The Bookman

by Lavie Tidhar

  There was a silence.

  Orphan sank deeper into his chair. I want to find him too, he wanted to say. But what makes you think that I will? The tiredness threatened to consume him. He said, "For what purpose," not quite forming it into a question. Intuition told him what the answer would be.

  "Tell him," Mycroft said, and his voice was heavy and suddenly old, the voice of a man making a compromise against his will, against his very nature, "that I am willing to bargain with him. He is the enemy of Les Lézards. He will want to talk to me."

  "Bargain for what?" Orphan whispered, but he knew the answer even before he heard it, and before the blimp turned, away from the palace, and back towards the river.

  "For my brother's life," Mycroft said. "Tell him that, when you finally find your Lucy."

  TWELVE

  At the Nell Gwynne

  Love in these Labyrinths his Slaves detains, And mighty Hearts are held in slender Chains.

  – Alexander Pope, "The Rape of the Lock"

  He had been left on the riverbank, at the same place from which he was taken. The blimp touched down softly. The silent butler escorted him out of the car and deposited him outside. There was no sign of the other man who helped abduct him. It was still dark. The blimp rose into the air and silently departed, gliding as soft as a whisper into the sky.

  He could barely think. His feet felt heavy and unresponsive underneath him. He made his slow, weary way up the Strand. Soon he would have to open the shop. Did Jack expect him to work today? Then he thought of Tom, and a small smile formed on his tired face.

  He walked past Simpson's and the Savoy Theatre. Stopping to rest for a moment, he stood outside the newly relocated abode of Stanley Gibbons and admired the display in the windows. Though the streetlights still burned the sun was slowly climbing out of the depths of night and natural light began to awaken the capital's streets. How long have I been awake? Orphan thought. His body ached for sleep.

  Nevertheless, he was captivated by Gibbons' display: stamps of all shapes and sizes and colours collected in the window like a cloud of still butterflies. There was, for instance, a Penny Black, the first stamp ever issued, bearing the profile of the young Queen Victoria, her scaly face regal underneath the burden of the crown. There was a rare, triangular Cape of Good Hope stamp bearing the smiling head of Mpande, the third of the Zulu kings and the father, so the note in the window said, of Cetshwayo kaMpande, the current king of that far-off protectorate of the Everlasting Empire. For a moment, Orphan was a child again, pressing his nose against the window, where a whole, unknown, exciting world was compressed into small pieces of paper. There was a Kashmiri "Old Rectangular" from twenty years before, with a script he couldn't read; there was a celebratory stamp bearing the grinning face of Harry Flashman, the Hero of Jalalabad; there was a Vespuccian First Day Cover with three stamps bearing the proud heads of leaders of the Great Sioux Nation; there was even a series of French stamps depicting artists' wildly romantic impressions of what Caliban's Island might look like. He lingered over the display for a long moment, savouring each of these tiny mementos of a world he hadn't seen. It was also, he realised, a thorough display of the greatness of the empire, of its boundless reach. It was meant to excite – but also to humble.

  He walked away from the closed shop at last, feeling a small regret, as if he had lost something but hadn't known what it was. His tired feet carried him onwards, across the wakening Strand. Just before the Adelphi Theatre he turned right, and into the dark confines of Bull Inn Court. The alleyway was always dark; tall grey-brick walls rose on either side of it, permanently obscuring the sun. It was a narrow path, almost a scratch on the face of the city, a thin line connecting the Strand with Maiden Lane above it. It was too narrow for gas lamps, a small, hidden way one could have passed a hundred times when walking along the busy Strand without noticing its existence.

  On the left, its walls adjoining the Adelphi, was, of course, a pub. There were always pubs, Orphan thought. Wherever you turned in the capital you would find one, and in the unlikeliest of places. They were the glue that held society together, a fixture of history and culture, as permanent and as pervasive as the gloomy weather.

