The Anubis Gates

PROLOGUE: FEBRUARY 2,1802

From between two trees at the crest of the hill a very old man watched, with a nostalgic longing he thought he’d lost all capacity for, as the last group of picnickers packed up their baskets, mounted their horses, and rode away south—they moved a little hastily, for it was a good six miles back to London, and the red sun was already silhouetting the branches of the trees along the River Brent, two miles to the west.

When they’d gone the old man turned around to watch the sun’s slow descent. The Boat of Millions of Years, he thought; the boat of the dying sungod Ra, tacking down the western sky to the source of the dark river that runs through the underworld from west to east, through the twelve hours of the night, at the far eastern end of which the boat will tomorrow reappear, bearing a once again youthful, newly reignited sun.

Or, he thought bitterly, removed from us by a distance the universe shouldn’t even be able to encompass, it’s a vast motionless globe of burning gas, around which this little ball of a planet rolls like a pellet of dung propelled by a kephera beetle.

Take your pick, he told himself as he started slowly down the hill… But be willing to die for your choice.

He had to walk carefully, for his Japanese clogs were awkward on the uneven dirt and grass.

Fires were already lit among the tents and wagons, and a weaving of wild odors whirled up to him on the cool evening breeze: a sharp, earthy reek from the tethered donkeys, wood smoke, and the aroma of roasting hedgehog, a dish his people particularly relished. Faintly, too, he thought he caught a whiff of stale breath from the crate that had arrived that afternoon—a musty fetor, as of perverse spices meant to elicit aversion rather than appetite, almost shockingly incongruous when carried on the clean breezes of Hampstead Heath. As he approached the cluster of tents he was met by a couple of the camp dogs; as always, they backed away from him when they recognized him, and one turned around and loped purposefully to the nearest tent; the other, with evident reluctance, escorted Amenophis Fikee into the camp.

Responding to the dog’s summons, a dark man in a striped corduroy coat stepped out of the tent and strode across the grass toward Fikee. Like the dogs, he halted well short of the old man. “Good evening, rya,” he said. “Will you eat some dinner? They’ve got a hotchewitchi on the fire, smells very kushto.”

“As kushto as hotchewitchi ever does smell, I suppose,” Fikee muttered absently. “But no, thank you. You all help yourselves.”

“Not I, rya—my Bessie always loved cooked hotchewitchi; so since she mullered I don’t eat it anymore.”

Fikee nodded, though he obviously hadn’t been listening. “Very well, Richard.” He paused as though hoping for an interruption, but none came. “When the sun is all the way down, have some of the chals carry that crate down the bank to the tent of Doctor Romany.”

The gypsy scratched his oiled moustache and shifted doubtfully. “The crate that the sailor chal brought today?”

“Which crate did you think I meant, Richard? Yes, that one.”

“The chals don’t like it, rya. They say there’s something in it mullo dusta beshes, dead many years.”

Amenophis Fikee frowned and pulled his cloak closer about himself. He had left the last rays of sunlight behind him at the top of the hill, and among these shadows his craggy face seemed to possess no more vitality than a stone or tree trunk. At last he spoke: “Well, what’s in it has seen dusta beshes, certainly—many many years.” He gave the timorous gypsy a smile that was like a section of hillside falling away to expose old white stone. “But it’s not mullo, I’m… I hope. Not quite mullo.”

This did nothing to reassure the gypsy, who opened his mouth to voice another respectful objection; but Fikee had turned away and was stalking through the clearing toward the riverbank, his cloak flapping behind him in the wind like the wing-case of some gigantic insect.

The gypsy sighed and slouched away toward one of the tents, practicing a limp that would, he hoped, earn him a dispensation from actually having to help carry the dreadful crate.

Fikee slowly picked his way along the darkening riverbank toward Doctor Romany’s tent. Except for the hoarse sighing of the breeze the evening was oddly silent. The gypsies seemed to realize that something momentous was in the wind tonight, and were slinking about as silently as their dogs, and even the lizards had stopped hopping and splashing among the riverside reeds.

The tent stood in a clearing, at the focus of enough lines and rigging—slung from every nearby tree—for a good-sized ship. The angling ropes, assisted by a dozen upright poles, supported the flapping, bulging, many-layered randomness of Romany’s tent. It looked, thought Fikee, like some huge nun in a particularly cold-weather habit, crouched beside the river in obscure devotion.

Ducking under a couple of ropes, he made his way to the entrance and lifted aside the curtain, and stepped through into the central room, blinking in the brightness that the dozen lamps cast on the draped carpets which formed the walls, floor and ceiling.

Doctor Romany stood up from a table, and Fikee felt a wave of hopeless envy. Why, Fikee asked venomously, hadn’t it been Romanelli who picked that short straw in Cairo last September? Fikee pulled off his drab cloak and hat and flung them in a corner. His bald head gleamed like imperfectly polished ivory in the lamplight.

Romany crossed the room, bobbing grotesquely on his high, spring-soled shoes, and gripped him by the hand. “It’s a great thing we—you—attempt tonight,” he said in a deep muted voice. “I only wish I could be here with you in person.”

Fikee shrugged, a little impatiently. “We are both servants. My post is England, yours is Turkey. I completely understand why it is that you can be present tonight only”—he waved vaguely—”in replica.”

“Needless to say,” Romany intoned, his voice becoming deeper as though trying to wring an echo out of the surrounding carpets, “if it happens that you die tonight, rest assured you will be embalmed and entombed with all the proper ceremonies and prayers.”

“If I fail,” Fikee answered, “there won’t be anybody to pray to.”

“I didn’t say fail. It could be that you will succeed in opening the gates, but die in accomplishing it,” the unruffled Romany pointed out. “In such a case you’d want the proper actions taken.”

“Very well,” said Fikee with a weary nod. “Good,” he added.

There was a sound of shuffling feet from the entry, and then an anxious voice. “Rya? Where would you like the crate? Hurry, I think spirits are coming out of the river to see what’s in it!”

“Not at all unlikely,” muttered Doctor Romany as Fikee instructed the gypsies to carry the thing inside and set it down on the floor. This they hastily did, making their exit as quickly as respectful deportment would permit.

The two very old men stared at the crate in silence for a time, then Fikee stirred and spoke. “I’ve instructed my gypsies that in my… absence, they are to regard you as their chief.”

Romany nodded, then bent over the crate and began wrenching the top boards away. After tossing aside some handfuls of crumpled paper he carefully lifted out a little wooden box tied up with string. He set it on the table. Turning back to the crate, he knocked away the rest of the loosened boards and, grunting with effort, lifted out a paper-wrapped package which he laid on the floor. It was roughly square, three feet on each side and six inches thick.

He looked up and said, “The Book,” unnecessarily, for Amenophis Fikee knew what it was.

“If only he could do it, in Cairo,” he whispered.

“Heart of the British kingdom,” Doctor Romany reminded him. “Or maybe you imagine he could travel?”

Fikee shook his head, and, crouched beside the table, lifted from under it a glass globe with a slide-away section in its side. He set it on the table and then began undoing the knots on the small wooden box. Romany meanwhile had stripped away the package’s paper covering, exposing a black wooden box with bits of ivory inlaid to form hundreds of Old Kingdom Egyptian hieroglyphics. The latch was leather, and so brittle that it crumbled to dust when Romany tried to unfasten it. Inside was a blackened silver box with similar hieroglyphic characters in relief; and when he’d lifted away the lid of that one a gold box lay exposed to view, its finely worked surface blazing in the lamplight.

Fikee had gotten the little wooden box open, and held up a cork-stoppered glass vial that had been nested in cotton inside. The vial contained perhaps an ounce of a thick black fluid that seemed to have sediment in it.

Doctor Romany took a deep breath, then lifted back the lid of the gold box.

At first Doctor Romany thought all the lamps had been simultaneously extinguished, but when he glanced at them he saw that their flames stood as tall as before. But nearly all the light was gone—it was as though he now viewed the room through many layers of smoked glass. He pulled his coat closer about his throat; the warmth had diminished too.

For the first time that night he felt afraid. He forced himself to look down at the book that lay in the box, the book that had absorbed the room’s light and warmth. Hieroglyphic figures shone from ancient papyrus—shone not with light but with an intense blackness that seemed about to suck out his soul through his eyes. And the meanings of the figures darted clearly and forcefully into his mind, as they would have done even to someone who couldn’t read the primeval Egyptian script, for they were written here in the world’s youth by the god Thoth, the father and spirit of language itself. He tore his gaze fearfully away, for he could feel the words burning marks on his soul like a baptism.

“The blood,” he rasped, and even the capacity of the air to carry sounds seemed weakened. “Our Master’s blood,” he repeated to the dimly seen figure that was Amenophis Fikee. “Put it into the sphere.”

He could just see Fikee thumb aside the hatch in the side of the globe and hold the vial to the opening before uncorking it; the black fluid spilled inside, falling upward, staining the top of the glass globe. The moon must be up, Romany realized. A drop fell up onto Fikee’s palm, and must have burned, for he hissed sharply between his teeth.

“You’re… on your own,” croaked Doctor Romany, and lurched blindly out of the tent into the clearing, where the evening air felt warm by comparison. He blundered away up the riverbank, yawing and pitching on his peculiar shoes, and finally crouched, panting and bobbing, on a slight rise fifty yards upstream and looked back at the tent.

As his breathing and heartbeat decelerated he thought about his glimpse of the Book of Thoth, and shuddered. If any evidence were needed to document the inversion of sorcery during the last eighteen centuries, that prehistoric book provided it; for though he’d never actually seen it before, Romany knew that when the Prince Setnau Kha-em-Uast had, thousands of years ago, descended into the tomb of Ptah-nefer-ka at Memphis to recover it, he had found the burial chamber brightly illuminated by the light that radiated from the book.

And this spell, he thought unhappily, this tremendous effort tonight, would have been almost prohibitively dangerous even in those days, before sorcery became so much more difficult and personally costly to the sorcerer, and, despite the most rigid control, unpredictable and twisted in its results. Even in those days, he thought, none but the bravest and most transcendently competent priest would have dared to employ the hekau, the words of power, that Fikee was going to speak tonight: the words which were an invocation and an invitation to possession addressed to the dog-headed deity Anubis—or whatever might remain of him now—who, in the time of Egypt’s power, presided over the underworld and the gates from this world to the other.

Doctor Romany let his gaze break away from the tent and drift across the river to the heathery landscape that rolled beyond it up to another rise crested with trees that seemed to him too tall for their girth, waving their emaciated branches in the breeze. A northern landscape, he thought, stirred by a wind that’s like flowing gin, sharp and clean and smelling of berries.

Reacting to the alien qualities of these things, he thought of the voyage to Cairo, he and Fikee had taken four months before, summoned by their Master to assist in the new crisis.

Though prevented by a startling disorder from ever leaving his house, their Master had for quite a while been using a secret army of agents, and an unchartably vast fortune, in an effort to purge Egypt of the Moslem and Christian taints and, even more difficult, to throw out the governing Turkish Pasha and his foreign mercenaries, restoring Egypt as an independent world power. It was the Battle of the Pyramids four years ago that provided the first real breakthrough for him, though at the time it had seemed the final defeat—for it had let the French into Egypt. Romany narrowed his eyes, remembering the rippling crackle of the French muskets echoing from the Nile on that hot July afternoon, underscored by the drum-roll of the charging Mameluke cavalry … by nightfall the armies of the Egyptian governors Ibraheem and Murad Bey had been broken, and the French, under the young general Napoleon, were in possession.

A wild and agonized howl brought Doctor Romany to his feet; the sound rebounded among the trees by the river for several seconds, and when it had died he could hear a gypsy fearfully muttering protective cantrips. No further sounds issued from the tent, and Romany let out his breath and resumed his crouching position. Good luck, Amenophis, he thought—I’d say “may the gods be with you,” but that’s what you’re deciding right now. He shook his head uneasily.

When the French came into power it had seemed like the end of any hope of restoring the old order, and their Master had, by hard-wrought sorcerous manipulation of wind and tides, lent subtle aid to the British admiral Nelson when he destroyed the French fleet less than two weeks later. But then the French occupation turned to their Master’s advantage; the French curtailed the arrogant power of the Mameluke Beys, and in 1800 drove out the Turkish mercenaries who’d been strangling the country. And the general who took command of Cairo when Napoleon returned to France, Kleber, didn’t interfere with their Master’s political intrigues and his efforts to lure the Moslem and Coptic population back into the old pantheist worship of Osiris, Isis, Horus and Ra. It looked, in fact, as though the French occupation would do for Egypt what Jenner’s cowpox was evidently doing now for human bodies: substituting a manageable infection, which could be easily eliminated after a while, for a deadly one that would relent only upon the death of the host.

Then, of course, it began to go wrong. Some lunatic from Aleppo stabbed Kleber to death in a Cairo street, and in the ensuing months of confusion the British took up the slack; by September of 1801 Kleber’s inept successor had capitulated to the British in Cairo and Alexandria. The British were in, and a single week saw the arrest of a dozen of the Master’s agents. The new British governor even found reason to close the temples to the old gods that the Master had had erected outside the city.

In desperation their Master sent for his two oldest and most powerful lieutenants, Amenophis Fikee from England and Doctor Monboddo Romanelli from Turkey, and unveiled to them the plan that, though fantastic to a degree that suggested senility in the ancient man, was, he insisted, the only way to scorch England from the world picture and restore Egypt’s eons-lost ascendancy.

They had met him in the huge chamber in which he lived, alone except for his ushabtis, four life-size wax statues of men. From his peculiar ceiling perch he had begun by pointing out that Christianity, the harsh sun that had steamed the life-juices out of the now all but dry husk of sorcery, was at present veiled by clouds of doubt arising from the writings of people like Voltaire and Diderot and Godwin.

Romanelli, as impatient with the antique magician’s extended metaphors as he was with most things, broke in to ask bluntly how all this might aid in evicting the British from Egypt.

“There is a magical procedure—” the Master began.

“Magic!” Romanelli had interrupted, as scornfully as he dared. “These days we’d get headaches and double vision—not to mention losing about five pounds—if we tried to charm a pack of street dogs out of our way; and even then as likely as not it’d go awry and they’d all simply drop dead where they stood. It’s easier to shout and wave a stick at them. I’m sure you haven’t forgotten how you suffered after playing with the weather at the Bay of Aboukeer three years ago. Your eyes withered up like dates left too long in the sun, and your legs—!”

“As you say, I haven’t forgotten,” said the Master coldly, turning those partially recovered eyes on Romanelli, who involuntarily shivered, as always, before the almost imbecilic hatred that burned in them. “As it happens, although I’ll be present by proxy, one of you must perform this spell, for it has to be sited very near the heart of the British Empire, which would be the city of London, and my condition forbids travel. Though I’ll provide you with all the strongest remaining wards and protective amulets, the working of it will, as you suggest, consume quite a bit of the sorcerer. You will draw straws from the cloth on that table, and the man with the short straw will be the one to do it.”

Fikee and Romanelli stared at the two stubs of straw protruding from beneath a scarf, then at each other.

“What is the spell?” queried Fikee.

“You know our gods are gone. They reside now in the Tuaut, the underworld, the gates of which have been held shut for eighteen centuries by some pressure I do not understand but which I am sure is linked with Christianity. Anubis is the god of that world and the gates, but has no longer any form in which to appear here.” His couch shifted a little, and the Master closed his eyes for a moment in pain. “There is a spell,” he rasped finally, “in the Book of Thoth, which is an invocation to Anubis to take possession of the sorcerer. This will allow the god to take physical form—yours. And as you are speaking that spell you will simultaneously be writing another, a magic I myself have composed that is calculated to open new gates between the two worlds—gates that shall pierce not only the wall of death but also the wall of time, for if it succeeds they will open out from the Tuaut of forty-three centuries ago, when the gods—and I—were in our prime.”

There was a silence long enough for the Master’s couch to move another painful couple of inches. At last Fikee spoke. “And what will happen then?”

“Then,” said the Master in a whisper that echoed round the spherical chamber, “the gods of Egypt will burst out in modern England. The living Osiris and the Ra of the morning sky will dash the Christian churches to rubble, Horus and Khonsu will disperse all current wars by their own transcendent force, and the monsters Set and Sebek will devour all who resist! Egypt will be restored to supremacy and the world will be made clean and new again.”

And what role could you, or we, thought Romanelli bitterly, play in a clean new world?

“Is,” Fikee said hesitantly, “is it still possible, you’re certain? After all, the world already was young that way once, and an old man can’t be made into a boy again any more than wine can go back to grape juice.” The Master was getting very angry, but he pressed on desperately, “Would it be completely out of the question to… adapt to the new ways and new gods? What if we’re clinging to a sinking ship?”

The Master had gone into a fit of rage, drooling and gabbling helplessly, and so one of the wax ushabti statues twitched and began working its jaws. “Adapt?” shouted the Master’s voice out of the wax throat. “You want to get baptized? Do you know what a Christian baptism would do to you? Negate you—unmake you—salt on a snail, moth in a fire!” The furious speaking was causing the wax lips to crack. “A sinking ship? You stinking, fearful body-vermin of a diseased whore! What if it should sink, is sinking, has sunk! We’ll ride it down. I’d rather be at the helm of this sunken ship than in the… cattle pen!… of that new one! Shall I—ack… ack… kha—” The tongue and lips of the wax statue broke off and were spat out by the still driving breath.

For several moments Master and ushabti gibbered together, then the Master regained control of himself and the statue fell silent. “Shall I,” asked the Master, “release you, Amenophis?”

Romanelli remembered, with unwelcome clarity, once seeing another of the Master’s very old servants suddenly made independent of the Master’s magical bonds; the man had, within the space of a few minutes, withered and broken down and dried and split apart and finally shaken himself to dust; but worse than the fact of death and dissolution was his memory that the man had retained consciousness through the entire process… And it had seemed to be an agony worse than burning.

The silence in the chamber lengthened, unbroken except for the faint slapping sound of the ushabti’s tongue on the floor tiles. “No,” said Fikee at last. “No.”

“Then you are one of my crew, and will obey.” The Master waved one of his crippled, driftwood arms. “Choose a straw.”

Fikee looked at Romanelli, who just bowed and waved after you toward the table. Fikee stepped over to it and drew out one of the straws. It was, of course, the short one.

The Master sent them to the ruins of Memphis to copy from a hidden stone the hieroglyphic characters that were his real name, and here too a shock awaited them, for they had seen the Master’s name stone once before, many centuries ago, and the characters carved on it were two symbols like a fire in a dish followed by an owl and the looped cross: Tchatcha-em-Ankh, it spelled, Strengths in Life; but now different characters were incised in the ancient stone—now there were three umbrella shapes, a small bird, an owl, a foot, the bird again and a fish over a slug. Khaibitu-em-Betu-Tuf, he read, and mentally translated it: Shadows of Abomination.

Despite the baking desert heat the pit of his stomach went cold, but he remembered a thing that had whimpered and rolled about as it fell apart into dust, and so he only pursed his lips as he obediently copied down the name.

Upon their return to Cairo the Master delayed Romanelli’s return to Turkey long enough to fashion a duplicate of him out of the magical fluid paut. The animated duplicate, or ka, was ostensibly made to travel to England with Fikee and assist him in performing the Anubis summoning, but all three knew that its main task would be to serve as a guard over Fikee and prevent any dereliction of duty. Since the odd pair would be living with Fikee’s tribe of gypsies until the arrival of the Book and the vial of their Master’s blood, Fikee dubbed the ka Doctor Romany, after the word the gypsies used for their language and culture.

Another howl broke from the tent downstream, this one sounding more like pieces of metal being violined against each other than an issue from any organic throat. The sound rose in volume and pitch, drawing the air as taut as a bowstring, and for a moment, during which Romany numbly noted that the river was holding still like a pane of rippled glass, the ringing, grating peak note held, filling the dark countryside. Then something seemed to break, as if a vast bubble over them had popped, silently but palpably. The ghastly howl broke too, and as the shattered bits of sound tumbled away in a mad, despairing sobbing, Romany could feel the air spring back to its usual pressure; and as though the molecules of the black fabric had all abruptly relaxed even their usual clench, the tent burst into bright yellow flame.

Romany sprinted down the bank, picking his footing with ease in the glare of the fire, and with scorching fingers flicked the burning entry curtain aside, and bounded into the smoky interior. Fikee was a huddled, sobbing bulk in the corner. Romany slammed the Book of Thoth shut and put it in the gold box, tucked that under his arm and stumbled outside again.

Just as he got away from the intense heat, he heard a barking, whimpering sound behind him, and turned. Fikee had crawled out of the tent and was rolling on the ground, presumably to put out his smoldering clothes.

“Amenophis!” Romany called over the roaring of the fire.

Fikee stood up and turned on Romany a glance devoid of recognition, then threw his head back and howled like a jackal at the moon.

Instantly Romany reached into his coat with both hands and drew out two flintlock pistols. He aimed one and fired it, and Fikee folded up in midair and sat down hard several feet behind where he’d been standing; but a moment later he had rolled back up on his hands and knees and was scuttling away into the darkness, now on two legs, now on all fours.

Romany aimed the other pistol as well as he could and fired again, but the loping shape didn’t seem to falter and soon he lost sight of it. “Damn,” he whispered. “Die out there, Amenophis. You do owe us that.”

He looked up at the sky—there was no sign of any gods breaking through; he stared toward the west long enough to satisfy himself that the sun wasn’t going to reappear. He shook his head in profound weariness.

Like most modern magics, he thought bitterly, while it probably did something, it didn’t accomplish what it was supposed to.

Finally he tucked the pistols away, picked up the Book and bobbed slowly back to the gypsy camp. Even the dogs had hidden, and Romany met no one as he made his way to Fikee’s tent. Once inside, he put down the gold box, lit a lamp, and then far into the night, with pendulum, level, a telescope and a tuning fork and reams of complicated calculations geometrical and alchemical, worked at determining to what extent, if any, the spell had succeeded.

CHAPTER 1

When the driver swung the BMW in to the curb, braked to a quick but smooth stop and clicked off the headlights, Brendan Doyle hunched forward on the back seat and stared at the rubbled, fenced-in lot they’d arrived at. It was glaringly lit by electric lights on poles, and he could hear heavy machinery at work close by.

“Why are we stopping here?” he asked, a little hopelessly. The driver hopped nimbly out of the car and opened Doyle’s door. The night air was cold. “This is where Mr. Darrow is,” the man explained. “Here, I’ll carry that,” he added, taking Doyle’s suitcase.

Doyle hadn’t spoken during the ten-minute ride from Heathrow airport, but now nervousness overcame his reluctance to admit how little he knew about his situation. “I, uh, gathered from the two men who originally approached me in Fullerton—California, that is—that this job has something to do with Samuel Taylor Coleridge,” he said diffidently as the two of them plodded toward the gate in the chain link fence. “Do you know… what it is, exactly?”

“Mr. Darrow will explain it fully, I’m sure,” said the driver, who seemed much more relaxed now that his own part in the relay race was almost over. “Something to do with a lecture, I believe.”

Doyle stopped. “A lecture? He rushed me six thousand miles overnight, to London”—and offered me twenty thousand dollars, he added mentally—”just to give a lecture?”

“I really don’t know, Mr. Doyle. As I say, he will explain—”

“Do you know if it has anything to do with the position he recently hired Steerforth Benner for?” pressed Doyle.

“I don’t know of Mr. Benner,” said the driver cheerfully. “Do come along now, sir, this is all scheduled rather tightly, you know.” Doyle sighed and resumed walking, and he wasn’t reassured when he noticed the coils of barbed wire strung along the top of the fence. Looking more closely, he saw little scraps of scribbled-on paper, and sprigs of what might have been mistletoe, tied on at intervals along the wire strands. It was beginning to seem likely that the rumors he’d read about Darrow Interdisciplinary Research Enterprises—DIRE—were true. “I probably should have mentioned it before,” he called, only half joking, to the driver, “but I can’t work a Ouija board.” The man put the suitcase down on the dirt and pressed a button on the gatepost. “I don’t think that will be necessary, sir,” he said.

On the other side of the fence a uniformed guard was hurrying toward them. Well, you’re in it now, Doyle told himself. At least you get to keep the five thousand dollar retainer check even if you decline his offer… whatever it turns out to be.

Doyle had been grateful, an hour earlier, when the stewardess woke him to tell him to fasten his seat belt, for he’d been dreaming about Rebecca’s death again. Always in the first part of the dream he was a stranger with foreknowledge, trying desperately to find Brendan and Rebecca Doyle before they got on the bike, or at least before Doyle could gun the old Honda up the curling onramp from Beach Boulevard onto the Santa Ana Freeway—and always he was unsuccessful, screeching his car around the last corner only in time, tormentingly, to see the old bike speed up, lean into the curve and disappear around the landscaped bend. Generally he was able to force himself awake at that point, but he’d had several scotches earlier, and this time he might not have been.

He sat up and blinked around at the spacious cabin and the people in the other seats. The lights were on, and only speckled blackness showed beyond the little window—it was night again, though he remembered seeing dawn over icy plains only a few hours ago. Jet air travel was disorienting enough, it seemed to Doyle, without doing it in over the pole jumps that left you unable to guess what day it was. The last time he’d been to England there had been a stopover in New York, but of course DIRE was in too much of a hurry for that.

He stretched as well as he could in his seat, and a book and some papers slid off the fold-down tray in front of him and thump-fluttered to the floor. A lady across the aisle jumped, and he smiled in embarrassed apology as he leaned over to pick the stuff up. Sorting it out and noting the many blanks and question marks he’d scrawled, he wondered bleakly if even in England—for he was certainly going to take advantage of this free trip to try and pursue his own researches—he would be able to dig up some data on the poet whose definitive biography he’d been trying to write for two years. Coleridge was easy, he thought as he tucked the papers back into the briefcase between his feet; William Ashbless is a goddamn cipher.

The book that had fallen was Bailey’s Life of William Ashbless. It had landed open and several of the age-browned pages were broken. He laid them back in carefully, closed the book gently and brushed dust off his fingers, then stared at the unhelpful volume.

It would be an understatement, he reflected disconsolately, to say that Ashbless’ life was scantily documented. William Hazlitt had written a brief evaluation of his work in 1825, and incidentally provided a few details about the man, and Ashbless’ close friend James Bailey had written the cautious biography that was, for lack of anything else, considered the standard account. Doyle had managed to supplement the narrative with a few illuminating letters and journals and police reports, but the poet’s recorded life was still flawed by many gaps.

Which town in Virginia was it, for example, that Ashbless lived in from his birth until 1810? Ashbless at one time claimed Richmond and at another Norfolk, but no records of him had so far turned up at either place. Doyle was going on the assumption that the troublesome poet had changed his name when he arrived in London, and he had unearthed the names of several Virginians who disappeared in the summer of 1810 at about the age of twenty-five. Ashbless’ years in London were fairly easy to trace—though the Bailey biography, being Ashbless’ own version, was of dubious value—and his brief trip to Cairo in 1811, while inexplicable, was at least a matter of record.

What’s missing, Doyle thought, is all the details—and some of the undetailed areas tormented Doyle’s curiosity. There was, for example, his possible connection with what Sheridan had lastingly dubbed the Dancing Ape Madness: the surprising number—by sober accounts six, by extravagant three hundred—of fur-covered creatures that appeared one at a time in and around London during the decade between 1800 and 1810; evidently human beings, they outdid even the shock of their sudden, agonizedly capering appearances by falling quickly to the ground and dying in violent convulsions. Madame de Stael noted that Ashbless once, when drunk, told her that he knew more about the peculiar plague than he’d ever dare say, and it was fairly certain that he had killed one of the creatures in a coffee house near Threadneedle Street a week after his arrival in London… But there, to Doyle’s chagrin, the trail ended. Ashbless apparently never got drunk enough to tell de Stael the story—for she’d certainly have passed it on if he had—and of course the Bailey biography didn’t refer to the matter at all.

And what, precisely, were the circumstances of his death? God knows, Doyle thought, the man made many enemies during his lifetime, but which one was it that caught up with him on, probably, the twelfth of April in 1846? His body was found in the marshes in May, decomposed but verifiably his, also verifiably killed by a sword thrust through the belly.

Hell, thought Doyle, dejectedly staring at the book in his lap, more is known about the life of Shakespeare. And Ashbless was a contemporary of such appallingly thoroughly chronicled people as Lord Byron! Granted, the man was a minor poet, whose scanty and difficult work would, if not for some derogatory remarks made about it by Hazlitt and Wordsworth, be absolutely forgotten instead of just reprinted rarely in notably complete anthologies—still, the man’s life ought to have left more marks.

Across the aisle, through the windows on that side of the plane, he saw the twinkling lights of London rise as the huge plane banked, and he decided the stewardess wouldn’t bring him another drink so near disembarking time. He glanced around, then surreptitiously drew his flask out of his inside jacket pocket, unscrewed the top and poured an inch of Laphroaig into the plastic cup his last drink had arrived in. He put the flask away and relaxed, wishing he could also clip and light one of the Upmann cigars waiting in the opposite pocket.

He took a sip of the warm scotch and smiled—Laphroaig was still damn good, if not quite the wonder it had been when it was being bottled at 91.4 proof. In fact, he thought, these new Upmann cigars from the Dominican Republic aren’t nearly what they were when they were being rolled in the Canary Islands.

And none of the young ladies I’ve gone with since Rebecca have been interesting at all.

He flipped open the old book and stared at the frontispiece engraving, a portrait done from the Thorwaldsen bust: the sunken-eyed, startlingly bearded poet stared back at him from the picture, his massive height and breadth of shoulder clearly implied by the sculptor’s skill. And how was it in your day, William? Doyle thought. Were the cigars and scotch and women any better?

For a moment Doyle imagined that Ashbless’ faint sardonic grin was directed at him… Then, in a moment of vertigo so strong that he nearly dropped his cup and grabbed the arms of the seat, it seemed that Ashbless really was looking at him, through a picture and across a hundred and fifty years, in scornful amusement.

Doyle shook his head sharply and closed the book again. That’s how you know you’re tired, he told himself: when a guy a century dead seems about to wink at you out of a picture. Never happened with Coleridge.

He tucked the book into his briefcase next to the book he’d brought along to serve as his credentials—it was The Nigh-Related Guest, a biography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge by Brendan Doyle. He had wanted to follow it with a lengthy study of the Lake Poets, but the reviews of the Guest, and its sales, had caused his editor at the Devriess University Press to suggest he pursue, as the editor had put it, “a more uncharted sort of territory. I’ve admired,” the editor had gone on, “your two articles in the PMLA that attempted, with some success, to make sense of the murky verse of William Ashbless. Perhaps a biography of that odd poet would strike the critics—and the college librarians!—as a more ground-breaking piece of work.”

Well, thought Doyle as he closed his briefcase, unless I resort to outright fiction, it looks like it will be a damned short piece of work.

The plane was descending, and when he yawned his ears popped. Forget Ashbless for now. Whatever Darrow is paying you twenty thousand for, it has to do with Coleridge.

He had another sip of the scotch, and hoped fervently that the job didn’t also have to do with planchettes or Ouija boards or any such stuff. He’d once seen a book of poems supposed to have been dictated by the ghost of Shelley, through a medium, and he half-suspected that this DIRE job might be a similar enterprise. He wondered, too, whether twenty thousand dollars might be enough to make him abandon his professional integrity and participate. He drained the cup, as the plane seemed to be about to touch down.

It was certainly an odd coincidence to be hearing so much of DIRE lately. A month ago they’d offered a job to Steerforth Benner, the most brilliant English Literature graduate student Doyle had ever had. Doyle remembered being mildly surprised to hear from Benner that DIRE was still in existence. Doyle knew of the company, of course—from small beginnings in the 1930s, it had become, under the shrewd guidance of its colorful founder, a pillar of American scientific industry rivalling IBM and Honeywell. They’d been very big in things like the space program and undersea exploration, and during the 60s, Doyle recalled, they were always sponsoring Shakespeare plays on television without commercial interruptions. But the company had withdrawn from the public eye during the 70s, and Doyle had read somewhere—in the National Enquirer, he believed it was—that J. Cochran Darrow had learned he had cancer, and after exhausting all the scientific possibilities of a cure, had tried to turn the resources of DIRE toward the occult, in the hope of finding a cure in the dubious annals of magic. Newsweek had only noted that DIRE was laying off most of its personnel and closing down their production centers, and Doyle remembered a Forbes article, titled something like “DIRE Straits,” about the sudden worthlessness of their stock.

And then Benner was approached by them and offered a high-paying, though unspecified, position. Over a pitcher of beer one night Benner had told Doyle about all the tests he was taking in order to qualify: tests for alertness under fatigue and distraction, physical endurance and agility, quick comprehension of complicated logic problems… and even a few tests which struck Doyle as distasteful, the purpose of which seemed to be to measure Benner’s capacity for ruthlessness. Benner had passed them all, and though he did tell Doyle afterward that he’d been accepted for the position, he completely, though amiably as ever, evaded all questions about the job itself.

Well, Doyle thought as, sounding distant through the insulation, the wheels yelped against the runway, maybe I’m about to learn what Benner wouldn’t tell me.

The guard unlocked the gate and took Doyle’s suitcase from the driver, who nodded politely and walked back toward the purring BMW. Doyle took a deep breath and stepped through, and the guard locked the gate behind him.

“Good to have you with us, sir,” the man recited, his voice raised to be heard over the roaring of diesel engines. “If you’ll follow me, please.”

The lot was more expansive than it had looked from the street, and the guard led him on a looping course to stay out of the way of intimidating obstacles. Big yellow earth-moving tractors lurched and shifted from place to place, popping head-sized stones to dust under their mill wheel tires and sending up an unholy clattering roar as they pushed quantities of rubble into big heaps and then pushed these away somewhere out in the darkness; the rubble, Doyle noted, was fresh, the broken edges of stone still white and sharp-smelling. And there were busy people hurrying about on foot, too, laying out thick power cables and peering through surveying instruments and calling numbers to each other over walkie-talkies. The ring of bright spotlights cast a half-dozen shadows from every object.

The guard was six feet tall and taking long strides, and the shorter Doyle, having to jog occasionally to keep up, was soon puffing and wheezing. What’s the goddamn hurry, he wondered angrily; though at the same time he promised himself that he’d start doing sit-ups and push-ups in the mornings again. A battered old aluminum trailer stood at the periphery of the glare, moored to the activity by cables and telephone lines, and this proved to be their destination. The guard hopped up the three steps to the door and knocked, and when someone inside shouted, “Come in!” he stepped down and waved Doyle ahead. “Mr. Darrow will speak to you inside.”

Doyle walked up the steps, opened the door and went in. The inside of the trailer was littered with books and charts, some looking old enough to belong in a museum and others obviously brand new; all were clearly in use, the charts covered with penciled notes and colored pins, and the books, even the oldest and most fragile, propped carelessly open and marked up with felt-pen ink. An old man stood up from behind one of the taller book stacks, and Doyle was impressed in spite of himself to recognize, from a hundred pictures in magazines and newspapers over the years, J. Cochran Darrow. Doyle had been prepared to humor a wealthy but sick and almost certainly senile old man, but all such thoughts evaporated before the man’s piercing and frostily humorous gaze.

Though the hair was whiter and scantier than recent photographs had shown, the cheeks a little hollower, Doyle had no difficulty in believing that this was the man who had pioneered more fields of scientific research than Doyle could probably even spell, and, out of a small-town sheet-metal factory, built a financial empire that made J. Pierpont Morgan look merely successful.

“You’re Doyle, I hope,” he said, and the famous deep voice had not deteriorated at all.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.” Darrow stretched and yawned. “‘Scuse me, long hours. Sit down, any space you can find. Brandy?”

“Sounds fine to me.” Doyle sat down on the floor beside a knee-high stack of books on which Darrow a moment later set two paper cups and a pear-shaped bottle of Hennessey. The old man sat down cross-legged on the other side of the stack, and Doyle was mortified to note that Darrow didn’t have to suppress a grunt in lowering himself to the floor. Lots of push-ups and sit-ups, he vowed.

“I imagine you’ve speculated on the nature of this job,” Darrow said, pouring the cognac, “and I want you to ditch whatever conclusions you’ve come up with. It’s got nothing to do with any of them. Here.” He handed Doyle a cup. “You know about Coleridge, do you?”

“Yes,” Doyle answered cautiously.

“And you know about his times? What was going on in London, in England, in the world?”

“Reasonably well, I think.”

“And by know, son, I don’t mean do you have books at home on these things or would you know where to look ‘em up in the UCLA library. I mean know ‘em in your head, which is more portable. Answers still yes?”

Doyle nodded.

“Tell me about Mary Wollstonecraft. The mother, not the one who wrote Frankenstein.”

“Well, she was an early feminist, wrote a book called, let’s see, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, I think, and—”

“Who’d she marry?”

“Godwin, Shelley’s father-in-law. She died in childb—”

“Did Coleridge really plagiarize Schlegel?”

Doyle blinked. “Uh, yes. Obviously. But I think Walter Jackson Bate is right in blaming it more on—”

“When did he start up on the opium?”

“When he was at Cambridge, I think, early 1790s.”

“Who was the—” Darrow began, but was interrupted by the ringing of a telephone. The old man swore, got up and went over to the phone and, lifting the receiver, resumed what was obviously an argument in progress about particles and lead sheathing.

Both from politeness and lack of interest, Doyle made a show of being curious about a nearby book stack—and a moment later his interest became wide-eyed genuine, and very carefully he lifted the top volume.

He opened it, and his half-incredulous suspicion was confirmed—it was the Journal of Lord Robb, which Doyle had been vainly begging the British Museum for a xerox copy of for a year. How Darrow could have got actual possession of it was unguessable. Though Doyle had never seen the volume, he’d read descriptions of it and knew what it was. Lord Robb had been an amateur criminologist, and his journal was the only source of some of the most colorful, and in many cases implausible, crime stories of the 1810s and 20s; among its tales of kill-trained rats, revenges from beyond the grave, and secret thief and beggar brotherhoods, it contained the only detailed account of the capture and execution of the semi-legendary London murderer known as Dog-Face Joe, popularly believed to have been a werewolf, who reputedly could exchange bodies with anyone he chose but was unable to leave behind the curse of lycanthropy. Doyle had wanted to link this story somehow with the Dancing Ape Madness, at least to the extent of the kind of speculative footnote that’s mainly meant to show how thoroughly the author has done his homework. When Darrow hung up the phone Doyle closed the book and laid it back on the stack, making a mental note to ask the old man later for a copy of the thing. Darrow sat down again beside the book stack with the cups and bottle on it, and picked up right where he’d left off. For the next twenty minutes he fired questions at Doyle, hopping from subject to subject and rarely allowing him time to amplify—though occasionally he would demand every detail Doyle knew about some point; questions on the causes and effects of the French Revolution, the love life of the British Prince Regent, fine points of dress and architecture, differences in regional dialects. And what with Doyle’s good memory and his recent Ashbless researches, he managed to answer nearly all of them. Finally Darrow leaned back and fished a pack of unfiltered cigarettes out of his pocket. “Now,” he said as he lit one and drew deeply on it, “I want you to fake an answer.”

“Fake one?”

“Right. We’re in a roomful of people, let’s say, and several of ‘em probably know more about literature than you do, but you’re being billed as the resident expert, so you’ve got to at least look like you know everything. So somebody asks you, uh, ‘Mr. Doyle, to what extent, in your opinion, was Wordsworth influenced by the philosophy expressed in the verse plays of, I don’t know, Sir Arky Malarkey?’ Quick!”

Doyle cocked an eyebrow. “Well, it’s a mistake, I think, to try to simplify Malarkey’s work that way; several philosophies emerge as one traces the maturing of his thought. Only his very late efforts could possibly have appealed to Wordsworth, and as Fletcher and Cunningham point out in their Concordium there is no concrete evidence that Wordsworth ever actually read Malarkey. I think when trying to determine the philosophies that affected Wordsworth it would be more productive to consider—” He stopped, and grinned uncertainly at Darrow. “And then I could ramble indefinitely about how much he was influenced by the Rights of Man business in the French Revolution.”

Darrow nodded, squinting through the curling smoke. “Not too bad,” he allowed. “Had a guy in here this afternoon—Nostrand from Oxford, he’s editing a new edition of Coleridge’s letters—and he was insulted at the very idea of faking an answer.”

“Nostrand’s evidently more ethical than I am,” said Doyle a little stiffly.

“Evidently. Would you call yourself cynical?”

“No.” Doyle was beginning to get annoyed. “Look, you asked me if I could bluff my way out of a question, and so off the top of my head I had a try at it. I’m not in the habit, though, of claiming to know things I don’t. In print, or in class, I’m always willing to admit—”

Darrow laughed and raised a hand. “Easy, son, I didn’t mean that. Nostrand’s a fool, and I liked your bluff. What I meant was, are you cynical? Do you tend to reject new ideas if they resemble ideas you’ve already decided are nonsense?”

Here come the Ouija boards, Doyle thought. “I don’t think so,” he said slowly.

“What if somebody claimed to have incontrovertible proof that astrology works, or that there’s a lost world inside the earth, or that any of the other things every intelligent person knows are impossible, was possible? Would you listen?”

Doyle frowned. “It’d depend on who was claiming it. Probably not, though.” Oh well, he thought—I still get five thousand and a return ticket.

Darrow nodded, seemingly pleased. “You say what you think, that’s good. One old fraud I talked to yesterday would have agreed that the moon is one of God’s stray golf balls if I’d said it was. Hot for the twenty grand, he was. Well, let’s give you a shot. Time is short, and I’m afraid you’re the likeliest-looking Coleridge authority we’re going to get.”

The old man sighed, ran his fingers through his thinning hair, and then gave Doyle a hard stare. “Time,” he said solemnly, “is comparable to a river flowing under a layer of ice. It stretches us out like water weeds, from root to tip, from birth to death, curled around whatever rocks or snags happen to lie in our path; and no one can get out of the river because of the ice roof, and no one can turn back against the current for an instant.” He paused to grind his cigarette out on an antique Moroccan binding.

Doyle was distinctly disappointed to get vague platitudes when he’d expected to have his credulity strained by wild revelations. Apparently there were a few stripped gears in the old man’s head after all. “Uh,” he said, feeling that some response was expected from him, “an interesting notion, sir.”

“Notion?” Now it was Darrow that was annoyed. “I don’t deal in notions, boy.” He lit another cigarette and spoke quietly but angrily, almost to himself. “My God, first I exhaust the entire structure of modern science—try to grasp that!—and then I spend years wringing the drops of truth out of… certain ancient writings, and testing the results and systematizing them, and then I have to browbeat, coerce, and in two cases even blackmail the boys at my chrono labs in Denver—the Quantum Theory lads, for God’s sake, supposed to be the most radically brilliant and elastic-minded scientists at work today—I have to force them to even consider the weird but dammit empirical evidence, and get them to whip it up into some practical shape—they did it, finally, and it required the synthesis of a whole new language, part non-Euclidean geometry, part tensor calculus and part alchemical symbols—and I get the findings, the goddamn most important discovery of my career, or anyone’s since 1916, I get the whole thing boiled down to one sentence of plain English… and do some pissant college teacher the favor of letting him hear it… and he thinks I’ve said ‘Life is but a dream,’ or ‘Love conquers all.’” He exhaled a lungfull of smoke in a long, disgusted hiss.

Doyle could feel his face getting red. “I’ve been trying to be polite, Mr. Darrow, and—”

“You’re right, Doyle, you’re not cynical. You’re just stupid.”

“Why don’t you just go to hell, sir?” said Doyle in a tone he forced to be conversational. “Skate there on your goddamn ice river, okay?” He got to his feet and tossed back the last of his brandy. “And you can keep your five thousand, but I’ll take the return ticket and a ride to the airport. Now.”

Darrow was still frowning, but the parchment skin around his eyes was beginning to crinkle. Doyle, though, was too angry to sit down again. “Get old Nostrand back here and tell him about the water weeds and the rest of your crap,” Darrow stared up at him. “Nostrand would be certain I was insane.”

