The Anubis Gates

The very thought of the money he’d get from the rag shop for the haul—eight pence at least, more likely a shilling and some—made the boy’s mouth water, and he resolved that if he found it and couldn’t work it back up the slope with his feet, he’d risk being swept away and just bend down and pick it up. It would be well worth the risk, for he could live high for several lazy days on a shilling, at the end of which time he’d be ready to do his usual early winter trick of getting caught stealing coal from one of the barges up at Wapping so as to be sent off to the House of Correction, where he’d have a coat and shoes and stockings and regular meals for several months, and not have to wade half-clad out into the cold mud in the winter dawns.

He tensed and the corners of his mouth turned up in a smile, for the toes of his left foot had plunged through the top layer of silt and found cloth. He turned, trying to get his other foot onto it without losing his balance.

“Can,” croaked a voice from a few yards out in the water, “can someone… help me?”

The boy recovered his balance after starting in surprise, and belatedly realized that some of the river sounds that he’d been too absorbed to pay attention to had been the ripple and swish of weak swimming.

There was the spatter of a wet head being shaken. “Hey… boy! Is that a boy there? Help me!”

“I can’t swim,” said Fennery.

“You’re standing there, aren’t you? The shore’s so close?”

“Aye, just behind me.”

“Then I can… make it myself. Where am I?”

“I’ll tell you if you come pick up this sack of nails for me.” The swimmer had been angling toward the boy, and was now close enough to stand on the underwater mud slope. For a few minutes he just stood there as his frame was racked with gasping and choking and retching. Fennery was glad he was upstream of the man.

“God,” the man gasped finally. He rinsed his mouth and spat. “I must have… swallowed half the Thames. Did you hear an explosion earlier?”

“No, sir,” said Fennery. “What blew up?”

“I think a block in Bond Street did. One moment I was—” He gagged and threw up another cupful of river water. “Pah. Lord preserve me. I was fencing at Angelo’s, and an instant later I was at the bottom of the Thames with empty lungs. I think it took me five minutes to fight my way to the surface—I don’t think anybody who wasn’t a trained athlete could have done it—and in spite of clenched teeth and a… firm resolve, I tried to breathe the river on the way up. I don’t even recall breaking the surface—I think I had fainted, and the cold air revived me.”

The boy nodded. “Could you reach down and get me my bag?”

Dazedly obedient, the man bent over, ducked his head under, groped for and found the neck of the bag and yanked it up out of the mud.

“Here you go, lad,” he said when he’d straightened up. “Lord, I’m weak! Scarce could lift it. And I think I’ve damaged my ears—voice sounds odd. Where is this?”

“Limehouse, sir,” said Fennery gleefully, wading back toward the stairs.

“Limehouse? Then I’ve been swept much further than I’d thought.”

The water was only at Fennery’s knees now, and he was able both to hang onto the bag and support the bedraggled swimmer, who was reeling dizzily. “You’re an athlete, sir?” the boy asked dubiously, for the shoulder he was supporting felt bony and thin.

“Aye. I’m Adelbert Chinnie.”

“What? Not the Admirable Chinnie, the singlestick champion?”

“That’s me.”

“Why, I saw you in Covent Garden once, fighting Torres the Terrible.” They had reached the stairs, and started haltingly up them.

“Summer before last, that was. Yes, he nearly beat me, too.”

When they had laboriously gotten up to street level they walked along a cinder path in the shadow of a brick wall for a dozen paces, then rounded the end of it and started across a littered, industrial-looking yard that was lit by a couple of lanterns hung on the wall of a warehouse.

Fennery was glad to be so impressively escorted in this neighborhood, which was one of the most perilous in London. He glanced up at his companion—and halted.

“You stinking liar!” he hissed, all at once fearful of making any noise.

The man seemed to be having difficulty walking. “What?” he asked distractedly.

“You’re not the Admirable Chinnie!”

“Of course I am. What the devil do you suppose is wrong with me, though? My whole body feels strange, as though—”

“Chinnie’s taller than you, and younger, and muscular. You’re some sort of derelict.”

The man chuckled weakly. “You young wretch. If there was ever an occasion I’d every right to look like a derelict, this is it. How do you suppose you’d look after swimming up, breathless, from the floor of the river? And I am taller—when shod.”

The boy shook his head incredulously. “You’ve sure gone to hell since that summer. Look, I live just over there, so I’m gonna go, but if you follow that lane it’ll get you to Ratcliff Highway. You ought to be able to get a cab there.”

“Thank you, lad.” The man began to walk unsteadily in the indicated direction.