by Tim Powers
Damn, Jacky thought. He’s moved on, and now I have no idea at all whose body he may be in.
She stuck her hands deep into the pockets of her oversized coat and, picking her way around the wagon and through the pack of gawking spectators, ambled away down Threadneedle Street.
* * *
Halfway home Doyle started trembling, and when he’d got to his rooftop perch and downed a first quick beer he lowered his face into his hands and breathed very deeply until the shivering stopped. My God, he thought, so that’s what it’s like when the damn things appear. No wonder poor Jacky went a little mad after killing one, so that he believed he saw Colin Lepovre’s soul staring out of the dying creature’s eyes. Or, hell, maybe he did. Doyle poured and drank off another cupful of beer. I sure hope, he thought, that Benner knows what he’s doing. I hope he knows what kind of fire he’s playing with. Doyle put down his cup and let his gaze wander to his left.
And where is he now, Doyle wondered uneasily, and has the fur begun to whisker out like grime on the new body yet, and has he started looking for another one to take?
* * *
On the weathered stone doorstep of a little whitewashed house roughly two thousand miles southeast of Doyle’s roof-top eyrie, a bald-headed old man sat stolidly smoking a long clay-bowled pipe and staring down the slope of dusty yellow grass at the pebbled beach and the water. The warm, dry wind was from the west, coming in with long ripples across the otherwise smooth Gulf of Patras, and in the occasional moments of its abatement he could sometimes hear the quiet clatter of sheep’s bells among the foothills of the Morea behind him.
For the third time during that long afternoon the boy Nicolo ran out of the house, this time actually kicking the doctor’s arm so that he nearly dropped his pipe. And the boy didn’t even apologize. The doctor smiled coldly up at the unhappy boy, promising himself that one more piece of rudeness from this Greek catamite would result in an ugly, painful and prolonged death for his beloved “padrone.”
“Doctor,” gasped Nicolo. “Come now! The padrone, he rolls on the bed and speaks to people who are not in the room! I think he will die!”
He won’t die until I let him, thought the doctor. He looked at the sky—the sun was well down the western side of the cloudless Grecian sky, and he decided that he could proceed now; not that it really mattered anymore at which hour of the day he did it—but old dead laws hang on as superstitions, and just as he wouldn’t dream of pronouncing the name of Set on the twenty-fourth day of the month Pharmuthi, or willingly see a mouse on the twelfth of Tybi, he could not bring himself to perform a work of black magic while Ra the sungod was overhead, and might see.
“Very well,” said the doctor, laying aside his pipe and getting laboriously to his feet. “I’ll go see him.”
“I will come also,” declared Nicolo.
“No. I must be alone with him.”
“I will come also.”
The ridiculous boy had placed his right hand on the hilt of the curved dagger he always carried in his red sash, and the doctor almost laughed. “If you insist. But you will have to leave when I treat him.”
“Why?”
“Because,” said the doctor, knowing that this excuse would sit well with the boy—though it would have set milord anglais, inside, scrabbling for his pistols—”medicine is magic, and the presence of a third soul in the room might change the healing sorceries into malevolent ones.”
The boy looked sulky, but muttered, “Very well.”
“Come along, then.”
They walked into the house and down the hallway to the doorless room at the end, and although the stone walls had kept the inside air cool, the young man lying on the narrow iron bed was drenched with sweat, and his curly black hair was plastered to his forehead. As Nicolo had reported, he was tossing fretfully, and though his eyes were closed he was frowning and muttering.
“You must leave now,” the doctor told the boy.
Nicolo went to the doorway, but paused, mistrustfully eyeing the odd collection of things—a lancet and bowl, colored liquids in little glass bottles, a metal loop with a wooden bead halfway along it—on the bedside table. “One thing before I go,” he said. “Many of the people you have treated for this fever have died. Monday the Englishman George Watson slipped through your fingers. The padrone,” he waved at the man on the bed, “says you are more of a periculo, a danger, than the fever itself. And so I will tell you this—if he too should be one of your many failures, you will follow him into death on the same day. Capeesh?”