“Then do it by all means—it’ll be the first time he was correct about anything.”

The old man was grinning. “He advised me against approaching you, by the way. Said all you were good for was rearranging other people’s research.”

Doyle opened his mouth to riposte furiously, then just sighed. “Oh, hell,” he said. “So calling you crazy would be his second correct statement.”

Darrow laughed delightedly. “I knew I wasn’t wrong about you, Doyle. Sit down, please.”

It would have been too rude to leave now that Darrow was refilling Doyle’s paper cup, so he complied, grinning a little sheepishly. “You do manage to keep a person off balance,” he remarked.

“I’m an old man who hasn’t slept in three days. You should have met me thirty years ago.” He lit still another cigarette. “Try to picture it, now; if you could stand outside the time river, on some kind of bank, say, and see through the ice, why then you could walk upstream and see Rome and Nineveh in their heydays, or downstream and see whatever the future holds.”

Doyle nodded. “So ten miles upstream you’d see Caesar being knifed, and eleven miles up you’d see him being born.”

“Right! Just as, swimming up a river, you come to the tips of trailing weeds before you come to their roots. Now—pay attention, this is the important part—sometime something happened to punch holes in the metaphorical ice cover. Don’t ask me how it happened, but spread out across roughly six hundred years there’s a… shotgun pattern of gaps, in which certain normal chemical reactions don’t occur, complex machinery doesn’t work … But the old systems we call magic do.” He gave Doyle a belligerent stare. “Try, Doyle, just try.”

Doyle nodded. “Go on.”

“So in one of these gaps a television won’t work, but a properly concocted love potion will. You get me?”

“Oh, I follow you. But wouldn’t these gaps have been noticed?”

“Of course. Those binders by the window are full of newspaper clippings and journal entries, dating back as far as 1624, that mention occasions when magic has seemed actually, documentably, to work; and since the turn of the century there’s usually some note, in the same day’s issue, of a power failure or blanket radio interference in the same area. Why, man, there’s a street in Soho that some people still call the Auto Graveyard, because for six days in 1954 every car that drove into it conked out and had to be towed away—by horses!—and then started up fine in the next street. And a third-rate part-time medium that lived there staged the last of her Saturday afternoon tea and seance sessions during that week—no one will ever know what happened, but the ladies were all found dead, ice cold after having been dead less than an hour in a warm room, and stamped on every face was, I understand, the most astonishing expression of dismayed terror. The story was downplayed in the press, and the stalling of the cars was blamed on a, quote, accumulation of static electricity, unquote. And there are hundreds of similar examples.

“Now I came across these when I was… well, trying to accomplish something science had failed to do, and I was trying to find out if, when and where magic might work. I found that these magic-yes-machinery-no fields are all in or around London and are scattered through history in a bell curve pattern whose peak extends roughly from 1800 to 1805; there were evidently a lot of them during those years, though they tended to be very brief in duration and small in area. They become wider and less frequent farther away from the peak years. Still with me?”

“Yes,” said Doyle judiciously. “As far back as the sixteen hundreds, you say? So the gaps then would have been rare, but long when they did show up. And they quickened and shortened until they must have been banging by like clicks from a geiger counter in 1802, say, and then they slowed down and broadened out again. Do they seem to damp out entirely at either end of the curve?”

“Good question. Yes. The equations indicate that the earliest one occurred in 1504, so the curve reaches about three hundred years in each direction, call it six hundred years all told. So anyway, when I began to notice this pattern, I nearly forgot about my original purpose, I was so fascinated by this thing. I tried to get my research boys to work on the puzzle. Hah! They knew senility when they saw it, and there were a couple of attempts to have me committed. But I ducked out of the net and forced them to continue, to program their computers with principles from Bessonus and Midorgius and Ernestus Burgravius; and in the end I did learn what the gaps were. They were—are—gaps in the wall of time.”

“Holes in the ice that covers the river.” Doyle nodded.

“Right—picture holes in that ice roof; now if part of your lifetime, some section of the seventy-year-long trailing weed that’s you, should happen to be under one of the holes, it’s possible to get out of the time stream at that point.”

“To where?” Doyle asked guardedly, trying to keep any tone of pity or derision out of his voice. Why, to Oz, he thought, or Heaven, or the Pure Vegetable Kingdom.

“Nowhere,” answered Darrow impatiently. “Nowhen. All you can do is enter again through another gap.”

“And wind up in the Roman Senate watching Caesar being assassinated. No, sorry, that’s right, the holes only extend as far back as 1500; okay, watching London burn down in 1666.”

“Right—if there happens to be a gap then. And there. You can’t reenter at arbitrary points, only through an existing gap. And,” he said with a note of discoverer’s pride, “it is possible to aim for one gap rather than another—it depends on the amount of… propulsion used in exiting from your own gap. And it is possible to pinpoint the locations of the gaps in time and space. They radiate out in a mathematically predictable pattern from their source—whatever that can have been—in early 1802.”

Doyle was embarrassed to realize that his palms were damp. “This propulsion you mention,” he said thoughtfully, “is it something you can produce?”

Darrow grinned ferociously. “Yes.”

Doyle was beginning to see a purpose in the demolished lot outside, all these books, and perhaps even his own presence. “So you’re able to go voyaging through history.” He smiled uneasily at the old man, trying to imagine J. Cochran Darrow, even old and sick, at large in some previous century. “I fear thee, ancient mariner.”

“Yes, that does bring us to Coleridge—and you. Do you know where Coleridge was on the evening of Saturday, the first of September, in 1810?”

“Good Lord, no. William Ashbless arrived in London only… about a week later. But Coleridge? I know he was living in London then…”

“Yes. Well, on the Saturday evening I mentioned, Coleridge gave a lecture on Milton’s Aereopagitica at the Crown and Anchor Tavern in the Strand.”

“Oh, that’s right. But it was Lycidas, wasn’t it?”

“No. Montagu wasn’t present, and he got it wrong.”

“But the Montagu letter is the only mention anywhere of that lecture.” Doyle cocked his head. “Uh… isn’t it?”

The old man smiled. “When DIRE undertakes to do a job of research, son, we’re thorough. No, two of the men who attended, a publisher’s clerk and a schoolmaster, left journals which have come into my hands. It was the Aereopagitica. The schoolteacher even managed to get a fair amount of the lecture down in shorthand.”

“When did you find this?” Doyle asked quickly. An unpublished Coleridge lecture! My God, he thought with a surge of bitter envy, if I’d had that two years ago, my Nigh-Related Guest would have got a different sort of review.

“A month or so ago. It was only in February that I got concrete results from the Denver crew, and since then DIRE has been obtaining every available book or journal concerning London in 1810.”

Doyle spread his hands. “Why?”

“Because one of these time gaps is just outside Kensington, five miles from the Strand, on the evening of the first of September, 1810. And unlike most gaps that close to the 1802 source, this one is four hours long.”

Doyle leaned forward to help himself to another cupful of the brandy. The excitement building in him was so big that he tried to stifle it by reminding himself that what was being discussed here was, though fascinating, impossible. Stick with it for the twenty thousand, he advised himself, and maybe the possibility of getting your hands on Robb’s journal or that schoolteacher’s notebook. But he wasn’t fooling himself—he wanted to participate in this. “And there’s another gap here and now, of course.”

“Here, all right, but not quite now. We’re”—Darrow looked at his watch—”still several hours upstream of it. It’s of a typical size for one this far from the source—the upstream edge is tonight, the downstream edge at about dawn of the day after tomorrow. As soon as Denver pinpointed this gap I bought the entire area the field would cover, and got busy levelling it. We don’t want to take any buildings back with us, do we?”

Doyle realized his own grin must have looked as conspiratorial as Darrow’s. “No, we don’t.”

Darrow sighed with relief and satisfaction. He picked up the phone just as it started to ring. “Yes?… Get off this line and get me Lament. Quick.” He drained his cup and refilled it. “Been living for three days on coffee, brandy and candy bars,” he remarked to Doyle. “Not bad, once your stomach gets—Tim? Drop the efforts for Newnan and Sandoval. Well, radio Delmotte and tell him to turn around and take him right back to the airport. We’ve got our Coleridge man.”

He replaced the phone. “I’ve sold ten tickets, at one million dollars apiece, to attend the Coleridge lecture. We’ll make the jump tomorrow evening at eight. There’ll be a catered briefing session at six-thirty for our ten guests, and naturally for that we ought to have a recognized Coleridge authority.”

“Me.”

“You. You’ll give a brief speech on Coleridge and answer any questions the guests may have concerning him or his contemporaries or his times, and then you’ll accompany the party through the jump and to the Crown and Anchor Tavern—along with a few competent guards who’ll make sure no romantic soul attempts to go AWOL—take notes during the lecture and then, back home again in 1983, comment on it and answer any further questions.” He cocked an eyebrow sternly at Doyle. “You’re being paid twenty thousand dollars to see and hear what ten other people are paying a million apiece for. You should be grateful that all our efforts to get one of the more prominent Coleridge authorities failed.”

Not too flatteringly phrased, Doyle thought, but “Yes,” he said. Then a thought struck him. “But what about your… original purpose, the thing science failed to do, the reason you found these gaps in the first place? Have you abandoned that?”

“Oh.” Darrow didn’t seem to want to discuss it. “No, I haven’t abandoned it. I’m working on it from a couple of angles these days. Nothing to do with this project.”

Doyle nodded thoughtfully. “Are there any gaps, uh, downstream of us?”

For no reason Doyle could see the old man was beginning to get angry again. “Doyle, I don’t see—oh, what the hell. Yes. There’s one, it’s forty-seven hours long in the summer of 2116, and that’s the last one, chronologically.”

“Well.” Doyle didn’t mean to provoke him, but he wanted to know why Darrow apparently didn’t intend to do what seemed to Doyle the obvious thing. “But couldn’t this… thing you want done … be done very easily, probably, in that year? I mean, if science could almost do it in 1983, why by 2116…”

“It’s very annoying, Doyle, to give someone a cursory glance at a project you’ve been working hard at for a long time, and then have them brightly suggest courses which, as a matter of fact, you considered and dismissed as unworkable long ago.” He blew smoke out between clenched teeth. “How could I know, before I got there, whether or not the world in 2116 is a radioactive cinder? Hah? Or what sort of awful police state might exist then?” Exhaustion and brandy must have undermined a lot of Darrow’s reserve, for there was a glisten in his eyes when he added, “And even if they could and would do it, what would they think of a man from more than a century in the past?” He crumpled his paper cup, and a trickle of brandy ran down his wrist. “What if they treated me like a child?”

Embarrassed, Doyle instantly changed the subject back to Coleridge. But that’s it, of course, he thought—Darrow’s been the captain of his own ship for so long that he’d rather sink with it than accept the condescension of a life preserver tossed from some Good Samaritan vessel, especially a grander one than his own.

Darrow too seemed eager to steer the conversation back to business.

The sky had begun to pale in the east when Doyle was chauffeured by another driver to a hotel nearby, and he slept until, late in the afternoon, a third driver arrived to take him back to the site.

The lot was now planed flat as a griddle, and all the tractors were gone; several men were at work with shovels and brooms cleaning up horse dung. The trailer was still there, looking adrift now that its telephone and power cables had been removed. Another trailer, big enough to be called a mobile home, was pulled up alongside it. As Doyle got out of the car he noticed pulleys and lines at intervals along the fence top and a collapsed tarpaulin lying at the base of the fence all around the perimeter. He grinned. The old man’s shy, he thought.

A guard opened the gate for him and led him to the new trailer, the door of which stood open. Doyle went inside. At the far end of the walnut-panelled and carpeted room Darrow, looking no more tired than he had last night, was talking to a tall blond man. Both men were dressed in the pre-Regency style: frockcoats, tight trousers and boots; they wore them so naturally that Doyle momentarily felt ridiculous in his polyester-cotton suit.

“Ah, Doyle,” said Darrow. “I think you already know our chief of security.”

The blond man turned around and after a moment Doyle recognized Steerforth Benner. The young man’s once-long hair had been cut short and curled, and his wispy moustache, never very evident, was now shaved off.

“Benner!” Doyle exclaimed, pleased, as he crossed the room. “I suspected you must be connected with this project.” His friendship with the young man had cooled off in the last month or two, since Benner’s DIRE recruitment, but he was delighted to see a familiar face here.

“Colleagues at last, Brendan,” said Benner with his characteristic wide smile.

“We jump in a little less than four hours,” resumed Darrow, “and there are a lot of things to get done first. Doyle, we’ve got a period suit for you, and those doors at that end are changing rooms. I’m afraid you’ll be supervised, but it’s important that everyone dress the role from the skin out.”

“We’re only going to be staying four hours, aren’t we?” Doyle asked.

“It’s always in the realm of possibility, Doyle, that one of our guests might run off, despite the efforts of Benner and his boys. If one does, we don’t want him to be carrying any evidence that he’s from another century.” Darrow snapped his hand up, as though physically fielding Doyle’s next question. “And no, son, our hypothetical escapee wouldn’t be able to tell people how the war will turn out or how to build a Cadillac or anything. Each guest will swallow a capsule, just before we go, of something I think I’ll call Anti-Transchrono Trauma. ATCT. What it will actually be, and please don’t start yelling yet, Doyle, is a fatal dose of strychnine in a capsule set to dissolve after six hours. Now when we get back they’ll have their entire GI tracts pumped full of an activated charcoal solution.” He smiled frostily. “Staff is exempt, of course, or I wouldn’t be telling you this. Each guest has agreed to these conditions, and I think most of them have guessed what they mean.”

And maybe they haven’t, Doyle thought. Suddenly the whole project looked like lunacy again, and he imagined himself in court, some day soon, trying to explain why he hadn’t informed the police about Darrow’s intentions.

“And here’s a speech you can make at the briefing,” Darrow went on, handing Doyle a sheet of paper. “Feel free to change it or rewrite it entirely—and if you could have it memorized by then I’d be very pleased. Now I imagine you two would like to compare notes, so I’ll get busy in my trailer. Staff won’t be permitted to drink at the briefing, but I don’t see any harm if you have a couple right now.” He smiled and strode out, looking piratically handsome in the archaic clothes.

When he was gone Benner opened a cupboard that proved to be a liquor cabinet. “Aha,” he said, “they were ready for you.” He pulled down a bottle of Laphroaig, and in spite of his worries Doyle was pleased to see that it was the old 91.4 proof kind, in the clear glass bottle.

“God, pour me some. Neat.”

Benner handed him a glass of it and mixed a Kahlua and milk for himself. He sipped it and grinned at Doyle. “I think a bit of liquor is as essential as the lead sheathing; you wouldn’t catch me standing in the path of all that radiation without some hooch under my belt.”

Doyle had been about to demand a phone to call the police with, but this brought him up short. “What?”

“The tachyon conversion process. Didn’t he explain how the jump will work?”

Doyle felt hollow. “No.”

“Do you know anything about Quantum Theory? Or subatomic physics?”

Without conscious volition Doyle’s hand lifted the glass and poured some scotch into his mouth. “No.”

“Well, I don’t know nearly enough about it myself. But basically what’s going to happen is we’ll all be lined up in the path of a blast of insanely high frequency radiation, way up above gamma ray frequencies—photons haven’t got any mass, you know, so you can send one phalanx of ‘em out right after another without them stepping on each other’s heels—and when it hits us, the odd properties of the gap field will prevent whatever would ordinarily occur. I’m not sure what would ordinarily happen, though it’d certainly trash us.” He sipped his drink cheerfully. “Anyway, since we’ll be in the gap, what will happen—the only way nature can reconcile the inequities involved—is that we’ll become, in effect, honorary tachyons.”

“Christ,” exclaimed Doyle hoarsely, “we’ll become ghosts. We’ll see Coleridge, all right—we’ll see him in Heaven.” A car horn blared past on the street, sounding more distant than Doyle knew it must be, and he wondered where some innocent soul was driving to, and what trivial difficulty had made him honk his horn. “Benner, listen to me—we’ve got to get out of here and get to the police. My God, man—”

“It really is perfectly safe,” Benner interrupted, still smiling.

“How can you possibly know that? The man is probably a certifiable lunatic, and—”

“Take it easy, Brendan, and listen. Do I look all right? Is the fence still standing? Then stop worrying, because I made a solo jump to a brief gap in 1805 two hours ago.”

Doyle stared at him suspiciously. “You did?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die. They dressed me up like—oh, picture a Ku Klux Klansman who favors metallic robes and doesn’t need eyeholes—and then had me stand on a platform by the fence while they lined up their infernal machinery on the other side of the fence. And then whoosh!—one minute I was here and today, the next I was in a tent in a field near Islington in 1805.”

“In a tent?”

Benner’s smile took on a puzzled quirk. “Yeah, it was weird, I landed in some kind of gypsy camp. The first thing I saw when I ripped off the hood was the inside of this tent, and it was all fumy with incense and full of Egyptian-looking stuff, and there was a cadaverous old bald-headed guy staring at me in extreme surprise. I got scared and ran outside, which wasn’t easy in that robe, and it was English countryside I saw, and no highways or telephone poles, so I guess it really was 1805. There were a lot of horses and tents and gypsy types around, and all the gypsies were staring at me, but the gap came to its end just then—thank God I hadn’t run outside the field—and the mobile hook snatched me back to here and now.” He chuckled. “I wonder what the gypsies thought when I just disappeared, and the robe fell empty without me in it.”

Doyle stared at him for several long seconds. Though always amiable, Benner had never been trustworthy—but this wasn’t how he lied. The man wasn’t a good actor, and this story, especially the note of puzzlement about the old man in the tent, had been told with effortless conviction. He realized dizzily that he believed it.

“My God,” he said in an envious near-whisper, “what did the air smell like? What did the ground feel like?”

Benner shrugged. “Fresh air and grassy ground. And the horses looked like horses. The gypsies were all fairly short, but maybe gypsies always are.” He clapped Doyle on the back. “So stop worrying. The charcoal enemas will keep the guests healthy, and I’m not going to let any of them get away. You still want to call the cops?”

“No.” No indeed, Doyle thought fervently. I want to see Coleridge. “Excuse me,” he said, “I’ve got to get busy on this speech.”

At twenty after six Doyle decided he had his new speech memorized. He stood up in the little office Darrow had let him use, sighed, and opened the door to the main room.

A number of well-dressed people were milling around at the far end of the room, separated from him by a dozen or so empty chairs and a big central table. The hundreds of candles in the chandeliers were lit, and the soft, gracious illumination gleamed off the polished panelling and the rows of glasses on the table; faintly on the warm air he caught a smell of bell peppers and grilling steak.

“Benner,” he called softly, seeing the tall young man lean tiredly against a wall near the table and, in perfect harmony with the way he was dressed, flip open a snuffbox and bring a pinch of brown powder up to his nose.

Benner looked up. “Damn it, Brendan—hatchoo!—damn it, staff’s supposed to be all dressed by now. Never mind, the guests are in the dressing rooms, you can change in a few minutes.” Benner put away his snuffbox and frowned impatiently at Doyle’s clothes as he walked over. “You’ve got your mobile hook on, at least?”

“Sure.” Doyle pulled back his shirt sleeve to show him the leather band, drawn tight and secured with a little lock, around his shaven forearm. “Darrow himself put it on an hour ago. Come listen to my speech, will you? You know enough about—”

“I don’t have time, Brendan, but I’m sure it’s fine. These damn people, each one of them thinks he’s the maharajah of the world.”

A man hurried up to them, dressed, like Benner, in the early nineteenth century style. “It’s Treff again, chief,” he said quietly. “We finally did get him to strip, but he’s got an Ace bandage on his leg and he won’t take it off, and it’s obvious he’s got something under it.”

“Hell, I knew one of them would pull this. Rich people! Come along, Doyle, you’ve got to head in this direction anyway.”

As they strode across the room the imposing figure of Darrow entered through the main door and their paths converged just as a stout, hairy man wearing nothing but an elastic bandage around his thigh stormed out of one of the dressing rooms.

“Mr. Treff,” said Darrow, raising his thick white eyebrows, and his deep voice undercut and silenced all the others, “you have evidently misunderstood the dress requirements.”

At this several people laughed, and Treff’s face went from red to dark red. “Darrow, this bandage stays on, understand? It’s my doctor’s orders, and I’m paying you a goddamn million dollars, and no fugitive from a nut hatch is going to—”

Only because he happened to smile nervously just then at Benner did Doyle see him whip a thin knife out of his sleeve; but everyone saw him when he kicked forward in a graceful full-extension fencer’s lunge and slipped the flat of the blade under the disputed bandage, paused for a theatrical moment, and then flicked it out sideways, cleanly slicing the layers of cloth through from top to bottom.

A good fistful of heavy, gleaming metallic objects thudded onto the carpet. In a quick glance Doyle recognized among them a Colibri Beam Sensor lighter, a Seiko quartz watch, a tiny notebook, a .25 caliber automatic pistol and at least three one-ounce plates of solid gold.

“Planning on buying the natives with glass beads, were you?” Darrow said, with a nod of thanks to Benner, who had straightened back up to his position beside Doyle and slipped the knife away. “As you know, this violates the terms of our agreement—you’ll be getting a fifty percent refund, and right now the guards will escort you to a trailer outside the lot, where you’ll be held in luxurious captivity until dawn. And in a spirit of friendly concern,” he added, with the coldest smile Doyle had ever seen, “I do strongly advise you to leave here quietly.”

“Well, one good result of all that,” said Benner lightly as Treff was led, naked, out the door, “is that a dressing room is now free. In you go, Brendan.”

Doyle stepped forward and, muttering “Excuse me” to several people, went into the newly vacated dressing room. There was a guard on a stool inside, and he looked relieved that this wasn’t Treff coming back in.

“Doyle, aren’t you?” the man said, standing up.

“Yes.”

“Right, then, off with your clothes.”

Sucking in his belly a little, Doyle obediently shed his clothes and hung his suit carefully on a hanger the guard handed him. There was a door in the back of the dressing room, and the guard bustled away through it, taking Doyle’s things with him.

Doyle leaned against the wall, hoping they wouldn’t forget about him. He tried to scratch under the leather band on his forearm, but it was drawn too tight for him to get a finger under it. He gave up, resolving just to ignore the way the carved bit of green stone under the leather made his shaved skin itch. A mobile hook, Darrow had called it, and he’d let Doyle look at the thing before it was covered by the strap that would hold it tightly against him. Doyle had turned the small lozenge of green stone in his fingers, noting the symbols carved on it—they seemed to be a mix of hieroglyphics and astrological notations.

“Don’t look at it so disapprovingly, Doyle,” Darrow had said. “It’s what will bring you back to 1983. When the 1810 gap comes to an end, this thing will pop back to the gap it came from, which is here and now, and as long as it’s in contact with your flesh it’ll take you back with it. If you were to lose it, you’d see us all disappear and you’d be marooned in 1810; which is why it’s to be locked onto you.”

“So we’ll all just disappear from there after four hours?” Doyle had asked as Darrow soaped and shaved his forearm. “What if you’ve miscalculated the length of the gap, and we all disappear in the middle of the lecture?”

“We wouldn’t,” Darrow had said. “You’ve got to be within the gap as well as touching the hook, and the gap is five miles away from the tavern we’re going to.” He laid the stone on Doyle’s arm and wrapped the wide leather band around it. “But we haven’t miscalculated, and we have a comfortable margin of time to get back to the gap field after the lecture, and we’re bringing two carriages, so,” he had said as he drew the strap tight and snapped the little lock onto it, “don’t worry.”

Now, leaning naked against the wall of the dressing room, Doyle smiled at himself in the mirror. What, me worry?

The guard came back and gave Doyle a set of clothes that presumably wouldn’t raise any eyebrows in 1810; he also gave him directions on how to put them on, and had actually to assist him in tying the little bow at the front of the cravat. “Your hair doesn’t need cutting, sir, the fashion in length is about the same again, but I will just brush it down a bit in front here, so; a bald spot’s nothing to be ashamed of. That’s it precisely, semi-Brutus style. Have a look at yourself now.”

Doyle turned to the mirror, cocked his head and then laughed. “Not bad,” he said. He was wearing a brown frockcoat with two rows of buttons; in the front it came down only to belt level, but in back it swept in a long tail that reached to the backs of his knees. He had on tight tan trousers and knee-high Hessian boots with tassels, and the white silk cravat visible between the high wings of the coat’s collar gave him, he thought, if not an air of rakish handsomeness, at least one of dignity. The clothes had none of the stiffness of brand new garments; though clean, they had clearly been worn before, and this had the effect of making Doyle feel relaxed and comfortable in them, and not as though he’d been shoehorned into some costume for a party.

When he stepped back into the main room the guests were ambling toward the table, on which a colorful profusion of plates and platters and bottles had appeared. Doyle filled a plate and, remembering that he was “staff,” forced himself not to look at the selection of wines and beers but to grab a cup of coffee instead.

“Here you go, Doyle,” spoke up Darrow, indicating an empty chair next to himself. “Doyle,” he explained to the nearest several people, “is our Coleridge expert.”

They nodded and smiled as Doyle sat down, and one white-haired man with humorous eyes said, “I enjoyed The Nigh-Related Guest, Mr. Doyle.”

“Thank you.” Doyle smiled, pleased for the few seconds it took him to realize that the man was Jim Thibodeau, whose massive, multi-volume History of Mankind—written with his wife, who Doyle now noticed sitting on the other side of him—had reflected even just in the chapter on the English Romantic poets a depth of research and a relaxed style Doyle could only admire and envy. But their presence here reinforced the hopeful excitement he’d been feeling ever since hearing Benner describe jumping to 1805. If the Thibodeaus are taking it seriously, he thought, there’s got to be a good chance of it working.

The table and food had been cleared away and the ten chairs were now arranged in a semicircle before a podium. Doyle embarrassedly told Benner to take the podium away, and he replaced it with the chair Treff would have got.

Doyle sat down in it and met the gaze of each guest in turn. Of the nine of them, he recognized five: three, including the Thibodeaus, were prominent historians, one was a distinguished British stage actor, and one, he was fairly sure, was a famous spiritualist and medium. She’d better watch her tricks here in the gap, he thought uneasily, remembering Darrow’s story about the seance on Auto Graveyard Street in 1954.

He took a deep breath and began. “You are probably familiar with the life and works of the man who was the father of the Romantic movement in English poetry, but our outing this evening certainly calls for a review. Born in Devonshire on October 21, 1772, Coleridge early on exhibited the precocity and wide range of reading that he maintained all his life and that made him, among so many other things, the most fascinating conversationalist of an age that included such people as Byron and Sheridan…”

As he went on, touching on the poet’s scholastic career, his addiction to opium in the form of laudanum, his unfortunate marriage, his friendship with William and Dorothy Wordsworth, and the extended trips abroad occasioned by his horror of his wife, Doyle carefully watched his audience’s response. They seemed satisfied on the whole, frowning doubtfully or nodding from time to time, and he realized that his presence here was a gracious detail, like the fine china dishes on which the food had been served when paper plates would have done just as well. Darrow could probably have delivered a talk on Coleridge at least as effectively, but the old man had wanted a sure enough Coleridge authority to do it.

After about fifteen minutes he drew it to a close. Questions followed, all of which Doyle managed to answer confidently, and at last Darrow stood up and walked over to stand beside Doyle’s chair, effortlessly replacing him as the focus of attention. He was carrying a lantern, and he waved it in the direction of the door. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “it is now five minutes to eight, and our coaches await us outside.”

In a tense silence everyone got to their feet and put on hats and bonnets and greatcoats. A hundred and seventy years, Doyle thought, is the distance to 1810. Can I get there by candlelight? Yes, and back again. He noted almost disinterestedly that his heart was pounding and that he didn’t seem able to take a deep breath.

They all filed out onto the packed dirt of the lot. Two broughams, each with two horses harnessed to it, had been drawn up to within a few yards of the trailer, and by the light of the flickering coach lamps Doyle could see that the vehicles, like the period clothes they were all wearing, were clean and in good repair but obviously not new.

“There’s room for five in each vehicle with a bit of crowding,” Darrow said, “and since Treff couldn’t attend, I’ll take his place inside. Staff rides up top.”

Benner took Doyle by the elbow as the guests, with a good deal of hat dropping and shawl tangling, began climbing in. “We’ve got the back of the second coach,” he said. They walked around to the rear of the farther coach and climbed up to two little seats that projected from the back at the same height as the driver’s. The night air was chilly, and Doyle was glad of the heat from the left rear lamp below his elbow. From his perch he could see more horses being led in from the north end of the lot.

The carriage rocked on its springs when two of the guards hoisted themselves up onto the driver’s seat, and hearing metal clink close by, Doyle glanced toward Benner and saw the butts of two pistols sticking out of a leather pouch slung near Benner’s left hand.

He heard reins snap and hooves clop on the dirt as the first carriage got moving. “Where are we going?” he asked as their own carriage got under way. “Spatially speaking, I mean.”

“Over to the fence there, that section where the curtain isn’t up. Do you see that low wooden platform? There’s a truck pulled up right to the edge of the fence just outside.”

“Ah,” said Doyle, trying not to sound as nervous as he felt. Looking back, he saw that the horses he’d noticed being led up were now harnessed to the two trailers and were pulling them away toward the north end.

Benner followed his glance. “The lot, the gap field, has to be completely cleared for every jump,” he explained.

“Anything that’s within it goes back with us.”

“So why didn’t your tents and gypsies come back here?”

“The whole field doesn’t come back on the return, just the hooks and whatever they’re touching. The hook works like the rubber band on one of those paddleball things—energy’s required to swat the ball away, and if a fly’s in the way he’ll go too, but only the ball comes back. Even these coaches will stay there. In fact,” he added, and there was enough light from the lamps for Doyle to see his grin, “I noted on my own jaunt that even one’s clothes stay there, though hair and fingernails somehow stay attached. So Treff got in on at least part of the fun.” He laughed. “That’s probably why he’s only getting a fifty percent refund.”

Doyle was glad now of the tarpaulin curtain around the lot. The two coaches drew up to the fence, and through the chain links Doyle could see the truck, its wide side panel slid all the way open. A wooden stage, only about a foot high but more than a dozen yards long and wide, had been set up on the patch of dirt next to the truck but just inside the fence, and it boomed and rattled like a dozen drums when the drivers goaded the horses to pull the coaches up onto it. A number of men, already looking anachronistic in 1983 jumpsuits, quickly set up aluminum poles and draped a stiff and evidently heavy cloth over them, so that the two coaches were in a large cubical tent. The fabric of the tent gleamed dully in the contained lamplight, and Doyle leaned way out of his seat to brush it with his fingers.

“A mesh of woven steel strands sheathed in lead,” Benner said, his voice sounding louder in the enclosed space. “The same stuff my robe and hood were made of this afternoon,” he added more quietly. “The truck’s tented too, on three sides.” Doyle was trying not to let Benner see his hands trembling.

“Is there an actual blast?” he asked, forcing his voice not to quaver. “Will we feel any concussion?”

“No, you don’t really feel anything. Just… dislocation.”

Doyle could hear people whispering in the carriage below him, and from the other one he heard Darrow’s laugh. One of the horses echoingly stamped a hoof.

“What are they waiting for?” Doyle whispered.

“Got to give those men time to make it to the gate and get outside.” Even though the coaches were halted, Doyle still felt sick, and the oil and metal smell of the peculiar tent was becoming unbearable.

“I hate to say it,” he whispered, “but that smell is—”

Abruptly something shifted, violently but without motion, and the sense of depth and space was extinguished from everything he could see, leaving only a flat dimness in front of his eyes splashed with patches of meaningless light; the roof rail he was clutching was the only bearing he had—there was no north and south, or up and down, and he found himself back in the dream the stewardess had awakened him from last night, feeling the old Honda shift horrifyingly sideways on the wet pavement and then spill him into a horizontal tumble of shocking velocity, hearing Rebecca’s scream end instantly at the first punching impact of the asphalt …

The wooden platform had dropped away from beneath them a short distance, and it shattered when the four horses and two coaches came down on it. The ground was no longer flat, and the poles toppled inward, burying everything a moment later under the heavy folds of the lead-sheathed fabric.

Doyle welcomed the pain when one of the falling poles rebounded from the coach roof and banged his shoulder, for it established the here and now for him. If it hurts it’s got to be the real world, he thought dazedly, and he shook off the vivid memory of the motorcycle crash. The smell he so disliked was very intense, for a section of the collapsed tent was pressing his head down onto the coach roof. And, he thought, probably nothing unites you with surrounding reality more thoroughly than being wringingly sick.

Just when he thought he had gathered the energy, though, the lead curtain was hauled off him, and the fresh night air he found himself breathing made the whole idea of vomiting seem self-indulgent and affected. He looked around at the moonlit field the coaches stood in, bordered by tall trees.

“You okay, Brendan?” Benner said for, Doyle realized, the second time.

“Yeah, sure, I’m fine. Jesus, what a jump, huh? Is everybody else okay? How about the horses?” Doyle was proud of himself for asking such unruffled, businesslike questions, though he wished he could talk more quietly and stop bobbing his head.

“Take it easy, will you?” Benner said. “Everything’s fine. Here—drink.” He unscrewed the top of a flask and handed it to Doyle.

A moment later Doyle was reflecting that liquor was even more effective than pain—or, probably, throwing up—in reconciling one to reality. “Thanks,” he said more quietly, handing it back.

Benner nodded, pocketed the flask, vaulted to the broken platform, and strode off it to where four of the six other guards were spading up a patch of earth and, with gloved hands, folding up the lead tent cloth; in so short a time that Doyle knew they must have practiced it they had buried the folded-up bale of fabric and scrambled back up to their places on the coaches. “You should see the platform,” Benner remarked, hardly panting. “A good three inches was sheared off the bottom of it when we jumped. If we hadn’t been up on it the horses would have lost their hooves and the wheels would each have a section gone.”

The drivers snapped the reins and the coaches moved unevenly forward off the crumpled boards and onto the grass. At a slow pace they began to make their way across the field.

In a few minutes they had reached a stand of willows that screened them from the road, and one of the guards jumped to the ground and sprinted ahead. Crouching, he glanced right and left, and made a patting, keep-your-head-down gesture; a few moments later an open carriage rattled past from left to right, headed for the city. Doyle stared after it in fascination, awed to think that the cheery-looking couple he’d glimpsed through the willow branches would very likely be dead a century before he was born.

The reins flapped and harnesses jingled as the horses advanced to the ditch and, with some effort and backsliding, pulled the coaches across it and onto the road. Wheeling around to the right they set off, and in a minute were rocking along at a good speed east, toward London. The coach lamps, which had fluttered and flickered during the jiggling passage across the ditch, settled down now to a regular back and forth sway on their hooks, casting yellow highlights on the horses’ backs and the brightwork on the coaches, but otherwise dimmed by the moonlight that frosted the trees and made the road glow like a track of palest ashes.

If your heels be nimble and light, Doyle thought, you may get there by candle-light.

CHAPTER 2

Above the crowded sidewalks the windows of the stately, balconied buildings of Oxford Street were all aglow with lamplight on this young Saturday evening; elegantly dressed men and women were to be seen everywhere, wandering arm in arm, silhouetted by shop windows and open doorways, stepping into or alighting from the hansom cabs that jostled one another for positions at the curb. The air was clamorous with the shouting of the cab drivers, the whirring clatter of hundreds of coach wheels on the cobblestones, and, a little more pleasantly, the rhythmic chanting of street vendors who had strayed west from the weekly fair in Tottenham Court Road. From his perch Doyle could smell horses, cigar smoke, hot sausages and perfume on the chilly night breeze.

When they turned right onto Broad Street Benner pulled one of his pistols—a four-barrelled thing, looking all spidery with its multiple flintcocks and flashpan covers—completely out of the leather sack and leaned his elbow on the coach roof with the gun very evident, pointed at the sky. Looking up front, Doyle saw that all the guards had done the same.

“We’re entering the St. Giles rookery,” Benner explained. “Some very rough types about, but they won’t interfere with a body of armed men.”

Doyle looked around with a wary interest at the narrow alleys and courts that snaked away from the street, most of them dark, but a few lit by reflections of some smoky light around a corner. There was much more street-selling here, on the main street at least, and the coaches passed dozens of coffee stalls, old clothes stands, and crates of vegetables watched over by formidable old women who puffed clay pipes and watched the crowd through narrowed eyes. A number of people shouted things at the two coaches, in so thick an accent that Doyle could catch only an occasional “damn” or “bloody,” but their tone seemed more jocular than threatening.

He looked behind, and then touched Benner’s arm. “Didn’t mean to startle you,” he said quickly. “That wagon back there—behind the potato cart—the thing that looks like a Conestoga wagon. It’s been behind us ever since we got onto the Bayswater Road.”

“For God’s sake, Brendan, we’ve only made one turn since then,” Benner hissed impatiently. He did turn around, though. “Hell, that’s just…” Suddenly he looked thoughtful. “I believe it’s a gypsy wagon.”

“Gypsies again,” said Doyle. “They didn’t use to—I mean they don’t usually come into big cities much, do they?”

“I don’t know,” Benner said slowly. “I’m not even sure it is a gypsy wagon, but I’ll mention it to Darrow.”

The street narrowed and darkened as they rattled down St. Martin’s Lane and passed the tall old church, and the groups of men that watched their passage from low, dimly lit doorways made Doyle glad of Benner’s weapons; then it broadened out into light and festivity again when they came to the wide boulevard that was the Strand. Benner worked his complicated gun back into its sack.

“The Crown and Anchor’s just around the corner,” he said. “And I haven’t seen your gypsy wagon for the last several blocks.”

Between two buildings Doyle got a quick view of the river Thames, glittering in the moonlight. It seemed to him that a bridge wasn’t there that he’d seen there on his 1979 visit, but before he had time really to orient himself they’d turned into a little street and squeaked to a halt in front of a two-storied half-timbered building with a sign swinging over the open doorway. The Crown and Anchor, Doyle read.

Drops of rain began pattering down as the guests stepped out of the coaches. Darrow moved to the front, his hands buried in a furry muff. “You,” he said, nodding at the man who’d driven the forward coach, “park the cars. The rest of us’ll be inside. Come on, all.” He led the party of seventeen into the warmth of the tavern.

“Good God, sir,” exclaimed the boy who hurried up to them, “all of you for dinner? Should have let us know in advance, they’d have opened the back banquet room. But see if there’s enough chairs to settle on in the taproom, and—”

“We haven’t come for dinner,” said Darrow impatiently. “We’ve come to hear Mr. Coleridge speak.”

“Have ye?” The boy turned and shouted down a hall, “Mr. Lawrence! Here’s a whole lot more people that thought it was this Saturday that the poet fellow was to speak here!”

Every bit of color left Darrow’s face, and suddenly he was a very old man dressed up in ludicrous clothes. The muff fell off his hands and thumped on the hardwood floor. No one spoke, though Doyle, beneath his shock and disappointment, could feel a fit of hysterical laughter building up to critical mass inside himself.

A harried-looking man, followed by a pudgy old fellow with long gray hair, hurried up to them. “I’m Lawrence, the manager,” he said. “Mr. Montagu set up the lecture for next Saturday, the eighth of October, and I can’t help it that you’ve all come tonight. Mr. Montagu isn’t here, and he’d be upset if—”

Doyle had glanced, and was now staring, at the chubby, ill-seeming man beside Lawrence, who blinked at them all apologetically while the manager was speaking. In his mounting excitement Doyle raised a hand so quickly that the manager halted in mid-sentence, and he leaned forward and said to the man beside Lawrence, “Mr. Coleridge, I believe?”

“Yes,” the man said, “and I do apologize to you all for—”

“Excuse me.” Doyle turned to Lawrence. “The boy indicated that there is a banquet room not in use.”

“Well, yes, that’s true, but it hasn’t been swept and there’s no fire… and besides, Mr. Montagu—”

“Montagu won’t mind.” He turned to Darrow, who was recovering his color. “I’m sure you must have brought suitable cash to cover emergencies, Mr. Darrow,” he said. “And I imagine that if you give this fellow enough of it he’ll have a fire built and provisions brought to us in this banquet room. After all, Mr. Coleridge clearly thought it was to be this evening, and so did we, so why should we listen to him out on the street when there are taverns about with unused rooms? I’m sure,” he said to Lawrence, “even Mr. Montagu can’t fault the logic of that.”

“Well,” said the manager reluctantly, “it will mean taking several of our people away from their proper duties… we will all have to take extra pains… “

“A hundred gold sovereigns!” cried Darrow wildly.

“Done,” choked Lawrence. “But keep your voice down, please.”

Coleridge looked horrified. “Sir, I couldn’t permit—”

“I’m a disgustingly wealthy man,” Darrow said, his poise regained. “Money is nothing to me. Benner, fetch it from the coach while Mr. Lawrence here shows us to the banquet room.” He clapped one arm around Coleridge’s shoulders and the other around Doyle’s and followed the bustling, eager figure of the manager.

“By your accents I surmise you are American?” said Coleridge, a little bewildered. Doyle noted that the man pronounced his r’s; it must be the Devonshire accent, he thought, still present after all these years. Somehow that added to the impression of vulnerability Coleridge projected.

“Yes,” Darrow answered. “We’re from Virginia. Richmond.”

“Ah. I’ve always wished to visit the United States. Some friends and I planned to, at one time.”

The banquet room, on the far side of the building, was dark and very cold. “Never mind sweeping,” said Darrow, energetically flipping chairs off the long table and setting them upright on the floor. “Get some light in here, and a fire, and a lot of wine and brandy, and we’ll be fine.”

“At once, Mr. Darrow,” said Lawrence, and rushed out of the room.

Coleridge had another sip of the brandy and got to his feet. He looked around at the company, which now numbered twenty-one, for three men who’d been dining in one of the other rooms had heard what was going on and decided to join the group. One had flipped open a notebook and held a pencil expectantly.

“As you all know doubtless at least as well as I,” the poet began, “the entire tone of English literature was altered, dropped into a minor and somber key, at the accession of Cromwell’s Parliament party, when the popularly styled Roundheads succeeded, despite the ‘divine right of kings,’ in beheading Charles the First. The Athenian splendors of Elizabeth’s reign, or rather her age, for her years embraced a combined glory of all disciplines that our nation has not at any other time seen, gave way to the austerity of the Puritans, who eschewed alike the extravagances and the bright insights of their historical predecessors. Now John Milton was already thirty-four years old when Cromwell came into power, and thus, although he supported the Parliament party and welcomed the new emphasis on stern discipline and self-control, his modes of thought had been formed during the twilight of the previous period… “

As Coleridge went on, losing his apologetic tone and beginning to speak more authoritatively as he warmed to his subject, Doyle found himself glancing around at the company. The stranger with the notebook was busily scribbling away in some sort of shorthand, and Doyle realized that he must be the schoolteacher Darrow mentioned last night. He stared enviously at the notebook; if luck’s with me, he thought, I may be able to get my hands on that, a hundred and seventy years from now. The man looked up and caught Doyle’s eye, and smiled. Doyle nodded and quickly looked away. Don’t be looking around, he thought furiously—keep writing.

The Thibodeaus were both staring at Coleridge through half-closed eyes, and for a moment Doyle feared the old couple was dozing off; then he recognized their blank expression as intense concentration, and he knew they were recording the lecture, in their own minds, as completely as any videotape machine could.

Darrow was watching the poet with a quiet, pleased smile, and Doyle guessed that he wasn’t even listening to the lecture, but was simply glad that the audience seemed satisfied with the show.

Benner was staring down at his hands, as though this was just an interlude, a rest period before some great effort to come. Could he be worrying, Doyle wondered, about the return trip through that slum area? He didn’t seem very concerned on the ride down.

