The knife blade flashed in the dingy light—a cruel and cutting arc. Then, curiously, it halted in midflight, hovered, and spun, spent to the ground as an agonized cry split the warm evening air.
Arthur sensed, rather than saw, a rush of movement. Something—a hand perhaps or, more strangely, a foot—swinging lazily through the air to catch a forward-hurtling thug in the throat, crushing his windpipe; Burleigh’s man dropped heavily to the ground, clawing at his neck and gasping for air.
There was an incoherent shout.
The sound seemed to Arthur to come from a very great distance above, or possibly from somewhere deep inside him. Someone seemed to be calling on someone to stand and fight. Dutifully, Arthur struggled to rise, his head throbbing, his eyes bulging with the effort. The sound of his own blood surged in his ears with the roar of wild ocean surf.
Dizziness overwhelmed him, and he fell back . . . but not before he saw an angel.
The heavenly figure was swathed in glowing white silk and took the form of a young Chinese woman, tall and lithe, with long hair black as jet, braided to her slender waist. Her face was a smooth oval of absolute beauty and composure, and Arthur knew he had never seen anything so lovely in all his life. The angelic creature’s movements were performed with a calm, unhurried grace as, with an exquisite kick to the forehead of a charging attacker, she snapped the fellow’s neck, sending him crashing to the dust in a quivering heap of twisted limbs. Pirouetting with a dancer’s poise, she lightly turned to address pale-faced Burleigh, who was now backing away, stumbling, cursing, and cradling a loose and strengthless arm that appeared to have adopted a wholly unnatural bend.
Arthur, overcome at last by pain and shock, allowed himself to lie back and close his eyes. When he opened them again, the white-clad angel was bending over him, cradling his head in her lap. “Peace, my friend,” she breathed, and her voice was the soothing music of paradise.
“Thank you,” he murmured, and tried to lift his hand to her face. The effort brought pain in shimmering silver cascades that stole the breath from his lungs.
Laying a fingertip to his lips, she hushed him and smoothed back the hair from his forehead. “Rest now,” she said. “Help is coming.”
In that moment, the pain of his wounds receded, ebbing away on the dulcet notes of her low, whispered voice. Bliss enfolded him, and he lay gazing up into the most beautiful dark almond-shaped eyes he could conceive—and would happily have spent an eternity in such delightful repose. Then, wrapped in the warmth of the knowledge that he would live and not die, he felt himself lifted up and carried on light wings from the derelict yard that was to have been his pitiful grave.
He was roused again some while later to the sensation of being laid upon a bed of fragrant linen in a room aglow with candlelight. There were other figures floating around him now—more angels, perhaps?—and one of these was dabbing at his seeping wounds with a warm, damp cloth that smelled of camphor and stung him however gently applied. The pain caused him to cry out, whereupon another angel applied a folded cloth to his nose. He breathed in heavy, sick-sweet vapours, and the room with its heavenly beings grew dim and vanished into a realm of white and silence.
It was pain that brought him to his senses once more, to find himself in a dim room, covered by a thin sheet and shaking uncontrollably. The smell of burning spices and oil in a pan, mingled with the barking of a dog, made him heave violently, but his stomach was empty and nothing came up.
Arthur lay back, panting and sweating, his head and chest and side burning as if live coals had been placed beneath his skin. When he could open his eyes again, he looked around. The room was small and neat—bare wooden floors, grass matting on unadorned walls, a low three-legged stool, and a bed—the bed a simple straw-stuffed pallet; a roll of woven bamboo strips covered a wide door half open to a tiny garden. Through the slits of bamboo, he could see a plum tree and, beneath it, a large copper basin of water. In the shade of the tree sat his old friend, the master tattooist, Wu Chen Hu, his expressionless gaze fixed in meditation upon the surface of the water in the basin, where a plum leaf floated.
