onto one shoulder and put his hat on backwards before he straightened himself out.
Hugging his coat tightly around him against the night's chill, he crept down to the hay stalls at the far end of the long attic, opened the trap door and, hanging from the ledge, dropped down into the darkness and the pile of hay that lay below. Brushing himself down, he walked through the stable, listening to the breathing of the horses. Some of them were awake, moving nervously as the storm blustered overhead.
He had returned to the stables after the explosion looking as if he'd been buried alive. There was no way he would have been able to wash his clothes in time, and he only had a spare shirt; no other trousers, boots or jacket. He had considered fleeing the grounds, but his father's words had stayed with him. They had to act normal. Francie had still been trying to come up with an excuse for the state of his clothes when Hennessy had walked in. The old man had taken one look at him, strode forward and wrapped his arms around him, hugging him tightly.
'Francie, little Francie,' the old man had cried. 'We thought yeh were dead when we couldn't find yeh. Thank God yer all right!'
That was when Francie had found out about what had happened at the cemetery. Hennessy – who, despite his gruff manner, was very protective of his lads – assumed that the stable boy was in a state because he had been in the wrong place in the graveyard when the ground erupted. And Francie let him go on thinking that.
His eyes were adjusting to the gloom and he ran his fingers along the wooden walls of the stalls. Being with the animals relaxed him a little and he whispered comforting words to some of them, reaching over to stroke their noses. He had been visiting the new engimal regularly and was making his way towards the velocycles stall when a sound from ahead of him made him start. A tall figure had come from nowhere and was walking through the darkness towards him. The man had a candle in his hand, but the light had not yet reached Francie. Not wanting to explain why he was up and about, he carefully opened the nearest door and slipped in. A warm damp nose nuzzled his ear and he reached up to scratch the horse's chin.
The glow from the candle passed over his head and he heard the side door of the building open.
'There you are. You're late,' a man said softly.
He spoke like a gentleman and Francie assumed it was one of the Wildensterns. He couldn't tell which one.
'Sorry sor,' Old Hennessy's voice replied. 'There wuz a watchman out on the lawn.'
'You don't have to call me 'sir' here, when there's nobody around,' the gentleman chided him warmly. 'But you're right. All this new security's going to make things difficult. The place has turned into a bloody barracks since the attack on the funeral. The inside of the house is almost as bad, what with our efforts to raise the dead and all that. We'll just have to concoct an excuse for you to move around with more freedom. Leave it with me; I'll come up with something.'
'Aye,' Hennessy replied.
'And for God's sake, don't get caught by any of those thugs standing guard. They'll shoot on sight they're so on edge at the moment. Don't do anything to make them suspicious – we're taking enough chances as it is. The family will cover up my crimes, but they won't forgive you yours. Come on, let's get out of here…'
The door opened and the sound of the storm drowned out the rest of the conversation. The door closed quietly and the light disappeared. Francie peeked over the wall to check they were gone and then came out of the stall. His mind was filled with questions: Who was the stranger? What was Hennessy doing talking to him in the stable in the middle of the night? What were they up to? What did the stranger mean about raising the dead? But the question that was really nagging him was how the gentleman had got in. If he'd come in through the big double doors at the front, Francie was certain that he would have seen him. Creeping down to the front of the building, he felt the ground at the door. It was dry. The doors had not been opened.
He straightened up and looked around at the stone walls on either side. Some of the older lads said that Wildenstern Hall was riddled with secret passages. Francie wondered if it was true – and if one of those passages happened to lead to the stables.
XV
Until the night a corpse had bitten his hand. The graze from the velocycle accident had almost fully healed, but he could still feel the brush of those teeth over his raw flesh. He was unable to get the bog bodies off his mind.
And he still was no closer to finding that goddamned, bloody Babylon either. Thinking the message might have been a code, he had broken the letters up and tried re-form them into other words, but it did not seem to be an anagram – nor, for that matter, was it a numerical code or any other system of encryption that he or Gerald could think of. But then, how could they tell without some kind of key?
He had questioned Winters at length, but with no satisfaction. The footman was telling the same story as everyone else. It could be the truth, or it could be Edgar forcing the servants to maintain a cover-up according to the Rules of Ascension. Nate's father didn't trust him enough yet to share those kinds of responsibilities.
But Nate was sure now that the message wasn't a code. Babylon was not where it should have been and he had several servants trying to find out what had happened to it. And anyway, what did the message
Nate let out a yell of frustration and thumped his head against his pillow.
Climbing out of bed, he pulled on a dressing gown and made his way down to the laboratory. As the elevator doors slid open on the floor where Gerald had his rooms, Nate heard a low moaning sound. Three voices were softly wailing in a haunted chorus of pain. He hurried along the hallway. It could only be the bog people, and this was the first time he had heard their voices.
He was not surprised to find Gerald awake. The four ravaged figures were breathing unaided and his cousin was watching them as if hypnotized. The bodies were covered by blankets and a fire burned fiercely in the fireplace, but still they shivered uncontrollably. There were still gold needles visible, sticking out of their flesh, but the electrical wires had been removed. They had Gerald's complete attention now: all the other bones and corpses unearthed by the explosion were gone; reassembled and returned to their graves. He was spending every waking hour assisting them in their recovery. He looked up with a start and greeted Nate with a nod.
'How long have they been making that racket?' Nate asked.
'Started about an hour ago,' Gerald replied. 'They're still not conscious – it's as if they're in a delirious state. Well, three of them anyway; this fourth one hasn't made a sound.'
He indicated the taller of the two males. The man's body was in the worst state of all of them, and at nearly seven feet tall, was easily the largest. They had found wounds all over his body and it was clear that he had not been buried without a struggle.
'Quite the brute, isn't he?' Gerald muttered. 'Doesn't seem to be much fight in him now. Not like the others.'
The moaning filled the room, an aching, sorrowful noise. Nate found the sound deeply disturbing.
'It's bloody awful,' he breathed.
'You've been hurt enough times yourself… and you've had to heal,' Gerald said quietly. 'Think about it. You know what it's like to have a wound close up, or have a broken bone knit itself back together. It's painful. Sharp pain eventually subsides to a throbbing, then the itching and discomfort of healing, the feeling of being fragile…
