bidden the boy farewell—having agreed to meet at high noon on Friday at the middle of London Bridge—and was being introduced to Kusiak’s stable boss when the gypsy had hurried in, demanding to exchange three spent horses for three fresh ones. The stable boss had initially refused, but reconsidered when the gypsy impatiently produced a handful of gold sovereigns from a pouch and offered to throw them in. Doyle’s idle interest had turned to hollow- bellied fear when he recognized the man—this was the same gypsy that had watched with no sympathy when Doctor Romany had tortured him a week ago; Doyle quietly stepped back out of the circle of lamplight and turned to leave, but by the time he got to the side door the recognition had become mutual. Doyle ran down an alley and then dashed east along a sidewalk toward London Bridge, but the old gypsy was faster, and the running footsteps behind Doyle sounded louder and louder until a hand had clamped on his collar and he’d been thrown to the ground.
“Speak the first word of any spell, dog of the Beng, and I’ll bounce your head off this pavement,” the gypsy had said, crouching over him and hardly panting at all.
“Go ahead,” Doyle had gasped. “Christ, why can’t you people leave me alone?” He slowly got his breath back. “And if I knew any spells do you think I’d have run from you? Hell no, I’d have conjured up some damn kind of… winged chariot or something. And changed you into a pile of horse dung so I’d have had the pleasure of shovelling you onto a manure cart.”
To Doyle’s surprise the gypsy had grinned. “Hear that, monkey? Man wants to turn us to horse manure. Most of these magical chals try to turn things to gold, but old Wheezy here thinks small.” He’d yanked Doyle to his feet. “Come on now, Bengo, there’s a man wants to talk to you.”
A couple of people were leaning out of a back door Doyle had fled past, and one called an angry question, so the old gypsy had led him down a street away from the river and then turned right again so that they were approaching Kusiak’s front entrance. Doyle was walking ahead.
When they were passing the open door of a public house two buildings away from Kusiak’s, Doyle stopped. “If you’re taking me back to that lunatic who tried to burn my eye out last time,” Doyle said, a little unsteadily, “then I need two beers first. At least two. And since you’ve got all that gold, sport, you can buy ‘em.”
There was silence behind him for a moment, then the gypsy said, “It’s a kushto idea. Adree we go.”
They entered and walked through the high-ceilinged room where the bar was, to a smaller chamber two steps up where a lot of tables were set randomly across the wood floor. The gypsy rolled his dark eyes toward a table in the corner, and Doyle nodded and crossed to it and, sitting down, warmed his hands over the candle that sat on it.
When a girl had appeared and taken their order—beer for Doyle, wine for the gypsy—Doyle’s captor said, “They call me Damnable Richard.”
“Oh? Well, pleased to—no. Uh, I’m Brendan Doyle.”
“And this is my partner,” the gypsy said, pulling from his pocket a monkey carved out of wood. Doyle remembered seeing Richard with it last Saturday night. “Monkey, this is Doyle. Doyle is the gorgio the rya has been so anxious to find, and the rya will be very pleased with us for netting him.” He smiled quite cheerfully at Doyle. “And this time we’ll take you to someplace where there are no prastamengros to hear you yell.”
“Listen, uh. Damnable,” said Doyle with quiet urgency, “if you’ll pretend you didn’t catch me, I’ll make you a rich man. I give you my word—” He rocked violently back in his seat then, for the gypsy had moved as fast as a striking mousetrap and rapped a knuckle hard against the bridge of Doyle’s nose.
“You gorgios all think the Romany, the gypsies, are stupid,” Richard remarked.
The wine and beer arrived at this point, and Doyle made the girl wait while he finished his beer in two long, laboring, throat-burning drafts, and then gasped out an order for another pint.
Richard was staring at him. “I guess it’s no harm if I bring you to him drunk.” He looked after the girl wistfully, “A bit of cool beer would sit well after all that running.” He sipped his wine without enthusiasm.
“It’s not bad. Have some.”
