The Anubis Gates (12 page)

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.

“The fruit that was to grow upon this Tree of Evil would be great, for it should be fit to be served to Don Lucifer’s table as a new banqueting dish, sithence all his other meats, though they fatted him well, were grown stale.”

—Thomas Decker

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.”