Miss Bonaventure looked unconvinced. “Surely the Nizam had it appraised before making the offer?”
“Remember,” Blank answered, pointing at finger at the newspaper article, “Jacob here claims to be acting merely as broker. Doubtless he would also have been in a position to secure the services of a suitable appraiser, or to influence the Nizam's choice of such, at the very least.”
Miss Bonaventure arched an eyebrow. “Why did you consult the Whitaker's?”
“Oh,” Blank answered, with an absent wave. “To confirm a suspicion. The name ‘Alexander Jacob’ is a commonly employed alias of a rouge and scoundrel named Jack Alasdair, with whom I have had some previous dealings. The man committed murder, but last year fled before he was apprehended, and remains at large. There was an Alexander Jacob, a dealer in gems, but as the obituary pages of Whitaker's confirm, he passed away in Portsmouth the year before. Jack Alasdair was no doubt surprised to see the obituary notice for one of his well-worn noms de guerre, and found it to his advantage to assume the dead man's identity abroad.”
“Well,” Miss Bonaventure said, with a sly smile, “perhaps you'll have another accolade and honor to add to your collection.”
“Ppth,” Blank sputtered, waving his hand dismissively. His feelings about such things were well known. Such piffle was more trouble than it was worth, by half, trinkets to clutter his already full lodgings. Blank's actions in Cyprus the previous year had earned him the recognition of the Sublime Porte and Number 10 Downing Street alike, but while the Turkish Sultan had presented him with the Atiq Nishan-i-Iftikhar, or Order of Glory, from Salisbury he'd received only a hearty handshake. The medal had already tarnished, and the green-trimmed red ribbon was grayed with dust, sitting on a high shelf. With Salisbury, Blank had merely to wash his hands, figuratively and literally, to be done with the whole affair.
There came a knock at the door. Blank lingered at the table for a long moment, before remembering that, with his valet Quong Ti temporarily called back to China on pressing family business, Blank was himself left without a manservant.
“Would you like me to answer that?” Miss Bonaventure asked with a faint smile.
Blank sighed. “No, I suppose I better had.” Wearily he rose from the table, and crossed to the door.
From the sitting room, Blank walked into a narrow corridor and from there into the entry. Overhead hung a gilt Venetian lantern, in which burned three blue-flamed gas jets. His hat rested on an occasional table next to a vase of orchids, his silver-topped cane propped up against the wall beside it. To his right, through the high doorway, was the library, and beyond that Blank's own bedroom. How he longed to return to that octagonal chamber and to sleep; but he'd slept fitfully, if at all, these last nights.
Blank mused that it could be a sign, presaging some dirty business in the offing, this insipient insomnia. It had been some little while since he'd been called upon to do Omega's bidding, and it was only a matter of time before he would be again. He had never slept well in the days leading up to a summoning, and seldom did for a long period after.
Unlocking the door, Blank found a uniformed officer of the Metropolitan Police waiting on the threshold. After ascertaining Blank's identity, the constable related that he had instructions to escort Blank to Tower Bridge, but was either unable or unwilling to share any further particulars about the matter.
Blank pulled a silver hunter from his vest pocket, consulted the time, and shrugged. “I have no pressing business until midafternoon,” he said to the constable, casually, and then glanced back over his shoulder, to see Miss Bonaventure lingering in the corridor. “Well, Miss Bonaventure, best get your coat and hat. It seems we are needed.”
“Pooh,” Miss Bonaventure said, with a moue of disappointment. “And I'd hoped to finish reading the papers.”
2000 CE
THE GUY BEHIND THE COUNTER wouldn't stop giving Alice the stinkeye.
“Name?”
“Alice Fell.” Like it wasn't on her passport, right there in his grubby mitts.
“And how old are you, miss?”
“Eighteen.” Again, like it wasn't there in black and white.
The guy pursed his lips and nodded, looking thoughtful. Alice got the impression he thought she was lying, but really, who would lie about being eighteen? Only a sixteen-year-old. If you were eighteen, and looked it, you'd lie about being twenty-one. At least you would in the States. But then again, the drinking age in England was eighteen, wasn't it? So maybe he had a point.