Amusement was struggling with annoyance on the doctor’s craggy and eroded face. “Leave us, Nicolo.”
“Have a care, Doctor Romanelli,” said Nicolo, then turned and strode away down the hall.
The doctor dipped a cup into the basin of water that stood on the table and took a few pinches of powder-dry crushed herbs from a pouch at his belt, sifted them into the cup and stirred it with a forefinger. Then he slipped one arm under the delirious man’s shoulders, lifted him to a half-sitting position and put the cup to his still muttering lips.
“Drink up, my lord,” he said softly, tilting the cup. The man in the bed drank it reflexively, though he frowned, and when Doctor Romanelli took the empty cup away the man coughed and shook his head like a cat with a noseful of something it doesn’t like. “Yes, it’s bitter, isn’t it, my lord? I had to down a cup of it myself eight years ago, and I still remember the taste.”
The doctor stood up and moved quickly to the table, for time counted now. Romanelli struck sparks to a little pile of tinder in a dish, got a flame, and held his special candle in it until the wick wore a corona of round flame, then he wedged it back into its holder and stared earnestly at it. The flame didn’t trail upward as a normal candle’s would have done, but radiated evenly in all directions so that it was a sphere, like a little yellow sun, and it cast heat waves down as well as up, making the hieroglyphic figures on the candle shaft seem to shift and jitter like race horses waiting in the starting gate.
Now if only his ka in London was doing his part correctly!
He spoke into the flame. “Romany?”
A tiny voice answered. “Ready here. The tub of paut is fresh and warmed to the right temperature.”
“Well, I would hope so. The way is paved for him?”
“Yes. The request for an audience with King George was acknowledged and approved earlier this week.”
“All right. Let’s line up this channel.”
Romanelli turned to the metal loop, which was firmly moored to a block of hard wood, and with a little metal wand he struck it. It produced a long, pure note, which was answered a moment later by a note out of the flame.
The answering note was higher, so he slid the wooden bead an inch farther up the loop and struck again; the sounds were similar now, and for a moment the ball of flame seemed to disappear, though it glowed again when the notes diminished away.
“I believe we have it,” he said tensely. “Again now.”
The two notes, one struck in London and one in Greece, rang out again, very nearly identical—the flame turned to a dim, churning grayness—and as the struck metal was still singing he gingerly touched the bead, moving it a hairbreadth further. The notes were now identical, and where the flame had been was now a hole in the air, through which he could see a tiny section of a dusty floor. As the double ringing faded away to silence the peculiar sphere of flame reappeared.
“Got it,” said Romanelli excitedly. “I could see through clearly. Strike again when I tell you, and I will send him through.”
He picked up the lancet and a dish, and turning to the unconscious man in the bed he lifted a limp hand, sliced a finger with the blade and caught the quick drops of blood in the dish. When he’d got a couple of spoonfuls he dropped the hand and the scalpel and faced the candle again.
“Now!” he said, and struck the loop with the wand. Once more the note was answered, and as the candle flame again became a hole he dropped the w
and, dipped his fingers into the dish of blood and flicked a dozen red drops through.
“Arrived?” he asked, his fingers poised ready to try it again.
“Yes,” answered the voice from the other side as the ringing faded out and the flame waxed bright. “Four drops, right in the tub.”
“Excellent. I’ll let him die as soon as I hear it’s succeeded.” Romanelli leaned forward and blew the candle out.
He sat back and stared reflectively at the unquiet sleeper on the bed. Finding this young man had been a stroke of luck. He was perfect for their purposes—a peer of the British realm, but with a background of obscurity and near poverty, and—perhaps because of his lameness—shy and introverted, with few friends. And during his days at Harrow he had obligingly published a satire that managed to offend quite a number of influential people in England, including his sponsor, Lord Carlisle—they would all be willing to believe that he had committed the shocking crime that Romanelli and his British ka would make it appear that he had committed.
