The Anubis Gates (57 page)

Jacky leaped to her feet, for she recognized the man, who was now swimming a little dazedly toward shore.

“Mr. Ashbless!” she shouted. “Over here!”

Just as the snake boat had passed between the two poles—each supporting a pharaoh-bearded head—that flanked the last archway, Ashbless felt a tremendous swelling heat burst up inside himself, stunning the beleaguered shred that was his consciousness, and until he splashed into the icy Thames he was blissfully sure that this was death.

When he’d thrashed to the surface and shaken the long hair out of his eyes it occurred to him that he once again had hair, and two eyes. He held up first one hand, and then the other, in front of his face, and grinned to see all fingers present, all skin unbroken.

The restoration Doctor Romanelli had hoped for in vain had happened to him—when the sun was resurrected and made whole and alive again at dawn, Ashbless had been allowed—God knew why—to partake in it.

He’d just begun to swim in toward shore when he heard a call. He paused, squinting at the shadowed shore, then recognized the person sitting on the wall, waved, and resumed his stroke.

The water was surging and swashing around the Adelphi Arches, and when he stood up in the shallows and splashed his way up onto the mud bank he saw why: the subterranean waterway had stopped flowing into the Thames, as completely as if a huge valve had been closed somewhere—and now that the immediate backwash had abated, the river was flowing past Ashbless’ point of exit as smoothly as it swept past the rest of the bank. A few river birds had swooped down to peer inquisitively at the churned-up mud that was swirling away downstream.

He looked up at the thin figure perched on the wall. “Hello, Jacky,” he called. “Coleridge got out too, I think.”

“Yes, sir,” said Jacky.

“And,” said Ashbless, climbing up the bank, “I daresay he won’t remember anything he saw last night.”

“Well,” said Jacky, mystified, as the dripping, bearded giant scrambled up the slope and hoisted himself up to sit next to her on the wall, “as a matter of fact, he may not.” She peered closely at him. “I thought you were dead when you slid past me down there. Your… eyes, and… “

“Yes,” said Ashbless gently. “I was dying—but there was magic loose last night, not all of it malign.” It was his turn to peer at her. “You found time to shave?”

“Oh!” Jacky rubbed her bare upper lip. “It… the moustache… was singed off.”

“Good Lord. I’m glad to see you made it out, anyway.” Ashbless leaned back, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. “I’m going to sit here,” he said, “until the sun’s high enough to dry me off.”

Jacky cocked an eyebrow. “You’ll die of the chill—which seems at least a waste, after surviving the… condensed works of Dante.”

He grinned without opening his eyes, and shook his head. “Ashbless has got lots of things to do before he dies.”

“Oh? Such as what?”

Ashbless shrugged. “Well… get married, for one thing. Fifth of next month, as a matter of fact.”

Jacky tossed her head carelessly. “That’s nice. To whom?”

“A girl named Elizabeth Jacqueline Tichy. Pretty girl. Never met her, but I’ve seen a picture of her.”

Jacky’s eyebrows went up. “Who?”

Ashbless repeated the name.

Her face twitched irresolutely between a piqued smile and a frown. “You’ve never met her? So how can you be so damn sure she’ll have you?”

“I know she will, Jacky me lad. You might say she hasn’t any choice.”

“Is that a fact now,” said Jacky angrily. “I suppose it’s your broad shoulders and fair hair that will… render her incapable of resisting you, eh? Or no, don’t tell me—it’s your poetry, isn’t it? Sure, you’re going to read her a few verses of your incomprehensible damned ‘Twelve Hours,’ aren’t you, and she’ll figure since she can’t understand it, it must be… Art, right? Why, you arrogant son of a bitch… “

Ashbless had opened his eyes in astonishment and sat up. “Damn it, Jacky, what’s the matter with you? Lord, I didn’t say I was going to rape her, I—”

“Oh, no! No, you’re just going to give her the once in a lifetime chance to—what, consort?—with a real poet. What a bit of luck for her!”

“What in hell are you raving about, lad? I only said—”

Jacky leaped to her feet on the wall and planted her fists on her hips. “Meet Elizabeth Tichy!”

