The Anubis Gates

There was a large stone missing from the tower’s dome, and as the spot of bright sunlight slid by slow inches down the sunlit wall, and the costermongers in Holborn Street could be faintly heard shouting the virtues of their vegetables, the two sorcerers discussed strategies, and Damnable Richard had tucked his awakened monkey into his shirt collar and was having a long talk with it in the faintest of whispers.

CHAPTER 6

“The other night upon the stair I met a man who wasn’t there … “

—Old Rhyme

Tuesday morning, two days later, was overcast and threatening rain—but in the coffee houses around the Royal Exchange the brokers and auctioneers were conducting business as vigorously as ever. Doyle, stupefied by hunger and lack of sleep, sat in a corner of the Jamaica Coffee House and watched a dozen merchants bidding for a shipment of tobacco salvaged from some ship that had managed to founder in the Thames; the auction was by Inch of Candle, whereby the last bid made before a short candle went out was the one taken, and the candle was now very low and the bidding quick and loud. Doyle took another sip of his lukewarm coffee, forcing himself to take only a small one, for if he finished it he’d have to buy another to keep his table, and the purchase of his present set of clothes—brown trousers and jacket, a white shirt and black boots, all secondhand but clean and whole—had left him only a shilling, and he wanted to be able to buy Ashbless a cup of coffee when he arrived.

His shoulder burned with a hot ache, and he was afraid the brandy with which he’d soaked his bandage hadn’t killed the infection in the knife cut. I should just have drunk the brandy, he reflected. His eyes were watering and his nose tingled, but it seemed his body had forgotten how to sneeze. Hurry up, William, he thought. Your biographer is evidently dying. He hunched around to glance at the clock on the wall—twenty minutes after ten. Ashbless was due in ten minutes.

At least I made it to here and now alive, he told himself. There were moments when it looked like I wouldn’t. Knifed, shot at and nearly drowned on Saturday evening, and then captured by that gypsy later that night.

He smiled a little bewilderedly into his coffee as he remembered the encounter. He’d thanked Jacky and bidden the boy farewell—having agreed to meet at high noon on Friday at the middle of London Bridge—and was being introduced to Kusiak’s stable boss when the gypsy had hurried in, demanding to exchange three spent horses for three fresh ones. The stable boss had initially refused, but reconsidered when the gypsy impatiently produced a handful of gold sovereigns from a pouch and offered to throw them in. Doyle’s idle interest had turned to hollow-bellied fear when he recognized the man—this was the same gypsy that had watched with no sympathy when Doctor Romany had tortured him a week ago; Doyle quietly stepped back out of the circle of lamplight and turned to leave, but by the time he got to the side door the recognition had become mutual. Doyle ran down an alley and then dashed east along a sidewalk toward London Bridge, but the old gypsy was faster, and the running footsteps behind Doyle sounded louder and louder until a hand had clamped on his collar and he’d been thrown to the ground.

“Speak the first word of any spell, dog of the Beng, and I’ll bounce your head off this pavement,” the gypsy had said, crouching over him and hardly panting at all.

“Go ahead,” Doyle had gasped. “Christ, why can’t you people leave me alone?” He slowly got his breath back. “And if I knew any spells do you think I’d have run from you? Hell no, I’d have conjured up some damn kind of… winged chariot or something. And changed you into a pile of horse dung so I’d have had the pleasure of shovelling you onto a manure cart.”

To Doyle’s surprise the gypsy had grinned. “Hear that, monkey? Man wants to turn us to horse manure. Most of these magical chals try to turn things to gold, but old Wheezy here thinks small.” He’d yanked Doyle to his feet. “Come on now, Bengo, there’s a man wants to talk to you.”

A couple of people were leaning out of a back door Doyle had fled past, and one called an angry question, so the old gypsy had led him down a street away from the river and then turned right again so that they were approaching Kusiak’s front entrance. Doyle was walking ahead.