The Edinburgh Dead

Cold Burn Farm II

Merry Andrew’s cart was a rackety old contraption, too shabby and brittle for carrying much in the way of anything. The last time Quire had been aboard it, he had been the cargo, bouncing along over the Water of Leith bridge with Merry Andrew’s grave-robbing tools for company; now, he drove it. It had been a fair few years since he was called upon to steer a horse in harness, but he had done it often enough as a child on his father’s farm, and sometimes when he had been at war, for no army moved much of anywhere without a mighty train of wagons in its wake.

Nor did Quire, this time, ride alongside spade and crowbar and sacks for the bagging of bodies. His one French pistol rested on the seat beside him, rocking gently as the wagon progressed up the lumpy track. It was loaded and primed. The hammer could be cocked in a moment. Quire found it difficult to imagine any outcome that would not involve its firing. It was a day waiting for the shedding of blood. Whose it would be—that he would learn soon enough.

Beyond the pistol, hunched down under an oversized cloak—entirely buried by it, in fact, the better to obscure his features—was Spune. Flat on the bed of the cart, beneath a light canvas, lay Merry Andrew and the third of his grave-robbing triumvirate: Mowdiewarp. Which was a nickname Quire might have thought funny, had he not been entirely preoccupied with other concerns. Mowdiewarp was an old country name for a mole. A digger.

Merry Andrew was complaining, rather indistinctly due to the concealing canvas, as he had been for a considerable length of time.

“Have you never driven a wagon before?” he hissed. “I’ve got a bruise on every bone, the way you keep finding out the ruts, you daft fuck.”

Quire ignored him. He could imagine that Merrilees’ elongated, bony form made for a hard ride over these rough tracks, but it could not be helped. Merry Andrew could never have passed for Durand, no matter how bundled up in cloak or cape. The two were far too dissimilar in form and carriage. It was not possible to make a heron look like a grouse, whatever the size of the bag you put over its head. So Merry Andrew stayed hidden in the back, and Spune—the only one of them, in fact, of even passingly similar stature to the Frenchman—sat glumly up front, pretending to be sick and keeping his face well hidden.

Arrowheads of geese were ploughing the sky, honking as they went. A buzzard was mewing, off over the slopes of the Pentlands, quartering the heather and grassland with lazy glides. The wagon pitched and yawed and grumbled. And through it all, Quire could still hear Merry Andrew’s whining complaints.

“I’ll have your guts for fiddle strings if this doesn’t play out right after all this bloody misery, you police bastard.”

Quire had made a neat little confection of lies and truth for Merry Andrew and his boys; close enough to the latter to let him say it with an air of conviction, enough of the former to make his proposal tempting to them.

It had taken him longer to find them than he would have liked. A few hours of rummaging around in Edinburgh’s darker corners, and the distribution of coins he could not really afford to part with, not if he was ever to eat again. From the distillery where Spune was—occasionally—employed, he had been sent to an inn in the basement of a half-ruinous tenement near the canal basin at Port Hopetoun. The place was bursting with bargees and canal workers, for all that it was early in the morning, and the air so thick with tobacco he could have chewed it. He had, though, missed both Spune and Merry Andrew by an hour or more. Look for him at the Flesh Market, Quire was told, once he paid over a thrupenny piece.

The Flesh Market was down on the low ground between Old Town and New, in the shadow of the North Bridge. It was a mazy place packed with barrows and stalls and little shops. It was a stinking place too, and a raucous one, with meat traders and butchers and provisioners all competing to get themselves heard one above the other.

Quire found the butcher he had been sent to and was told that Merry Andrew had been there but minutes before, settling a debt. After that, an ironmonger’s shop in Blair Street, run by a man who was an uncle to the city’s thieves, and plied a secret trade in a great deal more than ironwork. But Merrilees was not to be found there either, and the ironmonger was at first unwilling to offer any alternative suggestion. He read some fell and fixed determination in Quire’s face, though, and the passage of a few more coins was enough to loosen his tongue.

