Suddenly he was rolling in midair, and he tensed convulsively a moment before plunging into icy rushing water. He bobbed up to the surface but couldn’t make his cold-shocked lungs take in any air, and then he was under again, his arms and legs straining uselessly against the ropes. Here’s where I die, he thought—but he kept kicking, and the next time his head was out of water he gasped a deep breath.
After he got his initial panic under control he discovered that it wasn’t too difficult to float along feet foremost and jackknife up every half minute or so to take a breath. This stream probably shallows out sometime before it reaches the Thames, he thought, and when it does I’ll somehow flop my way to shore. His heel caught against something, swinging him around to thump his shoulder against a rock, and he yelped in pain. The next rock caught him across the middle, and he forced his tortured stomach muscles to keep him curled around it while he got his breath back. The flowing water at his back was helping him stay on the rock, but he could feel himself slipping off—the nails of one hand scrabbled ineffectually against the wet stone—and all at once he had lost confidence in his ability to get to shore unaided. “He-e-elp!” he yelled, and the effort of yelling both loosened his grip on the rock and brought back the other time that night that he’d shouted the same thing. Duvel save us, rya, it’s prastamengros! he thought as he bobbed away downstream again, nearly all of his strength gone. He shouted for help twice more as he was carried along, spinning helplessly now, his head to the front as often as his feet, and when he’d despairingly realized that he could manage only one more yell, and porpoised himself well out of the water, lungs filled to make it a good loud one, something cold and sharp nipped through his coat and yanked him back against the current.
He expelled the breath in a wild ululating scream of surprise.
“Good Lord, man,” exclaimed a startled voice from nearby. “give o’er, you’re being rescued!”
“I think you broke his spine. Dad,” said a girl’s voice eagerly.
“Sit down, Sheila, I’ve done nothing of the sort. Over on the far side, there, we don’t want the boat to capsize when I drag this wretch aboard.”
Doyle was being pulled jerkily backward through the water, and looking over his shoulder he saw several people in a rowboat with bulging sides; an older man was drawing in the long, hooked pole that he’d snagged him with. Doyle gave his weight to the hook and let himself relax totally, leaning his head back in the water and staring at the moon while he gasped great, unhindered lungfuls of the cool night air.
“My God, Meg, will you look at this,” said the man’s voice as the pole clattered on the gunwales and two hands gripped Doyle’s shoulders, “your man’s tied up like a bloody top before the string’s yanked.” A woman muttered something Doyle didn’t hear. “Well,” the man went on, “we can’t just let him drift past with a wave and a nod, now, can we? Besides, I’m sure he appreciates the fact that we’re poor hard-working merchants, and even a Good Samaritan delay like this is costing us money. Stands to reason.” There was a locking click and then a knife blade was sawing and snapping through the ropes with businesslike ease. “That’s it, feet up now, may as well get them all. Good, that’s got it. Now—damn it, Sheila, didn’t I tell you to sit over there?”
“I wanted to see if he’d been tortured,” said the girl.
“Torture enough, I’d call it, to be bound hand and foot and pitched into the Chelsea Creek and then be fished out only to have to listen to an idiot girl. Sit down.”
The man lifted Doyle up by the collar, then reached out over his shoulder and, flipping the sopping coattails aside and grabbing the waistband of his pants, hauled him over the gunwale and onto the forward thwart. Doyle tried to cooperate, but was too weak to do more than brace his hands against the gunwale as it went by under him. He lay motionless on the thwart, still absorbed with the pleasures of relaxing and breathing.
“Thank you,” he managed to gasp. “I couldn’t have… kept afloat… sixty more seconds.”
“My husband saved your life,” said a potato-faced old woman sternly, leaning into his field of vision.
“Now, Meg, he’s as aware of that as you are, and I’m certain his gratitude will be handsomely expressed. Now let me get us moving again, we’re drifting in toward the bank,” He sat down on the center thwart and Doyle heard the oarlocks rattle as he took up the oars. “I’ll have to set to rowing with a passion to make up for the time we’ve lost, Meg,” he said, more loudly than necessary. “And we’ll still probably be too late to get our usual spot at Billingsgate.” He paused a moment, and then the boat shuddered, and surged forward, as he leaned into the work.
