The Hidden Family

Pawnbroker

It’s no good,” said Miriam, rubbing her forehead. “All I get is crossed eyes, blurred vision, and a headache. It doesn’t work.” She snapped the assassin’s locket closed in frustration.

“Maybe it doesn’t work here,” Brill suggested. “If it’s a different design?”

“Maybe.” Miriam nodded. “Or then again, it’s a different design and it came through on the other side. How do I know where I’d end up if I did get it to work here?” She paused, then looked at the locket. “Maybe it wasn’t real clever of me to try that here,” she said slowly. “I really ought to cross over before I try it again. If there’s really a third world out there, how do we know there isn’t a fourth? Or more? How do we know that using it twice in succession brings you back to the place you departed from—that travel using it is commutative? It raises more questions than it answers, doesn’t it?”

“Yes—” Brill fell silent.

“Do you know anything about this?” Miriam asked.

“No.” She shook her head slowly. “I don’t—they never spoke about the possibility. Why should they? It was as much as anyone could do to travel between this world and the other, without invoking phantoms. Would testing a new sigil not be dangerous? If it by some chance carried you to another world where wild animals or storms waited…”

“Someone must have tried it.” Miriam frowned. “Mustn’t they?”

“You would have to ask the elders,” Brill offered. “All I can tell is what I was told.”

“Well, anyway,” Miriam rubbed her forehead again, “if it works, it’ll be one hell of a lever to use with Angbard. I’ll just have to take this one and cross over to the other side before I try to go wherever its original owner came from. Then try from there.”

“Can you do that?” Brill asked.

“Yes. But just one crossing gives me a cracking headache if I don’t take my pills. I figure I can make two an hour apart. But if I run into something nasty on the far side—wherever this one takes me—I’ll be in deep trouble if I need to get away from it in a hurry.”

Malignant hypertension wasn’t a term she could use with Brill, but she’d seen what it could do to people. In particular she’d seen a middle-aged man who’d not bothered to follow the dietary guidelines after his HMO doctor prescribed him an ancient and dubious monoamine oxidase inhibitor. He’d flatlined over the cheese board at a birthday party, the glass of sparkling white wine still at hand. She’d been in the emergency room when the ambulance brought him in, bleeding from nose and eyes. She’d been there when they turned the ventilator off and filled out the death certificate. She shook her head. “It’ll take careful planning.”

Miriam glanced at the window. Snow drifted down from a sky the color of shattered dreams. It was bitterly cold outside. “What I should do is go across, hole up somewhere and catch some sleep, then try to cross over the next day so I can run away if anything goes wrong. Trouble is, it’s going to be just as cold on the other side as it is here. And if I have to run away, I get to spend two nights camping in the woods, in winter, with a splitting headache. I don’t think that’s a really great idea. And I’m limited to what I can carry.”

When’s Paulie due back? she wondered. She’ll be able to help.

“What about a coaching-house?” Brill asked, practical-minded as ever.

“A coaching—” Miriam stopped dead. “But I can’t—”

“There’s one about two miles down the road from Fort Lofstrom.” Brill looked thoughtful. “We dress you as a, an oracle’s wife, summoned to a village down the coast to join your husband in his new parish. Your trap broke a wheel and—” She ran down. “Oh. You don’t speak hoh’sprashe.”

“Yup.” Miriam nodded. “Doesn’t work well, does it?”

“No.” Brill wrinkled her nose. “What a nuisance! We could go together,” she added tentatively.

“I think we’ll have to do that,” said Miriam. “Probably I play the mute mother and you play the daughter—I try to look older, you to look younger. Think it would work?”

From Brilliana’s slow nod she realized that Brill did—and wasn’t enthusiastic about it. “It might.”

“It would also leave you stranded in the back of beyond up near, where was it, Hasleholm, if I don’t come back, wouldn’t it?” Miriam pointed out.

“On the other hand, you’d be in the right place. You could make your way to Fort Lofstrom and tell Angbard what happened. He’d take care of you,” she added. “Just tell him I ordered you to come along with me. He’ll swallow that.”

“I don’t want to go back,” Brilliana said evenly. “Not until I’ve seen more of this wonderful world.”

