The Anubis Gates

Doyle soon noticed that certain members of the milling market crowd were looking at him in peculiar ways; a well-dressed man leading a child by the hand glanced at him with a mixture of pity and contempt, one stout old fellow stared with obvious envy, and a policeman—to Doyle’s alarm—gave him a squinting, tight-lipped stare as though half resolved to arrest him on the spot. Doyle stared down at the sprung, bag-like shoes Chris and Meg had let him have in exchange for his elegant boots. Whatever it is, he thought, if there’s money in it and it’s not too illegal, I’ll take it—for a while, anyway, just till I get on my feet in this damned century.

The old man pushed the curtain aside and walked away without a glance at the boy or Doyle, and Doyle, watching him recede into the crowd, was unable to guess whether the old fellow was pleased or disappointed. The boy had stepped inside, and could soon be heard laughing delightedly. He was outside again in a moment, skipping away with a bright new shilling in his hand—and, Doyle noticed, a chalked cross in a, circle, which definitely hadn’t been there before, on the back of his oversized coat.

He looked back at the booth and met the cunningly worked gaze of the voluptuous Judy puppet peering around the curtain at him. “Come play in my pint pot,” she whispered, and winked.

The kid got a shilling, he reminded himself as he stepped forward—and I’ll check my coat afterward for chalk marks.

The puppet disappeared inside a moment before Doyle swept the curtain aside and edged in. The interior was dark, but he could see a little stool, and he sank onto it.

He could just make out the silhouette, a foot or two away, of a head in a tall, pointed hat and an upper torso in a coat with grotesquely padded shoulders; the form moved, leaning forward, and he knew it was his host. “And now the ruined foreigner,” came a fluty voice, “trying to look at ease in an alien land. Where do you come from?”

“Uh… America. And I am broke—penniless. So if you do have some kind of job offer, I’ll be—gaah!”

The sliding panel of a dark lantern had been clanked open, and the silhouette was abruptly revealed to be a clown, its face hideously pied with red and green and white paint, its inflamed eyes wide open and crossed, and a startlingly long tongue protruding from between puffed-out cheeks. It was the same clown he’d seen stumping about the market on stilts earlier, the model of the Horrabin puppet.

The tongue withdrew and the face relaxed, but even in repose the face paint made it impossible to guess its expression, or even much of its form. The clown was perched cross-legged on a stool a little higher than Doyle’s. “I perceive you’ve nearly used up your woodpile,” the clown said, “and are about to start shoving the chairs and curtains, even the books, into the fireplace. Lucky I came across you today—tomorrow or the day after I don’t think there’d have been much left of you.”

Doyle closed his eyes and let his heartbeat slow down. He was alarmed to note that even this scanty sympathy made him feel ready to burst into tears. He sighed deeply and then opened his eyes. “If you have an offer,” he said quietly, “state it.”

The clown grinned, revealing a set of yellowed teeth that pointed every which way, like tombstones in an old and shifting graveyard. “Haven’t quite ripped up the floorboards yet,” he noted approvingly. “Good. You have, milord, a sensitive and intelligent face; it’s clear that you’ve been well brought up and that garbage clothes like these aren’t what you’re accustomed to. Have you ever been interested in the dramatic arts?”

“Well… no, not particularly. I was in a play or two in school.”

“Do you think you could learn a part, gauge an audience and alter your role to suit their tastes, become whatever sort of character they’d be most sympathetic toward?”

Doyle was mystified, but timidly hopeful. “I suppose so. If I could just get some food and a bed first. I know for a fact that I don’t get stage fright, because—”

“The question,” interrupted the clown, “is whether you’re susceptible to street fright. I’m not talking about caperings in a playhouse.”

“Oh? What, then, street performing? Well—”

“Yes,” said the clown patiently, “the subtlest of street performances—begging. We’ll write you a role, and then depending on what… sacrifices you’re willing to make, you can earn up to a pound a day.”

The realization that what he’d thought was flattery was just a clinical evaluation of his ability to evoke pity struck Doyle like a slap across the face. “Begging?” Anger made him dizzy. “Well, thank you,” he said tightly, getting to his feet, “but I’ve got honest employment, selling onions.”