Ancient Appetites

XXI

Brutus's recovery was faltering. Nate entered Gerald's laboratory to find his cousin cleaning his surgical instruments with alcohol. Hugo was kneeling by his brother's bed, crying and clutching Brutus's right hand and offering prayers in Latin.

'The hand has to come off or he'll die,' Gerald told their ancestor, and Nate got the impression that he had been telling the old man this for some time now. 'The flesh of his hand is dead and the decay is producing toxins that are poisoning his blood. It is only because of your brother's extraordinary powers of healing that he is not dead already. But that will not last. The same flesh that can manage such a remarkable recovery is also producing a remarkably powerful toxin. The hand must come off.'

Nate took his place at Gerald's side. He had aided his cousin in minor operations before, but never something so drastic. They waited at Brutus's bedside for Hugo to finish.

'If it must be done, then so be it,' Hugo said at last, in a choked voice. 'I can only hope that he will forgive me for allowing him to be crippled so. This sword-arm was the most feared in Ireland.'

He wiped his eyes and stood back, a look of abject misery on his face. Gerald waved to four waiting servants, and together they lifted the giant over onto the operating table. Hugo watched Gerald set out a number of blades on a side table.

'Don't worry' Gerald reassured him, his attention already focused on the job at hand. 'He won't feel a thing.'

A bottle of laudanum stood on the side table, in case Brutus should suddenly wake up. Gerald placed a bone-saw beside the other blades. Hugo put a hand to his mouth and hurried out of the room.

'It's true, what he said,' Gerald muttered to Nate as he tied a tourniquet around Brutus's arm. 'I finally found a mention of them – in just one book, a rare family journal from our own library. But our dear old ancestors were hard to find – almost as if they had been erased from history. They were a mongrel breed who came over with the Normans in eleven seventy to try and help Dermot MacMurrough – that disgraced King of Leinster – to win back his lands. In return, he promised them land of their own.' He swabbed Brutus's wrist with alcohol. 'MacMurrough couldn't deliver, but the Normans took what they could by force of arms anyway.

'The Wildensterns were among them. Brutus is said to have killed nearly a hundred men in one day of battle. He was unstoppable. They seized land south of Dublin and held onto it by sheer ferocity. Hugo was a master strategist, apparently; but he was merciless – a complete bloody tyrant. Anyone who spoke out against him had their tongue cut out. The same went for any other body parts that offended him. Nearly forty years after he moved in, some fanatical monk convinced everyone that Hugo was the devil himself and led the people in an uprising against him and his family. They tortured the four of them for days, buried them alive and then tried to destroy every trace of their existence. Nearly managed it too, by the looks of it. I've always thought the Wildensterns didn't get here for decades after that. The ancestors we know about must just have followed these valiant pioneers. It seems we have Hugo to thank for starting the family on the road to greatness.'

Gerald picked up a scalpel and prepared to make a cut just above Brutus's right hand.

'Oh, I almost forgot,' he said to Nate. 'Take a syringe and go and ask Hugo if we can take some of his blood. Our mighty friend here is going to lose quite a bit and hopefully we can use Hugo's to replace some of it.'

As Nate picked up a syringe, he watched Gerald press the scalpel into Brutus's flesh, drawing the first blood.

'I wouldn't want to be around when he wakes up and finds someone's chopped his hand off,' he observed.

'These are extraordinary times,' Gerald replied. 'Who knows? Perhaps it'll grow back.'

Hugo's education began the following morning. Nathaniel's new charge wanted some sword practice and Nate, who was fast becoming convinced that the house was full of rebel spies, was happy to oblige. It was clear that he would need to stay on his toes if he was to survive long enough to make his trip to America – or rather, to solve Marcus's murder and then flee to wherever he could escape his father's influence. Hugo would hardly be a challenging opponent, old and decrepit as he was, but every bit of practice helped. And besides, it was more fun than teaching history or politics.

Nate led the old man to the gymnasium, noticing that Hugo was steadier on his feet than he had been the day before. His movements were becoming more and more confident as time passed.

The first argument started over which swords they were going to use. Hugo immediately chose a hefty longsword, the weapon of his time. Nate refused, on the basis that the old man was far too weak to be swinging four and a half pounds of metal around. It would also require the use of a buckler – a small shield – and Nate doubted that Hugo would be able to even lift a longsword with one hand, let alone swing one.