Miriam nodded soberly at her. “Me too, kid. So we’re not going to plan on me not coming back, are we? Instead, we’re going to plan on us both going over, spending the night at a coach-house, and then walking down the road to the next one. They’re only about twenty miles apart—it’s a fair hike, but not impossible. Along the way, I disappear, and catch up with you later. We spend the night there, then we turn back—and cross back here. How does that sound?”

“Three days?” Brill looked thoughtful. “And you’ll bring me back here?”

“Of course.” Miriam brooded for a moment. “I think I want some more tea,” she decided. “Want some?”

“Oh yes!” Brilliana sat up eagerly. “Is there any of Earl Grey’s own blend?”

“I’ll just check.” Miriam wandered into Paulette’s kitchen, her mind spinning gears like a car in neutral. She filled the kettle, set it on the hob to boil, began searching for tea bags. There’s got to be a way to make this work better, she thought. The real problem was mobility. If she could just arrange how to meet up with Brill fifteen miles down the road without having to walk the distance herself—“Oh,” she said, as the kettle began to boil.

“What is it?” asked Brill, behind her.

“It’s so obvious!” Miriam said as she picked the kettle up. “I should have figured it out before.”

“Figured? What ails you?”

She poured boiling water into the teapot. “A form of speech. I meant, I’ve worked out what I need to do.” She put the lid on the pot, moved it onto a tray, and picked it up to carry back into the living room. “Go on.”

“You’ve hatched a plan?”

“Yes.” Miriam kicked the kitchen door shut behind her. “It’s quite simple. I’ve been worrying about having to camp in the woods in winter, or make myself understood, or keep up appearances with you. That’s wrong. What I should have been thinking about is how I can move myself about, over there, to somewhere where there’s shelter, without involving anyone else. Right?”

“That makes sense.” Brilliana looked dubious. “But how are you going to do that, unless you walk? You couldn’t take a horse through. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen any horses here—”

Miriam took a deep breath. “Brill, when Paulie gets back I think we’re going to go shopping. For an all-terrain bicycle, a pair of night-vision goggles, a sewing machine, and some fabric…”

The devil was in the details. In the end it took Miriam two days to buy her bicycle. She spent the first day holed up with cycle magazines, spokehead Web sites, and the TV blaring extreme sports at her. The second day consisted of being patronized in successive shops by men in skintight neon Lycra bodysuits, to Brill’s quietly scandalized amusement. In the end, the vehicle of Miriam’s desire turned out to be a Dahon folding mountain bike, built out of chromed aluminium tubes. It wasn’t very light, but at thirty pounds—including carrying case and toolset—she could carry it across easily enough, and it wasn’t a toy. It was a real mountain bike that folded down into something she could haul in a backpack and, more importantly, something that could carry herself and a full load over dirt trails as fast as a horse.

“What is that thing?” Brill asked, when she finished unfolding it on a spread of newspapers on Paulette’s living room carpet. “It looks like something you torture people with.”

“That’s a fair assessment.” Miriam grimaced as she worked the allen keys on the saddle-post, trying to get it locked at a comfortable height. “I haven’t ridden a bike in years. Hope I haven’t forgotten how.”

“When you sit on that thing, you can’t possibly be modest.”

“Well, no,” Miriam admitted. “I plan to only use it out of sight of other people.” She finished on the saddle and began hunting for an attachment place for the toolkit. “The Swiss army used to have a regiment of soldiers who rode these things, as mounted infantry—not cavalry. They could cover two hundred miles a day on roads, seventy a day in the mountains. I’m no soldier, but I figure this will get me around faster than my feet.”

“You’ll still need clothing,” Brill pointed out. “And so will I. What I came across in isn’t suitable for stamping around in the forest in winter! And we couldn’t possibly be seen wearing your camping gear if we expect to stay in a coaching inn.”

“Yup. Which is where this machine comes in.” Miriam pointed to the other big box, occupying a large chunk of the floor. “I take it there’s no chance that you already know how to use an overlocker?”