“Thus Milton refines the question down to a matter of faith,” said Coleridge, bringing the lecture to a close, “and a kind of faith more independent, autonomous—more truly strong, as a matter of fact—than the Puritans really sought. Faith, he tells us, is not an exotic bloom to be laboriously maintained by the exclusion of most aspects of the day to day world, nor a useful delusion to be supported by sophistries and half-truths like a child’s belief in Father Christmas—not, in short, a prudently unregarded adherence to a constructed creed; but rather must be, if anything, a clear-eyed recognition of the patterns and tendencies, to be found in every piece of the world’s fabric, which are the lineaments of God. This is why religion can only be advice and clarification, and cannot carry any spurs of enforcement—for only belief and behavior that is independently arrived at, and then chosen, can be praised or blamed. This being the case, it can be seen as a criminal abridgment of a person’s rights willfully to keep him in ignorance of any facts or opinions—no piece can be judged inadmissible, for the more stones, both bright and dark, that are added to the mosaic, the clearer is our picture of God.”

He paused and looked over his audience; then, “Thank you,” he said, and sat down. “Are there any questions or amplifications or disagreements?” Doyle noticed that as the fire of oratory left him he became again the plump, modest old fellow they had met in the entry hall—during the lecture he’d been a more impressive figure.

Percy Thibodeau genially accused Coleridge of having read his own convictions into Milton’s essay, quoting in support some of his own essays, and the obviously flattered poet replied at some length, pointing out the many points on which he differed with Milton; “But when dealing with a man of Milton’s stature,” he said with a smile, “vanity prompts me to dwell upon the opinions I share with him.”

Darrow fished a watch from his waistcoat pocket, glanced at it and got to his feet. “I’m afraid our party will have to be on our way now,” he said. “Time and tide wait for no man, and we’ve got a long voyage ahead of us.”

Chairs rutched noisily back from the table and people got to their feet and began fumbling arms through coat-sleeves. Nearly everyone, including Doyle, made a point of shaking hands with Coleridge, and Percy Thibodeau kissed him on the cheek. “Your Sara could hardly object to a kiss from a woman my age,” she said.

The woman Doyle suspected to be a celebrity spiritualist had, sure enough, begun to go into some kind of trance, and Benner hurried over and, smiling, whispered something to her.

She came out of it instantly, and allowed herself to be led by the elbow out of the room.

“Benner,” said Darrow. “Oh, sorry, carry on. Mr. Doyle—would you please go tell Clitheroe to bring the coaches around front?”

“Certainly.” Doyle paused in the doorway to take a last look at Coleridge—he was afraid he hadn’t paid enough attention, hadn’t got as much out of the evening as, say, the Thibodeaus—and then he sighed and turned away.

The hall was dark, and the floor uneven, and Benner and the unhappy medium were not in sight. Doyle groped his way around a corner, but instead of the entry hall found himself at the foot of a staircase, the bottom few steps of which were lit by a candle in a wall cresset. It must be the other way, he thought, and turned around.

He started violently, for a very tall man was standing directly behind him; his face was craggy and unpleasantly lined, as if from a long lifetime of disagreeable expressions, and his head was as bald as a vulture’s.

“God, you startled me,” Doyle exclaimed. “Excuse me, I seem to have—”

With surprising strength the man seized Doyle’s hand and, whirling him about, wrenched it up between his shoulder blades, and just as Doyle gasped at the sudden pain a wet cloth was pressed over his face so that instead of air he inhaled the sharply aromatic fumes of ether. He was off balance anyway, so he kicked backward with the strength of total panic, and he felt the heel of his boot collide hard with bone, but the powerful arms that held him didn’t even flinch. His struggles made him gulp in more of the fumes in spite of his efforts to hold his breath. He could feel a warm bulk of unconsciousness swelling in the back of his head, and he wondered frantically why someone, Darrow, Benner, Coleridge even, didn’t round the corner and shout an alarm.

With his last flicker of bewildered consciousness it occurred to him that this must be the “cadaverous old bald-headed guy” that Benner had startled in his tent in Islington in 1805, five years or a few hours ago.

The evening’s ride, which Damnable Richard had been enjoying as a respite from the sweaty labor of melting down more of an apparently endless supply of Britannia metal spoons, had now been spoiled for him by Wilbur’s description of how their quarry had appeared in that field. “I sneaked out and followed the old man,” Wilbur had whispered to him as they waited on the driver’s bench of the wagon for their chief to return, “and he went through the woods slow, by stops and starts, carrying a couple of his weird toys—he had that clay pot with acid and lead in it, you know, that stings you if you touch the two metal buttons on top? He kept stopping to touch it, the Beng only knows why, and I could see his hand jump back every time when it stung him. And he had that telescope thing with rutter pictures in it.”

Richard knew he meant the sextant; Wilbur could never understand that it was not called the sex-tent, and so he’d always assumed the chief was looking at dirty pictures when he peered through it. “And he stopped a lot of times to look through it—to keep his blood flowing quick, I judge. So I watched him from behind a tree as he started out across that field, looking at his tit pictures and then stinging himself, like maybe he was sorry. Then one time he touched the pot and his hand didn’t jump back. He looked at it and shook it and touched it again, and he didn’t jerk, so I knew it was broken. Right after that he ran back to the trees quick, no stops this time, and I flattened out, afraid he’d see me. He didn’t, though, and when I peeked up he was behind a tree maybe fifty yards away from me, staring hard at the empty field. So I did too, more than a little scared, because whatever he was up to had even him acting jumpy.”

As Wilbur paused for breath, Richard had reached into his shirt and held his finger and thumb over the ears of his little wooden monkey, for he always suspected scary talk would upset it. “Well,” Wilbur had gone on, “we stayed there for a few minutes, and I didn’t dare leave for fear he’d hear me. And, all of a sudden there was a loud thump sound, and a quick gust of wind in the treetops, and I looked out just in time to see a big black tent collapsing in the middle of the field.” He had squeezed Damnable Richard’s shoulder at this point. “And it wasn’t there when I peeked out a few seconds before! It just appeared there, you see? I made warding signs and said ‘Garlic!’ about a dozen times, for anybody could see this was the Beng’s work. Then a couple of fancy-dressed chals come crawling out from under the tent and pull it away, and what do you think? There were two coaches inside, with their lamps burning and all! And people in both of them, and horses harnessed up all ready to go. And one of these bengo chals says, real loud, ‘What a jump! Is everybody all right? How about the horses?’ Another one shushed him. Then a couple of them folded up their tent and buried it, and the two coaches headed for the road. That’s when the chief ran back to camp, me right behind, and got us into this wagon to follow them.”

Wilbur had now retired to the back of the wagon and was, to judge by his loud, slow breathing, seizing the opportunity to take a short nap. Damnable Richard envied him the ability simply to stop thinking about upsetting things. The old gypsy shifted uneasily on the driver’s bench and stared at the back door of the Crown and Anchor. Even being in the city made him nervous, what with all the gorgios staring at him, and the prastamengros always eager to clap a Romany chal into prison, but to learn that there was sorcery afoot that made his head ache with the danger of it all. Richard had an ungypsylike ability to compare past and present situations, and he wished forlornly that old Amenophis Fikee hadn’t disappeared, eight years ago; the picking had been rich enough when he was their chief, and life had been a lot less stressful. He put his hand into his shirt again and petted the monkey’s head reassuringly with his thumb.

The tavern’s back door squeaked open and Doctor Romany, carrying a limp body over his shoulder, bobbed across the alley toward the wagon. “Up, Wilbur,” Richard hissed, a moment before their chief appeared at the back opening.

“Help me get this fellow in, Wilbur,” said Romany softly.

“Avo, rya,” said the instantly alert Wilbur.

“Carefully, you idiot. Don’t bang his head—I need what’s in it. Avo, on the blankets, that’s kushto. Now bind and gag him.” The old chief drew the back opening shut, laced it up, and then, surprisingly agile in his spring-soled shoes, hurried around and climbed up on the driver’s bench beside Richard. “They’re evidently about to leave here,” he said. “I netted one, but let’s follow the rest.”

“Avo, rya,” acknowledged Richard. He clicked his tongue at the horses and the wagon surged forward, the canvas cover flapping as the high iron hoops rocked back and forth. They turned onto the Strand two blocks east of the Crown and Anchor, and then drew in to the curb.

They waited nearly half an hour, during which time a number of pedestrians wandered up, attracted by the ornately painted letters that spelled out DOCTOR ROMANY’S TRAVELLING EGYPCIAN FAIR across the canvas sides of the wagon. Then Romany’s eyes narrowed. “Richard! There they go at last—after them.”

The reins snapped and the wagon swung out into traffic. The street was crowded with carriages and hansoms, the two coaches were receding quickly, and the old gypsy had to stand up on the foot board and use every bit of his horse-handling skill even to keep their quarry in sight.

Doctor Romany pulled a watch from his pocket as they careened to the right into St. Martin’s Lane, amid angry and scared yells from other drivers, and he eyed it and then thrust it away. “They must intend to get back to the gate before it closes,” Richard heard him say to himself.

The three hastening vehicles, two together and one trailing, retraced the course they’d followed earlier in the evening, and by the time they were clattering west on Oxford Street Richard was sure that the lone man perched at the rear of the second coach had noticed that there was a wagon behind them matching their speed. And as soon as Hyde Park had swung past on the left and they were surrounded by dark fields, there was a muzzle flash and a hollow knocking sound from the second coach, and a pistol ball spanged off the iron hoop over Richard’s head.

“Pre my mullo dados!” the old gypsy exclaimed, instinctively reining in a little. “The bugger’s shooting at us!”

“Damn your dead father and speed up!” shouted Romany. “I’ve got a bullet-deflecting spell working.”

Richard gritted his teeth and, shielding his poor wooden monkey with one arm, whipped the horses up to their former speed again. The air was damp and chilly, and he wished unhappily that he was back in his tent, laboring over the hot molds and melting pots.

“They’re definitely going back to that field on the road side of the trees,” Romany told him. “Pull off on this next path and we’ll loop around to our camp.”

“Is that why you had us set up where we did, rya?” asked Richard as he gratefully reined in and let the two speeding coaches recede along the road. “Did you know these people would be coming?”

“I knew somebody might come,” Romany muttered. The wagon lurched and rocked along the rutted track that led away from the Bayswater Road and around to the south of the belt of trees. There was no one standing by the tents and smoldering campfires, but the wagon was met by several dogs, who stared at the new arrivals and then trotted to the tents to let their masters know, by tail-wagging and prancing, that the arrivals were fellow gypsies. A moment later a couple of men appeared and approached the halted wagon.

Romany jumped to the ground, wincing as the springs on the bottoms of his shoes clacked shut and the ground jarred him. “Take our prisoner to your tent, Richard,” he said, “and make sure he’s neither hurt nor allowed any opportunity to escape.”

“Avo, rya,” the old gypsy called as their chief sprinted away, springing and bobbing crazily, toward the trees that divided this field from the one where, according to Wilbur, the murderous strangers had materialized.

Recalling Wilbur’s bold spying, Richard suddenly resolved not to be outdone. “Take him to my tent, Wilbur,” he said, “and bind him up like an old shoe—I’ll be back.” He gave the gratifyingly goggle-eyed gypsy a big wink, and then set off in pursuit of the chief.

He slanted a bit to the left, so as to reach the trees a few hundred feet west of where Romany had—he could hear the old man picking his way quietly, though not as quietly as a gypsy, between the trees off to his right, and by the time Romany had positioned himself behind a wide trunk at the edge of the field Richard was already prone behind a hummock, having made no noise at all.

The coaches were huddled next to each other in the middle of the field, and everyone had got out of them and gathered in a group a few yards away. Richard counted seventeen of them, and several were women.

“Will you listen to me?” one old man said loudly, clearly upset. “We couldn’t have looked for him any longer. As it is we cut our safety margin dangerously slim. Hell, we’ve only just got here, and there are only a few seconds left until the gap closes. Doyle evidently decided—”

There was a muted thump, and they all fell limply to the ground. Then Richard noticed that the huddled piles were just clothes—the people who’d worn them were gone. The horses and coaches stood unattended in the empty moonlit field.

“They were mullo chals,” Richard whispered, horrified. “Ghosts! Garlic garlic garlic.” He could see Doctor Romany hurrying out across the field, so he got to his feet and pulled the monkey out of his shirt. “You don’t even have to tell me,” he whispered to it. “We’re going.” He hurried back through the trees to the camp.

Though Doyle couldn’t work up the strength to open his eyes at first, the awful antiseptic taste and smell that filled his head let him know he was back at the dental surgeon’s office, in the recovery room. He felt around the inside of his mouth with his tongue, trying to figure out which teeth they’d pulled this time. It occurred to him that it was a damn lumpy couch they’d laid him on—and where, he wondered petulantly, is the nurse with my hot chocolate?

He opened his eyes and was annoyed to see that he wasn’t in the dental office at all, and therefore probably wouldn’t be getting any hot chocolate. He was in a tent, and by the light of a lantern on a nearby table he could see two dark men with moustaches and earrings staring at him, for some reason, fearfully. One of them, the one with a good deal of gray in his curly hair, was panting as if he’d just run a distance.

Doyle couldn’t seem to work his arms and legs, but he suddenly remembered that he was in England, to give a lecture on Coleridge for mad old J. Cochran Darrow. And he told me there was a hotel room for me, he thought angrily. Is that what he calls this goddamn tent? And who are these clowns?

“Where is he?” he croaked. “Where’s Darrow?” The two men just stepped back a pace, still staring rudely. Conceivably they didn’t work for Darrow. “The old man I was with,” he said impatiently. “Where is he?”

“Gone,” said the one who’d been panting.

“Well call him up,” Doyle said. “The number’s probably in the book.”

The men gasped, and one yanked a little wooden monkey out of a pocket and apparently squeezed its head between thumb and forefinger. “We’ll be calling up no gorgio ghosts for you, you chal of the Beng!” he hissed. “Aye, though the number of the beast is indeed in the gorgio Bible!”

At that moment a dog came into the tent, walked in a quick circle with its tail between its legs, and scuttled out.

“The rya is back,” said the one with the monkey. “Go out through the back, Wilbur.”

“Avo,” said Wilbur heartily, and crawled out under a flap of the tent.

Doyle was staring at the tent flap. When the dog had knocked it aside coming in, he’d glimpsed open night outside, and there had been a breath of cold air scented with trees and grass. His memory had at last shaken off the ether fumes and clicked into gear, and he was anxiously replaying the evening in his head. Yes, the jump had worked, and then the city, and that slum area, and yes, Coleridge! And Mrs. Thibodeau kissed him… suddenly Doyle’s abdomen went hollow and cold, and he could feel cold sweat pop out on his forehead, for he remembered the bald man seizing him. Oh my God, he thought in horror, I missed the return jump, I was outside the field when the gap ended!

The flap was pulled open, and the bald man who’d abducted him from the Crown and Anchor entered the tent, bouncing wildly as he moved. He took a cigar out of a pocket and crossed to the table, bent down over the lantern and puffed it alight. Moving to the cot, he grabbed Doyle’s head in one powerful hand and held the lit end of the cigar toward Doyle’s left eye. In panic Doyle arched his body and thumped his bound heels up and down, but in spite of the most strenuous struggling his head was held motionless. He could feel the heat on his eye through his clenched shut eyelid; the coal couldn’t have been more than a half inch away. “Oh my God, stop it!” he burst out. “Help, stop it, get him away from me!”

After a moment the heat went away and his head was released. He rolled his head from side to side, blinking tears out of his left eye. When he could look at things again he saw the bald man standing over the cot, puffing thoughtfully on the cigar.

“I will know it all,” the bald man remarked. “You will tell me where you people came from, how you use the gates for travel, how you discovered the gates—I will know all of it. Do I make myself plain?”

“Yes,” wailed Doyle. God damn J. Cochran Darrow, he thought furiously, and may his cancer eat him alive. It wasn’t my job to go fetch the coaches! “Yes, I’ll tell you everything. In fact, I’ll make you a wealthy man if you’ll do me a favor.”

“A favor,” repeated the old man wonderingly.

“Yes.” Doyle’s cheek itched where tears had run across it, and it was driving him mad that he couldn’t scratch it. “And I’m not kidding about making you wealthy. I can tell you property to buy, things to invest in… I can probably even tell you where to find hidden treasure if I can have time to think about it… gold in California… the tomb of Tutankhamen… “

Doctor Romany clutched a couple of the loops of rope over Doyle’s chest and lifted him half off the cot, bending down so that his face was only inches from Doyle’s. “You people know that?” he whispered. “Where it is?”

Doyle’s half dangling position was making the rope bite into his sides and shoulders so painfully that he felt near losing consciousness again, but he could see that he had somehow displeased this murderous old man. “What,” he choked, “where King Tut’s tomb is? Yes—put me down, I can’t breathe!” Romany opened his hand and Doyle slammed back onto the cot, his already dizzy head rebounding from the canvas. “Where is it, then?” asked Romany in a dangerously quiet voice. Doyle looked around wildly. The only other person in the tent was the old gypsy with the monkey, and he was staring at Doyle fearfully and muttering some word over and over again. “Well,” Doyle said uncertainly, “I’ll make a bargain with—”

A few moments later he realized that the reason his ear was ringing and his cheek felt both hot and numb was that the old man had given him a hard open-handed blow to the side of the head.

“Where is it, then?” Romany repeated gently.

“Jesus, man, take it easy!” Suddenly he was certain that his tormentor somehow already knew where it was, and was in effect calling his bluff. He saw Romany’s hand draw back again. “In the Valley of Kings!” he blurted, “under the huts of the workmen who built some other pharaoh’s tomb! Ramses or somebody.”

The old man scowled, and for several long seconds did nothing but puff on his cigar. Then, “You will tell me everything,” he said. He dragged a chair over and sat down, but at that moment the dog trotted in again and, turning around toward the tent opening, growled softly.

“Gorgios,” whispered the old gypsy. He peered through the tent flap. “Duvel save us, rya, it’s prastamengros!”

Doyle took a deep breath, feeling like someone about to jump from a dangerous height, and shouted, “He-e-e-elp!” with all the volume he could wring out of his lungs and throat.

Instantly the old gypsy whirled and launched a flying kick at the lantern, which shattered and sprayed burning oil across one wall of the tent; Romany had simultaneously clapped a hand over Doyle’s mouth and wrenched his head around so that he was staring at the dirt floor; and Doyle heard the old gypsy yell, “Help! Fire!” a moment before Doctor Romany’s fist landed just behind his left ear, propelling him once again into unconsciousness.

A couple of tents were burning, and it annoyed Doyle that he couldn’t get his eyes to focus; he wanted to postpone worrying about the wooly-tasting gag stuffed in his mouth and the ropes that pressed his wrists against his hips, and these fires seemed like they’d be a first-rate distraction if he could just manage to see them. He vaguely remembered being propped in a sitting position at the base of this tree by the alarming bald man, who had paused to take Doyle’s pulse and thumb open his eyelids to peer intently into each eye before hurrying back to where all the fire and shouting were. That was what had really awakened him—the pain of the man’s callused thumb on his burned eyelid.

Tilting his head back, he was startled to see two moons in the sky. His brain was working like a car that badly needs a tune-up, but he quickly deduced that this meant he was seeing double, and that therefore there was only one tent burning. With a physical effort he made the two moons coalesce into one. He brought his head back down, and saw one fire. A wave of cool air seemed to sluice through the hot murkiness of his mind, and he was suddenly aware of things—the grass and pebbles under him, the rough tree-trunk against his back and the painful constriction of the ropes.

With no warning, a surge of nausea brought Darrow’s elegant snacks up to the back of his throat, and he rigidly overrode the reflex and swallowed them back down. The night breeze was chilly on the sweat that had suddenly misted his face and hands, and he forced himself not to think about what would have happened if he’d thrown up while still unconscious with the gag in his mouth. He set to work on getting rid of it, tonguing it forward and then holding it between his teeth so that his tongue could move back and push again. At last he had forced it out of his mouth, under the leather loop that had held it in place, and he shook his head until it spun away onto the grass. He breathed deeply through his open mouth and tried to collect his thoughts. He couldn’t remember what had led up to him being dumped out here to watch the fire, but he did remember the old man’s cigar, and one good belt across the face. Almost without conscious decision he hiked himself away from the tree, flopped flat on the ground, and began rolling away. He was getting dizzy and losing his new-won clarity of thought, but he kept it up across the dark grass, pressing himself up with one heel, rocking himself over with a heave of his shoulder, and then letting the momentum of the roll help set him up for the next one. He had to stop twice to be violently sick, and he was profoundly thankful that he’d managed to get rid of the gag. After a while he’d completely forgotten why he was engaging in this peculiar form of locomotion, and he imagined he was a pencil rolling toward the edge of a desk, or a lit cigar rolling off the arm of a chair—but he didn’t want to think about cigars.

Suddenly he was rolling in midair, and he tensed convulsively a moment before plunging into icy rushing water. He bobbed up to the surface but couldn’t make his cold-shocked lungs take in any air, and then he was under again, his arms and legs straining uselessly against the ropes. Here’s where I die, he thought—but he kept kicking, and the next time his head was out of water he gasped a deep breath.

After he got his initial panic under control he discovered that it wasn’t too difficult to float along feet foremost and jackknife up every half minute or so to take a breath. This stream probably shallows out sometime before it reaches the Thames, he thought, and when it does I’ll somehow flop my way to shore. His heel caught against something, swinging him around to thump his shoulder against a rock, and he yelped in pain. The next rock caught him across the middle, and he forced his tortured stomach muscles to keep him curled around it while he got his breath back. The flowing water at his back was helping him stay on the rock, but he could feel himself slipping off—the nails of one hand scrabbled ineffectually against the wet stone—and all at once he had lost confidence in his ability to get to shore unaided. “He-e-elp!” he yelled, and the effort of yelling both loosened his grip on the rock and brought back the other time that night that he’d shouted the same thing. Duvel save us, rya, it’s prastamengros! he thought as he bobbed away downstream again, nearly all of his strength gone. He shouted for help twice more as he was carried along, spinning helplessly now, his head to the front as often as his feet, and when he’d despairingly realized that he could manage only one more yell, and porpoised himself well out of the water, lungs filled to make it a good loud one, something cold and sharp nipped through his coat and yanked him back against the current.

He expelled the breath in a wild ululating scream of surprise.

“Good Lord, man,” exclaimed a startled voice from nearby. “give o’er, you’re being rescued!”

“I think you broke his spine. Dad,” said a girl’s voice eagerly.

“Sit down, Sheila, I’ve done nothing of the sort. Over on the far side, there, we don’t want the boat to capsize when I drag this wretch aboard.”

Doyle was being pulled jerkily backward through the water, and looking over his shoulder he saw several people in a rowboat with bulging sides; an older man was drawing in the long, hooked pole that he’d snagged him with. Doyle gave his weight to the hook and let himself relax totally, leaning his head back in the water and staring at the moon while he gasped great, unhindered lungfuls of the cool night air.

“My God, Meg, will you look at this,” said the man’s voice as the pole clattered on the gunwales and two hands gripped Doyle’s shoulders, “your man’s tied up like a bloody top before the string’s yanked.” A woman muttered something Doyle didn’t hear. “Well,” the man went on, “we can’t just let him drift past with a wave and a nod, now, can we? Besides, I’m sure he appreciates the fact that we’re poor hard-working merchants, and even a Good Samaritan delay like this is costing us money. Stands to reason.” There was a locking click and then a knife blade was sawing and snapping through the ropes with businesslike ease. “That’s it, feet up now, may as well get them all. Good, that’s got it. Now—damn it, Sheila, didn’t I tell you to sit over there?”

“I wanted to see if he’d been tortured,” said the girl.

“Torture enough, I’d call it, to be bound hand and foot and pitched into the Chelsea Creek and then be fished out only to have to listen to an idiot girl. Sit down.”

The man lifted Doyle up by the collar, then reached out over his shoulder and, flipping the sopping coattails aside and grabbing the waistband of his pants, hauled him over the gunwale and onto the forward thwart. Doyle tried to cooperate, but was too weak to do more than brace his hands against the gunwale as it went by under him. He lay motionless on the thwart, still absorbed with the pleasures of relaxing and breathing.

“Thank you,” he managed to gasp. “I couldn’t have… kept afloat… sixty more seconds.”

“My husband saved your life,” said a potato-faced old woman sternly, leaning into his field of vision.

“Now, Meg, he’s as aware of that as you are, and I’m certain his gratitude will be handsomely expressed. Now let me get us moving again, we’re drifting in toward the bank,” He sat down on the center thwart and Doyle heard the oarlocks rattle as he took up the oars. “I’ll have to set to rowing with a passion to make up for the time we’ve lost, Meg,” he said, more loudly than necessary. “And we’ll still probably be too late to get our usual spot at Billingsgate.” He paused a moment, and then the boat shuddered, and surged forward, as he leaned into the work.

The girl Sheila leaned curiously over Doyle. “Gentlemanly nice, those clothes was, before they got spoiled,” she remarked.

Doyle nodded. “Put ‘em on for the first time tonight,” he said hoarsely.

“Who was it tied you up and threw you in the creek?”

Having regained his breath and some of his strength, Doyle sat up dizzily. “Gypsies,” he answered. “They, uh, robbed me, too. Didn’t leave me a cent—I mean a sixpence.”

“Oh God, Chris,” the old woman interrupted, “he says he hasn’t got any money. And he sounds like some kind of foreigner.”

The rhythmic clacking of the oars ceased. “Where do you hail from, sir?” Chris asked.

“Calif—uh, America.” The breeze on his soaked clothes had set him shivering, and he clamped his teeth to keep them from chattering.

“Well then, Meg, he’s got money for travelling, hasn’t he? Stands to reason. Where’s your hotel, sir?”

“Actually, I—damn, it’s cold, have you got anything I could wrap up in?—actually, I had just arrived. They took everything: all my money, my luggage, my, uh, passport… “

“In other words, he’s a shivering pauper,” stated Meg. She turned a righteous stare on Doyle. “And just how do you expect to repay our kindness in saving your life?”

Doyle was getting angry. “Why didn’t you tell me your rates before you pulled me out of the river? I could have told you then that I can’t afford them, and you could have gone on and looked for a more affluent person to rescue. I guess I never read the last part of that parable—the part where the Thrifty Samaritan serves the poor devil with an itemized bill.”

“Meg,” said Chris, “the poor man’s right, and we wouldn’t accept money from him even if he had any. I know he’ll be happy to work off the debt—for that’s what it is, you know, sir, in the eyes of man and God—by helping us set up at the market, and carrying the baskets when Sheila goes the rounds with her bunts.” He eyed Doyle’s coat and boots. “And now fetch him a blanket to change out of his wet clothes under. We can let him have a suit of Patrick’s old work things in exchange for his ruined clothes, which we’ll have to try to sell as rags.”

Doyle was tossed a blanket that reeked of onions, and from some sort of locker in the bow Meg dug out a heavy coat and a pair of pants, both of worn and much-mended dark corduroy, a once-white shirt, and a pair of old boots that looked like they might have graced old Chris’ feet when he was Doyle’s age. “Ah!” she exclaimed, producing last a dirty white scarf. “Patrick’s third-best kingsman.”

The chill made Doyle eager to change into these wretched but dry clothes, and when he’d kicked his wet things out from under the blanket Meg gathered them all and stowed them so carefully that he knew they hoped to get a good price for them.

He scrubbed his hair fairly dry with the blanket, then, feeling warm and restored, moved to the end of the thwart away from the puddle he’d been sitting in. He wished he had a pipe or cigar, or even a cigarette. The boat, he noticed, was filled with lidded wooden tubs and lumpy burlap sacks. “I smell onions and… ?”

“Pea soup,” said young Sheila. “The fishermen and fishmongers get so cold at Billingsgate that they’ll fork out tuppence for a plate of it. Thruppence in winter.”

“Onions… is the main enterprise,” panted Chris. “The soup’s just… a courtesy, like… we scarcely get for it… what it costs us to make.”

I’ll bet, thought Doyle sourly.

The moon was low on the horizon, looking big and gold and blurry, and its faery radiance on the trees and fields and creek ripples wasn’t dimmed when Meg leaned out to unhook the bow lantern, flint-scratch it alight, and replace it on its hook. The watercourse widened out, and Chris heeled the boat around to port.

“On the Thames now, we are,” he said quietly. A couple of other boats, tethered together, were visible out on the broad expanse of the river; they were ponderous, low-riding things, each with a huge cubical canvas-covered burden visible under the tangles of rigging.

“Hay boats,” said Sheila, crouched beside Doyle. “We saw one burning out there once, and men on fire were jumping from the top of the bale down into the water. That was a show—better than the penny gaffs, and free.”

“I hope the… performers enjoyed it,” said Doyle. He reflected that this little voyage would make an interesting story to tell over brandy at the Boodles or White’s club some day, once he’d made his fortune. For he wasn’t in any doubt about that. The first few days would certainly be difficult, but the advantage of all his twentieth century knowledge couldn’t help but turn the scales in his favor. Hell, he could get a job for a while on a newspaper, and maybe make some startling predictions about the outcome of the war, and current literary trends; and Ashbless was due to arrive in London in only about a week, and he could easily strike up a friendship with him; and in two years Byron would be returning to England, and he could get an introduction before Childe Harold made him a superstar. Why, he thought, and I could invent things—the light bulb, the internal combustion engine, latakia tobacco, flush toilets… no, better not do anything to change the course of recorded history—any such tampering might cancel the trip I got here by, or even the circumstances under which my mother and father met. I’ll have to be careful… but I guess I could give Farraday and Lister and Pasteur and the gang a few smug suggestions. Ho ho.

He remembered asking the portrait of William Ashbless whether the girls, scotch and cigars had been better in his day. Well, I’m by God going to find out, he told himself. He yawned and leaned back against a sack of onions. “Wake me up when we get to the city,” he said, and let the boat rock him to sleep.

CHAPTER 3

Though the actual fish market of Billingsgate was the big shed on the river side of Lower Thames Street, the carts of costermongers, heaped with turnips and cabbage and carrots and onions, were jammed wheel hub to wheel hub along the length of Thames Street from the Tower Stairs in the east, by the white medieval castle with flags flying from its four towers, west past the Grecian facade of the Customs House, past the eight crowded quays to Billingsgate Market, and past that to just west of London Bridge; and the clamorous, milling commerce filled the entire street, from the alleys in the north face of Thames Street to where the pavement dropped away to the river ten feet below, and the ranked oyster boats moored to the timbered wharf, with planks laid across their jostling gunwales, formed a narrow, bobbing lane the costermongers called Oyster Street.

Doyle, leaning against an outside corner of the fish barn, was certain he’d walked over every foot of the whole scene during the course of the morning. He looked down with distaste at his basket of scrawny onions, and wished he hadn’t tried to allay his considerable hunger by eating one of them. He patted his pocket to make sure he hadn’t lost the four pennies he’d earned. Everything you make above one shilling you can keep, Chris had told him the last time Doyle and Sheila had stopped by the boat; by now you must know the way of it, and you can do a few rounds all by yourself. And then he had handed Doyle a basket filled with what had to be the poorest-looking onions in the whole boatload, and sent him off in one direction and Sheila in another. The morbid girl hadn’t been the best company, but he missed her now. And a shilling is twelve pennies, he thought hopelessly; I’ll never even make that much with these wretched vegetables, much less any more, any bunt, as they call it, for myself.

He levered himself away from the wooden wall and plodded away in the direction of the Tower again, holding his basket in front of him. “Onions!” he called half-heartedly. “Who’ll buy these fine onions?” Sheila had taught him the litany.

A coster’s wagon, its bed empty, was rumbling past, and the evidently prosperous old fellow on the driver’s seat looked down at Doyle and laughed. “Onions you call those things, mate? I’d call ‘em rat turds.”

This brought merriment from the nearby members of the crowd, and a tough-faced boy ran up and nimbly kicked the bottom of Doyle’s basket so that it flew up out of his hands and the vegetables in question showered down around him. One thumped him on the nose, and the laughter doubled.

The coster on the cart pursed his lips, as though he hadn’t quite intended to provoke all this. “You’re a pitiful sod, ain’t you?” he said to Doyle, who was just standing there dazedly watching the impromptu soccer with onions game the street boys had started up. “Here—take twice what they were worth. Here, damn you, wake up!” He dropped two pennies into the hand Doyle automatically held out, then goaded his horse forward.

Doyle pocketed the coins and looked around. The crowd had lost interest in him. The onions—even the basket—were nowhere to be seen. No point going any further, he thought, and began trudging back toward the river in defeat.

“Ah, there’s one of the Dolorous Brethren!” piped a weird high voice like Mickey Mouse’s. “Just had his onions stomped into Pavement Soup, haven’t you now, sir?”

Startled and embarrassed, Doyle looked up and saw that he was being addressed by a gaudily painted puppet in a tall booth that had even gaudier pictures of dragons and little men all over the front of it. There was a scanty audience of ragged boys and a few old bums squatted in front of it, and they laughed when the puppet crooked its arm beckoningly at Doyle.

“Come over and let old Punch cheer you up,” it squeaked. Doyle shook his head, feeling himself blush, and kept walking, but the puppet added, “Maybe I could tell you how to earn some real money, eh?” and Doyle stopped.

Eyes of some kind of gleaming crystal made the puppet actually seem to be staring at him. It beckoned again. “What have you got to lose, yer lordship?” it asked in its bird-whistle voice. “You’ve already been laughed at—and Punch never tries for an effect somebody else just got.”

Doyle strode over to it, careful to keep a sceptical expression. Could the concealed puppeteer really be offering him employment? He couldn’t afford not to check. Standing a couple of yards in front of the booth, he crossed his arms. “What have you got in mind, Punch?” he asked loudly.

“Ah!” exclaimed the puppet, clapping its wooden hands, “you’re a foreigner! Excellent! But you can’t talk to Punch till after the show. Sit down, please, your lordship.” It waved at the paving stones. “Your box has been held for you and your companion.”

Doyle glanced around. “My companion?” he asked, feeling like the straight man in a comedy routine.

“Oh yes,” chirped the thing, “I think I recognize Lady Ruin. Hm?”

Doyle shrugged and sat down, pulling his cap lower over his eyes. What the hell, he thought, I’m not supposed to be back at the boat until eleven, and it can’t even be ten-thirty yet.

“Very well then!” exclaimed the puppet, straightening up and darting its lifelike gaze around the sparse and tattered assembly. “Now that his lordship has finally arrived, we will commence The Dominion of Secret Glamor, or Punch’s New Opera.”

A melancholy crank organ started up inside the narrow booth, wheezing and clattering as it tortuously rendered some tune that might have been a cheery dance step once, and Doyle wondered if there was more than one man in the booth, for now a second puppet had appeared on stage, and presumably a hand was still needed to crank the organ.

The newly arrived puppet was, of course, Judy, and Doyle watched, stupefied with hunger and exhaustion, as the two of them alternately exchanged endearments and cudgel-thumps.

He wondered why this had been called Punch’s New Opera, for it seemed to be the same old pointlessly savage story line—here was Punch left to take care of the crying baby, singing to it to quiet it down, and finally just slamming its head against the wall and pitching it out the set’s little window. He next confessed the deed to Judy, and then killed her when she hit him for it. Doyle yawned profoundly, and hoped the show wouldn’t be too long. The sun had finally burned its way through the gray overcast, and was beginning to bake old fish smells out of his shiny corduroy coat.

The next puppet to appear was Joey the Clown, though in this version his name was something Doyle didn’t catch that sounded like “Horrible,” and he was on stilts. Topical satire, evidently, thought Doyle—for he’d seen a clown on stilts several times during the course of the morning, here and there around the market, and this puppet was a duplicate of him, right down to the somewhat nightmarish patterns of face paint. The clown, with a sort of mocking sternness, was asking Punch what he intended to do about the murder of his poor wife and child.

“Why, I expect I’ll go to the constable and have myself locked up,” said Punch sadly. “A murdering blackguard like myself ought to be hanged.”

What’s this, thought Doyle, a Punch with morals? That’s an innovation.

“And who says so?” inquired the clown, somehow freeing one arm from a stilt to point at Punch. “Who says you ought to be hanged? The police? A crusher-lover, are you?”

Punch shook his head.

“The magistrates? Are they anything more than a bunch of fat old fools that want to stop you having your fun?”

On reflection Punch had to admit they were not.

“Is it God, then? Some bearded giant that lives in the clouds? Have you ever seen Him, or heard Him say you mustn’t do as you please?”

“Well—no.”

“Then come with me.”

The two puppets began walking in place, and after a few moments a beadle puppet appeared, and announced that he had a warrant “to take you up, Mr. Punch.” Punch looked abashed, but the clown pulled a tiny gleaming knife out of a sleeve and stuck it into the beadle’s eye. The boys sitting around Doyle cheered as the beadle fell.

Punch danced a hornpipe, clearly pleased. “Mr. Horrabin,” he said to the clown, “can you get us some dinner?”

The show went back to the standard story line and Punch and the clown stole a string of sausages and a frying pan from a public house landlord, though Doyle didn’t remember the landlord being actually killed.

Punch, feeling frolicsome, was doing a whirling dance with the string of sausages when a headless puppet entered, also dancing, the stump of its neck bobbing up and down to the beat of the accelerated organ music. Punch was terrified by this apparition until Horrabin explained that it was only his pal Scaramouche, “and isn’t it fun to be pals with things everybody else is afraid of?” Punch pondered this, knob chin on his fist, then laughed, nodded, and resumed his dance. Even the Horrabin puppet was dancing on its stilts, and Doyle was awed to think of the contortions the puppeteer must have been going through to keep three puppets dancing and the music going too.

Now a fourth puppet whirled on stage—it was a woman, with the sort of exaggeratedly voluptuous figure that little boys chalk on walls, but her white face, dark eyes and long white veils made it clear that she was meant to be a ghost. “Judy, my sweet creature!” exclaimed Punch, still dancing, “you’re ever so much more beautiful now!”

Punch jigged to the front of the stage, and all at once the music stopped and a curtain dropped behind him, isolating him from the others. He did a few more hesitant steps and then halted, for a new puppet had appeared—a somber figure in a black hood, and it was pushing along a gallows with a little noose swinging from it. ,

“Jack Ketch!” said Punch.

“Aye, Jack Ketch,” said the newcomer, “or Mr. Graball, or the Grimy Reaper. It don’t make no difference what you call me, Punch. I’ve come to execute you, by order of the Law.”

Horrabin’s head popped out for a moment from the wings. “See if you can kill him,” he said, and withdrew.

Punch clapped his hands. Then with a lot of double talk he got Jack Ketch to put the noose around his own neck, just to show how it’s done, and Punch pulled the rope, hoisting the executioner puppet into the air, its legs somehow kicking realistically. Punch laughed and turned to the audience with spread, welcoming arms. “Hooray!” he cried in his cartoon character voice. “Now Death is dead, and we can all do as we please!”

The curtain behind him snapped back up and the music came on with a crash, very fast and wild now, and the puppets were all dancing around the gallows, Punch hand in hand with Judy’s ghost. A couple of the boys and one of the old men got up from the pavement and walked away, the old man shaking his head in disgust.

Punch and the Judy ghost danced up to the front, so that when the curtain dropped again and the music ceased they were alone at the front of the stage. “That, ladies and gentlemen,” piped Punch, “was the new and corrected Punch’s Opera.” Punch slowly looked round his audience—thinned down to only two old bums, three boys and Doyle. Then he did a quick jig and pinched the ghost puppet obscenely. “Horrabin did your humble servant a good turn or two, lads,” he said. “And any of you that’s interested can come talk to me backstage.” He gave Doyle a stare that was surprisingly intense for glass eyes, and then the outer curtains swept in from the sides. The show was over.

One old man and one boy walked around with Doyle to the back of the narrow booth, and the Punch puppet, looking very small away from the scaled down stage, waved at them from over the top of the curtain that served as a stage door.

“My admirers!” the puppet squeaked. “One at a time—Lord Foreigner last.”

Feeling like a fool, Doyle stood behind the evidently imbecilic boy while the old man shuffled into the booth. It’s as though we’re waiting to get into a confessional, he thought glumly. The image was reinforced by the murmured questions and answers he could hear from inside.

Doyle soon noticed that certain members of the milling market crowd were looking at him in peculiar ways; a well-dressed man leading a child by the hand glanced at him with a mixture of pity and contempt, one stout old fellow stared with obvious envy, and a policeman—to Doyle’s alarm—gave him a squinting, tight-lipped stare as though half resolved to arrest him on the spot. Doyle stared down at the sprung, bag-like shoes Chris and Meg had let him have in exchange for his elegant boots. Whatever it is, he thought, if there’s money in it and it’s not too illegal, I’ll take it—for a while, anyway, just till I get on my feet in this damned century.

The old man pushed the curtain aside and walked away without a glance at the boy or Doyle, and Doyle, watching him recede into the crowd, was unable to guess whether the old fellow was pleased or disappointed. The boy had stepped inside, and could soon be heard laughing delightedly. He was outside again in a moment, skipping away with a bright new shilling in his hand—and, Doyle noticed, a chalked cross in a, circle, which definitely hadn’t been there before, on the back of his oversized coat.

He looked back at the booth and met the cunningly worked gaze of the voluptuous Judy puppet peering around the curtain at him. “Come play in my pint pot,” she whispered, and winked.

The kid got a shilling, he reminded himself as he stepped forward—and I’ll check my coat afterward for chalk marks.

The puppet disappeared inside a moment before Doyle swept the curtain aside and edged in. The interior was dark, but he could see a little stool, and he sank onto it.

He could just make out the silhouette, a foot or two away, of a head in a tall, pointed hat and an upper torso in a coat with grotesquely padded shoulders; the form moved, leaning forward, and he knew it was his host. “And now the ruined foreigner,” came a fluty voice, “trying to look at ease in an alien land. Where do you come from?”

“Uh… America. And I am broke—penniless. So if you do have some kind of job offer, I’ll be—gaah!”

The sliding panel of a dark lantern had been clanked open, and the silhouette was abruptly revealed to be a clown, its face hideously pied with red and green and white paint, its inflamed eyes wide open and crossed, and a startlingly long tongue protruding from between puffed-out cheeks. It was the same clown he’d seen stumping about the market on stilts earlier, the model of the Horrabin puppet.

The tongue withdrew and the face relaxed, but even in repose the face paint made it impossible to guess its expression, or even much of its form. The clown was perched cross-legged on a stool a little higher than Doyle’s. “I perceive you’ve nearly used up your woodpile,” the clown said, “and are about to start shoving the chairs and curtains, even the books, into the fireplace. Lucky I came across you today—tomorrow or the day after I don’t think there’d have been much left of you.”

Doyle closed his eyes and let his heartbeat slow down. He was alarmed to note that even this scanty sympathy made him feel ready to burst into tears. He sighed deeply and then opened his eyes. “If you have an offer,” he said quietly, “state it.”

The clown grinned, revealing a set of yellowed teeth that pointed every which way, like tombstones in an old and shifting graveyard. “Haven’t quite ripped up the floorboards yet,” he noted approvingly. “Good. You have, milord, a sensitive and intelligent face; it’s clear that you’ve been well brought up and that garbage clothes like these aren’t what you’re accustomed to. Have you ever been interested in the dramatic arts?”

“Well… no, not particularly. I was in a play or two in school.”

“Do you think you could learn a part, gauge an audience and alter your role to suit their tastes, become whatever sort of character they’d be most sympathetic toward?”

Doyle was mystified, but timidly hopeful. “I suppose so. If I could just get some food and a bed first. I know for a fact that I don’t get stage fright, because—”

“The question,” interrupted the clown, “is whether you’re susceptible to street fright. I’m not talking about caperings in a playhouse.”

“Oh? What, then, street performing? Well—”

“Yes,” said the clown patiently, “the subtlest of street performances—begging. We’ll write you a role, and then depending on what… sacrifices you’re willing to make, you can earn up to a pound a day.”

The realization that what he’d thought was flattery was just a clinical evaluation of his ability to evoke pity struck Doyle like a slap across the face. “Begging?” Anger made him dizzy. “Well, thank you,” he said tightly, getting to his feet, “but I’ve got honest employment, selling onions.”

