Shadowland

of kingdoms.

12

'And what's the point of that?' Tom asked, shivering on the pier.

    The magician smiled at him: smiled as coldly as the wizard in his story. 'Need I really say? Rose can never leave Shadowland. Kiss her all you want, Tom, but don't believe a word she says, for she has no idea of the truth.'

    'That's a terrible . . . ridiculous . . . lie.' Tom began to walk away from Collins down the pier.

    'I don't blame you for being angry with me,' the magician called out into the fog between them, 'but whatever you do, don't forget my warning. Don't take her too seriously.' Tom was now at the iron ladder. As he set his feet on the first rung, he heard the magician call, 'Our lives take many different turnings, Tom, and today's king is tomorrow's goat. Don't be fool enough to think it cannot happen to you.'

THREE

Two Betrayals

1

At night the fog still hung over the lake and in the forest swirled around the trees. The lights above the clearings were glowing yellowish disks. 'Let's not get separated,' Del said, and took his hand as they slowly made their way through the trees.

    When they came into the clearing of the sixth light, Coleman Collins was waiting for them. He sat in the owl chair, his legs crossed at the ankles.

    Tom swallowed, knowing that he would see Rose down in the funnel of trees before this part of the story was done.

    'The sorcerer's apprentices,' Collins said, turning his head to greet them. His voice was blurred. Both boys had seen the bottle clamped between his thighs. 'Just in time, yes, and wandering lone through the mists like orphans. Sit down in your accustomed places, boys, and attend. We have reached the next-to-last chapter of my unburdening, and the weather is appropriate.

2

'First of all, it was a foggy day when I deserted the armed forces of the United States. It was the first week of December, and the war had been over for three weeks. I was in England, waiting for my discharge papers. Speckle John had been discharged a week earlier, and was already in Paris. I could see no reason why I should not leave immediately, but for the strict interpretation the govern­ment puts on such things as premature departure from its service. At the time, I was not serving anyone, in fact. I was waiting out the period before my papers came in a country house which had been turned into a hospital and convalescent home — Surrey, this was — and I was more or less being kept out of sight. The patients there had been on what was called Blighty Leave, a term I suppose you boys are too young to understand. Nobody knew when the papers would come through. Some of the men had heard rumors that they might not be discharged, or demobbed, as the English soldiers said, for a year. Don't think these were idle rumors, either; some men were still in France eight months later.

    'I don't suppose you boys know Surrey? Physically, it is quite a beautiful county. Before the war and for the well-off, it must have been a sort of paradise. But the weather, at least while I was there, was miserable, cold and misty — the most expressive weather I've ever known, somehow speaking of blasted hopes and dead expectations. The English had lost nearly an entire generation of men, and in those villages in Surrey I think they felt the loss especially keenly. When Speckle John's letter came, I felt I simply had to get out.

    'So in the first week of December I just left, carrying only a hand valise with a few books and my razor and toothbrush. I walked two miles into the village, waited a couple of hours at the station, and caught the Charing Cross train. From the moment I walked through the gates of that house, I was a criminal and a fugitive, traveling on forged papers I'd had the foresight to buy on the black market just before we left France. The next day I took the boat train to Paris. The name on my false papers was Coleman Collins. I let the hunt for Lieutenant Charles Nightingale go on without me.

    'For there was a hunt, and that was the reason I had been sequestered away in Surrey. At dinner I told you boys about that day I did five magical cures in a row. Reckless, even stupid-certainly arrogant. I was on fire with impatience. Austria-Hungary had just surrendered after the Italian victory at Vittorio Veneto. Everybody knew that Germany was exhausted. Finished. I wanted out. So I let rip, boys, I let rip. Five in a row. Spuds-and-Guinness, the Irish nurse, thought the devil had ap­peared. Of course my display caused an uproar. Withers saw what I was doing, and after finishing up his own work, tore out faster than any Georgian has ever traveled before or since. To see the colonel, I was sure. I did not give a damn. Anyhow, to make a long story short, before I got to England, there were new rumors about me. Not just among a handful of Negro soldiers, but among the general public. Reports had begun to appear in the English and French papers. Miracle on the Battlefield. That sort of thing. First in one place, then in another. By the time I left Yorkshire, the English papers were conducting their own search for the 'miracle doctor.' If I had wanted that sort of thing, I could have had it in a minute, boys — if I had wanted to be a performing monkey the rest of my life. But what I wanted was in Paris, working on our act and looking for theater bookings. What I wanted had secrets and knowledge to make a faith healer look like a dogcatcher.

'I set foot again on French soil on December 5, 1918, hung-over, unshaven, in a cold rain. My phony papers had never been questioned, not even looked at twice. I did see, after a few weeks in Paris, that a newspaper had managed to identify the 'miracle doctor' as one Lieuten­ant Charles Nightingale, who had unreasonably vanished from an English village shortly before his release from the army and was now AWOL. But by then the doings of Lieutenant Nightingale were no more important to me than those of General Pershing.

    'Speckle John was living in rooms in rue Vaugirard, and I took a room directly below him. You entered the building through huge wooden doors on the street and came into an open court surrounded on all sides by high gray brick walls. Smaller doors let onto staircases. To your right was the concierge's office; straight ahead, the stairs to Speckle John's rooms. This building was so run­down it was moldy, but to me it looked beautiful. Now I can almost see it before me. And so, I think, can you.'

    The boys looked down the funnel of trees and saw the suggestion of high gray walls in the fog. Dark windows stared down at a tall figure in a hat and Burberry. Then a black figure, his face in shadow, emerged from a door in the brick.

    'My mentor, my guide, and my rival was waiting for me.'

    The man in the hat and long Burberry walked through the swirling fog toward the black figure. Then another door opened, and a slender girl hurried past both men. Rose.

    'On that first day, I saw a girl walking past us but did not look closely at her. Later I found that she was named Rosa Forte, that she was a singer, and that her rooms were on the ground floor just below mine.'

    Rose had disappeared into the trees; the two men had vanished too; the scene at the end of the tunnel of trees went black.

    'At first I thought that she was the most enchanting girl I'd ever known, brave and intelligent, with a face that delighted me more than any painting. Within weeks I had fallen in love with her. Once I saw a shepherdess that had her face in a provincial antique shop, and because I had no money to buy it, I stole it — slipped it into my pocket and took it home. When Speckle John and I toured, I took it with me. Stared at it; stared into it, as if it knew mysteries Speckle John did not.'

    Down in the narrow space between the trees, Rose Armstrong appeared, dressed in a long white garment of indeterminate period. She held a shepherd's crook, froze like a statue, and looked at Tom with unfocused eyes.

    'Mysteries, yes. Mystery is always duplicitous, and once you know its secret, it is twice banal. In time I came to think that Rosa Forte was like some maiden in a fable, blank to herself for all her surface charm, the property of anybody who listened to her tale.' Collins lifted his bottle, and Rose Armstrong disappeared backward into fog and trees.

    'Ah. Speckle John and I began working almost imme­diately. We booked ourselves into theaters and halls all over France. I was afraid to stay long periods in England because of the 'miracle-doctor' business, but we did cross England several times to perform in Ireland. We pro­ceeded to invent an entirely new kind of performance, using the skills we had, and eventually worked our way up toward the top of the bill. What we were after was