The overlocker took them most of the rest of the day to figure out, and it nearly drove Paulette to distraction when she came home from the errand she’d been running to find Miriam oiling a bicycle in the hall and Brill puzzling out the manual for an industrial sewing machine and a bunch of costume patterns Miriam had bought. “You’re turning my house into an asylum!” she accused Miriam, after kicking her shoes off.

“Yeah, I am. How’s the office hunt going?”

“Badly,” snapped Paulette. Her voice changed: “Offices, oy, have we got offices! You should see our offices, such wonderful offices you have never imagined! By the way, how long have you been in business? There’ll be a deposit if it’s less than two years.”

“Uh-huh.” Miriam nodded. “How big a deposit?”

“Six months rent,” Paulie swallowed. “For two thousand square feet with a loading bay and a thousand feet of office above it, that comes to about thirty thousand bucks. Plus municipal tax, sewer, electric and gas. And the broadband you want.”

“Hmm.” Miriam nodded to herself, then hit the quick-release bolts. The bike folded in on itself like an intricate origami sculpture and she locked it down in its most compact position, then eased the carrying case over it.

“Hey, that’s real neat,” Paulette said admiringly. “You turning into a fitness freak in your old age?”

“Don’t change the subject.” Miriam grunted, then upended the case and zipped it shut. Folded, the bike was a beast. She could get the thing comfortably on her back but would be hard put to carry anything else. Hmm.

“Back in a minute.” She shouldered the bike pack and marched to the back door that opened on Paulette’s yard. “Here goes nothing,” she muttered, and pulled out her locket.

Half an hour later she was back without the bike, staggering slightly, shivering with cold, and rubbing her sore forehead. “Oh, I really don’t need to do that so fast,” she groaned.

“If you will do that with no preparation—” Paulette began to say waspishly.

“No, no.” Miriam waved her away. “I took my pills, boss, honest. It’s just really cold over there.”

“Where did you stash it?” Paulie asked practically.

“Where your back wall is, over on the other side, where there’s nothing but forest. Brrr. Up against a tree, I cut a gash in the bark.” She brandished her knife. “Won’t be hard to find if we go over from here: Main thing will be walking to the road, the nearest one is about half a mile away. Better go in the morning.”

“Right,” Paulette said skeptically. “About the rent.”

“Yeah.” Miriam nodded. “Look, give me fifteen minutes to recover and I’ll get my coat. Then we can go look over that building, and if it’s right we’ll go straight on to the bank and move another whack of cash so you can wave a deposit under their nose.” She straightened up. “We’ll take Brill. There’s a theatrical costume shop we need to check out; it might speed things up a bit.” Her expression hardened. “I’m tired of waiting, and the longer this drags on the harder it’ll be to explain it to Angbard. If I don’t get in touch soon, I figure he’ll cut off my credit until I surface. It’s time to hit the road.”

Two days later, a frigid morning found Miriam dozing fitfully on a lumpy, misshapen mattress with a quietly snoring lump to her left. She opened her eyes. Where am I? she wondered for a moment, then memory rescued the day. Oh. A pile of canvas bags before her nose formed a hump up against the rough, unpainted planks of the wall. The snoring lump twitched, pushing her closer to the edge. The light streamed in through a small window, its triangular tiles of glass uneven and bubbled. She’d slept fully dressed except for her boots and cloak, and she felt filthy. To make matters worse, something had bitten her in the night, found her to its taste, and invited its family and friends along for Thanksgiving.

“Aargh.” She sat up and swung her feet out, onto the floor. Even through her wool stockings the boards felt cold as ice. The jug under the bed was freezing cold too, she discovered as she squatted over it to piss. In fact, the air was so chilly it leached all the heat out of any part of her anatomy she exposed to it. She finished her business fast and shoved the pot back under the bed to freeze.

“Wake up,” she called softly to Brilliana. “Rise and shine! We’ve got a good day ahead!”

“Oh, my head.” Brill surfaced bleary-eyed and disheveled from under the quilt. “Your hostelries aren’t like this.”

“Well, this one won’t stay like this for long if I get my way,” Miriam commented. “My mouth tastes like something died in it. Let me get my boots on and warm my toes up a bit.”