“And is this your luggage, miss? All of it?”
As if he found it difficult to accept that she'd just gotten off a transatlantic flight with no luggage but a ratty little nylon backpack with an anarchy symbol drawn on it in ballpoint pen. She nodded, trying not to giggle. She's just realized who his accent made him sound like, and found it funny to imagine Sporty Spice with a bristly mustache working the immigration and customs counter at Heathrow Airport.
“You've just arrived on Temple Air flight 214 from New York?”
Alice nodded.
“Anything to declare?”
Alice had to actively resist the temptation to say “Nothing but my genius,” like Orson Welles or whoever it was had done. Oscar Wilde, maybe? But then, she wasn't really much of a genius, so maybe she'd have been better off saying “Nothing but my angst” or something equally self-aware and mopey. As it was, she managed to resist the impulse altogether, and just muttered “No” while she shook her head.
“May I look in your bag?” He said it like it was a question, but Alice knew that if she answered anything but “Yes,” she'd be turned right back around and put on a plane back to the States. So she played along, and nodded.
Here was what the guy pulled out of her backpack, which presently represented everything Alice owned in the world:
A deck of playing cards, wrapped in duct tape.
A library bound copy of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Loooking Glass, stamped property of Grisham Middle School, Austin, TX. (She'd stolen the book from the school library when she was in the eighth grade, but she wasn't sure what the statute of limitation on library theft was, or what sort of extradition policy Austin ISD had with the United Kingdom, anyway, so she kept the fact that the book was stolen property to herself.)
A trade paperback edition of Mark Twain's Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc.
A copy of the 2000 edition of Frommer's London From $85 a Day (shoplifted from the Waldenbooks at Lakeline Mall which, again, Alice failed to mention).
Two T-shirts, one pair of denim jeans, three pairs of socks, and three pairs of undergarments.
Two packs of Camel Light cigarettes, one opened and one unopened.
An antique silver match holder, or “vesta case,” engraved with the initials “J.D.” and a stylized dragon's head, containing thirty-two wooden matches.
A wallet containing an American Express credit card, an ATM card, four hundred and fifty-two dollars in American bills, and seventy-two cents in American coins.
Sunglasses.
A Ziploc bag containing various toiletries, including toothbrush, toothpaste, and deodorant.
A half-dozen tampons.
A Diamond Rio 500 Portable mp3 player, with headphones.
Three spiral notebooks, one completely filled, one partially filled, one entirely empty.
Four Uni-ball Vision Micro roller pens, all with purple ink.
A vial containing 125 milligram doses of divalproex sodium, brand name Depakote, an anticonvulsant, prescribed to an Alice Jean Fell of Austin, Texas.
That, along with the clothes she had on—leather jacket, blue jeans, eight-hole Doc Martens, and black Ramones T-shirt—was all that Alice owned in the world. And her nose ring, she supposed, if someone wanted to get technical. And the ink in her three tattoos. And the platinum filling in her left rear molar.
“Reason for your visit to the United Kingdom, miss?”
Alice shifted her gaze
away from the mustached Sporty Spice, trying to think of a convincing lie.
“Miss?”
The truth was, she was on a mission from God. Or she was completely batshit crazy. There wasn't much middle ground. But she was pretty sure that neither answer was likely what Sporty Spice wanted to hear, and that either answer would greatly diminish her chance of walking through the door and getting on with it.
Alice looked up from the counter, and with a smile, said, “Pleasure?”
Sporty Spice narrowed his eyes, pursing his lips again, making his bristly mustache stand out at all angles.
Alice was sure that the guy thought she was a drug mule or something like that. As if any drug mule worth their salt would show up to the airport with a nose ring and dyed-black hair, less luggage than most kids carried to a regular day at high school, stuffed into a backpack with the word “FUCK” scribbled in purple ink next to the carefully wrought anarchy symbol. Wouldn't she be better off wearing a sign around her neck that said, “Please give me the full body cavity search, I'm carrying drugs,” and cut out the middle man?