The girl Sheila leaned curiously over Doyle. “Gentlemanly nice, those clothes was, before they got spoiled,” she remarked.
Doyle nodded. “Put ‘em on for the first time tonight,” he said hoarsely.
“Who was it tied you up and threw you in the creek?”
Having regained his breath and some of his strength, Doyle sat up dizzily. “Gypsies,” he answered. “They, uh, robbed me, too. Didn’t leave me a cent—I mean a sixpence.”
“Oh God, Chris,” the old woman interrupted, “he says he hasn’t got any money. And he sounds like some kind of foreigner.”
The rhythmic clacking of the oars ceased. “Where do you hail from, sir?” Chris asked.
“Calif—uh, America.” The breeze on his soaked clothes had set him shivering, and he clamped his teeth to keep them from chattering.
“Well then, Meg, he’s got money for travelling, hasn’t he? Stands to reason. Where’s your hotel, sir?”
“Actually, I—damn, it’s cold, have you got anything I could wrap up in?—actually, I had just arrived. They took everything: all my money, my luggage, my, uh, passport… “
“In other words, he’s a shivering pauper,” stated Meg. She turned a righteous stare on Doyle. “And just how do you expect to repay our kindness in saving your life?”
Doyle was getting angry. “Why didn’t you tell me your rates before you pulled me out of the river? I could have told you then that I can’t afford them, and you could have gone on and looked for a more affluent person to rescue. I guess I never read the last part of that parable—the part where the Thrifty Samaritan serves the poor devil with an itemized bill.”
“Meg,” said Chris, “the poor man’s right, and we wouldn’t accept money from him even if he had any. I know he’ll be happy to work off the debt—for that’s what it is, you know, sir, in the eyes of man and God—by helping us set up at the market, and carrying the baskets when Sheila goes the rounds with her bunts.” He eyed Doyle’s coat and boots. “And now fetch him a blanket to change out of his wet clothes under. We can let him have a suit of Patrick’s old work things in exchange for his ruined clothes, which we’ll have to try to sell as rags.”
Doyle was tossed a blanket that reeked of onions, and from some sort of locker in the bow Meg dug out a heavy coat and a pair of pants, both of worn and much-mended dark corduroy, a once-white shirt, and a pair of old boots that looked like they might have graced old Chris’ feet when he was Doyle’s age. “Ah!” she exclaimed, producing last a dirty white scarf. “Patrick’s third-best kingsman.”
The chill made Doyle eager to change into these wretched but dry clothes, and when he’d kicked his wet things out from under the blanket Meg gathered them all and stowed them so carefully that he knew they hoped to get a good price for them.
He scrubbed his hair fairly dry with the blanket, then, feeling warm and restored, moved to the end of the thwart away from the puddle he’d been sitting in. He wished he had a pipe or cigar, or even a cigarette. The boat, he noticed, was filled with lidded wooden tubs and lumpy burlap sacks. “I smell onions and… ?”
“Pea soup,” said young Sheila. “The fishermen and fishmongers get so cold at Billingsgate that they’ll fork out tuppence for a plate of it. Thruppence in winter.”
“Onions… is the main enterprise,” panted Chris. “Th
e soup’s just… a courtesy, like… we scarcely get for it… what it costs us to make.”
I’ll bet, thought Doyle sourly.
The moon was low on the horizon, looking big and gold and blurry, and its faery radiance on the trees and fields and creek ripples wasn’t dimmed when Meg leaned out to unhook the bow lantern, flint-scratch it alight, and replace it on its hook. The watercourse widened out, and Chris heeled the boat around to port.
“On the Thames now, we are,” he said quietly. A couple of other boats, tethered together, were visible out on the broad expanse of the river; they were ponderous, low-riding things, each with a huge cubical canvas-covered burden visible under the tangles of rigging.
