Will Starling Read Online Free PDF Page A

that he does for his brother, collecting money that Ned has loaned out to shirkers. But he is sixteen stone and a half, and once on a wager he lay on his back while a cart was rolled across his chest. You would need to stand on an apple-crate to look Jemmy in the eye, which you would not want to do when he is roused. He was roused the day he went round to see that man, whom he set exceedingly straight indeed. Word got round, and since then men in general have been very much nicer to Meg.
    â€œâ€™S go,” hisses Little Hollis. They’ve been here too long already, and cannot afford to be seen.
    A Resurrectionist had been lynched in Dublin, just two months previous. Battered unrecognizable and strung from a lamppost. That’s what a mob will do, if they once lay hands — and it’s all because of Judgement Day. On Judgement Day you will rise up to meet your Maker, and you’re supposed to meet Him intact. But you can’t do that, can you, if you’ve been dug up and dissected? You can’t be resurrected whole. The Trumpet will sound and there you’ll be, stripped down like the leftover carcass of a Christmas goose. That’s why there exists such horror of grave-robbing, and such loathing of the Doomsday Men.
    Jemmy’s premonition has become a knot of dread. Something is amiss — he is sure of it, now — but what? The grave itself? Perhaps the pebbles are not quite right. He hesitates to look, and starts at the sight of his own shadow. The old whore moon is out again, behind him.
    Little Hollis is on his way, scuttling swift and hunched. His arse is hiked high as if raised by frequent kickings, and it is broader than his shoulders. This gives him a frankly verminous air, as Jemmy might remark were he given to making hurtful observations about his friends, which he is not. Hollis is halfway to the gate, now; Noddy Sprockett will be waiting for them just outside, with his cart. Ten minutes earlier they had heard the clip-clop of Old Jeroboam’s hooves arriving.
    There are flowers on a nearby grave, a sprig of them tied with ribbon. On an impulse Jemmy stoops; he will take these home to Meg. She’ll receive them carelessly, but secretly she’ll be pleased.
    In turning, Jemmy sees them. Two spectral figures, rising in the moonlight.
    The dead. He knows it at once, with an icy clutching certainty; he has always known it must come to this. The dead are rising from their graves to take revenge. They will seize him and drag him down, with the Privy Witch and the Chimbley Fiend.
    Little Hollis, hearing his cry, looks back. “Christ!” exclaims Hollis. “’S the Watch!”
    But it isn’t, nor revenants neither, issuing from the tomb. Much worse: these are cousins of the deceased coachman.
    This will come out later, at the trial. They’d been delegated to keep watch in the graveyard, against precisely such depredations. A third had been with them when the grave-robbers arrived, who after a swift exchange of urgent whispers — gripping their cudgels and weighing the odds, but misliking their chances against the big one — had slipped away to alert the coachman’s other friends, who were gathered at a wake just down the road.
    Wrathful shouts beyond the wall. A whinny and a clatter of hooves, receding. Old Jeroboam has stirred himself to desperate exertion, and is bearing Noddy Sprockett off to safety. Little Hollis flees the other way, flinging his shovel aside. He moves at astonishing speed for one so elevated of arse.
    That leaves Jemmy, standing frozen in the moonlight with a corpse upon his shoulder, as the coachman’s friends pour through the gate. Four of them at first, then more, and more.
    He wants to say: “I’ll put your friend back in the ground — I swear, upon my davy. I’ll dig up someone else.”
    â€œKill him!”
    He wants to say: “No, wait. Just — please. I need to take these flowers