  This pub was a small, nondescript building that merged into its surroundings like a smear of coal-dust on the grey walls. Small, rectangular windows looked like dark glasses worn by a retreating professor. The pub used to be called the Bull's Head, but under the edict of its mischievous new owner the name was changed to the Nell Gwynne, and the sign above the door depicted the famous actress – who grew up in Covent Garden, performed in the Theatre Royal, and was whisperingly told to have been a mistress to Charles II, who people still called the Merry King – entwined with a smiling lizardine gentleman, neither of them dressed, her pale flesh startling against his bright scales. It was a typical sign for his friend to have had commissioned, Orphan thought; and, shaking his head, he reached for the low door and knocked.

  He had to knock several more times, and more and more loudly, before the door finally opened, and a ruffled-haired Tom Thumb stood in the doorway, looking at first annoyed and then, as he spied Orphan, concerned.

  "What happened to you?" the little man said, and he grabbed hold of Orphan's arm and pulled him into the dim interior, closing the door behind them with a practised kick. "Sit down, china. You look terrible."

  He propped Orphan on a red velvety chair before the fireplace, where a comforting blaze was slowly consuming a large tree log. Orphan sat down gratefully and felt the exhaustion overcome him. The warmth from the fire threatened to send him to sleep, and his eyes slowly closed.

  A giggle made him open his eyes again. On the other side of the small room (the inside of the Nell Gwynne, Orphan had decided on his first visit there, was about the size of a large wardrobe) a large bed covered most of the raised area which would have once held, perhaps, a couple of tables for the pub's customers. Two young women – each easily twice the height of his friend – were sitting up in the bed now, their nakedness covered half-heartedly by a blanket. Behind the long bar counter Tom was pouring a drink. "We was having a bit of a party before you showed up," he said. "Orphan, I'd like you to meet my dear friends Belinda and Ariel – girls, this is Orphan." He turned to Orphan and offered him a sheepish grin. "I was telling them about youse only last night."

  "You poor thing!" the two girls said in unison and, rising from the bed – the blanket falling to reveal two perfect Rubenesque nudes – came over to Orphan and began fussing over him. "It's so sad," said one of them – he couldn't tell which was Belinda, and which was Ariel – and the other said, "You have been so brave!" She turned towards the bar and bellowed, "Tom Thumb, stop mucking about there and bring your friend something to drink! Look at the state of him!"

  "I'm getting it!" Tom growled. "You can't rush the drink, you insufferable doxy!"

  Orphan, who felt rather confused, looked on helplessly as the two girls set about plumping pillows for him, taking off his shoes, and then sat down on either side of him and looked at him with large, sorrowful eyes. "You look terrible," one of them said, touching a cool hand to his forehead. "You're so pale and weak." She nodded and her hand sleeked the hair off Orphan's brow. "It's a broken 'eart what does that to you. I know."

  "Leave him be!" Tom Thumb bellowed as he approached from behind the counter, a large, round glass held in his hand. "Here, laddie, drink this."

  Strangely, the drink in the glass looked like the skies in sunrise, red and yellow hues suffusing the liquid with an internal glow. Tom Thumb, as if reading Orphan's mind, said, "It's one of me own little inventions. I call it a Mezcal Sunrise. I first made it when I was travelling through Mexica. Did I ever tell you about my time with the Aztecs? Barnum took us all there in the good old days…" He stopped and sighed, lost in memories. "I wish you could see it, Orphan. It's a magnificent place, and the women!"

  "Oi!" one of the girls – Orphan had decided, in his dazed state, that she must be Ariel, if only for t
he sake of convenience – said. "You said there was naught as good as Britannia's girls last night!"

  "Oh, Ariel," Tom Thumb said (and Orphan was relieved to find he was right), "the world is full of mysteries and beauties too numerous to ever fully explore, but all are enthralling and captivating in equal measure!" He grinned, then said, "It was Barnum's favourite line, that was."

  Orphan held the bulbous glass in his hands. It had two straws sticking out of it, and he took a careful sip. The drink was sweet and yet refreshing, and he felt for a moment as if he had indeed swallowed a little bit of sunshine. He smiled sleepily and said, "You are all too kind. Too kind." Then he closed his eyes and, without even realising, fell asleep.

