The Anubis Gates

“Well, there do seem to have been… excesses, yes, incidents of a violent nature,” Moss allowed cautiously, “back when the Brotherhood had its quarters on London Bridge, down on the Southwark end of it. There are mentions in our archives of some rather—”

“Archives? Could I examine them, please? Uh, Lord Byron indicated he’d want to know the history of the Brotherhood before he decided to join,” he added hastily, seeing the simian frown reforming on Moss’s features. “After all, before he invests his fortune in an organization of this nature he’d like to check it out.”

“Oh? Well, yes of course. Irregular, you realize,” Moss said, precariously poling himself up out of his chair with a cane, “but I suppose in this case we may make an exception to the members only rule…” Erect at last, he tottered toward the door behind him. “If you’d bring the lamp and step this way,” he said, and the reference to a fortune earned Doyle the addition of a grudging “sir.”

The door swung inward with such creaking that Doyle knew it hadn’t been opened in quite some time, and when he’d stepped inside behind Moss, and the lamp illuminated the narrow room beyond, he could see why.

Stacks of mildewed, leather-bound journals filled the place from floor to ceiling, and had in places collapsed, spilling crumbled fragments of age-browned paper across the damp floor. Doyle reached for the top volume of a stalagmite stack that only came up chest-high, but rain had leaked into the room at some time and melted or germinated the ancient bindings into one solid mass. Doyle’s prying was exciting to madness a nation of spiders, so he stopped and looked at a shelf that contained several pairs of mummified boots. Catching a glitter by the heel of one, he looked closer and saw a three-inch length of fine gold chain trailing from the ancient leather. All the boots proved to have chains, though most were copper long since gone green.

“Why chains?”

“Mm? Oh, it’s… traditional, in our formal functions, to wear a chain attached to the heel of the right boot. I don’t know how the custom got started, just one of those peculiarities, I expect, like cuff buttons that don’t—”

“What do you know about the origins of the custom?” Doyle growled, for like Byron’s remark about bare feet and dirt floors, this seemed to remind him of something. “Think!”

“Now see here, sir… no need to… wrathful tones … but let’s see, I believe members wore the chains at all times during the reign of Charles the Second… oh, of course, and they didn’t just staple it to the heel as they do now, the chain actually entered the boot through a hole and passed through the stocking and was knotted around the ankle. God knows why. Over the years it’s been simplified… prevent chafing … “

Doyle had begun dismantling one of the drier and older-looking book stacks. He found that they were roughly chronological, arranged in the same pattern as geological strata, and that the journal entries from the eighteenth century chronicled nothing but a dwindling involvement in social affairs—a dinner at which Samuel Johnson was expected but didn’t show, a complaint against adulterated port wines, a protest against gold and silver galloon, whatever that might be, adorning men’s hats—but when he had unearthed the upper volumes of the seventeenth century the notes abruptly became sparser and more cryptic, and were generally slips of paper glued or laid into the books rather than written on the pages. He was unable to follow any gist of these older records, which consisted of lists, in some code, or maps with incomprehensibly abbreviated street names; but at length he found one volume that seemed to be entirely devoted to the occurrences of one night, that of February the fourth, 1684. The pieces of paper laid in it were generally hastily scrawled and in plain English, as if there hadn’t been time to use a cipher.

The writers of them did, though, seem to take it for granted that any reader would be familiar with the situation, and interested only in the details.

“… Then we followed him and his hellish retinue back a-crosse the ice from the Pork-Chopp Lane stayres to the Southwark side,” Doyle read on one slip, “our party dextrously in a Boat with wheeles, piloted by B. and our unnam’d Informant, and although we took care to avoid any clear conflict while on the water, onely endeav’ring to drive them onto the land… the Connexion of course being no good upon the frozen water… there ensu’d Troubles.” Another fragment read, “… destroied entirely, and their leader kill’d by a pistol-ball in the face… ” Toward the front of the book there was an entry actually written on a page: “As wee were about to set about dynynge upon sawfages and a rare chine of beef, in hee burst, and sadlie call’d us away from what was to bee one of the fine dinners.”