He realized that the man he’d been reciting to was gone. When had he left? No matter—another would be along presently. He sat back, his blank smile returning to his face like something dead floating to the surface of a pond.
After a time he became aware that someone else had sat down next to him, and he started up again. “Good morning, my good man. I am Lord Byron. May I buy you a pint of something?”
He was answered with one of the sentences he had been warned he might get, and with an unfocussed uneasiness he responded with reply number eight: “Yes, my friend, I was travelling abroad until recently. I had to come home due to an illness, a brain fever, which still clouds my mind at times. Please excuse the uncertainty this infirmity plagues me with—do we know each other?”
After a long pause during which the still-smiling young man was aware of a vicarious sort of worry in himself, the man answered in the negative, and so with relief he went on. “If you’re wondering why a peer of the realm should be in a place like this, drinking with common—”
The newcomer interrupted the recital with a question that, frighteningly, was not muffled: “How are you coming with Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage?” the stranger asked. “Oh, sorry, it’s Childe Buron’s Pilgrimage at this point, isn’t it? Ah—’Whilome in Albion’s isle there dwelt a youth, who ne in virtue’s ways did take delight… ‘ How does it go from there?”
For some reason these sentences hit the young man like a splash of ice water, and as they forced his hearing into clarity they did the same for his sight; his surroundings leaped from a congeries of comfortable blurs into awful focus, and for the first time in four days he saw a face clearly.
And the face of the man who had spoken to him was one that would attract attention—perched on impressively broad shoulders and a rope-muscled neck, and framed by a thick golden mane and beard, it was haggard, lined and mad-eyed as if with fabulous and harrowing secrets.
The no longer smiling young man knew that he’d been briefed on what to do in this situation—”If things become close up, and louder,” Romany had repeatedly told him, “and you lose the veil of protection my guidance give you, return to the camp here instantly, before the people in the streets tear you to bits like a crippled dog in a ratting pit… “—But this bearded man’s words had triggered something else, something more important than Romany’s command. Byron could hear himself speaking: “‘But spent his days in riot most uncouth, and vexed with mirth the drowsy ear of night.’” A swarm of astringent memories seemed to be loosed by these somehow very familiar phrases, and they stung like circulation returning to a suddenly unconstricted limb; he remembered being aboard the brig Spider with Fletcher and Hobhouse … the Albanians at Tepaleen with their white kilts and gold-trimmed capes, their belts bristling with ornate pistols and daggers… the dry yellow hills and deep blue sky of the Morea… and something about a fever, and… a doctor? His brain shut down with an almost audible slam on that line of recollection, but his voice continued, “‘Ah me! in sooth he was a shameless wight, sore given to revel and ungodly glee; he cheered the bad and did the good affright… ‘”
A hand seemed to squeeze his throat shut, and he knew it was Doctor Romany. In his head he heard the bald-headed doctor’s order: “Return to the camp here instantly.”
He stood up, darting bewildered glances around at the other drinkers in the low-ceilinged taproom, and then, muttering apologies, limped across to the door and out onto the street.
Doyle leaped to his feet, but his new height made him dizzy and he grabbed the table for support. My God, he thought as he took a deep breath and then reeled off in pursuit of the young man, it really is Byron—he knew Childe Harold, which no one in England will see for two years. But what’s wrong with him? And what’s wrong with history? How can he be here?
He lurched to the door and hung onto the wooden frame as he stepped down to the pavement. He could see Byron’s curly-topped head bobbing through the crowd to his right, and he followed unsteadily, wishing he could make this admittedly superior body work as gracefully as Benner had.
The people in the street seemed eager to get out of the way of the lurching, mad-eyed, lion-headed giant, and he caught up with Byron at the next tavern; grabbing his elbow, he steered him forcefully inside. “Beer for me and my friend,” he said carefully to the barmaid who was blinking up at him. Damn this cut-up tongue, he thought. He marched the ineffectually resisting young man to a table and sat him down, then leaned over him with one hand gripping the back of the chair so that his muscled arm barred any escape. “Now then,” Doyle rumbled sternly, “what’s the matter with you? Aren’t you curious about how I happened to know those lines?”
“I—I have an illness, a brain fever,” said Byron nervously, his smile seeming imbecilic when coupled with his evident anxiety. “I… must go, please, I… have an illness—” The words seemed to be jerked out of him one at a time, as if they’d been knotted along a piece of string that Doyle was pulling out of his throat.
Abruptly Doyle realized where he’d seen this mindless smile before—on the faces of the cultists who he used to see begging for change in airports and out in front of all-night restaurants. I’ll be damned, he thought—Byron acts like he’s been programmed.
“What do you think of this weather we’re having?” Doyle asked him.
“Please, I’ve got to go. My illness—”
“What day is it?”
“—a brain fever, which still clouds my mind at times—”
“What’s your name?”
The young man blinked. “Lord Byron, sixth baron of Rochdale. May I buy you a pint of something?”
Doyle sat down in the other chair. “Yes, thanks,” he said. “Here comes the girl with it now.”
Byron took a gold coin from his pocket and paid for the beers, though he didn’t touch his. “If you’re wondering why a peer of the realm—”
“‘For he through sin’s long labyrinth had run,’” interrupted Doyle, “‘nor made atonement when he did amiss—’ Who wrote that?”
Again Byron’s smile disappeared, and he pushed his chair back, but Doyle stood up and blocked his exit again.
“Who wrote that?” he repeated.
“Uh…” Sweat broke out on Byron’s pale brow, and when he finally answered, it was in a whisper. “I… I did…”
“When?”
“Last year. In Tepaleen.”
“How long have you been in England?”
“I don’t—four days? I think I’ve been sick… “
“How did you get here?”
“How did I… “
Doyle nodded his shaggy head. “Get here. On a ship? What ship? Overland?”
“Oh! Oh, of course, I came back…” Byron frowned. “I can’t recall.”
“You can’t? Doesn’t that seem peculiar to you, that you don’t know that? And how do you think I knew those verses of yours?” I wish I had Ted Patrick here, he thought.
“You’ve read my poetry?” said Byron, his weird smile returning. “You gratify me. But it all seems childish to me now; now I am pursuing the poetry of action, the well-placed sword rather than the well-chosen word. My goal is to strike the blow that shall sever the—”
“Stop it, “said Doyle.
“—chains that restrict us from—”
“Stop it. Look, I don’t have lots of time, and my mind isn’t firing on all cylinders either, but your presence here—I need to know what you’re doing here, I need to know… oh, hell, lots of things…” Doyle’s voice was becoming a distracted whisper as he picked up his beer mug. “Whether this is the real 1810 or some fake one… “