The old Patriarch persisted in demanding a heavy sword, pointing first at a Scottish claymore, then a cleaver-like falchion, and then finally a six-foot two-handed sword, which sent Nathaniel into fits of laughter. He could barely hold that one up himself. Instead, Nate took down a pair of épées; light and blunt and ideal for training. He handed one to Hugo, who looked at the flimsy sword in disdain.

'Do people commonly fight with knitting needles in this new age?' he grunted.

'It's built to develop speed, not to chop horses in half,' Nate replied. 'Let's see what you remember.'

Clancy, who was standing nearby, invisible as all good servants should be, helped the two gentlemen into their padded jackets, gauntlets and wire-mesh helmets and then stood aside to watch.

Nate raised his blade in front of him in salute, then took up the en garde stance, blade extended, his free hand above his shoulder. He nodded to Hugo, eager to see what his opponent would do. The Normans were masters of the battlefield in their day and he had no doubt Hugo was a seasoned warrior. The old man nodded back and held his sword horizontally at head-height in a pose that Nate recognized from medieval fighting manuals. Nate gave a resigned sigh; his opponent was determined to learn the hard way. Nate lunged in with an attack.

At this point all pretence at formality went out of the window.

Nate scored two strikes while Hugo was still making his first swing. The older man had clearly used a sword before, but he made big, sweeping moves that telegraphed his intentions and left him wide open. He wasn't used to the tighter, quicker style of modern fencing.

'Stop using it like a big sword,' Nate told him. 'Small movements… short and quick!'

He deflected Hugo's blade again and thrust the point of his sword into his opponent's chest. Hugo snarled and stamped on Nate's toe.

'Aagh!' Nate yelped.

Hugo pinned Nate's foot down long enough to smack him on the side of the helmet with his blade. Nate gave a curse and pulled free. He parried the next blow and jammed his point into the protective pad on Hugo's chest again. Hugo grabbed the blunt blade with his free hand and kicked Nate in the shin. Nate was so surprised, the old man managed to get two more kicks in with the other foot before swinging his sword so hard against the younger man's side that the blade bent.

Nate grunted in pain. He should have called a halt to it there and then, but his temper flared and he swept Hugo's sword aside and jabbed his point into the man's mask. Hugo staggered back and Nate followed, lunging after him to whip the thin blade across the man's unprotected thigh – going for pain rather than points. Hugo let out a scream and jerked away, lashing wildly with his crooked sword.

They both came forward, clashing again, and Nate scored several more strikes as Hugo fought like a whirling dervish, his frantic efforts all the more comical because of his pathetically weak limbs. Nate would have laughed, but the old man was taking it so seriously. Nate leaned onto his back leg as Hugo came at him again, avoiding the thrusting point, and with a neat spiralling motion, whipped the blade right out of Hugo's hand.

That should have been the end of it, but even as he was disarmed, Hugo grabbed Nate's wrist. Wrenching his mask off, he whacked Nate over the head with it and then sank his teeth into the young man's arm, provoking another yell of pain. Only the material of Nate's sleeve saved him from broken flesh.

They pulled apart, breathing heavily. Hugo was wheezing through gritted teeth, clutching his chest, looking frighteningly absurd as he snatched his sword from the floor and tensed up his weak, aged frame, raising his bent weapon in a guard position.

'This is not how we practise fighting,' Nate growled. 'You have to use more control.'

'Any warrior knows you gain control by winning,' the old man panted. 'Perhaps you should practise less and fight more?'

He charged forward to make another sweeping attack with his sword. But Nate had run out of patience; if the old relic wanted to play dirty, that was his own lookout. With a flick of his wrist, Nathaniel parried the clumsy strike and stepped aside to let Hugo's momentum carry him past. Nate brought his knee up sharply into the other man's ribs, doubling him over and sending him crumpling to the floor.

'I'm a great believer in practice myself,' Nathaniel breathed, relishing the adrenaline rushing through his body. 'It's how I win.'

Hugo lay on the floor, struggling to get his wind back, the ache in his side etched in lines across his face.

'Indeed,' he gasped. Then, looking up at his opponent with a grimacing smile, he added: 'So… same time tomorrow?'