An eternity later, the guy pulled out a little stamp, carefully laid Alice's passport on the counter, and after stamping it a couple of times handed it back to her.
“Enjoy your visit, miss.”
Alice stuffed all of her junk into the backpack, slung it on her shoulder, and moved on before Sporty Spice had a chance to reconsider.
She breezed by all of the tourists and businessmen wrestling with their heavy luggage, or waiting around the carousels at baggage claim. She fished her sunglasses out, put them on, and stepped outside. It had been one hundred degrees outside and sunny when she left Austin the day before. Here, it was sixty degrees at most, about as cold as it got at night back home, this time of year, but just as sunny.
Alice pulled a cigarette from the half-empty pack and lit it with a match from the silver vesta case her grandmother had given her just months before. Months before, she'd been Alice Fell, the girl from that accident no one liked to talk about, finishing up her junior year at Westwood High School, watching her grandmother die by inches.
Now, she was all by herself in London, and she was on a mission.
That, or she was completely batshit crazy. The jury was still out…
GALAAD WAS LOST ALMOST IMMEDIATELY. Within moments of passing through the gate in the city wall, he had no earthly notion where he was or where he was going. Embarrassment and frustration rose red in his cheeks, and he struggled to seem anything but completely out of place.
It wasn't as if Galaad was a rustic, after all. Both of his grandfathers had been born Roman citizens of Britannia. He'd studied civics, geography, and history, and his first language had been Latin. He was a devout follower of Christ, duly baptized, and while the Church in Rome might reject Galaad's sect of Pelagianism as heresy, it made his belief no less sincere. And he'd spent his entire life within the city walls of Glevum, a former garrison town and home of the Twentieth Legion.
So why was it that he felt a complete bumpkin on the streets of Caer Llundain?
The streets thronged with men, women, and children from all over Britannia and beyond. Though Galaad knew that they must seem deserted compared with the time of his grandfather's visit, much less the capital's height of importance in the days of empire, to him it seemed a mad crush of people. Groups of ten, fifteen, twenty people clustered at intersections, haggling in makeshift markets over craft goods, livestock, textiles, wine, and grain, each word accompanied by a brief cloud of exhalation in the frigid air. Galaad was thankful for the cold, though, which served to dampen the stench of dung and urine from the cattle, sheep, horses, and dogs everywhere, some tethered or bound up in pens of wooden stakes and twine, others allowed to wander at will. Better that the animals’ leaving should crunch icily underfoot than assault the senses on the wind.
Galaad, who had rarely seen more than a handful of strangers at once, and precious few altogether, was unsure how to address himself to them. His ears were met with a riot of languages and accents, everything from the refined Latin of the noble class to the gutter Latin of the streets, from the Britonnic of Galaad's countrymen to the clipped Gaelic tones of Hibernia. And though the weather was unwelcoming, there seemed a certain festive tang in the air, as though the city dwellers were anticipating some enjoyment to come. And one could hardly blame them. Midwinter was just days away, though whether any given citizen of Caer Llundain intended to celebrate the pagan solstice, the Roman festival of the unconquered sun, or the Christian observance of the birth of the Messias, it was impossible to say.
As he turned corners, one after another, quickly losing his way, Galaad slowly came to realize that for all its crowded intersections and rough market stalls, the city was far from full. Some of the buildings he passed were of Roman design, walls of fired brick roofed with interlocking red terra-cotta tegulae and imbrices, but where the tiles had slipped loose or broken, they had been left in disrepair, the gaps like missing teeth in a broken smile. And all of the Roman buildings were older structures, ancient when his grandfather had been a boy. All of the newer construction Galaad saw was of less ambitious design and of meaner materials, little more than wattle-and-daub structures with thatched roofs. Worse, many of both varieties, Roman and wattle, stood untenanted, empty and abandoned, the doors and windows like the eyes and mouth of bleached skulls through which the cold winds whistled.