Arthur raised his hand to wave and made to call to his friend, but even that small exertion proved such a fierce and insistent agony that the effort lapsed as soon as it began. Instead, he drew a deep breath and held it until the pain subsided, then turned his attention to his wounds. He could see little, for they were covered with strips of cloth that had been soaked in some kind of aromatic liquid. Gingerly, and with the minimum of movement, he lifted the edge of one of the cloths and saw an ugly, ragged cut, its red, inflamed edges oozing blood and pus.
He had just replaced the cloth and was about to close his eyes against the throbbing in his head when there was a movement in the doorway. He turned on the pillow to see a young Chinese woman enter the room, carrying a steaming bowl. She was dressed all in white with long, black, braided hair, and he recognized her at once.
“You.” Arthur sighed. “You are the angel of my dream.”
Her perfect lips curved in a smile. “You are alive still. That is good.”
“It was you who saved me,” he continued, his voice an ineffectual whisper. “My angel.”
“Please,” she said, placing the bowl on the floor beside the bed. “What is ain-jel ?”
“A creature sent by God,” replied Arthur, “to be a protector and helpmate of man.”
“Ah, anjo,” she said, then smiled and dipped her head. “For you, I am pleased to be ain-jel.” She drew the low stool close, seating herself primly on it. With the most graceful and gentle fingers, she peeled away the cloth covering his wounds, rolling the strips up and placing them into the hot liquid in the bowl.
“You speak English,” observed Arthur.
“Father sent me to Jesuit School. They teach me very well.”
Arthur’s eyes widened with surprise. “Xian-Li?”
The young woman smiled and dipped her head. “I am. And you are Master Arthur.”
“Xian-Li, the last time I saw you . . .” He fell silent looking at her, amazed at the transformation as if it had taken place before his very eyes. “You have grown into a beautiful woman, Xian-Li.”
“And you have been hit on the head,” she replied, carefully removing another strip of cloth. The bandage stuck to the skin and pulled at the wound, making Arthur wince. “So sorry.”
“No,” he said, “you continue. I am sure it is doing me a world of good.”
“So sorry, too, because I came so late.”
“So late?”
“To save you injury,” she said. “Father foresaw trouble. We went to inn and waited. When you did not come out, father went in. But you had gone. It was a little time to find you.”
“Yet, you found me,” replied Arthur. “For that I will be forever in your debt.”
She smiled.
“It is a service I must repay,” he told her. “I owe you my life.”
“You owe me new shoes,” she corrected lightly. She indicated her feet, and he saw that her blue silk slippers were soiled and stained with blood.
He smiled. “As soon as I am better, we will go out together, you and I, and we will buy you the best shoes in all Macau. On that, you have my sacred vow.”
CHAPTER 19
In Which Kit Is Mistaken for a Footpad
The journey back to London was a glum affair. Upon leaving Black Mixen Tump, the weather grew increasingly dank and dreary. Low clouds closed in, and mist rose up from the marshy places. Just outside Banbury, rain began leaking out of the heavy sky, and Kit, wincing and clutching his sore ribs with every jolt of the vehicle, decided they had had enough fun for one day and told Giles to stop at the inn. They ate a supper of lamb shanks and dumplings at a table with some other travellers and, after seeing the single communal room they would have to share with other late-arriving guests, elected to sleep in the coach instead. They were on the Oxford road by sunrise the next morning, paused at the Golden Cross for breakfast, and then resume
d their journey.
Just outside Headington it began to rain again—a nasty spitting drizzle. Kit felt sorry for Giles, sitting hunched on his bench, alone, driving in the rain through a cheerless wet countryside. Once, Kit climbed up to sit beside his new friend just to keep him company; but, clearly, having his passenger up front made Giles uncomfortable—as no doubt, it violated the ironclad social protocol that firmly kept the classes in their respective places. So, Kit crawled back to his seat at first opportunity, and order was restored.
They reached Chepping Wycombe late and stopped at the Four Feathers coaching inn. Having spent most of their funds the previous night, they made do with a few meat pies and small beer and spent the night in the coach again. Next morning, they joined the London Road and settled in for another damp, dull day. The going was a long slow slog along muddy tracks, so Kit had plenty of time to contemplate the latest wrinkle in his peculiar plight. What he thought, chiefly, was that whenever it seemed that he just might manage to climb up out of the mire of misfortune, Lady Fate—that haggard old slapper—turned around and smacked him back down again.
