Ancient Appetites

II

Francis Noonan walked on tired legs along Sackville Street, making his way home. Most of the lights had gone out now, and the street had lost its glamour to the night. Even the pubs were quiet at this hour. Nelson's Column towered into the night sky, and he looked across at the Imperial Hotel, the most brightly lit building on the street. It reminded him of the times he and the lads would hang around on the corner, watching the 'lords and ladies' strut like peacocks; laughing when the toffs had to cross the mucky side streets – acting like they were fording a river, trying to avoid getting mud on their fancy duds.

He didn't laugh at them now. Not now he worked at the Wildenstern stables, earning a good wage. Nowadays it was all 'yes, sir', or 'no, ma'am' or 'thank you kindly, sir' whenever they saw fit to talk to him directly, which wasn't often. Mostly they just spoke to Old Hennessy as if the others weren't there, and the old timer passed on the instructions to the rest of them.

There was a man out in front of the hotel, leading an engimal back and forth over the flagstones of the path. Francie stopped to watch for a while. He had seen this one before, many times. The hotel had been using it for years. The thing was roughly the size and shape of a large chest of drawers, and was rolling along with its downward pointing mouth, licking the muddy footprints off the stone and buffing the surface with its soft, rough tongue. It seemed happy enough, being led on a rope as placidly as a cow, and getting an occasional friendly pat from its keeper. Francie watched until he got bored and then carried on walking.

He shouldn't have been out. He'd hitched a ride into town with the coalman, but he wasn't sure how he was going to get back to his bed in the loft above the stables by morning. He could lose his job if Hennessy discovered he was missing. But they might put him in gaol for the piece of paper he had tucked into his shirt. Francie's father had said to let him know if anything big happened in the Wildenstern house; any inside information he could pass on for a price. Francie's da had friends who could use that kind of information. Francie would do anything for his da, and he had a right juicy bit of gossip for him this time.

He crossed Great Britain Street and made his way round Rutland Square. Further up he could see the silhouetted shape of the Black Church. Legend had it that if you walked three times anti-clockwise around that church, reciting the Hail Mary backwards, the devil would appear to you. Francie had once managed two and a half circuits before his nerve had failed.

A metallic noise near his feet made him start, and his heart leaped into his throat as something brushed against his arm. For a silly moment he thought that the Wildensterns were on to him, that they had sent the peelers… He blinked, squinting into the gloom. Instead of a hulking policeman, he saw it was a small engimal, with rotating blades around its mouth, a wheeled base and a long arching tail. The kind of creature that could be used to mow rich people's lawns. Francie had nearly stood on it. The thing had probably just escaped from its owners. It stared at him with its tubular eyes and then scurried away down the street. Francie gawked at it for a second, and then sprinted after it. He didn't have time to be chasing around after a lawncutter in the dark, but it was too great a temptation to resist. A good healthy engimal was worth a lot of money.

It was dark, and the streets off the main thoroughfares were badly lit, if at all, but Francie knew these streets blindfolded. The lawncutter led him a merry chase, zigzagging away from him, bouncing up onto the kerb, its motor making a shrill whirring sound. He hoped nobody else would hear it. Francie wanted this prize for himself. He was breathing hard and his trousers were spattered with mud by the time he cornered the machine in a dead-end alley. It had turned round to look at him, humming warily. He advanced slowly, making comforting sounds, but it backed away from him into the shadows until its tail touched the wall that blocked off the end of the alley.

'Here… thingy, thingy, thing,' he called softly. 'I'm not goin' ta hurt yeh. Come 'ere to me now. Come to Francie. That's a good girl.'

He didn't know if it was a boy or a girl, but it probably didn't matter anyway. He wondered where it was from. Not from around here, that was for sure. Nobody in this neighbourhood had a lawn, let alone an engimal to mow it. He edged closer, admiring the sweeping patterns on its humped carapace.

'Shhh. That's it. That's a good girl. Easy now'

Francie was good with animals. He got on well with the horses and dogs that were kept at Wildenstern Hall. The stable boys weren't let anywhere near the engimals, but he was sure he could win the lawncutter's trust. Having seen machines like this used on the estate, he knew he had to grab its tail. It should be tame enough once he got hold of it. Its little engine gave a nervous growl. It shifted from side to side, but Francie had his arms out ready to grab it if it tried to get round him.