Finally, wearily, Quire found Merry Andrew getting himself shaved at a barber’s beside the Royal Exchange. He waited outside, watching the razor sweep its way back and forth over the soapy skin. Andrew Merrilees looked to be entirely at his ease, his lanky frame stretched out in the barber’s chair, his head tilted back. Anyone not knowing him might have thought him a man of some means, a righteous member of the city’s merchant class, perhaps, tidying himself up in anticipation of a meeting to discuss business proposals with fellow traders.

Quire approached Merry Andrew when he emerged, fresh-faced and neat. The man seemed hungry for what Quire disingenuously offered: the chance to settle accounts with those rivals who had caused him such trouble last winter, and broken up one of his cronies; to rid himself of competitors in advance of the next body-snatching season.

“I know where they are,” Quire had murmured, “and I’m not meaning to arrest them, not now. There’s only one or two of them, and none at all after I’m done. That’s my plan. Anything you can find on them or about them is yours. I’m not caring about the law these days.”

And Merry Andrew had smiled, in his brutish, gawky way.

So the four of them rode the cart up the track towards Cold Burn Farm. Spune, it turned out, was even more enthusiastic about the enterprise than Merry Andrew, for it was his cousin had been beaten half to death when they met Blegg in the grounds of Greyfriars Kirk. The boy was still half-crippled, Spune told Quire bitterly, and would never walk right again.

They were not the kind of allies Quire would once have chosen for himself, but he lived by different rules now, and for the work at hand he could think of few better. He had made the mistake once of coming to Cold Burn Farm alone; it was only fools who failed to learn the lesson of their follies.

Quire was equipped for savagery if—when—it came to that. Not just the pistols, but the sabre sheathed at his waist. Though he had never been much of a swordsman, he knew the rudiments of its use. Gently curved, with a broad, single-edged blade and a simple but solid bar for a hand guard, it was very much a thing of purpose, not decoration.

Merry Andrew had a pocket pistol, Quire knew; a tiny little snub-nosed thing, but it would be damaging if he was close to his target. He had seen Spune and Mowdiewarp loading their pockets and belts with knives and—in Spune’s case—a short iron truncheon that looked brutally heavy. It was a fearsome enough armament, though whether it would meet the needs of the day, Quire was not certain. It would probably depend, as such things usually did, not on the weapons themselves, but on the conviction of the men who wielded them. All three of his companions seemed to Quire to be pleasingly set upon doing violence.

Though fire was a thing Quire loathed, and feared, he had come ready for that, too, as Durand had recommended it. There were lit lanterns in the bed of the cart, beside Merrilees and Mowdiewarp, and bottles of lamp oil. He had done what he could to prepare himself, and now wanted only to get done what needed doing.

The gate partway up the track stood open. It was impossible to say whether it was invitation or negligence. Quire let the horse take its own pace through the gate and on towards the copse of trees, which he remembered all too well from his encounter with Davey Muir. It was agonising, to now grind slowly along with the dense thickets on either side, expecting at any moment to be suddenly assailed. But they came safely through, and trundled up towards the farm steading.

“Get yourselves ready, lads,” Quire said under his breath. “Not until I tell you, though, right?”

A discontented grunt from Merry Andrew was the only response.

Quire could see at once that things had changed at the farm. The barns and house looked just as dilapidated and neglected as before, but the low cowshed at the far end of the yard, where Quire had inadvertently disturbed Davey, was now in considerably worse condition. It had, from the look of it, been gutted by fire. Part of its roof was fallen in, and there were ugly black streaks over some of its stonework, where smoke had leaked out through cracks and crevices. The doors were hanging from their hinges, one of them blackened and much reduced by flames.

Quire shot a glance up to the chimney of the farmhouse. No smoke. There would be someone here somewhere, though. He was sure of that. If it was Blegg or Ruthven, all he needed was to draw them close enough with the temptation of the false Durand at his side, and he would put a ball in their head. There would be no petty talk, no hesitation. If Dunbar was even still alive, Quire was all but he certain he would not have long remained so—none of them would—had the real Durand been handed over. This way, at least there was a chance. But only if he got the first kill in.

