Hellfire at Twilight
by Kage Baker



On a certain autumn day in the year 1774, a certain peddler walked the streets of a certain residential district in London.

His pack was full, because he wasn’t really making much of an effort to sell any of his wares. His garments were shabby, and rather large for him, but clean, and cut with a style making it not outside the powers of imagination that he might in fact be a dashing hero of some kind. One temporarily down on his luck, perhaps. Conceivably the object of romantic affection.

He whistled as he trudged along; doffed his hat and made a leg when the coaches of the great rumbled by, spattering him with mud. When occasionally hailed by customers, he stopped and rifled through his pack with alacrity, producing sealing wax, bobbins of thread, blotting paper, cheap stockings, penny candles, tinderboxes, soap, pins and buttons. His prices were reasonable, his manner deferential without being fawning, but he was nonetheless unable to make very many sales.

Indeed, so little notice was taken of him that he might as well have been invisible when he slipped down an alley and came out into one of the back lanes that ran behind the houses. This suited his purposes, however.

He proceeded along the backs of sheds and garden fences with an ease born of familiarity, and went straight to a certain stretch of brick wall. He balanced briefly on tiptoe to peer over; then knocked at the gate in a certain pattern, rap-a-rap rap.

The gate was opened by a maid, with such abruptness it was pretty evident she’d been lurking there, waiting for his knock.

“You ain’t half behind your time,” she said.

“I was assailed by profitable custom,” he replied, sweeping off his hat and bowing. “Good morning, my dear! What have you for me today?”

“Gooseberry,” she said. “Only it’s gone cold, you know.”

“I shan’t mind that one whit,” the peddler replied, swinging his pack round. “And I have brought you something particularly nice in return.”

The maid looked at his pack with eager eyes. “Oooo! You never found one!”

“Wait and see,” said the peddler, with a roguish wink. He reached into the very bottom of his pack and brought out an object wrapped in brown paper. Presenting it to the maid with a flourish, he watched as she unwrapped it.

“You never!” she cried. She whipped a glass lens out of her apron pocket and held the object up, examining it closely.

“Masanao of Kyoto, that is,” she announced. “Here’s the cartouche. Boxwood. Very nice. Some sort of funny little dog, is it?”

“It’s a fox, I believe,” said the peddler.

“So it is. Well! What a stroke of luck.” The maid tucked both lens and netsuke into her apron pocket. “You might go by Limehouse on your rounds, you know; they do say there’s all sorts of curious things to be had there.”

“What a good idea,” said the peddler. He hefted his pack again and looked at her expectantly.

“Oh! Your pie, to be sure. La! I was that excited, I did forget.” The maid ran indoors, and returned a moment later with a small pie wrapped in a napkin. “Extra well lined, just as you asked.”

“Not a word to your good master about this, however,” said the peddler, laying his finger beside his nose. “Eh, my dear?”

“Right you are,” said the maid, repeating the gesture with a knowing wink. “He don’t miss all that old parchment, busy as he is, and now there’s ever so much more room in that spare cupboard.”

The peddler took his leave and walked on. Finding a shady spot with a view of the Thames, he sat down and ever so carefully lifted the pie out of its parchment shell, though he was obliged to peel the last sheet free, it having been well gummed with gooseberry leakage. He spread the sheets out across his lap, studying them thoughtfully as he bit into the pie. They were closely written in much-blotted ink, ancient jottings in a quick hand.

“‘Whatte to fleshe out thys foolyshe farye play? Too insubstancyal. Noble courte of Oberon nott unlike Theseus his courte. The contrast invydious. Yet too much wit in that lyne and the M of Revylls lyketh it not. Lovers not sufficienclye pleasing of themseylves. Thinke. Thinke, Will. Thinke,’ ” he read aloud, through a full mouth.

“‘How yf a rustick brought in? None can fynde fawlt there by Jesu. Saye a weaver, bellowes-mender or some suche in the woodes by chance. Excellent good meate for Kempe. JESU how yf a companye of rusticks??? As who should bee apying we players? Memo, speake wyth Burbage on thys…’”

At that moment he blinked, frowned, and shook his head. Red letters were dancing in front of his eyes: TOXIC RESPONSE ALERT.