“Yes, I observed your aptitude for the job. On your way, then—but when you change your mind, ask anyone in the East End where Horrabin’s Punch show is playing.”

“I won’t change my mind,” said Doyle, leaving the booth. He walked away, and didn’t look back until he had reached the edge of the long wharf paralleling the street. Horrabin, once again on stilts, was striding away, pulling behind him a wagon that was apparently the booth itself, collapsed and folded up. He shuddered, and turned away to his left, toward the quays, looking for Chris and Meg’s rowboat.

It was gone. There were fewer boats now along the quays that projected out into the river, and the water was dotted with boats sailing away east and west—what’s the problem, Doyle thought worriedly, the market can’t be closing, it’s only mid-morning—and he could see a rowboat several hundred yards out that might have been the one with Chris and Meg and Sheila in it.

“Hey!” he tried to yell, and was instantly embarrassed at how weak his voice was—even on the next quay over they couldn’t have heard him. “All right, what’s the difficulty?” Doyle turned around and saw the policeman who’d given him the unfriendly eye a few minutes before. “What’s the time, please, sir?” he asked the policeman, trying to swallow his vowels the way everyone else was doing.

The officer yanked a watch on a chain out of his waistcoat pocket, cocked an eyebrow at it and put it away. “Coming hard on eleven. Why?”

“Why are they all leaving?” Doyle waved a hand at the boats scattered across the face of the river.

“It’s nearly eleven o’clock, isn’t it,” the officer answered, speaking very clearly as though he thought Doyle might be drunk. “And it’s Sunday, you’ll be interested to learn.”

“The market closes at eleven on Sundays, is what you’re saying?”

“You’ve stated the case. Where are you from? That’s no Surrey or Sussex accent.”

Doyle sighed. “I’m from America—Virginia. And though I”—he dragged a hand across his forehead—”though I will be doing fine as soon as a friend of mine arrives in the city, I’m destitute now. Where is there a charitable institution that might give me food and a bed until I can get my… affairs in order?”

The policeman frowned. “There’s a workhouse by the slaughterhouses in Whitechapel Street; they’ll give you food and lodging for helping tan hides and drag out the offal bins.”

“A workhouse, you say.” Doyle remembered the way Dickens was to portray the places. “Thanks.” He started to slouch away.

“Just a moment,” called the policeman. “If you’ve got any money on your person, let me see it.”

Doyle dug into his pocket for the six pennies and held them out on his palm.

“Very well, I can’t take you up for vagrancy now. But perhaps I’ll see you about this evening.” He touched his helmet. “Good day.”

Returning to Thames Street, Doyle expended half his fortune on a plate of vegetable soup and a trowelful of mashed potatoes. It tasted wonderful, but left him at least as hungry as before, so he spent his last three cents on another order of the same. The vendor even let him have a cup of cold water to wash it down.

Policemen were walking up and down the street, calling, “Close ‘em up now, day of rest, eleven o’clock it is, close ‘em up,” and Doyle, a genuine vagrant now, was careful to stay out of their way.

A man of about his own age was striding along with a bag of fish in one arm and a pretty girl on the other, and Doyle, telling himself just this once, forced himself to step into the man’s path.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said hastily. “I find myself in a distressing—”

“Get to the point, fellow,” interrupted the man impatiently. “You’re a beggar?”

“No. But I was robbed last night, and I haven’t a penny, and—I’m an American, and all my luggage and papers are gone, and… I’d like to solicit employment or borrow some money.”

The girl looked sympathetic. “Give the poor man something, Charles,” she said. “Since we’re not going to church.”

“What ship did you arrive on?” Charles asked sceptically. “That’s no American accent I ever heard.”

“The, uh. Enterprise,” Doyle answered. In his confused fumbling for a name he’d almost said Starship Enterprise.

“You see, my dear, he’s a fraud,” said Charles proudly. “There may be an Enterprise, but no such ship has landed here lately. There could conceivably be a stray Yankee still about from the Blaylock last week, but then,” he said, turning cheerfully to Doyle, “you didn’t say the Blaylock, did you? You shouldn’t try a line like that on a man in the shipping trade.” Charles looked around the thinning crowd. “Plenty of constables about. I’ve half a mind to turn you in.”

“Oh, let him be,” sighed the girl. “We’re late anyway, and he’s clearly in some sort of distressed circumstances.”

Doyle nodded gratefully to her and hurried away. The next person he approached was an old man, and he was careful to say that he’d arrived on the Blaylock. The old man gave him a shilling, and added an admonition that Doyle should be similarly generous to other beggars if he ever found himself with money. Doyle assured him that he would.

A few moments later, when Doyle was leaning against the brick wall of a public house, debating whether he dared drown his embarrassment and apprehension by spending some of his new-won wealth on a glass of beer, he was startled to feel a tug at his pant leg; and he nearly cried out when he looked down and saw a ferociously bearded man, legless and sitting on a little cart, staring up at him.

“What dodge are you working and who are you with?” the man demanded in an operatically deep voice.

Doyle tried to move away, but the man tightened his clutch on the corduroy pants and the cart rolled after Doyle for a pace or two like a little trailer. When Doyle halted—for people were staring—the man repeated his sentence.

“I’m not working any dodge and I’m not with anybody,” Doyle whispered furiously, “and if you don’t let go of me I’ll run off the wharf into the river!”

The bearded man laughed. “Go ahead, I’ll wager I can swim farther than you can.” Seeing the breadth of shoulder under the man’s black coat, Doyle despairingly guessed that was true. “Now I saw you hit up those two, and you got something from the second one. You might be a new recruit of Captain Jack’s, or you might be one of Horrabin’s crew, or you might be freelance. Which is it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about—Get away from me or I’ll shout for a constable.” Once again Doyle felt ready to burst into tears, for he could imagine this creature never letting go, but rolling angrily along behind him for the rest of his life. “I’m not with anyone!”

“That’s what I thought.” The legless man nodded. “You’re apparently new to the city, so I’ll just give you some advice—freelance beggars can take their chances east or north of here, but Billingsgate and Thames Street and Cheapside are staked out for either Copenhagen Jack’s lads or the vermin Horrabin runs. You’ll find the same sort of arrangements west of St. Paul’s. Now you’ve been warned off by Skate Benjamin, and if you’re seen freelancing in the East End’s main streets again you’ll be… well, frankly, pal,” Skate said, not unkindly, “you’ll be rendered unfit for any employment save begging. So go on, I saw silver and I should take it from you—and if you say I couldn’t I’ll be forced to prove I could—but you do look like you need it. Go!”

Doyle hurried away west, toward the Strand, praying that newspaper offices didn’t close down as early as Billingsgate market, and that one of them might have a position needing filling, and that he’d be able to shake his dizzy feverishness well enough to convince an editor that he was literate and educated. He rubbed his jaw—he’d shaved less than twenty-four hours ago, so that was no problem, but a comb would have been handy.

Oh, never mind looks, he told himself, a little deliriously—I’ll win a position by sheer eloquence and force of personality. He squared his shoulders and put a bit of spring into his step.

CHAPTER 4

It was a subterranean grotto formed by the collapse, God knew how long ago, of roughly twelve levels of sewers, the debris of which had all long since been carried away by the scavengers and floods of other seasons. It formed a huge hall, roofed by the massive beams that supported the paving stones of Bainbridge Street—for the collapse hadn’t extended quite all the way up to the surface—and floored with stones laid by the Romans in the days when Londinium was a military outpost in a hostile Celtic wilderness. Hammocks on long ropes were suspended at various heights across the cathedral dimness, and ragged men were already crawling like spiders out along the lines to pouch themselves comfortably in the swinging sacks. Lights were beginning to be lit, smoky red grease lamps hung from the timbers exposed in cross section at the many open sewer-mouths in the walls. A rill of water ran steadily from one of the higher mouths, losing its solidity as it arched down through the dim air to splash in a black pool off to the side.

A long table was set up on the stone floor, and a misshapen white-haired dwarf was standing on tiptoe to set fine porcelain and silver on the linen cloth; he snarled softly whenever a bit of crumbled shoe-leather or a few spilled drops from a pocket flask fell onto the table from the beggar lords overhead. Chairs were set along the sides of the table, and a large highchair, as if for some huge infant, stood at the foot, but there was no chair at the head of the table—instead there was a sort of harness, at which the dwarf kept darting fearful glances, hung on a long rope from the very top of the vast chamber to swing in the sewer breeze only six feet above the floor. The thief lords were filing in now, their foppishly elegant clothes striking a macabre note in this setting, and taking their places at the table.

One cuffed the dwarf out of his way. “Take it from one who can see the top of the table,” he said absently, “you’ve finished setting it. Go get the food.”

“And the wine, Dungy!” called another of the lords to the dwarf. “Quick, quick!”

The dwarf hurried away down a tunnel, clearly glad of an excuse to leave the hall even for a few minutes. The lords produced clay pipes and tinderboxes, and soon a haze of opium and tobacco fumes was whirling up, to the delight of the beggar lords, who set their hammocks swinging back and forth across the abyss to catch as much of the smoke as possible.

The space around the table was beginning to fill up too, with shabbily clad men and boys who called greetings to each other. Beyond them, and studiously ignored by them, were groups of men far gone in poverty and psychic and physical devastation. They squatted on the flagstones in the dark corners, each one alone despite their proximity, muttering and gesturing from habit rather than from any desire to communicate.

The dwarf reappeared, hunching lamely along under the weight of a fishnet sack full of bottles. He set the burden down on the floor and began twisting a corkscrew into their necks and popping out the corks. A spaced knocking, as of wood on stone, became audible from one of the larger tunnels, and he worked faster as the sound echoed louder and closer.

“What’s the hurry. Dungy?” asked one of the thief lords, watching the dwarf’s haste. “Shy of meeting the host?”

“‘Course not, sir,” gasped old Dungy, sweating as he drew the last cork, “just wants to do me work prompt-like.”

The knocking sound, having become very loud, now ceased, and two white-painted hands appeared gripping the upper stones of the tunnel mouth’s arch, followed a moment later by a painted head that bobbed just under the keystone, twelve feet above the ancient pavement. Horrabin grinned, and even the arrogant thief lords looked away uneasily. “Tardy again, Dungy?” piped the clown merrily. “All the setting-up’s supposed to be done by now.”

“Y-yes, sir,” said old Dungy, nearly dropping a bottle. “It just—just keeps getting harder to get the table set, sir. Me old bones—”

“—Will be fed to the street dogs one of these days,” finished Horrabin, skillfully poling his way into the hall on his stilts. His conical hat and colorful coat with high, pointed shoulders lent an air of carnival to the scene. “My somewhat younger bones aren’t in the best of shape either, it might interest you to know.” He halted, swaying, in front of the dangling harness. “Get my stilts,” he commanded.

Dungy hurried over and held the stilts while Horrabin poked his arms through the harness straps and then jackknifed his legs into the two bottom loops. The dwarf carried the stilts to the nearest wall and leaned them against the bricks, leaving the clown swinging free a dozen feet off the ground.

“Ah, that’s better,” sighed Horrabin. “I think malign vibrations begin to travel up the poles after a few hours. Worse in wet weather, of course. Price of success.” He yawned, opening a great red hole in the colorful surface of his face. “Whew! Now then! To make it up to the assembled lords for being late with their dinner, perhaps you’d care to sing us a little song.”

The dwarf winced. “Please sir—the dress and wig is down in me cell. It’d take—”

“Never mind the props tonight,” said the clown expansively. “We won’t stand on ceremony. Tonight you can sing it without the costume.” He looked up toward the distant ceiling. “Music!”

The dangling beggar lords pulled a variety of instruments, ranging from kazoos and Jew’s-harps to, in a couple of cases, violins, out of cloth bags tied to their hammocks, and set up a din that was, if not musical, at least rhythmic. Echoes provided a counterpoint, and the ragged men and boys crouched on the floor around the table commenced keeping time with hand-claps.

“Put an end to this idiocy,” spoke a new voice, pitched so deeply that it cut through the cacophony. The music and clapping faltered to a stop as the assembly became aware of the newcomer—a very tall, bald-headed man wrapped in a cloak. He stepped into the hall with a weirdly bouncing gait, as though he were walking across a trampoline instead of the solid stone floor.

“Ah!” exclaimed Horrabin, his voice, at least, expressing delight—his facial expression, as always, was impossible to read under all the paint—”Our wandering chief! Well, this is one meeting in which your honorary chair won’t stand empty!”

The newcomer nodded, whirled the cloak off his shoulders and tossed it to Dungy—who gratefully scuttled out of the room with it—and stepped up to the highchair at the foot of the table. Now that the cloak was gone everyone could see the spring-soled shoes that he bobbed up and down on.

“My various lords and commoners,” said Horrabin in a ringmaster’s voice, “may I present our overlord, the Gypsy King, Doctor Romany!” There were a few half-hearted cheers and whistles. “What business induces you to grace our table, Your Majesty?”

Romany didn’t reply until he had climbed up into the highchair and, with a sigh of relief, removed his spring-shoes. “Several matters have brought me to your throne-sewer, Horrabin,” he said. “For one thing, I’ve personally brought this month’s coin shipment—gold sovereigns in fifty-pound sacks in the corridor back there, probably still hot from the molds.” This news brought on a racket of more sincere cheering from the congregation. “And some new developments in the matter of manhunting.” He accepted a glass of red wine from one of the thief lords. “Somehow you still haven’t found for me the man you call Dog-Face Joe.”

“A goddamn werewolf is a dangerous sort of man to find, mate,” came a call, and there were murmurs of assent.

“He’s not a werewolf,” said Doctor Romany without turning around, “but I’ll agree he is very dangerous. That’s why I’ve made the reward so big, and advised you all to bring him to me dead rather than alive. In any case, the reward has increased now to ten thousand pounds cash and passage on one of my merchant ships to any spot on the globe. There is now, though, another man I want you to find for me—and this one must be captured alive and undamaged. The reward for bringing me this man will be twenty thousand pounds, and a wife of any description you care for, guaranteed to be as affectionate as you please, and of course passage to anywhere you like.” The audience shifted and muttered among themselves, and even one or two of the ruined derelicts, who’d only shambled down the ramps and stairs for the traditional concluding food fight, seemed to be showing interest. “I don’t know this man’s name,” Doctor Romany went on, “but he’s about thirty-five years old, with dark hair beginning to go bald, he’s tending to fat around his middle, pale, and he speaks with some sort of colonial accent. I lost him last night in a field near Kensington, by the Chelsea Creek. He was tightly bound, but apparently—” Romany paused, for Horrabin had begun swinging back and forth in excitement. “Yes, Horrabin?”

“Was he dressed as a costermonger?” the clown asked.

“Not when last seen, but if he escaped by way of the creek, as I suspect he did, he’d certainly have wanted a change of clothes. You’ve seen him? Where, man, when?”

“I saw a man just like what you’ve described, but in a coster’s old corduroy, trying to peddle onions in Billingsgate this morning, just before the market closed. He sat for my Punch show, and I offered him a begging job, but he got all insulted and walked away. He said he was American. I did tell him that when he changed his mind—and you never saw a man less able to fend for himself—to ask where Horrabin’s Punch show is playing, and to talk to me again.”

“I think that is probably him,” said Doctor Romany with controlled excitement. “Thank Anubis! I was afraid he might have drowned in the creek. Billingsgate, you say—very well, I want your people to scour the entire area from St. Paul’s and Blackfriar’s Bridge east to the rookery above London Dock, and from the river north to Christ’s Hospital, London Wall and Long Alley. The man who brings him to me alive will live the rest of his life in sunny luxury;” Romany did turn around now, and swept the entire company with his cold gaze, “but if anyone should kill him, his lot will be”—he seemed to search for an appropriate image—”such that he’d bitterly envy old Dungy.”

From the crowd came mutters to the effect that there were worse things than setting tables and doing idiot dances for a living, but the men around the table, several of whom had sat there when Dungy was their chief, frowned doubtfully, as though wondering whether capturing this man would be worth the risk.

“Our international affairs,” Romany went on, “are proceeding smoothly, and there should be a couple of fairly dramatic results in about a month if all continues going well.” He allowed himself a brief smile. “If I didn’t know it would be discounted as wild hyperbole, I’d observe that this at present underground parliament may, before winter sets in, be the Parliament that governs this island.”

Suddenly a burst of lunatic laughter erupted out of one flock of the shadow-huddling derelicts, and a thing that was evidently a very old man hopped with insect-like nimbleness into the light. His face had long ago suffered some tremendous injury, so that one eye, his nose and half of his jaw were gone, and his tattered clothes were so baggy and flapping that there hardly seemed to be any body inside them. “Not much left,” he gasped, trying to control the laughter that pummelled him, “not much left of me, hee hee, but enough to tell you, you—smug fool!—what your high-perbolee is worth, Murph!” A loud belch nearly knocked him down, and set the crowd laughing.

Doctor Romany stared angrily at this ruinous intruder. “Can’t you put this wretch out of his misery, Horrabin?” he asked quietly.

“You can’t because you didn’t!” cackled the ancient man.

“With your permission, sir,” said Horrabin, “I’ll just have him carried out. He’s been around forever, and the Surrey-side beggars call him their Luck. He rarely speaks, and when he does there’s no more meaning to it than a parrot’s chatter.”

“Well, do it then,” said Romany irritably.

Horrabin nodded, and one of the men who’d been laughing strode over to the Luck of Surrey-side and picked him up, and was visibly startled at how light the old man was.

As he was being briskly carried away, the old man turned and winked his one eye at Doctor Romany. “Look for me later under different circumstances,” he stage-whispered, and then was again seized with the crazy laughter, which diminished into weird echoes as his bearer hurried down one of the tunnels.

“Interesting sort of dinner guest you cater to,” said Doctor Romany, still angry, as he pulled his spring-shoes back on.

The clown shrugged—a weird effect with his already toweringly padded shoulders. “Nobody is ever turned away from Horrabin’s hall,” he said. “Some are never permitted to leave, or they leave by the river, but everybody’s welcome. You’re leaving already, before dinner?”

“Yes, and by the stairs, if it’s all right with you. I’ve got a lot of things to do—I’ve got to contact the police and offer them a big reward for this man, too. And I’ve never cared for … the kind of pork you serve.” The expression on the clown’s face could have been a warning look; Romany smiled, then climbed back down to the floor, wincing a little when his odd shoes came in contact with the flagstones. Dungy hurried up with his cloak, which Romany unfolded and put on. Just before striding away down one of the tunnels, he turned to the congregation and let his gaze roll across the uncharacteristically quiet company—he even took in the airborne beggar lords—and every eye was on him. “Find me that American,” he said quietly. “Forget about Dog-Face Joe for now—fetch me the American, alive.”

The low sun was silhouetting the dome of St. Paul’s behind Doyle as he trudged back down Thames Street toward Billingsgate. The pint of beer he’d bought ten minutes before had rid him of most of the bad taste in his mouth and some of his appalling embarrassment.

Though not as crowded as it had been this morning, the street was still amply populated—children were kicking a ball around, an occasional carriage rattled past, and pedestrians had to step around a wagon from which workmen were unloading barrels. Doyle was watching the passersby.

After a few minutes he saw a man walking toward him, whistling, and before he went past Doyle asked him, a little wearily, for this would be the fourth person he’d approached, “Excuse me, sir, but could you tell me where Horrabin’s Punch show is playing tonight?”

The man looked Doyle up and down and shook his head wonderingly. “That bad, is it? Well, mate, I’ve never seen it play at night, but any beggar ought to be able to take you to him. ‘Course there’s never but a couple of beggars around on Sunday evenings, but I believe I saw one or two down by Billingsgate.”

“Thanks.”

The vermin Horrabin runs, he thought as he walked on, a little faster now. On the other hand, up to a pound a day if you’re willing to make some sacrifices. What kind of sacrifices, I wonder? He thought about his interview with the editor of the Morning Post, and then forced himself not to.

An old man was sitting by a wall at the corner of St.-Mary-at-Hill, and as Doyle drew up to him he saw the placard hung on his chest: ONCE A DILIGENT TAILOR, it read, I AM NOW DISQUALIFIED FOR THAT TRADE BY BLINDNESS, AND I MUST SELL PEPPERMINTS TO SUPPORT MY WIFE AND AILING CHILD. CHRISTIAN, BE GENEROUS. He held a tray of dirty-looking lozenges, and when Doyle paused over him the old man pushed the tray forward, so that if Doyle had not stopped he couldn’t have helped spilling them.

The old man looked a little disappointed that Doyle hadn’t, and glancing around Doyle guessed why; there were a number of well dressed people out strolling in the early evening, and they’d doubtless have been moved by pity to see the old man’s candies spilled on the pavement. “Would ye purchase some fine minties from a poor blind man?” he whined, rolling his eyes imploringly at the sky.

“No, thank you,” said Doyle. “I need to find Horrabin. Horrabin,” he repeated when the beggar cocked his head with a look of earnest inquiry. “I think he’s some kind of beggar master.”

“I’ve got minties to sell, sir,” the beggar pointed out. “I couldn’t turn my attention from them to trying to remember folks without a penny to pay for my time.”

Doyle pressed his lips together, but dropped a penny into the old man’s hand. Night was coming on, and he desperately needed a place to sleep.

“Horrabin?” said the beggar more quietly. “Aye, I know him. And this being a Sunday evening, he’ll be in parliament.”

“Parliament? What do you mean?”

“I could take you there and show you, sir, but it’d mean losing at least a shilling’s worth of minties sales.”

“A shilling?” Doyle said despairingly. “All I’ve got is ten pennies!”

The beggar’s hand darted out, palm up. “You can owe me the tuppence, sir.”

Doyle hesitated. “Will he be able to give me food and a bed?”

“Oh, aye, no one is ever turned away from Horrabin’s hall.”

The trembling palm was still extended, and Doyle sighed, dug in his pocket and carefully laid his sixpence and four pennies in the old man’s hand. “Uh… lead the way.”

The old man swept the coins and peppermints into a pocket and stuffed the tray under his coat, then picked up a stick from the pavement behind him and poled himself up. “Come on, then,” he said, and strode away briskly west, the way Doyle had just come, swinging his stick in an almost perfunctory way in front of him. Doyle had to take long steps to keep up.

Dizzy with hunger, for he’d lost his soup and mashed potatoes lunch at the Morning Post office, Doyle was blinking against the sunset glare and concentrating on keeping up with the beggar, and so despite being vaguely aware of a loud rattling nearby he didn’t notice the person pacing him until a well-remembered hand clutched his pant leg. He was off balance, and went down painfully onto his hands and knees on the cobblestones.

He turned his head angrily and found himself looking up into the bearded face of Skate Benjamin. The legless man’s cart had come to a halt by colliding hard with Doyle’s ankle. “Damn it,” Doyle gasped, “let go. I’m not begging and I need to follow that—”

“Not with Horrabin, man,” said Skate, an earnest urgency in his low whisper. “You’re not bad enough to thrive with that crew. Come with—”

The old beggar had turned around and was hastening back, staring so directly at Skate that Doyle belatedly realized that his blindness was a fraud. “What are you interferin’ for, Benjamin?” the old man hissed. “Captain Jack needs to go recruiting these days?”

“Give it over, Bugs,” said Skate. “He ain’t your sort. But here’s your finder’s fee anyway, courtesy of Copenhagen Jack.” He fished two sixpences out of his waistcoat pocket and tossed them. Bugs snatched them both out of the air with one hand.

“Very well,” he said, dumping them in with his minties. “On a basis like that you can interfere any time.” He cackled and set off back toward Billingsgate, beginning to tap his cane ahead of him when he was a hundred feet away. Doyle stood up, gingerly trying his weight on his ankle.

“Before he disappears,” Doyle said, “you’d better tell me whether this Copenhagen Jack of yours can give me food and abed.”

“Yes, and a more wholesome sort of each than you’d have got from Horrabin. God, you are a helpless one, aren’t you? This way, come along.”

The dining room of the beggars’ house in Pye Street was longer than it was wide, with eight big windows, each a checkerboard of squares of warped glass leaded together, set at intervals in the long street-side wall. A street lamp out front threw a few trickles of light that were caught in the whirlpool patterns of the little panes, but the room’s illumination came from bright oil lamps dangling on chains from the ceiling, and the two candles on each of the eight long tables. The narrow east end of the hall was raised four feet above the floor level and accessible by four steps in the middle of its width; a railing ran to the wall from either side of the steps, giving the room the look of a ship’s deck, with the raised area as the forecastle.

The beggars who were assembled at the long wooden tables presented a parody of contemporary dress: there were the formal frockcoats and white gloves, mended but impeccably clean, of the Decayed Gentlemen, the beggars who evoked pity by claiming, sometimes truthfully, to be wellborn aristocrats brought to ruin by financial reverses or alcohol; the blue shirt and trousers, rope belt and black tarpaulin hat, bearing the name of some vessel in faded gold letters, of the Shipwrecked Mariners, who even here spiced their speech with nautical terms learned from dance shows and penny ballads; and there were the turbans and earrings and sandals of Distressed Hindoos; and blackened faces of miners supposedly disabled in subterranean explosions; and of course the anonymous tattered rags of the general practitioner beggars. Doyle noticed as he took a place at the end of one of the benches that there were even several dressed like himself as costermongers.

The most impressive figure of all, though, was the tall man with sandy hair and moustache who had been lounging in a high-backed chair on the raised deck, and now stood up and leaned on the railing, looking out across the company. He was extravagantly—not quite ludicrously—attired in a green satin frockcoat, with clusters of airy lace bursting out at wrist and throat, tight white satin knee breeches and white silk stockings, and little shoes that, if shorn of their gold buckles, would have looked like ballet pumps. The babble of conversation had ceased when he got to his feet.

“That’s Copenhagen Jack himself,” proudly whispered Skate, who had positioned his cart on the floor beside Doyle, “captain of the Pye Street beggars.”

Doyle nodded absently, his attention suddenly caught by the roasting turkey smell on the warm air.

“Good evening, friends,” said the captain. He was twirling a long-stemmed wine glass in one hand. “Evening, captain,” chorused the company. Still looking across the dining hall, he held the glass out to the side, and a boy in a red coat and high boots hurried up and splashed some red wine into it from a decanter. The captain tasted it and then nodded. “A dry Medoc with the roast beef,” he announced as the boy scampered away, “and with the fowl we’ll probably exhaust the sauternes that arrived last week.”

The company applauded, Doyle as energetically as any of them.

“Reports, disciplines and the consideration of new members will be conducted after supper.” This announcement too seemed agreeable to the beggars, and as soon as the captain sat down at his own elevated table a door swung open from the kitchen, and nine men issued from it, each carrying a whole roasted turkey on a platter. Each table got one, and the man at the head was given a long knife and fork to carve with. Doyle happened to be sitting at the head of his table, and he managed to summon up enough Christmas and Thanksgiving skill to do an adequate job. When he’d slapped some onto all the plates presented to him, including the one Skate held up from below the table edge, he forked some onto his own and set to it with vigor, washing it down with liberal sips of the chilled sauternes that a small army of kitchen boys kept pouring into any glass less than half full. The turkey was followed by roast beef, charred and chewy at the ends and blood-rare in the middle, and an apparently endless supply of hot rolls and butter, and bottles and bottles of what Doyle had to admit was a wonderfully dry and full-bodied Bordeaux. Dessert was hot plum pudding and a cream sherry.

When the dishes had been cleared away and the diners were sitting back, many of them, to Doyle’s envy, stuffing clay pipes and dextrously lighting them from the candles on the tables, Copenhagen Jack dragged his tall chair to the front of the raised section and clapped his hands for attention. “Business,” he said. “Where’s Fairchild?”

The street-side door opened and a young man hurried inside, and for a moment Doyle thought that this must be Fairchild, but a surly, unshaven man had stood up from one of the rear tables and said, “Here, sir.” The boy who’d just entered unlooped a muffler from around his neck and, crossing to the front of the hall, sat down on the steps that led up to the raised deck.

The captain nodded to the new arrival and then looked back at Fairchild, who was nervously wrenching at an old cloth cap in his hands. “You were seen to hide five shillings in a drainpipe this morning, Fairchild.”

Fairchild kept his head down, but looked up at Copenhagen Jack through his bushy eyebrows. “Seen by who, sir?”

“Never mind who. Do you deny hiding them?”

The man considered. “Uh… no, sir,” he said at last. “Only I wasn’t… hiding ‘em from Marko, see, but there were these kids bothering me and I was afraid they’d rob me.”

“Then why did you tell Marko when he came by at one in the afternoon that you’d only made a few pennies?”

“I forgot,” said Fairchild. “About them shillings.”

The young man perched on the steps was scanning the crowd as though he was expecting to meet someone here. Doyle wondered who he was. He seemed young, less than twenty, in spite of his little moustache, and Doyle reflected that the original owner of that coat he was wearing, who had probably been dead twenty years, had been a much bigger man than its present wearer.

“You’re not the only forgetful one around here, Fairchild,” said the captain gently. “It seems to me I agreed to forget two similar offences of yours during these past several months.”

The young man on the steps had let his gaze stop on Doyle; he stared at him speculatively, then with something like anxiety. Just when Doyle was beginning to be worried by it, the young man looked away.

“I’m afraid,” Copenhagen Jack went on, “that we’ll have to forget some more things: we’ll forget you were ever a member of our company, and you can oblige me by forgetting the way to my house.”

“But Cap’n,” gasped Fairchild, “I didn’t mean it, you can have the five shillings—”

“Keep them. You’ll need them. Now go.” Fairchild left so quickly that Doyle knew the captain must have had some brisk way of ejecting people that didn’t want to leave as they were told. “And now,” said Captain Jack, smiling, “to pleasanter tasks. Are there any petitioners for admission?”

Skate waved his hand as high as he could, which was no higher than the candles on the table. “I’ve brought one, captain,” he roared, and his cup-rattlingly deep voice made up for the ineffectiveness of his waving.

The captain peered curiously down at the table. “Let him stand up then.”

Doyle got to his feet and faced Copenhagen Jack.

“Well, Skate, he’s certainly pitiful-looking enough. What’s your name?”

“Brendan Doyle, sir.”

When Doyle had voiced no more than the first two syllables of his reply, the young man who’d been staring at him whirled and leaped nimbly to the deck and whispered urgently to the captain.

Captain Jack leaned to the side and cocked his head, and a few moments later straightened up and stared at Doyle somewhat incredulously; then he whispered to the boy a few words which, though inaudible, were obviously something like Are you sure? The young man nodded vigorously and told him something more.

Doyle viewed these proceedings with mounting alarm, wondering if this moustached youth could be working for the bald-headed gypsy chief. He eyed the street door, and noticed that it hadn’t closed quite all the way. He thought, if they make any attempt to seize me, I’ll be out that door before these boys can get up from the tables.

The captain shrugged and turned toward the increasingly curious diners. “Young Jacky tells me that our new friend Brendan Doyle has just arrived in town from Bristol, where he’s done very well in the past at pretending to be a simple-minded deaf-mute. Under the name of, uh, Dumb Tom he’s milked the sympathy of the folks at Bristol for the last five years, but he’s been forced to leave there because—what was it again, Jacky? Oh, I remember—he saw a friend of his coming out of a whorehouse, and the girl the chap had been with was leaning out of an upstairs window with a… a solid marble chamber pot she was going to fling down onto the poor man’s head when he walked by underneath, as he was just about to do. Seems there’d been a disagreement about the fee, and the girl felt she’d been cheated. In any case, Doyle called to his pal from across the street: ‘Look out!’ yells Doyle. ‘Back away, my friend, the tart’s fixing to brain you!’ Well, his friend’s life was saved, but poor Doyle was overheard by everyone on the street, and in no time everyone realized he could talk as well as any of them, and he had to leave town.”

The beggars near Doyle told him he was a fine fellow, and Skate said, “You should have told me your story this morning, lad.”

Doyle, concealing his surprise and suspicion, opened his mouth to reply to Skate, but the captain raised his hand so suddenly and imperiously that all eyes were on him again, and Doyle didn’t speak.

“And Jacky points out that since Doyle hopes to take up the begging trade here in London, and since he prospered so when he didn’t speak and suffered exile the first time he uttered a word, he ought to get back into the habit of relying on gestures to communicate with. You need practice at being Dumb Tom again, Mr. Doyle. Don’t you agree?”

Everybody turned to Doyle, and he saw one of the captain’s eyelids flutter slightly. The purpose of all this must be to conceal my accent, Doyle realized. But why? And how did that boy know I’d have one? He smiled uncertainly and nodded.

“You’re a wise man. Dumb Tom,” said Copenhagen Jack. “Now Jacky tells me you and he used to be great pals in Bristol once, so I’ll let him rob us of your company for a while so he can explain our ways to you. And in the meantime I’ll consider the rest of the candidates for recruitment. Stand up, another of you!”

As a bleary-eyed old man struggled to stand up at another table, Jacky hopped down from the platform and hurried over to Doyle, his oversized coat flapping around his thin form like the wings of a bird. Still wary, Doyle stepped back from him and glanced again at the door.

“Brendan,” said Jacky, “come on now. You know I’m not one to hold a grudge—and I understand she left you for another bloke only a week later.” Skate let out a rumbling chuckle, and Jacky winked and mouthed something that might have been trust me.

Doyle let himself relax. You’ve got to trust somebody, he thought—and at least these people appreciate a good Bordeaux. He nodded and let himself be led away.

Fairchild gently pushed the door closed, and then stood troubled by thought on the pavement outside the dining room. The air was getting chilly as the last gray light faded out of the sky, and he frowned—then took cheer from the memory of the five shillings in the drainpipe, for that would buy him a couple of days of leisurely living, graced with beer and beef pies and skittles. But—and he frowned again as much at the abstractness as at the bleakness of the thought—there would be days after the five shillings were gone. What would he do then? He could ask the captain what to do… no, that’s right, the captain had just thrown him out, which was why he had to think of what to do.

He whimpered a little as he hurried down Pye Street, and slapped himself across the face a few times in an effort to rouse his brain to constructive thought.

“You knew I’d have an accent.” Doyle pulled the corduroy coat closer about himself, for the little room was cold in spite of the smoldering coals in the grate.

“Obviously,” said Jacky as he piled blocks of wood onto the old embers and arranged them to produce a good draft. “I told the captain that you mustn’t be allowed to speak, and he improvised a story to arrange for it. Close those windows, will you? And then sit down.”

Doyle pulled the windows shut and latched them. “So how did you know? And why shouldn’t people hear me?” There were two chairs, one on either side of the small table, and he took the one nearest the door.

Having got the fire going to his satisfaction, Jacky got up and crossed to a cupboard. “I’ll tell you as soon as you answer some questions of mine.”

Doyle’s eyes narrowed with resentment at being talked to so peremptorily by a kid who was younger than most of his students—and his resentment was only slightly appeased by the bottle the young man had lifted down from a shelf.

A muted racket of applause and whistling sounded from downstairs, but neither of them remarked on it.

Jacky sat down, and gave Doyle a look that was both puzzled and stern as he splashed brandy into two snifters and pushed one across the table to him.

“Thanks,” Doyle said, picking it up and swirling it under his nose. It smelled as good as any he’d ever had. “You people do live well,” he admitted grudgingly.

Jacky shrugged his narrow shoulders. “Begging’s a trade like everything else,” he said, a little impatiently, “and Copenhagen Jack’s the best organizer of it.” He took a gulp from his own glass. “Tell me the truth now, Doyle—what have you done to make Doctor Romany so anxious to get hold of you?”

Doyle blinked. “Who’s Doctor Romany?”

“He’s the chief of the most powerful band of gypsies in England.”

Ghost fingers tickled the hair at the back of Doyle’s neck. “A tall, bald-headed old guy? That wears spring-shoes?”

“That’s the man. He’s got every beggar and thief in Horrabin’s warren looking for a… a man of your description with a foreign, possibly American accent. And he’s offering a big reward for your capture.”

“Horrabin? That clown? My God, I met him this morning, saw that damn puppet show of his. He didn’t seem to—”

“It was only this evening that Doctor Romany told everybody to look for you. Horrabin mentioned having seen you at Billingsgate.”

Doyle hesitated, trying to sort out the different interests in all this. If a truce could be enforced, he wouldn’t mind talking to Doctor Romany, for the man obviously knew—somehow—the times and places where the gaps would show up; and Doyle still had his mobile hook strapped to his arm. If he could learn the location of a gap and be standing inside its field when it closed, he’d reappear in that lot in London in 1983. He felt a wave of homesick longing when he thought about California, Cal State Fullerton, the Ashbless biography… On the other hand, this Doctor Romany hadn’t given the impression of being an accommodating sort of person, what with his cigar and all. And what was this boy’s interest in the whole thing? Probably the “big” reward.

Doyle must have given Jacky a wary look, for the boy shook his head in disgust and said, “And no, I’m not planning on turning you over to him. I wouldn’t deliver a mad dog into the hands of that creature… even if he kept his word about the reward, which is unlikely. The real reward would probably be the opportunity to check the bottom of the Thames for lost coins.”

“Sorry,” said Doyle, taking a sip of the brandy. “But it sounded like you had been to a meeting of these people.”

“I was. Captain Jack pays me to wander around and keep track of what the… competition is doing. Horrabin holds meetings in a sewer under Bainbridge Street, and I’m a frequent visitor. But stop dodging the question—why does he want you?”

“Well…” Doyle held his glass up and absently admired the way the flames shone through the dark topaz of the liquor. “I’m not completely sure myself, but I know he wants to learn something from me.” It occurred to him that he was beginning to get drunk. “He wants to know… how I arrived in a field near Kensington.”

“Well? How did you arrive? And why does he care?”

“I’ll tell you the truth, Jacky my boy. I traveled by magic.”

“Yes, it would have to be something like that. What sort of magic? And where did you come from?”

Doyle was disconcerted. “You don’t find that hard to believe?”

“I’d find it hard to believe that Doctor Romany could get this excited by anything that didn’t involve magic. And I’m certainly not so… inexperienced as to claim it doesn’t exist.” He smiled with such bitterness that Doyle wondered what sort of thing the boy might have seen.

“What sort of magic?” Jacky repeated.

“I don’t know, actually. I was just part of a group, and the magical mechanics of the whole thing was somebody else’s department. But it was a spell or something that permitted us to jump from one… place to another without traversing the distance between.”

“And you jumped all the way from America that way?”

Why not, thought Doyle. “That’s right. And this Doctor Romany must have seen us appear in that field—I think he was watching the place, for you can’t just jump from here to there as you please, you see, you’ve got to take off and land at certain places, what the man in charge called gaps, and I believe Romany knows where all the gaps are—and he must have followed us from there, because he grabbed me when I was just for a moment away from the others, and he took me to some gypsy camp.” Doyle gulped some brandy, for telling the story was reawakening his fear of the bald-headed old man.

“And what happened to the other people, the ones you came with?”

“I don’t know. I guess they made it back to the gap and jumped back to, uh, America.”

“Why did you all come?” He laughed. “It’s a long story, but what we came for was to hear a lecture.” Jacky cocked an eyebrow. “A lecture? What do you mean?”

“Have you ever heard of Samuel Taylor Coleridge?”

“Of course. He’s supposed to speak on Milton at the Crown and Anchor next Saturday.”

Doyle raised his eyebrows. This beggar boy was beginning to impress him. “Right. Well, he got the dates mixed up and came to give it last night, and we were all there, so he delivered it then. Very interesting talk, as a matter of fact.”

“Oh?” Jacky finished his brandy and thoughtfully poured himself another inch. “And how did you people know he’d get the dates mixed up?”

Doyle spread his hands. “The man in charge knew.”

Jacky was silent for a few moments, gingerly scratching under his moustache, then he looked up and grinned. “Were you just a hireling brought along to mind the horses or something, or were you interested in the lecture?”

Doyle was tempted to tell this arrogant boy that he’d published a biography of Coleridge. He contented himself with saying, as loftily as possible, “I was brought along to explain to the guests who Coleridge… is, and to answer questions about him after we’d got back home.”

Jacky laughed with pleasure. “So you’re interested in modern poetry! There’s more to you than meets the eye, Doyle.” The door at Doyle’s back opened and Copenhagen Jack entered, looking even taller and broader-shouldered in the small room. “Two new members,” he said, perching himself on the corner of the table and picking up the brandy bottle.

“A good Decayed Gentleman, and the best shaker I’ve seen in years—you should have seen the fit he threw to show us his style. Astonishing. And how fares Dumb Tom?”

Doyle winced. “Am I really stuck with that?”

“If you stay you are. What’s this story about Horrabin being after you?” The captain tilted the bottle up and took a liberal swig from the neck of it.

Jacky spoke up. “It’s Horrabin’s master, Doctor Romany. He thinks Dumb Tom here knows a lot of sorcerous stuff, and he’s mistaken, but he’s offered a huge reward, and so every mongrel from Horrabin’s rat-warren will be looking for Brendan Doyle.” He turned to Doyle. “Face it, man, your Dumb Tom role is purely a survival tactic.”

The captain laughed. “And be grateful I don’t conduct my business the way Horrabin’s father did.”

Jacky laughed too, and then seeing Doyle’s uncomprehending look, explained. “The clown’s father was a St. Giles beggar master too, and he wouldn’t run a fake—all of his blind men really were blind, and his crippled children didn’t carry crutches just for effect. All very commendable, one would say, until you learn that he’d recruit healthy people and then alter them for the trade of begging. He had a hospital in reverse under London somewhere, and developed techniques for turning robust men, women and children into creatures tailored to evoke horror and pity.” The smile had worn off Jacky’s face during his speech.

“So if old Teobaldo Horrabin had decided you ought to be Dumb Tom,” said the captain, “why he’d cut out your tongue and then have a game try at making you genuinely simple-minded by knocking in one corner of your head or smothering you just long enough for your brain to die. Like Jacky said, he was an expert at it.” He sucked some more brandy out of the bottle’s neck. “They even say he went to work on his own son, and that Horrabin wears those baggy clothes and that face paint to conceal the deformities his father gave him.”

Doyle shuddered, remembering the startling appearance of the clown’s face as he’d seen it in the back of the puppet booth. “So what happened to Horrabin pere?”

Jacky shrugged. “It was all before my time.”

“Some said he died and then Horrabin fils took over,” said the captain. “Others said he killed old Teobaldo in order to take over. I’ve even heard that old Teobaldo is still alive down there … and I’m not sure he wouldn’t rather be dead.” He caught Doyle’s questioning look. “Oh, old Horrabin was very tall, and any tight places, even a crowded corridor, used to upset him.”

“One loss we suffer in running this lad as a mute,” said Jacky, snagging the bottle from the captain long enough to refill the two glasses, “is that he can read.”

The captain glanced at Doyle with more interest than he’d shown in anything all evening. “Can you really? Affluently?”

Guessing that he meant fluently, Doyle nodded.

“Excellent! You can read to me. Literature is perhaps my main interest in life, but I’ve never been able to wring the sense out of the marks on the pages. Do you know any poems? By heart?”

“Oh, sure.”

“Give us one.”

“Uh… all right.” He cleared his throat, and then began,

The captain and Jacky both sat raptly listening during Doyle’s recitation of the entirety of Gray’s Elegy. When he finished the captain applauded, and himself launched into verse, a section from Samson Agonistes. Jacky was next. “Tell me what you think of this,” he said, and then recited,

Jacky paused, and Doyle automatically completed the octave:

After he’d recited it Doyle tried to remember where he’d read it. It was in a book about Ashbless, but it wasn’t by him… Got it, he thought—it’s one of the damn few works of Colin Lepovre, who was engaged to Elizabeth Tichy before she became William Ashbless’ wife. Lepovre disappeared in, let’s see, 1809 it was, a few months before the wedding was to have occurred; he was twenty, and left behind him only a thin book of verses that got few and unsympathetic reviews.

He glanced at Jacky and saw that the young man was staring at him with surprise and, for the first time, something like respect. “My God, Doyle, you’ve read Lepovre?”

