The Anubis Gates Page 11

“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?”
<
br />   “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, whic
h 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.