The Anubis Gates

“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.

She shivered—for it had just occurred to her that subjectively her fears were justified: for her there wouldn’t be any dawn.

* * *

As far as the professional purposes of the gathering went, Coleridge and Ashbless were disappointments to Murray. When the publisher strolled over to the corner of the book-lined room where the two of them were talking, and managed first to enter the conversation and then to change the subject to a proposal of publication for each of them, neither one looked eager; which puzzled Murray, for Coleridge was in financial ruin, his family having to be supported on the charity of friends, and Ashbless was a raw novice who ought to have been delighted at the prospect of getting such a good publisher so quickly.

“A translation of Goethe’s Faust?” said Coleridge doubtfully. When his attention had been distracted from the subject he and Ashbless were discussing, the animation had left his face, and now he looked old and ill again. “I don’t know,” he said. “Though Goethe is a genius whose work—especially that work—it would be a privilege and a challenge to translate, I’m afraid that my own philosophy is so much… at odds with his that such an undertaking would… compromise us both. I do have many essays… “

“Yes,” said Murray, “we’ll certainly have to discuss publication of your essays sometime. But what do you think, Mr. Ashbless, of the idea of publishing a volume of your own verse?”

“Well,” Ashbless began. You can’t, Murray, he thought helplessly, for it happens that Ashbless’ first book will be published by Cawthorn this May. Sorry—but that’s history for you. “At the moment,” he said, “the ‘Twelve Hours’ is all I have. Let’s wait and see if I manage to write any others.”

Murray forced a smile. “Right. Though I may not have a space in my schedule when you’re ready. You gentlemen will excuse me?” He returned to the group by the table.

“I’m afraid I shall really have to be excused as well,” said Coleridge, putting down his scarcely tasted glass of port and massaging his gray forehead. “I feel one of my headaches coming on, and they make dull company of me. The walk home may even cure it.”

“Why not take a cab?” Ashbless asked, walking with him toward the door.