“Doctor Romany and I are going to propel you out of obscurity,” Romanelli said softly. “We’re going to make your name famous, my lord Byron.”
* * *
Under the remarkably placid smile on the face of the severed head of Teobaldo, which had been set in a niche high in the wall, the clown Horrabin and Doctor Romany stared into the coffin-sized tub of dimly glowing paut in which the drops of blood had blackened, solidified, sunk to the mid-level and were now beginning to sprout networks of fine red webs, connecting one to another.
“In twelve hours it will be recognizably a man,” said Romany softly, standing so still that he didn’t bob at all on his spring-soled shoes. “In twenty-four it should be able to speak to us.”
Horrabin rearranged his stilts under himself. “A genuine British lord,” he said thoughtfully. “The Rat’s Castle has had a number of distinguished visitors, but young Byron here will be the first,” and even under his caked make-up Romany could see him sneer, “peer of the realm.”
Doctor Romany smiled. “I’ve led you into elevated circles.”
There was silence for a few moments, then, “You’re certain we have to do this no-sleep project tomorrow night?” said the clown in a whining tone. “I always have to have ten hours in the hammock or I get terrible back pains, and since my damned father,” he waved at the dried head, “knocked me onto the ground, the pains are twice as bad.”
“We’ll each take turns, getting four hours sleep out of eight,” Doctor Romany reminded him wearily. “That ought to be enough to keep you alive. Pity him,” he added, nodding at the tub of paut. “He’ll stay awake and be shouted at the whole time.”
Horrabin sighed. “Some time day after tomorrow we’ll quit?”
“The evening, probably. We’ll hammer at him by turns all tomorrow night and all the day after. By evening he won’t have any will of his own left, and after letting him be visible for two days we’ll give him his instructions, and that midget pistol, and turn him loose. Then my gypsies and your beggars will go to work, and about an hour after my man in the Treasury announces that a fifth of all the gold sovereigns in the country are counterfeit, my captains will start a run on the Bank of England. And then when our boy Byron does his trick, the country should be virtually on its knees. If Napoleon is not in London by Christmas I’ll be very surprised.” He smiled contentedly.
Horrabin shifted on his stilt-poles. “You… are certain that’ll be an improvement? I don’t mind giving the country a whipping, but I still question the wisdom of killing it outright.”
“The French are easier to manage,” said Romany. “I know—I’ve dealt with them in Cairo.”
“Ah.” Horrabin heeled toward the doorway but paused to stare into the tub, where the red threads had now coalesced into a sketch of a human skeleton. “God, that’s disgusting,” he remarked. “Picture being born out of a tub of slime.” Shaking his carnival-tent head, he stumped out of the room.
Doctor Romany too stared into the glowing tub. “Oh,” he said quietly, “there are worse things, Horrabin. Tell me in a month whether or not you’ve found that there are worse things.”
* * *
On the morning of Tuesday the twenty-fifth of September Doyle stood over the line of tobacco jars at Wassard’s Tobacconist Shop, trying to find a smokeable blend in these days before humidification and latakia, and he was slowly becoming aware of the conversation going on next to him.
“Well of course he’s a genuine lord,” said one of the middle-aged merchants standing nearby. “He’s pig-drunk, ain’t he?”
His companion chuckled, but replied thoughtfully, “I don’t know. He looked more sick—or crazy, yes, that’s it.”
“He sure do dress dainty.”
“Yes, that’s what I mean, it’s like he’s an actor costumed up to play a lord in a penny gaff show.” He shook his head. “If it weren’t for all those gold sovereigns he’s flinging about that’s what I’d guess it was—a prank to spark interest in some damned show; and you say you’ve heard of this Lord… what’s his name? Brian?”
“Byron. Yes, he wrote a little book making fun of all the modern poets, even Little, who I’m partial to myself. This Byron’s one of them university lads.”
“Snotty, putting-on-airs little bastards.”
“Exactly. Did you see his moustache?”
