The Anubis Gates

He realized now that it had been a mistake to pin all his hopes on the intervention of Ashbless. Even if he could find the poet, it was a fantasy to imagine that Ashbless would, or could, do anything to aid him. The conflict was between himself and Doctor Romany, and a confrontation was the only way to resolve it. The sooner it occurred, the better—for Doyle’s health was definitely declining.

He asked Kusiak for the day off, and the old man was happy to give it to him, as Doyle’s hacking cough was getting so bad that customers were uneasy around him, as though fearing he carried some plague. Doyle took the meager cash he’d saved and bought what he thought of as insurance: a battered and rusty old flintlock pistol which the marine store owner had insisted would actually fire, and with which Doyle would threaten to kill himself if Doctor Romany tried to have him seized. Yesterday on London Bridge Jacky had told him about the abortive attempt on Horrabin’s life, and Doyle wished he had the poison pill the dwarf had offered Jacky; it would be easier to carry that between his teeth than to lug around a pistol pointed at his head.

Realizing that his arm would get tired if he should have to keep the heavy pistol pointed at himself for very long, he had taken off his belt, run the end of it through the gun’s trigger guard, and then re-buckled it around his neck. With his coat buttoned up over it and his scarf fluffed out to cover the gun’s muzzle, which was now pressing coldly into the soft spot behind his chin, he avoided being conspicuous and also kept the pistol in a position where one yank of his thumb between the second and third buttons of his coat would send a pistol ball punching up through his mouth, palate, nasal cavity, brain, and then bursting out into the sunlight right aft of his widow’s peak.

In Bishopsgate Street he met a beggar from Captain Jack’s house, and after exchanging greetings the man told him that Doctor Romany’s gypsy camp was currently in a field up at the north end of Goswell Road, telling fortunes for aristocrats from the West End and selling love potions and poisons to the inhabitants of the Golden Lane rookery.

Doyle thanked him, asked to be remembered to the company, and turned east on London Wall Street. Just as he was crossing Coleman Street—only a block, he realized, from Keats’ birthplace—he heard a sharp whistle from the north side of the street.

It was the high-low-low first three notes of Yesterday.

And it was answered, from the opposite side of Coleman Street, by the up and down the scale next nine notes.

This time there was no doubt. He was not the only twentieth century man in 1810. His heart pounding, he sprinted across the street and then paused on the north pavement, looking wildly around. Many people were staring at him, and he looked earnestly into each amused or disapproving face, hoping to recognize somehow a fellow anachronism; but they all seemed to be indigenous citizens.

He’d taken a couple of uncertain steps up Coleman Street before noticing the coach at the opposite curb. Its side window was open and Doyle could dimly see a passenger within. In the instant before his feet were yanked off the pavement he saw the flash of a gun in the carriage, but what he heard was the detonation of the pistol under his shirt as the bullet shattered the flashpan and hammer and ignited the powder; he’d been turning quickly, and the muzzle was next to his jaw instead of under it when the gun went off, and the red-hot ball only plowed up the side of his face and ripped his right ear off, instead of exploding his head.

He lay crumpled, unaware of the rattle as the carriage moved off. He vaguely realized that there had been an explosion, and that he was hurt, and that there was blood all over him. His chest hurt terribly, but when his numb hands had brushed aside the powder-burned tatters of his shirt and knocked the smoking, splintered gun off to the side, there seemed to be no lethal injury—just a lot of burns and scratches. His ears were ringing, the right worse than the left; in fact, that whole side of his head was as dead as though he’d been given a shot of Novocain. He fumbled at it with his hand and felt hot, free-flowing blood, and ripped flesh, but no ear. What in God’s name had happened?

He had rolled over and was trying to get to his feet when several people came over and sympathetically but roughly dragged him upright. Doyle was dazedly aware of what they were saying:

“Are ye going to live, mate?”

“How can you ask, look, he’s shot right through the head.”

“The man in that carriage shot him.”

“Nonsense, I saw it all—his chest exploded. He was carrying a bomb. He’s one of the French spies from Leicester Square.”

“Why, look,” exclaimed one. “There’s a wrecked pistol tied around his neck.”

He tilted Doyle’s face up toward his own. “Why in hell were you carrying a pistol that way?”