“Hah.” Brilliana’s expression was pessimistic. “They let the fire run low, I’d say.” She found the chamber pot. Miriam nodded and looked away. So much for en suite bathrooms, she thought mordantly. “You stand up, now,” Brill ordered after a minute.

“Okay. How do I look?” asked Miriam.

“Hmm. I think you will pass. Don’t brush your hair until we are out of sight, though. It’s too clean to be seen in daylight, from all those marvelous soaps everyone uses on the other side, and we don’t want to attract attention. Humph. So what shall we do today, my lady?”

“Well, I think we’ll start by eating breakfast and paying the nice man.” Nice was not an adjective Miriam would normally use on a hotelier like the one lurking downstairs—back home she’d be more inclined to call the police—but standards of personal service varied wildly in the Gruinmarkt. “Let’s hit the road to Hasleholm. As soon as we’re out of sight, I’m going to vanish. You remembered your pistol?”

Brill nodded.

“Okay, then you’re set up. It should just be a quiet day’s walk for you. If you run into trouble, first try to get off the road, then shoot—I don’t want you taking any chances, even if there isn’t much of a bandit problem around these parts in winter. Luckily you’re more heavily armed than anyone you could possibly meet except a Clan caravan.”

“Right.” Brill nodded uncertainly. “You’re sure that strange contraption will work?”

Miriam nodded. “Trust me.”

Breakfast below consisted of two chipped wooden bowls of oatmeal porridge, salted, eaten in the kitchen under the watchful (if squinting) eyes of the publican’s wife—which made it harder for Miriam to palm her pills. She made a song and dance of reciting some kind of grace prayer over the bowls. Miriam waited patiently, moving her lips randomly—her mute and incomprehending condition explained by Brill, in her capacity as long-suffering daughter.

Barely half an hour later, Miriam and Brill were on the road again, heading toward the coast, breath steaming in the frigid morning air. It was bitterly dry, like an icy desert. A heavy frost had fallen overnight, but not much snow. Miriam hunched beneath a heavy canvas knapsack that held her bicycle and extra supplies. Brill, too, bore a heavy bag, for Miriam had made two trips through to cache essential supplies before they began this trip. Although they’d come only two miles from Paulette’s house, they were centuries away in the most important way imaginable. Out here, even a minor injury such as a twisted ankle could be a disaster. But they had certain advantages that normally only the Clan and its constituent families would have—from their modern hiking boots to the hefty automatic pistol Brill carried in a holster concealed beneath her Thinsulate-lined cloak.

“This had better work.” Miriam’s teeth chattered slighly as she spoke.

“I’m going to feel really stupid if it turns out that this locket doesn’t work here, either.”

Brill said pragmatically, “my mother said you could tell if they’re dead. Have you looked at it since we came through?”

“No” Miriam fumbled in her pouch for it. It clicked open easily and she shut it at once. “Ick. It’ll work, alright, if I don’t spill my guts. It feels rougher than the other one.”

Frozen leaf skeletons crunched beneath their boots. The post house was soon out of sight, the road empty and almost untraveled in winter. Bare trees thrust limbs out above them, bleak and barren in the harsh light of morning. “Are we out of sight, yet?” asked Miriam.

“Yes.” Brill stopped walking. “Might as well get an early start.”

Miriam paused beside her. She shuffled her feet. “Don’t wait long. If I don’t return within about five minutes, assume it means everything’s alright. Just keep walking and I’ll join you at the post house. If you hear anyone coming on the road, hide. If I’m late, wait over for one day then buy a horse or mule, head for Fort Lofstrom, and ask to be taken to Angbard. Clear?”

“Clear.” For a moment Brill froze, then she leaned forward and embraced Miriam. “Sky Father protect you,” she whispered.

“And you,” said Miriam, more surprised than anything else. Abruptly she hugged Brill back. “Take care.” Then she pulled away, pulled out the assassin’s locket, and stood in the middle of the road staring into its writhing depths.

It was twelve o’clock, and all the church bells in Boston were chiming noon.

The strange woman received nothing more than covert glances as she walked along The Mall, eyes flickering to either side. True, she wore a heavy backpack—somewhat singular for a woman—and a most peculiar cap, and her dress was about as far from fashionable as it was possible to be without street urchins harassing her with accusations of vile popery; but she walked with an air of granite determination that boded ill for anyone who got in her way.

