And Doctor Romanelli had kept busy during his forty-eight hours of lead time. He’d learned that under the Ashbless name his quarry was expected to appear at, of all things, a literary gathering in the offices of the publisher John Murray, and Romanelli had browbeaten the sorcerer-clown Horrabin into having some of his swinish thugs follow Ashbless everywhere he went, and to abduct him and bring him back here to Rat’s Castle after he left Murray’s offices.
And when they’ve brought him here, thought Romanelli as the weary breaths trudged up and down his throat, I will simply wring him dry. I’ll learn from him enough about the time jumping to do it myself, and I’ll jump back to when I was healthy and tell my younger self how to do things differently, so that on Monday the second of April, 1811, I am not a trembling, bleeding, far overextended wreck.
He opened his bloodshot eyes and glanced up at the clock that sat on a doll-crowded shelf just below the niche where old Dungy’s head was perched. Quarter to nine. In another hour or so, he told himself, Horrabin’s hoodlums will bring Ashbless to me, and we’ll adjourn to the subterranean hospital.
As the cab rattled past St. Paul’s Cathedral, William Ashbless peered out at the dark square on the west side of the huge church and remembered begging there as Dumb Tom. I never, he thought, get to use my voice. Dumb Tom was mute, and so of necessity was Eshvlis the cobbler, and though William Ashbless will be a voluble poet, he’ll only be copying from memory poems he read and memorized long ago.
His mood was a blend of relief, anticipation and vague disappointment. It was certainly pleasant to be back in England again, free at last of all that hellish magic, and able to look forward to meeting, as he knew he would, Byron, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth and the rest of the gang—but now that he was, irrevocably, Ashbless, and had wandered back into the scope of the Bailey biography, there could be no more major surprises for him; he’d already read his own life story.
He still half wished that the test he’d thought up during the month-long voyage of the Fowler had turned out negative. It had occurred to him that if the universe was dead set on his being Ashbless it would have to get busy and do two things. It would have to have seen to it that the manuscript of “The Twelve Hours of the Night,” which he’d last seen on the desk in that room at the Swan With Two Necks, was somehow conveyed to the Courier office in time to have been published in December; and it would have to make sure the Fowler arrived in London in time for him to attend the gathering at John Murray’s, and meet Coleridge again, on the second of April. Both were unalterable facts in the life of the Ashbless he’d studied, and if either one didn’t happen, then he might still be able to be his own man, with the capacity for chosen action, able to feel hope and fear.
But when he’d gone to the Swan this afternoon and asked them if they were holding any mail for William Ashbless, they’d told him he owed postage on three items. These had proven to be a letter of acceptance from the Courier, together with a check for three pounds; the December 15 issue of the paper, with the poem printed in it; and a letter from John Murray, dated the twenty-fifth of March, inviting Ashbless to an informal gathering at the publisher’s office a week later—tonight.
It was settled. He was Ashbless.
And it wouldn’t be dull—for one thing, there were some pieces of the story he would be interested to watch unfold. Where, for example, is Elizabeth Jacqueline Tichy, my wife to be? I’ll presently tell Bailey that I first met her way back in September of last year. I wonder why I’ll say that. And of course the final question is: who is it that will meet me in the Woolwich marshes on the twelfth of April in 1846, stab me through the stomach and leave my body to be found more than a month later? And how in hell will I make myself keep that appointment?
The cab had slanted to the right, past the Old Bailey onto Fleet Street, and now drew to a stop at number 32, a narrow, pleasant-looking building with lights glowing behind the curtains. Ashbless stepped down, paid the driver, and as the cab clopped and jingled away into the night he took a deep breath, glanced up and down the street—noticing a beggar boy slouching in his direction—and then knocked on the door.
After a few moments there was the snap of a bolt being drawn back and the door was opened by a sandy-haired man with a glass in his hand; and in spite of the haircut, beard-trim and respectable clothes that Ashbless had spent most of his three pounds on, the man stepped back uncertainly when he got a look at the huge bronzed visitor.
“Uh… yes?” he said.
“My name is Ashbless. Are you John Murray?”
“Oh? Yes, yes, do come in. Yes, I’m Murray. You gave me a start—if there is such a thing as a typical poet, sir, may I say you don’t look anything like him. Would you care for a glass of port?”
“I’d love it.” Ashbless stepped into the entry hall and waited white Murray re-bolted the door.
“There’s a beggar boy been hanging round out front,” Murray explained apologetically. “Tried to sneak in earlier.” He straightened, had a gulp of his port and then gingerly stepped past his guest. “Right this way. I’m glad you were able to come—we’re lucky enough to have Samuel Coleridge with us this evening.”
Ashbless grinned and followed. “I knew we would.”
Jacky had timidly started forward when she saw the stranger climb out of the cab, but before she could think of what to say, the man had knocked and been admitted into the house by that ill-tempered Murray. She walked back to the lightless recessed doorway she’d been crouching in during the past hour.
That’s certainly the man Brendan Doyle described, she thought. Murray wasn’t just talking through his hat to that Times columnist when he said he had reason to believe that the controversial new poet William Ashbless would be a guest at his Monday night gathering.
So how do I get to talk to the man? she wondered. I owe poor old Brendan Doyle that much—to convey the sad news of his death to this friend of his. I guess I’ll just have to wait here until he comes out, and then catch him before he can get into a cab.
Though Jacky hadn’t slept since killing Dundee—and, by extension, Dog-Face Joe—two nights ago, she’d begun having hallucinations, as if her dreams were impatient to get at her. Huge shadows seemed to rush toward her, but after she flinched away there’d be nothing there; and she kept hearing… not the sound, not even the echo, but a sort of after reverberation in the air of a vast iron door slamming down over the sky. It hadn’t begun yet, for it was still early in the evening, but she was wearily certain that in a few hours she’d begin to wonder why it wasn’t dawn yet… and long before five o’clock the uneasy wondering would deepen to a panicked conviction that something really had shut down over the sky, and she’d never again see the sun.
She’d once visited the Magdalen Hospital for insane women—”Maudlin,” as it was known in the streets—and she had vowed to kill herself rather than be committed there, if the options should ever become as narrow as that.
Tonight she was pretty sure they’d become that narrow.
Her only remaining intentions were to meet Ashbless, break to him the news about Doyle, and then do The Admirable’s Dive, swim out to the middle of the Thames and empty her lungs and sink to the bottom.