taking Doyle’s things with him.
Doyle leaned against the wall, hoping they wouldn’t forget about him. He tried to scratch under the leather band on his forearm, but it was drawn too tight for him to get a finger under it. He gave up, resolving just to ignore the way the carved bit of green stone under the leather made his shaved skin itch. A mobile hook, Darrow had called it, and he’d let Doyle look at the thing before it was covered by the strap that would hold it tightly against him. Doyle had turned the small lozenge of green stone in his fingers, noting the symbols carved on it—they seemed to be a mix of hieroglyphics and astrological notations.
“Don’t look at it so disapprovingly, Doyle,” Darrow had said. “It’s what will bring you back to 1983. When the 1810 gap comes to an end, this thing will pop back to the gap it came from, which is here and now, and as long as it’s in contact with your flesh it’ll take you back with it. If you were to lose it, you’d see us all disappear and you’d be marooned in 1810; which is why it’s to be locked onto you.”
“So we’ll all just disappear from there after four hours?” Doyle had asked as Darrow soaped and shaved his forearm. “What if you’ve miscalculated the length of the gap, and we all disappear in the middle of the lecture?”
“We wouldn’t,” Darrow had said. “You’ve got to be within the gap as well as touching the hook, and the gap is five miles away from the tavern we’re going to.” He laid the stone on Doyle’s arm and wrapped the wide leather band around it. “But we haven’t miscalculated, and we have a comfortable margin of time to get back to the gap field after the lecture, and we’re bringing two carriages, so,” he had said as he drew the strap tight and snapped the little lock onto it, “don’t worry.”
Now, leaning naked against the wall of the dressing room, Doyle smiled at himself in the mirror.
The guard came back and gave Doyle a set of clothes that presumably wouldn’t raise any eyebrows in 1810; he also gave him directions on how to put them on, and had actually to assist him in tying the little bow at the front of the cravat. “Your hair doesn’t need cutting, sir, the fashion in length is about the same again, but I will just brush it down a bit in front here, so; a bald spot’s nothing to be ashamed of. That’s it precisely, semi-Brutus style. Have a look at yourself now.”
Doyle turned to the mirror, cocked his head and then laughed. “Not bad,” he said. He was wearing a brown frockcoat with two rows of buttons; in the front it came down only to belt level, but in back it swept in a long tail that reached to the backs of his knees. He had on tight tan trousers and knee-high Hessian boots with tassels, and the white silk cravat visible between the high wings of the coat’s collar gave him, he thought, if not an air of rakish handsomeness, at least one of dignity. The clothes had none of the stiffness of brand new garments; though clean, they had clearly been worn before, and this had the effect of making Doyle feel relaxed and comfortable in them, and not as though he’d been shoehorned into some costume for a party.
When he stepped back into the main room the guests were ambling toward the table, on which a colorful profusion of plates and platters and bottles had appeared. Doyle filled a plate and, remembering that he was “staff,” forced himself not to look at the selection of wines and beers but to grab a cup of coffee instead.
“Here you go, Doyle,” spoke up Darrow, indicating an empty chair next to himself. “Doyle,” he explained to the nearest several people, “is our Coleridge expert.”
They nodded and smiled as Doyle sat down, and one white-haired man with humorous eyes said, “I enjoyed The Nigh-Related Guest, Mr. Doyle.”
“Thank you.” Doyle smiled, pleased for the few seconds it took him to realize that the man was Jim Thibodeau, whose massive, multi-volume History of Mankind—written with his wife, who Doyle now noticed sitting on the other side of him—had reflected even just in the chapter on the English Romantic poets a depth of research and a relaxed style Doyle could only admire and envy. But their presence here reinforced the hopeful excitement he’d been feeling ever since hearing Benner describe jumping to 1805. If the Thibodeaus are taking it seriously, he thought, there’s got to be a good chance of it working.
The table and food had been cleared away and the ten chairs were now arranged in a semicircle before a podium. Doyle embarrassedly told Benner to take the podium away, and he replaced it with the chair Treff would have got.
Doyle sat down in it and met the gaze of each guest in turn. Of the nine of them, he recognized five: three, including the Thibodeaus, were prominent historians, one was a distinguished British stage actor, and one, he was fairly sure, was a famous spiritualist and medium. She’d better watch her tricks here in the gap, he thought uneasily, remembering Darrow’s story about the seance on Auto Graveyard Street in 1954.
He took a deep breath and began. “You are probably familiar with the life and works of the man who was the father of the Romantic movement in English poetry, but our outing this evening certainly calls for a review. Born in Devonshire on October 21, 1772, Coleridge early on exhibited the precocity and wide range of reading that he maintained all his life and that made him, among so many other things, the most fascinating conversationalist of an age that included such people as Byron and Sheridan…”
As he went on, touching on the poet’s scholastic career, his addiction to opium in the form of laudanum, his unfortunate marriage, his friendship with William and Dorothy Wordsworth, and the extended trips abroad occasioned by his horror of his wife, Doyle carefully watched his audience’s response. They seemed satisfied on the whole, frowning doubtfully or nodding from time to time, and he realized that his presence here was a gracious detail, like the fine china dishes on which the food had been served when paper plates would have done just as well. Darrow could probably have delivered a talk on Coleridge at least as effectively, but the old man had wanted a sure enough Coleridge authority to do it.
After about fifteen minutes he drew it to a close. Questions followed, all of which Doyle managed to answer confidently, and at last Darrow stood up and walked over to stand beside Doyle’s chair, effortlessly replacing him as the focus of attention. He was carrying a lantern, and he waved it in the direction of the door. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “it is now five minutes to eight, and our coaches await us outside.”
In a tense silence everyone got to their feet and put on hats and bonnets and greatcoats.
They all filed out onto the packed dirt of the lot. Two broughams, each with two horses harnessed to it, had been drawn up to within a few yards of the trailer, and by the light of the flickering coach lamps Doyle could see that the vehicles, like the period clothes they were all wearing, were clean and in good repair but obviously not new.
“There’s room for five in each vehicle with a bit of crowding,” Darrow said, “and since Treff couldn’t attend, I’ll take his place inside. Staff rides up top.”
Benner took Doyle by the elbow as the guests, with a good deal of hat dropping and shawl tangling, began climbing in. “We’ve got the back of the second coach,” he said. They walked around to the rear of the farther coach and climbed up to two little seats that projected from the back at the same height as the driver’s. The night air was chilly, and Doyle was glad of the heat from the left rear lamp below his elbow. From his perch he could see more horses being led in from the north end of the lot.
The carriage rocked on its springs when two of the guards hoisted themselves up onto the driver’s seat, and hearing metal clink close by, Doyle glanced toward Benner and saw the butts of two pistols sticking out of a leather pouch slung near Benner’s left hand.
He heard reins snap and hooves clop on the dirt as the first carriage got moving. “Where are we going?” he asked as their own carriage got under way. “Spatially speaking, I mean.”
“Over to the fence there, that section where the curtain isn’t up. Do you see that low wooden platform? There’s a truck pulled up right to the edge of the fence just outside.”
“Ah,” said Doyle, trying not to sound as nervous as he felt. Looking back, he saw that the horses he’d noticed being led up were now harnessed to the two trailers and were pulling them away toward the north end.
Benner followed his glance. “The lot, the gap field, has to be completely cleared for every jump,” he explained.
“Anything that’s within it goes back with us.”
“So why didn’t your tents and gypsies come back here?”
“The whole field doesn’t come back on the return, just the hooks and whatever they’re touching. The hook works like the rubber band on one of those paddleball things—energy’s required to swat the ball away, and if a fly’s