Ashbless blinked up at her. “What do you mean? Do you know her? Oh my God, that’s right, you do know her, don’t you? Listen, I didn’t mean—”

“Damn you!” Jacky brushed her hair out with her fingers. “I’m Elizabeth Jacqueline Tichy!”

Ashbless laughed uneasily—then did a double take. “Holy God. Are… are you really?”

“It’s one of the perhaps four things I’m sure of, Ashbless.”

He flapped his hands in dismay. “Damn me, I’m sorry, Ja—Miss Tichy. I thought you were just… good old Jacky, my buddy from the old days at Captain Jack’s house. I never dreamed that all this time you—”

“You were never at Captain Jack’s house,” said Jacky. Almost pleadingly she added, “I mean, were you?”

“In a way I was. You see, I—” He halted. “What do you say we discuss this over breakfast?”

Jacky was frowning again, but after a pause she nodded. “All right, but only because poor Doyle thought so highly of you. And it doesn’t mean I’m conceding anything, you understand?” She grinned, then caught herself and frowned sternly. “Come on, I know a place in St. Martin’s Lane where they’ll even let you sit by the fire.”

She hopped down from the wall as Ashbless stood up, and together they walked away, still bickering, north toward the Strand in the clear dawn light.

“Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off! and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.”

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson

After standing in his doorway for nearly a quarter of an hour, staring out across the gray, hummocked expanse of the Woolwich marshes that stretched for several miles under the rain-threatening sky, William Ashbless nearly took off his coat and went back inside. The fire was drawing well, after all, and he had not entirely killed the bottle of Glenlivet last night. Then he frowned, tucked his cap lower over his bone-white hair, touched the pommel of the sword he’d strapped on for the occasion, and drew the door closed behind him.
No, I owe it to Jacky,
he thought as he trudged down his steps.
She met her own appointment so … gallantly, seven years ago.

During the last couple of solitary years, Ashbless had fretfully noticed that his memory of Jacky’s face had disappeared—the damned portraits had looked fine when they were new and she was still alive to supplement them, but recently it had seemed to him that they hadn’t ever caught her with her real smile on. But today, he realized, he could remember her as clearly as if she’d just that morning taken the coach into London; her affectionately sarcastic grin, her occasional snappishness, and the gamin, Leslie Caron prettiness that, to his mind, she had kept right up until her death of a fever at the age of forty-seven. Probably, he thought as he crossed the highway and started out along the marsh path—which he’d morbidly watched appear over the last couple of seasons, knowing he would this day walk it—
probably I remember her so well today because today I join her.

The path rose and fell over the hilly marshes, but when the river came into view after ten minutes of brisk walking, his step was still springy and he wasn’t panting at all, for he’d been exercising and studying fencing now for years, determined at least to seriously injure whoever it might prove to be that was destined to kill him.

I’ll wait here,
he decided,
standing on a low rise that overlooked the willow-fringed Thames bank fifty yards away. They’ll find my body closer to the bank, but I’d like to get a long, clear look at my murderer first. And who on earth, he wondered, will it turn out to be?
He noticed that he was trembling, and he sat down and took several deep breaths.
Take it easy, old lad,
he told himself.
You’ve known for thirty-five long and mainly happy years that this day was coming.

He leaned back and stared up at the turbulent gray clouds.
And most of your friends are dead now,
he thought. Byron went—of a fever, too—in Missolonghi twenty-some years ago, and Coleridge bit the dust in 1834. Ashbless smiled and wondered, not for the first time, how much of some of Coleridge’s very late poems—particularly “Limbo” and “Ne Plus Ultra”—might have derived some of their imagery from his dimly remembered experiences that night in the early April of 1811. Certain lines made Ashbless curious:

“No such sweet sights doth Limbo den immure,
Wall’d round, and made a spirit-jail secure.
By the mere horror of blank Naught-at-all… “
and
“Sole Positive of Night! Antipathist of Light!…
Condensed blackness and abysmal storm… “

He rubbed his eyes and stood up—and froze, and his chest went icy hollow, for a rowboat had been moored to one of the willows while he’d been looking away, and a tall, burly man was climbing sturdily up the slope, a sheathed sword swinging on his right hip.
Interesting,
Ashbless thought nervously—
a lefty like myself. Okay, he told himself, now stay calm. Remember, the wound in the belly is the only one they’ll find on you, so don’t bother with the epee-type parries, that protect the arms, legs and head—only parry thrusts to the body… while knowing, of course, that there’s one coming that you’ll fail to parry.