There was, Kit noted, little satisfaction to be had pursuing such musings, but eventually he found that it helped somewhat to imagine himself a shipwrecked castaway, lonely and lost, marooned on a remote island called Seventeenth-Century England—a topsy-turvy place where everything was oddly familiar, yet vastly foreign at the same time. Like a good castaway, he took stock of his resources and realized that he was not completely alone, or without some considerable material assets. He had Sir Henry’s roof over his head—or soon would have—and there were a few friendly inhabitants around. What is more, they shared a roughly common language: with a steadily increasing fluency he could talk to the natives.
He had to keep his wits about him. Even well-known words were often pronounced differently and could have unfamiliar meanings; connotations were not fixed, but fluid. Definitions drifted. He was constantly brought up short by the sudden realisation that what he thought he had said was not at all what he meant—at least as it had been understood by his hearers. Still, he was coming to grips with the slippery speech, and his confidence was growing.
As for the rest: Cosimo and Sir Henry’s disappearance with the Burley Men sharp on their heels . . . Well, there was nothing he could do about that now, so he set it aside. Next on the list of his meditations was the outrageous, multistorey universe theory his great-grandfather was promulgating. The implications of that were simply too many and too monumental for him to entertain at any meaningful level. Without scientific training in such things, Kit did not know what to think. Indeed, he did not rightly know how to think about any of it. If only he had read that book—the one he’d always been meaning to read but that still sat dusty and unopened on his shelf: A Brief History of Time. That might have given him some mental ballast for his current voyage of discovery. As it was, the very idea of a near-infinite array of universes made his head swim. So, Kit decided to set that aside, for the time being, as well.
Thus, he shortly arrived at the conclusion that owing to his woeful ignorance—or, as he put it to himself, his lack of useful information—the wisest course of action seemed to be to simply accept things as he found them and advance his cause as best he could wherever opportunity allowed.
The next day on the road passed much as the one before, and Kit grew bored with his enforced solitude. He dozed on and off and woke at one point just in time to observe that they were trundling into London—a city he knew so well, and yet not at all. The rain increased as they passed the outlying villages and hamlets. The muddy thoroughfares—roads churned to goopy grey soup by foot and wheel—made the going tedious as one after another vehicle—whether farm wagon, coach, or handcart—became bogged in the sticky morass and had to be hauled free. Kit, chilled to the bone, slouched in the relative comfort of the carriage and watched the bedraggled host of foot travellers slogging along, many burdened with bundles and boxes on their heads in a vain effort to keep off the rain that ran in rivulets from the down-turned brims of sodden hats and from the ragged ends of tightly gathered shawls. Some few lucky ones rode in sedan chairs borne by servants sunk to their shanks in the mire.
The drably dressed citizens of the drenched capital reminded him of a flock of very sorry blackbirds: feathers matted, sogged to the skin, and miserable with it. The rough board shops and merchant stalls crowding the margins of the road—the tailors and tanners, brewers and barbers, dyers and drapers, fullers and fishmongers, and all the trading ilk—were splashed to the gunnels with mud, and forlorn faces of shopkeepers stared out from darkened interiors at the unhappy cavalcade passing by their bespattered premises.
Daylight was rapidly dwindling when Giles at last expertly steered the coach onto the great London Bridge and the wide stone-paved street; Kit breathed a sigh of relief—but, alas, the pace did not quicken. If anything it slowed even more as the waterlogged population funnelling onto the bridge conspired to bring traffic to a crawl. Kit abandoned any hope of reaching Clarimond House before nightfall and stared dully out upon the wet, wet world. By the time the coach rolled through the gate of Sir Henry’s manor, torches were being lit in front of the larger houses on the street.
They clattered into the yard, and a footman came running to help unhitch the horses and lead them into dry stables. Giles climbed down from the driver’s seat to open the door of the carriage for Kit, saying, “Get yerself inside and get yerself warm, sir.”
