The doctor knew that this was the closest thing to an apology that he would ever get from the sullen Scot. They stopped to re-light their pipes, then walked on in silence for a few moments.
‘It will all work out fine if we stick to bairns that are naturally born dead.’ Maclish raised his brows at the doctor, who hesitated before slowly nodding his agreement.
So the ritual began again and the Limboia were once more satisfied. A greater bond grew between the keeper and the doctor; their secret remained hidden and effective; Mrs. Maclish was pregnant again.
In the spring, an intake of new lost men joined the throng, some younger than ever before. One was a runaway who had hidden in the Vorrh for two years, living wild until he was erased and then found by others, cutting trees nearby. He still had a remnant of language, but never used it – until the day he told Maclish about the Orm.
It had happened after his first scrying session, when all the others had returned to their dormitories. He stood alone on the metal staircase, as Maclish and the doctor, who hadn’t noticed him loitering, wrapped the bundle and prepared to leave. He started knocking on the iron banister, and they turned to see him waiting for them. Surprised, the keeper strode over to him and was about to bark an order when the young man pointed at his own heart and spoke. The voice was sluggish, without emphasis or effort.
‘From the shallow place, we have say. Say is bout the one who lives inside us, say came not with the fleyber, but with the one that looks back.’
Maclish was about to stop the gibberish when the word ‘fleyber’ rang a long, distant bell. It was a Scottish word; his mother had used it. He could not remember its meaning. How in God’s name would this native have it on his tongue?
‘Bring back that one again so Orm walk on. Or we cease. All cease.’
‘What do ye mean ‘cease’? Ye think ye can just stop work when ye want?’ barked Maclish.
‘All cease,’ said the herald of the Limboia. ‘Cease live.’
‘What are we going to do about this?’ groaned the keeper, his head in his hands, elbows on the kitchen table. The doctor sat opposite him, saying nothing. ‘Have ye any idea what in hell that idiot was gabbling about? Was that a threat?’
‘I think so, yes,’ said the doctor, reluctantly. ‘Some part of them wants the aborted child brought back, some part that calls itself Orm.’
‘That’s ridiculous, they can’t ask for anything!’
‘They mean it,’ said Hoffman.
‘Anyway, it’s impossible: ye burnt it.’ He looked indignantly at the doctor, whose eyes met his only briefly, before sliding back to the table.
‘Not exactly,’ said Hoffman.
Maclish’s family were from Glasgow, his wife’s from Inverness: it was possible that she would know the word, be able to dredge a meaning for it out of her memory.
She was watering some newly planted vegetables in a corner of their garden when he came upon her.
‘Marie,’ he said, approaching her, and the subject, cautiously. ‘Do ye recall hearing the word ‘fleyber’ before? I remember my mother using it, but I cannae for the life of me recall its meaning. Is it Gaelic, do ye know?’
Marie was a strong, neat woman, her thick, dark hair pulled back from her broad face in a bun. ‘Fleyber,’ she repeated, her neck and her ears blushing a deep blood red under her fair skin. He nodded eagerly, not noticing her discomfort, or her backwards step, onto one of the thin shoots she had just watered. ‘William, why do you ask this of me? What do you want? Haven’t we been through enough?’
He was instantly irritated by her irrational response. ‘I only asked the meaning of a word,’ he blustered.
She drew in a deep breath, resting her weight on the hoe at her side and looking him square in the eyes. ‘It’s from the highlands. The fleyber is the spirit of one that died in childbirth; they say its soul wanders the moors as a ghost light, a will-o’-the-wisp.’
Her voice quavered as she said it, but her eyes never left her husband’s. ‘Is that what you wanted to know?’ she said, blinking hard before returning to her plants, ignoring the one crushed under her foot.
Hoffman had kept the cadaver in a polished wooden box, a kind of substitute coffin that originally held a small, portable microscope. Since that day at the incinerator, he had peeked into the box several times. The eyes were always closed, except for yesterday, when he returned with the request from the Limboia: then, the eyes had stared out at him from the rigid interior.
He was preparing to pack the creature when his servant announced that Mrs. Klausen had arrived for her appointment. He had completely forgotten about the wretched woman and her insistence on being examined again for yet another of her imaginary illnesses. He went through to his consulting room, where the plump frau sat, smiling like a bird.
‘Dear Doctor Hoffman, so nice to see you again, even if it is because of my poor, ailing body.’
The doctor smiled and prepared to charm the pestilential woman, hoping to send her on her way quickly.
‘These are for you,’ she said, offering a richly embroidered silk bag containing an ornate box. ‘They are Chanteuse bonbons,’ she gushed, ‘all the way from Stuttgart.’
He thanked her and began the consultation, probing and questioning the woman’s hypochondriac needs for almost an hour. When he finally got rid of her, he rushed back into the laboratory to pack the bundle. Late, and desperate to be on the road, he bustled about, his curiosity running in a lapse. The new voice in the Limboia meant that he could gauge his experiments. He hoped to see again the response of the lost ones, this time without fear clouding his perceptions.
In his distracted panic, he mislaid the creature’s carrying bag and spent ten minutes crawling under the furniture, looking behind the books and spinning around like a giddy dog. Time was running out, and he knew Maclish would be chewing his claws and growing ill-tempered. Perhaps he had taken it next door when he’d gone to examine that dreary woman? He sprinted across the hall and scanned the examination room. The bag was not there, but her silk pouch was. He quickly threw the repulsive sweets in a bin. The bundle fitted perfectly in its elegant new conveyor.
The keeper was standing outside the prison house, chafing and irritable. The doctor gave him a limp wave from the fence door while hurrying towards him.
‘Sorry to be so late, I had a patient.’
Maclish said nothing, but stared at the bright, noisy sack which Hoffman pulled out of his Gladstone bag like a garish conjuror. With a slur of incongruity, he said, ‘Is that it?’ Hoffman nodded and they entered the anticipant building.
Inside the stillness, the herald stood waiting at the table. ‘The one that looks back,’ he said, staring at the embroidered bag.
Maclish and Hoffman said nothing, setting their prize down on the table.
‘You leave, we need lone this day.’
‘Now, wait a minute…’ bristled Maclish.
‘It’s alright, William,’ said the doctor, with a certainty which sounded believable, ‘let’s do it their way this time.’
‘One hour!’ barked the keeper. ‘One hour only, then we come back.’
They did not turn around as they left the building, the hallway reverberating with the sound of the multitude descending the clanking stairs behind them.
There was something wrong with the food. He had tasted it in the second course. He was now on the ninth, and it was getting worse. The crème de testicule had a bitter tang, astringent and disconcerting. The kidneys had been swollen and leathery, and now the foie gras had a sulphurous aftertaste. He dined with one of his urchinous, casual companions. This alone was unheard of: he always had them removed before he bathed and dressed for a solitary dinner. The boy shovelled the food into his emaciation, washing it down with brimming glasses of the Frenchman’s favourite wine. He spat while talking, laughing out great gobfuls of exquisite cuisine, which now looked like chewed cud as they flew ungraciously across the shining tablecloth.