by Tim Powers
“And what happened to the other people, the ones you came with?”
“I don’t know. I guess they made it back to the gap and jumped back to, uh, America.”
“Why did you all come?” He laughed. “It’s a long story, but what we came for was to hear a lecture.” Jacky cocked an eyebrow. “A lecture? What do you mean?”
“Have you ever heard of Samuel Taylor Coleridge?”
“Of course. He’s supposed to speak on Milton at the Crown and Anchor next Saturday.”
Doyle raised his eyebrows. This beggar boy was beginning to impress him. “Right. Well, he got the dates mixed up and came to give it last night, and we were all there, so he delivered it then. Very interesting talk, as a matter of fact.”
“Oh?” Jacky finished his brandy and thoughtfully poured himself another inch. “And how did you people know he’d get the dates mixed up?”
Doyle spread his hands. “The man in charge knew.”
Jacky was silent for a few moments, gingerly scratching under his moustache, then he looked up and grinned. “Were you just a hireling brought along to mind the horses or something, or were you interested in the lecture?”
Doyle was tempted to tell this arrogant boy that he’d published a biography of Coleridge. He contented himself with saying, as loftily as possible, “I was brought along to explain to the guests who Coleridge… is, and to answer questions about him after we’d got back home.”
Jacky laughed with pleasure. “So you’re interested in modern poetry! There’s more to you than meets the eye, Doyle.” The door at Doyle’s back opened and Copenhagen Jack entered, looking even taller and broader-shouldered in the small room. “Two new members,” he said, perching himself on the corner of the table and picking up the brandy bottle.
“A good Decayed Gentleman, and the best shaker I’ve seen in years—you should have seen the fit he threw to show us his style. Astonishing. And how fares Dumb Tom?”
Doyle winced. “Am I really stuck with that?”
“If you stay you are. What’s this story about Horrabin being after you?” The captain tilted the bottle up and took a liberal swig from the neck of it.
Jacky spoke up. “It’s Horrabin’s master, Doctor Romany. He thinks Dumb Tom here knows a lot of sorcerous stuff, and he’s mistaken, but he’s offered a huge reward, and so every mongrel from Horrabin’s rat-warren will be looking for Brendan Doyle.” He turned to Doyle. “Face it, man, your Dumb Tom role is purely a survival tactic.”
The captain laughed. “And be grateful I don’t conduct my business the way Horrabin’s father did.”
Jacky laughed too, and then seeing Doyle’s uncomprehending look, explained. “The clown’s father was a St. Giles beggar master too, and he wouldn’t run a fake—all of his blind men really were blind, and his crippled children didn’t carry crutches just for effect. All very commendable, one would say, until you learn that he’d recruit healthy people and then alter them for the trade of begging. He had a hospital in reverse under London somewhere, and developed techniques for turning robust men, women and children into creatures tailored to evoke horror and pity.” The smile had worn off Jacky’s face during his speech.
“So if old Teobaldo Horrabin had decided you ought to be Dumb Tom,” said the captain, “why he’d cut out your tongue and then have a game try at making you genuinely simple-minded by knocking in one corner of your head or smothering you just long enough for your brain to die. Like Jacky said, he was an expert at it.” He sucked some more brandy out of the bottle’s neck. “They even say he went to work on his own son, and that Horrabin wears those baggy clothes and that face paint to conceal the deformities his father gave him.”
Doyle shuddered, remembering the startling appearance of the clown’s face as he’d seen it in the back of the puppet booth. “So what happened to Horrabin pere?”
Jacky shrugged. “It was all before my time.”
“Some said he died and then Horrabin fils took over,” said the captain. “Others said he killed old Teobaldo in order to take over. I’ve even heard that old Teobaldo is still alive down there … and I’m not sure he wouldn’t rather be dead.” He caught Doyle’s questioning look. “Oh, old Horrabin was very tall, and any tight places, even a crowded corridor, used to upset him.”
“One loss we suffer in running this lad as a mute,” said Jacky, snagging the bottle from the captain long enough to refill the two glasses, “is that he can read.”