“Oh yes,” said Doyle airily. “He disappeared, uh, last year, didn’t he?”

Jacky looked grim. “That’s the official story. Actually he was killed. I knew him, you see.”

“Did you really?” It occurred to Doyle that, if he ever got back to 1983, this story might make a good footnote in the Ashbless biography. “How was he killed?”

The young man drained his brandy again and recklessly poured himself a lot more. “Maybe some day I’ll know you well enough to tell you.”

Still determined to get something publishable out of the boy, Doyle asked, “Did you know his fiancee, Elizabeth Tichy?”

Jacky looked startled. “If you’re from America, how do you know all this?”

Doyle opened his mouth to voice a plausible reply, couldn’t think of one, and had to make do with, “Some day, Jacky, I may know you well enough to say.”

Jacky raised his eyebrows, as if considering taking offense; then he smiled. “As I said, Doyle, there’s certainly more to you than meets the eye. Yes, I knew Beth Tichy—quite well. I knew her years before she met Lepovre. I still keep in touch.”

“Evidently I was nearly correct in saying that you two were old pals,” said Copenhagen Jack. “Doyle, you come with me. Old Stikeleather has got me halfway through Dallas’ Aubrey, but the way he reads he’ll be at least another year finishing it. Let’s see if you can read a little more quickly.”

The low-ceilinged kitchen of The Beggar in the Bush was crowded, but most of the people were hanging over the table where a card game was going on, and Fairchild, nursing his cup of gin in a dark corner, had room to lean back and put his feet up against the bricks of the wall. Long ago he’d learned not to gamble, for he could never understand the rules, and regardless of what sort of cards he was dealt, somehow people always took his money away and told him he’d lost.

He had taken only one of the shillings from the drainpipe in the alley off Fleet Street, for he had figured out a plan: he would join Horrabin’s beggar army and keep the shillings just for special things like meat and gin and beer and—he gulped some gin when he thought of it—a girl every now and then.

His gin gone, he decided not to have another, for if he missed signing up with the stilted clown tonight he’d have to spend some of his money on mere lodging, and that wasn’t part of his plan. He stood up and made his way through the shouting and laughing press to the front door of the place and stepped outside.

The flickering lamplight seemed to fall with reluctance across the overhanging housefronts of Buckeridge Street, laying only the faintest of dry brush touches on the black fabric of the night—here an open window high in one wall was underlit, though the room beyond was in darkness; there the mouth of an alley with another lamp somewhere along it was discernible only by a line of yellowly glistening wet cobblestones, like a procession of toads only momentarily motionless in their slow crossing of the street; and ragged roofs and patches of scaling walls were occasionally visible when the vagrant breeze blew the lamp flame high.

Fairchild groped his way across the street to the opposite corner, and as he hunched along toward the next street he could hear snoring from behind the boards nailed up over the unglassed windows of Mother Dowling’s boarding house. He sneered at the oblivious sleepers who, as he knew from experience, had each paid three pennies to share a bed with two or three other people and a room with a dozen more. Paying money to be packed like bats in an old house, he thought, smug in the knowledge that he had other plans.

A moment later, though, he was uneasily wondering just what sort of sleeping arrangements Horrabin might provide. That clown was scary; he might have everybody sleep in coffins or something. The thought made Fairchild halt, gaping and crossing himself. Then he remembered that it was getting late, and whatever he intended to do he’d better do soon. At least Horrabin’s is free, he thought, moving forward again. Everybody’s welcome at Horrabin’s.

The sewer parliament would have adjourned by this time, so instead of turning right on Maynard toward Bainbridge Street he followed the wall that brushed his left shoulder, around the corner to face the north, where on the far side of Ivy Lane stood the dark warehouse-like structure known in the neighborhood as the Horrabin Hotel, or Rat’s Castle.

Now he was worrying that they might not take him in. After all, he was not smart. He reassured himself with the reflection that he was a good beggar, at least, and that’s what was important here. It also occurred to him that Horrabin might be interested to learn that Copenhagen Jack’s newest deaf-mute was a fake, and could be tricked into talking.

Yes, Fairchild decided, I’ll have to be sure to put myself on the clown’s good side by telling him about that.

Jacky stood for quite a while beside the window Doyle had shut, just looking out over the indistinct rooftops, pinpricked here and there with the smoky red dot of a lantern or the amber lozenge of an uncurtained window. I wonder what he’s doing this minute, Jacky thought, what dark court he may be silently treading, in what gin den he may be buying some unsuspecting poor devil a drink. Or is he asleep in some garret out there… and what sort of dreams could he have? Does he steal those too, I wonder?

Jacky turned away and sat down at the table where the paper, pen and ink were waiting. Lean fingers picked up the pen, dipped the nib in the ink and, after some hesitation, began to write:

Jacky waved the letter in the air until the ink was dry, then folded it up, addressed it, and dripped candle wax on it for a seal. She locked the door, got out of her baggy clothes and, just before swinging the hinged bed down out of the wall, peeled the moustache off, scratched her upper lip vigorously, and then stuck the strip of gummed, canvas-backed hair onto the wall.

CHAPTER 5

Covent Garden on Saturday night displayed an entirely different character than it had shown at dawn—it was nearly as crowded, and certainly no less noisy, but where twelve hours ago ranks of coster’s wagons had lined the curb, there now gracefully rolled the finest phaeton coaches, drawn by ponies carefully matched in size and color, as the West End aristocracy arrived from their houses in Jermyn Street and St. James to attend the theatre. The paving stones were now being frenziedly swept every couple of minutes by ragged crossing sweepers, each jealously working his hard-won section of pavement, ahead of any pedestrian ladies and gentlemen that looked likely to tip; and the Doric portico of the Covent Garden Theatre, newly rebuilt only last year after burning to the ground in 1808, reared its grand architecture far more elegantly by lamplight and the gold glow of its interior chandeliers than it had in the hard brightness of the sunlight.

The crossing sweepers made at least a token gesture of performing a service for the pence and shillings they received, but also present were people who simply begged. One of the most successful was a tubercular wretch who shambled about the square, never soliciting alms, but hopelessly gnawing at a mud-caked chunk of stale bread whenever anyone was watching him. And if a pity-struck lady goaded her escort to ask this unfortunate soul what ailed him, the sunken-eyed derelict would only touch his mouth and ear, indicating that he could neither hear nor speak, and then return his attention to the ghastly piece of bread. His plight seemed more genuine for not being flaunted or explained, and he collected so many coins—including a number of five-shilling crowns and one unprecedented gold sovereign—that he had to go empty his pockets into Marko’s bag every ten or twenty minutes.

“Ah, Dumb Tom,” exclaimed Marko softly as Doyle once again sidled into the alley where he waited. He held out his sack and Doyle dug handfuls of change out of his pockets and tossed them into it. “Yer doin’ splendid, lad. Now listen, I’m movin’ over to Malk Alley by Bedford Street this time, and I’ll be there for the next half hour. Got it?”

Doyle nodded.

“Keep up the good work. And cough sometimes. You do a stunning cough.”

Doyle nodded again, winked, and moved back out into the street.

This was his sixth day of begging, and he was still surprised at how good at it he’d proved to be, and how relaxed a life it was. He was even coming to terms with the idea of getting up at dawn and walking a dozen miles a day—covering both sides of the river west of London Bridge—for the appetite he worked up was always lavishly sated by the dinners at Copenhagen Jack’s house in Pye Street, and the captain had no objection to his beggars stopping at public houses for the occasional pint, or taking short naps on disused street to street rooftop bridges or between coal barges on the shore by Blackfriar’s Bridge.

The make-up around his eyes was making his skin break out, though. It had been Jacky’s idea to exaggerate Doyle’s already pale complexion to the point of looking consumptive by having him wear a white cloth around his head like a toothache sling, with a black cap above and a red scarf around his neck—to make his face seem very blanched by contrast—and applying some pink make-up around his eyes. “Makes you look more smitten,” Jacky had said as he’d smeared the smelly stuff into Doyle’s eye sockets, “and if Horrabin should happen to see you, let’s hope it’ll keep him from recognizing you.”

Jacky puzzled Doyle. The boy sometimes struck him as effeminate in certain spontaneous gestures and word choices, and he certainly had no apparent interest in young ladies, but Wednesday after dinner, when a floridly handsome Decayed Gentleman beggar had cornered Jacky in the hall, calling him his little hot cross bun and trying to kiss him, Jacky had reacted not just with a firm refusal but with disgust, as if he considered all that sort of thing distasteful. And Doyle couldn’t understand why a young man of Jacky’s intelligence would settle for begging as a means of earning a living, even in such a relatively pleasant operation as Captain Jack’s.

Doyle himself certainly didn’t intend to stay with it for very long. Three days from now, on Tuesday the eleventh of September, William Ashbless was going to arrive in London, and Doyle had resolved to meet him, strike up a friendship with the poet and then somehow get Ashbless—who had never been noted as hurting for money—to help set him up with some decent sort of job. He knew that the man would arrive at the London Dock on the frigate Sandoval at nine in the morning, and at ten-thirty would write the first draft of his best-known poem, “The Twelve Hours of the Night,” in the front room of the Jamaica Coffee House. Doyle intended to save some begging money, buy a passable suit, and meet Ashbless there. Having studied the man so thoroughly Doyle already felt that he knew him pretty well.

He wasn’t letting himself consider the possibility that Ashbless might be unable, or unwilling, to help him.

“My God, Stanley, will you look at that poor creature!” said a lady as she stepped to the pavement from a hackney cab. “Give him a shilling.”

Acting as if he hadn’t heard, Doyle resumed gnawing the piece of dirty bread Captain Jack had equipped him with six days ago; Stanley was complaining that if he gave Doyle a shilling he wouldn’t have enough for a drink before the show.

“You value your filthy liquor more than the salvation of your soul, is that it? You make me sick. Here, you with the bread or whatever that thing is! Buy yourself a decent dinner with this.”

Doyle was careful to wait until she’d approached closer, and then he looked up sharply as if startled, and touched his mouth and ear. She was holding a bracelet out toward him.

“Oh, will you look at that, Stanley, on top of it all he can’t hear nor speak. Low as a dog the poor fellow is.”

She waved the bracelet at Doyle, and he took it with a grateful smile. The couple moved on toward the theater, Stanley grumbling, as Doyle dropped the heavy bracelet into his pocket.

And then, he thought as he shambled on, once Ashbless has helped me get on my feet in this damned century, if I decide—as I imagine I will—that I’d rather go home to the time when there are paramedics and anesthetics and health inspectors and movies and flush toilets and telephones, I’ll cautiously get in touch with the fearsome Doctor Romany and work out some sort of a deal whereby he’ll tell me the location of one of the upcoming time gaps. Hell, I could probably trick him into letting me be within the field when the gap closed! I’d have to be sure he wouldn’t find and take away the mobile hook, though. I wonder if it’s too big to swallow.

The tickling itch had been building in his throat over the last few minutes, and an elegantly dressed couple was approaching at an unhurried pace, so he unleashed his much admired cough; he tried not to let himself do it too often because it tended quickly to change from a simulated ordeal into a genuine lung-wrenching paroxysm, and in the last few days it had been getting worse. He supposed glumly that he had picked it up from his midnight dip in the chilly Chelsea Creek a week ago.

“Holy Mother of God, James, that walking corpse is about to cough his livers right out onto the pavement. Give him something to buy himself a drink with.”

“Be wasted on that sod. He’ll be dead before dawn.”

“Well… perhaps you’re right. Yes, you certainly seem to be right.”

Two men leaned against the iron palings of the fence that flanked the wings of the theatre. One of them tapped ash from a cigar and then drew on it, making a glowing red dot in the shadows. “I asked somebody,” he said softly to his partner, “and this boy is a deaf-mute called Dumb Tom. You’re sure it’s him?”

“The boss is sure.”

The first man stared across the street at Doyle, who had pulled himself together and was lurching away, again pretending to gnaw the bread. “He sure doesn’t look like a menace.”

“Just the fact of him is a menace, Kaggs. He’s not supposed to be here.”

“I guess so.” Kaggs slipped a long, slim knife from his sleeve, absently tested the edge with his thumb and then slipped it away again. “How do you want to do it?”

The other man thought for a moment. “Shouldn’t be hard. I’ll bump him and knock him down, and you can act like you’re helping him up. Let your coat hang forward so nobody’ll see, and then slip the knife all the way in just behind his collarbone, blade perpendicular to the bone, and rock it back and forth a little. There’s a big artery down there that you can’t miss, and he ought to be dead in a few seconds.”

“All right. Let’s go.” He tossed his cigar onto the street and they both pushed away from the fence and strode after Doyle.

Red-rimmed eyes peered out of the face colorful with grease paint, and Horrabin took two knocking steps forward. “They were watching him, and now they’re going after him,” he said in a growling whisper quite different from his fluty voice. “You’re certain they’re not ours?”

“I’ve never clapped eyes on ‘em before, yer Honor,” said one of the men standing on the pavement below him.

“Then never mind waiting until this crowd’s inside,” hissed the clown. “Get Dumb Tom now.” As the three men sprinted away after Doyle and his two pursuers, Horrabin pounded a white-gloved fist against the brick wall of the alley and whispered, “Damn you, Fairchild, why couldn’t you have remembered yesterday?”

I’ve got to get back to 1983 before this cough kills me, Doyle thought unhappily. A shot of penicillin or something would clear it up in a couple of days, but if I went to a doctor here the bastard would probably prescribe leeches. He felt the throat tickle building up again, but resolutely resisted it. I wonder if it’s developed into full-blown pneumonia yet. Hell, it doesn’t even seem to be good for business anymore. Nobody wants to give anything to a beggar who looks like he’ll be dead in ten minutes. Maybe the captain would—

Someone thrust a leg in his way and before he could step aside he was heavily shoulder-bumped, and he pitched straight forward onto the cobblestones, abrading the palms of his hands. The person who’d tripped him walked on, but someone else crouched beside him. “Are you all right?” the newcomer asked.

Dizzily Doyle started to make his deaf-mute gesture, but all in an instant the man slapped one hand over Doyle’s face, holding his jaw shut with the heel of his hand, and with the other drove a blade down at Doyle’s shoulder. Doyle caught a glimpse of the knife and thrashed backward, so that it cut through his coat and skin but was deflected outward by his collarbone. He tried to yell but could only produce a sort of loud hum with his mouth still held shut; his assailant knelt on Doyle’s free arm and drew the knife up for another try.

Suddenly something from behind collided hard with the man and he oomphed! and did a quick forward somersault as his knife clattered away across the cobbles. Three men now stood above Doyle, and two of them quickly hooked hands under his arms and hoisted him up. “Saved yer life. Tommy,” panted one. “Now you come with us.”

Doyle allowed himself to be marched at a trot back the way he’d come, for he assumed these were some of Copenhagen Jack’s beggars who had come to his rescue; then he saw the upright grasshopper figure of Horrabin waiting in the alley ahead, and realized that Doctor Romany had found him.

He extended one arm and then slammed the elbow back into the stomach of the man who held his left arm, and as the man crumpled Doyle drove his left fist into the throat of the man on his right. He too went down and then Doyle was running south with the boundless energy of pure panic, for he remembered Romany’s cigar so well that he could almost feel the heat of it on his eye. He could hear the footsteps of the third man pounding close behind him.

He was off the main street and pelting down an alley now, and the racing pursuer’s footsteps echoed terrifyingly close, so when he saw a stack of boxes full of vegetable peelings against one wall he reached out as he ran past and yanked the stack out; Doyle spun with the momentum of the action, lost his footing and fell heavily, skidding on his hip and then on his cut shoulder, but the boxes had toppled directly into the path of Horrabin’s man and he had tangled his feet in them and done a resounding belly-flop onto the round stones of the pavement. He lay motionless face down, the wind and maybe the life knocked out of him, and Doyle got to his feet, whimpering, and limped as fast as he could on down the alley.

He crossed two narrow streets and followed his alley through one more block and then found himself on the brightly lamplit sidewalk of the Strand, only a few blocks east of the Crown and Anchor. All the running had started him coughing again, and he made a shilling and fourpence from the awed passersby before he got it under control. When he could get a breath again he began walking west on the Strand, for it had suddenly occurred to him that this was the Saturday night Coleridge had been scheduled to speak, and that Coleridge, while not now in any position to grant substantial aid to anyone, might at least be able to help Doyle get back to Captain Jack’s house unseen. Hell, Doyle thought, he might even remember me from a week ago.

Oblivious to the bright store and restaurant windows he passed, he hurried down the sidewalk, hunched over to relieve the pain of the stitch in his side, limping, and breathing with fast asthmatic wheezes. He saw a woman recoil from him in actual fear, and it came to him how grotesque he must look with his make-up, tattered clothes and crippled cockroach gait; abruptly self-conscious, he straightened up and walked more slowly.

The crowd that parted hastily in front of him seemed no more composed of individuals than a plywood theatrical flat representing a bus-line, but he did notice when a startlingly tall figure stepped out of an alley into his path. A white conical hat topped a head like a decorated Easter egg, and Doyle gasped, spun around and ran, hearing the knocking of the pursuing stilts on the pavement.

Horrabin ran easily on the stilts, taking bobbing ten foot strides even as he wove through the sidewalk traffic, and as he ran he emitted a succession of piercing high-low-high-low whistles. To the terrified Doyle it sounded like the Nazi Gestapo sirens in old movies about World War Two.

The whistle was rousing certain beggars and drawing them out of alleys and doorways; they were silent, powerful-looking creatures, and two of them plodded toward Doyle while another was working his way over from across the street.

Looking over his shoulder, Doyle caught a freeze frame glimpse of Horrabin only a giant pace away, his face grinning maniacally like a Chinese dragon and one white claw extended. Doyle leaped sideways into the street; he tumbled, rolling with only inches to spare out from under the hammering hooves of a cab horse, and then he scrambled to his feet and sprang up onto the step of a carriage and braced himself there with one hand on the window sill and one on the roof rail.

The carriage’s occupants were an old man and a young girl. “Please speed up,” Doyle gasped, “I’m being chased by—”

The old man had angrily picked up and poised a lean walking stick, and now with all the force of the first breaking shot of a pool game drove the blunt end at Doyle’s chest. Doyle flew off his perch as if he’d been shot, and though he managed to land on his feet he instantly fell onto his hands and knees and then rolled over a couple of times.

The ruin-faced, one-eyed old creature huddled in a doorway giggled and clapped his papier-mache hands silently. “Ah, yes yes! Now into the river, Doyle—there’s something I want to show you on the other side,” chittered the Luck of the Surrey-side beggars.

“God save us, he’s been shot!” shouted Horrabin. “Get him while he’s still got any breath in him, you dung beetles!”

Doyle was on his feet now, but every breath seemed to spread a crack in his chest, and he thought that if he started coughing now he’d die of it. One of his pursuers was only a few paces away, advancing with a confident smile, so Doyle dug into his pocket, fetched out the heavy bracelet and pitched it with all his strength into the man’s face, then without pausing to see what effect it had he turned and hobbled to the far curb, crossed the sidewalk and disappeared into an alley.

“Tomorrow night’s dinner you all are unless you bring him to me!” shrilled Horrabin, froth flying from his vermillioned lips as he did a woodpecker tap dance of fury on the north sidewalk.

One of his beggars hurried forward but had misjudged the velocity of a Chaplin Company coach and went down under the hooves, and one of the front wheels had cut across his middle before the driver was able to wrench the horses and vehicle to a halt. By now all traffic had come to a stop in this section of the Strand, and drivers were shouting at each other and, in a few cases, lashing at one another with their whips.

Horrabin stepped off the curb and began poling his way through the confusion toward the opposite side of the street.

Doyle emerged from between two buildings and clattered down an ancient set of wooden stairs to a sort of boardwalk that ran along the top of the glistening riverbank. He hurried down to the end of one of the piers and crouched behind a high wooden box, and his breathing gradually slowed to the point where he could close his mouth. The river air was cold, and he was glad Copenhagen Jack didn’t insist that his beggars appear half-clad in cold weather—though it was an effective touch. He pulled his jacket and shirt away from his collar-bone—the knife cut was still bleeding pretty freely, though it wasn’t deep.

I wonder who the hell that was, he thought. It couldn’t have been one of Doctor Romany’s people, or Horrabin’s, for Jacky told me they definitely want me alive. Maybe it was some rival of theirs… or even just a solo lunatic hobo-killer, some prototype Jack the Ripper. Doyle gingerly touched the long cut. Thank God, he thought, that Horrabin’s man arrived when he did.

He rubbed his chest and then inhaled experimentally, filling his lungs. Though his breastbone stung, and he was doubtlessly developing the major bruise of his life—so far—there was no grating sensation; the vicious old man’s cane had probably not broken anything. He exhaled and leaned wearily against the box, letting his feet dangle over the water.

The yellow dots of lanterns on passing boats, and their reflections, stippled the blackness of the river like a Monet painting, and the lights of Lambeth were a glowing chain on the close horizon. The moon, a faint orange crescent, seemed to be balanced on the railing of Blackfriars Bridge half a mile east. Behind and above him to his right were the lights of the Adelphi Terrace, looking like some fantastic pleasure ship viewed from water level, and he could hear faint music from there when the breeze slackened.

He could feel another coughing fit building up in his throat and chest, but fear gave him the strength to suppress it when he heard a slow, heavy knocking coming his way along the boardwalk behind him.

Jacky was glad the water was flowing fast enough in the subterranean canal to make the rudder useless in downstream travel, for if it was swung very far to port it would hit her in the head; and if the people in the boat had been exerting any more control over the craft than just using barge poles to push it away from the walls whenever the current swung it too close, they’d have felt the drag of their secret passenger. The water swirling around her neck was becoming even colder as they approached the river, and it was all she could do to keep her teeth from chattering. She was careful to keep her head out of the water, for she had a small flintlock pistol wrapped up in her turban, and she wanted to keep the flashpan dry. The torches at bow and stern of the boat flickered in the sulphury breeze, sometimes casting only a dim red glow and at others flaring up to illuminate starkly every stone of the arched ceiling passing by close overhead.

Five minutes ago she had been dry and warm, cooking a panful of sausages over the fire in the kitchen of Horrabin’s Rat’s Castle on Maynard Street. She’d been dressed in her Ahmed the Hindoo Beggar outfit, with a turban, sandals, and a robe made from a chintz bedspread, with walnut stain on her face and hands and a false beard supplementing her customary false moustache, for she’d seen the exiled Fairchild at the Rat’s Castle, and didn’t want to be recognized as one of Copenhagen Jack’s people. Doctor Romany had arrived a half hour earlier, and had perched in one of Horrabin’s swings, taken his weird shoes off and absorbed himself with a stack of shipping reports.

Then one of Horrabin’s beggars, a sturdy red-faced old fellow, had burst in, out of breath from running but gasping out a message almost before he was in the room. “Doctor Romany… hurry … the Strand, and moving south toward the river… a man’s been shot… “

“Who? Who’s been shot?” Romany hopped down from the swing without putting his spring-shoes back on, and his old face twisted with agony; quickly he climbed back into the swing and pulled the shoes on. “Who, damn you?” he rasped.

“I don’t know… Simmons saw it and… sent me to fetch you. He said it’s the man you’ve… offered a reward for.”

Romany had his shoes on and laced by this time, and he had again jumped down from the swing, and was bobbing agilely now on the powerful springs. “Which one? But it must be Dog-Face Joe. They’d never dare to shoot the American. Well, where is he? The Strand, you say?”

“Yes, sir. And moving south, by the Adelphi. It’d be quickest, yer Honor, to take a boat down the underground canal straight to the Adelphi Arches. All the waterways are running strong, what with the rains… “

“Lead the way—and hurry. I knew old Joe for years, and if they haven’t outright killed him he’ll get away from them.”

When the two men hurried down the cellar stairs Ahmed the Hindoo Beggar was only a few paces behind, the sausages forgotten. This sounds like it, Jacky had thought, her heart pounding as she forced herself to hang back far enough so they wouldn’t see or hear her following. God, let him be still alive; and let me get close enough to put a pistol ball through his brain. And if I could somehow have a moment to whisper to him first, explain who I am and why I’m going to kill him… and then at last, she had thought longingly, I could go home.

When they had reached the old stone dock in the under basement there came a moment when two beggars were untying the boat and lighting the torches, and Doctor Romany was staring impatiently down the dark tunnel, and Jacky had been able to pad across the stone floor and slip noiselessly into the cold black water. The boat, which the two men dragged and bumped alongside the dock for Doctor Romany to get into, had rings along the outside of the gunwale so that a tarpaulin could be lashed over it, and Jacky looped two fingers through one of them and let herself be towed along when the boat was poled out into the strong current.

“Ha ha?” came the high, birdy voice of the clown. “Now where’s my old pal Dumb Tom?” There was a slow knocking of wood on wood as Horrabin moved back and forth on the boardwalk. The only other sounds were the fitful breeze in the rigging of the fishing boats moored nearby, and the lapping of the water around the pier pilings.

Doyle, sitting behind the box at the end of the pier, didn’t even breathe, and he wondered how long he could hold out before leaping to his feet and shouting, Get it over with, here I am, as you very well know! For there was a teasing note in the clown’s voice, as if it did know.

He heard more slow thumping as the clown moved this way and that. My God, Doyle thought, if that thing starts stumping down this pier toward me I’ll be into the water and swimming for Lambeth before he’s three steps out. Then he imagined the clown following him into the black water, imagined seeing over his shoulder that grinning painted face moving at him with impossible speed as he tried to swim with his stiffening shoulder. His heartbeat seemed to be shaking him apart, like the impacts of a wrecking ball on an old building.

“Horrabin!” came a cry from away to Doyle’s right. “Where is he?”

Doyle realized with horror that it was Doctor Romany’s voice.

The clown giggled, a sound like a hundred manic crickets, and then called, “Right here.” The knocking of the stilts moved out onto the pier. With an explosive shriek that appalled even himself, Doyle dove off the pier end, barely getting a breath before plunging into the cold water. He thrashed to the surface and began swimming frantically. “What was that?” Romany’s voice carried clearly across the water. “What’s going on?”

Horrabin had ladder-walked to the end of the pier. “He’s in the river. I’ll show you where.” He whistled, a shriller and more complicated whistle than the one he’d summoned the beggars with in the Strand, and then he waited, looking up and down the river shore.

As soon as the boat had emerged from the tunnel, and just before it passed through the Adelphi Arches and out into the river, Jacky unhooked her numbing fingers and let the craft recede away from her. Just in time, she had told herself, for a moment later one of the beggars had stepped back and grabbed the tiller and the other had lifted a pair of oars from the bottom of the boat and begun fitting the thole pins into the oarlocks. Doctor Romany had shouted a question, and she’d heard a faint answer, but she’d been swimming half underwater and hadn’t caught any of the words. Then there had come a scream, short but so loud that nobody within a mile could have missed it. Faintly she’d heard Horrabin’s voice say, afterward, “He’s in the river. I’ll show you where.”

She heard the first clattering stroke of the oars just as she reached the bank and pulled herself out of the water.

Doyle, forty feet out now, calmed down a little and began to dog paddle silently. If anything, he thought, any boat or swimmer comes near me, I’ll surface dive and go as far as I can under water, and then try to let my head emerge slow and breathe quietly. Hell, with any luck I should be able to elude them … And, with a good deal more luck, get back to shore somewhere before my strength gives out. The current was carrying him to his left, away from Doctor Romany.

He heard a new sound—oarlocks clacking rhythmically behind him to his right.

Horrabin smiled, for a dim glow had appeared under the second pier to his left, and as it moved out from under the overhang it could be seen to be a shotgun pattern of dozens of tiny lights whirling across the face of the dark water. The clown pointed out toward where he’d last heard Doyle splashing, and the cluster of tiny lights scudded out into the river as quick as the wind-blown petals of some luminous flower.

“Follow the lights, Doctor Romany!” Horrabin called merrily.

What lights? Doyle wondered. The nearest lights are across the river. Sure, Doctor Romany, follow them while I drift east.

He quietly treaded water with his legs and right arm, giving his left shoulder a rest. Staying afloat was no problem; he had discovered that by taking turns with his dog paddle, floating on his back and slowly treading water he was able to keep his face out of water with no strenuous use of any one set of muscles. The current was taking him toward Blackfriars Bridge, and he was cautiously confident that he’d be able to climb up on one of the pilings and, once his pursuers had decided he’d drowned, make a segmented swim from piling to piling to the shore.

Suddenly he learned what lights Horrabin had meant, for what seemed to be a couple of dozen little floating candles were skimming across the surface straight toward him. He yanked his head under water and, with just a kick-splash to mark where he’d been, swam away under water in a direction at right angles to the course the lights had been taking.

His tenuous confidence was gone. This reeked of sorcery—hadn’t Jacky said Doctor Romany was a magician? Evidently Horrabin was too—and he felt like a man who, limbering up for a fistfight, sees his opponent snap the loaded cylinder closed on a revolver.

He frog-kicked along as far as he could and still expect to surface without gasping, and then he let his head float up and break the surface of the water. Slowly he lifted a hand and pushed the soaked flap of hair away from his eyes.

For a moment he just hung stunned in the water, for the lights had followed him and now surrounded him, and staring at the nearest couple he saw that they were eggshell halves, equipped with tiny torches, straw masts and folded paper sails, and—and it didn’t even occur to him to ascribe it to fever delirium—a tiny man, no bigger than his little finger, crouched in each one, twisting the toy mast deftly in the breeze to hold his diminutive craft in position.

Doyle screamed and flung his arm around in an arc to capsize them, then without waiting to see the effect drew a sobbing breath and dived again.

When his lungs were heaving at his clenched shut throat and he thought he must be about to crack his head against the stones of the bridge pilings, Doyle again let himself bob to the surface. The tiny eggshell mariners were again grouped in a ring around him when he surfaced. They didn’t approach nearer than two arm’s lengths, and in spite of the kalunk… kalunk… kalunk of Doctor Romany’s boat drawing ever closer he paused, thrashing weakly in the water, to get his breath back. Something slapped the water, hard, an inch from his left cheek, and the spray stung his eye. A moment later he heard the boom of a gunshot roll across the water from the shore. It was instantly followed by a shot from Romany’s boat, but because the boat was moving the shot was badly aimed and kicked up spray among the lighted eggshells, sending one spinning through the air.

God, I’m being shot at from all sides, Doyle thought despairingly as he once more filled his lungs and pushed himself under. They don’t even want me alive anymore.

Horrabin had glanced down to his left when a gunshot went off down there among the fishing boats, then his head snapped back up when there was a shot from Doctor Romany’s boat. The clown saw the tiny light spring up from the surface and go out when it came down again, and he realized the gypsy chief was shooting at the man in the water.

Horrabin quickly cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “I thought you wanted him alive!”

There was a moment’s silence, and then Romany’s voice echoed across the water. “Isn’t this Dog-Face Joe?”

“It’s the American.”

“Apep eat me. Then why did you shoot at him, you doomed sod?”

Jacky had already snatched a close-mesh fishing net out of a nearby boat, flung it into one of the canoes and was pushing the narrow craft out into the water when she heard Horrabin yell, in a voice made even shriller by fear, “It wasn’t me, damn it, your Worship, I swear! It’s somebody down among the boats here—there he goes now, in a canoe, heading toward you!”

Jacky handled the single oar with speed and grace, and propelled the canoe rapidly out toward the ring of little lights, which was shifting even further east, toward the bridge. God, she thought as she panted with the effort, I’m sorry Tom—I mean Doyle. I was just too eager to kill Dog-Face Joe. I’m sorry, please don’t be killed.

She felt hollow and cold with horror, though, for it had felt like a good shot, and she’d been aiming directly at the center of the dimly seen head.

Her canoe was moving faster than Doctor Romany’s larger boat, and she’d started well to the east of him, so when Doyle’s head burst up out of the water again—again right in the middle of the infallible ring of lights—she was almost a hundred yards closer to him than Romany was.

“Doyle!” she called, profoundly relieved to see him still alive. “It’s Jacky. Wait for me.”

Doyle was so exhausted that he was almost annoyed to hear Jacky’s voice. He’d resigned himself to being captured, and this rescue attempt of Jacky’s sounded as if it would involve further exertions, and likely avail nothing but to anger Doctor Romany.

“Sink straight down as deep as you can, and then come back up,” came Jacky’s voice again, closer now.

Doyle turned his head and, by the light of the candles of his Lilliputian retinue, saw a bearded man in a canoe.

His eyes widened with surprise, but before he could duck under water again the figure in the canoe said, “Wait!” and, reaching up, yanked off the beard. “It is me, Doyle. Now do what I said, and hurry!”

I guess you can’t relax yet, Doyle told himself wearily as he slid under the surface again and obediently let half the air in his lungs bubble out through his nose, so that he sank easily through the cold black water; then he halted his descent with a scissors-kick when it occurred to him that there wasn’t going to be a pool floor to kick upward from. What if I’ve sunk so deep, he thought, that I can’t thrash my way back to the surface before my lungs mutiny and suck in river water? He instantly began clawing and kicking his way up, and he felt a rope loop brush the back of his hand a moment before he burst out into the air.

There was a wild chittering nearby, like a cageful of excited birds, and Jacky, leaning out over the side, was bundling up the wet weight of a fishing net, in among the tangles of which a few little lights still burned. “Get in,” Jacky snapped. “Clamber over the side up front, I’ll balance you from the back. Stay away from that net—those little bastards carry knives. And hurry.”

Doyle took a moment to look upstream—he could see Romany’s boat perhaps fifty yards off, the synchronized knocking of the oars very loud now—and then he heaved himself up and rolled into the canoe. Jacky was crouched in the rear, rigidly holding the oar straight down into the water.

As soon as the canoe had stopped wobbling, Doyle panted, “Step on the gas.”

Jacky began plying the oar desperately. Having come to a full stop and taken on more weight, though, the canoe was reluctant to move.

“I’ve got one more pistol,” called Doctor Romany. “Drop the oar and I won’t fire it.”

“Wouldn’t dare,” gasped Jacky, her arms quivering as she dragged the oar through the motionless water. “Wants you… alive.”

“Not anymore,” said Doyle, sitting up carefully. “A minute ago they were all shooting at me.”

“Thought you… were someone else.”

The canoe was moving now, but slowly. Doyle could distinguish three heads in silhouette in the boat bearing down on them. “Is there a spare oar?” he asked desperately.

“Ever paddled… canoe?”

“No.”

“Shut up then.”

Doyle noticed a long tear in Jacky’s trousers on the outside of the left thigh, exposing a long, rough cut. He opened his mouth to ask about it, then noticed a round hole punched in the fabric of the canoe, toward the stern. “Good God, Jacky, you’ve been shot!”

“I know.” Even by the dim light of the rising crescent moon Jacky’s face was visibly dark with effort and glistening with sweat, but the canoe was now matching the speed of Doctor Romany’s boat. For a minute or two both craft maintained their interval as they knifed and lumbered through the water, and the oarlocks clacked in the same rhythm as Jacky’s desperate panting; then the canoe put on a little more speed and began to leave the clumsier boat behind.

Blackfriars Bridge was looming close in front of them, and when it was clear that they would lose the pursuing boat Jacky sat back and stared ahead at the great stone arches they were being relentlessly propelled toward. “North middle arch,” she gasped, and stabbed the oar into the water on the starboard side. The rocketing canoe heeled over and began cutting a wide arc to starboard across the face of the river.

When they were nearly in line with the arch she’d indicated, and so close that Doyle could see the explosive splashing where the river pounded against the stone pilings, she whipped the oar out of the water and plunged it in on the other side; the craft straightened out, and there was an instant of blackness and roaring water and the awareness of hard stone rushing past on all sides—and a fast rise and drop that almost landed Doyle in the water again—and then they were out on the broad river, on the east side of the bridge now, and Jacky was slouched back, eyes shut and hands hanging limp over the sides, devoting her energy to getting her breath back as the canoe gradually lost speed.

Doyle looked back, and realized that Doctor Romany would not have been able to duplicate the sharp turn to the wider middle arch, and would not dare try shooting the bridge through the narrow arch that lay ahead of him. If he wanted to continue the pursuit he’d have to heel around to a halt and then row to the one the canoe had darted through. “You lost ‘em, Jacky,” he said wonderingly. “By God, you left ‘em behind.”

“Grew up… on a river,” Jacky panted after a while. “Handy… with boats.” After a few more moments of panting, and pushing back sweat-damp hair, Jacky went on, “I thought the Spoonsize Boys were a myth.”

Doyle knew that Jacky must be referring to the little eggshell mariners. “You’ve heard of them?”

“Oh, sure, there’s even a song about ‘em. ‘And the Spoonsize Boys steal the dollhouse toys when the cat by the fire is curled, then away they floats in their eggshell boats down the drains to the underground world.’ Goes on and on, blaming all sorts of things on ‘em. People say Horrabin made the creatures—and the things certainly seemed to be obeying him tonight, marking your location all the time. They say he made a bargain with the devil to learn how.”

Doyle’s eyes widened as a thought struck him. “Did you ever see his Punch show?”

“Of course. He is damned clev—oh! Yes… yes, I daresay you’re right. Good God. But the Punch puppets are bigger.”

“The pocketsize boys.”

“And here I was admiring his puppet-working skill.” Jacky picked up the oar and began rowing again. “Better keep moving—he wants you badly.”

“The way everybody was shooting at me—us—it looked like they just wanted me dead. You saved my life, Jacky. How’s your leg?”

“Oh, it stings, but it just tore across the surface. He shot at me three times while you were underwater and I was throwing the net over your little escorts. First time in my life I’ve been shot at. Don’t like it.”

Doyle was shivering. “I don’t like it either. Horrabin’s shot missed my eye by maybe an inch.”

“Well… that’s why I had to row out and get you. You see, it wasn’t Horrabin that shot at you. He knew who you were. It was me.”

Doyle’s first impulse was to get angry, but the sight of Jacky’s wound extinguished it. “Who did you—and Doctor Romany, I guess—think I was?”

Jacky rowed in silence for a few moments, then answered reluctantly, “I guess at this point you’ve earned the right to hear the story. We thought you were a man known as Dog-Face Joe. He—”

“Dog-Face Joe? The murderer who’s supposed to be a werewolf?” He could see Jacky’s eyes widen in surprise. “Who could have told you about him?”

“Oh, I’m just a good listener. So what have you or Romany got against him?”

“He killed a friend of mine. Hell. He—he tricked me into killing a friend of mine. He—I’ve never… talked to anyone about this, Doyle. Not this part of it. God damn it all anyway. You’ve read Colin Lepovre’s poetry—well, Colin was … a close friend, and… do you know how Dog-Face Joe stays alive?”

“I heard he could switch bodies with people.”

“You do know lots more than you let on, Doyle. I wouldn’t have thought there were a half-dozen people in London who knew that. Yes, that’s what he does. I don’t know how, but he can switch with anyone he can manage to spend some time with. And he has to do it fairly frequently, because as soon as he gets into a new body it starts to grow fur… all over it. So after a few days it’s a choice of shave his whole body or go find a fresh one.” Jacky took a deep breath. “Last year he took Colin’s. I think Dog-Face Joe must have poisoned the old body just before he left it. Colin came to me, evidently in great pain”—Jacky’s voice was clearly being controlled only with great effort, and though he was staring toward the dome of St. Paul’s, Doyle could see peripherally the sheen of tears on the youthful cheek—”and it was in the middle of the night. I was in my parents’ house, reading, when he opened the door and hurried toward me, groaning like, I don’t know, a big dog or something, and he was bleeding terribly from the mouth. Damn it, Doyle, he was in the cast-off body, the one Joe had just vacated, and it was covered with fur, like an ape! You understand me? In the middle of the goddamn night! How was I to … possibly… know it was Colin? God damn it to hell?”

“Jacky,” said Doyle helplessly, baffled by the impossible story but recognizing genuine suffering. “You couldn’t have known.”

London Bridge was less than half a mile ahead, and Doyle could see the hulks of grounded coal barges on the Surrey-side shore to his right. Jacky began angling in that direction. “There was a gun,” Jacky went on in a flat voice, “a flintlock pistol—that’s it there, by your foot—it was on the mantle, and when this furry thing came rushing into the house, I leaped up, grabbed the pistol and fired right into its chest. The thing dropped, bleeding all over the place. I went and stood over it, not too close, and it… looked at me for a moment before it sort of shuddered a few times and went limp. There was a mess. But when it looked at me I recognized him—I knew it was Colin. The color of the eyes was different, of course, but I recognized the… not expression, exactly… I recognized him in there.” Past the easternmost of the barges was a pier below a lighted house, and Jacky seemed to be heading for it. The glow from the narrow windows glittered warm gold on the oily black water. “After that I just slept through two weeks. Nobody else could—day and night I was screaming, throwing food and jabbering obscenities so foul that my innocent mother didn’t even understand most of them… but I was asleep. And after I came out of it I set out to kill Dog-Face Joe with the same gun that killed—with which I killed—Colin.” Jacky grinned sourly. “Follow all that?”

“Yes.” Doyle wondered how much of this Lovecraftian fantasy could be true—perhaps one of the mysterious Dancing Ape creatures had broken into Jacky’s house at roughly the same time that Lepovre decided to hit the road—and he wondered too whether he was correct in suspecting that this was more than grief for the death of a close friend. Could his first suspicions about Jacky have been correct? “It’s trite to say, Jacky, but I mean it—I’m sorry.”

“Thanks.” Jacky had been slowing the canoe by dragging the oar in the water, and now it slid, hardly moving at all, alongside the pier, and Jacky stopped it by grabbing a rope dangling between the pilings and hanging onto it when the canoe’s weight came onto her arm. “Pull your end around there, Doyle—there’s a ladder that starts about four feet over your head.”

When they’d both climbed up to the narrow pier, Jacky said, “Now we’ve got to figure out what to do with you. You can’t come back to Copenhagen Jack’s house—Horrabin will have a dozen spies there watching for you.” They were walking slowly toward the building, which seemed to be some kind of riverfront inn, and Jacky, feet bare, was picking her way carefully over the ragged old timbers. “When does this friend of yours arrive in town? What’s his name, Ashbin?”

“Ashbless. I’ll meet him this Tuesday.”

“Well, the innkeeper here, old Kusiak, has a stable off to the side, and he’s always needing help. Can you shovel horse dung?”

“If there are people who can’t, I’d hate to think I was one of them.”

Jacky pulled open the inn’s dockside door and they stepped into a small room with a fireplace, and Doyle hurried over to it. A girl in an apron appeared, and her welcoming smile faltered a little when she noticed that both guests had evidently fallen into the river, and one was still dripping wet.

“It’s all right, miss,” Jacky said, “we won’t sit on the chairs. Would you tell Kusiak, please, that it’s Jacky from across the river, and a friend, and we’d like two hot baths—in individual private rooms—”

Doyle grinned. Modest little chap, this Jacky.

“—And some clean dry clothes, it doesn’t much matter what sort,” Jacky went on. “And after that two pots of your excellent fish chowder in the dining room. Oh, and some hot coffee with rum in it while we wait.”

The girl nodded and hurried away to check all this with the innkeeper.

Jacky squatted down beside Doyle at the fireplace. “You’re pretty sure this Ashbin character will get you set up in some decent sort of position?”

Doyle wasn’t sure, and was trying to convince himself more than Jacky when he said, a little defensively, “He’s not hurting for money, I believe. And I do know him pretty damn well.”

And he’s got friends and influence, Doyle added to himself, and he might just be able to get me an audience—in enforced immunity!—with old Romany, in which we could bargain on my terms: I’ll let him have certain harmless bits of information—or even outright lies; yes, that would be safer—in exchange for a gap location. If I could have the right sort of friends waiting outside the tent he wouldn’t dare do any more things like his cigar in the eye trick. And it would take me months, or years, to build up that kind of influence unaided, and Darrow said the gaps decrease in frequency after 1802, and in any case I don’t think I have months—this cough was already killing me before tonight’s swim. It may now choose to develop into real pneumonia. I’ve got to get back, soon, to where there are hospitals.