'Shhh. Come here to me now. That's it. I'm not goin' to hurt yeh-'

It swivelled and he lunged for its tail. The lawncutter turned and went for his feet, and he barely got out of the way of its spinning blades in time. The machine let out a screech and came at him again, its rotating jaws snatching at his ankles.

'Aaah!' he yelped. 'Holy Mary-!'

Francie jumped clear of the gnashing blades and turned to run. It clipped his heel as he took off, and he thanked the good Lord that he was wearing shoes. He could hear it behind him as he ran, its blades whining with speed. Clattering round a corner, he slipped in the mud and fell hard on his side, jarring his senses and badly scraping his elbow. The lawncutter was only a few yards behind him and, with an agility born of fear, he leaped to his feet and hurled himself at the top of the high wall beside him. His fingertips caught hold and he scrambled up and onto it, flopping down to try and catch his breath. The engimal looked up at him, giving off a petty little growl and spinning its jaws in triumph.

'Get lost!' he yelled down at it. 'Get away from me, yeh maggot! Go on!'

It snarled back at him.

'Go away, I'm tellin' yeh! If I have to come down there, I'll hit yeh so hard I'll make yeh cough up thrupenny bits. Away with yeh now!'

The lawncutter was unimpressed. It crouched there, waiting for him.

'What's all that noise there?' a voice called down from a window above them. 'There's people tryin' to sleep here. Have yiz no homes to go to?'

The engimal flinched from the voice, its new-found savagery disappearing at the sound of another adversary. It flashed its blades once more at Francie and then scurried off down the dark street. Francie waited for a couple of minutes to be sure that it was gone. Then he climbed down and brushed down his clothes as best he could. He was plastered with mud all down his left side, and the left elbow of his shirt was torn. His elbow was bleeding and it was starting to hurt. There was no way he'd be able to get his clothes clean by the morning. He was going to be in for a right hiding from Hennessy when he got back to the stables.

He found that the tails of his shirt had come out of his trousers and gave a start. Checking around his sides and back to be sure, he uttered an earthy curse. It was gone.

Desperately casting his eyes around, he searched the ground where he had fallen. It wasn't there. His heart thumping, he worked his way back along the road where the lawncutter had chased him until he saw a pale square in the mud a few yards away. He could easily have missed it in the darkness. Francie picked up the folded piece of paper, wiping it down. Checking that it wasn't damaged, he tucked his shirt into his trousers, tightened his braces and slipped the large folded piece of paper back inside. He breathed a sigh of relief. It had fallen less than a foot from a stream of raw sewage that was oozing down the gutter. And he was lucky the lawncutter hadn't shredded it.

Francie's family lived in the tenements not ten minutes from the bright lights of Sackville Street, in a Georgian house that had once been a fine building, according to his father. Fit for a lord, he said, before the Famine emptied the country, and thousands had moved to the city. Now there were eight families living in that house. Eight large families.

Francie found his way down the gloomy lane, past the one outside toilet that served four houses, with its rusting tap where they took their water and rinsed out their privy pails. He clambered over the wall into the yard that led to the back door of his house. Somewhere a cat yowled like a hurt child. Another one answered it. Patting his shirt to make sure the folded piece of paper was still tucked into it, he lifted the latch.

His family lived on the third floor, and he climbed the bare wooden steps, wincing at the familiar squeaks. He had never been embarrassed by his family's poverty before. But after nearly a year of working for the Wildensterns, he had become painfully aware of the sordid life he had grown up with. From behind the door of one of their neighbours he could hear arguing and crying. From another, the sound of a tin whistle being played with vigour. The third door he passed was hanging off its hinges, the frame splintered. There was no warmth or sound from the darkness within. The O'Malleys must have been evicted. That room would be filled soon enough by some other desperate bunch. Some of these rooms housed as many as twenty people.

He reached his family's door, and knocked before opening it. There was only one candle lit, and his mother sat by the light, darning a hole in the elbow of a jumper. The rickety wooden chair scraped on the floor as she stood up.

'Francis, pet! You're home! Oh, praise be to God, you're home!'