“I beg your pardon?” he murmured aloud. Vaguely he waved a hand through the air in front of his face, as though swatting away flies, while he ran a self-diagnostic. The red letters were not shooed away; yet neither did his organic body appear to be having any adverse reactions to anything he was tasting, touching, or breathing.

But the red letters did fade slightly after a moment. He shrugged, had another mouthful of pie and kept reading.

“‘Cost of properteyes: not so muche an it might be, were we to use agayne the dresses fro thatt Merlyne playe—’”

TOXIC RESPONSE ALERT, cried the letters again, flashing bright. The peddler scowled in real annoyance and ran another self-diagnostic. He received back the same result as before. He looked closely at the pie in his hand. It appeared wholesome, with gooseberry filling oozing out between buttery crusts, and he was rather hungry.

With a sigh, he wrapped it in a pocket handkerchief and set it aside. Carefully he packed the Shakespeare notes in a flat folder, and slid it into his pack; took up the pie again and walked away quickly in the direction of St. Paul’s.



There was a stately commercial edifice of brick built on a slope, presenting its respectable upper stories level with the busy street above. The side facing downhill to the river, however, looked out on one of the grubbier waste grounds in London, thickly grown with weeds. Little winding dog paths crossed the area, and the peddler followed one to an unobtrusive-looking door set in the cellar wall of the aforementioned edifice. He did not knock, but stood patiently, waiting as various unseen devices scanned him. Then the door swung inward and he stepped inside.

He walked down an aisle between rows of desks, at which sat assorted gentlemen or ladies working away at curious blue-glowing devices. One or two people nodded to him as he passed, or waved a languid pen. He smiled pleasantly, but proceeded past them to a low flight of stairs and climbed to a half-landing, which opened out on private offices. One door bore a sign in gold lettering that read REPAIRS.

The peddler opened the door, looked in, and called hesitantly:

“Yoo-hoo, Cullender, are you receiving?”

“What the hell is it now?” said someone from behind a painted screen. A face rose above the screen, glaring through what appeared to be a pair of exceedingly thick spectacles. “Oh, it’s you, Lewis. Sorry—been trying to catch the last episode of Les Vampires, and there’s an Anthropologist over in Cheapside who keeps transmitting on my channel, all in a panic because he thinks—well, never mind. What can I do for you?”

Lewis set the half-eaten pie down on Cullender’s desk blotter. “Would you mind very much scanning this for toxins?”

Cullender blinked in surprise at it. He switched off the ring holo, removed it, and came around the screen to unwrap the handkerchief.

“Gooseberry,” he observed. “Looks all right to me.”

“Well, but when I take a bite of it, I get this Red Alert telling me it’s toxic,” said Lewis, holding his fingers up at eye level and making jerky little stabs at the air to signify flashing lights. Cullender frowned, perplexed. He took off his wig, draped it over a corner of the screen, and scratched his scalp.

“You ran a self-diagnostic, I suppose?”

“I certainly did. I appear to be fit as a fiddle.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“From the cook of a certain collector of rare documents,” said Lewis, lowering his voice.

“Oh! Oh! The, er, Shakespeare correspondence?” Cullender looked at the pie with new respect. He turned it over carefully, as though expecting to find the front page of Loves Labours Wonne stuck there.

“I’ve already peeled the parchment off,” said Lewis. “But I did wonder, you know, whether some sort of chemical interaction with old parchment, or the ink perhaps…?”

“To be sure.” Cullender took hold of the pie with both hands and held it up. He stared at it intently. His eyes seemed to go out of focus, and in a flat voice he began rattling off a chemical analysis of ingredients.

“No; nothing unusual,” he said in a perfectly normal voice, when he had done. He took a bite of the pie and chewed thoughtfully. “Delicious.”

“Any flashing red letters?”

“Nary a one. Half a minute—I’ve thought of something.” Cullender went to a shelf and took down what appeared to be a small Majolica ware saucer. He held it out to Lewis. “Spit, there’s a good fellow.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Just hoick up a good one. Don’t be shy. It’s the latest thing in noninvasive personnel chemistry diagnostics.”

“But I’ve already run a diagnostic,” said Lewis in tones of mild exasperation, and spat anyway.

“Well, but, you see, this gives us a different profile,” said Cullender, studying the saucer as he swirled its contents to and fro. “Yes… yes, I thought as much. Ah ha! Perfectly clear now.”