Traffic was light but fast, and she seemed self-conscious as she looked both ways repeatedly before crossing the street. An open Jolly-car rumbled past behind her, iron wheels striking sparks from the cobblestones. There was a burst of raucous laughter from the tars within, returning to the North Station for the journey back to the royal dockyards. She dodged nimbly, then reached the safety of the sidewalk.

The pedestrian traffic was thicker near the fish market and the chandlers and other merchant suppliers. The woman glanced at a winter chestnut seller, raised her nose as she sidestepped a senescent pure-collector mumbling over his sack of dogshit, then paused on the corner of The Mall and Jefferson Street, glancing briefly over one shoulder before muttering into her scarf.

“Memo” This is not Boston—at least, not the Boston I know. All the street names are wrong and the buildings are stone and brick, not wood or concrete. Traffic drives on the left and the automobiles—there aren’t many—they’ve got chimneys, like steam locomotives. But the signs are in English and the roads are made of cobblestones or asphalt and it feels like Boston. Weird, really weird. It’s more like home than Niejwein, anyway.”

She carried on down the street, mumbling into the tie-clip microphone pinned inside her scarf. A brisk wind wheezed down the street, threatening to raise it from her head: She tugged down briskly, holding it in place.

“I see both men and women in public—more men than women. Dress style is—hmm. Victorian doesn’t describe it, exactly. Post-Victorian, maybe? Men wear cravats or scarves over high collars, with collarless double-breasted suits and big greatcoats. Hats all round, lots of hats, but I’m seeing suit jackets with yellow and blue stripes, or even louder schemes.” She strode on, past a baroque fire hydrant featuring cast-iron Chinese dragons poised ready to belch a stream of water. “Women’s costume is all tightly tailored jackets and hems down to the ground. Except some of the younger ones are wearing trousers under knee-length skirts. Sort of Oriental in style.” A woman pedaled past her on a bicycle, back primly upright. The bike was a black bone-shaker. “Hm. For cycling, baggy trousers and something like a Pakistani tunic. Everyone wears a hat or scarf.” She glanced left. “Shop prices marked in the windows. I just passed a cobbler’s with a row of metal lasts and leather samples on display and Jesus Christ.”

She paused and doubled back to stare into the small, grimy windows of the shop she’d nearly passed. A distant buzzing filled her ears. “A mechanical adding machine—electric motor drive, with nixie tubes for a display. That’s a divide key, what, nineteen-thirties tech? Punched cards? Forties? Wish I’d paid more attention in the museum. These guys are a long way ahead of the Gruinmarkt. Hey, that looks like an Edison phonograph, but there’s no trumpet and those are tubes at the back. And a speaker.” She stared closer. The price…“price in pounds, shillings, and pennies,” she breathed into her microphone.

Miriam paused. A sense of awe stole over her. This isn’t Boston, she realized. This is something else again. A whole new world, one that had vacuum tubes and adding machines and steam cars—a shadow fell across her. She glanced up and the breath caught in her throat. And airships, she thought. “Airship!” she muttered. It was glorious, improbably streamlined, the color of old gold in the winter sunshine, engines rattling the window glass as it rumbled overhead, pointing into the wind. I can really work here, she realized, excitedly. She paused, looking in the window of a shipping agent, Greenbaum et Pty, “gateways to the world.”

“Scuse me, ma’am. Can I help you with anything?”

She looked down, hurriedly. A big, red-faced man with a bushy moustache and a uniform, flat-topped blue helmet—oops, she thought. “I hope so,” she said timidly. Gulp. Try to fake a French accent? “I am newly arrived in, ah, town. Can you kind sir direct me to a decent and fair pawnbroker?”

“Newly arrived?” The cop looked her up and down dubiously, but made no move toward either his billy club or the brass whistle that hung on a chain around his neck. Something about her made up his mind for him. Maybe it was the lack of patching or dirt on her clothes, or the absence of obvious malnutrition. “Well now, a pawnbroker—you’ll not want to be destitute within city limits by nightfall, hear? The poorhouse is near to overflowing this season and you wouldn’t want a run-in with the bench, now, would ye?”

