The Bookman - Lavie Tidhar [27]
The girl he still loved, Orphan thought. He resented Jack that moment. He straightened, avoiding Jack's eyes. The truth, he realised, was that he did think that, did not – could not – comprehend another reason, no sense in the act that took Lucy away. He turned his head from his friend, focusing on the crowd. Movement caught his attention. That head. It looked familiar. As if in response a man in the crowd turned and their eyes met, and though the man did not give any sign that he knew him, Orphan recognised him immediately: it was Karl Marx.
When Marx turned back to the fight Orphan noticed that the figure next to him, though it was dressed in a long coat and its head was cowled, was that of a woman; and he was not surprised when, a moment later, the cowled head turned towards him, revealing the face of Isabella Beeton.
So the Parliament of Payne was complete and present.
Mrs Beeton, too, did not acknowledge him; and a moment later she had turned back and was swallowed in the crowd as though she had never been.
"What are they doing here?"
"The same thing we are doing," Jack said beside him. "Watching."
"The cockfight?"
Jack drew further into the shadows. He lifted his hand, his finger pointing upwards. "Them."
Orphan looked up.
Though the ceiling was low, a small balcony was erected halfway above the floor, made of wooden boards and surrounded by a thin balustrade. Three figures stood there: and though one was a man, the other two were of aristocratic stock.
They were lizards.
TEN
The Woman in White
The paleness grew whiter on her face, and she turned it farther away from me.
"Don't speak of to-morrow," she said. "Let the music speak to us of to-night, in a happier language than ours."
– Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White
In the ring, a wounded rooster and a dead one were taken away. Something that was not quite a hush settled over the crowd then: a kind of tense, anticipatory stillness.
The umpire reappeared. He looked tense himself, and kept casting quick, darting glances at the balcony.
"Ladies and gentlemen, doxies and rakes!" the umpire cried. "Get ready to be shocked, prepare to be amazed! The fight of the night is about to commence!" Again he looked up, saw the silent watchers on the balcony, hesitated. His Adam's apple bobbed up and down.
Leaning against the wall, in the shadows, Orphan, too, was watching the lizards. They were two tall, distinguished beings, dressed in simple (yet obviously expensive), sober suits, with gentlemen's hats perched on their scaly heads. They moved forward now, their claws resting on the balustrade. They watched the ring intensely. Their tongues hissed out every so often and tasted the air.
The man beside them was uncommonly fat. He stood apart from the lizards, his attention not on the ring but on its audience. His head moved, slowly and methodically, as he scanned the room. Suddenly, as if aware he was being watched, he turned his head sharply and met Orphan's eyes.
It was the man from the mortuary at Guy's.
The man nodded, once, then winked at Orphan. Orphan hurriedly turned his eyes back to the ring. He was discomfited by the fat man, and not just by the memory of their previous encounter. He could not tell what it was that had so unnerved him. He knows me, he thought. He was waiting for me. He reminded him of a spider that had lain in wait in the centre of a cobweb, the trap so light it could not be seen until it sprung. He looked to Jack for help, but his friend's eyes were on the ring, and there was a strange, hungry expression in them that made Orphan uneasy.
"All the way from the ancient empire of Egypt," the umpire was saying, "now under the protection of our own Everlasting Empire – from the deadly deserts of the Nile, the most hostile region known to man – and lizard –" and here he glanced again at the balcony, like an unruly child afraid of being punished for his misbehaviour – "it's… Goliath!"
Orphan watched, incredulous, as into the ring came, on all