Also, Doyle wanted to interview Ashbless in detail about his early years and then stash the information somewhere where it wouldn’t be disturbed until he could “discover” it when he got back to 1983. Schliemann and Troy, he thought fatuously, George Smith and Gilgamesh, Doyle and the Ashbless Documents.

“Well, good luck with him,” said Jacky. “Maybe next month at this time you’ll have a job at the Exchange and rooms in St. James. And you’ll hardly remember your days as a beggar and a stablehand—” She smiled. “Oh yes, and your morning as a less than successful costermonger… what else have you done?”

The rum-laced coffee arrived then; and the girl’s smile, and her assurances that their baths were being drawn even now, showed that Kusiak had acknowledged Jacky as a good credit risk. Doyle sipped his coffee gratefully. “Nothing much,” he answered.

The structure known throughout the St. Giles rookery as Rat’s Castle had been constructed on the foundations and around the remains of a hospital built in the twelfth century; the hospital’s bell-tower still survived, but over the centuries the various owners of the site had, largely for warehousing purposes, steadily added new floors and walls around it, until now its arched Norman windows looked, instead of out across the city, into narrow rooms fronted right up against them and moored to the ancient stone; the cap of the tower was the only bit of the structure still exposed to the open air, and it would have been hard to find in the rooftop wilderness of chimney pots, airshafts and wildly uneven architecture.

The bellropes had rotted away centuries ago, and the pulleys plummeted to the floor to be carted away as scrap metal, but the ancient cross timbers still spanned the shaft, and new ropes had been looped over these in order to hoist Horrabin and Doctor Romany some fifty feet off the floor, roughly three-quarters of the way up the enclosed tower. Since it allowed them to converse at a comfortable distance from the ground, it was their preferred conference chamber. Oil lamps had been set on the sills of the old stone windows at the very top, and Damnable Richard attended this evening’s council, sitting on the sill of a window one level down from the lamps, which put him only a foot or two above the heads of the dangling chiefs.

“I have no idea who those two men were, your Honor,” Horrabin was saying, and his already weird voice echoed with a sort of nightmare ululation in the stone shaft. “They were certainly none of my crew.”

“And they really did mean to kill him?”

“Oh, yes. Dennessen says when he knocked the second man off our American he had already stabbed him once, and was cocking another thrust.”

Doctor Romany swung meditatively for a few moments back and forth, kicking off gently from the concave stonework. “I can’t understand who they could be. Someone working against me, obviously, who either already knows what the American has to tell … or simply doesn’t want me to learn any of it. It couldn’t be the people he came with, because I saw them all disappear when the gate ceased to exist, and I’ve monitored all gates since and nobody has come through them. And the Antaeus Brotherhood hasn’t been a threat to us for more than a century, I gather.”

“They’re a bunch of old men,” Horrabin agreed, “who have forgotten the original purpose of their organization.”

“Well, tell your man Dennessen that if he could recognize the man who tried to kill the American, and bring that man to me alive, the reward will be the same as if he’d killed Dog-Face Joe.” He flapped his arms to stop swinging. “The bearded man who shot at the American and then picked him up may be of the same group. You say you recognized the daring canoeist?”

“I believe so, yer Worship. He wasn’t wearing his usual turban, but it looked like a beggar who sometimes hangs around here, called Ahmed. A fake Hindoo. I’ve got an order and reward out now for his capture.”

“Good. We’ll wring the story out of one of these birds, Set willing, even if we have to peel him down to nothing but lungs and a tongue and a brain.”

Damnable Richard carefully reached for his wooden monkey, whom he’d set on the window ledge so as to be able to see the prodigy of two sorcerers hung up like hams in a smokehouse, and put his thumb and forefinger over its ears, for savage talk tended to upset it. And Richard himself wasn’t pleased. He’d been in town for a full week now, confined to Rat’s Castle and the hall under Bainbridge Street, while Doctor Romany at least got to travel around in order to be at each gate when it appeared, which involved going out into the country a good deal of the time.

“I can’t help thinking—wondering whether—this interference may be prompted by my… partner’s efforts in Turkey,” said Doctor Romany.

“But nobody knows what they are,” pointed out Horrabin. He added more softly, “Even I know only that your twin brother has found a young British lord, sojourning abroad alone, who you two seem to think you can make some use of. It seems to me I should be more fully acquainted with your plans.”

Romany seemed not to have heard him. He said thoughtfully, “I don’t believe there’s been any breach of secrecy at this end, simply because I’m the only one that knows anything important. But I don’t know much about what may be going on at Doctor Romanelli’s end of things, back in Turkey; I understand this young lord is fond of writing letters. I just hope my… brother hasn’t allowed some unobtrusively important bit of information to find its way, in one of these letters, to certain people in this island.”

Horrabin looked surprised. “Where’d you say this troublesome young peer is?”

“A few days out of Athens, obediently heading back up the Gulf of Corinth to Patras; for some reason milord is very vulnerable psychically when he’s in that little area: Patras, the Gulf of Patras, Missolonghi. So when he was last there, in July, Romanelli had the imperial consul, an employee of his, put milord to sleep by having him concentrate on the operation of a musical clock, and while he was asleep my brother placed a command in milord’s mind, under the thinking level so he wouldn’t be aware of it—a command to return to Patras in mid-September, by which time things should be warmed up here so that everything will come to a boil at once. And his lordship is even now carrying out the order, blithely supposing that the decision to return to Patras is his own.”

Horrabin was nodding impatiently. “The reason I asked was, well, for a letter of his to have incited trouble here, it would have to have been sent… when? Months ago, I should think. Aren’t there about a dozen wars going on between here and there? So even if he’d written to somebody right at first, in July, there hasn’t been time for the letter to arrive here and for somebody here to find out who you are and what you want.”

Romany raised his eyebrows and nodded. “You’re right—I hadn’t considered the slow pace of international mail these days.” He frowned. “Then who in hell were those men, and why are they interfering with me? “

“I couldn’t say,” answered the clown, slowly stretching and bending his limbs like some sort of huge, painted spider. Damnable Richard covered his monkey’s eyes. “But,” added Horrabin, “they’re interfering with me too. Four dozen of my tiniest homunculi were drowned out there tonight by that bloody Hindoo. You need to make your Master in Cairo send more of that stuff—what’s it called?”

“Paut,” said Doctor Romany. “That’s damned hard stuff to produce nowadays, magic being as strangled as it is.” He shook his head dubiously.

Horrabin’s painted face clenched in what was probably a scowl, but he continued his slow exercises. “I need it—to work for you I need it—to make more homunculi,” he said evenly. “Dwarves and such I can warp down from human stock, but for boys that can overhear conversations while hidden in a teacup, follow a man by crouching in a fold of his hat,” the clown’s voice was rising, “sneak into a bank through the drains and replace good gold sovereigns with your gypsy fakes—” and he tilted over so that his head was near Romany and his legs pointed away, and he added, in a whisper, “or if you want some lads that can enter a monarch’s chamber concealed in a nurse’s dress, and put mind-rot drugs in his soup without being seen, and then, dressed up as anything from bugs to the twelve apostles, do dances on a table top out of his reach, just to give his ravings added color—for work like that you need my Spoonsize Boys.”

“We won’t have to do that very much longer, if things work out as planned in Patras,” said Romany quietly. “But your creatures have their uses, I admit. I’ll explain the situation to my Master, and let you know tomorrow what he says.”

“You communicate by means of something faster than the mail,” observed Horrabin, his orange eyebrows inquiringly raised halfway to his hat.

“Oh yes,” said Romany with a deprecatory shrug. “By sorcerous means my colleagues and I can converse directly at any time, across any distance, and even send objects through space instantly. Such perfect communication ensures that our stroke, when we deal it, will be flawlessly aimed, timed and coordinated—unanswerable.” He permitted himself a smile. “In our hand is the King of Sorcerers, and that beats any of the cards John Bull may have in his hand.”

Damnable Richard looked at his monkey and rolled his eyes and shook his head. What a crock, eh, monkey? he thought. He just doesn’t want this terrible clown to know how much he needs him. How many times, monkey, have you and I seen him shouting at that silly candle of his with Egypt-writing on it, and after a couple of hours just get a faint voice saying, “What? What?” coming out of the round flame… and how about the times he’s tried to send or get objects from his pals in the far off lands? Remember the time his Master tried to send him a little statue, and all that showed up was a handful of red hot gravel? Hah! This to sorcery!

He spat disgustedly, earning an angry yell from Doctor Romany. “Sorry, rya,” Richard said hastily. He scowled at the monkey. Don’t start me chatting with you, he told it. You see what you did? Got me in trouble.

“In any case,” Doctor Romany went on, wiping the top of his bald head, “we flushed the American out of cover, and I want a serious search for him tonight, while he’s still running scared. Now the three of us here—are you paying attention, Richard? Very well—the three of us here know him by sight, so each of us should lead a search party. Horrabin, you’ll mobilize your wretches and search the area from St. Martin’s Lane to St. Paul’s Cathedral—and check with all lodging house owners; look into pubs; eye closely all beggars. Richard, you will lead a search of the south shore, from Blackfriars Bridge to past the granaries below Wapping. I’ll take some of my dockside boys southeast from St. Paul’s through the Clare Market rookery and the Tower and Docks and Whitechapel area. Frankly, that’s where I expect to find him; he’ll have made friends on the north side of the river, and when we last saw him he was being carried east, away from the area you’ll have, Horrabin.”

Two hours after dawn Damnable Richard trudged back up the stairs, stepping softly, for he believed the wooden monkey in his pocket was asleep. When he wearily took his place in the window the two sorcerers were already dangling from their ropes, though Doctor Romany was swinging back and forth as if only recently drawn up.

“I presume,” said the gypsy chief, turning up toward him a face haggard with exhaustion, “that you had no better luck on the Surrey-side than we did on the north.”

“Kek, rya.”

“Means no,” Romany told Horrabin.

There was a large stone missing from the tower’s dome, and as the spot of bright sunlight slid by slow inches down the sunlit wall, and the costermongers in Holborn Street could be faintly heard shouting the virtues of their vegetables, the two sorcerers discussed strategies, and Damnable Richard had tucked his awakened monkey into his shirt collar and was having a long talk with it in the faintest of whispers.

CHAPTER 6

Tuesday morning, two days later, was overcast and threatening rain—but in the coffee houses around the Royal Exchange the brokers and auctioneers were conducting business as vigorously as ever. Doyle, stupefied by hunger and lack of sleep, sat in a corner of the Jamaica Coffee House and watched a dozen merchants bidding for a shipment of tobacco salvaged from some ship that had managed to founder in the Thames; the auction was by Inch of Candle, whereby the last bid made before a short candle went out was the one taken, and the candle was now very low and the bidding quick and loud. Doyle took another sip of his lukewarm coffee, forcing himself to take only a small one, for if he finished it he’d have to buy another to keep his table, and the purchase of his present set of clothes—brown trousers and jacket, a white shirt and black boots, all secondhand but clean and whole—had left him only a shilling, and he wanted to be able to buy Ashbless a cup of coffee when he arrived.

His shoulder burned with a hot ache, and he was afraid the brandy with which he’d soaked his bandage hadn’t killed the infection in the knife cut. I should just have drunk the brandy, he reflected. His eyes were watering and his nose tingled, but it seemed his body had forgotten how to sneeze. Hurry up, William, he thought. Your biographer is evidently dying. He hunched around to glance at the clock on the wall—twenty minutes after ten. Ashbless was due in ten minutes.

At least I made it to here and now alive, he told himself. There were moments when it looked like I wouldn’t. Knifed, shot at and nearly drowned on Saturday evening, and then captured by that gypsy later that night.

He smiled a little bewilderedly into his coffee as he remembered the encounter. He’d thanked Jacky and bidden the boy farewell—having agreed to meet at high noon on Friday at the middle of London Bridge—and was being introduced to Kusiak’s stable boss when the gypsy had hurried in, demanding to exchange three spent horses for three fresh ones. The stable boss had initially refused, but reconsidered when the gypsy impatiently produced a handful of gold sovereigns from a pouch and offered to throw them in. Doyle’s idle interest had turned to hollow-bellied fear when he recognized the man—this was the same gypsy that had watched with no sympathy when Doctor Romany had tortured him a week ago; Doyle quietly stepped back out of the circle of lamplight and turned to leave, but by the time he got to the side door the recognition had become mutual. Doyle ran down an alley and then dashed east along a sidewalk toward London Bridge, but the old gypsy was faster, and the running footsteps behind Doyle sounded louder and louder until a hand had clamped on his collar and he’d been thrown to the ground.

“Speak the first word of any spell, dog of the Beng, and I’ll bounce your head off this pavement,” the gypsy had said, crouching over him and hardly panting at all.

“Go ahead,” Doyle had gasped. “Christ, why can’t you people leave me alone?” He slowly got his breath back. “And if I knew any spells do you think I’d have run from you? Hell no, I’d have conjured up some damn kind of… winged chariot or something. And changed you into a pile of horse dung so I’d have had the pleasure of shovelling you onto a manure cart.”

To Doyle’s surprise the gypsy had grinned. “Hear that, monkey? Man wants to turn us to horse manure. Most of these magical chals try to turn things to gold, but old Wheezy here thinks small.” He’d yanked Doyle to his feet. “Come on now, Bengo, there’s a man wants to talk to you.”

A couple of people were leaning out of a back door Doyle had fled past, and one called an angry question, so the old gypsy had led him down a street away from the river and then turned right again so that they were approaching Kusiak’s front entrance. Doyle was walking ahead.

When they were passing the open door of a public house two buildings away from Kusiak’s, Doyle stopped. “If you’re taking me back to that lunatic who tried to burn my eye out last time,” Doyle said, a little unsteadily, “then I need two beers first. At least two. And since you’ve got all that gold, sport, you can buy ‘em.”

There was silence behind him for a moment, then the gypsy said, “It’s a kushto idea. Adree we go.”

They entered and walked through the high-ceilinged room where the bar was, to a smaller chamber two steps up where a lot of tables were set randomly across the wood floor. The gypsy rolled his dark eyes toward a table in the corner, and Doyle nodded and crossed to it and, sitting down, warmed his hands over the candle that sat on it.

When a girl had appeared and taken their order—beer for Doyle, wine for the gypsy—Doyle’s captor said, “They call me Damnable Richard.”

“Oh? Well, pleased to—no. Uh, I’m Brendan Doyle.”

“And this is my partner,” the gypsy said, pulling from his pocket a monkey carved out of wood. Doyle remembered seeing Richard with it last Saturday night. “Monkey, this is Doyle. Doyle is the gorgio the rya has been so anxious to find, and the rya will be very pleased with us for netting him.” He smiled quite cheerfully at Doyle. “And this time we’ll take you to someplace where there are no prastamengros to hear you yell.”

“Listen, uh. Damnable,” said Doyle with quiet urgency, “if you’ll pretend you didn’t catch me, I’ll make you a rich man. I give you my word—” He rocked violently back in his seat then, for the gypsy had moved as fast as a striking mousetrap and rapped a knuckle hard against the bridge of Doyle’s nose.

“You gorgios all think the Romany, the gypsies, are stupid,” Richard remarked.

The wine and beer arrived at this point, and Doyle made the girl wait while he finished his beer in two long, laboring, throat-burning drafts, and then gasped out an order for another pint.

Richard was staring at him. “I guess it’s no harm if I bring you to him drunk.” He looked after the girl wistfully, “A bit of cool beer would sit well after all that running.” He sipped his wine without enthusiasm.

“It’s not bad. Have some.”

“No—beer was my Bessie’s favorite drink, and since she mullered I’ve not had a drop of it.” He drained the wine in one long gulp, shuddered, and then when the girl brought Doyle’s second beer he ordered another glass of wine.

Doyle gulped some more beer and pondered this. “My Rebecca,” he said carefully, “loved nearly every kind of liquor, and since she … mullered, I’ve drunk enough for the two of us. At least.”

Richard pondered this, frowning, for a few moments, then nodded. “It’s the same idea,” he pronounced.

“It’s to keep them from being forgotten.”

When the girl came to their table this time she demanded some money, got it, and then left a pitcher and a bottle on the table. The two men thoughtfully filled their glasses. “Here’s to dead ladies,” said Damnable Richard.

Doyle raised his glass. There was a moment of silent gulping, and then both glasses bumped back down on the table empty. They were ceremoniously refilled.

“How long ago… did Bessie die?” asked Doyle.

Richard drank half his glassful before answering. “Seventeen years ago,” he said quietly. “She was thrown from a horse near Crofton Wood. She was always kushto with horses but we were running at night from prastamengros and her horse put his foot in a hole. The fall… just… broke her head.”

Doyle refilled his own glass and then reached across to the wine bottle and refilled the gypsy’s. “Here’s to dead ladies,” Doyle said softly. Again they drained the glasses and refilled them.

Doyle found that he could still speak clearly if he spoke slowly and chose his words as carefully as a golfer selecting the right iron to use for a difficult stroke. “Rebecca also had her head broken,” he told the gypsy. “In spite of the helmet—the helmet broke too—she hit a freeway pillar head-first. I was riding, she was behind.” The gypsy nodded sympathetically. “We were on an old 450 Honda, and the streets were too wet to ride on if you were carrying a passenger. I even knew that then, but we were in a hurry and, hell, she had on a helmet, and I’d been riding bikes for years. I was changing lanes, ‘cause when you get onto the Santa Ana Freeway from Beach Boulevard you wind up in the fast lane, and I wanted to get to a slower one; and as I leaned it to the right and went across those lane divider bumps I felt the bike… shift sideways. Horrible sensation, like an earthquake, you know? A … deadly and unexpected motion. And the old 450’s were top-heavy anyway, with those overhead cams, and it—just—went—down.” He swallowed a massive gulp of beer. “Rebecca tumbled off to the right and I slid on straight ahead. Burned my leather jacket paper-thin on the pavement—if it had been dry it would have sanded me down to the bare ribs. The cars all managed to stop without running over me, and I got to my feet and hopped back—I’d broken my ankle, among other things—back to where she was. Her… head was—”

He was pulled out of his memories by the clink of the pitcher-lip on the rim of his glass. “No need to say it,” said Richard, lifting the pitcher away when the glass was full again. “I too saw what you saw.” He raised his own glass. “Here’s to Rebecca and Bessie.”

“May they rest in peace,” said Doyle.

When the glasses had clunked to the table again Damnable Richard stared hard at Doyle. “You’re not a sorcerer, are you?”

“God, I wish I was.”

“Somebody you were with must have been, though—I saw the two carriages disappear from that field like fleas from the back of your hand.”

Doyle nodded morosely. “Yes. Left without me.”

The gypsy got to his feet and threw a sovereign onto the table. “Take that,” he said. “I’ll tell them I took off chasing a chal that I thought was you, and knocked him down, but it was the wrong man and I had to buy him a drink to keep him from going to the prastamengros.” He turned to leave.

“You’re—” Doyle blurted. The gypsy paused and gave him an unreadable stare. “You’re letting me go? After only having a drink with me?” He knew he should just shut up, but he felt he couldn’t live with this mystery. “Did you think my offer to make you rich was a bluff?”

“It’s you gorgios that are stupid,” said Damnable Richard. He smiled, turned and walked out of the room.

The candle flickered out in a puddle of melted wax—the auction was over. The winner stood up to deal with the paperwork, looking a little more surprised than pleased that his last bid had been the last of all. Doyle glanced at the clock, and felt a tiny cold quiver in his chest—it was thirty-five minutes after ten. His glance darted around the room, but there was no giant blond man present, with or without the fierce beard Ashbless was evidently never without. Damn it, Doyle thought; the son of a bitch is late. Could I have missed him during the last few minutes? No, he’s not supposed to just duck in and out; he’s supposed to sit down and write the damned “Twelve Hours of the Night.” That’s what, a couple of hundred lines long?

His face was hot and his mouth tasted feverish. Reasoning that he must at all costs keep from passing out here, he ordered a pint of stout for two precious pennies. When it arrived the clock said twenty minutes of eleven, and though he tried to drink it slowly, as befitted a restorative, when the clock pinged the third quarter-hour his glass was empty, and he could feel the alcohol pressing outward against the walls of his skull—for he hadn’t eaten in twenty-four hours—and Ashbless still hadn’t arrived. Get hold of yourself, he thought. Coffee, no more beer. So he’s a little late; the accounts of his arrival were more than a century old when you read them—and those were based on Ashbless’ recollections, as recorded by Bailey in the 1830s. A bit of inaccuracy is hardly surprising. It might very well have been eleven-thirty actually. It has to have been eleven-thirty. He settled down to wait. Three carefully nursed cups of coffee later the clock bonged eleven-thirty and there had been no sign of William Ashbless. The stock and shipping business continued to be lively, and at one point a portly gentleman who’d sold a Bahamian plantation at a tremendous profit ordered up a glass of rum for everyone present, and Doyle gratefully poured the stuff down his feverish throat. And he began to get angry.

This really did, it seemed to him, show a carelessness on the poet’s part, a lack of regard for his readers. Arrogant—to claim he’d been here at ten-thirty when actually he hadn’t bothered to arrive until at least… let’s see—getting on for noon. What does he care if he’s kept people waiting? thought Doyle blurrily. He’s a famous poet, a friend of Coleridge and Byron. Doyle visualized him in his mind, and fever and exhaustion gave the picture an almost hallucinatory clarity—the broad shoulders, the craggy face lion-maned and Viking-bearded. Before, that face had seemed, like Hemingway’s, basically humorous and sociable in a hard-bitten way, but now it only looked cruel and unapproachable. He’s probably outside, Doyle thought, waiting for me to drop dead before he’ll condescend to come in and write his damn poem.

An idea struck him, and he stopped a boy and asked him for a pencil and some sheets of paper. And when it arrived he began to write out, from memory, the entire text of “The Twelve Hours of the Night.” In composing the original PMLA article on Ashbless’ work, and later while writing the biography, he had read the poem hundreds of times, and in spite of his sick dizziness he had no difficulty in remembering every word. By twelve-thirty he was scribbling the somewhat awkward final eight lines.

He whispered,

There, he thought, letting the pencil clatter to the table. Now when the bastard finally gets around to keeping his historical appointments I’ll just hand him this—and I’ll say, If you’re curious about this, Mr. William Hell-of-a-fellow Ashbless, I can be reached at Kusiak’s, Fickling Lane, Southwark. Ho ho.

He folded up the sheets of paper and sat back smugly, content now to wait.

When the gargling screams started, Jacky broke into a run down the narrow alley toward Kenyon Court, the old flintlock in her shoulder pouch bouncing painfully against her left shoulder blade. She swore, for it certainly sounded like she was too late. Just as she burst out of the alley into the littered court a gunshot echoed between the dilapidated buildings.

“Damn it,” she panted. Under the ragged curtain of her bangs her eyes darted this way and that, trying to spot anyone—from a toddler to an old woman—leaving the court, especially with a too nonchalant air; but the entire population of the area seemed to be hurrying toward the house from which the shot had sounded, and shouting questions to the people that lived there, and cupping their faces against the dust-frosted windows.

Jacky sprinted, ducked and elbowed her way nimbly through the noisy crowd to the house’s front door, and just pressed down the latch, swung the door open and stepped inside. She shut the door behind her and shot the bolt.

“And just who the bloody hell are you?” came a voice with more than a hint of hysteria in it. A heavy-set man in a brewer’s apron stood on the first landing of the stairway on the other side of the front room. The smoking gun in his right hand seemed to be something he hadn’t noticed yet, like a fleck of mustard on one’s moustache, and right now it only served as a weight, keeping that hand from flying about in aimless gestures as the left was doing.

“I know what you just killed,” Jacky panted, her voice urgent. “I’ve killed one myself. But never mind that for now. Are any people, any members of your family, not here? Did anyone leave the house in the last few minutes?”

“What? There’s a goddamn ape upstairs! I just shot it! My God! None of my family are at home, thank all the saints! My wife will go mad. I may go mad.”

“Very well, what was… the ape doing? When you shot it?”

“Was it yours? You son of a bitch, I’ll have you clapped in jail for letting that thing run wild!” He began clumping down the stairs.

“No, it wasn’t mine,” Jacky said loudly, “but I’ve seen another like it. What was it doing?”

The man waved with both hands, clanking the gun against the wall. “It was—Jesus!—screaming like somebody on fire, and spitting pints of blood out of its mouth, and trying to crawl into my son Kenny’s bed. Damn me, it’s still there—the mattress will be—”

“Where is Kenny right now?” Jacky interrupted.

“Oh, he won’t be home for hours yet. I’ll have to—”

“God damn it, where’s Kenny?” Jacky shouted. “He’s in terrible danger!”

The man gaped at her. “Are the apes after Kenny? I knew something like this would happen.”

Seeing Jacky open her mouth for another outburst, he said hastily, “At the Barking Ahab, around the corner in the Minories.”

As Jacky sped out the door and ran back toward the alley she thought, you poor bastard, it’s a blessing you’ll never find out that it was probably your Kenny you shot, as, crowbarred into an unfamiliar and fur-covered and poisoned body, he tried to crawl into his bed.

The Minories was blocked by a line of wagons carrying bales of clothing from the Old Clothes Exchange in Cutler Street toward London Dock, and Jacky ran to the nearest one, scrambled up the sideboards and from this vantage point looked up and down the street. There it was—a swinging sign with an Old Testament-looking man painted on it, his head tilted back and his mouth an O. She swung down from the wagon just as the driver behind was beginning to shout about thieves, and she made a beeline for the Barking Ahab.

Though the door was open and a breeze fluttered the smoke-yellowed curtains in the windows, the place smelled strongly of cheap gin and malty beer. The owner looked up irritably from behind the counter when Jacky came clattering and panting in, but changed his expression to a doubtful smile when the pop-eyed, out-of-breath newcomer slapped a half-crown onto the polished wood.

“There’s a lad named Kenny drinking here?” Jacky gasped. “Lives over in Kenyon Court.” Be here, Joe, she thought. Don’t have left yet.

A voice sounded from a table behind her. “You a Charlie, Jack?”

She turned and looked at the four poorly dressed young men around the table. “Do I look like a Charlie, mate? This isn’t a law matter—his father’s in some trouble, and sent me after him.”

“Oh. Well, maybe Kenny heard of it; he got up and dashed out of here five minutes ago like he’d remembered something left on the fire.”

“Aye,” said another, “I was just coming in, and he shoved by me without a glance, much less a ‘hullo’ for a chap he’s been pals with nigh a decade.”

Jacky sagged. “Five minutes ago?” He could be half a mile away by now, she thought, in any direction, and I could never get a good enough description of Kenny to be sure of him even if I found him. And even if I was sure I’d found him, I couldn’t shoot him just because I’m almost certain that Kenny was shot in his own bed, and that his body is now occupied by old Dog-Face Joe. I’d have to question him, trick him, somehow get him to betray himself. Maybe once I could have killed him on the almost certainty, but not anymore—not after having almost punched a hole through the skull of poor old Doyle.

She got a fair description of Kenny anyway—short, fat, red hair—and then left the place. Well, that’s what he’ll look like for the next week or two, she thought. Judging by the areas where the “apes” have tended to show up, he likes the East End—probably because disappearances are not uncommon here, and it’s easier to evade pursuit among the mazy alleys and courts and rooftop bridges of the rookeries, and any crazy stories coming out of the area would be more likely to be discounted as products of drink, opium or lunacy—so for the next couple of weeks I’ll search the low lodging houses of Whitechapel and Shoreditch and Goodman’s Fields for a short, fat, red-haired young man who’ll have no close friends, be a bit simple-minded and talk about immortality to anybody who’ll listen, and maybe need a shave on his forehead and hands—for evidently the thick fur begins to grow all over a body as soon as he gets into it. I wonder what sort of creature he is, she thought, and where he came from.

She shuddered, and slouched away east toward a public house she knew of in Crutchedfriars Road where she could sit quietly over a double brandy for a while—for this had been the closest she’d ever come to her prey, and the ravings of poor Kenny’s father had vividly brought to mind her own encounter with one of Dog-Face Joe’s cast-off bodies. This one was bleeding from the mouth too, she noted. I wonder if they all do, and if so, why. She stopped, suddenly pale.

Well of course, she told herself. Old Joe wouldn’t want the person he shoves into his discarded body to be able to say anything before the poison finishes him. Before he… exits a body he must, in addition to drinking a fatal dose of poison, chew up his tongue to the extent that the new tenant won’t be able to speak with it…

Jacky, who had read and admired Mary Wollstonecraft, and despised the fashion of fluttery helplessness in women, felt, to her own annoyance, close to fainting.

The Jamaica Coffee House closed at five o’clock, and Doyle found himself ordered out onto the pavement, and not very politely. He shuffled aimlessly out of the alley and stood for a while on the Threadneedle Street sidewalk, staring absently at the impressive facade of the Bank of England across the still-crowded street, the manuscript pages flapping forgotten in his hand.

Ashbless had not appeared.

A hundred times during the long day Doyle had mentally reviewed the historical sources of his certainty that Ashbless would arrive: the Bailey biography clearly stated that it was the Jamaica Coffee House, at ten-thirty in the morning, Tuesday the eleventh of September 1810—but of course the Bailey biography was based on Ashbless’ years-old recollections; but Ashbless submitted the poem to the Courier in early October, and Doyle had not only read but actually handled the cover letter. “I wrote ‘The Twelve Hours of the Night’ on Tuesday the Eleventh of last month,” Ashbless had written, “at the Jamaica off Exchange Alley, and the Motif was occasioned by my recent long voyage…” Damn it, Doyle thought, he might have remembered the date incorrectly ten or twenty years later, but he could hardly have been mistaken after less than a month! Especially when he was so precise about the day and the date!

A portly little red-haired fellow was staring at him from the corner by the Royal Exchange, so Doyle, having developed a wariness of the scrutiny of strangers, walked purposefully away east, toward Gracechurch Street, which would lead him down to London Bridge and across the river to Kusiak’s.

Could Ashbless have been intentionally lying? But why on earth should he want to? Doyle looked furtively behind, but the red-haired lad wasn’t following him. You’d better relax, he told himself—every time somebody looks at you directly you assume it’s one of Horrabin’s beggar agents. Well, he thought, resuming the puzzle, the next event I think I’m sure of in the Ashbless chronology is that he’s seen to shoot one of the Dancing Apes in one of the Exchange Alley coffee houses on Saturday the twenty-second of this month. But I can’t wait a week and a half. I’d be too far gone with pneumonia to benefit from even twentieth century medicine, probably. I’ll have to—God help me!—approach Doctor Romany. The thought made him feel sick. Maybe if I, I don’t know, strap a pistol around my neck, and keep my finger near the trigger, and tell him, “We bargain or I’ll blow my own head off, and you won’t learn one thing… ” Would he dare to call my bluff? Would I dare let it be a bluff?

He was passing a narrow street off Aldgate, and somebody crossing one of the rooftop bridges was whistling. Doyle slowed to listen. It was a familiar tune, and so melancholy and nostalgic that it almost seemed chosen as a fitting accompaniment for his lonely evening walk. What the hell is the name of that, he wondered absently as he walked on. Not Greensleeves, not Londonderry Air …

He froze and his eyes widened in shock. It was Yesterday, the Beatles song by John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

For a moment he just stood there, stunned, like Robinson Crusoe staring at the footprint in the sand.

Then he was running back. “Hey!” he yelled when he was below the little bridge, though there was nobody on it now. “Hey, come back! I’m from the twentieth century too!” A couple of passersby were giving him the warily entertained look people save for street lunatics, but nobody peered down from the rooftop level. “Damn it,” Doyle yelled despairingly, “Coca Cola, Clint Eastwood, Cadillac!”

He ran into the building and blundered his way upstairs and even managed to find and open the roof door, but there was no one in sight up there. He crossed the little bridge and then descended through the other building, panting, but singing Yesterday as loudly as he could, and shouting the lyrics down all cross corridors. He drew many complaints but didn’t get anyone who seemed to know what the song was.

“I’ll give you a place to hide away, mate,” shouted one furious old man who seemed to think Doyle’s behavior had been specifically calculated to upset him, “if you don’t get out of here this instant!” He shook both fists at Doyle.

Doyle hurried down the last flight of stairs and opened the door out to the street. By this time he was beginning to doubt that he’d even really heard it. I probably heard something that sounded like it, he thought as he drew the door shut behind him, and wanted so much to believe somebody else had found a way back to 1810 that I convinced myself it was the Beatles tune.

The sky was still a gray luminescence behind the rooftops, but it was darkening. He hurried on southward, toward London Bridge. I don’t want to be late for the six-thirty shift at Kusiak’s stable, he reflected wearily—I need that job.

The remaining leaves on the trees in Bloomsbury Square shone gold and red in the sunlight on Thursday afternoon as Ahmed the Hindoo Beggar stepped out of Paddy Corvan’s, stared with homesickness for a moment at the trees and the grass, then carefully wiped beer-foam from the artificial beard and moustache and turned resolutely to the left, down Buckeridge toward Maynard Street and the Rat’s Castle. The breeze was from ahead, out of the heart of the St. Giles rookery, and the smells of sewers, and fires, and things being cooked that ought to be thrown away, shattered the frail sylvan charm of the square.

Jacky hadn’t been to Rat’s Castle since the night five days ago when she’d hurried down the stairs to the underground dock, right behind Doctor Romany, intent on killing Dog-Face Joe; and she was checking in now to see if anyone else had made any progress toward finding the furry shapechanger.

When she turned right into the dark chasm, narrow at pavement level but narrower still at the top, that was Maynard Street, a little boy leaned out of an imperfectly boarded-up loading dock on the third floor of an abandoned warehouse on the corner. Under a piratical and oversized three-cornered hat his fish-blank eyes followed the shambling figure of Ahmed the Hindoo Beggar, and the nearly toothless slash of a mouth turned up in a smile. “Ahmed,” the boy whispered, “you’re mine.”

A rope still hung from the rusted pulley under the overhanging roof three floors above—only because it hung too far away from the wall to be snagged by leaning out from the docks on each floor and its ends swung too far above the pavement to be reached even by a man on another man’s shoulders—and goaded by the immensity of the reward Horrabin had offered, the child hopped up onto the board his hands had been resting on, and then sprang out across two yards of empty space and clutched the old rope.

The pulley had rusted almost to immobility, and fortunately for the boy the rope ran through it haltingly, so that though he collided hard with the brick wall on the way down he didn’t break his legs when he landed on the pavement three floors below. He wound up sitting down, with loops of stiff, weathered rope slapping the cobbles around him and thumping his hat down over his eyes. The child sprang to his feet and scurried after Ahmed as a trio of old women emerged from a cellar stairway and began to fight about who’d get the rope. Ahmed was walking beside a low wall, and the boy climbed up onto it, ran along the coping and then sprang onto the Hindoo Beggar’s back, screeching like a monkey. “Oi’ve got Ahmid!” he shrilled. “Fetch ‘Orr’bin!”

Drawn by the echoing racket, several men stepped out of the recessed front doorway of Rat’s Castle, stared for a few moments at the prodigy of a lurching Hindoo flapping about with a shrieking child perched on his back and clawing at his throat, then they sprinted up and seized the Hindoo’s arms. “Ahmed!” said one, fondly. “The clown is ever so anxious to chat with you.”

They tried to pry the boy loose, but he only dug his fingernails deeper into Ahmed and bit at every reachable hand. “Hell, Sam,” one said finally, “take ‘em as is. He won’t give the reward to no infant.”

Jacky was trying not to panic. She thought, if I could get a hand to my turban I could—maybe—snatch the pistol out and kill one of these men and maybe club this nightmare child off me. The reeling knot of people was only a few steps from the building now, and she reached up under the turban, found the butt of the pistol and yanked it down—the turban came down too, tangled around the barrel—and she pressed it against the ribs of the man on her right and yanked the trigger.

The hammer came down on a fold of cloth, knocking open the flashpan cover but producing no sparks. Desperately she wrenched away the cloth and, as the man was shouting, “Christ, a gun, grab him!” she cocked it one-handed and again pulled the trigger. There was a spray of sparks but all the powder had spilled out of the open pan and the gun didn’t fire, and an instant later a hard fist slammed into Jacky’s stomach and a nimble boot kicked the gun out of her hand.

The gun clanked on the paving stones, and the piggyback child, evidently deciding to take the cash in hand and waive the rest, hopped to the ground, seized the pistol and scampered away. The two men picked up the jackknifed, gasping Hindoo Beggar—”Lightweight bugger, ain’t he?”—and carried her inside.

Horrabin had returned to the Castle only a few minutes earlier, and he had just relaxed in his swing—Dungy was wheeling away the folded-up Punch stage—when they carried Ahmed into the room. “Ah!” exclaimed the clown. “Good work, my lads! The fugitive Hindoo at last.” They set Jacky down on the floor in front of the swing, and Horrabin leaned forward and grinned down at her. “Where did you take the American on Saturday night?”

Jacky could still only gasp.

“He pulled a pistol on us, yer Honor,” one of the men explained. “I had to give him a thump in the turn.”

“I see. Well, let’s—Dungy! Bring me my stilts!—let’s lock him up in the dungeon. It’s Doctor Romany that’ll have the most questions for him, and,” the clown added with a giggle, “the most motivating questioning techniques.”

It was an odd little parade that descended four flights of stairs and walked a hundred yards down a subterranean corridor that could have been pre-Roman—the hunched dwarf Dungy limping along in the lead, carrying a flaring torch over his head, followed by the two men who frog-marched between them the chintz-curtain-robed Ahmed, whose face behind the false beard and moustache and walnut stain was gray with fear, and Horrabin, bent way over forward to avoid brushing his hat against the roof stones, bringing up the rear on his stilts.

Eventually they passed through an arch into a wide chamber; Dungy’s torch illuminated the ancient, wet stones of the ceiling and near wall, but the far wall, if indeed there was one, was lost in the absolute blackness. To judge by the echoes, the chamber was very large. The procession paused after a few paces into it, and Jacky could hear water dripping and, she was certain, faint but excited whispering.

“Dungy,” said Horrabin, and even the clown sounded a little uneasy, “the nearest vacant guest room—hoist the lid. And hurry.”

The dwarf limped forward, leaving the others in darkness. Twenty feet away he stopped and lifted a little metal plate away from a hole in the floor, and squatted down, trying to get his head and the torch both next to the hole without setting his greasy white hair on fire. “Nobody home.” He set the torch upright in a hole between the stones, hooked the fingers of both hands around a recessed iron bar in the floor, carefully rearranged his feet, and then tugged upward. A whole stone slab lifted up, evidently on hinges, exposing a circular hole three feet across. The slab came to rest at a bit more than a ninety degree angle and Dungy stepped back, wiping his brow. “Your chamber awaits, Ahmed,” said Horrabin. “If you hang by your hands and then drop, it’s only six feet to the floor. You can do that or be pushed in.”

Jacky’s captors led her forward and, when she was standing in front of the hole, let go of her and stepped back. She forced herself to smile. “When’s dinner? Will I be expected to dress?”

“Make any preparations you please,” said Horrabin coldly.

“Dungy will drop it in on you at six. Get in now.”

Jacky eyed the two men who’d escorted her, calculating whether she could break away between them, but they caught the look and stepped back, moving their arms out from their sides a little. Her gaze fell hopelessly back to the hole at her feet, and to her own humiliation she felt close to tears. “Are—” she choked, “are there rats… down there? Or snakes?” I’m just a girl! she wanted to yell, but she knew that revealing that would only add to the ordeals in store for her.

“No, no,” Horrabin assured her. “Any rats and snakes that make their way down here are devoured by other sorts of creatures. Sam, he doesn’t want to do it himself; push him in.”

“Wait.” Jacky carefully crouched and sat down on the edge of the hole, her sandalled feet dangling in the darkness. She hoped the others wouldn’t see how badly her legs were shaking under the chintz robe. “I’m going, I don’t need your… kind help.” She leaned forward and gripped the opposite edge. She paused to take a deep breath, then hiked her rump off the rim and swung down into the hole so that she hung by the grip of her hands. She looked down and could see nothing, just the most solid blackness she’d ever stared into. The floor could believably have been three inches below her toes, or three hundred feet.

“Kick his hands,” said Horrabin. She let go before anyone could. After a long second of free fall she landed on flexed knees on muddy ground, and managed not to let either kneecap clip her chin as she sat down hard. Something scurried away from her across the mud floor. Looking up, she saw the underside of the stone slab appear for one instant lit by the red torchlight, and then, with a shocking, eardrum-battering crash, fall back into place; for a few more moments there was a tiny square of dim red light above her, but then someone replaced the metal plate over the peek-hole and she was in featureless, disorienting darkness.

Though as tense as an over-wound clock, she didn’t move, just breathed silently through her open mouth and listened. When she’d dropped in, the close echoes of her fall had convinced her that the sunken room could be no more than fifteen feet across, but after a thousand silent breaths she was certain that it was far wider, in fact not a room at all but a vast subterranean plain. She seemed to hear wind in faraway trees, and every now and then a faint echo of distant singing, some sad chorus wandering far out across the plain … She grew doubtful of her memory of the stone roof above her—surely it was just the eternal black sky, in which any stars seen were—perhaps had always been—just meaningless flashes on the individual retina…

She was just beginning to wonder whether the sound of the surf had always simply been the soft roar of her own breathing projected onto a certain sort of agitation of water—and she knew that there were even more fundamental doubts and losses to be discovered—when an actual noise brought her out of her downward spiralling introspection. The noise, only a tiny grating and a clink, was startlingly loud in that hitherto silent abyss, and it brought the dimensions of her cell back to her original estimate of about fifteen feet across.

It had sounded like the peek-hole cover being removed, but when she looked up she couldn’t see anything, not even a square of lesser darkness. After a moment, though, she could hear breathing, and then sibilant but indistinct whispering.

“Who’s there?” asked Jacky cautiously. It’s got to be only Dungy with my dinner, she insisted to herself.

The whispering became quiet, aspirated giggles. “Let us in, darling,” came the whisper clearly. “Let my sister and me in.”

Tears were running down Jacky’s cheeks and she crawled to a wall and braced her back against it. “No,” she sobbed. “Get out of here.”

“We’ve got gifts for you, darling—gold and diamonds that people lost down the sewers since the long ago times. They’re all for you, in exchange for two things you won’t ever need again, like yer dollies after you growed up into a young lady.”

“Your eyes!” came a new, harsher whisper.

“Yes indeed,” hissed the first speaker. “Just your eyes, so that my sister and I can each have one, and we’ll climb up all the stairs there are and take a ship to the Haymarket and dance right under the sun.”

“Soon,” croaked the other.

“Oh yes, soon, darling, for the darkness is hardening, like thick mud, and we want to be away when it turns as solid as the stones.”

“Not in it,” put in the harsh voice.

“No, not in it, we mustn’t have my pretty sister and me caught forever in the stones that are hardened night! So open the door.”

Jacky crouched in her corner weeping almost silently, and hoping that when the stone slab had fallen into place it had jammed solidly, and couldn’t ever be opened.

Then there was a faint shuffling from far away, and the two voices chittered in consternation. “One of your brothers comes,” said the first voice. “But we’ll be back… soon.”

“Soon,” assented the other gravelly whisper. There followed a sound like leaves scuttering across pavement, and then Jacky could see, through the uncovered peek-hole, a waxing red glow, and she could hear Dungy nervously whistling the idiotic song Horrabin always made him sing.

After a few moments the torch and Dungy’s ravaged face appeared in the little hole. “How’d you move the cover aside?” the dwarf asked.

“Oh, Dungy,” said Jacky, getting to her feet and standing directly below, for at this point any human company was welcome, “I didn’t. Two creatures who claimed to be sisters moved it, and offered me treasures in exchange for my eyes.”

