The Anubis Gates

come with me. Old Stikeleather has got me halfway through Dallas’ Aubrey, but the way he reads he’ll be at least another year finishing it. Let’s see if you can read a little more quickly.”

* * *

The low-ceilinged kitchen of The Beggar in the Bush was crowded, but most of the people were hanging over the table where a card game was going on, and Fairchild, nursing his cup of gin in a dark corner, had room to lean back and put his feet up against the bricks of the wall. Long ago he’d learned not to gamble, for he could never understand the rules, and regardless of what sort of cards he was dealt, somehow people always took his money away and told him he’d lost.

He had taken only one of the shillings from the drainpipe in the alley off Fleet Street, for he had figured out a plan: he would join Horrabin’s beggar army and keep the shillings just for special things like meat and gin and beer and—he gulped some gin when he thought of it—a girl every now and then.

His gin gone, he decided not to have another, for if he missed signing up with the stilted clown tonight he’d have to spend some of his money on mere lodging, and that wasn’t part of his plan. He stood up and made his way through the shouting and laughing press to the front door of the place and stepped outside.

The flickering lamplight seemed to fall with reluctance across the overhanging housefronts of Buckeridge Street, laying only the faintest of dry brush touches on the black fabric of the night—here an open window high in one wall was underlit, though the room beyond was in darkness; there the mouth of an alley with another lamp somewhere along it was discernible only by a line of yellowly glistening wet cobblestones, like a procession of toads only momentarily motionless in their slow crossing of the street; and ragged roofs and patches of scaling walls were occasionally visible when the vagrant breeze blew the lamp flame high.

Fairchild groped his way across the street to the opposite corner, and as he hunched along toward the next street he could hear snoring from behind the boards nailed up over the unglassed windows of Mother Dowling’s boarding house. He sneered at the oblivious sleepers who, as he knew from experience, had each paid three pennies to share a bed with two or three other people and a room with a dozen more. Paying money to be packed like bats in an old house, he thought, smug in the knowledge that he had other plans.

A moment later, though, he was uneasily wondering just what sort of sleeping arrangements Horrabin might provide. That clown was scary; he might have everybody sleep in coffins or something. The thought made Fairchild halt, gaping and crossing himself. Then he remembered that it was getting late, and whatever he intended to do he’d better do soon. At least Horrabin’s is free, he thought, moving forward again. Everybody’s welcome at Horrabin’s.

The sewer parliament would have adjourned by this time, so instead of turning right on Maynard toward Bainbridge Street he followed the wall that brushed his left shoulder, around the corner to face the north, where on the far side of Ivy Lane stood the dark warehouse-like structure known in the neighborhood as the Horrabin Hotel, or Rat’s Castle.

Now he was worrying that they might not take him in. After all, he was not smart. He reassured himself with the reflection that he was a good beggar, at least, and that’s what was important here. It also occurred to him that Horrabin might be interested to learn that Copenhagen Jack’s newest deaf-mute was a fake, and could be tricked into talking.

Yes, Fairchild decided, I’ll have to be sure to put myself on the clown’s good side by telling him about that.

* * *

Jacky stood for quite a while beside the window Doyle had shut, just looking out over the indistinct rooftops, pinpricked here and there with the smoky red dot of a lantern or the amber lozenge of an uncurtained window. I wonder what he’s doing this minute, Jacky thought, what dark court he may be silently treading, in what gin den he may be buying some unsuspecting poor devil a drink. Or is he asleep in some garret out there… and what sort of dreams could he have? Does he steal those too, I wonder?

Jacky turned away and sat down at the table where the paper, pen and ink were waiting. Lean fingers picked up the pen, dipped the nib in the ink and, after some hesitation, began to write:

Sept. 2, 1810

My dear Mother—

While I am still not able to give you an address at which I can be reached, I can assure you that I am well, & getting enough to eat, & sleeping with a roof over my head. I know you consider it a dangerous and affected Lunacy, but I am making some progress at finding the man—if he can be called a man—that killed Colin; and although you have told me repeatedly that it is a task for the police, I will ask you once more to take my word for it that the police are not equipped to deal with—even acknowledge the existence of—the sort of man this is. I intend to kill him with the Minimum of Risk to myself, as soon as it may be Feasible, and then return home, where I trust I shall still find a Welcome. In the meantime I am among Friends, and am in far less danger than you probably imagine; and if you will, despite my present very regretful disobedience to your Wishes, keep for me the warmth and love you have so bountifully shewn me in the past, you will very deeply gratify your most loving and affectionate daughter,

Elizabeth Jacqueline Tichy.

Jacky waved the letter in the air until the ink was dry, then folded it up, addressed it, and dripped candle wax on it for a seal. She locked the door, got out of her baggy clothes and, just before swinging the hinged bed down out of the wall, peeled the moustache off, scratched her upper lip vigorously, and then stuck the strip of gummed, canvas-backed hair onto the wall.

CHAPTER 5

“Most persons break the shells of eggs, after they have eaten the meat. This was originally done to prevent their being used as boats by witches.”

—Francis Grose

Covent Garden on Saturday night displayed an entirely different character than it had shown at dawn—it was nearly as crowded, and certainly no less noisy, but where twelve hours ago ranks of coster’s wagons had lined the curb, there now gracefully rolled the finest phaeton coaches, drawn by ponies carefully matched in size and color, as the West End aristocracy arrived from their houses in Jermyn Street and St. James to attend the theatre. The paving stones were now being frenziedly swept every couple of minutes by ragged crossing sweepers, each jealously working his hard-won section of pavement, ahead of any pedestrian ladies and gentlemen that looked likely to tip; and the Doric portico of the Covent Garden Theatre, newly rebuilt only last year after burning to the ground in 1808, reared its grand architecture far more elegantly by lamplight and the gold glow of its interior chandeliers than it had in the hard brightness of the sunlight.

The crossing sweepers made at least a token gesture of performing a service for the pence and shillings they received, but also present were people who simply begged. One of the most successful was a tubercular wretch who shambled about the square, never soliciting alms, but hopelessly gnawing at a mud-caked chunk of stale bread whenever anyone was watching him. And if a pity-struck lady goaded her escort to ask this unfortunate soul what ailed him, the sunken-eyed derelict would only touch his mouth and ear, indicating that he could neither hear nor speak, and then return his attention to the ghastly piece of bread. His plight seemed more genuine for not being flaunted or explained, and he collected so many coins—including a number of five-shilling crowns and one unprecedented gold sovereign—that he had to go empty his pockets into Marko’s bag every ten or twenty