windup toy.
'An unusually clear day for this time of year,' said Doyle, inundated by the sour wine saturating the Prince's breath.
'We are all truly blessed by such a day as this,' added the Bishop, flashing an oily grin. 'One can only attribute our great good fortune to the company of His Highness.'
'The company of His Highness produces numerous fortunes,' said Eileen graciously. 'I know that at least one of his gifts, passed from father to son, has been repeatedly bestowed to women throughout England.'
The Bishop appeared thunderstruck by Eileen's comment—a none-too-veiled reference to the unmarried Duke's renowned promiscuity and rumored venereal heritage. Prince Eddy wrinkled his brow slightly; confusion seemed almost too complicated a mental state for him to reach.
The eldest son of the eldest son of the Queen herself, second in line to the throne, thought Doyle; if there was ever a more convincing argument against the continued intermarriage of royal European bloodlines—
The throne.
The words of Spivey Quince and the boy in blue came rushing back—
The throne. Opening the passage.
We've been trying to interpret the warnings metaphorically. ...
'It seeks the throne. It will be King.'
'His Highness has been so generous with the distribution of his bounty, it must be difficult to remember exactly where he's deposited it,' added Eileen, smiling pleasantly, vivid spots of color highlighting her cheeks.
Bishop Pillphrock had gone as pale as a ghost, mouth yawning open, momentarily devoid of his abundant social lubricant. The Prince blinked many times and worked his lips silently. He looked like a broken toy.
'On hot afternoons,' said the Prince timidly, 'I'm very fond of strawberry ice cream.'
The oddness of the non sequitur stilled even Eileen. A solitary tear escaped the Prince's bleary light eyes and ran into his splotchy whiskers.
'All I want,' said the Prince in a wee voice that must have been familiar in the royal nursery, 'is some peace and quiet and a little fun.'
The silver-haired man to the Prince's right asserted himself, taking the Prince by the arm. 'And so you shall have it. Your Highness has been sorely tried by his day's demanding schedule,' said the man, easing the Duke back into his chair, 'and is in need of nourishment to replenish his spirits.'
'More wine,' said the Prince, eyes downcast, sullenly sinking into himself.
'More wine!' barked the Bishop. 'Thank you, Sir Nigel. His Highness's welfare is of course foremost in all our minds.'
'So I would've thought,' said Sir Nigel Gull, the silver-haired man, erstwhile physician to the prince. As he took his seat, Gull shot a withering glare at Eileen, A woman-hater, concluded Doyle instantly, remembering that the prolific rumors of the Prince's debauchery were not exclusively limited to the fairer sex.
'Please, be seated, won't you?' said the Bishop, regaining his form. 'Miss Temple, if you would be so kind; our host has requested you for his right hand.'
The Bishop held out her chair as Eileen sat to the right of Chandros, directly across from Alexander Sparks. The upright hulk of General Marcus McCauley Drummond stood on Sparks's left.
'And here for you, please, Dr. Doyle.' Pillphrock indicated
a chair two spots to Eileen's right. 'Welcome, all, welcome, welcome.'
Pillphrock rang the serving bell and settled his girth be-tween Eileen and Doyle, who took his seat directly across from the only other female at the table, a darkly handsome woman whom he recognized as Lady Caroline Nicholson. Black hair bonneted a strong face, her features hawkish and unforgiving, more sensual than the photo had been able to convey. Her black eyes glittered with a predatory heat. She smiled cryptically.
The man to Doyle's immediate right had difficulty retaking his seat, wincing in pain. His right leg extended out as stiff as a board, the bulge of a poultice ballooning the pants leg around his knee. Slight, clean-shaven, pale, and pockmarked. Even with the spectacles he wore and the absence of makeup, Doyle recognized him as the Dark Man from the seance, the man he had shot in that leg. Professor Arminius Vamberg.
So they were accounted for, all seven, and the grandson of Queen Victoria in the bargain. Doyle looked up and met the willful, steady eyes of Alexander Sparks. The implied complicity of his smile was unnerving, as if he could gaze unimpeded into the private mind of anyone he scrutinized. Seeing no purpose in openly challenging him, Doyle looked away.
Sharing the same dull eyes and attentively vacant expression, a squadron of servants carried in a soup course, which, a ravenous Doyle was disappointed to see, proved to be a thin consomme.
'I made the discovery during my years in the Caribbean,' offered Professor Vamberg unsolicited, in the harshly accented rasp that vividly recalled the night at 13 Cheshire.
'What's that?' asked Doyle.
'Have you spent any length of time in primitive cultures, Doctor?'
'Not if you exclude the French,' said Doyle, trying to check his hunger from prompting him to pick up his bowl and drink.
The Professor smiled politely. 'The signal difference, I find, is that, lacking the polished veneer of what we Europeans arrogantly pronounce 'civilized,' less developed societies maintain a direct relationship to the natural world. As a consequence, they enjoy a more straightforward experience of that part of nature which remains unseen to us: the spirit world, specifically the world of the devas, or elementals, who inform and inhabit the physical world which we presumptively assume to be the limit of existence. Our colleagues in the medical profession dismiss these people as foolish, primitive, superstitious, at the mercy of irrational fancies and terrors. Contrarily, after years of examination, I'm inclined to consider them wise and knowing, attuned with the world they live in to a degree undreamt of by ourselves.'
Doyle nodded attentively, glancing at Chandros, deep in a one-sided conversation with Eileen, who seemed as equally preoccupied as Doyle with her soup.
'I myself was quite unconvinced of their existence for the longest time,' said the Bishop, between noisy slurps. 'As you can well imagine—public school, Church of England, already a vicar—'
'Unaware of whose existence?' asked Doyle.
'Why, the elementals, of course,' beamed the Bishop. He had managed to splatter droplets of broth all over his spectacles. 'Until I met Professor Vamberg—then the scales fell from my eyes like autumn leaves!'
'They are known by different names in different cultures,' said Vamberg, clearly irritated by the Bishop's cheery intrusion. 'You are of Irish descent, are you not, Doctor?'
Doyle nodded. His soup was gone; he was tempted to ask Vamberg, who hadn't so much as wet his spoon, if he wouldn't mind giving his over.
'In Ireland you know them as leprechauns: the little people. Here, in Britain, they're called brownies or elves, with many regional variations: 'knockers' in Cornwall, the pixies of Scotland, the trows of Shetland and Orcadia. The Germans, of course, know them as kobolds or goblins—'
'I'm familiar with the mythology,' said Doyle, annoyed by the man's condescending pedantry.
'Ah, but you see, it is a great deal more than mere mythology, Doctor,' said Vamberg, waving his spoon for emphasis.
In came the next course; thank God, thought Doyle. It's not enough to perish by way of starvation, they have to bore me to death simultaneously.
'Roast partridge on a bed of cabbage,' announced the Bishop.
Partridge? There must be some mistake, thought Doyle. This was a single wing, and it was easily the size of a turkey's. And that cabbage leaf covered the entire plate. They were in the north of England: Where did one find produce like this in the depths of winter? Gift horses, decided Doyle, tasting the first cut of the wing; the meat was succulent and tender and, he had to admit, on first bite as flavorful as anything he'd ever eaten.
'These figures of legend, so familiar to us from folktales and children's stories, are in actuality the unseen architects and builders of the natural world,' continued Vamberg, as disinterested in the partridge as he had been in the soup. 'Wood nymphs, water naiads, sprites of the air—there is a reason why these traditions persist in every culture, even in one as ostensibly advanced as our own—'
'What reason would that be?' said Doyle, unable to resist picking up the wing with his hands and tearing into it.
