their throats, to see if they were capable of swallowing, and therefore rehydrating their bodies. Every breath, every waking moment seemed to require supreme effort for these preserved people, but eventually they began to drink. As his confidence in them grew, Gerald added sugar to the solution.

Nathaniel helped where he could, following Gerald's instructions, but he was working in a daze. He could not comprehend how any of this could be possible. Gazing down at the first man they had brought back to life after his centuries-long sleep, Nate wondered what kind of eyes lay beneath those sunken eyelids. As if parting the petals of a flower, he delicately pulled back one of the dark-brown eyelids to see. Deflated against the wall of the hollow socket, he found a shrivelled yellow ball with a bleached pupil. Clancy was standing next to him and tilted his head to look closer.

'If they do wake up, do you think they'll be blind?' Nate asked quietly.

'I think that remains to be seen, sir,' Clancy replied.

Gerald joined them, his fatigue starting to show through his zeal.

'There are other questions to ask, Master Nathaniel, if these extraordinary souls recover,' Clancy added softly, careful not to let the other servants hear him. 'It is clear that they were killed… or at least attacked and then buried in the belief that they were dead. This was an act of hateful vengeance. And to be buried in a peat bog as they were was a fate most often reserved for those who died in disgrace, or were being punished for the most serious of crimes. What kind of people were they to deserve such a death?

'But there is one more thing to consider,' he went on. 'Because if this man here was a Wildenstern Patriarch – though evidently not a popular one – and he regains his faculties, then he will be by far the oldest living male in the family line.'

Clancy turned to look at Nate and Gerald. He could see that with everything that had gone on, they had not even considered this.

'He could claim the family' Nate said. 'He could take over from Father.'

Outside, dawn was starting to creep across the eastern sky.

Francie shifted around restlessly in the narrow bed, unable to settle. Beside him, his bedmate, Patrick, tugged angrily on the thin blanket.

'Francie, will yeh stop yer fiddlin'!' he muttered. 'Some of us're tryin' to sleep, y'know!'

Heaving a frustrated sigh, Francie rolled out of bed and felt around in the dark for his clothes, which lay in an untidy pile on the floor. He was half dead with exhaustion but knew he was not going to sleep. He had been unable to doze for more than an hour at a time since the explosion. His nerves were raw, he felt sick and he was cold all the time. Memories of the disaster and the men who had died constantly forced their way into his thoughts. Guilt and fear washed over him in waves. This was the third night now and still he couldn't find peace.

It was still raining outside; the storm had been blowing for two nights and there had been less work to do. Normally he would have been happy about this, but now he found that work offered the only relief for his uneasy mind. He couldn't light the lamp with all the others asleep, and in his weary daze he managed to pull both braces