The Anubis Gates

“Yes, I observed your aptitude for the job. On your way, then—but when you change your mind, ask anyone in the East End where Horrabin’s Punch show is playing.”

“I won’t change my mind,” said Doyle, leaving the booth. He walked away, and didn’t look back until he had reached the edge of the long wharf paralleling the street. Horrabin, once again on stilts, was striding away, pulling behind him a wagon that was apparently the booth itself, collapsed and folded up. He shuddered, and turned away to his left, toward the quays, looking for Chris and Meg’s rowboat.

It was gone. There were fewer boats now along the quays that projected out into the river, and the water was dotted with boats sailing away east and west—what’s the problem, Doyle thought worriedly, the market can’t be closing, it’s only mid-morning—and he could see a rowboat several hundred yards out that might have been the one with Chris and Meg and Sheila in it.

“Hey!” he tried to yell, and was instantly embarrassed at how weak his voice was—even on the next quay over they couldn’t have heard him. “All right, what’s the difficulty?” Doyle turned around and saw the policeman who’d given him the unfriendly eye a few minutes before. “What’s the time, please, sir?” he asked the policeman, trying to swallow his vowels the way everyone else was doing.

The officer yanked a watch on a chain out of his waistcoat pocket, cocked an eyebrow at it and put it away. “Coming hard on eleven. Why?”

“Why are they all leaving?” Doyle waved a hand at the boats scattered across the face of the river.

“It’s nearly eleven o’clock, isn’t it,” the officer answered, speaking very clearly as though he thought Doyle might be drunk. “And it’s Sunday, you’ll be interested to learn.”

“The market closes at eleven on Sundays, is what you’re saying?”

“You’ve stated the case. Where are you from? That’s no Surrey or Sussex accent.”

Doyle sighed. “I’m from America—Virginia. And though I”—he dragged a hand across his forehead—”though I will be doing fine as soon as a friend of mine arrives in the city, I’m destitute now. Where is there a charitable institution that might give me food and a bed until I can get my… affairs in order?”

The policeman frowned. “There’s a workhouse by the slaughterhouses in Whitechapel Street; they’ll give you food and lodging for helping tan hides and drag out the offal bins.”

“A workhouse, you say.” Doyle remembered the way Dickens was to portray the places. “Thanks.” He started to slouch away.

“Just a moment,” called the policeman. “If you’ve got any money on your person, let me see it.”

Doyle dug into his pocket for the six pennies and held them out on his palm.

“Very well, I can’t take you up for vagrancy now. But perhaps I’ll see you about this evening.” He touched his helmet. “Good day.”

Returning to Thames Street, Doyle expended half his fortune on a plate of vegetable soup and a trowelful of mashed potatoes. It tasted wonderful, but left him at least as hungry as before, so he spent his last three cents on another order of the same. The vendor even let him have a cup of cold water to wash it down.

Policemen were walking up and down the street, calling, “Close ‘em up now, day of rest, eleven o’clock it is, close ‘em up,” and Doyle, a genuine vagrant now, was careful to stay out of their way.

A man of about his own age was striding along with a bag of fish in one arm and a pretty girl on the other, and Doyle, telling himself just this once, forced himself to step into the man’s path.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said hastily. “I find myself in a distressing—”

“Get to the point, fellow,” interrupted the man impatiently. “You’re a beggar?”

“No. But I was robbed last night, and I haven’t a penny, and—I’m an American, and all my luggage and papers are gone, and… I’d like to solicit employment or borrow some money.”

The girl looked sympathetic. “Give the poor man something, Charles,” she said. “Since we’re not going to church.”

“What ship did you arrive on?” Charles asked sceptically. “That’s no American accent I ever heard.”

“The, uh. Enterprise,” Doyle answered. In his confused fumbling for a name he’d almost said Starship Enterprise.

“You see, my dear, he’s a fraud,” said Charles proudly. “There may be an Enterprise, but no such ship has landed here lately. There could conceivably be a stray Yankee still about from the Blaylock last week, but then,” he said, turning cheerfully to Doyle, “you didn’t say the Blaylock, did you? You shouldn’t try a line like that on a man in the shipping trade.” Charles looked around the thinning crowd. “Plenty of constables about. I’ve half a mind to turn you in.”

“Oh, let him be,” sighed the girl. “We’re late anyway, and he’s clearly in some sort of distressed circumstances.”