“You come, too, Giles.”
“I will follow along as soon as the coach is put up.”
“Can it not wait?”
“No, sir, it cannot,” came the reply.
Kit accepted this and made a dash for the house and was soon standing in the rear vestibule, shaking water from his coat. A tall servant in a red doublet appeared with a clean linen cloth and passed it to him without a word. Kit wiped his face and rubbed his damp hair, then passed the cloth back with his thanks. The servant then addressed him. “You will be hungry, sir.”
“Yes, indeed—famished,” replied Kit. “Kill the fatted calf. We’ve had nothing good to eat for two days.”
The servant merely nodded, then announced, “I will inform the cook.”
“Great. Fine,” agreed Kit.
“Am I to understand that Sir Henry and Mister Livingstone have departed on their travels?”
“Oh, yes. They are well away,” replied Kit, uncertain how much to say. “Giles and I came back alone.”
“As I see.” The servant turned, then hesitated. “Do you require anything before dinner, sir?”
“A change of clothes—if that is not too much trouble,” said Kit. “These will need washing.”
“Of course, sir. I will have something brought to your room. Anything else?”
“Just one more thing,” Kit said. “What is your name?”
“Sir?”
“What should I call you?”
“I am Sir Henry’s steward, sir. You may call me Villiers.”
“Thank you, Villiers.”
The servant smiled thinly, dipped his head, and moved off.
Kit found his way up the stairs to his room; little light filtered through the tiny, thick-paned windows, and a definite chill had settled in. He was casting about, trying to find a way to light the candles, when there was a knock at the door and one of the younger servants announced, “Your clothes, sir.”
Kit opened the door and retrieved the bundle. He thanked the servant and asked if he would mind lighting the candles. While the fellow busied himself with this task, Kit spread out his change of clothes on the bed. The breeches were knee-length and the shirt immense, with a long floppy-sleeved waistcoat of blue brocade, buttoned to the waist, and with pockets the size of saddlebags either side. It was the fashion of the day, he reminded himself, as shivering, he removed his damp clothes and put on the dry things, impressed all over again with the unreality of his situation. A fish out of water, that was him all over, he thought,
drawing on his thick wool socks. He tied the stockings at the knee and stuffed his feet into the big, boatlike shoes. Then, remembering his apostle spoon, he slipped it into a pocket and clumped down the stairs in search of a warmer room. He settled in Sir Henry’s study, where a fire burned merrily in the hearth. A large brown leather wingback chair was drawn up near the fire. On a small round table next to the chair rested a crystal decanter and a small pewter cup. An iron holder with eight tall candles stood nearby.
“This is more like it.” Kit sighed, sinking into the deeply upholstered chair. He stretched his legs and put his feet toward the fire, then turned to address the decanter. It was filled with a fragrant liquid that, Kit decided after a sniff, was probably brandy. He poured a little into the cup and took an ill-advised gulp. The virulent stuff burned his throat and scalded his gullet and threw him forthwith into a coughing fit—which hurt his sore ribs and made his eyes water.
Pouring the contents of the cup back into the decanter, he rose and went to examine the bookshelves lining one side of the cosy room. The books were uniformly large and blocky tomes bound in heavy brown leather. Kit had seen the kind before—under lock and key at his university library. Yet here they were, free to roam about. Intrigued, he fetched the candle stand and brought it closer so he could read the words on the spine. They were all in Latin, and all with incomprehensible titles like: Principium Agri Cultura . . . and Modus Mundus . . . and Commentarius et Sermo Sacerdos . . . and the like.
Kit’s Latin was scant, if not utterly absent, but he could work out a few of the titles. He ran his fingers over some of the spines, tracing the titles and pronouncing the words to himself. “Ars Nova Arcana . . . ,” he said aloud, and became aware that he was no longer alone in the room.
Thinking Giles had joined him at last, he turned to find himself under the intense scrutiny of a young woman standing in the doorway. “Are you a robber?” she demanded, stepping smartly into the room. “A thief ? A blackguard?”
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