The cart creaked to a halt in the centre of the farmyard. A flock of pigeons that had been roosting on the roof of the barn burst into the air at the sound, clattering their way into the cloudy sky with flailing wings. They carried Quire’s gaze with them for a moment. He watched them coalesce into a flock and go sweeping down behind the building. And because he did that, he did not see the hounds straight away.

“God damn, Quire,” Spune said with feeling. “You never said anything about dogs.”

Quire snapped his head back. They were loping across the yard from the open door of the cowshed. Two of them, closing quickly. As filthy as he remembered, and with those same dead and lightless eyes.

“What’s happening?” Merry Andrew shouted, stirring beneath the canvas.

The horse reared in alarm, violently enough to shake the front end of the cart, but its harness dragged it back down. The leading dog came bounding up and sprang at the horse’s head. It seized hold of the animal’s nose and lips with its teeth, and tore away a strip of skin and flesh as the horse screamed and twisted and tried to raise its head.

“Jesus Christ,” Spune said, rising to his feet, sloughing the great cloak from his shoulders and whipping out his iron cudgel.

Quire dropped the reins and reached for the pistol to prevent it from sliding away as the cart slewed round, dragged by the distraught horse. The first dog was under the horse’s neck, snapping at it, tearing at it. The second lunged up at the side of the cart, close by Spune, trying to get a hold on his ankle. Spune leaned down and hit it hard on the side of the head with his truncheon. The beast fell back, rolled, and recovered its feet in an instant, coming bounding back towards the cart.

Quire had his pistol in hand now. He cocked the hammer. He might have tried a shot at one or other of the dogs, but the horse succumbed entirely to its terror then, and bolted. It pounded its attacker beneath its hoofs and swept the cart over the fallen hound, crashing off in directionless panic, trailing streamers of blood and mucus and spit from its mangled muzzle.

Merry Andrew and Mowdiewarp, flailing around in the back, trying to free themselves of the smothering canvas, were screaming abuse at the horse, at Quire, and the world in general.

The sudden, violent movement pitched Spune off the cart altogether, and flung Quire against the back of his seat. He tried to steady himself as best he could, one-handed, but would likely have been thrown clear had the horse not found itself under renewed assault. The very dog it had trampled just moments before came racing up to its rear leg, passing dangerously close to the spinning front wheel of the cart, and unhesitatingly leaped up and fixed its teeth into the horse’s hamstring. That was enough to slow it dramatically, and it limped desperately along on three legs as the hound put the whole weight of its body into a violent shaking, intended to tear out a mouthful of muscle.

Quire leaned forward and down from his seat and shot the dog in the head. The flare and roar of the gun startled the horse all over again, and it staggered sideways, but it was lapsing into that state of numb shock Quire had seen in its kind before when they were seriously injured. The pistol spat its ball into the dog’s skull just behind the eye, and blew a hole the size of a half-crown coin in the far side of the animal’s head, sending a portion of its skull and ear spinning away across the yard. The impact was enough to knock loose its grip upon the horse’s hindquarters, though it left deep gouges behind it, and thick rivulets of blood coursing down the horse’s leg.

Quire jumped to the ground, landing on the balls of his feet and dropping into a crouch. He could hear Spune screaming, and began to turn to look for him, but the dog he had shot came at him, its head horribly open and misshapen now.

It leaped at Quire’s face, and he barely got the discharged pistol up in time to block its jaws. A vile, musty stench of dead flesh and rotting fur washed over him. The hound bit down on the gun, and shook it with such terrible strength that it tore it from Quire’s grasp and pushed him on to his backside. The silence of the attack was uncanny and horrible. Quire could hear the faltering snorts of the horse, Merry Andrew shouting something, Spune wailing; but not a sound from the dog that was remorselessly trying to kill him.

Quire made to draw the sabre from its scabbard, trying to rise as he did so. The dog let the pistol fall from its mouth and came at him again. He fell on to his back, letting his own weight take him down, and got his foot into the creature’s chest as it lunged once more for his face.

