They hurried back down the cross lane to the stairs below Thames Street, and leaning out over the railing at the top step they stared out across the ice at the torches and tents of the frost fair.
“Too many people about to be knowing if any is them,” grumbled Longwell.
“Perhaps,” muttered Burghard, who had pulled out his telescope and was inching it by slow degrees across the scene. “I see them,” he whispered finally. “They’re just making a straight line across, not even bothering to avoid people—ho, you should see some of these people recoil!” He turned to the towering figure of Doyle. “How much more powerful will he be when he gets to that inn?”
“I don’t know the precise amps or anything,” Doyle said; “let’s just say vastly. He must have had something pretty urgent in mind to have left it before.”
“I’m afraid we’ll have to follow right on his heels then,” said Burghard reluctantly, starting down the stairs. “Come along smartly—we’ve got some catching up to do.”
Oriental clog shoes knocked on frost-split cobblestones as another company of furtive men rounded the corner from Gracechurch into Thames Street. The peculiarly shod leader scanned the empty street for a moment and then resumed his determined stride.
“Wait one moment, alchemist,” said one of his company. “I’ll go no farther without an explanation. That was gunfire we heard, was it not?”
“Aye,” said the leader impatiently. “But ‘twasn’t aimed at thee.”
“But what was it aimed at? I think that was no man that screamed.” The breeze blew the man’s long brown curls, unconfined by a wig, forward across his somewhat pudgy and petulant face. He pushed his hat down more firmly on his head. “I’m in command here, though without official sanction, as much as was my father in France. I say all we need is what you carry in yonder box—we need no advice from another damned sorcerer.”
Amenophis Fikee walked back to where the man stood and, able to look down at him by virtue of his stilted shoes, hissed, “Listen to me, you posturing clown. If your damned backside is ever to rest on the throne it will be because of my efforts, and in spite of yours. Or do you imagine that the idiot assassination attempt you and Russell and Sidney set up last year was intelligent? Hah! Fools, trying to reach through a pane of glass for a sweet! You need me, and magic, and a damn large spoonful of luck even to steer clear of the headsman’s block, far less become king! And the man who contacted me tonight, greeted me through the candle with the ancient passwords, has more raw power than I’ve seen in a sorcerer for—well, a long time. You were there, man—I didn’t even have to light the candle to receive him—it just burst into flame! Now he’s run afoul of something, very possibly James’ precious Antaeus Brotherhood, and he’s had to fall back to the spot on the Surrey side where there’s one of those inexplicable bubbles of indulgence I mentioned to you, in which sorcery is freer. Therefore we will meet him there. Or would you rather return to Holland to pursue the crown on your own, without my help?”
The Duke of Monmouth still looked sulky, so Fikee waved the little black box at him. “And without my indetectibly forged marriage certificate?”
Monmouth scowled, but shrugged. “Very well, wizard. But let’s get moving, before your damned frost freezes us solid.” The band moved forward again, toward the bridge.
The boat had been sailing close-hauled, its half-drunk sailors waving their flaring torches more or less in time to their singing, but now the man at the tiller had cut too close into the wind and the sail luffed and fluttered empty; the boat lost its speed, the grotesque faces painted on the great wooden wheels becoming distinguishable as the disks rolled more and more slowly on the wooden axles penetrating the framework that supported the craft, and finally the boat lurched to a stop on the ice, and after a moment began to roll indecisively backward as the sail billowed in reverse.
Burghard, who had been leading Doyle and the ten Antaeus Brotherhood members in a long, curving sprint across the ice behind the screen the wheeled boat provided, caught up with it now, leaped for the rail, caught it, and swung over the gun-wale and tumbled into the boat. The drunken mariners, already irate at having lost the wind, turned angrily on this unimposingly slim boarder, but lurched back in confusion when the burly figure of Doyle came vaulting lightly over the rail, all flying mane and beard and cape.
“We’re taking command of this vessel,” he cried in a voice tight with restrained laughter, for he realized that he’d read about this adventure only a few hours ago. “Burghard, how do you get this thing running again?”
“Stowell,” the leader called over the rail, “get the back wheels pushed all the way over and then all of you get in. Everybody’s used to seeing this thing tacking around the river—our man won’t notice if it follows him.”
“It be my boat, though, mate,” objected a tubby man in the stern, who scrambled to his feet as the tiller moved slowly over.
Burghard handed him some coins. “Here. We’ll not mistreat her, and we’ll leave her on the south shore. Oh, and—” he counted out some more coins, “—this is yours too if we can have your masks and torches.”
The owner weighed the coins against the obvious determination of the boarders, then shrugged. “Abandon ship, lads,” he called to his companions. “And leave the masks and lights—we’ve got enough here for a whole butt of sack.”
The evicted sailors climbed over the gunwales and dropped to the ice cheerfully, and as the last of Burghard’s men swung aboard, the sail filled again and the boat began to rock forward.
Burghard, wearing some kind of blue and red toucan mask, worked the tiller and sheet carefully in order to follow but not overtake Romany, and they had got nearly all the way across, and were within thirty yards of the Jeter Lane stairs, when the bounding Romany glanced back for the third time, did a double take, and then skidded to a halt, aware at last that he was being followed. “He’s seen us!” Doyle yelled, but Burghard had already wrenched the tiller all the way over to the left, and the boat heeled, tilting dangerously to port as the two wooden wheels on that side kicked up sprays of shaved ice, then righted itself with a slam and cut sharply to starboard, no longer heading for the stairs but aiming straight at a long section of dock. Doyle stood up and drew his sword, and then instantly pitched it away, for it was not a sword at all, but a long silver snake looping back to bite him. A moment later his dagger began to squirm strongly out of its sheath, and it took both hands to hold it in. His clothes were undulating in an insane peristalsis, his mask was flapping wildly on his face, and the very hull under his feet was heaving up and down like the ribs of a big, panting animal. Realizing through his panic that he was in the midst of some awful sorcerous focus, he used the hull’s next heave as a springboard and catapulted right over the side of the rushing, wriggling boat; he landed on his outstretched hands and curled into a tumble. He rolled several yards and then slid to a stop a second or two after the wheeled boat plowed into the dock, loudly shattering the hull and the mast and pitching members of the Antaeus Brotherhood in all directions like bowling pins,
Doyle sat up, wrenched off his palpitating cat mask and flung it as far as he could, and then he noticed his dagger, which had fallen out of its sheath, crawling toward him like a big inchworm; he kicked it away—and instantly felt an almost crippling disorientation engulf him, for though it bounced away as limber as a length of rubber hose, it clinked each time it hit the ice.
Burghard was up on his feet again only a moment after he hit the ice, and though his face was a grimace of pain he managed to croak, “Up onto the land!” as he forced himself to limp forward. Flames had begun to lick up brightly here and there from the shattered hull. One of the boat’s wheels, wrenched loose from its axle, was rolling slowly around on the ice, its painted mouth opening and closing spasmodically and its painted eyes darting about with malign will; and as the flames found and streaked ravenously up the margins of the sail, the face painted on it rolled its eyes and crumpled its canvas furiously as it mouthed unreadable words.