The Anubis Gates

This brought merriment from the nearby members of the crowd, and a tough-faced boy ran up and nimbly kicked the bottom of Doyle’s basket so that it flew up out of his hands and the vegetables in question showered down around him. One thumped him on the nose, and the laughter doubled.

The coster on the cart pursed his lips, as though he hadn’t quite intended to provoke all this. “You’re a pitiful sod, ain’t you?” he said to Doyle, who was just standing there dazedly watching the impromptu soccer with onions game the street boys had started up. “Here—take twice what they were worth. Here, damn you, wake up!” He dropped two pennies into the hand Doyle automatically held out, then goaded his horse forward.

Doyle pocketed the coins and looked around. The crowd had lost interest in him. The onions—even the basket—were nowhere to be seen. No point going any further, he thought, and began trudging back toward the river in defeat.

“Ah, there’s one of the Dolorous Brethren!” piped a weird high voice like Mickey Mouse’s. “Just had his onions stomped into Pavement Soup, haven’t you now, sir?”

Startled and embarrassed, Doyle looked up and saw that he was being addressed by a gaudily painted puppet in a tall booth that had even gaudier pictures of dragons and little men all over the front of it. There was a scanty audience of ragged boys and a few old bums squatted in front of it, and they laughed when the puppet crooked its arm beckoningly at Doyle.

“Come over and let old Punch cheer you up,” it squeaked. Doyle shook his head, feeling himself blush, and kept walking, but the puppet added, “Maybe I could tell you how to earn some real money, eh?” and Doyle stopped.

Eyes of some kind of gleaming crystal made the puppet actually seem to be staring at him. It beckoned again. “What have you got to lose, yer lordship?” it asked in its bird-whistle voice. “You’ve already been laughed at—and Punch never tries for an effect somebody else just got.”

Doyle strode over to it, careful to keep a sceptical expression. Could the concealed puppeteer really be offering him employment? He couldn’t afford not to check. Standing a couple of yards in front of the booth, he crossed his arms. “What have you got in mind, Punch?” he asked loudly.

“Ah!” exclaimed the puppet, clapping its wooden hands, “you’re a foreigner! Excellent! But you can’t talk to Punch till after the show. Sit down, please, your lordship.” It waved at the paving stones. “Your box has been held for you and your companion.”

Doyle glanced around. “My companion?” he asked, feeling like the straight man in a comedy routine.

“Oh yes,” chirped the thing, “I think I recognize Lady Ruin. Hm?”

Doyle shrugged and sat down, pulling his cap lower over his eyes. What the hell, he thought, I’m not supposed to be back at the boat until eleven, and it can’t even be ten-thirty yet.

“Very well then!” exclaimed the puppet, straightening up and darting its lifelike gaze around the sparse and tattered assembly. “Now that his lordship has finally arrived, we will commence The Dominion of Secret Glamor, or Punch’s New Opera.”

A melancholy crank organ started up inside the narrow booth, wheezing and clattering as it tortuously rendered some tune that might have been a cheery dance step once, and Doyle wondered if there was more than one man in the booth, for now a second puppet had appeared on stage, and presumably a hand was still needed to crank the organ.

The newly arrived puppet was, of course, Judy, and Doyle watched, stupefied with hunger and exhaustion, as the two of them alternately exchanged endearments and cudgel-thumps.

He wondered why this had been called Punch’s New Opera, for it seemed to be the same old pointlessly savage story line—here was Punch left to take care of the crying baby, singing to it to quiet it down, and finally just slamming its head against the wall and pitching it out the set’s little window. He next confessed the deed to Judy, and then killed her when she hit him for it. Doyle yawned profoundly, and hoped the show wouldn’t be too long. The sun had finally burned its way through the gray overcast, and was beginning to bake old fish smells out of his shiny corduroy coat.

The next puppet to appear was Joey the Clown, though in this version his name was something Doyle didn’t catch that sounded like “Horrible,” and he was on stilts. Topical satire, evidently, thought Doyle—for he’d seen a clown on stilts several times during the course of the morning, here and there around the market, and this puppet was a duplicate of him, right down to the somewhat nightmarish patterns of face paint. The clown, with a sort of mocking sternness, was asking Punch what he intended to do about the murder of his poor wife and child.

“Why, I expect I’ll go to the constable and have myself locked up,” said Punch sadly. “A murdering blackguard like myself ought to be hanged.”

What’s this, thought Doyle, a Punch with morals? That’s an innovation.