The Anubis Gates Read online

  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 h
is 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?”