The Anubis Gates

The rhythmic clacking of the oars ceased. “Where do you hail from, sir?” Chris asked.

“Calif—uh, America.” The breeze on his soaked clothes had set him shivering, and he clamped his teeth to keep them from chattering.

“Well then, Meg, he’s got money for travelling, hasn’t he? Stands to reason. Where’s your hotel, sir?”

“Actually, I—damn, it’s cold, have you got anything I could wrap up in?—actually, I had just arrived. They took everything: all my money, my luggage, my, uh, passport… “

“In other words, he’s a shivering pauper,” stated Meg. She turned a righteous stare on Doyle. “And just how do you expect to repay our kindness in saving your life?”

Doyle was getting angry. “Why didn’t you tell me your rates before you pulled me out of the river? I could have told you then that I can’t afford them, and you could have gone on and looked for a more affluent person to rescue. I guess I never read the last part of that parable—the part where the Thrifty Samaritan serves the poor devil with an itemized bill.”

“Meg,” said Chris, “the poor man’s right, and we wouldn’t accept money from him even if he had any. I know he’ll be happy to work off the debt—for that’s what it is, you know, sir, in the eyes of man and God—by helping us set up at the market, and carrying the baskets when Sheila goes the rounds with her bunts.” He eyed Doyle’s coat and boots. “And now fetch him a blanket to change out of his wet clothes under. We can let him have a suit of Patrick’s old work things in exchange for his ruined clothes, which we’ll have to try to sell as rags.”

Doyle was tossed a blanket that reeked of onions, and from some sort of locker in the bow Meg dug out a heavy coat and a pair of pants, both of worn and much-mended dark corduroy, a once-white shirt, and a pair of old boots that looked like they might have graced old Chris’ feet when he was Doyle’s age. “Ah!” she exclaimed, producing last a dirty white scarf. “Patrick’s third-best kingsman.”

The chill made Doyle eager to change into these wretched but dry clothes, and when he’d kicked his wet things out from under the blanket Meg gathered them all and stowed them so carefully that he knew they hoped to get a good price for them.

He scrubbed his hair fairly dry with the blanket, then, feeling warm and restored, moved to the end of the thwart away from the puddle he’d been sitting in. He wished he had a pipe or cigar, or even a cigarette. The boat, he noticed, was filled with lidded wooden tubs and lumpy burlap sacks. “I smell onions and… ?”

“Pea soup,” said young Sheila. “The fishermen and fishmongers get so cold at Billingsgate that they’ll fork out tuppence for a plate of it. Thruppence in winter.”

“Onions… is the main enterprise,” panted Chris. “The soup’s just… a courtesy, like… we scarcely get for it… what it costs us to make.”

I’ll bet, thought Doyle sourly.

The moon was low on the horizon, looking big and gold and blurry, and its faery radiance on the trees and fields and creek ripples wasn’t dimmed when Meg leaned out to unhook the bow lantern, flint-scratch it alight, and replace it on its hook. The watercourse widened out, and Chris heeled the boat around to port.

“On the Thames now, we are,” he said quietly. A couple of other boats, tethered together, were visible out on the broad expanse of the river; they were ponderous, low-riding things, each with a huge cubical canvas-covered burden visible under the tangles of rigging.

“Hay boats,” said Sheila, crouched beside Doyle. “We saw one burning out there once, and men on fire were jumping from the top of the bale down into the water. That was a show—better than the penny gaffs, and free.”