“Hay boats,” said Sheila, crouched beside Doyle. “We saw one burning out there once, and men on fire were jumping from the top of the bale down into the water. That was a show—better than the penny gaffs, and free.”
“I hope the… performers enjoyed it,” said Doyle. He reflected that this little voyage would make an interesting story to tell over brandy at the Boodles or White’s club some day, once he’d made his fortune. For he wasn’t in any doubt about that. The first few days would certainly be difficult, but the advantage of all his twentieth century knowledge couldn’t help but turn the scales in his favor. Hell, he could get a job for a while on a newspaper, and maybe make some startling predictions about the outcome of the war, and current literary trends; and Ashbless was due to arrive in London in only about a week, and he could easily strike up a friendship with him; and in two years Byron would be returning to England, and he could get an introduction before Childe Harold made him a superstar. Why, he thought, and I could invent things—the light bulb, the internal combustion engine, latakia tobacco, flush toilets… no, better not do anything to change the course of recorded history—any such tampering might cancel the trip I got here by, or even the circumstances under which my mother and father met. I’ll have to be careful… but I guess I could give Farraday and Lister and Pasteur and the gang a few smug suggestions. Ho ho.
He remembered asking the portrait of William Ashbless whether the girls, scotch and cigars had been better in his day. Well, I’m by God going to find out, he told himself. He yawned and leaned back against a sack of onions. “Wake me up when we get to the city,” he said, and let the boat rock him to sleep.
CHAPTER 3
“Shamefast he was to come to Towne, But meet with no one save a Clowne.”
—Old Ballad
Though the actual fish market of Billingsgate was the big shed on the river side of Lower Thames Street, the carts of costermongers, heaped with turnips and cabbage and carrots and onions, were jammed wheel hub to wheel hub along the length of Thames Street from the Tower Stairs in the east, by the white medieval castle with flags flying from its four towers, west past the Grecian facade of the Customs House, past the eight crowded quays to Billingsgate Market, and past that to just west of London Bridge; and the clamorous, milling commerce filled the entire street, from the alleys in the north face of Thames Street to where the pavement dropped away to the river ten feet below, and the ranked oyster boats moored to the timbered wharf, with planks laid across their jostling gunwales, formed a narrow, bobbing lane the costermongers called Oyster Street.
Doyle, leaning against an outside corner of the fish barn, was certain he’d walked over every foot of the whole scene during the course of the morning. He looked down with distaste at his basket of scrawny onions, and wished he hadn’t tried to allay his considerable hunger by eating one of them. He patted his pocket to make sure he hadn’t lost the four pennies he’d earned. Everything you make above one shilling you can keep, Chris had told him the last time Doyle and Sheila had stopped by the boat; by now you must know the way of it, and you can do a few rounds all by yourself. And then he had handed Doyle a basket filled with what had to be the poorest-looking onions in the whole boatload, and sent him off in one direction and Sheila in another. The morbid girl hadn’t been the best company, but he missed her now. And a shilling is twelve pennies, he thought hopelessly; I’ll never even make that much with these wretched vegetables, much less any more, any bunt, as they call it, for myself.
He levered himself away from the wooden wall and plodded away in the direction of the Tower again, holding his basket in front of him. “Onions!” he called half-heartedly. “Who’ll buy these fine onions?” Sheila had taught him the litany.
A coster’s wagon, its bed empty, was rumbling past, and the evidently prosperous old fellow on the driver’s seat looked down at Doyle and laughed. “Onions you call those things, mate? I’d call ‘em rat turds.”
This brought merriment from the nearby members of the crowd, and a tough-faced boy ran up and nimbly kicked the bottom of Doyle’s basket so that it flew up out of his hands and the vegetables in question showered down around him. One thumped him on the nose, and the laughter doubled.
The coster on the cart pursed his lips, as though he hadn’t quite intended to provoke all this. “You’re a pitiful sod, ain’t you?” he said to Doyle, who was just standing there dazedly watching the impromptu soccer with onions game the street boys had started up. “Here—take twice what they were worth. Here, damn you, wake up!” He dropped two pennies into the hand Doyle automatically held out, then goaded his horse forward.