“Would you care to enlighten me?”

“It’s nothing over which you need be concerned. Merely a crypto-allergy,” said Cullender, as he stepped into a back cubicle and rinsed off the dish. “I’m sorry?”

“Had you lived your life as a mortal man, you’d have been allergic to gooseberries,” said Cullender, returning to his desk. “But, when we underwent the process that made us cyborgs, our organic systems were given the ability to neutralize allergens. Nonetheless, sometimes a little glitch in the software reads the allergen as an active toxin—sends you a warning, when in fact you have nothing to fear from the allergen at all—a mere false alarm. Don’t let it trouble you, my friend!”

“But I’ve eaten gooseberries plenty of times,” said Lewis.

“You may have become sensitized,” said Cullender. “Had a mortal acquaintance once became allergic to asparagus at the age of forty. One day he’s happily wolfing it down with mayonnaise—next day he’s covered in hives the size of half crowns at the mere smell of the stuff.”

“Yes, but I’m a cyborg,” said Lewis, with a certain amount of irritation. “Well—a minor error in programming, perhaps,” said Cullender. “Who knows why these things happen, eh? Could be sunspots.”

“There haven’t been any,” said Lewis. “Ah. True. Well, been in for an upgrade recently?”

“No.”

“Perhaps you ought, then,” said Cullender. “And in the meanwhile, just avoid gooseberries! You’ll be fine.”

“Very well,” said Lewis stiffly, tucking his handkerchief back in his pocket. “Good day.”

He turned and left the Repairs office. Behind him, Cullender surreptitiously picked up the rest of the pie and crammed it into his mouth.

Lewis proceeded down the hall to the cloakroom, where he claimed a change of clothes and continued to the showers. He bathed, attired himself in a natty ensemble and neat powdered wig that made him indistinguishable from any respectable young clerk in the better offices in London, and went back to the cloakroom to turn in his peddler’s outfit. The pack went with it, save for the folder containing the Shakespeare notes.

“Literature Preservation Specialist Grade Three Lewis,” said the cloak warden meditatively. “Your case officer’s expecting you, you know. Upstairs.”

“Ah! I could just do with a cup of coffee,” said Lewis. He tucked the folder under his arm, set his tricorn on his head at a rakish angle, and went off down the hall to climb another flight of stairs.

Having reached the top, and having passed through no less than three hidden panels, he stepped out into the Thames Street coffee room that sat above the London HQ of Dr. Zeus Incorporated.



The coffee room, in its decor, reflected the Enlightenment: rather than being dark-paneled, low-beamed, and full of jostling sheep farmers clutching leathern jacks of ale, it was high-ceilinged and spacious, with wainscoting painted white, great windows admitting the (admittedly somewhat compromised) light and air of a London afternoon, and full of clerks, politicians, and poets chatting over coffee served in porcelain cups imported from China.

Lewis threaded his way between the tables, smiling and nodding. He heard chatter of Gainsborough’s latest painting, and the disquiet in the American colonies. Three periwigged gentlemen in tailored silk of pastel Easter egg colors discussed Goethe’s latest. Two red-faced, jolly-looking elders pondered the fall of the Jesuits. A tableful of grim men in snuff-colored broadcloth debated the fortunes of the British East India Company. Someone else, in a bottle-green waistcoat, was declaring that Mesmer was a fraud. And, over in a secluded nook, a gentleman of saturnine countenance was watching the room, his features set in an expression compounded of equal parts disdain and boredom.

Ave, Nennius! Lewis transmitted. The gentleman turned his head, spotted Lewis, and stifled a yawn.

Ave, Lewis. He took out his watch and looked at it in a rather pointed fashion, as Lewis came to his table and removed his hat.

“Your servant, sir!” said Lewis, aloud. “Dr. Nennys? I believe I had the pleasure of your acquaintance at Mr. Dispater’s party, some weeks ago.”

“I believe you are correct, sir,” said Nennius. “Pray have a seat, won’t you? The boy’s just bringing a fresh pot.”

“Too kind of you,” said Lewis, as he settled into a chair. He held up the folder containing the parchments, waggled his eyebrows in a triumphant manner, and set it down at Nennius’s elbow. “I believe you collect antiquities, sir, do you not? If you will do me the kindness of examining these papers, I believe you will find much to engage your interest!”

