“Jesus, man, take it easy!” Suddenly he was certain that his tormentor somehow already knew where it was, and was in effect calling his bluff. He saw Romany’s hand draw back again. “In the Valley of Kings!” he blurted, “under the huts of the workmen who built some other pharaoh’s tomb! Ramses or somebody.”
The old man scowled, and for several long seconds did nothing but puff on his cigar. Then, “You will tell me everything,” he said. He dragged a chair over and sat down, but at that moment the dog trotted in again and, turning around toward the tent opening, growled softly.
“Gorgios,” whispered the old gypsy. He peered through the tent flap. “Duvel save us, rya, it’s prastamengros!”
Doyle took a deep breath, feeling like someone about to jump from a dangerous height, and shouted, “He-e-e-elp!” with all the volume he could wring out of his lungs and throat.
Instantly the old gypsy whirled and launched a flying kick at the lantern, which shattered and sprayed burning oil across one wall of the tent; Romany had simultaneously clapped a hand over Doyle’s mouth and wrenched his head around so that he was staring at the dirt floor; and Doyle heard the old gypsy yell, “Help! Fire!” a moment before Doctor Romany’s fist landed just behind his left ear, propelling him once again into unconsciousness.
A couple of tents were burning, and it annoyed Doyle that he couldn’t get his eyes to focus; he wanted to postpone worrying about the wooly-tasting gag stuffed in his mouth and the ropes that pressed his wrists against his hips, and these fires seemed like they’d be a first-rate distraction if he could just manage to see them. He vaguely remembered being propped in a sitting position at the base of this tree by the alarming bald man, who had paused to take Doyle’s pulse and thumb open his eyelids to peer intently into each eye before hurrying back to where all the fire and shouting were. That was what had really awakened him—the pain of the man’s callused thumb on his burned eyelid.
Tilting his head back, he was startled to see two moons in the sky. His brain was working like a car that badly needs a tune-up, but he quickly deduced that this meant he was seeing double, and that therefore there was only one tent burning. With a physical effort he made the two moons coalesce into one. He brought his head back down, and saw one fire. A wave of cool air seemed to sluice through the hot murkiness of his mind, and he was suddenly aware of things—the grass and pebbles under him, the rough tree-trunk against his back and the painful constriction of the ropes.
With no warning, a surge of nausea brought Darrow’s elegant snacks up to the back of his throat, and he rigidly overrode the reflex and swallowed them back down. The night breeze was chilly on the sweat that had suddenly misted his face and hands, and he forced himself not to think about what would have happened if he’d thrown up while still unconscious with the gag in his mouth. He set to work on getting rid of it, tonguing it forward and then holding it between his teeth so that his tongue could move back and push again. At last he had forced it out of his mouth, under the leather loop that had held it in place, and he shook his head until it spun away onto the grass. He breathed deeply through his open mouth and tried to collect his thoughts. He couldn’t remember what had led up to him being dumped out here to watch the fire, but he did remember the old man’s cigar, and one good belt across the face. Almost without conscious decision he hiked himself away from the tree, flopped flat on the ground, and began rolling away. He was getting dizzy and losing his new-won clarity of thought, but he kept it up across the dark grass, pressing himself up with one heel, rocking himself over with a heave of his shoulder, and then letting the momentum of the roll help set him up for the next one. He had to stop twice to be violently sick, and he was profoundly thankful that he’d managed to get rid of the gag. After a while he’d completely forgotten why he was engaging in this peculiar form of locomotion, and he imagined he was a pencil rolling toward the edge of a desk, or a lit cigar rolling off the arm of a chair—but he didn’t want to think about cigars.
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.