She saw the dwarf straighten and peer uneasily around; and remembering the extent of the chamber above, she knew how useless such an inspection was. “Yeah,” he said finally, “there are such things down here. Unsuccessful experiments of Horrabin’s—hell, there may even be some of mine still around.” He looked down into the pit again. “Doctor Romany and Horrabin think you’re a member of some group working against them. Is that the case?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. Still, it’s enough if Horrabin does.” The dwarf hesitated. “If I… let you out, will you help me kill him?”

“I’d be delighted to, Dungy,” said Jacky sincerely.

“Promise?”

The dwarf could have asked nearly any price and Jacky would have paid it. “I promise, yes.”

“Good. But if we’re going to work together you’ve got to stop calling me Dungy. My name is Teobaldo. You call me ‘Tay.’”

The dwarf’s face disappeared, and Jacky heard a grunt of effort and then the stone slab lifted away from above her. He peered down through the wider hole, and she could see that he held a stout stick with a length of rope knotted around the middle of it and trailing away out of sight. “I hope you can climb a rope,” said Teobaldo.

“Of course,” said Jacky. We’re about to find out whether I can or not, she thought.

The dwarf laid the stick across the hole and pushed the rope into the pit. Excess loops piled up on the muddy ground at Jacky’s feet. She took a deep breath, stepped up to the dangling rope, locked her hands onto it as high as she could reach, and then began yanking herself up, hand over hand. In two seconds she had one hand, and a moment later both hands, locked on the stick.

“Grab the coping,” said Teobaldo, “and then I’ll move the stick and you can pull yourself out.”

Jacky discovered that she could also chin herself and scramble out of a hole with no footholds. When she’d got to her feet she stared somberly at her rescuer, for she remembered now where she’d heard the name Teobaldo. “You used to be in charge here,” she said quietly.

The old dwarf gave her a sharp glance as he hauled up the line and quickly coiled it around his palm and elbow. “That’s right.”

“I… heard you were tall, though.”

The dwarf set down the coiled rope and stood on the edge of the hole opposite from the stone lid. He flexed his arms and then said, reluctantly, “Push that down, will you? I’ll try to catch it and lower it into place quietly. I’m supposed to be bringing you your dinner, and I’d just have pitched it in through the peek-hole, so if they hear the slab fall they’ll all come running.”

Jacky braced herself against the block, wedged her sandalled feet into a channel between two paving stones, and heaved.

The dwarf caught it against his outstretched palms and let it fold him down to a low crouch. He took several deep breaths and then heaved it up a little, got out from under it and caught the descending edge in his hands. His lips were drawn back from his teeth in a rictus of extreme effort, and Jacky could see sweat popping out on his forehead as he lowered it, his arms trembling; then he let go and leaped back. The slab dropped into place with a sound like a heavy door slamming.

Tay sat on the floor panting. “That’s… good,” he gasped. “They’ll… not have heard that.”

He got painfully to his feet. “I was tall once.” He pulled the torch out and looked across the slab at Jacky. “Can you do magic?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Well, we’ll trick him. I’ll go back upstairs now and tell him you want to talk—but not to Doctor Romany, who would only kill you. I’ll say you want to buy your freedom by telling Horrabin so much that he’ll be equal to—hell, stronger than—Romany. You’ve got Words of Power, I’ll say. He’s become a fair sorcerer, Horrabin has, in the eight years he’s been Romany’s right-hand man, but he’s always trying to get the old man to give him a Word of Power or two. Romany’s never done it. And we’ll say that your group knows all about Romany’s plans in Turkey; ‘cause that’s another thing that bothers Horrabin, that Romany won’t tell him anything except stuff he needs to know to run the London end of things. Yeah,” said the old man bleakly, “he’ll bite that hook. He’ll ask why you let yourself get captured if you’re such a whizzo witch, but I’ll just tell him that you said—I don’t know—that the stars are crooked for that stuff right now. Does that sound good?”

“I guess so, but why the complicated story?” Jacky asked nervously, already wishing she hadn’t promised to help him in this perilous undertaking.

“To get him down here alone,” snapped Tay, “without his guards. He wouldn’t want them to hear the Words of Power, or even be aware that he was making deals with Doctor Romany’s enemies.”

“And what will we do when he comes down here? Just kill him?” Though glad to be out of the pit, Jacky was feeling tense and distinctly ill. “Do you have a gun?”

“No, but a gun’s no good against him anyway. One of the spells Doctor Romany gave him is a bullet-deflecting charm. I’ve seen a pistol fired straight into the middle of his chest but the ball never touched him, just broke a window off to the side. And I’ve twice seen hard-thrust daggers simply jerk to a stop inches away from him, and shatter, as if he’d been wearing a suit of thick clear glass. The only time I’ve ever seen him cut was a couple of years ago when he went to Hampstead Heath to explain city ways to the gypsies—for at the time they thought the gypsies might be useful in organized burglary—and a gypsy that didn’t fancy the idea said Horrabin was the Beng, they tell me that means devil, and this gypsy leaped up, yanked a tent spike out of the ground and slammed it into the clown’s thigh. And it wasn’t deflected and it didn’t stop inches away from him—it tore right through, and the clown was bleeding like a ripped wineskin and almost fell off his stilts, and if the gypsy’d been able to get a second swing he’d have put Horrabin right out of the picture.”

Jacky nodded dubiously. “So what was so special about the stake?”

“The dirt on it, man!” said Tay with impatience. “Before Doctor Romany made Horrabin a magician, the clown didn’t have to walk around all day on stilts. But when you cast your lot with magic you … forfeit, you forfeit your connection with the earth—the dirt, the soil. Touching the earth is terribly painful for these magical boys, which is why Romany wears those spring-shoes and Horrabin walks on stilts. Their magic can’t work on dirt, and so this muddy stake punched through his charms as if they were cobwebs.” The dwarf pulled a knife out from under his shapeless coat and handed it to Jacky. “There’s plenty of mud between these paving blocks—rub a lot of it on the blade and then go crouch in the shadows. When he bends over to peek into the pit I’ll knock him down, and then you run up and just hack away. The underground dock is through that arch there, and we can escape down the river. Got all that?”

“Why don’t we just escape? Right now?” said Jacky with a weak smile. “I mean, why bother taking the risk of actually trying to kill him?”

Tay frowned angrily. “Well, for one thing because you promised—but I’ll give you some better reasons. It’s a good twenty minutes to the Thames by the underground channel, and if I’m not back upstairs pretty quick he’ll send men down to see what’s going on, and when he learned we were gone he’d send men running south to climb down into the sewers ahead of us and intercept us—but if we kill him, especially if he leaves orders not to be interrupted, and if we hide the body—why nobody’ll miss him for hours.”

Jacky nodded unhappily and, crouching down, fingered up a lump of mud and smeared it on both sides of the blade.

“Good. You go stand over there.” With great reluctance Jacky picked her way over the uneven pavement to a point twenty yards from the dwarf. “No, I can still see you. Farther! Yes, and a bit farther still. That should do it.”

Jacky was trembling and darting fearful glances at the impenetrable shadows all around her, and she cried out when the dwarf turned toward the arch. “Wait!” she almost shrieked. “Aren’t you going to leave the torch here?”

The dwarf shook his head. “It’d look suspicious. I’m sorry—but it’ll only be for a few minutes, and you’ve got that dagger.”

He walked away through the arch. Paralyzed with fear, Jacky could hear his footsteps receding away down the hall beyond as she watched the shape of the arch, the only spot of light, slowly darken. A few seconds after the chamber had reverted to full dark, Jacky heard a harsh whisper from nearby: “While she’s alone.” And there was a sound like long, stiff-starched skirts sweeping across the floor toward her.

Stilling a scream, Jacky ran in the direction in which it seemed to her that the dock archway had stood. After ten pounding paces she rebounded from a brick wall—and though she had struck it first with her knee and shoulder, her head had been the next to collide with it, and she wound up sitting half-stunned on the floor. She shook her head, trying to clear it and stop her ears from ringing. She knew she’d misjudged the direction of the dock arch—but was it left or right of here? Had she done a half turn or a full one when she bounced off the wall? Was the wall a yard or two in front of her, or behind, or to one side?

Suddenly something poked at her eye, and with a sob Jacky lunged upward with the dagger, and felt the point tear through balloon-like resiliencies that popped and bathed her hand and arm in cold fluid; then there was shrill, whispered screaming and the dank air shook with a buzzing like the vibrating wing-cases of some giant insect, and Jacky was on her feet and running again, stumbling over the unevennesses of the floor but never quite falling, sobbing hopelessly and sweeping the dagger back and forth through the darkness in front of her. Abruptly the floor shelved away under her feet, slanted down, and though she managed to maintain her balance for a few tilting, tiptoe steps, finally she tripped, tumbled and came up onto her skinned hands and knees, winded but still clutching the dagger. All right, come on then, she thought despairingly. At least I know you can be hurt. I suppose I’ve run right out of that chamber, and down into some tunnel where there never has been and never will be the faintest ray of light, but I’ll hack away at you monsters until you kill me.

Cautious rustlings sounded from nearby, A whispering voice muttered something, of which Jacky caught only the words, “Killed her… “

Another voice said softly, “It still has its eyes—I can feel the wind of them blinking.”

“Take its eyes,” whined a voice like an old woman’s, “but my children need its blood.”

Jacky was suddenly aware that she could smell river water, and faintly she heard water slapping against stone. It seemed to be at her back, and she turned around—and was surprised to find that she could see.

No, not see exactly, for seeing needs light; in the darkness her eyes were aware of a patch of deeper darkness, a blackness that shone with the absence and negation of light, and she knew that if the object approaching on the river should ever appear above ground, even the brightest sunlight would be swallowed up and obscured by its black rays. As it drew slowly closer she could see that it was a boat.

Another piece of the positive darkness arose behind it, defining the opposite bank; it seemed to be the shape of a vast serpent, and Jacky could hear a metallic rasping echo along the watercourse as it slowly uncoiled itself.

The whisperers around Jacky chittered in terror. “Apep!” exclaimed one. “Apep rises?” And Jacky heard a scuttling and pattering as her pursuers fled.

Jacky was right behind them.

There was light—real, red-orange light—visible when the floor levelled out into the main chamber, and Jacky could see the dwarf and the clown on stilts just appearing through the arch a hundred feet away. The two figures, weirdly tall and weirdly short, halted and stared in Jacky’s direction. She hunched down, though she knew they couldn’t see her that far back in the shadows.

“I wonder what’s got them so agitated,” said Horrabin.

“Your damned mistakes,” said Tay uneasily. “The Hindoo complained that they were speaking to him through the peek-hole.”

Horrabin laughed, but his merriment sounded forced. “You object to company, Ahmed? Be grateful we don’t render you incapable of being aware of it.”

Horrabin and Tay advanced across the warped floor and halted. Jacky knew they must have arrived at the hole in which she’d been incarcerated. Gripping the dagger tightly, she stole forward; her sandals had been lost in the tumble, and her bare feet made no sound on the stone.

When she was fifty feet away, and beginning to tread cobblestones crescented with the orange reflection of the torch-light, Horrabin leaned forward—an odd spectacle, for his stilts had to lean backward—and said, “Step into the light, Ahmed, and make your best offer!” The dwarf actually crossed himself before placing both hands against Horrabin’s stilts and shoving.

With a shrill, fearful cry the clown lurched forward, tried to get his stilts back under himself, failed, and crashed to the floor as Jacky crossed the last few yards at a sprint; the clown rolled over on his back, his head strained back with yellow teeth showing in a grimace of agony, and Jacky sprang onto the arched-up stomach and drove the dagger down at the proffered white-painted throat.

The blade snapped off as if she’d tried to stab one of the paving stones; and as it clanged away across the floor the red-veined eyes rolled down to look at her over the white point of the chin, and though the bared teeth were flecked with blood, and blood was running out of the painted ears, the mouth curled up in what was, unmistakably, a smile.

“Whatcha got in yer ‘and, yer Worship?” Horrabin whispered. Jacky felt something scrabbling strongly in her still poised right fist, and she convulsively flung away what should have been the bladeless dagger hilt, but was a handful of big black bees, as dark and fat as plums. One stung her hand before she could flick it off, and the others swarmed buzzing and clicking around her head as she rolled off the clown and scrambled away across the floor. Tay was standing in the archway that led to the dock, still holding the torch. “All we can do is run!” he shouted to Jacky. “Come on, before he can get up!”

As Jacky hurried to the arch, pursued by the bees, and joined Tay in a scramble to the end of the dock, they heard Horrabin cry from behind them, “I’ll have you back, Father! And I’ll make you into something that has to live in a tank!”

The two fugitives had found a raft, crawled onto it, and cast loose. “What happened to the mud on the blade?” Tay asked, in a tone of only mild interest.

“I had to stab one of the creatures down here,” gasped Jacky, slapping a persistent bee into a pasty mess against the wood of the raft. “It seemed to have cold water for blood. I guess it washed the mud off.”

“Ah, well. Good try, anyway.” The dwarf opened a pouch at his belt and took out a pill, which he swallowed. He shuddered, then offered another of the pills to Jacky.

“What is it?”

“Poison,” said Tay. “Take it—a much easier death than what he’ll give you if he catches you alive.”

Jacky was shocked. “No! And you shouldn’t have taken one! My God, perhaps you can vomit it up. I think—”

“No, no.” Tay wedged the torch between two of the raft timbers and lay down across the rough surface, staring at the passing ceiling. “I decided to die this morning. He told me to get ready for a full-dress performance tonight—skirt, wig, nail polish—and I just decided… no. I couldn’t do it one more time. I decided to try to kill him, so I’d have died either way, you see; four years ago he set up—what did he call it?—a one-way sustenance link. Magical talk. Means when he dies, I do too. He thought that made him safe from me. It might have, if he hadn’t made me do those goddamn song and dance numbers all the time. God, I’m sleepy.” He smiled peacefully. “And I can’t think of a… nicer way to spend my last few minutes than on a boat ride with a young lady.”

Jacky blinked. “You… know?”

“Ah, I’ve known all along, lass. You’re that Jacky, too. With the false moustache. Oh yes.” He closed his eyes.

Jacky stared at the silent dwarf, horrified and fascinated. The raft turned and bumped down the canal. When she judged he was dead, she said softly, “Are you really his father?”

She was startled when he answered. “Yes, lass,” he said weakly. “And I can’t really blame him for the way he’s treated me. I deserved no better. Any man that would… alter his own son, just to make the lad a more efficient beggar… ah, I had it all coming to me, certainly.” A faint smile touched Tay’s lips. “Oh, and did that boy repay it in full! He took over my beggar army … and then put me through the hospital in the basement … many, many times… yes, I was tall once… ” He sighed, and his left heel thumped a few times on the wood. Jacky had now seen two people die.

Remembering Tay’s prediction that men would be sent ahead to descend into the sewers to intercept them, Jacky didn’t wait to arrive at one of the docks further down, but lowered herself into the water. It was cold, but as the subterranean river had slowed and diminished in width since her dip in it Saturday night, it had also lost its sharp chill. For a moment she clung to the raft.

“Rest in peace, Teobaldo,” she said, and then pushed off. Once she’d shucked the sodden Ahmed robe she had no difficulty in swimming against the current, and soon she had left the raft—and the torch—behind, and was swimming upstream in darkness. It wasn’t a threatening darkness, though, and Jacky knew instinctively that the deeper river, the one on which she’d “seen” the boat, had no connection with this channel—perhaps not even with the Thames.

Voices were echoing down the watercourse—”Who the hell did he say it was?”

“Old Dungy and that Hindoo.”

“Well, Pete’s lads will stop ‘em at the dock below Covent Garden.”—and yellow light glinted on the water and the wet walls and ceiling ahead of her. Then she rounded a curve, dog paddling silently, and could see, far ahead, the dock from which they’d embarked. There were several men on it, all carrying torches, though Horrabin didn’t seem to be present.

“They must be crazy,” commented one, his voice carrying clearly down the tunnel. “Or maybe they thought the Hindoo had better magic. It’ll be interesting to hear them—ow! Damn it, how did a bee get down here?”

“Jesus, there’s another one! Come on, there’s nothing to be done here. Let’s go upstairs and watch when they bring them in. It ought to be good—the clown ordered the hospital opened.”

The men hurried away, and the tunnel went dark; for a moment the archway glowed orange, and then as the torches were carried away up the hall it too faded into the uniform darkness. Jacky paddled steadily toward the after image in her eyes, being careful not to turn her head, even when she felt the false beard peel off and slide past her shoulder. After a few minutes she banged a hand against the timbers of the dock. She pulled herself up onto it and sat there, panting. She was naked except for a pair of shorts, and reaching up to brush her hair back she noticed that her moustache had pulled away with the beard.

This wasn’t, she reflected, the sort of costume in which she could slip unnoticed out of Rat’s Castle.

She padded timidly through the arch, wishing she still had the dagger. In the silence she could hear a bee buzzing somewhere. The long hallway was evidently empty, and she picked her way down it, pausing frequently to listen for pursuit from either direction, but especially from behind.

She climbed a set of stone steps to a wide landing, and in groping to find the next set of steps she brushed the wooden surface of a door. There was no faintest sliver of light visible around the frame or between the boards, so either the room beyond was as dark as the stairs or this was an unreasonably solid door.

She pressed the latch—it wasn’t locked!—and inched the door open. No light spilled out on the stairs, so she hurried inside and closed the door behind her.

She had no way to strike a light even if she’d dared to, so she reconnoitered the room by feel, following the wall around all four sides of the little room back to the door again, and then making a cautious diagonal across the middle of the floor. There was a narrow bed, neatly made, a dresser with a couple of books on it, a table on which Jacky’s gently groping hands felt a bottle and a cup—she sniffed the cup: sharp gin—and, in the corner, a chair on which were draped—and Jacky thanked God as she fumblingly identified the objects—a short dress, a wig, a make-up kit, and an ancient pair of ladies’ leather slippers.

It’s an absolute miracle that these clothes should be laid in my path, she thought. Then she remembered that old Teobaldo had said he’d been ordered to do a full-dress performance tonight—this must be his room, and he must have laid the costume out before, as he’d put it, deciding to die. Though she couldn’t see, she glanced curiously around the room, and wished she could know what the books on the dresser were.

Len Carrington sat down right in the front room and had a long sip from his pocket flask, not caring who might see him. Why was it, he’d have liked to know, that he was suddenly appointed the clown’s second in command, and simultaneously expected to mollify the angry Doctor Romany, evaluate the unsatisfactory reports being run back every few minutes from the team that was trying to catch the two fugitives, and assure the raging Horrabin—who was moaning in a hammock, evidently with bad burns all over himself—that every step was being taken to remedy the situation? Carrington didn’t even understand what the situation was. He’d heard that the dancing dwarf had tried to kill the clown and had then fled down the underground river with a Hindoo, for God’s sake, but if that was so, why was Doctor Romany only interested in talking to the Hindoo?

Someone was trotting up the stairs from the basement. Carrington considered, and then rejected, the idea of standing up.

It proved to be, of all things, a woman. Her hair looked like some sort of rodent’s nest and her dress fit her like a tarpaulin tied around a hatrack, but her face, under a lot of powder and rouge, was pretty. “They told me to look for Horrabin downstairs,” she said, as calmly as if a woman in Rat’s Castle was not as unprecedented a thing as a horse in Westminster Cathedral. “I didn’t see him.”

“No,” said Carrington, scrambling to his feet. “He’s… under the weather. What the devil are you doing here?”

“I’m from Katie Dunnigan, who runs all the accommodation houses around Piccadilly. I’m supposed to arrange a conference—evidently this Horrabin fellow wants to buy in.”

Carrington blinked. So far as he knew the clown had not branched out into prostitution, but it was certainly his sort of thing. And it was inconceivable that a young girl would come to this place without some such reason. He relaxed—she certainly had nothing to do with the two fugitives. “Well I’m afraid you can’t see him now. You’d better leave—and tell this Dunnigan woman to send a man next time! You’ll be lucky if you’re raped less than a dozen times before you get out of this building.”

“Loan me a knife, then.”

“Wha—why should I?”

Jacky winked. “You ever get out to Piccadilly?” A slow smile built on Carrington’s face, and he reached out and slipped an arm around her.

“No no, not me,” she said hastily. “I, uh, have—a disease. But we’ve got clean girls in Piccadilly. Shall I give you the password that’ll get you one gratis, or not?” Carrington had recoiled from her, but now grudgingly reached under his coat and pulled out a knife in a leather sheath. “Here,” he said. “What’s the password?”

Jacky said the filthiest compound noun she’d ever heard. “I know it sounds crazy, but that’s it. Just walk into any of those places, go up to the bouncer by the front door and whisper that to him.”

Jacky walked unhurriedly out of Rat’s Castle, ostentatiously cleaning her fingernails with the knife.

CHAPTER 7

Doyle awakened on his straw pallet Saturday morning and realized that he’d come to a decision; the prospect of what he intended to do dried his mouth and set his hands trembling, but it was the clean jumpiness of a difficult course resolved upon, and it came as a relief after a week of murky indecision.

He realized now that it had been a mistake to pin all his hopes on the intervention of Ashbless. Even if he could find the poet, it was a fantasy to imagine that Ashbless would, or could, do anything to aid him. The conflict was between himself and Doctor Romany, and a confrontation was the only way to resolve it. The sooner it occurred, the better—for Doyle’s health was definitely declining.

He asked Kusiak for the day off, and the old man was happy to give it to him, as Doyle’s hacking cough was getting so bad that customers were uneasy around him, as though fearing he carried some plague. Doyle took the meager cash he’d saved and bought what he thought of as insurance: a battered and rusty old flintlock pistol which the marine store owner had insisted would actually fire, and with which Doyle would threaten to kill himself if Doctor Romany tried to have him seized. Yesterday on London Bridge Jacky had told him about the abortive attempt on Horrabin’s life, and Doyle wished he had the poison pill the dwarf had offered Jacky; it would be easier to carry that between his teeth than to lug around a pistol pointed at his head.

Realizing that his arm would get tired if he should have to keep the heavy pistol pointed at himself for very long, he had taken off his belt, run the end of it through the gun’s trigger guard, and then re-buckled it around his neck. With his coat buttoned up over it and his scarf fluffed out to cover the gun’s muzzle, which was now pressing coldly into the soft spot behind his chin, he avoided being conspicuous and also kept the pistol in a position where one yank of his thumb between the second and third buttons of his coat would send a pistol ball punching up through his mouth, palate, nasal cavity, brain, and then bursting out into the sunlight right aft of his widow’s peak.

In Bishopsgate Street he met a beggar from Captain Jack’s house, and after exchanging greetings the man told him that Doctor Romany’s gypsy camp was currently in a field up at the north end of Goswell Road, telling fortunes for aristocrats from the West End and selling love potions and poisons to the inhabitants of the Golden Lane rookery.

Doyle thanked him, asked to be remembered to the company, and turned east on London Wall Street. Just as he was crossing Coleman Street—only a block, he realized, from Keats’ birthplace—he heard a sharp whistle from the north side of the street.

It was the high-low-low first three notes of Yesterday.

And it was answered, from the opposite side of Coleman Street, by the up and down the scale next nine notes.

This time there was no doubt. He was not the only twentieth century man in 1810. His heart pounding, he sprinted across the street and then paused on the north pavement, looking wildly around. Many people were staring at him, and he looked earnestly into each amused or disapproving face, hoping to recognize somehow a fellow anachronism; but they all seemed to be indigenous citizens.

He’d taken a couple of uncertain steps up Coleman Street before noticing the coach at the opposite curb. Its side window was open and Doyle could dimly see a passenger within. In the instant before his feet were yanked off the pavement he saw the flash of a gun in the carriage, but what he heard was the detonation of the pistol under his shirt as the bullet shattered the flashpan and hammer and ignited the powder; he’d been turning quickly, and the muzzle was next to his jaw instead of under it when the gun went off, and the red-hot ball only plowed up the side of his face and ripped his right ear off, instead of exploding his head.

He lay crumpled, unaware of the rattle as the carriage moved off. He vaguely realized that there had been an explosion, and that he was hurt, and that there was blood all over him. His chest hurt terribly, but when his numb hands had brushed aside the powder-burned tatters of his shirt and knocked the smoking, splintered gun off to the side, there seemed to be no lethal injury—just a lot of burns and scratches. His ears were ringing, the right worse than the left; in fact, that whole side of his head was as dead as though he’d been given a shot of Novocain. He fumbled at it with his hand and felt hot, free-flowing blood, and ripped flesh, but no ear. What in God’s name had happened?

He had rolled over and was trying to get to his feet when several people came over and sympathetically but roughly dragged him upright. Doyle was dazedly aware of what they were saying:

“Are ye going to live, mate?”

“How can you ask, look, he’s shot right through the head.”

“The man in that carriage shot him.”

“Nonsense, I saw it all—his chest exploded. He was carrying a bomb. He’s one of the French spies from Leicester Square.”

“Why, look,” exclaimed one. “There’s a wrecked pistol tied around his neck.”

He tilted Doyle’s face up toward his own. “Why in hell were you carrying a pistol that way?”

Doyle wanted to get away from there. “I… just bought it,” he mumbled. “Thought it would be a good way to carry it home. Uh… I guess it went off accidentally.”

“The man’s an idiot,” pronounced Doyle’s questioner. To Doyle he added, “It can’t have been any good anyway. You see it flew to bits after being fired only once. Here, now, come with me and we’ll get you to a doctor who’ll patch up your head.”

“No!” Doyle couldn’t recall whether antiseptics were in general use in 1810, and though he knew he wasn’t thinking clearly, he also knew he didn’t want to pick up some damned infection from unwashed fingers and stitching thread. “Just… get me some brandy please. Strong brandy. Or whiskey—anything with a lot of alcohol in it.”

“I knew it!” piped up one old man who couldn’t really see what was going on. “It’s a dodge. He likely lost his ear years ago, and goes ‘round pretendin’ to have blowed it off over and over again all over London, just so’s gullibles will stand him to a drink.”

“Naw,” contradicted someone else. “Look, there’s part of his ear over there. Whoops! Look out! He’s gettin’ sick!”

Doyle was indeed. A few moments later he gathered the strength to push through the decreasingly solicitous crowd. Unaware of the wondering stares turned on him from all sides, he shed his coat, ripped off the remains of his shirt, tied it tightly around his head to staunch the blood that was pattering on the pavement and sliming his hands, replaced his coat, and then, dizzy from shock and loss of blood, he reeled away to find a grog shop; for though he was certain of very little at the moment, he took comfort in the knowledge that the purchase of the gun, which still swung from his neck, had left him with enough cash for two brandies: one to soak his bandage with and one to pour, rapidly, down his throat.

Two days later he heard the Beatles tune again. When he’d gotten back to Kusiak’s on Sunday afternoon, pushed open the front door and lurched into the entry hall, the old innkeeper had looked up from some bookwork with an expression of alarm that had quickly turned to a tight-lipped anger. He’d cut through Doyle’s incoherent explanations with a curt order that Doyle be put to bed in a spare room and watched over “until his soul pops away through the ceiling or his damn feet can take him out the back door.” He had put a knuckle under Doyle’s chin and tilted the pale face up. “I don’t care which way, Doyle, but you leave here as damn soon as possible—you understanding me, hah?”

Doyle had drawn himself up to his full height and framed a dignified reply—which he could never recall afterward—and then abruptly his eyes rolled up out of sight and he toppled backward like an axed tree; the floor boomed like a drum when he struck it with the whole length of his body, and his fingernails, scrabbling, for a moment on the polished boards, sounded like castanets. Kusiak, with some relief, pronounced him dead and ordered him taken out back to await the summoning of a constable, but when a couple of the kitchen boys had dragged the limp body as far as the back door, Doyle sat up, looked around urgently, said, “Flight 801 to London—you’re supposed to be holding a ticket for me. It’s paid for—by Darrow of DIRE. What’s the problem?” and then passed out again.

Kusiak wearily cursed Doyle, and the absent Jacky, and then ordered the boys to take the delirious and unwelcome guest to the smallest possible vacant room, and check in on him from time to time until he had the grace to die.

For two days Doyle languished on a narrow bed in a windowless and peculiarly shaped room under the main stairs, nourished by Kusiak’s excellent fish chowder and dark beer, and sleeping most of the time; on Tuesday evening he stood up and walked out into the hall, where he was seen by the aproned Kusiak, who said that if he was recovered enough to leave the room he was damn well healthy enough to leave the inn altogether.

When Doyle had put on his coat and taken a few wobbly steps down the street, he heard something clatter on the pavement behind him. He turned around and saw that Kusiak had thrown his destroyed pistol out after him. He went back and picked it up, for it might bring a few pennies at one of the ubiquitous junk shops, and as things stood right now the acquisition of three pennies would double his fortune.

It certainly is ruined, he thought as he picked it up. The hammer and flashpan were gone, the stock was splintered, and the twisted corpse of the bullet that had crashed into it was visible, wedged deeply into the wood. Doyle shuddered, remembering that the ball would have drilled straight through his chest if this gun had not been in the way.

He peered at the bullet more closely—it had the flat base of a slug fired from a shell—it wasn’t a ball.

Well, that confirms it, he thought nervously. Bullets like this don’t come into use until 1850 or so. There are other twentieth century men here—I mean now—and for some reason they’re hostile. I wonder what the hell they’ve got against me.

And, he thought, I wonder who the hell they are.

He had reached Borough High Street. To his right was the somber bulk of St. Thomas’ Hospital, and to his left London Bridge soared away through the twilight, spanning the broad Thames whose surging, gunmetal-gray face was already beginning to twinkle with the first lights of the evening. There seemed to be more promise across the river, and he turned left.

But why, he asked himself as he walked down toward the river, would time travellers hang around in London in 1810? And why, for God’s sake, try to kill me? Why not just take me back? Do they think I want to be here… now?

A thought struck him. Maybe, he told himself, it’s because I’m looking for Ashbless. Maybe he would have shown up at the Jamaica, but they’ve abducted him; and since I’m from the future myself, I’d notice his absence, so they’ve got to prevent me telling anyone about it.

At the gently curving apex of London Bridge he paused and leaned on the still warm stone rail and gazed west along the river toward the darkening sunset that silhouetted the five arches of Blackfriars Bridge half a mile upriver. I guess I’ll have to make another attempt to talk to Doctor Romany. It’s probably a lost cause, but I’ve got to try to get back to 1983. He sighed, allowing himself a moment of self-pity. If it was just this bronchitis or pneumonia or whatever it is, I might stay and try to beat it and make a living here and now; but when two evidently powerful groups are fighting over you, one wanting to kill you while the other will settle for just torturing you, it’s hard to hold a job.

He pushed away from the rail and began walking down the north slope of the bridge. Of course I could just leave the city, he told himself. Just right now get to the shore, steal a boat and push off—let the current take me to Gravesend or somewhere. Begin life anew.

When he came out of his reverie he was off the bridge and crossing Thames Street. He glanced up and down the lamplit street, remembering the day, two and a half weeks ago, that he’d almost allowed himself to be taken to Horrabin by that fake blind beggar, and then had been rescued by Skate Benjamin.

There were few people out on the streets this Tuesday evening, and the pubs and dining rooms along Gracechurch Street spilled light but little noise out across the cobblestones. Doyle was able to hear the whistling when it was still a good distance away. Yesterday again.

When the first moment of blind panic had passed, Doyle smiled in grim amusement at how Pavlovian his response to that damned Beatles tune had become—he had instantly leaped into a recessed doorway, yanked the ruined gun out of his coat pocket and raised it like a club over his head. Now, as he realized the sound was coming from at least a block away, he lowered the gun and allowed himself to breathe—though the pounding of his heart didn’t slacken. He peered cautiously out of the alcove, not daring to leave it yet for fear of attracting notice. After a few moments the whistler rounded the corner from Eastcheap and began walking down Gracechurch, in Doyle’s direction but on the opposite side of the street.

The man was tall, and seemed to be drunk. His wide-brimmed hat was pulled low over his face and he lurched from side to side as he walked, though once for a moment or two he broke into a clumsy parody of tap dancing, whistling the tune fast to accompany himself. Just when he was about to pass Doyle’s hiding place he noticed, with an exaggerated jerk of his head, a pub at his right, a narrow, ill-lit place called The Vigilant Rowsby. The man stopped whistling, patted a pocket, and, reassured by the jingle of coins, pushed open the bull’s-eye windowed door and disappeared inside.

Doyle started to hurry away south, toward the river and Gravesend, but after a few steps he halted and glanced back at the pub.

Can you walk away from it? he asked himself. This guy certainly seems to be alone, and not particularly dangerous at the moment. Don’t be an idiot, objected the fearful part of his mind, get the hell out of here!

He wavered, then hesitantly, almost on tiptoe, he crossed the street and stepped up to the heavy wooden door of The Vigilant Rowsby. The place’s old name sign squeaked gently back and forth on its chains over his head as he tried to work up the nerve to take hold of the S-shaped iron door handle.

The decision was taken out of his hands when the door was yanked open from the inside and a tall, burly man stepped out onto the pavement, seeming almost propelled by the burst of warm air, redolent of beef and beer and candle tallow, that billowed out around him. “What’s the problem. Jack?” exclaimed the man loudly. “No pence for beer? Here. When Morningstar drinks, everybody drinks.” He dropped a handful of copper into Doyle’s pocket. “In you go.” Morningstar placed a giant hand between Doyle’s shoulder blades and shoved him inside.

Keeping his face averted from most of the tables and booths, Doyle hurried to the long counter at one end of the room and bought a beer from the bored-looking publican. Doyle brushed his hair down across his forehead and then tilted the heavy glass beer mug up to his face and, with only his eyes showing, turned his back to the counter and started a slow scan of the room while he took the first long sip.

Halfway through it he froze, and almost choked on his beer. The man who had been whistling was sitting over a beer in a tall-backed booth against the far wall; his hat was set next to his glass, and the candle on the table lit his slack, blear-eyed face clearly. It was Steerforth Benner.

When he had convinced himself that he was neither mistaken nor hallucinating, Doyle gulped some more beer. Why hadn’t Benner returned with the rest of the party? Had anyone else missed the boat? Doyle pushed away from the counter and, taking his beer with him, crossed to Benner’s table. He slipped his free hand into his coat pocket and gripped the ruined pistol.

The big, sandy-haired man didn’t look up when Doyle stood over him, so Doyle lifted the pistol inside his coat until the muzzle showed as a ring against the taut fabric, and then shook him by the shoulder.

Benner looked up, his wheat-colored eyebrows raised in irritable inquiry. “Yes?” he said, and then, carefully, “What is it?”

Doyle was impatient. Why did the man have to be drunk? “It’s me, Steerforth. It’s Doyle.” He sat down on the opposite side of Benner’s table, letting the barrel of the concealed gun clank onto the wood. “This is a pistol here,” he said, “and it’s pointed, as you can see, at your heart. Now I want some answers to some questions.”

Benner was staring at him in wide-eyed, slack-jawed horror. He said quickly, the words tumbling out of his mouth, “Christ Brendan don’t torture me are you real, I mean there, good God you’re not a ghost or a DT are you? Say something, god-dammit!”

Doyle shook his head disgustedly. “I should pretend to be a ghost, just to see you really crack. Get hold of yourself. I’m real. Do ghosts drink beer?” Doyle performed this trick, without taking his eyes off Benner. “Obviously you know I was shot at Sunday. Tell me who did it and why—and who else is going around whistling Yesterday.”

“They all are, Brendan,” said Benner earnestly. “All the boys Darrow brought back here with him. The tune’s a recognition signal with them, like that three note thing the Jets whistled to each other in West Side Story.”

“Darrow? He’s back here? I thought the return trip worked.”

“The trip you came along on? Sure it worked. Everybody except you got back fine.” Benner shook his head ponderously. “I’ll never know why you wanted to stay here, Brendan.”

“I didn’t want to. I was kidnapped by a crazy gypsy. But what are you telling me, then? That Darrow came back again? How could he? Did he find new gaps to jump through?”

“No. Why should he need to? Look, the whole Coleridge speech thing was just a lucky way to finance Darrow’s real purpose—which was to move back here to eighteen-goddamn-ten permanently. He was hiring open-minded, history-savvy lads to be his personal retinue—physician bodyguards—that’s the job I got that I wouldn’t tell you about, remember? And then he noticed that old Coleridge was giving a speech in London during the period of the gap. He’d been having problems paying for everything, and this was the solution—get a million a head from ten rich culture freaks to go hear Coleridge. And he decided he needed a Coleridge expert for that, and that’s when he hired you. But all along, the main… objective… was to come back again, just him and his hand-picked staff, to live. So when the Coleridge party got back to 1983, he hustled them all off into cars and then set up for another jump back to the same September first gap, and we jumped again. But this time we arrived in the middle of the gap, an hour or so after all of you—us—had driven off to see Coleridge, and we cleaned up the signs of our arrival and were long gone by the time the two coaches came back, minus one Coleridge expert, and waited for the gap to end.” Benner grinned. “It would have been fun to drive to the Crown and Anchor and look in on ourselves. Two Benners and two Darrows! Darrow even thought about doing it, and seeing that you didn’t go AWOL, but he decided that changing even that small a bit of history would be too risky.”

“So why does Darrow want me killed?” demanded Doyle impatiently. “And if Darrow’s so damn concerned about the inviolability of history, why has he kidnapped William Ashbless?”

“Ashbless? That jerk poet you were writing about? We haven’t messed with him. Why, isn’t he around?”

Benner seemed to be sincere. “No,” Doyle said. “Now quit ducking the question. Why does Darrow want me dead?”

“I think he wants us all dead, eventually,” Benner muttered into his beer. “He’s been promising that his staff will be permitted to return to 1983 through a gap in 1814, but I’m pretty sure he intends to kill us all, one by one, as he stops needing us. He’s holding all our mobile hooks, and he’s already killed Bain and Kaggs—those were the two who were supposed to do you in a week ago. And then this morning I overheard him order me shot on sight. I managed to grab a fair amount of cash and get away, but now I don’t dare go near him.” Benner looked up unhappily. “You see, Brendan, he doesn’t want anyone else here who knows twentieth century things—radio, penicillin, photography, all that kind of stuff. He was worried you’d patent a heavier than air flying machine, or publish ‘Dover Beach’ under your own name, or something like that. He was very relieved when I—”

There was a pause that lengthened uncomfortably while a hard smile deepened the lines in Doyle’s cheeks. “When you reported to him that you’d shot me through the heart.”

“Christ,” whispered Benner, closing his eyes, “don’t shoot me, Brendan. I had to, it was self-defense: he’d have had me killed if I didn’t. Anyway, it didn’t kill you.” He opened his eyes. “Where did it hit you? I didn’t miss.”

“No, it was a good shot, square in the center of the chest. But I was carrying something under my jacket, and it stopped your bullet.”

“Oh. Well, I’m glad of that.” Benner smiled broadly and rocked back in his seat. “You say you didn’t choose to go AWOL from the Coleridge trip? Then you and I can help each other tremendously.”

“How?” Doyle asked skeptically.

“Do you want to get back? To 1983 ?”

“Well… yes.”

“Good. So do I. Man, don’t know what you got till it’s gone, eh? You know what I miss most? My stereo. Christ, back home I could play all nine Beethoven symphonies in one day if I wanted to, and Tchaikovsky the next. And Wagner! And Gershwin! Janis Joplin! Hell, it used to be fun to drive up to the Dorothy Chandler and hear things in concert, but it’s lousy if that’s the only way you can hear ‘em.”

“So what’s your plan, Benner?”

“Well—here, Brendan, have a cigar—and,” he waved at a barmaid, “let me get us another round, and I’ll tell you.”

Doyle took the cigar, a long Churchill-sized thing with no band or cellophane wrapper, and bit a notch in the end; then, again without taking his eyes off the other man, he lifted the candle and puffed the cigar alight. It didn’t taste bad.

“Well,” began Benner, lighting one for himself when Doyle put down the candle, “to begin with, the old man’s nuts. Crazy. Smart as you could ask for, of course, a very shrewd guy, but he hasn’t got both oars in the water anymore. You know what he’s had us all doing since we got here? When we could be, I don’t know, booking passage for Sutler’s Mill and the Klondike? He’s bought a damn shop in Leadenhall Street and outfitted it, completely, as a for God’s sake depilatory parlor—you know? Where you go to get unwanted hair removed?—and he’s had two men staffing it at all times, from nine in the morning until nine-thirty at night!”

Doyle frowned thoughtfully. “Did he… say why?”

“He sure did.” The beers arrived and Benner took a hearty swig. “He told us all to keep our eyes peeled for a man who’ll have five o’clock shadow all over himself and ask for an all-body treatment. Darrow told us to shoot him with a tranquilizer gun, tie him up, and carry him upstairs, and not to hurt him at all beyond the tranquilizer bullet, which damn well better not hit him in the face or throat. And get this, Brendan: I asked him, boss, what does this guy look like? I mean, aside from having whiskers all over himself. You know what Darrow told me? He said, I don’t know, and even if I did know, the description would only be good for a week or so. Now—are those the words and actions of a sane man?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” said Doyle slowly, eyebrows raised, reflecting that he now knew far more about Darrow’s plans than Benner did. “How does all this bear on your plan to get us home?”

“Well—say, do you still have your mobile hook? Good—Darrow knows the times and locations of all the gaps. And they’re pretty frequent around now, the 1814 one isn’t the closest. So we’ll bargain with him, get him to tell us the location of the next one, and we’ll go and be standing in its field when it comes to an end, and snap! Back we’ll be in that empty lot in modern London.”

Doyle took a long puff on the—he had to admit—excellent cigar, and chased it with a sip of beer. “And what are we selling?”

“Hm? Oh, didn’t I say? I’ve found his hairy man. Yesterday he came in, just like the old man said he would. Short, chubby red-haired guy with sure enough five o’clock shadow all over him. When I started edging toward the trank gun he got spooked and ran out, but,” Benner smiled proudly, “I followed him to where he lives. So this morning I was listening in on Darrow’s room—trying to find out if he was in a mood to be approached with an offer of you give me my hook and tell me where’s a gap and I’ll tell you where your hairy man lives, and by God, I hear Darrow telling Clitheroe to tell all the boys Benner is to be shot on sight! Seems he doesn’t trust me. So after emptying one of the cash boxes, I split, and went and talked to the hairy man myself. Had lunch with him just a few hours ago.”

“You did?” Doyle thought he’d rather have lunch with Jack the Ripper than Dog-Face Joe.

“Yeah. Not a bad guy, really—wild-eyed, and talks about immortality and Egyptian gods all the time, but damned well educated. I told him Darrow did have the power to cure his hyperpilosity, but had some questions for him. I hinted that the old man intended to torture him—which, for all I know, he may—and that he’d need a middleman, a mouthpiece, to deal with Darrow through. I said I’d been one of Darrow’s boys, but had quit when I heard about the atrocities he planned to commit upon this poor son of a bitch. See? But I still had the problem of the shoot Benner on sight order Darrow had given his men.” Benner grinned. “So you become my partner. You talk to Darrow, negotiate the deal, and then you share the payoff—a trip home. I figure you’ll say something like this.” Benner sat back and cocked an eyebrow at Doyle. “We’ll tell old King Kong not to come see you, Darrow, until he gets a letter from us. And we’ll give that letter to a friend—I know just the girl for it—with instructions to mail it only if she sees us disappear through one of the gaps. So you give us a hook and the location of a gap, and if our girl sees our empty clothes fall—and you see, she might be a hundred yards away in a treetop or window, so you can’t hope to find her—then your hairy man will get the go see Darrow message.”

Doyle had been trying to interrupt. “But Benner,” he said now, “you forget that Darrow’s issued a kill Doyle order too. I can’t approach him.”

