Ignacio Narbondo—Willis Pule: Conspiracy

Ignacio Narbondo and Willis Pule are accomplices in a clandestine program of corpse reanimation, joined by a shared need for bodies and Carp but divided by an unequal distribution of labor and risk. Narbondo supplies the scientific direction and issues orders; Pule undertakes hazardous tasks, often expecting that his exposure will exceed his partner’s. Their conspiracy is therefore practical rather than trusting: each relies on the other, while Pule resents the arrangement and imagines a future in which their positions might change.

A Partnership Built on Unequal Work

Narbondo’s laboratory brings the two men together as collaborators in an enterprise that crosses from experimentation into crime. When Shiloh visits Narbondo, Willis Pule arrives carrying books; Narbondo turns back to work, and Pule is already positioned as an assistant within the doctor’s operation. Their connection is not based on a stated friendship or common moral purpose. It is visible instead in repeated tasks: acquiring materials, handling bodies, and supporting experiments whose risks fall heavily on the person doing the physical work.

The imbalance is especially clear in Pule’s own assessment of their arrangement. During a grave-robbing operation at Hammersmith Cemetery, he considers why he is wielding a spade rather than Narbondo, and concludes that if they are discovered the doctor can escape in his dogcart while Pule is left to answer to a constable. He regards the work as distasteful and believes that Narbondo’s willingness to leave him exposed is part of a larger pattern. The scene makes their partnership look less like coordinated equality than an arrangement in which Narbondo directs and Pule absorbs the immediate danger.

Bodies, Fish, and Experimental Supply

The pair’s work depends on more than their intentions. Narbondo’s method requires a fresh corpse and a substance taken from Carp, making animal life, human remains, and laboratory equipment parts of the same criminal supply chain. In his laboratory, Narbondo tests a group of fish, selects one that is visibly failing, and extracts a small gland, preserving it in a vial. The procedure shows the specialized material need behind the experiments and helps explain why the search for Carp recurs in the men’s operations.

The history of Sebastian Owlesby’s research gives that need a longer and darker context. Owlesby’s recovered notes describe a course of experimentation encouraged by Narbondo and ending in a demand for the brain of a living man. In another entry, Owlesby records that Short and Kraken had brought in a newly obtained body, but that it remained inert without a Carp and a fresh gland. The notes establish Narbondo’s role in pushing the work beyond its initial limits; they also show the recurring dependence on illicitly sourced bodies and animal material. Pule is not identified as a participant in every episode in Owlesby’s account, but his later work alongside Narbondo carries the same experimental enterprise forward.

The Cemetery and Oceanarium Operations

At Hammersmith Cemetery, Pule helps retrieve the remains of Joanna Southcote for the resurrection project associated with her son, Shiloh. The damaged grave marker identifies the burial place, and the effort to raise the coffin makes the partnership’s division of labor concrete: Pule handles the excavation alongside his companion, while the remains are treated as material for an experiment. The work is undertaken in secret, and Pule’s awareness that Narbondo might abandon him if they are caught sharpens the danger within their collaboration.

The need for Carp leads to another joint operation at the oceanarium. Narbondo drives there with Pule but stays back in the shadows while Pule tries the windows and eventually climbs inside. Pule knows that the attempt matters to Shiloh’s proposed resurrection: without the fish, he believes, Joanna Southcote’s remains will be useless to the project, and Shiloh will have little reason to pay them. That financial expectation joins the partners’ scientific and criminal motives. When a watchman and his dog discover Pule, he manages to pass the fish through the window before escaping. Narbondo is waiting outside with the dogcart and drives away with Pule and the stolen fish. The escape confirms their operational dependence, even as Pule’s thoughts dwell on Narbondo’s safer position and on the possibility of settling accounts later.

Assistance, Resentment, and Breakdown

Narbondo’s authority over Pule continues inside the laboratory. During preparations involving a fresh corpse and a sluggish Carp, Pule stands by and acts when Narbondo gives orders, then lapses back into reluctance or inaction. His assistance is real, but it is not wholehearted obedience: the account presents him as resentful of being directed and unwilling to do more than the task requires. Narbondo, for his part, depends on Pule’s help to move and prepare the body, even as he treats him as a subordinate.

The partnership’s wider consequences extend beyond the two men. Narbondo’s experiments produce reanimated corpses that later crowd a confined space as Langdon St. Ives and Hasbro try to escape. In the confusion, Pule’s body blocks the doorway, while Shiloh appears carrying a Keeble box and a bag of bones. The episode places the men’s secret work within a crisis involving others, but it does not establish Pule’s final fate or show the partnership reaching a settled end. Instead, the conspiracy is left amid the consequences of the experiments it enabled.

Significance of the Relationship

Narbondo and Pule’s relationship connects the scientific premise of reanimation to the practical machinery required to pursue it. Narbondo’s procedures depend on substances that must be extracted and on bodies that must be obtained; Pule’s labor turns those requirements into theft, grave robbery, and dangerous assistance. Neither partner can simply proceed alone, but their dependence does not produce trust. Narbondo delegates exposure, and Pule recognizes the imbalance while continuing to participate in the hope of a later advantage. Their alliance thus makes the story’s experiments inseparable from the precarious, exploitative work that sustains them.