  In his sleep, he didn't see Tom extract the drink carefully from his hands and lay it on the counter of the bar, nor did he feel it when the two girls helped Tom carry him to the large bed and laid him there, as peaceful as a child. No dreams came to him, just a deep, deep blackness that soothed his aching, fevered mind, and calmed him, and a hush filled him until it overflowed.

  When he woke the Nell Gwynne was quiet and empty. A small fire still burned in the fireplace, a new, slender log being consumed, and he sat still for a long moment in the unfamiliar bed, and watched the flames dance like sprites across the burning wood. Haltingly, he reached out for a pen and paper, finding some on the table by the bed (an old pub table, scarred with countless cigarette burns and the acidity of spilled drinks), and having done so, began writing a poem.

  like air rushing into a bone-white vessel (Orphan wrote)

  silence fills you;

  it wraps in your hair and turns it mute

  and courses through your blood vessels

  breathing your inner skin, and sighs

  residing in the hollows of your throat

  it fills you to the rim and lashes of your eyes: silence bursts out of you, a rupture of ears and touch – I stopper you with my mouth and you sigh,

  and turn over in your sleep.

  He thought of Lucy, then, and of all the things he never got to say to her, and all the futures, all the possibilities that were now gone, like a road that once branched into hundreds of unexplored paths but now lay blocked and abandoned, all its promises gone. If I can, he thought, I will get her back: even if it means going to the Bookman himself.

  He left the poem on the side of the bed. More mundane things made him shake his head, then rise. He made the short, dangerous trip to the bathroom, walking down the narrow stairs on unsteady feet (ducking just in time before his head could hit the low ceiling) until he reached the water-closet at the bottom. He returned to the bed then, and sat in silence, watching the flames, thinking of nothing in particular. He didn't know if it was night or day. Outside was the same twilight that always lingered in Bull Inn Court, and Tom kept no clocks. "Clocks are the enemies of time," his diminutive friend liked to say, "they are the gaolers of day and the turnkeys of night." Perhaps it was his friend's own attempt at poetry, or perhaps, Orphan thought, it was another Barnum saying – and he wished, then, that he had witnessed the spectacle of the P.T. Barnum Grand Travelling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan, and Circus that Tom always referred to, simply and with an utter conviction, as The Greatest Show on Earth.

  Tom was a Vespuccian, born to English parents in the lands of the Mohegan tribe in Quinnehtukqut, which meant – so Tom had once told him – Long River Place, and which the immigrants had called Connecticut. Born small, he was discovered by Barnum and joined the circus at a young age. Fearless, charming, and wild, he left the circus when it came to the capital, for reasons he had never discussed, and settled in the dilapidated old pub, the size of which, he said, made him feel comfortable. He was a friend, a fellow member of the Persons from Porlock, and seemed happy to work at Payne's when Orphan couldn't, taking his payment not in money but in books.

  Those books covered the walls of the Nell Gwynne. On crooked shelves and windowsills and, here and there, propping the short legs of a table or hiding behind a cushion or an empty pint glass, the books lay like sleeping domestic cats glorying in the dimness of the room and the heat of the fireplace. The small pubcum-home was full of unexpected, small discoveries reflecting Tom's eclectic and erratic interests. Lying on the bar counter, for example, Orphan found a heavy, illustrated volume of The Sedge Moths of Northern Vespuccia (Lepidoptera: Glyphipterigidae), With Woodcuts and Annotations By The Author, while on a half-hidden shelf behind the door he found a vellum-bound copy of The Floating Island, A Tragi-Comedy, written by the students of Christ Church in Oxford, dating from 1655 and notorious for being an early and venomous treatment of Les Lézards' journey to Britannia, set to music by Henry Lawes but never performed. By the sink he could leaf through the latest catalogue of Smedley's Hydropathic Company, advertising their brand new electrocution water tanks (Heal Any Disease!), and near the fireplace, precariously balanced, was a pile of technical tomes that included Ripper's Steam-Engine: Theory and Practice, Babbage's Some Thoughts on Simulacra, Moriarty's Treatise Upon the Binomial Theorem and Lady Ada Lovelace's Basic Programming Explained. Behind the bar, leaning against a label-less bottle of creamy liqueur, was a copy of poet William Ashbless's The Twelve Hours of the Night, and by the bedside he discovered Tom's latest reading material, The Chronic Argonauts, a debut novel by a young writer unknown to Orphan, by the name of Herbert Wells.