The captain glanced at Doyle with more interest than he’d shown in anything all evening. “Can you really? Affluently?”
Guessing that he meant fluently, Doyle nodded.
“Excellent! You can read to me. Literature is perhaps my main interest in life, but I’ve never been able to wring the sense out of the marks on the pages. Do you know any poems? By heart?”
“Oh, sure.”
“Give us one.”
“Uh… all right.” He cleared his throat, and then began,
“The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me…”
The captain and Jacky both sat raptly listening during Doyle’s recitation of the entirety of Gray’s Elegy. When he finished the captain applauded, and himself launched into verse, a section from Samson Agonistes. Jacky was next. “Tell me what you think of this,” he said, and then recited,
“These cold and tangled streets, that once were gay
With light and drink, now echo to my tread
As I pass by alone. Night breezes thread
Through dusty rooms their solitary way
And carry out, through broken windowpanes,
Into the street, old thoughts and memories.”
Jacky paused, and Doyle automatically completed the octave:
“The lad is far away who cherished these,
And nothing of his spirit now remains.”
After he’d recited it Doyle tried to remember where he’d read it. It was in a book about Ashbless, but it wasn’t by him… Got it, he thought—it’s one of the damn few works of Colin Lepovre, who was engaged to Elizabeth Tichy before she became William Ashbless’ wife. Lepovre disappeared in, let’s see, 1809 it was, a few months before the wedding was to have occurred; he was twenty, and left behind him only a thin book of verses that got few and unsympathetic reviews.
He glanced at Jacky and saw that the young man was staring at him with surprise and, for the first time, something like respect. “My God, Doyle, you’ve read Lepovre?”
“Oh yes,” said Doyle airily. “He disappeared, uh, last year, didn’t he?”
Jacky looked grim. “That’s the official story. Actually he was killed. I knew him, you see.”
“Did you really?” It occurred to Doyle that, if he ever got back to 1983, this story might make a good footnote in the Ashbless biography. “How was he killed?”
The young man drained his brandy again and recklessly poured himself a lot more. “Maybe some day I’ll know you well enough to tell you.”
Still determined to get something publishable out of the boy, Doyle asked, “Did you know his fiancee, Elizabeth Tichy?”
Jacky looked startled. “If you’re from America, how do you know all this?”
Doyle opened his mouth to voice a plausible reply, couldn’t think of one, and had to make do with, “Some day, Jacky, I may know you well enough to say.”
Jacky raised his eyebrows, as if considering taking offense; then he smiled. “As I said, Doyle, there’s certainly more to you than meets the eye. Yes, I knew Beth Tichy—quite well. I knew her years before she met Lepovre. I still keep in touch.”
“Evidently I was nearly correct in saying that you two were old pals,” said Copenhagen Jack. “Doyle, you come with me. Old Stikeleather has got me halfway through Dallas’ Aubrey, but the way he reads he’ll be at least another year finishing it. Let’s see if y
ou can read a little more quickly.”
* * *
The low-ceilinged kitchen of The Beggar in the Bush was crowded, but most of the people were hanging over the table where a card game was going on, and Fairchild, nursing his cup of gin in a dark corner, had room to lean back and put his feet up against the bricks of the wall. Long ago he’d learned not to gamble, for he could never understand the rules, and regardless of what sort of cards he was dealt, somehow people always took his money away and told him he’d lost.
He had taken only one of the shillings from the drainpipe in the alley off Fleet Street, for he had figured out a plan: he would join Horrabin’s beggar army and keep the shillings just for special things like meat and gin and beer and—he gulped some gin when he thought of it—a girl every now and then.
His gin gone, he decided not to have another, for if he missed signing up with the stilted clown tonight he’d have to spend some of his money on mere lodging, and that wasn’t part of his plan. He stood up and made his way through the shouting and laughing press to the front door of the place and stepped outside.