Miriam bobbed her head. “Thank you kindly, sir, but I’ll be well looked after if I can just raise enough money to contact my sister. She and her husband sent for me to help with the children.”

“Well then.” He nodded. “Go down Jefferson here, turn a left into Highgate. That’ll bring you to Holmes Alley. Don’t go down the Blackshaft by mistake, it’s an odious rookery and you’ll never find your way out. In Holmes Alley you can find the shop of Erasmus Burgeson, and he’ll set you up nicely.”

“Oh thank you,” Miriam gushed, but the cop had already turned away—probably looking for a vagrant to harass.

She hurried along for a block then, remembering the cop’s directions, followed them. More traffic passed on the road and overhead. Tractors pulling four or even six short trailers blocked the street intermittently, and an incongruous yellow pony trap clattered past. Evidently yellow was the interuniverse color of cabs, although Miriam couldn’t guess what Boston’s environmentalists would have made of the coal burners. There were shops here, shops by the dozen, but no department stores, nor supermarkets, or gas-burning cars, or color photographs. The advertisements on the sides of the buildings were painted on, simple slogans like BUY EDISON’S ROSE PETAL SOAP FOR SKIN LIKE FLOWER BLOSSOM. And there were, now she knew what to look for, no beggars.

A bell rang as Miriam pushed through the door of Erasmus Burgeson’s shop, beneath the three gold spheres that denoted his trade. It was dark and dusty, shelves racked high with table settings, silverware, a cabinet full of pistols, other less identifiable stuff—in the other side of the shop, rack after rack of dusty clothing. The cash register, replete with cherubim and gold leaf, told its own story: And as she’d hoped, the counter beside it displayed a glass lid above a velvet cloth layered in jewelry. There didn’t seem to be anybody in the shop. Miriam looked about uneasily, trying to take it all in. This is what people here consider valuable, she thought. Better get a handle on it.

A curtain at the back stirred as a gaunt figure pushed into the room. He shambled behind the counter and turned to stare at her. “Haven’t seen you in here before, have I?” he asked, quizzically.

“Uh, no” Miriam shuffled. “Are you Mr. Burgeson?” she asked.

“The same.” He didn’t smile. Dressed entirely in black, his sleeves and trousers thin as pipe cleaners, all he’d need would be a black stovepipe hat to look like a revenant from the Civil War. “And who would you be?”

“My name is Miriam, uh, Fletcher.” She pursed her lips. “I was told you are a pawnbroker.”

“And what else would I be in a shop like this?” He cocked his head to one side, like a parrot, his huge dark eyes probing at her in the gloom.

“Well. I’m lately come to these shores.” She coughed. “And I am short of money, if not in posessions that might be worth selling. I was hoping you might be able to set me up.”

“Posessions.” Burgeson sat down—perched—on a high, backless wooden stool that raised his knees almost to the level of the counter-top. “It depends what type of posession you have in mind. I can’t buy just any old tat now, can I?”

“Well. To start with, I have a couple of pieces of jewelry.” He nodded encouragingly, so Miriam continued. “But then, I have in mind something more substantial. You see, where I come from I am of not inconsiderable means, and I have not entirely cut myself off from the old country.”

“And what country would that be?” asked Burgeson. “I only ask because of the requirements of the Aliens and Sedition Act,” he added hastily.

“That would be—” Miriam licked her lips. “Scotland?”

“Scotland.” He stared at her. “With an accent like that,” he said with heavy irony. “Well, well, well. Scotland it is. Show me the jewelry.”

“One moment.” Miriam walked forward, peered down at the countertop. “Hmm. These are a bit disappointing. Is this all you deal in?”

“Ma’am.” He hopped down from the stool. “What do you take me for? This is the common stock on public display, where any mountebank might smash and grab. The better class I keep elsewhere.”

“Oh.” She reached into her pouch and fumbled for a moment, then pulled out what she’d been looking for. It was a small wooden box—purchased from a head shop in Cambridge, there being a pronounced shortage of cheap wooden jewelry boxes on the market—containing two pearl earrings. Real pearls. Big ones. “For starters, I’d like you to put a value on these.”

