The Anubis Gates

His face was hot and his mouth tasted feverish. Reasoning that he must at all costs keep from passing out here, he ordered a pint of stout for two precious pennies. When it arrived the clock said twenty minutes of eleven, and though he tried to drink it slowly, as befitted a restorative, when the clock pinged the third quarter-hour his glass was empty, and he could feel the alcohol pressing outward against the walls of his skull—for he hadn’t eaten in twenty-four hours—and Ashbless still hadn’t arrived. Get hold of yourself, he thought. Coffee, no more beer. So he’s a little late; the accounts of his arrival were more than a century old when you read them—and those were based on Ashbless’ recollections, as recorded by Bailey in the 1830s. A bit of inaccuracy is hardly surprising. It might very well have been eleven-thirty actually. It has to have been eleven-thirty. He settled down to wait. Three carefully nursed cups of coffee later the clock bonged eleven-thirty and there had been no sign of William Ashbless. The stock and shipping business continued to be lively, and at one point a portly gentleman who’d sold a Bahamian plantation at a tremendous profit ordered up a glass of rum for everyone present, and Doyle gratefully poured the stuff down his feverish throat. And he began to get angry.

This really did, it seemed to him, show a carelessness on the poet’s part, a lack of regard for his readers. Arrogant—to claim he’d been here at ten-thirty when actually he hadn’t bothered to arrive until at least… let’s see—getting on for noon. What does he care if he’s kept people waiting? thought Doyle blurrily. He’s a famous poet, a friend of Coleridge and Byron. Doyle visualized him in his mind, and fever and exhaustion gave the picture an almost hallucinatory clarity—the broad shoulders, the craggy face lion-maned and Viking-bearded. Before, that face had seemed, like Hemingway’s, basically humorous and sociable in a hard-bitten way, but now it only looked cruel and unapproachable. He’s probably outside, Doyle thought, waiting for me to drop dead before he’ll condescend to come in and write his damn poem.

An idea struck him, and he stopped a boy and asked him for a pencil and some sheets of paper. And when it arrived he began to write out, from memory, the entire text of “The Twelve Hours of the Night.” In composing the original PMLA article on Ashbless’ work, and later while writing the biography, he had read the poem hundreds of times, and in spite of his sick dizziness he had no difficulty in remembering every word. By twelve-thirty he was scribbling the somewhat awkward final eight lines.

He whispered,

“And a river lies

Between the dusk and dawning skies,

And hours are distance, measured wide

Along that transnocturnal tide—

Too doomed to fear, lost to all need,

These voyagers blackward fast recede

Where darkness shines like dazzling light

Throughout the Twelve Hours of the Night.”

There, he thought, letting the pencil clatter to the table. Now when the bastard finally gets around to keeping his historical appointments I’ll just hand him this—and I’ll say, If you’re curious about this, Mr. William Hell-of-a-fellow Ashbless, I can be reached at Kusiak’s, Fickling Lane, Southwark. Ho ho.

He folded up the sheets of paper and sat back smugly, content now to wait.

* * *

When the gargling screams started, Jacky broke into a run down the narrow alley toward Kenyon Court, the old flintlock in her shoulder pouch bouncing painfully against her left shoulder blade. She swore, for it certainly sounded like she was too late. Just as she burst out of the alley into the littered court a gunshot echoed between the dilapidated buildings.

“Damn it,” she panted. Under the ragged curtain of her bangs her eyes darted this way and that, trying to spot anyone—from a toddler to an old woman—leaving the court, especially with a too nonchalant air; but the entire population of the area seemed to be hurrying toward the house from which the shot had sounded, and shouting questions to the people that lived there, and cupping their faces against the dust-frosted windows.