The flickering lamplight seemed to fall with reluctance across the overhanging housefronts of Buckeridge Street, laying only the faintest of dry brush touches on the black fabric of the night—here an open window high in one wall was underlit, though the room beyond was in darkness; there the mouth of an alley with another lamp somewhere along it was discernible only by a line of yellowly glistening wet cobblestones, like a procession of toads only momentarily motionless in their slow crossing of the street; and ragged roofs and patches of scaling walls were occasionally visible when the vagrant breeze blew the lamp flame high.
Fairchild groped his way across the street to the opposite corner, and as he hunched along toward the next street he could hear snoring from behind the boards nailed up over the unglassed windows of Mother Dowling’s boarding house. He sneered at the oblivious sleepers who, as he knew from experience, had each paid three pennies to share a bed with two or three other people and a room with a dozen more. Paying money to be packed like bats in an old house, he thought, smug in the knowledge that he had other plans.
A moment later, though, he was uneasily wondering just what sort of sleeping arrangements Horrabin might provide. That clown was scary; he might have everybody sleep in coffins or something. The thought made Fairchild halt, gaping and crossing himself. Then he remembered that it was getting late, and whatever he intended to do he’d better do soon. At least Horrabin’s is free, he thought, moving forward again. Everybody’s welcome at Horrabin’s.
The sewer parliament would have adjourned by this time, so instead of turning right on Maynard toward Bainbridge Street he followed the wall that brushed his left shoulder, around the corner to face the north, where on the far side of Ivy Lane stood the dark warehouse-like structure known in the neighborhood as the Horrabin Hotel, or Rat’s Castle.
Now he was worrying that they might not take him in. After all, he was not smart. He reassured himself with the reflection that he was a good beggar, at least, and that’s what was important here. It also occurred to him that Horrabin might be interested to learn that Copenhagen Jack’s newest deaf-mute was a fake, and could be tricked into talking.
Yes, Fairchild decided, I’ll have to be sure to put myself on the clown’s good side by telling him about that.
* * *
Jacky stood for quite a while beside the window Doyle had shut, just looking out over the indistinct rooftops, pinpricked here and there with the smoky red dot of a lantern or the amber lozenge of an uncurtained window. I wonder what he’s doing this minute, Jacky thought, what dark court he may be silently treading, in what gin den he may be buying some unsuspecting poor devil a drink. Or is he asleep in some garret out there… and what sort of dreams could he have? Does he steal those too, I wonder?
Jacky turned away and sat down at the table where the paper, pen and ink were waiting. Lean fingers picked up the pen, dipped the nib in the ink and, after some hesitation, began to write:
Sept. 2, 1810
My dear Mother—
While I am still not able to give you an address at which I can be reached, I can assure you that I am well, & getting enough to eat, & sleeping with a roof over my head. I know you consider it a dangerous and affected Lunacy, but I am making some progress at finding the man—if he can be called a man—that killed Colin; and although you have told me repeatedly that it is a task for the police, I will ask you once more to take my word for it that the police are not equipped to deal with—even acknowledge the existence of—the sort of man this is. I intend to kill him with the Minimum of Risk to myself, as soon as it may be Feasible, and then return home, where I trust I shall still find a Welcome. In the meantime I am among Friends, and am in far less danger than you probably imagine; and if you will, despite my present very regretful disobedience to your Wishes, keep for me the warmth and love you have so bountifully shewn me in the past, you will very deeply gratify your most loving and affectionate daughter,
Elizabeth Jacqueline Tichy.
Jacky waved the letter in the air until the ink was dry, then folded it up, addressed it, and dripped candle wax on it for a seal. She locked the door, got out of her baggy clothes and, just before swinging the hinged bed down out of the wall, peeled the moustache off, scratched her upper lip vigorously, and then stuck the strip of gummed, canvas-backed hair onto the wall.
CHAPTER 5
“Most persons break the shells of eggs, after they have eaten the meat. This was originally done to prevent their being used as boats by witches.”