Finally Galaad had no choice but to intrude on one of the conversations he passed, and beg for directions. He was desperate to find the home of the High King, to plead his case.
The pair of men he approached—a Gael with bright red hair and drooping mustache in plaid breeches and rough woolen tunic, a long sword hanging at his belt, and a Briton wearing a dull yellow cloak of thick wool bound at his shoulder with a bronze clasp—regarded him coolly when he inexpertly interrupted their exchange.
“Your pardon, friends,” Galaad began in Latin, “but I am a stranger in your city, seeking the home of the High King.”
The two men looked at each other, in evident confusion, and then back to him.
“I don't…” the Briton began in Britonnic, ending with a halfhearted shrug, while the Gael just regarded him with barely disguised contempt.
Galaad nodded, and then repeated in Britonnic. “I am a stranger here, and seek the High King's home.”
“Can't help you there,” the Briton said, with another shrug. “I'm not from here, myself.”
“He's holed up in the old procurator's palace,” the Gael said impatiently, waving a hand off towards the south and east, then turned his attention back to the Briton. “Now look, I won't be telling you again…”
“Um, your pardon again, friend,” Galaad interrupted, reluctantly. “But where might I find the procurator's palace, in that case?”
The Gael sighed, dramatically. “On the east bank of the stream Gallus, near where it cuts under the wall and enters the Tamesa.” He paused and took in Galaad's blank expression. “It's a palace. It's three stories high. You can't miss it.”
The Gael turned back to the Briton, eager to conclude their business, but Galaad remained rooted to the spot, looking helplessly in the direction the Gael had indicated, his confusion evident.
“Um…” Galaad began, raising his hand.
The Gael sighed again, even louder, and shook his head. Without looking at Galaad, he said, “Let me guess. You've no earthly notion where to find the stream Gallus, have you?”
“Well, no,” Galaad answered, “but what I meant to ask was…”
“Can you find your arse with both hands?” the Gael said, glancing sidelong at Galaad. “Assuming that someone drew a map for you and started you off right?”
Galaad blinked, unsure how to respond, cheeks burning with embarrassment.
“So I can assume you're not a complete imbecile, in that case?” the Gael continued.
“Come now, Lugh,” the Briton said, looking with pity at Galaad.
�
��No, you come now, you great wrinkled teat,” the Gael said to the Briton. “I'll not be chastised by a thief for failing to coddle and cocker some hapless rustic.”
“Thief?!” the Briton sputtered, indignant.
“And why not?” The Gael sneered. “That price you quote is thievery, plain and simple.”
“Now look, I have a reputation to protect…”
“Ach!” The Gael waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “You can shove your reputation in your bung-hole. I'm through with you.”
The Gael wheeled around and pointed a long finger at Galaad.
“You,” he ordered. “Come with me.”
With that, the Gael spun on his heel and stomped away, imperiously.
Galaad looked from the retreating Gael to the Briton, who stood eyes wide and red faced, mouth open but unspeaking. “Well…Here now…Wait!” the Briton said, shouting at the Gael's back.
When the Gael failed to turn, but continued up the road, Galaad shrugged and, hiking the thong of his bundle higher on his shoulder, hurried after him. The Briton, for his part, stood his ground, wearing an expression of helpless resignation.
The Gael's long strides carried him down the road at speed, and Galaad was out of breath by the time he caught up, limping on his swollen knee as quickly as he was able.
“He's still watching, isn't he?” the Gael said out of the corner of his mouth, just as Galaad came abreast of him.
Galaad glanced back over his shoulder and nodded. “Yes. Yes, he is.”
The Gael chuckled and smoothed down his long mustache with thumb and forefinger. “Beauty.”
Galaad felt completely out of his depth. “Um, friend? Where are we…?”
“Relax, tadpole. I was on my way to Artor's place anyway, when I finished my business with that cheating bastard, so you've only provided the opportunity to stage a strategic retreat. He'll strike a fairer bargain when next I seem him, the fat bag of suet.”
End of the Century Page 2