"Abraham de Jaybo," Grandma Macaulay said quietly.
Uncle Tam glanced at the door and lowered his voice. "When they found him at the Miners' Station, he was in a terrible state, covered in cuts and bruises, his tongue missing — cut out, they say. He was almost starved to death, like a walking corpse. He didn't last long; died a week later from some unknown disease that made his blood boil up through his ears and mouth. He couldn't speak, of course, but some say he made drawings, loads of them, as he lay on his deathbed, too afraid to sleep."
"What were the drawings of?" Will was wide-eyed.
"All sorts, apparently; infernal machines, strange animals and impossible landscapes, and things no one could understand. The Styx said it was all the product of a diseased mind, but others say the things he drew really exist. To this very day the drawings are kept under lock and key in the Governor's vaults… though no one I know's ever seen them."
"God, I'd give anything to look at those," Will said, spellbound.
Uncle Tam gave a deep chuckle.
"What?" Will asked.
"Well, apparently, that Burrows fellow said the selfsame thing when he was told the tale… the selfsame words, he used.
24
After the talk, the tea, the "fancies," and the revelations, Uncle Tam finally rose with a cavernous yawn and stretched his powerful frame with several bone-chilling clicks. He turned to Grandma Macaulay.
"Well, come on, Ma, high time I got you home."
And with that, they bade their farewells and were gone. Without Tam's booming voice and infectious guffaws to fill it, the house suddenly seemed a very different place.
"I'll show you where you'll be sleeping," Cal said to Will, who only mumbled in response. It was as though he were under some kind of spell, his mind teeming with new thoughts and feelings that, try as he might, he couldn't keep from rising to the surface like a shoal of hungry fish.
They wandered out into the hallway, where Will perked up slightly. He began to study the succession of portraits hanging there, working his way gradually along.
"I thought your granny live in this house," he asked Cal in a distant voice.
"She's allowed to come visit me here." Cal immediately looked away from Will, who wasn't slow in noticing there was more to this than Cal was letting on.
"What do you mean, 'allowed to'?"
"Oh, she's got her own place, where Mother and Uncle Tam were born," Cal said evasively, with a shake of his head. "C'mon, let's go!" He was halfway up the stairs with the backpack hooked over his arm when, to his exasperation, he found Will wasn't following him. Peering over the banister, Cal saw that he was still hovering by the portraits, his curiosity piqued by something at the end of the hallway.
Will's hunger for discovery and adventure had taken hold of him again, sweeping aside his sheer fatigue and his preoccupation with all he'd so recently learned. "What's through herre?" he asked, pointing at a black door with a brass handle.
"Oh, it's nothing. Just the kitchen," Cal replied impatiently.
"Can I have a quick look?" Will said, already heading for the door.
" Cal sighed. "Oh, all right, but there's really nothing to see," he said in a resigned tone and descended the stairs, stowing the pack at the bottom. "It's just a kitchen!"
Pushing through the door, Will found himself in a low-ceilinged room resembling something from a Victorian hospital. And it not only looked but smelled like one, too, a strong undercurrent of carbolic blending with indistinct cooking smells. The walls were a dull mushroom color, and the floor and work surfaces were covered with large white tiles, crazed with a myriad of scratches and fissures. In places, they had been worn into dappled hollows by years of scrubbing.
His attention was drawn to the corner, where a lid was gently clattering on one of a number of saucepans being heated on an antiquated stove of some kind, its heavy frame swollen and glassy with burned-on grease. He leaned over the nearest saucepan, but its simmering contents were obscured by wisps of steam as it gave off a vaguely savory aroma. To his right, beyond a solid-looking butcher's block with a large-bladed cleaver dangling from a hook above, Will spotted another door leading off the kitchen.
"Where does that go?"
"Look, wouldn't you rather…," Cal 's voice trailed off as he realized it was futile to argue with his brother, who was already nosing into the small adjoining room.
Will's eyes lit up when he saw what was in there. It was like an alchemist's storeroom, with shelf upon shelf of squat jars containing unrecognizable pickled items, all horribly distorted by the curvature of the thick glass and discolored by the oily fluid in which they were immersed. They resembled anatomical specimens preserved in formaldehyde.
On the bottom shelf, laid out on dull metal trays, Will noticed a huddle of objects the size of small soccer balls that had a gray-brown bloom to them.
"What are these?"
"They're pennybuns — we grow them all over, but mostly in the lower chambers."
"What do you use them for?" Will was crouching down, examining their velvety, mottled surfaces.
"They're mushrooms. You eat them. You probably had some in the Hold."
"Oh, right," Will said, making a face as he stood upright. "And that?" he said, pointing at some strips of what appeared to be beef jerky hanging from racks above.
Cal smiled broadly. "You should be able to tell what it is."
Will hesitated for a moment and then leaned a little closer to one of the strips; it was definitely meat of some description. He sniffed tentatively, then shook his head.
"No idea."
"Come on. The smell?"
Will closed his eyes and sniffed again. "No, it doesn't smell like anything I—" His eyes snapped open and he looked at Cal. "It's rat, isn't it?" he said, both pleased that he was able to identify it and, at the same time, kind of appalled by the finding. "You eat rat?"
"It's delicious… there's nothing wrong with that. Now, tell me what kind is it? Cal asked, reveling in Will's evident disgust. "Pack, sewer, or sightless?"
"I don't like rats, let alone eat them. I haven't got the slightest idea."
Cal shook his head slowly, with an expression of mock disappointment.
"It's easy, this is sightless," he said, lifting the end of one of the lengths with his finger and sniffing it himself. "More gamey than the others — it's a bit special. We usually have it on Sundays."
They were interrupted by a loud, machine gun-like humming behind them, and both spun around at the same time. There, purring with all his might, sat Bartleby, his huge amber eyes fixed on the meat strips and drops of anticipatory saliva dripping off his bald chin.
"Out!" Cal shouted at him, pointing at the kitchen door. The cat didn't move an inch, but sat resolutely on the tiled floor, completely mesmerized by the sight of the meat.
"Bart, I said get out!" Cal shouted again. The cat snarled threateningly and bared his teeth, a pearly stockade of viciously sharp pegs, as his skin erupted with a wave of goose pimples.
"You insolent mutt!" Cal snapped. "You know you don't mean that!"
Cal aimed a playful kick at the disobedient animal, which dodged sideways, easily avoiding the blow. Turning slowly, Bartleby gave them both a slightly scornful look over his shoulder, then padded lethargically away, his naked, spindly tail flicking in a gesture of defiance behind him.
"He'd sell his soul for rat, that one," Cal said, shaking his head and smiling.
After the brief tour of the kitchen, Cal showed Will up the creaking wooden staircase to the top floor.