Don’t lay it on with a trowel, for gods’ sake, transmitted Nennius, but aloud said merely: “Indeed? Let us see.”

He opened the folder and studied its contents, while a waiter brought another pot of coffee and a fresh cup and saucer for Lewis.

“Would you be dining, sir? Cake or something?”

Lewis felt the pangs of appetite. “Have you any apple pie?”

“Yes, sir,” said the waiter, “Bring you a nice one,” and he withdrew.

“We—ell,” said Nennius, “Very interesting… some prime examples here. Private correspondence, notes, what appears to be a script page or two…” He lifted out one parchment, and pursed his lips in annoyance as it brought two other pages with it, glued together by fruit filling. “Rather a lot of work for the conservators, however.”

Lewis spread out his hands in a gesture of apology. “At least we have them. Before I made the contact, she was using them to light the boiler. Poor old fellow! I expect he’ll have apoplexy when he finds out. Still, ‘History—’”

“‘—Cannot Be Changed,’ ” said Nennius, finishing the statement for him. “So somebody ought to profit from it. Eh? Not a bad job overall, Lewis.” He closed the folder and studied his nails as the waiter brought a sturdy-looking little apple tart and set it before Lewis. The waiter left, and, as Lewis was happily breaking into the crust with a fork, Nennius said: “Still, they’re pulling you out. Sending you down to the Chilterns.”

“Mm! Lovely country thereabouts,” said Lewis, noting in satisfaction that no red letters flashed in his field of vision. He had another mouthful of pie. “What’s the quarry, pray?”

“If it really exists, it’s a Greek scroll or codex that would be anywhere from three thousand to seventeen hundred years old,” said Nennius. “On the other hand, it may be a fraud. The sort of thing that would be cobbled together and sold to an impressionable young Briton on a grand tour. Your job’s to find it—which may in itself be a bit tricky—and obtain it for the Company, which may be more difficult still.”

“And determine whether it’s authentic or otherwise, I assume,” said Lewis.

“Of course, of course.” Nennius took out a calfskin folder nearly identical to the one Lewis had given him and deftly switched them. “Your directions and letter of introduction are in there. Scholar wanting employment, highly recommended, encyclopedic knowledge of all things Greek and Latin, expert curator of papyrus, parchment, and et cetera. The gentleman in question has an extensive library.” Nennius smiled as he said the last word.

“Sounds easy!” said Lewis, not looking up from his pie. “Hours of browsing through a splendid classical library? Now, that’s my idea of a posting!”

“How nice that you bring your customary enthusiasm to the job,” Nennius drawled. “Though we don’t believe your specific quarry will be in the library, in fact. More likely hidden in a box of some kind, somewhere in one of the tunnels. Perhaps in an altar.”

“Tunnels?” Lewis knitted his brows in perplexity. “Wherever am I being sent?”

“West Wycombe,” said Nennius, with just a trace of malicious amusement. “To the estate of Baron leDespencer.”

“Ah,” said Lewis politely, lifting another forkful of flaky pastry crust.

“That would be Baron leDespencer, Sir Francis Dashwood,” said Nennius. The bit of pie fell off Lewis’s fork.

“I beg your pardon?” he stammered. Looking around hastily, he leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Surely you don’t mean that fellow with the, the, er—”

“Notorious hellfire club? I’m afraid I do, yes,” said Nennius in a leisurely fashion, taking a sip of his coffee.

“But I’m a Literature Preservation Specialist,” said Lewis.

“So I understand. And Dashwood has one of the most extensive libraries of pornography, both ancient and modern, in the world. I know of some operatives who’d positively leap at the chance to have a peek at it,” said Nennius. “You ought to have ample time, whilst you’re searching for the scroll. Which is something entirely different, by the way. It may, or may not, contain an account of the rituals performed during the Eleusinian Mysteries.”

“But we know all about the Eleusinian Mysteries!” said Lewis. “I attended them myself! And managed to record them, I might add.”

“Yes, but your old holiday holoshots aren’t the sort of thing the Company can sell to wealthy collectors,” Nennius pointed out. “He’s expecting you on the fifteenth.You’ll do famously, I’m quite sure. Good day, sir. You’ll excuse me, I trust; I have an engagement at the Cocoa Tree.”

He rose, took up a silver-headed walking stick and strolled out, leaving Lewis with the check.