—Francis Grose
Covent Garden on Saturday night displayed an entirely different character than it had shown at dawn—it was nearly as crowded, and certainly no less noisy, but where twelve hours ago ranks of coster’s wagons had lined the curb, there now gracefully rolled the finest phaeton coaches, drawn by ponies carefully matched in size and color, as the West End aristocracy arrived from their houses in Jermyn Street and St. James to attend the theatre. The paving stones were now being frenziedly swept every couple of minutes by ragged crossing sweepers, each jealously working his hard-won section of pavement, ahead of any pedestrian ladies and gentlemen that looked likely to tip; and the Doric portico of the Covent Garden Theatre, newly rebuilt only last year after burning to the ground in 1808, reared its grand architecture far more elegantly by lamplight and the gold glow of its interior chandeliers than it had in the hard brightness of the sunlight.
The crossing sweepers made at least a token gesture of performing a service for the pence and shillings they received, but also present were people who simply begged. One of the most successful was a tubercular wretch who shambled about the square, never soliciting alms, but hopelessly gnawing at a mud-caked chunk of stale bread whenever anyone was watching him. And if a pity-struck lady goaded her escort to ask this unfortunate soul what ailed him, the sunken-eyed derelict would only touch his mouth and ear, indicating that he could neither hear nor speak, and then return his attention to the ghastly piece of bread. His plight seemed more genuine for not being flaunted or explained, and he collected so many coins—including a number of five-shilling crowns and one unprecedented gold sovereign—that he had to go empty his pockets into Marko’s bag every ten or twenty minutes.
“Ah, Dumb Tom,” exclaimed Marko softly as Doyle once again sidled into the alley where he waited. He held out his sack and Doyle dug handfuls of change out of his pockets and tossed them into it. “Yer doin’ splendid, lad. Now listen, I’m movin’ over to Malk Alley by Bedford Street this time, and I’ll be there for the next half hour. Got it?”
Doyle nodded.
“Keep up the good work. And cough sometimes. You do a stunning cough.”
Doyle nodded again, winked, and moved back out into the street.
This was his sixth day of begging, and he was still surprised at how good at it he’d proved to be, and how relaxed a life it was. He was even coming to terms with the idea
of getting up at dawn and walking a dozen miles a day—covering both sides of the river west of London Bridge—for the appetite he worked up was always lavishly sated by the dinners at Copenhagen Jack’s house in Pye Street, and the captain had no objection to his beggars stopping at public houses for the occasional pint, or taking short naps on disused street to street rooftop bridges or between coal barges on the shore by Blackfriar’s Bridge.
The make-up around his eyes was making his skin break out, though. It had been Jacky’s idea to exaggerate Doyle’s already pale complexion to the point of looking consumptive by having him wear a white cloth around his head like a toothache sling, with a black cap above and a red scarf around his neck—to make his face seem very blanched by contrast—and applying some pink make-up around his eyes. “Makes you look more smitten,” Jacky had said as he’d smeared the smelly stuff into Doyle’s eye sockets, “and if Horrabin should happen to see you, let’s hope it’ll keep him from recognizing you.”
Jacky puzzled Doyle. The boy sometimes struck him as effeminate in certain spontaneous gestures and word choices, and he certainly had no apparent interest in young ladies, but Wednesday after dinner, when a floridly handsome Decayed Gentleman beggar had cornered Jacky in the hall, calling him his little hot cross bun and trying to kiss him, Jacky had reacted not just with a firm refusal but with disgust, as if he considered all that sort of thing distasteful. And Doyle couldn’t understand why a young man of Jacky’s intelligence would settle for begging as a means of earning a living, even in such a relatively pleasant operation as Captain Jack’s.
Doyle himself certainly didn’t intend to stay with it for very long. Three days from now, on Tuesday the eleventh of September, William Ashbless was going to arrive in London, and Doyle had resolved to meet him, strike up a friendship with the poet and then somehow get Ashbless—who had never been noted as hurting for money—to help set him up with some decent sort of job. He knew that the man would arrive at the London Dock on the frigate Sandoval at nine in the morning, and at ten-thirty would write the first draft of his best-known poem, “The Twelve Hours of the Night,” in the front room of the Jamaica Coffee House. Doyle intended to save some begging money, buy a passable suit, and meet Ashbless there. Having studied the man so thoroughly Doyle already felt that he knew him pretty well.