  It was a treasure trove and a scrapyard, a library that was also a maze, with little sense of purpose or direction, in which one could become easily lost. Orphan loved it.

  He was just leafing through a well-thumbed copy of Flashman's Dawns and Departures of a Soldier's Life when he heard voices outside, raised in song, and recognised Tom's bellowing, cheerful voice as he sang, "In taking a walk on a cold winter day, by hill side and valley I careless did stray, till I came to a cottage all rustic and wild, and heard a voice cry, I'm a poor drunkard's child!"

  Feminine voices joined in, shouting the refrain. "I'm a poor drunkard's child!"

  The voices came closer, and Orphan smiled as he listened to the old drinking song. "In this lonely place I in misery cry, there is no one to look to me, no one comes nigh. I am hungry and cold, and distracted and wild – kind heaven look down on a poor drunkard's child!"

  "Poor drunkard's child!" Orphan murmured, and just then the door opened, and Tom Thumb, accompanied by Ariel and Belinda, came through.

  "My father was drunken and wasted his store, which left us in misery our lot to deplore, his glass soon run out, he died frantic and wild, and now I must wander a poor drunkard's child!"

  Tom Thumb stopped his singing, slung a bag full of groceries on the bar counter, and said, "How are you feeling, china?"

  "A lot better," Orphan admitted, and the two friends smiled at each other. Belinda and Ariel came over to Orphan, fruity perfume following them in a summery cloud, and they fussed over him rather as if he were a kitten or a puppy before they pulled him to his feet and made him dance with them, each holding one of his hands.

  "My mother so good, in the cold grave lies low, she left me all friendless in want and in woe, brokenhearted, in death, she looked heavenward and smiled, but still I am left here, a poor drunkard's child!"

  Orphan spun and spun, grinning, caught in the dance and the song, and the two girls laughed and held him, like nymphs risen from a secluded pool in an ancient forest.

  "My clothing is scant, and all tattered and torn, kind friends, I have none. I am sad and forlorn! And far from this cottage so lonely and wild, I'll wander away, cried the poor drunkard's child!"

  And they fell, still laughing, onto the wide bed.

  Orphan sat up on the edge of the bed. "What time is it?"

  Tom Thumb grinned and said, "It is twelve o' the clock, and all is well."

  Orphan stood up. A sudden sense of urgency seized him. "Midnight?"

  "You slept for a long time."

  "You needed to!" Ariel said. "You was like Hamlet's ghost, coming in 'ere last night."

  "I have
something for you," Tom said. "From the shop."

  "From Jack?"

  Tom shook his head. "I didn't see him at all. Perhaps he was in the basement, but if so, he wasn't coming out."

  He took out a folded sheaf of paper from his back pocket and handed it to Orphan, who opened it.

  "From that infernal magician," Tom said. "That Maskelyne fellow. He asked about you, then made the note appear in the pages of the book I was reading. The ass."

  Orphan smiled, knowing the magician's fondness for elaborate illusion, and read the short note.

  Dear Orphan (Maskelyne wrote),

  I was dreadfully sorry to hear of recent events, and am only glad that you yourself are alive, and on the road to recovery.

  If you recall, the last time we spoke I offered you to come and see me at the Egyptian Hall if you ever had need of counsel.

  Let me once more extend this offer. If magic is an illu

  sion, the act of smoke and mirrors, then nevertheless

  the mirrors we hide may reflect, sometimes, a deeper