He folded his knee, taking the hound’s weight and speed into his leg, then kicked out with all his strength. He meant to send it back the way it had come, but his boot slid off its slick, half-rotted fur and it went twisting and tumbling sideways instead. Again, it was quickly on to its feet, but he was ready for it now. He met its charge with the tip of the sabre’s blade, angled in along the line of its throat, punching through the skin of its barrel chest and bursting through the ribcage deep down into the chest cavity.

It was no way to use a sabre, but it had the desired effect. Durand had told him to aim for the heart, and he had been right. The hound fell on to its side. Its legs still shook, and its jaw still worked open and shut, but it could not rise. Quire left the sword buried in the beast and turned towards the farmhouse.

Spune was on the ground, no longer screaming; limp, as the second great dog shook him. Mowdiewarp was bent over the creature, stabbing it again and again in the back and flank with a butcher’s knife. Merry Andrew stood, feet firmly planted in a wide stance, back straight, right arm extended perfectly level, pointing his tiny pistol at the door of the farmhouse. Where Blegg stood, looking directly at Quire.

Quire heard the horse slumping down to the ground behind him.

“Aim for the heart,” he cried out to Merry Andrew, though he doubted the man could aim at much of anything with such a trinket of a gun.

Merrilees was not listening anyway.

“There’s the bastard I want,” he shouted, and fired.

Blegg’s shoulder twitched. That was the only way to tell that the shot had hit him. A tremor went through his face, perhaps; that contemptuous smile faltered for a second, before reasserting itself.

Merry Andrew howled in frustration, and fumbled for his powder pouch. Blegg took a single long step backwards and disappeared into the farmhouse.

Quire set his foot on the still twitching dog he had impaled, and pulled the sabre out. It came grudgingly, rasping against bone. He hurried over to where the other beast was blindly, mindlessly savaging Spune and pushed Mowdiewarp roughly aside. He took a moment or two to steady himself, and choose his spot, then drove the blade in between two ribs and skewered the heart.

“Bastard,” Merry Andrew was saying over and over again. “Bastard. Bastard.”

Quire did not know if it was meant for him, or Blegg, or God for that matter. He glanced down at Spune, who was pale and moaning. One arm of his jacket was entirely soaked through with blood, and he had an ugly wound to his cheek.

Merry Andrew started towards the farmhouse door.

“Wait, Merrilees,” Quire snapped. “You’ll need more than that wee gun if you’re going in there.”

When Merry Andrew glared at him, he nodded towards the cart.

“Bring the lanterns, if they’re still alight, and the oil. We’ll burn the place down.”

Quire retrieved his pistol, and hurried to reload it. If he was to have any chance of finding Wilson Dunbar alive, it would be now, in the next few moments. Nothing mattered but that.

He kicked in the door of the kitchen, and found it bare and damp and cold.

“Dunbar,” he shouted, feeling despair winding itself about his heart. “Blegg!”

There was no answer, but he heard the creak of floorboards above his head. He looked at the ceiling. The sound came again. He ran out into the hall, almost colliding with Merry Andrew as he came loping into the house. In each hand he carried a burning lantern and a bottle of thin oil, tied together with fine rope. Quire hurriedly sheathed his sabre and took one of the cumbersome bundles from Merrilees.

“Up there,” he said to the grave robber, and led the way up the stairs.

When Quire was halfway up, Blegg heaved a linen chest over the railing of the landing above. His timing was off, but only by a fraction. The massive wooden box plummeted down just behind Quire, struck Merry Andrew a glancing blow on the shoulder, shattered the banisters into splinters and cracked the stair upon which it landed. Quire heard the sharp click of Merry Andrew’s collarbone breaking an instant before the man’s yelp of startled pain; and an instant before the sound of glass shattering and the soft whump of flame erupting through the spray of spilled oil.

A surge of fear rushed through Quire, and he scrambled further up the staircase, out of reach of the blooming flames. He twisted, raised his gun and fired just as Blegg darted back out of view. Quire looked back down towards the hall. Merry Andrew was kneeling on the floor down there, head bowed in pain, one hand clamped to his shoulder. Flames were leaping between the two of them, crackling away as they took hold of the staircase. Quire shied away from the memories that sight brought forth.

