The Dark River

The nun’s anxiety was transformed into panic. She stumbled backward, moving toward the staircase. “Matthew told us he was going to leave a sign here in the crypt. That’s all I can tell you.”

“I’ve got to find him,” Gabriel said. “Please tell me where he is.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t say more,” the nun whispered. And then she was gone, her heavy shoes clomping up the metal stairs.

Gabriel circled the crypt like a man trapped in a building about to collapse. Bones. Saints. A bloodstained shirt. How would this lead him to his father?

Footsteps on the staircase. He expected to see Sister Bridget return, but it was Sister Ann. The Irish nun looked angry. Reflected light flashed on the surface of her glasses.

“May I help you, young man?”

“Yes. I’m looking for my father, Matthew Corrigan. And the other nun, Sister Bridget, told me-”

“That’s enough. You have to leave.”

“She said he left a sign-”

“Leave immediately. Or I will call the police.”

The expression on the elderly nun’s face allowed no objection. The keys on her iron ring made a bright jingling sound as she followed Gabriel up the staircase and then out of the convent. He stood in the cold as Sister Ann began to shut the door.

“Sister, please. You have to understand-”

“We know what happened in America. I read in the newspaper how those people were killed. Children, too. They didn’t even spare the little ones. We won’t have such things here!”

She shut the door-hard-and Gabriel heard the sounds of locks being snapped shut. He felt like shouting and pounding on the door, but that would just bring the police. Not knowing what to do, the Traveler gazed out at the traffic and the bare trees of Hyde Park. He was in a strange city without money or friends, and no one was going to defend him from the Tabula. He was alone, truly alone, within the invisible prison.

13

After wandering aimlessly for a few hours, Gabriel found his way to an Internet café on Goodge Street near the University of London. The café was run by a group of amiable Koreans who spoke only a few words of English. Gabriel got a payment card and walked by a row of computers. Some people were looking at pornography, while others were buying cheap plane tickets. The blond teenager sitting at the computer next to him was playing an online game where his avatar would hide in a building and kill any stranger who showed up alone.

Gabriel sat at a computer and entered different chat rooms trying to find Linden, the French Harlequin who had sent money to New York. After two hours of failure, he left a message on a Web site for collectors of antique swords. G. in London. Needs financing. He paid the Koreans for his computer time and spent the rest of the day in the library reading room at the University of London. When the library closed at seven o’clock, he returned to the Internet café and discovered that no one had responded to his message. Back out on the street, it was cold enough to see his breath. A group of students brushed past him, laughing about something. He had less than ten pounds in his pocket.

It was too cold to sleep outside, and there were surveillance cameras on the underground. As he drifted down Tottenham Court Road past brightly lit shops selling televisions and computers, he remembered Maya telling him about a location in West Smithfield where heretics, rebels, and Harlequins were executed by authorities. Once she used her father’s language when she mentioned the area, calling it Blutacker. The German word originally denoted the cemetery near Jerusalem bought with the silver given to Judas, and then it acquired a more general meaning. It was any accursed place-blood ground. If this really was a Harlequin site, then perhaps there was a message board in the area or some indication of where he could find help.

He headed toward East London, asking for directions from people who all seemed to be either drunk or lost. One man who could barely walk straight started waving his arms around as if he were swatting flies. Finally, Gabriel walked up Giltspur Street past St. Bartholomew’s Hospital and found two memorials that were only a few feet apart. One was in memory of the Scottish rebel William Wallace, while the other plaque was placed a few feet away from where the Crown had burned Catholics at the stake. Blutacker, thought Gabriel. But there were no Harlequin signs anywhere.

Turning his back to the memorials, he approached St. Bartholomew the Great, a small Norman church. The stone walls of the church had been chipped and darkened over the years, and the brick walkway was smeared with mud. Gabriel passed through an archway and found himself in a burial ground. Directly in front of him was a heavy wooden door with iron hinges that led into the church. Something was scrawled on the lower edge of the door, and, as he came closer, he saw four words written with a black felt pen: HOPE FOR A TRAVELER.