The River of No Return (11 page)

Nick let the crowds surge past him and across the street, then turned back south, down Judd Street, watching out of the corner of his eye as Mibbs put his shades back on and stepped after him.

Interesting. Glasses back on. So was Mibbs’s naked gaze driving him somewhere in particular or only keeping him within the fucking Congestion Charge Zone?

At the end of Hunter Street he stood still for a moment, waiting to see if Mibbs was going to direct him again. But he felt nothing. All right; he was clearly free to roam, within certain boundaries. Arkady and Alice were probably waiting in St. James’s Square and Mibbs was their equivalent of an electric fence, making sure Nick didn’t go far. That was humiliating, to be sure, but it wasn’t life-threatening. Nick’s battle-readiness faded, and he turned and held up his hands to show that he surrendered. Mibbs was eight feet away. Nick could see himself in those mirrored shades, small and belligerent. He wheeled around again.

Which way? He was facing Guilford Street . . . Guilford Street . . . he searched his memory.

Guilford Street! The Foundling Hospital. It should be right there.

But when he looked to the left he could see that the great curving walls that used to enclose the grounds were gone. Nick crossed the street, staring. Not only the walls, but the imposing dormitories themselves, and the grand central hall that had joined them—all gone. Nick walked slowly along the iron fence that now enclosed a large park until he reached the entrance. Here was the marble centerpiece to the grand double gateway that had once stood here. One lonely little relic of the single most imposing monument erected by eighteenth-century benevolence.

The Foundling Hospital had been a favorite charity of his mother’s, and Nick well remembered being seven or eight years old and going on visitor’s day in the grand Blackdown carriage, his mother glorious in her enormous wig, to look at the children all scrubbed and regimented for presentation. At the end of their visit, they had seen a few women bringing infants to this gateway. Back then the marble had been decorated with a compass rose, and a man stood before it, receiving the little ones. The mothers had to put their hand into a bag and draw out a colored ball. Two women drew out black balls; they had to take their babies away. The third drew out a white ball, and the man reached out and took the little baby from her with a tenderness that fascinated Nick. The mother left a jet button with her newborn, as identification in case she ever had the means to come back and claim him.

Nicholas’s mother stepped forward after the woman turned away and asked the man at the gate if the baby had a name. He explained that all babies were named anew upon being accepted, and Nick’s mother said that the child must be named Nicholas, “for my son, who will be a marquess one day.” She tugged Nick forward: “Come and see your namesake.” The baby’s white-blond hair stood up all around his head in a frothy cloud, exactly like Nick’s mother’s wig. Nick laughed when he saw it. His mother asked why he laughed, and when he told her, she laughed, too. Then they watched as the man entered the new name in a big book: Nicholas Marquess—black button.

Now Nick stood again on the spot where Nicholas Marquess had lost his mother and gained his name, and where Nicholas Falcott had laughed with his mother, the only time he could remember sharing a joke with her. A heartless joke—and yet they had felt so good about themselves, going to see the foundlings. He read the sign adorning the simple iron gate that now opened into the park:
CORAM’S FIELDS: NO ADULTS UNLESS ACCOMPANIED BY A CHILD.

Nick put his hand to the gate, wanting to feel the cold of it against his fingers. He peered in at the empty football pitches, the bare trees. Blinking, he realized that tears were in his eyes. Then he felt a pressure on his arm and his feelings lost their footing: He hung over an abyss of fathomless despair, and he felt it sucking him downward . . . he cried out as every joy was lifted from him as gently and as easily . . .

Nick clung now to the iron gates with both hands, his vision narrowing, darkening, a terrible vertigo rushing in his ears. From far away somewhere, chattering, like the sound of children’s voices, a fading echo of pleasure . . . if he could just tear through these iron bars, just him . . .

With a last effort he summoned up those calm dark eyes . . . calm dark eyes . . . and he forced his own vision to focus. There, just beside him, Mibbs’s face. Mibbs’s breath on his face. Mibbs’s hand on his arm. Mibbs was holding him poised above the pit, as easily as he might hold a spider over a flame, and his eyes burned toward Nick. In a moment the fire would singe the thread, burn it asunder. . . .

And then Nick was gasping and cursing before he even registered that someone had tossed cold water in his face. He twisted, breaking Mibbs’s hold: “Shit!” He blinked water away from his eyes. “What was that?” He meant the crushing grief. He meant Mibbs’s touch.

But by the time he could really focus, Mibbs had melted away across the street, and a young Japanese woman was trying to wipe at Nick’s face, prettily accented apologies spilling from her lips. She had dropped her purse and tossed the contents of her water bottle up and over Nick, and now she was torn between drying him off and collecting her scattered belongings from the sidewalk. Her asshole boyfriend laughed and took her picture.