In the dim gray hours of the fifteenth of the month, Lewis stepped down from the coach, caught his valise as the coachman threw it down to him, and looked blearily around at High Wycombe.

Its appearance lived up to its reputation as the capital of the British chair manufacturing industry.

There was a tavern that looked as though its interior was dark-paneled, low-beamed, and full of jostling upholsterers clutching leathern jacks of ale. It did not look as though it might be open and serving breakfast, however. Lewis sighed, and started the trudge to West Wycombe.

In spite of his worries, his spirits rose as he went along. The road was good, free of mudholes; the country rolling and wooded, beautiful in the brightening air. The dawn chorus of birds began. When the sun rose at last, it struck an answering gleam from a curious feature high on a hill: what appeared to be the steeple of a church, surmounted not with a cross but with a golden ball, like an echo of the sun itself.

“How charmingly neoclassical,” Lewis thought to himself, and was surprised, on accessing his database of local information, to discover that it was in fact St. Lawrence’s church, and had been “restored and improved” by Sir Francis Dashwood himself.

The birds sang on. The autumn meadows were full of gamboling hares, and fleecy sheep, and the occasional prosperous and happy-looking shepherd. Rose brambles were bright with scarlet fruit. When the great house came into view at last, that too was all sunlight and peace: a great Palladian mansion of golden stone, trimmed with white.

Lewis scanned the countryside for suspicious-looking altars, standing stones, or at least a wicker man or two. There weren’t any. No black hounds watched him from behind trees, either. Only, as he entered the park and started down the wide, pleasant drive, an elderly pug limping along on its solitary business stopped to regard him. It coughed at him in a querulous sort of way, and then lost interest in him and wandered on through drifts of fallen leaves.

At the end of the drive Lewis came to the tremendous entrance portico, Greek Revival looking strangely comfortable in its setting. Within, like an immense lawn jockey, a statue of Bacchus towered beside the door. Bacchus too looked comfortable. Lewis smiled nervously up at him as he knocked.

He gazed about as he waited for someone to open the door; there were panels painted with representations of scenes from classical literature, including one of Bacchus crowning Ariadne. Lewis was studying it with his head craned back, mouth agape, when the door was abruptly opened. He looked down and found himself being regarded by an elderly gentleman, far too well dressed to be a butler.

“You’re not the postman,” he said.

“No, sir. Your servant, sir!” Lewis removed his hat and bowed. “Lewis Owens. Is Lord leDespencer within?”

“He is,” said the gentleman. “Owens? You’d be the librarian?”

“I hope to be, sir,” said Lewis, drawing forth and offering his letter of introduction. The gentleman took it and waved him within in an absent-minded way, as he broke the seal and perused the letter’s contents. Lewis slid past him and set down his valise in the Great Hall.

He scanned, but was unable to pick up any currents of mortal agitation; only a droning like a well-run beehive, and fragments of mortal thought:… Just get them geraniums potted… it doesn’t hurt quite so much now, I shall he better presently… he asked for jugged hare special, and here you’ve gone and used up all the… damn, however shall I get that grease spot out?… I could quite fancy a cup of chocolate just now… see, he put all his money in barley futures, but…

Lewis tended to become enthralled by mortal dramas, however ordinary, so he was startled from his reverie when the gentleman said, without warning: “‘Vilia miretur valgus; mihi flavus Apollo—’”

“‘—Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua,’ ” responded Lewis automatically. The old gentleman smiled at him.

“I see your patron is not mistaken in you. My apologies, young man; the last candidate Sir Francis considered for the post was something of an impostor. Paul Whitehead, sir, at your service.”

“Whitehead, the author of Manners and other celebrated satires!” Lewis cried, bowing low. “Oh, sir, what an honor—”

They were interrupted at this moment by the butler hurrying in, hastily rearranging his cravat.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Whitehead—so sorry—is the gentleman a friend?”

“I think it likely,” said Mr. Whitehead, looking dazed. “You have, in fact, read something of mine? Good God, sir! And here I thought myself quite forgotten.”

He drew breath to laugh and coughed instead, a hard racking cough. John hurried forward to take his arm, but he held up his hand.

“I’m quite all right. Never mind, John. Come along, Mr. Owens; Sir Francis will be delighted to see you.”