Doyle, puzzled by all this, leaned forward. “Excuse me, but do you mean to say you’ve seen Lord Byron? Recently?”
“Oh, aye, lad, us and half the business district. He’s at The Gimli’s Perch in Lombard Street, disgracefully drunk—or crazy,” he allowed, nodding to his companion, “and buying round after round of drinks for the house.”
“I may have time to go and partake,” said Doyle with a smile. “Has either of you a watch?”
One of the men fished a gold turnip from his waistcoat and eyed it. “Half past ten.”
“Thank you.” Doyle hurried out of the shop. An hour and a half yet before I meet Benner, he thought; that’s plenty of time to check out this Byron impostor and try to guess what kind of dodge he’s working. Byron’s not a bad identity for some con artist to assume, he reflected, for the real Byron is still fairly unknown in 1810—it’ll be the publication of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, two years from now, that’ll make him famous—and so the man in the street wouldn’t know that Byron is touring Greece and Turkey right now. But what kind of dodge is so big that it’s worth “flinging about” gold sovereigns just to set it up?
He made his way south to Lombard Street, and had no difficulty picking out The Gimli’s Perch—it was the tavern with a crowd of people blocking the street in front of it. Doyle sprinted up to it and tried to see over the heads of the crowd.
“Back off, now. Jack,” growled a fat man beside him. “You’ll take your turn like everybody else.”
Doyle apologized and edged around to one of the windows and, cupping his hands around his eyes, peered inside.
The tavern was packed, and for half a minute all Doyle could see was clamoring drinkers, all busy at either draining filled cups or waving empty ones at the harried waiters and bartenders; then through a chance parting in the crowd he saw a dark, curly-haired young man limp up to the bar and smilingly drop a stack of coins onto the polished surface. A cheer went up that Doyle could hear right through the thick glass, and the young man was lost to view behind a forest of waving arms.
Doyle fought his way back to the street and leaned against a lamppost. Though the surface of his mind was calm, he could feel a chilly pressure expanding deep within him, and he knew that when it nosed like a surfacing submarine up into his consciousness it would be recognizable as panic—so he tried to talk it down. Byron is in Turkey or Greece somewhere, he told himself firmly, and it’s only a coincidence that this lad looked—so damnably!—like all the portraits of him. And either this impostor is coincidentally lame too, or he so thoroughly studied his model that he’s added the detail of Byron’s lameness… eve
n though nearly no one in 1810 would know to expect it. But how can I explain the moustache? Byron did grow a moustache when he was abroad—you can see it in the Phillips portrait—but even if an impersonator could somehow know that, he’d hardly use it in deceiving people who, if they’d seen the original Byron at all, had seen him clean-shaven. And if the moustache is just an oversight, something the impersonator didn’t know Byron lacked when last seen in England, then why the accurate detail of the limp?
The panic, or whatever it was, was still building. What if that is Byron, he thought, and he isn’t in Greece at all, as history will claim? What the hell is going on? Ashbless is supposed to be here but isn’t, and Byron isn’t supposed to be but is. Did Darrow shoot us back to some alternate 1810, from which history will develop differently?
He was feeling dizzy, and glad of the support of the lamppost, but he knew he had to get into that tavern and find out whether or not that young man was the real Byron or not. He pushed himself out onto the sidewalk and took a couple of steps and he suddenly realized that the fear building up within him was too primal and powerful to be caused by something as abstract as the question of what time stream he was in. Something was happening to him, something his conscious mind couldn’t sense, but which was churning up his sub-conscious like a bomb detonated at the bottom of a well.
The crowd and the building in front of him suddenly lost all their depth and most of their color and clear focus, so that he seemed to be looking at an impressionist painting of the scene done only in shades of yellow and brown. And someone’s snapped the volume knob down, he thought.
Just before light and sound flickered away altogether and, unsupported now, he fell into unconsciousness like a man falling through the trap door of a gallows, he had an instant in which to wonder if this was how it felt to die.