His right hand fluttered over his stomach, and he wondered which patch of presently healthy skin would soon be parted to admit several inches of cold steel.

In an hour it’ll be done,
he thought.
Try to brave out this last hour as well as Jacky did. For she knew it was coming too … knew it ever since that night in 1815 when you got drunk enough to give in to her demands to know the date and circumstances of her death.

Ashbless squared his shoulders and stepped off the crest of the rise and walked down the path toward the river to meet his murderer halfway.

The man looked up, and seemed startled to see Ashbless coming toward him.
I wonder what our quarrel will be,
thought Ashbless.
At least he isn’t young—his beard looks as white as mine. He’s been in foreign parts, too, judging by that tan. His face does look vaguely familiar, though.

When they were still a dozen yards apart Ashbless stopped. “Good morning,” he called, and he was proud of how steady his voice was.

The other man blinked and grinned craftily, and Ashbless realized with a chill that the man was insane. “You’re him,” the stranger said in a cracked voice. “Ain’t you?”

“I’m who?”

“Doyle. Brendan Doyle.”

Ashbless answered, in a tone that concealed his surprise, “Yes … but it’s a name I haven’t used for thirty-five years. Why? Do we know each other?”

“I know you. And,” he said, drawing his sword, “I’ve come to kill you.”

“I guessed,” said Ashbless quietly, stepping back and drawing his own blade from its sheath. The wind whispered in the tall grasses. “Any use asking why?”

“You know why,” the other man replied, lunging fast as a whiplash on the word know; Ashbless managed to parry it with a wild outside flail in sixte, but he forgot to riposte.

“I really don’t know why,” he gasped, trying to get a firm footing on the muddy ground.

“It’s because,” the man said as he launched a quick feint and disengage that Ashbless barely avoided with a screeching circular parry, “while you’re alive,” the man’s sword sped up out of the bind and darted in at Ashbless’ chest, so that Ashbless had to hop back out of distance, “I can’t be.” As he recovered from his lunge his blade flicked sideways at Ashbless’ forearm, and Ashbless felt the edge cut right through his jacket and shirt and grate against the bone.

Ashbless was so stunned that he almost forgot to parry the next lunge.
But this is wrong,
he thought bewilderedly,
I know I won’t be found with a wounded arm!
And then he laughed, for he’d figured it out.

“Yield now or die,” Ashbless called almost merrily to his opponent.

“It’s you that’s to die,” the tanned man muttered, starting a lunge and then abruptly halting halfway through it, so as to provoke Ashbless into a premature parry; but Ashbless didn’t fall for it, and caught the end of his opponent’s blade with the forte of his own, and lunged forward with a strong bind that drove his point corkscrewing in to poke, and then deeply stab, the tanned man’s belly. He felt the narrow blade stop and constrictedly flex against the spine.

The man sat down on the wet grass, clutching himself with hands already slick with blood. “Quick,” he gasped, pale under his tan, “me be you.”

Ashbless just stared down at him, his exhilaration suddenly gone.

“Come on,” grated the man on the ground, dropping his sword and beginning to crawl. “Do the trick. Switch.”

Ashbless stepped back. His opponent crawled forward for a yard or two, then fell forward onto the grass.

Several minutes went by before Ashbless moved, and when he did it was to kneel beside the body, which had stopped breathing, and lay his hand gently on the dead man’s shoulder.
If there is any reward after death,
he thought,
for such creatures as you, I’ll bet you’ve earned it. God knows how you made your way back to England from Cairo, and how you found me. Maybe you were drawn back to me, very like the way ghosts are supposed to be drawn to the place where they died. Well, you get to share, a little bit at least, in my biography: you provide the corpse.

Eventually Ashbless wiped his sword clean on an uprooted tuft of grass, and then stood up to sheathe it; and he tore off a strip of his scarf and knotted it around his cut forearm. The chilly spring breeze blew all thoughts of the past out of his mind, and with a sense of adventure he hadn’t known in decades he walked on down the path to the moored boat, leaving behind him the ka which Doctor Romanelli had made of him so many years ago.