She was always like that. Stating the obvious – and then thanking God for it.

'Shay! Francie's home!' she cried as she rushed over to give her youngest child a smothering hug.

'Can't I see that with my own eyes, Cathy?' came the answer from across the room.

His father stood up from his place by the small cast-iron stove and came over, giving Francie an excuse to extricate himself from his mother's embrace. Shay looked his son in the eye and held out his hand. It still made Francie proud, to have his da shake his hand like he was a grown man. Francie was almost as tall as him now, tall enough up to see his da's bald spot under the thinning brown hair.

But he could see the curiosity in his father's gaze too. Shay knew his son had broken rules to be here.

'Have a seat, son,' he said. 'Sit down there and have some tea. The kettle's just boiled.'

'Look at the state of you!' Cathy scolded her son. 'Is it swimmin' in the mud you were?'

Taking a damp cloth, she cleaned up his bloody elbow and then wiped as much of the mud from his shirt and trousers as she could until he squirmed. Then she got on with making the tea.

'Aren't they missin' yeh at the stables?' his father asked, giving him the shrewd eye.

Francie shrugged.

His mother fussed about, putting tea leaves in the teapot and pouring in the water. She made a good cup of tea, did Ma. Francie sat down at the table with his parents, sipping the hot, milky tea and taking a look around to see what had changed. Nothing much. They had neighbours who lived in worse conditions. But the room was still sparse: a threadbare rug on the bare floorboards, the stove in one corner, the table in another. There were no curtains on the window, but it was so dirty on the outside that it didn't matter. And there was the trunk that held most of the rest of their possessions, which also doubled as a bench when some of the neighbours came round for a session. The folded blankets in another corner would make the beds that his folks and older sisters slept in.

'Where are the girls?' he asked.

'Away working,' his da replied.

'They both got placed in houses,' his ma added. 'Chambermaids. We don't see so much of them any more. Peggy's all the way out in Dundrum.'

Francie was disappointed that nobody had seen fit to let him know.

'What brings you out, son?' his father asked.

He was a lean man with a worn, ruddy face and had little patience for prattle when something had taken his interest. Francie took a breath. He'd been dying to tell them the news, but it was nice to just sit there and talk about the little stuff.

'You said to tell you if anything important happened up at the house,' he began. 'Anything like… y'know. Interestin'.'

'Yeah, so?' his father nodded insistently.

'Well, it's the first son. Master Marcus. He's dead. Was out mountain climbing and fell off, they sez. There's goin' to be a huge funeral; deffiney some time next week – it looks like Saturday, but they're not sure yet. They won't announce it for a couple of days.'

'That's terrible,' his ma gasped, her hand to her mouth. 'God help his poor mother.'

'His poor mother's in her grave these past eight years, woman,' Shay snapped. 'No doubt she'll be glad of his company. What else, son? There's more, isn't there?'

Francie bit his lip and reached into his pocket. Taking the folded paper from inside his shirt, he laid it on the table. The expression on his face was a mixture of excitement and fear. He was even trembling a little.

'What is it?' Cathy asked.

Shay unfolded the sheet of paper and flattened it out. It took up the entire top of the table. Father and son shared a look. Francie's mother could not read.

'It's a map,' Shay said, studying it. 'A plan of the house… Wildenstern Hall.'

'One of the lads working on the new railway gave it to me,' Francie lied. 'I just wanted to show you what it was going to be like. The railway, I mean. And what some of the house looked like. This is only one floor – not even a floor; this is just the cellar.'

The architectural plan showed where the basement level of the house connected to the underground station; where the Wildensterns would be able to board their private train. It also showed every other room on that level, and every room was labelled.

'This is marvellous, Francie,' Shay praised him cautiously. 'What a place this must be. Have you ever seen the like, Cathy? Look,' he said, pointing at one of the rooms. 'An armoury! What kind of family has an armoury in their home? Those Wildensterns are a breed unto themselves and no mistake. Bloody rich people!'

'Shay!' Cathy exclaimed. 'Language!'

'Sorry, love.'

Francie stared into his father's eyes and discreetly tapped his finger on another room marked on the paper. Shay gazed down at the plan and exhaled quietly.

The label for that room read 'TREASURY'.