The Kingdom of Bones by Stephen Gallagher Page B

record than even Sebastian knew, had laid aside all his other duties in order to respond. Eyebrows were raised. It was almost without precedent.
    The head slaughterman waited for them at the top of the ramp. He was bearded, with a scarf tied around his head like a pirate’s. There was a belt over his apron, and a long knife stuck through the belt. The blade of the knife had been worn down by repeated sharpening, almost to rapier width.
    Sebastian explained, “When the carcasses have been eviscerated and skinned, they’re brought up here to be butchered.”
    Lines of men and women worked at wooden butcher blocks. The men mostly hacked, the women mostly carved. The stench up here was worse than the stench below. The very air was misty and red; muslin had been hung to keep flies at bay, but to no great effect. The muslin had once been ivory-colored, but was now spattered and brown.
    “The offal is sorted into these vats,” Sebastian said, and nodded to the head slaughterman. They were now at the tripe tables, where the lowest of the workers had the job of scraping feces and worms from the animals’ intestines.
    The slaughterman ordered one of the tables cleared, whereupon he lifted up a bucket and dumped its contents onto the surface for the visitors to inspect. They landed and spread with a thick, slopping sound.
    There seemed little to distinguish this material from the guts, organs, and assorted entrails that lay all around them.
    “More offal?” said Turner-Smith.
    “Not quite,” said Sebastian. “The man knows his meat. And he tells me that these items are almost certainly human.”



EIGHT
    A nother day, another town, another playhouse. On their arrival, Whitlock and the actors had gone straight to their lodgings while Sayers had arranged the transfer of their stage properties to the Prince of Wales. They were to replace a show called
Memories of Old Ireland,
and when Sayers reached the theater, it was to find the sets only half struck and several members of the cast snoring loudly under the stage.
    Things went rather better at the lodging house, where Whitlock had taken the master bedroom. The room above the bay window went to Ricks and his wife, a former soprano who now played mother roles and Shakespearean dames. Everyone else set their bags down in the rooms that Mrs. Mack, the landlady, had chosen to assign to them. The stagehands, by their own choice, were billeted in rooms above a public house closer to the theater.
    There were several hours to be passed until the matinee, and the company chose to spend them in various ways. Some went out to look at the town. Some gathered in the sitting room for idle conversation, while others read alone. James Caspar, seemingly indifferent to his disgrace, went upstairs and threw himself on his bed and slept.
    A few minutes after noon, he awoke, changed into a large and threadbare Oriental dressing gown, and went down to the kitchen to beg some hot tea from Mrs. Mack. Mrs. Mack was not easily charmed, but Caspar seemed to manage. Gulliford, the Low Comedian, heard him on the stairs as he was taking the tea back to his room. He went out to accost Caspar, but he was too late; Caspar was back in his room with the door already closed.
    Gulliford went to the door and knocked. At Caspar’s response of “Come in, if you must,” he opened it and went inside.
    It was a bare room, with an iron bedstead and a table and not much of anything else. Caspar’s stage clothes had been hung up to dry on the front of the wardrobe, before which stood his cabin trunk. Caspar was rummaging inside this, and as Gulliford closed the door behind him came up with a glass preserving jar. He appeared to have wrapped it in a sock, for safety during transit.
    “She’s awake, then,” Gulliford said, as Caspar set his jar down on the table and pulled up a chair. He gave the Low Comedian a baleful glance and continued about his business, moving with painful slowness as if every part of him gave