Nick dropped down and started retrieving her things.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, and crouched down too.

“It’s okay.” Nick handed over her pocket-sized
A–Z
street guide. “I needed the shock. I wasn’t feeling well.”

She took the book and smiled at him. She was lovely, but more than that she wore sparkly eye shadow, and the things they were gathering up were contemporary. A phone. Some ballpoint pens. As she tucked them into her purse, he felt as if he were being tucked back with them into the twenty-first century. His heartbeat slowed.

Ah. A cellophane pack of tissues. “May I?” Nick extracted one and wiped the remaining water from his face, looking up in disbelief at the boyfriend, who was still going at it with the digital camera. “Your boyfriend is a jerk,” Nick said as the woman leaned toward him for a pound coin that had rolled between his feet.

She laughed, glancing up, and was even lovelier than before. “He is my brother,” she said.

“Oh, really?”

“Yes.”

Nick handed her the purse, now fully reassembled. He stood and put out a hand to pull her up. “You must find a better traveling companion next time you come to London.”

She held his hand for a moment after she rose; she had that look in her eyes. Nick smiled down at her, well-being seeping back into his soul. She had given him all he could ask for with that warm glance, so unlike Mibbs’s terrible blue stare. “Thank you,” he said, and bowed, like a marquess.

He straightened and watched as she walked away, expostulating with her brother in Japanese.

Then he turned and looked for Mr. Mibbs.

He was gone.

J
ulia woke the next morning fired with purpose. She was the Talisman, but what did that mean? A human talisman . . . it made no sense.

After breakfast, she knocked resolutely on the study door. When Eamon called for her to enter, she threw the door open with a flourish and closed it briskly behind her. Then she turned and froze Eamon where he sat in his chair, his mouth open to demand an explanation. He looked like a trout.

“Hold fast to that thought, Cousin,” she said, and strode past him to the bookshelf. There was Grandfather’s copy of
Johnson’s Dictionary,
pristine in spite of being over fifty years old: Grandfather had considered himself omniscient.

Julia hooked her finger over the binding of the first heavy volume and then the second, dragging them forth from among their friends. She carried them over to the desk, relieved to see that at least the pages were cut. “Excuse me,” she said, moving Eamon’s arm slightly to give herself room. “I need to look up the word
talisman,
” she explained as she flipped open volume two. “Because we need to know what we’re talking about, don’t you think? Now that the stakes are a little higher?”

She paged through the dictionary, and after five full pages given over to a definition of the word
take,
she found it.
Talisman.
Blast. The definition was three useless words long. “A magical character.” She closed the book. What did that mean? A magical character, like in a play?

She cracked volume one open, chasing after a new word and smiling when she saw it:
character
. But her smile faded as she drew her finger down the many definitions. “A mark, a stamp, a representation; a letter used in writing or printing; the hand or manner of writing; the person with his assemblage of qualities; particular constitution of mind.” And then a quote from Pope, to illustrate Johnson’s last definition: “Most women have no
characters
at all.”

“Marvelous,” she said aloud. “Grand. Look here, Eamon, I believe you will appreciate this tidbit of wisdom. What’s that you say? Cat got your tongue? How sad.” She slammed the book shut.

Julia hauled the dictionary back to the shelf and pushed the two volumes into place. Then she positioned herself in front of the closed door. “‘Hark, hark, the watch-dogs bark,’ Eamon!” He gaped blindly at her, and she laughed. Then she started time up again.

Words spilled from his lips: “Get out of here!”

Julia curtseyed low. “I am sorry to intrude upon you, Cousin. I wondered only if I might search for a word in the dictionary.”

“Get out!”

* * *

The problem, she decided five minutes later, as she stared out the window of the yellow saloon, lay in the definition of the word
character
. If she was a magical character in her own right—“the person with his assemblage of qualities”—then she was in control of her talent. It was hers to use and no one else’s. And indeed, she was clearly able to use her power herself. But if she was a magical character in the sense of “a representation, or a letter used in printing,” then her talent could be used by someone else. Writing was a method for channeling meaning from one mind to another, and she suspected that a talisman worked like writing—to channel magic, not to make it.

She was like Ariel, in other words. A magical character in and of herself, but also bound to do the will of another, should she meet and fall afoul of a Prospero.

Pretend, Grandfather had said. It was the only thing he had ever said to her that might be information about her power, and it was beginning to seem like sound advice, indeed.

Julia sighed onto a windowpane, then drew a sweeping
J
in the mist.