“Hmm.” Burgeson picked the box up, chewing his lower lip. “Excuse me.” He whipped out a magnifying lens and examined them minutely. “I’ll need to test them.” he murmured, “but if these are real pearls, they’re worth a pretty penny. Where did you get them?”

“That is for me to know and you to guess.” She tensed.

“Hah.” He grinned at her cadaverously. “You’d better have a good story next time you try to sell them. I’m not sticking my neck in a noose for your mistress if she decides to send the thief-takers after you.”

“Hmm. What makes you think I’m a light-fingered servant?” she asked.

“Well.” He looked down his nose at her. “Your clothes are not what a woman of fashion, or even of her own means, would wear—”

“Fresh off the boat,” Miriam observed.

“And earrings are among the most magnetic of baubles to those of a jackdaw disposition,” he added.

“And wanting a suit of clothes that does not mark me out as a stranger,” Miriam commented.

“Besides which,” he added with some severity, “Scotland has not existed for a hundred and seventy years. It’s all part of Grande Bretaigne.”

“Oh.” Miriam covered her mouth. Shit! “Well then?” She mustered up a sickly smile. “How about this?”

The quarter-kilogram bar of solid gold was about an inch wide, two inches long, and half an inch thick. It sat on the display case like an intrusion from another world, shimmering with the promise of wealth and power and riches.

“Well now,” breathed Burgeson, “if this is what ladies of means pay their bills with in Scotland, maybe it’s not such an unbelievable fiction after all.”

Miriam nodded. It had better cover the bills, she thought, the damn thing set me back nearly three thousand dollars. “It all depends how honest you aren’t,” she said briskly. “There are more where this one comes from. I’m looking to buy several things, including but not limited to money. I need to fit in. I don’t care if you’re fiddling your taxes or lying to the government, all I care about is whether you’re honest with your customers. You don’t know me, and if you don’t want to, you’ll never see me again. On the other hand, if you say ‘yes’—” she met his eyes—“this need not be our last transaction. Not by a very long way.”

“Hmm.” Burgeson stared right back at her. “Are you in French employ?” he asked.

“Huh?”

Miriam’s fleeting look of puzzlement seemed to reassure him. “Well that’s good,” he said genially. “Excuse me while I fetch the aqua regia: If this is pure I can advance you, oh, ten pounds immediately and another, ahum—” He picked up the gold bar and placed it on the balance behind him. “—sixty two and eight shillings by noon tomorrow.”

“I don’t think so.” Miriam shook her head. “I’ll take ten today, and sixty tomorrow—plus five full pounds’ credit in your shop, here and now, for goods you hold.” She’d been eyeing the price tags. The shilling, a twentieth of a pound, seemed to occupy the same role as the dollar back home, except that they went further. Pounds were big currency.

“Ridiculous.” He stared at her. “Three pounds.”

“Four.”

“Done,” he said, unnervingly rapidly. Miriam had a feeling that she’d been had, somehow, but nodded. He strode over to the door and flipped the sign in the window pane to CLOSED. “Now by all means, let me test out this bar. I’ll just take a sample with this scalpel, mind…” He hurried into the back room. A minute later he re-emerged, bearing a glass measuring cylinder full of water into which he dropped the gold bar. Scribbled measurements followed. Finally he nodded. “Oh, most satisfying,” he muttered to himself before looking at her. “Your sample is indeed of acceptable purity,” he said, looking almost surprised. Reaching into an inner pocket he produced a battered wallet, from which he plucked improbably large banknotes. “Nine one-pound notes, milady, the balance in silver and a few coppers. I hope these are to your satisfaction; the bank across the street will happily exchange them, I assure you.” Next he produced a fountain pen and a ledger, and a wax brick and a candle and a metal die. “I shall just make out this promissory note for sixty pounds to you. If you would like to select from my wares, I can work while you equip yourself.”

“Do you have a measuring tape?” she asked.

“Indeed.” He pulled one down from a hook behind the counter. “If you need any alterations making, Missus Borisovitch across the way is a most excellent seamstress, works while you wait. And her daughter is a fine milliner, too.”