He led Lewis through splendid rooms, all done in a rather old-fashioned Italian Renaissance style and perhaps with too many statues to be in the best of taste.

“My understanding was that the library was in some disarray,” said Lewis delicately.

“Well, it ought to be properly catalogued,” said Mr. Whitehead. “We never got around to it; and now that so many of the books from Medmenham have been conveyed over here—why, it is in a sad condition.”

Lewis cleared his throat. “That would be the, er, famous abbey?”

“Of the monks of St. Francis of Wycombe.” The old man rolled his eyes. “Famous, is it? I daresay. For a secret society, we had an extraordinary number of tattlers. Not that any of them are up to much lechery nowadays. But there it is: ‘In the days of me youth I could bill like a dove… tra la la la.’”

They emerged from the house into wide garden acreage, in which the neoclassical theme continued; temples, arches, and yet more statues, crowded around a lake. In the near foreground, however, a small and somewhat wobbly-looking pavilion of pink silk had been pitched on the lawn.

As they approached it, Lewis heard a man’s voice saying: “I shouldn’t do it, Francis. You will almost certainly have your left hand cut off by the Grand Turk.”

“Bad Francis,” said a child’s voice.

“I believe you’ve found your librarian, Francis,” said Mr. Whitehead, leading Lewis around to the front of the pavilion. Inside, seated on a Turkish carpet, were two tiny children, a dish of quartered oranges and sweetmeats, and a man in late middle age. He wore a dressing gown and a turban.

“What?” he said. “Oh. Pray excuse me; we’re being Arabs.”

“Quite all right,” said Lewis.

“May I present Mr. Lewis Owens, Sir Francis?” said Mr. Whitehead, not without a certain irony. “Mr. Owens—Lord leDespencer, Sir Francis Dashwood.”

Further introduction was delayed at this point, because the little boy lunged for the sweetmeats and crammed a fistful of them in his mouth quick as lightning, occasioning the little girl to scream shrilly: “Papa, he went and done it after all!”

“And may I present my children? Francis and Frances Dashwood.” Sir Francis clapped twice, and a nurse came from the portico. “I name them all after me; so like the Roman custom, don’t you think? Take them back to the harem, Mrs. Willis. Fanny, remember your manners. What must we do when we meet infidel gentlemen?”

The little girl drew a curtain over her head, then rose to her feet and made an unsteady curtsey. The nurse scooped up the baby, levered the gooball of sweets out of his mouth with a practiced hand, and bore him away despite his screams of rage. The little girl followed her, tripping only once on the trailing curtain.

“Won’t you sit down, Mr. Owens?” said Sir Francis, indicating the carpet beside him. Mr. Whitehead had already gone to the portico and fetched himself a garden chair.

“With gratitude, sir,” said Lewis, crawling awkwardly into the tent. Sir Francis offered him the dish, and he helped himself to an orange quarter. Seen close to, Sir Francis looked nothing like a notorious rake and blasphemer; he had a good-natured face, with shrewd eyes and none of the bloated fogginess of the habitual drinker.

“Here’s his letter,” said Mr. Whitehead, handing it to Sir Francis, who held it out at arm’s length and peered at it.

“Why, sir, you come to us highly recommended,” he said after a moment. “It would appear you are quite the scholar.”

“Dr. Franklin is too kind,” said Lewis, doing his best to look abashed.

“And you’ve some experience restoring old papers! That’s an excellent thing; for, you know, some of my library is exceeding rare and, like mortal flesh, prone to crumble with age.” Sir Francis tucked the letter into his pocket and gave Lewis a sidelong look. “I suppose you were, er, advised as to its nature?”

“Oh.” Lewis blushed. “Yes. Yes, my lord, I was.”

“I don’t imagine you’re a prudish young fellow; Franklin would scarce have sent you if you were inclined that way. Mr. Williams was a sad disappointment, yes indeed; let us hope his successor fares better.” Sir Francis took up a piece of orange and bit into it.

“I expect you have heard stories, of course,” he added.

“Er—yes,” said Lewis. Sir Francis chortled.

“Most of them are wildest exaggeration. Yet we had some rare times in our day, Paul, had we not? Good food, good drink, good company. Taste the sweets of life, my boy, whilst you’re able; for all too soon we fade like summer flowers.”

