looked after all the way to Kazeh, where she'll remain with our Arabian hosts while the rest of us hike north to the supposed position of the Mountains of the Moon.”
“And the cannibals?”
The corners of Burton's mouth twitched slightly. “Those few tribes that feast on human flesh do so in a ritualistic fashion to mark their victory in battle. It's not as common a phenomenon as the storybooks would have you believe. For a daily meal of arm or leg, you'll have to go to the other side of the world, to Koluwai, a small island to the southeast of Papua New Guinea. There they will very happily have European visitors for dinner-and I don't mean as guests. Apparently, we taste like pork.”
“Oof! I'm rather more in favour of lamb chops!” Lawless responded.
Cornewall Lewis interrupted: “You'll leave her with Arabians? Can they be trusted with the fair sex?”
Burton clicked his tongue impatiently. “Sir, if you choose to believe the lies propagated by your own government, that is up to you, but despite the calumnies that are circulated in the corridors of parliament, I have never found the Arabian race to be anything less than extraordinarily benevolent, courteous, and entirely honourable.”
“I meant only to suggest that there might be a risk in leaving a woman of the Empire in non-Christian hands, Sir Richard.”
“Christian? Do you then stand in opposition to Darwin's findings? Do you also believe that your God favours some races over others?”
“I use the word merely out of habit, as a synonym for civilised,” Cornewall Lewis protested.
“Then I'm to take it you don't consider the Arabians civilised, despite that they invented modern mathematics, surgical instruments, soap and perfume, the windmill, the crankshaft, and a great many other things; despite that they realised the Earth is a sphere that circles the sun five hundred years before Galileo was tortured by your Christian church for supporting the same notion?”
The secretary for war pursed his lips uneasily.
“That reminds me,” said Monckton Milnes. “Richard, I have the manuscript we discussed-the Persian treatise.”
“The what?”
“The translation you were looking for.” He stepped forward and hooked his arm through Burton's. “It's in the library. Come, I'll show you. Excuse us please, gentlemen, we shan't be long.”
Before Burton could object he was pulled from the group and propelled through the guests toward the door.
“What blessed treatise?” he spluttered.
“A necessary fiction to remove you from the battlefield,” Monckton Milnes hissed. “What the blazes has got into you? Why are you snapping like a rabid dog at Cornewall Lewis?”
They left the room, steered across a parlour, past a small gathering in the reception hall, entered a corridor, and stopped at a carved oak door. Monckton Milnes drew a key from a pocket in his costume, turned it in the lock, and, after they had entered into the room beyond, secured the door behind them.
They were in his famous and somewhat notorious library.
He pointed to big studded leather armchairs near the fireplace and snapped: “Go. Sit.”
Burton obeyed.
Monckton Milnes went to a cabinet, retrieved a bottle and glasses from it, and poured two drinks. He joined Burton and handed one to him.
“Vintage
Burton put the glass to his nose and inhaled the aroma. He took a taste, smacked his lips, then leaned back in his chair and considered his friend.
“My apologies, dear fellow.”
“Spare me. I don't want 'em. I want an explanation. By God, Richard, I've seen you angry, I've seen you defeated, I've seen you wild with enthusiasm, and I've seen you drunk as a fiddler's bitch, but I've never before seen you jittery. What's the matter?”
Burton gazed into his drink and remained silent for a moment, then looked up and met his friend's eyes.
“They are making a puppet of me.”
“Who are? How?”
“The bloody politicians. Sending me to Africa.”
Monckton Milnes's face registered his surprise. “But it's what you've wanted!”
“Not under these circumstances.”
“What circumstances? Stone me, man, if you haven't been handed a rare opportunity! The Royal Geographical Society was dead set against you going, but Palmerston-the prime minister himself! — forced their hand. You have another chance at the Nile, and no expedition has ever been so well funded and supported, not even Henry Stanley's! Why do you grumble so and flash those moody eyes of yours? Explain!”
Burton looked away, glanced around at the book-lined walls, and at the erotic statuettes that stood on plinths in various niches, pulled at his jacket and brushed lint from his sleeve, took another sip from his glass, and, reluctantly, returned his attention to Monckton Milnes.
“It's true, I have long wanted to return to Africa to finish what I began back in fifty-seven,” he said. “To locate, once and for all, the source of the River Nile. Instead, I'm being dispatched to find and bring back a damned weapon!”
“A weapon?”
“A black diamond. An Eye of Naga.”
“What is that? How is a diamond a weapon? I don't understand.”
Burton suddenly leaned forward and gripped his friend's wrist. A flame ignited in his dark eyes.
“You and I have known each other for a long time,” he said, a slight hoarseness creeping into his voice. “I can trust you to keep a confidence, yes?”
“Of course you can. You have my word.”
Burton sat back. “Do you remember once recommending to me the cheiromantist Countess Sabina?”
Monckton Milnes grunted an affirmation.
“These past weeks, she's been employing her talent as a seer for Palmerston. Her abilities are prodigious. She's able to catch astoundingly clear glimpses of the future-but not our future.”
His friend frowned, took a swallow from his glass then laid it aside and rubbed a hand across his cheek, accidentally smudging the red harlequin makeup that surrounded his left eye.
“Whose, then?”
“No, you misunderstand. I mean, not the future you and I and everyone else in the world will experience.”
“What other future is there?” Monckton Milnes asked in bewilderment.
Burton held his gaze, then said quietly, “This world, this time we live in, it is not as it should be.”
“Not as-You're speaking in blessed riddles, Richard!”
“Do you recall all the hysteria eighteen months or so ago when people started to see Spring Heeled Jack left, right, and centre?”
“Yes, of course.”
“It wasn't newspaper sensationalism. He was real.”
“A prankster?”
“Far from it. He was a man from the future. He travelled back from the year 2202 to 1840 to prevent his ancestor, with whom he shared the name of Edward Oxford, from shooting at Queen Victoria. His mission went terribly wrong. What should have been a botched assassination attempt succeeded thanks to his interference. It altered everything his history had recorded and, what's more, it wiped him out of his own time.”
Monckton Milnes sat motionless, his eyes widening.
“While he was trying to escape from the scene of the assassination,” Burton continued, “Oxford's strange costume, which contained the machinery that enabled him to move through time, was damaged by a young constable with whom we are both acquainted. In fact, he's here tonight.”
“Wh-who?”
