The Somnambulist

brotherhood, of their plans to escape and perfect themselves.

The dreamer sees himself talking fervently, fire blazing in his eyes, of poetry and metaphysics and the need for a better world.

Susquehanna. The word surfaces without warning. It means nothing to him but he enjoys the sound of it, its pleasing rhythm. He repeats it to himself. Susquehanna.

Then Edith emerges beside Southey, interrupting them with cake and wine, and the old man sees that the chasm between them is already widening. Sara brushes up against him and he is distracted. The dream shifts again.

He is old now, his friendships withered like fruit on a rotten vine, the clear vision of his youth fogged and obscured by the compromises of age. He is a different man, gripped in the coils of penury and afflicted by an evil longing. Naked to the waist, his breeches pulled down below his knees, he sits straining over a privy, clenched and groaning, sick in the knowledge that he has afflicted this poisoning, this acrimony of the bowels, upon himself, that he is to blame for his condition. “My body is deranged,” he writes — his madness the product of a fondness for medicine, a folly, a treacherous lover in whose thrall he has been too long held tight. He mutters to himself as, humiliated, he sits and heaves and pushes.

At last, he returns to the garret room in Highgate, to Gillman and the boy. Ned is there, not so young now. He holds out his hand. Feverish and dying, the old man takes it. He tells Gillman to leave them, and the doctor, respectful of his patient’s whims, obeys.

Ned seems fearless of him now that death stares back through the old man’s eyes. He wants to tell the boy what he means to him, how the boy has brought him to life again and rekindled his dreams. Surprisingly, for one so voluble in life, he cannot find the words. He stutters awhile, then contents himself with clutching the proffered hand, but he is sure nonetheless that the boy — this special, chosen boy — knows. He has bequeathed to him a legacy. Ned is to be his successor, his champion. He squeezes his hand, blinks back a few final tears.

Gasping in his sleep, shuffling uncomfortably on his iron cot, the dreamer knows the end is near.

Perhaps, if he were aware of the passing of time, the exact chronology of his incarceration, he might care to know precisely how long he has left before he wakes.

But I have faith in you. You’ll have worked it out by now, I’m sure.

Four days. Four days before the dream ends, the old man wakes and the city falls.

Chapter 14

Professional pavement artists are a modern phenomenon. In London, they sprang into being only as the guardians of the city’s streets and thoroughfares began to favor the economy of tarmacadam over the quaint impracticality of cobblestones. By the time of Moon’s last case, the pitted, pot-holed character of the old city had given way to the flawless asphalt of the new century. Accordingly, the city had seen an unwelcome increase in vagrants and down-at- heel needies plying their trade as roadside artists. One especially pernicious breed had acquired the name screever, a title given to those alms-seekers little better than beggars, the type that had they not possessed the barest modicum of artistic ability would doubtless have been selling matches or accosting passers-by with an outstretched cap and a forlorn look.

The day after Barabbas died, Mr. Dedlock was thrusting his way through the crowds which, quite without reason, had chosen this morning in particular to pack the streets of Limestone and block his path, all of them pushing and shoving and struggling like a Far Eastern football team jostling for drinks at the after-match bar. This must be a religious festival, he thought, some heathen public holiday or other which has resulted in this thoughtless and distracting inconvenience. By the time he reached the familiar shop front, he had to pause, sweaty and wheezing, to catch his breath. His triumphs on the rugby pitch were years behind him; that world belonged now to fitter, leaner, younger men.

A screever sat a few paces from the butcher’s door. Unkempt to as almost grotesque degree, his artwork was chalked half-heartedly on the pavement before him. Dedlock strode past, determined not to give the man the merest flicker of acknowledgment, but as he glanced down at the screever’s handiwork, something stared back — a word which made him stop short in shock.

Dedlock

Wrinkling his nose at the smell, the gentleman in question stared down at the screever. “Do I know you?”

“Danger,” the beggar hissed. “Danger.”

“Danger? What danger?”

“Danger.”

“Dedlock gave him a haughty stare. “You’re drunk.”

“Don’t you know me, sir?”

Dedlock snorted dismissively and was about to walk away when something about the creature drew his eye, something uncomfortably familiar. He peered closer. “Grischenko? Is that you?”

The screever nodded, a little sheepishly.

“What the devil are you doing here?”

“Danger,” he repeated solemnly. “Danger.”

“So you said.”

“Danger.”

Deadlock rolled his eyes. “Wipe that muck off your face and come with me. Whatever it is, you might as well tell me inside.”

The tramp stumbled to his feet and followed Dedlock as he swaggered into the building. Inside, Mr. Skimpole was already seated and waiting at the round table, fretful and restive. Given the albino’s permanently pasty complexion it was difficult to tell, but Dedlock thought he looked especially sickly today.

At the entrance of his colleague, Skimpole waved away a group of Civil Servants dressed as Chinamen who had been clustering around him, anxiously proffering reports to be read, letters to be signed, schemes and plots to be initialed. “Who’s this?” he asked, looking suspiciously toward the screever, his voice filled with the vexed tenor of a man whose pet dog has just dragged a small woodland creature into the drawing room, dead but still bleeding.

“This is Mr. Grishchenko,” Dedlock said, and the man nodded distractedly in greeting. He seemed jittery and furtive and kept looking about him as though terrified of some unseen menace lurking just beyond the borders of his vision.

“One of yours?” Skimpole asked witheringly.

The scarred man was unapologetic. “One of mine.”

“Who?”

Dedlock lowered his voice to an absurd stage whisper: “He’s our ‘in’ with the Russians. A double.”

“What in God’s name is he doing here? After the Slattery fiasco I’d have hoped you might be more wary about this kind of thing.”

“I think he has information for us.” Dedlock pointed to a chair and barked: “Sit down.” Grischenko, still whimpering, his vagabond disguise only partially removed, did as he was told.

“Why are you here?” Dedlock snapped. “Why that ludicrous disguise?”

Grischenko spoke carefully. His English was slow and thickly accented, his vocabulary antiquated and fussy. “I have to warn you,” he began. “I come here in this most brilliant disguise because the men who track me, they are dangerous. Most probably they watch us even now. I could not allow myself to be seen as Grischenko. You understand?”

Dedlock crossed his arms. “You’re quite safe here, I assure you. And I suspect Mr. Skimpole and myself are more than a match for anything your people might care to throw at us.”

“No, no,” Grischenko suddenly seemed animated. “Of course, I understand that my fellow countrymen would