* * *

Nick pushed open the door to the house in St. James’s Square, half expecting to find Alice and Arkady waiting for him, like angry parents. But the foyer was deserted. Nick headed to the kitchen to make himself some tea and eventually found the two older people in the parlor, sitting cozily around their own tea tray. “Nick!” Alice looked delighted to see him, as if he hadn’t broken her rule about leaving the house.

Arkady twisted around and beamed.

“Hi,” Nick said. “How are you guys?”

“Fine, fine.” Alice held out a hand, and Nick strolled over and took it. She squeezed his fingers. “I see you have a cup of something—won’t you join us?”

Nick settled into the chair that matched Alice’s and took a sip of his tea. He eyed his hosts over the rim of his cup. They wore matching expressions of almost comical benevolence. So they were playing Mommy and Daddy after all, just in an amiable vein. They looked like June and Ward Cleaver, getting ready to deliver the moral lesson of the episode. Don’t wander too far from home, Beaver, or Mr. Mibbs will control your mind!

“So,” Alice said, “what did you do today? Go anywhere in particular?”

He gave Alice his thinnest smile. “Come now. You know what I did. I ran away.”

“But of course,” Arkady said. “We knew you would. What kind of man would stay, day after day?”

Nick leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs out, crossing them at the ankle. “So this was a test of my manhood. Well played, me.”

“Bah! Of course it was not a test. I only say, how strange it would be if you did not break free. And you did. Off you went. All my wife does, like a civilized person, is ask: Where did you go?”

“You know perfectly well where I went. You had me tailed.”

Alice laughed. “How wonderful that you noticed. You see, Arkady? I told you he would realize. He’s very clever.”

“Do you mean to tell me your man was supposed to be subtle?” Nick snorted as Mibbs’s villainous yellow socks rose up in his imagination, the hair like Donny Osmond’s, the psychedelic Bertie Wooster suit.

“I’m pleasantly surprised, that’s all.”

“Okay . . .” Nick frowned, wondering what joy she could possibly be deriving from the misery he had endured by the gates of the Foundling Hospital. “Whatever. The point is, you know exactly where I went. And you know what happened.”

“Yes,” Arkady said. “That— how should I put it?—that mishap in Guilford Street.”

“We’re so relieved it came to nothing.” Alice leaned forward, her teacup cradled in her hands like an egg. “We weren’t having you followed for the fun of it. It was for your own safety.”

“Is that how you’re going to spin this?”

“It’s true. Alone all day in London—eventually you were bound to get sucked into your emotions.”

That fear at Euston Road and then that despair on Guilford Street—those had been his fault somehow? Because he couldn’t handle London? “That’s bullshit,” he said. “I’m in perfect control of my feelings. And those feelings weren’t my feelings at all. They were forced on me.”

Alice sighed. “Of course you are in control. Most of the time. But you are a time traveler, Nick, and your emotions are your time machine. That’s how it works.”

He raised his eyebrows and stared at her.

She smiled serenely, as if she hadn’t just said something unbelievable. “Normally your feelings are calibrated to keep you in the present, ticking over from moment to moment. But they also can propel you forward and pull you back. Don’t you see? We do it with feelings. That’s why we keep Guild members away from their homelands. Yearning, nostalgia, loss, loneliness—these are all superhighways back to the past. Your emotions can be overwhelming when you’re in a place that once was familiar to you. Without training, without proper understanding . . . well. It can be dangerous. If time is a river, it is a deep and a strong one. It is easy to drown, easy to get swept away.”

“Feelings.” Nick shook his head. “We do it with feelings.” He snorted, then laughed out loud. “That’s absurd!”

“I don’t know why you’re being so scornful,” Alice said. “You should appreciate it. You’re from the Romantic era. ‘Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart . . . the affections gently lead us on.’”

“Oh, please. And anyway, I favor the metaphysical poets.”

“Fair enough. But surely you understand; we couldn’t let you trot off into London all alone. We needed somebody near you to keep you from slipping away. You were bound to have a moment or two of intense longing for the past. And you did. In Guilford Street.”

Nick blew a long breath out between his teeth. “I’m sorry, Alice. But your lies don’t become you. If those were my feelings, emanating from my heart, I’ll eat my hat. And if that spy of yours, that atrocity in tweeds, is your idea of a gentle guiding hand . . .”

Alice’s face was as blank as a sheet of foolscap.

“You’re pretending to have no idea what I’m talking about.” Nick got to his feet. “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised, not after what I learned about you over dinner last night. The Guild and its deep dark secrets.” A shadow of that terrible despair he had experienced outside the Foundling Hospital fell over him, and he passed a hand over his face. “This is all bullshit. I’m tired and I need to be alone.”

“Wait.” Alice held a hand out. “Please. Sit down. Atrocity in tweeds? Who?”