“Nobody’s after you, Brendan,” said Benner patiently. “For one thing, everybody thinks I killed you, and for another, they remember you as the chubby, healthy-looking guy who gave the speech on Coleridge. Have you looked in a mirror lately? You’re emaciated, and pale as a guy in a Fritz Eichenberg engraving, and there’s about a hundred new lines in your face—shall I go on? Okay—and now you’re definitely bald, and to top it all off, your goddamn ear seems to be gone. How’d you do that? And I noticed the other day you walk funny. Frankly you look twenty years older. Nobody’s going to look at you and think, Aha, Brendan Doyle. So don’t worry. You just go into that depilatory parlor and say something like, ‘Hi there, a friend of mine grows fur all over his body, let me talk to your boss.’ And then when you see Darrow you set up the deal. At that point you can admit you’re Doyle—he won’t dare hurt his only link with Mighty Joe Young.”

Doyle nodded thoughtfully. “It’s not bad, Benner. Complicated, but not bad.” Doyle was pretty sure he knew what Darrow was trying to do… and, incidentally, why the old man had a copy of Lord Robb’s Journal. It’s his cancer, he told himself. He can’t cure it, but as soon as he acquired time travel he also acquired access to a guy that can switch bodies. So he gets a copy of Lord Robb because it contains the only mention of the time, place and circumstances of Dog-Face Joe’s vigilante-style execution in 1811. Not a bad bit of knowledge to bargain with!

“Damn it, are you listening to me, Brendan?”

“Sorry. What?”

“Listen to me, this is important. Now today is Tuesday. How about if Saturday I meet you at—do you know Jonathen’s, in Exchange Alley up by the bank? Well, let’s meet there at about noon. By then I can have set up this letter business with my girl and the hairy man, and you can go see Darrow. Okay?”

“How am I supposed to survive until Saturday? You made me lose my job when you shot me.”

“Oh, sorry. Here.” Benner dug into his pocket and tossed five crumpled five-pound notes onto the table. “That hold you?”

“It ought to.” Doyle stuffed them into his own pocket, and then got to his feet. Benner held out his hand, but Doyle only smiled. “No, Benner. I’ll cooperate with you, but I won’t shake hands with a guy who’d try to kill an old friend just to get his own ass out of a sling.”

Benner closed his hand with a soft clap, and smiled. “Say that again after you’ve been in the same spot and acted differently, old buddy. Then maybe I’ll be ashamed. See you Saturday.”

“Right.” Doyle started to leave, then turned back to Benner. “This is a good cigar. Where’d you get it? I’ve been wondering what the cigars are like in 1810, and now I can afford them.”

“Sorry, Brendan. It’s an Upmann, vintage 1983. I stole a box of them from Darrow when I left.”

“Oh.” Doyle walked to the door and stepped outside onto the pavement. The moon was up, and the shadows of racing clouds swept along the street and the housefronts like furtive ghosts in a hurry to get to the river. An old man was hunching along over the gutter in the middle of the street, and as Doyle watched he stooped and picked up a tattered cigar butt.

Doyle walked up to him. “Here,” he said, holding out his own lit cigar. “Never mind that trash. Have an Upmann butt.”

The old man looked up at him wrathfully. “Up mah what?”

Too weary to explain, Doyle hurried away.

Wealthy enough now to indulge himself, Doyle took a room at the Hospitable Squires in Pancras Lane, for all the sources agreed that this was where William Ashbless stayed during the first couple of weeks after his arrival in London; and though he was surprised to learn that the landlord had never heard of Ashbless, nor ever rented a room to a tall, burly blond man, with or without a beard, the matter of Ashbless’ absence was a good deal less urgent to Doyle now that he was in on the deal with Benner.

He spent the next three days simply relaxing. His cough didn’t seem to be getting any worse—if anything, it was receding—and the fever he’d been living with for two weeks had evidently been purged from him by Kusiak’s spicy fish chowder and beer. For fear of Horrabin’s people, or Darrow’s, he didn’t stray far from his inn, but there was a narrow balcony outside his window from which, he discovered, he could climb up shingled eaves to the roof of the building; and on a flat surface between two chimney pots he found a chair, its wood whitened and split by decades of London weather. Here he sat in the long twilights, looking down across the descending terraces of Fish and Thames streets to the misted river, its boats tacking down the tide with an appearance of unhurried serenity; he would have tobacco and a tinderbox lying on the wide brick collar of the chimney pot at his left, and a bucket of cool beer on the roof below his right hand, and alternately puffing on his pipe and taking sips from his ceramic cup, he would look out across the almost Byzantine tangle of rooftops and towers and columns of smoke, all dominated by the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral way out across the city to his right, and he considered, with the comfortable detachment of one from whom a decision is not immediately required, simply not meeting Benner, and instead living out his life in this half-century that was to be characterized by Napoleon, Wellington, Goethe and Byron.

The three-day rest was marred by only one distasteful event. On Thursday morning as Doyle was returning home from a bookseller’s in Cheapside, a shockingly deformed old man hunched and flapped up to Doyle, seeming to propel himself as much by the swimming motions of his driftwood hands as by the use of his feet. The bald head that stuck out from the collection of ancient clothing like a mushroom growing on a compost heap had at one time suffered a tremendous injury, for the nose, the left eye and the left half of the jaw were gone, replaced by deeply guttered, knotted scar tissue. When the old wreck stopped in front of Doyle, Doyle had already dug into his pocket and produced a shilling.

But the creature was not begging. “You, sir,” the old man cackled, “look like a man who’d like to go home. And I think,” he winked his eye, “your home lies in a direction we couldn’t point our finger at, hey?”

Doyle looked around in a sudden panic, but didn’t see anyone who seemed to be confederates of this ruinous person. Perhaps he was just one of the ubiquitous street lunatics, whose line of gibberish chanced to have a seeming reference to Doyle’s situation. He probably meant Heaven or something. “What do you mean?” Doyle asked cautiously.

“Heh heh! Do you think maybe that Doctor Romany is the only one that knows where the gates of Anubis will open, and when? Think again, Ben! I know ‘em, and there’s one I could take you to today, Jay.” He giggled—an appalling sound, like marbles rolling down metal stairs. “It’s just across the river. Want to see?”

Doyle was bewildered. Could this man truly know the location of a gap? He certainly knew about them, at least. And the gaps are supposed to be frequent around now; it’s not unlikely that there’d be one open on the Surrey-side. God, what if I could get home today! It would mean ditching Benner… but that bastard has no claims on my loyalty. And if this is a trap of Horrabin’s or Darrow’s, it’s needlessly roundabout.

“But,” he said, “who are you? And what will you get out of showing me the way home?”

“Me? I’m just an old man who happens to know something about magic. As to why I want to do you this service,” he giggled again, “it might be that I’m not exactly a friend of Doctor Romany’s, mightn’t it? A case could be made for it being Romany I have to thank for this.” He waved at the destroyed side of his face. “So. Interested? Want to come see the gate that will—or has, or is—taking you home?”

Lightheadedly Doyle said, “Yes.”

“Come on, then.” Doyle’s devastated guide set off energetically down the pavement, again seeming to swim as much as walk, and Doyle started to follow but halted when he noticed something. Dry leaves were clustered in waves along the pavement, and when the old man trod on them they didn’t crackle.

He turned his awful face back toward Doyle when he noticed he had stopped. “Hasten, Jason,” he said.

Doyle shrugged, resisted a sudden impulse to cross himself, and followed. They crossed the river by Blackfriars Bridge, neither of them saying much, though the old man seemed to be as pleased as a child on Christmas morning who, now that everybody is home from Mass, is finally allowed to go into the room where the presents are. He led Doyle down Great Surrey Street and then to the left down one of the narrower streets and finally to a high brick wall that completely enclosed one fairly large lot. There was a stout-looking door in the wall, and with a grin and a horrible raising of both eyebrows, the old man held up a brass key.

“The key to the Kingdom,” he said.

Doyle hung back. “This gate today just happens to be behind a door you’ve got a key to?”

“I’ve known… for quite a while!… what was here,” the old man said, almost solemnly. “And I bought this lot, for I knew you’d be coming.”

“So what is it?” Doyle asked nervously. “A long-term gap, is that what you’re saying? But it’s no good to me until it ends.”

“It’ll be a gate when you get to it, Doyle, there’s no doubt on that score.”

“You make it sound like I’m to die in there.”

“You won’t die today,” said his guide. “Nor any day to come.”

The old man was turning the key in the lock, and Doyle stepped back, but looked on uneasily. “You think not, huh?”

“I know not.” The door was unlocked, and the old man pushed it open.

Whatever Doyle had expected to see, it was not the grassy lot visible through the doorway, with the weak September sunlight shining on the weather-rounded lumps of masonry broken long ago. The old man had scuttled inside, and was picking his way over the green hillocks; Doyle gathered his nerve, clenched his fists and leaped through the doorway.

Aside from the old man and himself and the remains of ancient walls thrusting up through the grass, the walled-in lot was completely empty. The old man was blinking his one eye at him, surprised by the suddenness of Doyle’s entrance. “Close the door,” he said finally, and returned his attention to whatever he’d been grubbing at in the dirt.

Doyle closed the door without letting it lock and strode over to his peculiar guide. “Where’s the gate?” he asked impatiently.

“Look at these bones.” The old man had pulled a piece of canvas away from a pile of very old-looking bones, some of them blackened as if by fire. “Here’s a skull,” he said, holding up a battered ivory sphere on which the cheek and jaw bones clung tenuously.

“My God,” said Doyle, a little repelled, “who cares? Where’s the goddamn gate?”

“I bought this place many years ago,” said the old man reminiscently, speaking to the skull, “just so I could show you these bones.”

Doyle let his breath out in a long hiss. “There is no gate here, is there?” he said wearily.

The old man looked up at him, and if his scarred face bore any expression, it was unreadable. “You’ll find a gate here. I hope you’re as eager to pass through it then as you are now. Do you want to take this skull with you?”

Just a street lunatic after all, Doyle thought, with some knowledge of the magical hierarchy in London. “No, thank you.” He turned and plodded away over the unmowed grass.

“Look for me again under different circumstances!” called the old man.

When, promptly at noon on Saturday, Steerforth Benner strode in through the open doorway of Jonathen’s Coffee House, Doyle saw him and waved, and pointed at the empty chair on the other side of the table at which he’d been sitting for half an hour. Benner’s boot heels rapped on the wood floor as he crossed the room, pulled out the chair and sat down. He stared at Doyle with a belligerence that seemed to be masking uncertainty. “Were you early, Doyle, or did I misremember the hour of our appointment?”

Doyle caught the eye of a waiter and pointed at his coffee cup and then at Benner; the waiter nodded as he tapped up the three steps to the main floor. “I was early, Benner. You did say noon.” He looked more closely at his table mate—Benner’s eyes seemed to be a bit out of focus. “You all right? You look… hung over or something.”

Benner looked at him suspiciously. “Hung over, you say?”

“Right. Out late drinking last night, were you?”

“Ah! Yes.” The waiter arrived with his cup of steaming coffee, and Benner hastily ordered two kidney pies. “No better remedy for the effects of overindulgence than a bit of food, eh?”

“Sure,” said Doyle unenthusiastically. “You know, we’re both going to have some readjustment to do when we get back—you’ve not only picked up an accent, you’re using archaic phrasing, too.”

Benner laughed, but it seemed forced. “Well, of course. It’s been my intention to seem… indigenous to this ancient period.”

“I think you’re overdoing it, but never mind. Have you got it all set up?”

“Oh yes, yes of course, no problem at all.”

Doyle reflected that Benner must be very hungry, for he kept looking around impatiently for the waiter. “The girl will do it?” Doyle asked.

“Certes the girl will do it, she’ll do it splendid. Where in hell is that man with our pies?”

“Screw the goddamn pies,” said Doyle impatiently. “What’s the story? Has there been a hitch? How come you’re acting so strangely?”

“No no, no hitch,” said Benner. “I’m just hungry.”

“So when do I go see Darrow?” Doyle asked. “Today? Tomorrow?”

“Not so soon, must give it a few days. Ah, here are our pies! Thank you. Fall to, Doyle, don’t want to let it get cold.”

“You have mine,” said Doyle, who had never been able to stand the thought of eating kidneys. “So why do we have to wait a few days? Have you lost the hairy man?”

“You eat your damned pie. I ordered it for you.”

Doyle rolled his eyes impatiently. “Stop trying to change the subject. Why the wait?”

“Darrow’s going to be out of town until, uh, Tuesday night. Would you rather have some soup?”

“Not anything, thank you,” said Doyle very distinctly. “So let’s say I go see him Wednesday morning?”

“Yes. Oh, and also I was concerned about a man who seems to be following me. I can’t imagine who he is—a short man with a black beard. I think I eluded him when I came here, but I’d like to be certain. Would you go look outside and see if he’s hanging about? If he is, I don’t want him to know I’m aware of him.”

Doyle sighed, but got up and walked to the door and, stepping out onto the pavement, looked up and down the sunlit expanse of Threadneedle Street. The street was crowded, but Doyle, ducking and pardon me-ing and standing on tiptoe, couldn’t see any short, black-bearded man. Someone was hoarsely screaming up the street to his right, and heads were craning in that direction, but Doyle wasn’t interested in finding out what the commotion was about. He went back inside and returned to the table.

“I didn’t see him.” Doyle sat down. Benner was stirring a cup of tea that hadn’t been there when Doyle went out. “How long has he been following you? And where did you first notice him?”

“Well…” Benner sipped the tea noisily. “Damn, they serve fine tea here. Try some.” He held the cup toward Doyle.

The yelling outside was getting louder and more general, and Doyle had to lean forward to be heard. “No, thank you. Will you answer me?”

“Yes, I’ll answer. But first, please try some. It’s really very good. I’m beginning to think you fancy yourself above eating or drinking with me.”

“Oh for God’s sake, Benner.” Doyle took the cup and tilted it impatiently to his lips, and just as he opened his mouth for a sip Benner reached out and lifted the bottom of the cup, so that Doyle got a real solid gulp. He only just managed to keep from choking on it. “Damn you,” he sputtered when he’d swallowed it, “are you crazy?”

“I simply wanted you to get a good draught of it,” Benner said happily. “Isn’t it savory?”

Doyle smacked his puckered lips. The stuff had been bitterly spicy and thick with leaves and, like a red wine with a lot of tannin, so dry that it made his teeth feel raspy. “It’s horrible,” he told Benner, and then a disquieting thought struck him. “You son of a bitch, let me see you drink some.”

Benner cupped a hand to his ear. “I beg your pardon? There seems to be—”

“Drink some right now!” Doyle was almost shouting to be heard over the racket that was now just outside.

“Do you suppose I want to poison you? Hah! Watch.” To Doyle’s considerable relief Benner drained the cup with no hesitation. “You’re no connoisseur of tea, Doyle, that’s evident.”

“I guess not. What in hell do you suppose is going on outside? But tell me about this bearded—”

There were some panicky yells in the room behind Doyle, by the front door, and before he could turn around there was an explosive crash and roaring metallic splash as the front window burst inward. The street altercation doubled in volume. As Doyle whirled out of his chair and onto his feet he was peripherally aware of Benner coolly leaping up and drawing a small flintlock pistol from under his coat.

“My God,” someone was screaming, “kill it, I think it’s going for the kitchen!”

Doyle could see a frantically churning crowd on the street side of the room, and sticks from shattered chairs were being swung as clubs, but for the first tense several seconds he couldn’t see who or what was at the center of it; then a waiter was flung tumbling through the air to bowl down half a dozen people, and Doyle saw, in the small central clearing of the riot, a squat ape with fur the color of a red setter. Though shorter than most of its opponents, it managed by sheer, gibbering ferocity to burst through the hole left by the catapulted waiter, and in two bounds it had covered half the distance to Doyle and Benner’s table. In the instant before Benner’s gun cracked at his ear Doyle had time to notice that the ape’s fur was matted with blood in a number of places, and that it seemed to be bleeding more profusely through the mouth.

Doyle felt the concussion of the air slap at his cheek and saw blood jump from the ape’s chest as the slug hammered it right back off its feet. Its shoulders struck the floor ten feet behind where it had last been, and for one moment before its limp, rattling collapse the creature was nearly standing on its head.

In the instant of ringing silence that followed, Benner seized Doyle’s arm above the elbow and marched him quickly into the kitchen and through the back door into a very narrow, shadowed alley.

“Go,” Benner said. “This alley connects with Cornhill.”

“Wait a minute!” Doyle nearly tripped over an old broken cartwheel that had somehow eluded all the scrap scavengers. “That was one of Dog-F—I mean, the hairy man’s cast-offs! Why did it come—”

“It doesn’t matter. Now will you—”

“But it means he’s in a new body now! Don’t you understand—”

“I understand it better than you do, Doyle, believe me. Everything’s under control and I’ll explain later.”

“But—oh, okay. Hey, wait! Damn it, when will I meet you again? You said what, Tuesday?”

“Tuesday’s fine,” said Benner impatiently. “Trot!”

“Where on Tuesday?”

“Don’t worry about that—I’ll find you. Oh, what the devil. Tuesday right here at ten in the morning, does that make you feel better?”

“Okay. But could you loan me some more money? I don’t—”

“Oh aye, aye, mustn’t have you starving yourself. Here. I don’t know how much is there, but it’s bountiful. Now go, will you?”

The gray-haired waiter had swept the dustpan full of glass bits, and with the napkin he’d tied in a turban-like bandage around his head he looked like some sort of Grand Vizier looking about for a sultan to present a heap of randomly cut diamonds to. “I’m sorry, son, but things were too excited just then for me to really take notes, yes?” He dumped the panful of glass into the trash barrel and stooped to sweep up another load.

“But he was heading for two men at a table?”

The waiter sighed. “Heading for them or more likely just making a break in their direction.”

“And can you remember anything else about the man who shot him?”

“Just what I said, tall and blond. And the guy with him was short and dark and skinny and sick-looking. Now be off home, eh?”

There seemed nothing more to be learned here, so Jacky thanked the man and slouched disconsolately out onto the cobbles of Exchange Alley, where several men were gingerly loading into a wagon the red-pelted corpse of Kenny whatever-his-name-had-been, vacated a week ago by Kenny but only today by Dog-Face Joe.

Damn, Jacky thought. He’s moved on, and now I have no idea at all whose body he may be in.

She stuck her hands deep into the pockets of her oversized coat and, picking her way around the wagon and through the pack of gawking spectators, ambled away down Threadneedle Street.

Halfway home Doyle started trembling, and when he’d got to his rooftop perch and downed a first quick beer he lowered his face into his hands and breathed very deeply until the shivering stopped. My God, he thought, so that’s what it’s like when the damn things appear. No wonder poor Jacky went a little mad after killing one, so that he believed he saw Colin Lepovre’s soul staring out of the dying creature’s eyes. Or, hell, maybe he did. Doyle poured and drank off another cupful of beer. I sure hope, he thought, that Benner knows what he’s doing. I hope he knows what kind of fire he’s playing with. Doyle put down his cup and let his gaze wander to his left.

And where is he now, Doyle wondered uneasily, and has the fur begun to whisker out like grime on the new body yet, and has he started looking for another one to take?

On the weathered stone doorstep of a little whitewashed house roughly two thousand miles southeast of Doyle’s roof-top eyrie, a bald-headed old man sat stolidly smoking a long clay-bowled pipe and staring down the slope of dusty yellow grass at the pebbled beach and the water. The warm, dry wind was from the west, coming in with long ripples across the otherwise smooth Gulf of Patras, and in the occasional moments of its abatement he could sometimes hear the quiet clatter of sheep’s bells among the foothills of the Morea behind him.

For the third time during that long afternoon the boy Nicolo ran out of the house, this time actually kicking the doctor’s arm so that he nearly dropped his pipe. And the boy didn’t even apologize. The doctor smiled coldly up at the unhappy boy, promising himself that one more piece of rudeness from this Greek catamite would result in an ugly, painful and prolonged death for his beloved “padrone.”

“Doctor,” gasped Nicolo. “Come now! The padrone, he rolls on the bed and speaks to people who are not in the room! I think he will die!”

He won’t die until I let him, thought the doctor. He looked at the sky—the sun was well down the western side of the cloudless Grecian sky, and he decided that he could proceed now; not that it really mattered anymore at which hour of the day he did it—but old dead laws hang on as superstitions, and just as he wouldn’t dream of pronouncing the name of Set on the twenty-fourth day of the month Pharmuthi, or willingly see a mouse on the twelfth of Tybi, he could not bring himself to perform a work of black magic while Ra the sungod was overhead, and might see.

“Very well,” said the doctor, laying aside his pipe and getting laboriously to his feet. “I’ll go see him.”

“I will come also,” declared Nicolo.

“No. I must be alone with him.”

“I will come also.”

The ridiculous boy had placed his right hand on the hilt of the curved dagger he always carried in his red sash, and the doctor almost laughed. “If you insist. But you will have to leave when I treat him.”

“Why?”

“Because,” said the doctor, knowing that this excuse would sit well with the boy—though it would have set milord anglais, inside, scrabbling for his pistols—”medicine is magic, and the presence of a third soul in the room might change the healing sorceries into malevolent ones.”

The boy looked sulky, but muttered, “Very well.”

“Come along, then.”

They walked into the house and down the hallway to the doorless room at the end, and although the stone walls had kept the inside air cool, the young man lying on the narrow iron bed was drenched with sweat, and his curly black hair was plastered to his forehead. As Nicolo had reported, he was tossing fretfully, and though his eyes were closed he was frowning and muttering.

“You must leave now,” the doctor told the boy.

Nicolo went to the doorway, but paused, mistrustfully eyeing the odd collection of things—a lancet and bowl, colored liquids in little glass bottles, a metal loop with a wooden bead halfway along it—on the bedside table. “One thing before I go,” he said. “Many of the people you have treated for this fever have died. Monday the Englishman George Watson slipped through your fingers. The padrone,” he waved at the man on the bed, “says you are more of a periculo, a danger, than the fever itself. And so I will tell you this—if he too should be one of your many failures, you will follow him into death on the same day. Capeesh?”

Amusement was struggling with annoyance on the doctor’s craggy and eroded face. “Leave us, Nicolo.”

“Have a care, Doctor Romanelli,” said Nicolo, then turned and strode away down the hall.

The doctor dipped a cup into the basin of water that stood on the table and took a few pinches of powder-dry crushed herbs from a pouch at his belt, sifted them into the cup and stirred it with a forefinger. Then he slipped one arm under the delirious man’s shoulders, lifted him to a half-sitting position and put the cup to his still muttering lips.

“Drink up, my lord,” he said softly, tilting the cup. The man in the bed drank it reflexively, though he frowned, and when Doctor Romanelli took the empty cup away the man coughed and shook his head like a cat with a noseful of something it doesn’t like. “Yes, it’s bitter, isn’t it, my lord? I had to down a cup of it myself eight years ago, and I still remember the taste.”

The doctor stood up and moved quickly to the table, for time counted now. Romanelli struck sparks to a little pile of tinder in a dish, got a flame, and held his special candle in it until the wick wore a corona of round flame, then he wedged it back into its holder and stared earnestly at it. The flame didn’t trail upward as a normal candle’s would have done, but radiated evenly in all directions so that it was a sphere, like a little yellow sun, and it cast heat waves down as well as up, making the hieroglyphic figures on the candle shaft seem to shift and jitter like race horses waiting in the starting gate.

Now if only his ka in London was doing his part correctly!

He spoke into the flame. “Romany?”

A tiny voice answered. “Ready here. The tub of paut is fresh and warmed to the right temperature.”

“Well, I would hope so. The way is paved for him?”

“Yes. The request for an audience with King George was acknowledged and approved earlier this week.”

“All right. Let’s line up this channel.”

Romanelli turned to the metal loop, which was firmly moored to a block of hard wood, and with a little metal wand he struck it. It produced a long, pure note, which was answered a moment later by a note out of the flame.

The answering note was higher, so he slid the wooden bead an inch farther up the loop and struck again; the sounds were similar now, and for a moment the ball of flame seemed to disappear, though it glowed again when the notes diminished away.

“I believe we have it,” he said tensely. “Again now.”

The two notes, one struck in London and one in Greece, rang out again, very nearly identical—the flame turned to a dim, churning grayness—and as the struck metal was still singing he gingerly touched the bead, moving it a hairbreadth further. The notes were now identical, and where the flame had been was now a hole in the air, through which he could see a tiny section of a dusty floor. As the double ringing faded away to silence the peculiar sphere of flame reappeared.

“Got it,” said Romanelli excitedly. “I could see through clearly. Strike again when I tell you, and I will send him through.”

He picked up the lancet and a dish, and turning to the unconscious man in the bed he lifted a limp hand, sliced a finger with the blade and caught the quick drops of blood in the dish. When he’d got a couple of spoonfuls he dropped the hand and the scalpel and faced the candle again.

“Now!” he said, and struck the loop with the wand. Once more the note was answered, and as the candle flame again became a hole he dropped the wand, dipped his fingers into the dish of blood and flicked a dozen red drops through.

“Arrived?” he asked, his fingers poised ready to try it again.

“Yes,” answered the voice from the other side as the ringing faded out and the flame waxed bright. “Four drops, right in the tub.”

“Excellent. I’ll let him die as soon as I hear it’s succeeded.” Romanelli leaned forward and blew the candle out.

He sat back and stared reflectively at the unquiet sleeper on the bed. Finding this young man had been a stroke of luck. He was perfect for their purposes—a peer of the British realm, but with a background of obscurity and near poverty, and—perhaps because of his lameness—shy and introverted, with few friends. And during his days at Harrow he had obligingly published a satire that managed to offend quite a number of influential people in England, including his sponsor, Lord Carlisle—they would all be willing to believe that he had committed the shocking crime that Romanelli and his British ka would make it appear that he had committed.

“Doctor Romany and I are going to propel you out of obscurity,” Romanelli said softly. “We’re going to make your name famous, my lord Byron.”

Under the remarkably placid smile on the face of the severed head of Teobaldo, which had been set in a niche high in the wall, the clown Horrabin and Doctor Romany stared into the coffin-sized tub of dimly glowing paut in which the drops of blood had blackened, solidified, sunk to the mid-level and were now beginning to sprout networks of fine red webs, connecting one to another.

“In twelve hours it will be recognizably a man,” said Romany softly, standing so still that he didn’t bob at all on his spring-soled shoes. “In twenty-four it should be able to speak to us.”

Horrabin rearranged his stilts under himself. “A genuine British lord,” he said thoughtfully. “The Rat’s Castle has had a number of distinguished visitors, but young Byron here will be the first,” and even under his caked make-up Romany could see him sneer, “peer of the realm.”

Doctor Romany smiled. “I’ve led you into elevated circles.”

There was silence for a few moments, then, “You’re certain we have to do this no-sleep project tomorrow night?” said the clown in a whining tone. “I always have to have ten hours in the hammock or I get terrible back pains, and since my damned father,” he waved at the dried head, “knocked me onto the ground, the pains are twice as bad.”

“We’ll each take turns, getting four hours sleep out of eight,” Doctor Romany reminded him wearily. “That ought to be enough to keep you alive. Pity him,” he added, nodding at the tub of paut. “He’ll stay awake and be shouted at the whole time.”

Horrabin sighed. “Some time day after tomorrow we’ll quit?”

“The evening, probably. We’ll hammer at him by turns all tomorrow night and all the day after. By evening he won’t have any will of his own left, and after letting him be visible for two days we’ll give him his instructions, and that midget pistol, and turn him loose. Then my gypsies and your beggars will go to work, and about an hour after my man in the Treasury announces that a fifth of all the gold sovereigns in the country are counterfeit, my captains will start a run on the Bank of England. And then when our boy Byron does his trick, the country should be virtually on its knees. If Napoleon is not in London by Christmas I’ll be very surprised.” He smiled contentedly.

Horrabin shifted on his stilt-poles. “You… are certain that’ll be an improvement? I don’t mind giving the country a whipping, but I still question the wisdom of killing it outright.”

“The French are easier to manage,” said Romany. “I know—I’ve dealt with them in Cairo.”

“Ah.” Horrabin heeled toward the doorway but paused to stare into the tub, where the red threads had now coalesced into a sketch of a human skeleton. “God, that’s disgusting,” he remarked. “Picture being born out of a tub of slime.” Shaking his carnival-tent head, he stumped out of the room.

Doctor Romany too stared into the glowing tub. “Oh,” he said quietly, “there are worse things, Horrabin. Tell me in a month whether or not you’ve found that there are worse things.”

On the morning of Tuesday the twenty-fifth of September Doyle stood over the line of tobacco jars at Wassard’s Tobacconist Shop, trying to find a smokeable blend in these days before humidification and latakia, and he was slowly becoming aware of the conversation going on next to him.

“Well of course he’s a genuine lord,” said one of the middle-aged merchants standing nearby. “He’s pig-drunk, ain’t he?”

His companion chuckled, but replied thoughtfully, “I don’t know. He looked more sick—or crazy, yes, that’s it.”

“He sure do dress dainty.”

“Yes, that’s what I mean, it’s like he’s an actor costumed up to play a lord in a penny gaff show.” He shook his head. “If it weren’t for all those gold sovereigns he’s flinging about that’s what I’d guess it was—a prank to spark interest in some damned show; and you say you’ve heard of this Lord… what’s his name? Brian?”

“Byron. Yes, he wrote a little book making fun of all the modern poets, even Little, who I’m partial to myself. This Byron’s one of them university lads.”

“Snotty, putting-on-airs little bastards.”

“Exactly. Did you see his moustache?”

Doyle, puzzled by all this, leaned forward. “Excuse me, but do you mean to say you’ve seen Lord Byron? Recently?”

“Oh, aye, lad, us and half the business district. He’s at The Gimli’s Perch in Lombard Street, disgracefully drunk—or crazy,” he allowed, nodding to his companion, “and buying round after round of drinks for the house.”

“I may have time to go and partake,” said Doyle with a smile. “Has either of you a watch?”

One of the men fished a gold turnip from his waistcoat and eyed it. “Half past ten.”

“Thank you.” Doyle hurried out of the shop. An hour and a half yet before I meet Benner, he thought; that’s plenty of time to check out this Byron impostor and try to guess what kind of dodge he’s working. Byron’s not a bad identity for some con artist to assume, he reflected, for the real Byron is still fairly unknown in 1810—it’ll be the publication of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, two years from now, that’ll make him famous—and so the man in the street wouldn’t know that Byron is touring Greece and Turkey right now. But what kind of dodge is so big that it’s worth “flinging about” gold sovereigns just to set it up?

He made his way south to Lombard Street, and had no difficulty picking out The Gimli’s Perch—it was the tavern with a crowd of people blocking the street in front of it. Doyle sprinted up to it and tried to see over the heads of the crowd.

“Back off, now. Jack,” growled a fat man beside him. “You’ll take your turn like everybody else.”

Doyle apologized and edged around to one of the windows and, cupping his hands around his eyes, peered inside.

The tavern was packed, and for half a minute all Doyle could see was clamoring drinkers, all busy at either draining filled cups or waving empty ones at the harried waiters and bartenders; then through a chance parting in the crowd he saw a dark, curly-haired young man limp up to the bar and smilingly drop a stack of coins onto the polished surface. A cheer went up that Doyle could hear right through the thick glass, and the young man was lost to view behind a forest of waving arms.

Doyle fought his way back to the street and leaned against a lamppost. Though the surface of his mind was calm, he could feel a chilly pressure expanding deep within him, and he knew that when it nosed like a surfacing submarine up into his consciousness it would be recognizable as panic—so he tried to talk it down. Byron is in Turkey or Greece somewhere, he told himself firmly, and it’s only a coincidence that this lad looked—so damnably!—like all the portraits of him. And either this impostor is coincidentally lame too, or he so thoroughly studied his model that he’s added the detail of Byron’s lameness… even though nearly no one in 1810 would know to expect it. But how can I explain the moustache? Byron did grow a moustache when he was abroad—you can see it in the Phillips portrait—but even if an impersonator could somehow know that, he’d hardly use it in deceiving people who, if they’d seen the original Byron at all, had seen him clean-shaven. And if the moustache is just an oversight, something the impersonator didn’t know Byron lacked when last seen in England, then why the accurate detail of the limp?

The panic, or whatever it was, was still building. What if that is Byron, he thought, and he isn’t in Greece at all, as history will claim? What the hell is going on? Ashbless is supposed to be here but isn’t, and Byron isn’t supposed to be but is. Did Darrow shoot us back to some alternate 1810, from which history will develop differently?

He was feeling dizzy, and glad of the support of the lamppost, but he knew he had to get into that tavern and find out whether or not that young man was the real Byron or not. He pushed himself out onto the sidewalk and took a couple of steps and he suddenly realized that the fear building up within him was too primal and powerful to be caused by something as abstract as the question of what time stream he was in. Something was happening to him, something his conscious mind couldn’t sense, but which was churning up his sub-conscious like a bomb detonated at the bottom of a well.

The crowd and the building in front of him suddenly lost all their depth and most of their color and clear focus, so that he seemed to be looking at an impressionist painting of the scene done only in shades of yellow and brown. And someone’s snapped the volume knob down, he thought.

Just before light and sound flickered away altogether and, unsupported now, he fell into unconsciousness like a man falling through the trap door of a gallows, he had an instant in which to wonder if this was how it felt to die.

Sometimes hopping, but more often crawling on one foot and two hands like a half-stomped cockroach because his left leg had a new, grating joint in it, Doyle scuttled retching and gasping across the rain-slick asphalt, not even seeing the oncoming cars bow their front ends down close to the pavement as their brakes took hold and the tires began barking and squealing.

He could see the crumpled figure lying, in the random attitude of carelessly tossed things, on the gravel shoulder, and even though he was torturing himself toward her to see if she was all right, he knew she would not be—for he’d already lived through this event once in real life and several times in dreams; though his mind was incandescent with anxiety and fear and hope, he simultaneously knew what he’d find.

But this time it happened differently. Instead of the remembered porridge of blood and bone and bright-colored helmet fragments exploded across the pavement and freeway pillar, the figure’s head was still whole and attached to the shoulders. And it wasn’t Becky’s face—it was the beggar boy Jacky’s.

He sat back in surprise, and then saw, somehow without surprise, that he wasn’t on a freeway shoulder at all—he was in a narrow room with filthy curtains flapping stiffly in an unglassed window. The window kept changing its shape; sometimes it was round, swelling and contracting like some architectural sphincter from the size of a peep-hole in a door to the size of the rose window at Chartres Cathedral, and at other times it elected to warp itself through all the shapes that could be called rectangular. The floor too was capricious, at one moment swelling so that he had to crouch to avoid bumping the ceiling, at the next sagging like a dis-spirited trampoline, leaving him in a pit, looking up to watch the belly-dancing window. It was an entertaining room, all right.

His mouth was numb, and though the dentist, who wore two surgical face masks so that his glowing eyes were all Doyle could see, ordered him not to touch it, Doyle did surreptitiously drag a furry-gloved hand across his lips, and was terrified to see bright blood matting the golden fur., Some dentist, he thought, and though he forced himself out of that vision and back into the little room, he was still wearing the fur gloves and blood was still dripping energetically from his mouth. When he hunched over, huddling himself against another stomach cramp, the blood spattered the plate and knife and fork that someone had left on the floor.

It made him mad that whoever it was hadn’t picked up their dishes, but then he remembered that these were the remains of his own dinner. Had it caused the numbness and bleeding? Had there been broken glass in it? He picked up the fork and stirred the bits of food still on the plate, fearfully watchful for any hard gleamings. After a while he decided there wasn’t any glass in it.

But what was it, anyway? It smelled vaguely like curry, but seemed to be some kind of cold stew made of leaves and something that looked like kiwi fruit, but smaller and harder and more furry. His mind stuck on the rhyme of curry and furry—like a coin banging around in the intake hood of a vacuum cleaner, the evident relation of the two words held his attention and prevented consideration of anything else—but he finally got past it and experienced a moment of cold lucidity when he recognized the unusual fruit. He’d seen them before, in the Foster Gardens of Nuuanu in Hawaii, on a tall tree whose scientific name he still remembered: Strychnos Nux Vomica, the richest source of raw strychnine.

He’d been eating strychnine.

The water smelled terrible, implying a dead tide clogged with days-old fish corpses and putrid seaweed, but the sidewalk was alive with cheery people in colorful bathing suits, and Doyle was glad to see there wasn’t a line at the Yo-Ho Snack Stand. He lurched up to the narrow window and banged his quarter on the wooden counter to get the man’s attention. The man turned around, and Doyle was surprised to see that it was J. Cochran Darrow in the apron and white paper hat. He finally did go broke, Doyle realized sadly, and now he has to run a damned frozen banana stand. “I’ll have a—” Doyle began.

“All we’re serving today is activated charcoal shakes,” Darrow interrupted. He cocked his head. “I told you that, Doyle.”

“Oh yeah. I’ll have one of those, then.”

“You’ve got to make it yourself. I’ve got a boat to catch—it’s due to sink in ten minutes.” Darrow reached out through the window, grabbed Doyle by the collar and with a powerful heave pulled him in through the window until his shoulders jammed against the sides.

There was no light inside, and a cloud of ashes swirled up and set Doyle choking. He unwedged himself and fell back on the floor and saw that he’d wedged himself head first into the room’s little fireplace. My God, he thought, I’m hallucinating up one side and down the other. Does strychnine cause delirium? Or have I managed to ingest a couple of poisons?

Darrow was right, though, he thought. What I need is charcoal, a massive dose of it—and fast. I remember reading about a guy who ate a ten times over fatal dose of strychnine, and chased it with powdered charcoal and felt no ill effects at all. What was his name? Touery, that was it. So where am I going to get some? Call room service and ask ‘em to send up about fifteen hundred cartons of that cigarette with the activated charcoal filter.

Wait a moment, he thought. Here I am staring at a fair quantity of it. All these burned-up blocks of wood in the fireplace here. It may not be activated, but it’ll still have billions of microscopic pores, the better to absorb you with, my dear strychnine.

In a moment he had found a bowl and a little round-headed statuette of some dog-headed Egyptian god or other, and was using them as a mortar and pestle to pulverize the black chunks of crunchy incinerated wood. While doing this he noticed that his hands and forearms appeared to have grown a pelt of glossy yellow fur, and this he ascribed, a little nervously, to the hallucinations.

Another explanation of the phenomenon patiently awaited consideration on a back burner of his mind.

Through it all the blood kept dripping from his mouth, often falling into the mound of grainy black powder, but it was tapering off, and he had more important things to worry about. How the devil, he wondered as he sifted the gritty black stuff between his furry fingers, am I going to consume this?

He began by swallowing all the charcoal pieces that were relatively pill-sized. Then, using water from a basin in the corner, he made little balls of the black powder and managed to force down several dozen of these.

Mixed with a little water the stuff was adequately malleable, and after a while he stopped eating the black lumps and began pushing them together to make a little man-shaped figure. His skill surprised him, and he resolved to get some modelling clay at the first opportunity and begin life anew as a sculptor—for he’d only rolled the limb columns between his fingers for a few moments before pinching them onto the trunk lump, but now he noticed that the swell of thigh and bicep and the angularity of knee and elbow were faultlessly done, and the few quick thumbnail scratches he’d made on the front of the head had somehow produced a face like Michelangelo’s Adam on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. He’d have to save this little statue—sometime it would be reverently exhibited at the Louvre or someplace: Doyle’s First Work.

But how could he have thought the face looked like Adam? It was the face of an old, a hideously old man. And the limbs were twisted, shrunken travesties, like the dried worms you find on the sidewalks on a sunny day after rain. Horrified, he was about to crush it when it opened its eyes and gave him a big smile. “Ah, Doyle!” it croaked in a loud, harsh whisper. “You and I have a lot to discuss!”

Doyle screamed and scrabbled back across the floor away from the gleeful thing—with difficulty, for the floor had again begun its rising and falling tricks. He heard a slow, tooth-jarring drumbeat from somewhere, and as huge drops of acid began to form on the walls, break surface tension and trickle down, he realized too late that the entire house was one living organism, and was about to digest him.

He woke up on the floor, profoundly exhausted and depressed, staring with no interest at the drops of dried blood spattered in front of his eyes. His tongue ached like a split tooth, but he didn’t think it was anything urgent. He knew that he had survived the poisoning and the hallucinations, and he knew that eventually he’d be glad of it.

His face itched, and he brought a hand across to scratch it—then halted. Though the hallucinations had passed, the hand was still covered with golden fur.

Instantly the explanation, the explanation of all this, that had been in the back of his mind came to him, and he knew it was true. It increased his depression a little, for it meant more work for him when he gathered the energy to get up and begin dealing with things. Just to confirm it formally he felt his face. Yes, as he’d suspected, his face too was bushily pelted. All I needed, he thought sourly.

Obviously he was in the latest of Dog-Face Joe’s cast-off bodies; and Joe himself was off God knew where in Doyle’s own.

And whose body, he wondered, was this one I’m in? Why, Steerforth Benner’s, of course. Benner mentioned that he had lunch with old Joe a week ago, and Joe must have fed him whatever mixture of alchemical herbs it is that unscrews the hinges of people’s souls, and then on Saturday made the switch.

So, Doyle reasoned, it was Dog-Face Joe, in Benner’s pirated body, that I met Saturday at Jonathen’s. No wonder he … didn’t seem to be himself. And of course that’s why he was so anxious to have me eat or drink something there—so he could give me a dose of the soul-switch stuff; and when I didn’t want anything, he had to send me outside to look for a doubtless fictitious man so that he could get a cup of tea, fling his filthy leaves into it, and harass me into drinking it.

Despite his weary apathy, Doyle shuddered when it came to him that the red ape that he had seen shot that day had been Benner himself, the poor bastard, carelessly shoehorned into Dog-Face Joe’s last body.

So now, Doyle thought, he’s got my body and is free to go see Darrow and make the deal, without having to cut Benner or me in at all.

Doyle sat up, permitting himself a loud groan. His mouth and nose and throat were crusted and rusty-tasting with dried blood, and he realized with a dull sort of amusement that good old Joe the Ape Man must chew the hell out of his own tongue just before vacating the body, to make sure its new tenant wouldn’t be able, in the short time before the poison hammered him down, to say anything that might make people wonder.

He stood up—a little dizzily because of his new, increased height—and looked around. He was not surprised to find scissors, a brush and straight razor and a cake of gray soap on a shelf by the bed—Dog-Face Joe probably bought a new razor every week. There was also a mirror lying face down on the shelf, and Doyle picked it up and, apprehensively, looked into it.

My God, he thought, as much awed as frightened, I look like the wolf man—or Chewbacca—or the guy in that French movie of Beauty and the Beast—or no, I’ve got it, the Cowardly Lion of Oz.

Thick golden fur billowed in waves down over his chin, and outward across his cheeks to become exaggerated sideburns, and snaked upward along his nose to join the upside down waterfall of luxuriant golden fur that began at the eyebrow ridges and swept in a wild mane right up over the top of his head and hung down shaggily to his broad shoulders. Even his neck and the area under his jaw were thickly furred.

Well, he thought, picking up the scissors and stretching out a lock of his forehead hair, no point in delaying. Snip. There’s one handful of it gone. I hope I still remember how to use a straight razor.

An hour later he had clipped and shaved his forehead—being careful to leave eyebrows—and his nose and cheeks, and he decided, before moving on to the tricky task of shaving his hands, to see how he looked. He leaned the mirror up against the wall at a different angle, stepped back and cocked an eyebrow at it.

His chest was suddenly hollow, so that his quickening heartbeat echoed in there like thumps on a drum. After the initial shock he began reasoning it out, and he almost wanted to laugh at the neatness of it. For of course I did go to the Jamaica Coffee House on Tuesday the eleventh, he marveled, and as a matter of fact I did write—or at least copy from memory—”The Twelve Hours of the Night” there. And I did stay at the Hospitable Squires in Pancras Lane. And this body did shoot one of the Dancing Apes in Jonathen’s Saturday. It hasn’t been an abduction or an alternate 1810 at all.

For Doyle recognized the face in the mirror. It was Benner’s, of course, but with the wild mane of hair and the Old Testament prophet beard, the new, haggard lines in the cheeks and forehead and the somewhat haunted expression of the eyes, it was also, beyond any doubt, the face of William Ashbless.