Doyle pocketed the coins and looked around. The crowd had lost interest in him. The onions—even the basket—were nowhere to be seen. No point going any further, he thought, and began trudging back toward the river in defeat.
“Ah, there’s one of the Dolorous Brethren!” piped a weird high voice like Mickey Mouse’s. “Just had his onions stomped into Pavement Soup, haven’t you now, sir?”
Startled and embarrassed, Doyle looked up and saw that he was being addressed by a gaudily painted puppet in a tall booth that had even gaudier pictures of dragons and little men all over the front of it. There was a scanty audience of ragged boys and a few old bums squatted in front of it, and they laughed when the puppet crooked its arm beckoningly at Doyle.
“Come over and let old Punch cheer you up,” it squeaked. Doyle shook his head, feeling himself blush, and kept walking, but the puppet added, “Maybe I could tell you how to earn some real money, eh?” and Doyle stopped.
Eyes of some kind of gleaming crystal made the puppet actually seem to be staring at him. It beckoned again. “What have you got to lose, yer lordship?” it asked in its bird-whistle voice. “You’ve already been laughed at—and Punch never tries for an effect somebody else just got.”
Doyle strode over to it, careful to keep a sceptical expression. Could the concealed puppeteer really be offering him employment? He couldn’t afford not to check. Standing a couple of yards in front of the booth, he crossed his arms. “What have you got in mind, Punch?” he asked loudly.
“Ah!” exclaimed the puppet, clapping its wooden hands, “you’re a foreigner! Excellent! But you can’t talk to Punch till after the show. Sit down, please, your lordship.” It waved at the paving stones. “Your box has been held for you and your companion.”
Doyle glanced around. “My companion?” he asked, feeling like the straight man in a comedy routine.
“Oh yes,” chirped the thing, “I think I recognize Lady Ruin. Hm?”
Doyle shrugged and sat down, pulling his cap lower over his eyes. What the hell, he thought, I’m not supposed to be back at the boat until eleven, and it can’t even be ten-thirty yet.
“Very well then!” exclaimed the puppet, straightening up and darting its lifelike gaze around the sparse and tattered assembly. “Now that his lordship has finally arrived, we will commence The Dominion of Secret Glamor, or Punch’s New Opera.”
A melancholy crank organ started up inside the narrow booth, wheezing and clattering as it tortuously rendered some tune that might have been a cheery dance step once, and Doyle wondered if there was more than one man in the booth, for now a second puppet had appeared on stage, and presumably a hand was still needed to
crank the organ.
The newly arrived puppet was, of course, Judy, and Doyle watched, stupefied with hunger and exhaustion, as the two of them alternately exchanged endearments and cudgel-thumps.
He wondered why this had been called Punch’s New Opera, for it seemed to be the same old pointlessly savage story line—here was Punch left to take care of the crying baby, singing to it to quiet it down, and finally just slamming its head against the wall and pitching it out the set’s little window. He next confessed the deed to Judy, and then killed her when she hit him for it. Doyle yawned profoundly, and hoped the show wouldn’t be too long. The sun had finally burned its way through the gray overcast, and was beginning to bake old fish smells out of his shiny corduroy coat.
The next puppet to appear was Joey the Clown, though in this version his name was something Doyle didn’t catch that sounded like “Horrible,” and he was on stilts. Topical satire, evidently, thought Doyle—for he’d seen a clown on stilts several times during the course of the morning, here and there around the market, and this puppet was a duplicate of him, right down to the somewhat nightmarish patterns of face paint. The clown, with a sort of mocking sternness, was asking Punch what he intended to do about the murder of his poor wife and child.
“Why, I expect I’ll go to the constable and have myself locked up,” said Punch sadly. “A murdering blackguard like myself ought to be hanged.”
What’s this, thought Doyle, a Punch with morals? That’s an innovation.