The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [124]
He reached into the wardrobe and withdrew his cane-sword. An innocent thing, to all appearances, a walking stick made of Malacca wood with a plain but neatly formed metal grip at its head. It concealed a narrow, straight blade.
An oil lamp stood on the floorboards at the side of the mattress, its brass base and handle surmounted by a curving glass shade. Its flame guttered low, shedding almost no light. He turned the little wheel that would bring the lamp to life, and it chased the shadows from the room. Standing, he drew the sword slowly from its cane sheath. It had not been exposed to the air for years, and he had thought it might be stiff or stuck, but it came smoothly out and the lamplight laid soft yellow gleams out along its blade.
There was no further sound from below, but that silence did nothing to still his racing heart. He could think of no cause for the earlier disturbance that would be welcome. Isabel was almost never here now, keeping her own strange hours and telling him nothing of what she did. Treating him, in fact, with the contempt that had been for so long understood but not often so crudely expressed between them. He would have turned her out long ago, but for the need to preserve appearances. She, no doubt, would happily have gone of her own accord, once their funds were all but exhausted, save for Blegg. The perverse desire for him that had grown in her. Or been inflicted upon her by that presence inside Blegg. Ruthven did not know, or care, precisely how their corrupt union had come about.
Sword in one hand, lamp in the other, he went down the stairs. He trod as lightly as he could, but there was no carpeting on these upper flights, and the boards creaked beneath his feet no matter how much care he took.
He paused on the middle landing, peering over the banisters. There was nothing but darkness down there. His lamp set weaving, faltering patterns of soft light flowing over the walls. It merely accentuated the gloom in those parts it did not reach, and made the lurking shadows seem all the more impenetrable. Ruthven flexed his fingers about the hilt of the sword and resumed his cautious descent.
Every one of those he had relied upon in his enterprise had betrayed him. If he was guilty of folly, it was surely in that reliance as much as anything. They had come so close, after all; breathed life into the dead, performed an alchemy of souls. Yet he had become not the conqueror of death but its transmuter, giving it movement and vigour, but not sentience. He had not returned the departed to their bodily shells, but instead replaced them with raw, formless spirits whose nature he did not understand.
Except Blegg, of course. What Ruthven had instilled in Blegg’s corpse was of different substance. It was a soul, indisputably. An old, immutable presence that brought with it appetites and insights and whispered memories and promises. Now, though, Ruthven began to doubt whether he had even called forth what resided in Blegg’s form in the first place. It may be that it had come of its own accord.
He had killed Blegg with his own hands. Strangled him. His submissive, obedient thrall, aghast at the wonders Carlyle’s machines and Ruthven’s magical knowledge performed upon the corpses of dogs, had discovered an unwonted courage. Threatened all manner of scandal. And thus became the first human subject for Ruthven’s experiments. It had seemed a triumph of sorts at the time. Perhaps that had been illusion, Ruthven dully thought.
Down to the entrance hallway he went. Still there was no further sound other than that which he made himself. The ornate mirror standing on the side table caught the light of his lamp. Shadows spun around the walls as he turned. Perhaps it was imagination, but he thought he felt the slightest drift of cold air, easing its way through from the rear of the house. He made to go that way, back towards the kitchen, but stopped. He heard a single, muted scrape, the movement of one thing against another. Brief, almost inaudible.