He stowed his pistol and drew the sabre once more. He climbed the stair with sword in one hand, improvised fire grenade in the other. The doorway through which he thought Blegg had likely retreated was open. He approached it cautiously, trying to shut out the sound of the fire hungrily consuming the old, dry stairs. He could tell just from the roar of it that it was spreading quickly. Already, smoke was thickening all about him, stinging his eyes and his throat.

He looked into the room, and saw Blegg leaning over Dunbar, who was lying quite motionless on a wide bed. Blegg had his hands over Dunbar’s mouth and nose. Quire shouted and rushed at him, sword raised, but Blegg was a good deal too fast for him. He straightened and turned quickly, and caught Quire’s descending arm by the wrist. With his other hand he punched Quire once, solidly, in the chest. Pain lanced through Quire. It felt as though his whole chest was cramping.

Blegg pushed him backwards, towards the open doorway and the landing and the rising flames beyond it, and Quire could not help but go, for the man was terribly strong. His wrist was crushed and bent in Blegg’s grip.

With all his strength, he hit Blegg on the side of the head with the lantern in his left hand. It did not break, but Blegg paused in his determined advance, and looked down at Quire’s hand, and reached to block it with his own. Quire swung again, and this time the oil flask cracked and spilled some of its contents across the lantern with a little flash of flame, and that little flash became a cloud, blinding Quire even as he twisted away, billowing over Blegg’s face and head and shoulders.

The two of them parted, Quire staggering along the landing, dropping what remained of the lantern and his sword, pulling frantically at the collar of his coat to drag it off over his head. The left sleeve and breast of it were burning, and he could feel the awful heat of the flames already in his skin, and with it the panic that he knew would master him completely if he could not free himself of the coat.

He did manage to tear it off, and cast it into a corner. He blinked through the churning smoke as he felt for his sabre. Blegg was a bright, awful beacon of flame, reeling about at the far end of the landing, close by the top of the stairs and the window there. His hair was alight, and his shirt. The stink of burning flesh, which he knew all too well, made Quire gag, and he clamped his hand over his nose and mouth to keep both it and the acrid smoke out as best he could.

Flames were licking up around the railings on the landing. Quire shrank away from them. His hand found the hilt of the sabre and he took a firm grip of it. Blegg was still upright, still pawing at his burning scalp as if impotently trying to pat the flames out. It was difficult to be sure through the obscuring, shifting veils of smoke, but Quire thought Blegg’s face was blackening. Charring.

He moved closer, and hacked at Blegg with the sabre, desperate to put an end to this. The heat coming from the burning man was too much for him to get a great deal of force behind his blows, but they were enough to topple Blegg backwards, and he broke through the window behind him. The sudden gust of wind sucked a great roaring sheet of flame up the staircase and across Blegg’s body. He hung there for a moment, half in and half out of the window, then his legs came up and he tumbled backwards out of the house.

Quire went to Dunbar, who was battered and bruised and pale. But still breathing; not strongly or deeply, but still breathing. Quire called to him, and lifted him from the bed, but Dunbar did not stir.

The room overlooked the farmyard. Merry Andrew was sitting cross-legged by the cart, clutching his shoulder. Mowdiewarp was kneeling beside the unmoving Spune. Quire kicked out the window, and shouted, again and again, at Mowdiewarp until the sheer noise of it penetrated the man’s fug of bewildered disbelief and persuaded him to leave Spune’s side. Quire lowered Dunbar down to him. He lowered himself from the window after, and dropped the last half-dozen feet. He turned his ankle as he landed, and for a moment thought he had broken it, so sharp was the pain. But the bone held.

He hobbled around to the back of the farmhouse, coughing at the smoke that had settled into his lungs, watching great clouds of the stuff spilling out from the building.

Blegg was gone, leaving only a filthy, black, oily smear on the ground where he had fallen.