As a bleary-eyed old man struggled to stand up at another table, Jacky hopped down from the platform and hurried over to Doyle, his oversized coat flapping around his thin form like the wings of a bird. Still wary, Doyle stepped back from him and glanced again at the door.
“Brendan,” said Jacky, “come on now. You know I’m not one to hold a grudge—and I understand she left you for another bloke only a week later.” Skate let out a rumbling chuckle, and Jacky winked and mouthed something that might have been trust me.
Doyle let himself relax. You’ve got to trust somebody, he thought—and at least these people appreciate a good Bordeaux. He nodded and let himself be led away.
* * *
Fairchild gently pushed the door closed, and then stood troubled by thought on the pavement outside the dining room. The air was getting chilly as the last gray light faded out of the sky, and he frowned—then took cheer from the memory of the five shillings in the drainpipe, for that would buy him a couple of days of leisurely living, graced with beer and beef pies and skittles. But—and he frowned again as much at the abstractness as at the bleakness of the thought—there would be days after the five shillings were gone. What would he do then? He could ask the captain what to do… no, that’s right, the captain had just thrown him out, which was why he had to think of what to do.
He whimpered a little as he hurried down Pye Street, and slapped himself across the face a few times in an effort to rouse his brain to constructive thought.
* * *
“You knew I’d have an accent.” Doyle pulled the corduroy coat closer about himself, for the little room was cold in spite of the smoldering coals in the grate.
“Obviously,” said Jacky as he piled blocks of wood onto the old embers and arranged them to produce a good draft. “I told the captain that you mustn’t be allowed to speak, and he improvised a story to arrange for it. Close those windows, will you? And then sit down.”
Doyle pulled the windows shut and latched them. “So how did you know? And why shouldn’t people hear me?” There were two chairs, one on either side of the small table, and he took the one nearest the door.
Having got the fire going to his satisfaction, Jacky got up and crossed to a cupboard. “I’ll tell you as soon as you answer some questions of mine.”
Doyle’s eyes narrowed with resentment at being talked to so peremptorily by a kid who was younger than most of his students—and his resentment was only slightly appeased by the bottle the young man had lifted down from a shelf.
A muted racket of applause and whistling sounded from downstairs, but neither of them remarked on it.
Jacky sat down, and gave Doyle a look that was both puzzled and stern as he splashed brandy into two snifters and pushed one across the table to him.
“Thanks,” Doyle said, picking it up and swirling it under his nose. It smelled as good as any he’d ever had. “You people do live well,” he admitted grudgingly.
Jacky shrugged his narrow shoulders. “Begging’s a trade like everything else,” he said, a little impatiently, “and Copenhagen Jack’s the best organizer of it.” He took a gulp from his own glass. “Tell me the truth now, Doyle—what have you done to make Doctor Romany so anxious to get hold of you?”
Doyle blinked. “Who’s Doctor Romany?”
“He’s the chief of the most powerful band of gypsies in England.”
Ghost fingers tickled the hair at the back of Doyle’s neck. “A tall, bald-headed old guy? That wears spring- shoes?”
“That’s the man. He’s got every beggar and thief in Horrabin’s warren looking for a… a man of your description with a foreign, possibly American accent. And he’s offering a big reward for your capture.”
“Horrabin? That clown? My God, I met him this morning, saw that damn puppet show of his. He didn’t seem to—”
“It was only this evening that Doctor Romany told everybody to look for you. Horrabin mentioned having seen you at Billingsgate.”
Doyle hesitated, trying to sort out the different interests in all this. If a truce could be enforced, he wouldn’t mind talking to Doctor Romany, for the man obviously knew—somehow—the times and places where the gaps would show up; and Doyle still had his mobile hook strapped to his arm. If he could learn the location of a gap and be standing inside its field when it closed, he’d reappear in that lot in London in 1983. He felt a wave of homesick longing when he thought about California, Cal State Fullerton, the Ashbless biography… On the other hand, this Doctor Romany hadn’t given the impression of being an accommodating sort of person, what with his cigar and all. And what was this boy’s interest in the whole thing? Probably the “big” reward.
Doyle must have given Jacky a wary look, for the boy shook his head in disgust and said, “And no, I’m not planning on turning you over to him. I wouldn’t deliver a mad dog into the hands of that creature… even if he kept his word about the reward, which is unlikely. The real reward would probably be the opportunity to check the bottom of the Thames for lost coins.”
“Sorry,” said Doyle, taking a sip of the brandy. “But it sounded like you had been to a meeting of these people.”
“I was. Captain Jack pays me to wander around and keep track of what the… competition is doing. Horrabin holds meetings in a sewer under Bainbridge Street, and I’m a frequent visitor. But stop dodging the question—why does he want you?”
“Well…” Doyle held his glass up and absently admired the way the flames shone through the dark topaz of the liquor. “I’m not completely sure myself, but I know he wants to learn something from me.” It occurred to him that he was beginning to get drunk. “He wants to know… how I arrived in a field near Kensington.”
“Well? How did you arrive? And why does he care?”
“I’ll tell you the truth, Jacky my boy. I traveled by magic.”
“Yes, it would have to be something like that. What sort of magic? And where did you come from?”
Doyle was disconcerted. “You don’t find that hard to believe?”
“I’d find it hard to believe that Doctor Romany could get this excited by anything that didn’t involve magic. And I’m certainly not so… inexperienced as to claim it doesn’t exist.” He smiled with such bitterness that Doyle wondered what sort of thing the boy might have seen.
“What sort of magic?” Jacky repeated.
“I don’t know, actually. I was just part of a group, and the magical mechanics of the whole thing was somebody else’s department. But it was a spell or something that permitted us to jump from one… place to another without traversing the distance between.”
“And you jumped all the way from America that way?”
“And what happened to the other people, the ones you came with?”
“I don’t know. I guess they made it back to the gap and jumped back to, uh, America.”
“Why did you all come?” He laughed. “It’s a long story, but what we came for was to hear a lecture.” Jacky cocked an eyebrow. “A lecture? What do you mean?”
“Have you ever heard of Samuel Taylor Coleridge?”
“Of course. He’s supposed to speak on Milton at the Crown and Anchor next Saturday.”
Doyle raised his eyebrows. This beggar boy was beginning to impress him. “Right. Well, he got the dates