“No—beer was my Bessie’s favorite drink, and since she mullered I’ve not had a drop of it.” He drained the wine in one long gulp, shuddered, and then when the girl brought Doyle’s second beer he ordered another glass of wine.
Doyle gulped some more beer and pondered this. “My Rebecca,” he said carefully, “loved nearly every kind of liquor, and since she … mullered, I’ve drunk enough for the two of us. At least.”
Richard pondered this, frowning, for a few moments, then nodded. “It’s the same idea,” he pronounced.
“It’s to keep them from being forgotten.”
When the girl came to their table this time she demanded some money, got it, and then left a pitcher and a bottle on the table. The two men thoughtfully filled their glasses. “Here’s to dead ladies,” said Damnable Richard.
Doyle raised his glass. There was a moment of silent gulping, and then both glasses bumped back down on the table empty. They were ceremoniously refilled.
“How long ago… did Bessie die?” asked Doyle.
Richard drank half his glassful before answering. “Seventeen years ago,” he said quietly. “She was thrown from a horse near Crofton Wood. She was always kushto with horses but we were running at night from prastamengros and her horse put his foot in a hole. The fall… just… broke her head.”
Doyle refilled his own glass and then reached across to the wine bottle and refilled the gypsy’s. “Here’s to dead ladies,” Doyle said softly. Again they drained the glasses and refilled them.
Doyle found that he could still speak clearly if he spoke slowly and chose his words as carefully as a golfer selecting the right iron to use for a difficult stroke. “Rebecca also had her head broken,” he told the gypsy. “In spite of the helmet—the helmet broke too—she hit a freeway pillar head-first. I was riding, she was behind.” The gypsy nodded sympathetically. “We were on an old 450 Honda, and the streets were too wet to ride on if you were carrying a passenger. I even knew that then, but we were in a hurry and, hell, she had on a helmet, and I’d been riding bikes for years. I was changing lanes, ‘cause when you get onto the Santa Ana Freeway from Beach Boulevard you wind up in the fast lane, and I wanted to get to a slower one; and as I leaned it to the right and went across those lane divider bumps I felt the bike… shift sideways. Horrible sensation, like an earthquake, you know? A … deadly and unexpected motion. And the old 450’s were top-heavy anyway, with those overhead cams, and it— just—went—down.” He swallowed a massive gulp of beer. “Rebecca tumbled off to the right and I slid on straight ahead. Burned my leather jacket paper-thin on the pavement—if it had been dry it would have sanded me down to the bare ribs. The cars all managed to stop without running over me, and I got to my feet and hopped back—I’d broken my ankle, among other things—back to where she was. Her… head was—”
He was pulled out of his memories by the clink of the pitcher-lip on the rim of his glass. “No need to say it,” said Richard, lifting the pitcher away when the glass was full again. “I too saw what you saw.” He raised his own glass. “Here’s to Rebecca and Bessie.”
“May they rest in peace,” said Doyle.
When the glasses had clunked to the table again Damnable Richard stared hard at Doyle. “You’re not a sorcerer, are you?”
“God, I wish I was.”
“Somebody you were with must have been, though—I saw the two carriages disappear from that field like fleas from the back of your hand.”
Doyle nodded morosely. “Yes. Left without me.”
The gypsy got to his feet and threw a sovereign onto the table. “Take that,” he said. “I’ll tell them I took off chasing a chal that I thought was you, and knocked him down, but it was the wrong man and I had to buy him a drink to keep him from going to the prastamengros.” He turned to leave.
“You’re—” Doyle blurted. The gypsy paused and gave him an unreadable stare. “You’re letting me go? After only having a drink with me?” He knew he should just shut up, but he felt he couldn’t live with this mystery. “Did you think my offer to make you rich was a bluff?”
“It’s you gorgios that are stupid,” said Damnable Richard. He smiled, turned and walked out of the room.
* * *
The candle flickered out in a puddle of melted wax—the auction was over. The winner stood up to deal with