“Your spy. Mr. Mibbs.”

“Mr. Mibbs?” Alice frowned and glanced at her husband. He shrugged.

“Oh, God, I don’t know his real name, but your secret police guy. That big lummox who followed me. Or rather, who walked me, like a dog, through the city. And then punished me like a dog. Took me down right there in the street. Don’t tell me, Alderwoman, that he was saving me from my emotions. Don’t try to tell me you don’t know exactly what he put me through. For Christ’s sake, I thought I would never feel joy again. If it hadn’t been for a nice girl who dumped her water over me . . . to be honest, I don’t know what might have happened. I don’t know if he was killing me with sadness, or stealing my heart, or what. So now tell me your lies, Alice.” Nick shoved his hands in his pockets and prepared to listen. “Go on. Tell me a different story, one I believe. Explain it all away.”

Alice and Arkady stared up at him like he was a ghost. Then after what felt like a year, Alice said, “That woman who splashed you, do you remember anything about her?”

“Yes. Sure. She was lovely. Japanese. Her brother was a total dick and kept taking her picture.”

Alice nodded, comprehension writing itself again across her expression. “Sit down, Nick. No, really. This is very serious. I don’t know this Mr. Mibbs person. That woman and her brother, they were the ones trailing you for us.”

Nick blinked, thinking about that for a moment, then dismissing it. “Oh, sure. That’s good.”

“No, but really. They were.” Alice was digging her iPhone out from where it was tucked in beside her and turning it on. “Here.” She held it up to Nick and he saw a map of central London, with the route he had taken perfectly traced out in red through the streets. Then she tapped again at the screen and handed him the phone. There was a photo of himself and the girl, crouching over her purse. “Kumiko texted right away to say you had a fit in Guilford Street. She said she thought you were about to jump. That would have been a disaster; you are totally untrained. You might have disappeared into the River of Time and been lost. She saved you with that stunt of hers.”

Nick sank down into his chair and stared owlishly at the photo.

Alice kept talking. “Their names are Kumiko and Shuchiro. They’re new, fresh from training. Brother-and-sister team. Twins, actually. Extremely rare, for siblings to jump together. A strong connection. They are very useful to us.”

Kumiko and Shuchiro: The Asian tourists on the embankment. Nick Davenant: Total dick. He scrolled back through Shuchiro’s pictures. Another of the purse gathering, then one of him gripping the gate, looking weak in the knees. He flipped back more quickly. A picture of him standing at the light at Euston Road, then one of him sipping his coffee in Seven Dials. All the way back to a picture or two of him on the banks of the Thames, staring at the water. But not a single one with Mibbs.

He looked up from the phone. “Where is Kumiko now? I want to ask her something. Can you call her?”

“Yes, of course.” Alice took the phone back and tapped at it. “Hello, Shuchiro, this is Alderwoman Gacoki. Yes. Thank you for your work today. Is Kumiko with you? May I speak to her please? Thank you.” She nodded to Nick and handed him the phone. “She’ll be on in a minute.”

Nick held the phone to his ear, waiting. Soon enough he heard that accent again, but the voice was stronger, more self-assured. “Hello? This is Kumiko.”

“Hi, Kumiko. No, this isn’t the Alderwoman. This is Nick Davenant. I’m the guy you trailed today.”

“Oh!” She laughed. “So you knew?”

“No, no. Actually you had me completely fooled. But listen, do you remember, right before you tossed your water on me—was there a man with me?”

“Yes, there was a man. Trying to help you.”

“That was the only time you noticed him? He was dressed ridiculously—you didn’t see him earlier on my walk?”

There was silence as she thought about it. “Maybe I saw him earlier? I don’t know. I still think everyone dresses ridiculously in London.”

“Okay . . . but seriously. What was he doing when you saw him with me?”

“Just bending over you. He must have thought you were going to faint. He came forward before we even realized you were in trouble.”

“Did your brother send all the pictures he took? Do you think he might have a picture of that man? I want to show it to the Alderwoman.”

“Just a moment.” He heard her call to her brother in Japanese. He replied, and after a moment Kumiko spoke again in English. “Yes, we have a picture. He’ll send it right now.”

And indeed, there was the buzz of an incoming text message against his ear, and with it he relaxed; there would be proof. Maybe Alice and Arkady would know who Mibbs was and what he was doing trailing after Nick. “That’s great, thanks so much, Kumiko. And listen, thank you for saving me today. You dragged me right back into the moment. I’m very grateful.”

“No problem.” She paused. “Are you going to be in London long?”

Nick turned his shoulder to Alice and Arkady, as if that would keep his conversation private. “Maybe, I don’t know. I’m not allowed out, you know. You might have to come save me again.”