The Anubis Gates

“Acai, rya,” said the gypsy, hastening up to him. Doctor Romany glanced around. The sun was low in the west, throwing long shadows across the darkening heath, and was doubtless too concerned with its imminent entry into the Tuaut, and its boat trip through the twelve hours of the night, to glance back at what might be transpiring in this field. The rack of wood was laid out on the grass, looking like a twenty-foot section of a bridge, and the sharp aromatic fumes of brandy were so pungent on the evening breeze that he knew his threats had worked, and that the gypsies had used the entire keg to douse the wood and hadn’t saved any for drinking. “When did you splash it on?” he asked.

“Only a minute or so ago, rya,” answered Richard. “We were drawing lots to see who’d go fetch you.”

“Very well.” Romany rubbed his eyes and sighed deeply, trying to thrust out of his mind the whisper he’d heard. “Bring me the brazier of coals and the lancet,” he said finally. “And we’ll have a try at summoning these fire elementals.”

“Avo.” Richard hurried away, audibly muttering garlic, and Romany again turned toward the sun, which was now poised on the edge of entering the darkness, and while his guard was down the words he’d heard came rushing back to him: Kes ku setcher ser sat, tuk kemhu a pet… Your bones will fall upon the earth, and you will not see the heavens…

He heard Richard’s feet swishing through the long grass behind him, and he shrugged fatalistically and began prodding his left arm with the claw fingers of his right hand, trying to find a good bountiful vein.

I hope they’ll settle for ka blood, he thought.

* * *

The elderly man in the threadbare dressing gown lowered his white brows and widened his eyes in an almost ape-like expression of astonished disapproval when Doyle ventured to refill his tiny glass from the decanter of mediocre sherry, even though he’d only nodded and smiled and said, “Help yourself, my lord,” when Byron had refilled his for the second time.

“Ah, hmm, what were we discussing, before… ?” the man quavered. “Yes, aside from… ah… fellowship, yes, promoting the… quiet joys of sensible company, our main purpose is to prevent the… pollution of good old honest British stock by… inferior strains.” One trembling hand shook an incautiously large mound of snuff onto a lumpy knuckle of the opposite hand and then the old man snorted the powder up a nostril and seemed, to Doyle at least, almost to die of the resulting sneezing fit.

Byron made a silent snarl of exasperation and bolted his sherry.

“Mercy! I—kooshwah!—I beg your pardon, my lord.” The old man dabbed at his streaming eyes with a handkerchief.

Doyle leaned forward and rumbled impatiently, “And just how do you go about preventing this, as you call it, pollution, Mr. Moss?” He glanced around at the dusty curtains, tapestries, paintings and books that insulated the rooms of the Antaeus Brotherhood from the fresh autumn breeze outside. The smells of candle wax, Scottish snuff and deteriorating leather book bindings and upholstery was beginning to make him feel ill.

“Eh? Oh, why we… write letters. To the newspapers. Protesting the, ah, leniency in the immigration laws, and proposing statutes to… ban gypsies and Negroes and, uh, Irishmen from the larger towns. And we print and distribute pamphlets, which,” he said with an ingratiating grimace toward Byron, “tends, as you might imagine, to deplete the club kitty—ah, treasury. And we sponsor morality plays—”

“Why the Antaeus Brotherhood?” interrupted Doyle, angry that the vague hope he’d felt on hearing the name seemed to be proving so unfounded.

“—which… what? Oh! Yes, well we feel that England’s strength, like that of Antaeus in, as it were, classical mythology, is based on… maintaining contact with the earth, the soil… you know, the solid native British… uh … “

“Soil,” said Byron, nodding fiercely as he pushed his chair back and stood up. “Excellent. Thank you, Mr. Moss, it’s been inspiring. Ashbless, you may stay and glean more valuable information, in case we should be attacked by savage Negroes or Irishmen. I’d sooner wait at my haberdasher’s. There I shall simply be bored.” He turned on his heel, visibly suppressing a wince as his shoe pinched his foot, and limped out to the hall. His irregular footsteps thumped and knocked down the patchily carpeted stairs, and then the street door could be heard to slam.

“I beg your pardon,” Doyle said to the dumbstruck Moss. “Lord Byron is a man of tumultuous passions.”

“I… well, youth,” Moss muttered.

“But listen,” said Doyle earnestly, hunching forward in his chair, to Moss’ evident alarm, “didn’t you people used to be more … militant? I mean like a hundred years or so ago—weren’t things more… I don’t know… serious in their consequences than a letter to the Times would be?”