Over the next hour, Miriam ransacked the pawnbroker’s shop. The range of clothing hanging in mothballs from rails all the way up to the ceiling, a dizzying twenty feet up, was huge and strange, but she knew what she wanted—anything that wouldn’t look too alien while she realized her liquid assets and found a real dressmaker to equip her for the sort of business she intended to conduct. Which would almost certainly require formal business wear, as high finance and legal work usually did back home. For a miracle, Miriam discovered a matching jacket, blouse, and long skirt that was in good condition and close enough to her size to fit. She changed in Burgeson’s cramped, damp-smelling cellar while he reopened the shop. It took some getting used to the outfit—the jacket was severely tailored, and the blouse had a high stiff collar—but in his dusty mirror she saw someone not unlike the women she’d passed on her way into town.

“Ah.” Burgeson nodded to her. “That is a good choice. It will, however, cost you one pound fourteen and sixpenc.”

“Sure.” Miriam nodded. “Next. I want a history book.”

“A history book.” He looked at her oddly. “Any particular title?”

She smiled thinly. “One covering the past three hundred years, in detail.”

“Hmm.” Burgeson ducked back into the back of the shop. While he was gone, Miriam located a pair of kidskin gloves and a good topcoat: The hats all looked grotesque to her eye, but in the end she settled on something broad-brimmed and floppy, with not too much fur. He returned and dumped a hardbound volume on the glass display case. “You could do worse than start with this. Alfred’s Annals of the New British.”

“I could.” She stared at it. “Anything else?”

“Or.” He pulled another book up—bound in brown paper, utterly anonymous, thinner and lighter. “This.” He turned it to face her, open at the fly-leaf.

“The Hanoverian Exodus Reconsidered”—she bit her lip when she saw the author. “Karl Marx. Hmm. Keep this on the bottom shelf, do you?”

“It’s only prudent,” he said, apologetically closing it and sliding it under the first book. “I’d strongly recommend it, though,” he added. “Marx pulls no punches.”

“Right. How much for both of them?”

“Six shillings for the Alfred, a pound for the Marx—you do realize that simply being caught with a copy of it can land you a flogging, if not five years exile in Canadia?”

“I didn’t.” She smiled, suppressing a shudder. “I’ll take them both. And the hat, gloves, and coat.”

“It’s been a pleasure doing business with you, madam,” he said fervently. “When shall I see you again?”

“Hnnn.” She narrowed her eyes. “No need for the money tomorrow. I will not be back for at least five days. But if you want another of those pieces—”

“How many can you supply?” he asked, slipping the question in almost casually.

“As many as you need,” she replied. “But on the next visit, no more than two.”

“Well then.” He chewed his lower lip. “For two, assuming this one tests out correctly and the next do likewise, I will pay the sum of two hundred pounds.” He glanced over his shoulder. “But not all at once. It’s too dangerous.”

“Can you pay in services other than money?” she asked.

“It depends.” He raised an eyebrow. “I don’t deal in spying, sedition, or popery.”

“I’m not in any of those businesses,” she said. “But I’m really, truly, from a long way away. I need to establish a toehold here that allows me to set up an import/export business. That will mean…hmm. Do you need identity papers to move about? Passports? Or to open a bank account, create a company, hire a lawyer to represent me?”

He shook his head. “From too far away,” he muttered. “God help me, yes to all of those.”

“Well, then.” She looked at him. “I’ll need papers. Good papers, preferably real ones from real people who don’t need them anymore—not killed, just the usual, a birth certificate from a babe who died before their first birthday,” she added hastily.

“You warm the cockles of my heart.” He nodded slowly. “I’m glad to see you appear to have scruples. Are you sure you don’t want to tell me where you come from?”

She raised a finger to her lips. “Not yet. Maybe when I trust you.”

“Ah, well.” He bowed. “Before you leave, may I offer you a glass of port? Just a little drink to our future business relationship.”

“Indeed you may.” She smiled, surreptitiously pushing back her glove to check her watch. “I believe I have half an hour to spare before I must depart. My carriage turns back into a pumpkin at midnight.”