“Too soon indeed,” said Mr. Whitehead with a sigh. “Albeit a firm belief in eternal life in the hereafter is a great comfort.”

“Quite so,” Sir Francis agreed, looking solemn. “Still, we’re not entirely withered yet, hey? I was thinking only the other evening, we really ought to have another ‘chapter meeting’ with some of our brother monks.” He winked broadly at Lewis. “Quite a bit of fun, and really nothing of which to be ashamed. Paul knows of a respectable house with the most agreeable, good-natured girls—charmers all, discreet, free of the pox, but with a certain amount of intellectual furniture, you know.”

“Ah! Like the hetaerae of ancient Greece?” Lewis inquired.

“Exactly!” said Sir Francis, and seized his hand and shook it enthusiastically. “Just so. And, after all in men of our years, good conversation hath its virtue too. Not that I expect a young man to believe me.”

He popped a sweetmeat in his mouth and crawled out of the tent on hands and knees. “Come along,” he said briskly. “We’ll show you the library.”



Lewis found himself employed. It couldn’t have been easier; he had a pleasant room, was free to keep his own hours, and had a place at Sir Francis’s table. On his second evening in residence he had a difficult encounter with a dish of syllabub that proved to contain gooseberries, but managed to ignore the flashing lights and keep smiling at his host’s witticisms. And the library was a treasure trove.

It was true that a great deal of it consisted of erotica, inclining to the eclectic rather than the perverse. Lewis found a splendid copy of the earliest translation into English of the Kama Sutra. And the library certainly needed putting into order: Gulliver’s Travels jostled for shelf space with books on the Kabbalah, or on architecture, or Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, or Ovid’s Amores. There were indeed a couple of fairly ancient scrolls and codices: a second-century copy of Euripides’ The Bacchae, and a copy of Aristophanes’ The Frogs that was nearly as old.

There were a few fakes, too, most notably a work on alchemy purporting to have been written by Aristotle; these were well done, clearly by a someone who had had access to a cache of very old papyrus and knew a few tricks for compounding period-formula inks. Lewis recognized the hand of a certain forger active in the last century, who had worked from the Eugenikos manuscripts. This unknown Russian was quite a celebrity in the faked document trade; Lewis, noting that Sir Francis had traveled to Russia in his youth, suspected that he may have been sold a number of phonies from the same artist.

At the end of a week, he sat down at his artfully concealed field credenza and sent the message:



DASHWOOD MISSION SUCCESS SO FAR. HAVE GAINED ACCESS TO LIBRARY. MUCH TO INTEREST COMPANY INVESTORS! WILL REQUIRE TWO DRUMS PAPYRO-FIX AND ONE OF PARCH-FIX. KINDLY SHIP BY EARLIEST POST.

HOWEVER, NO SIGN OF QUOTE ELEUSINIAN MYSTERY SCROLL UNQUOTE. NO SIGN OF PAGAN ORGIES YET. NO ORGIES OF ANY KIND, IN FACT. SUGGEST INFORMANT MISTAKEN?



After an hour the reply came back, in glaring yellow letters:



PAPYRO-FIX AND PARCH-FIX HAVE SHIPPED.

LOOK HARDER, LEWIS.



“This is excellent bacon, my lord,” said Lewis, at the breakfast table.

“Eh?” Sir Francis looked up from watching the nurse attempting to feed his offspring porridge. “Ah. Good pigs hereabouts.”

Lewis wondered how to gracefully transition from pigs to the subject at hand, and couldn’t think of a way.

“I wondered, my lord, whether (since it is the Sabbath) I might not have the day to walk in the gardens,” he said.

“What? Oh, by all means!” said Sir Francis. “Yes, you’ll enjoy that. A man of classical education will find much to engage his attention,” he added, winking so broadly that his little daughter was fascinated, and sat there at table practicing outrageous winks, until her nurse quelled her with a deadly look.

Lewis slipped forth after breakfast and had hoped to spend a profitable day spying out likely places where a scroll might be hidden, but he had got no farther than the Temple of Venus when Sir Francis popped out of a folly.

“There you are! It occurred to me that you’d benefit from a guide; there’s rather a lot to see,” he cried heartily.

“You’re too kind, my lord,” said Lewis, concealing his irritation.

“Oh, not at all.” Sir Francis cleared his throat a little self-consciously and went on: “Well! The temple of Venus. Note, sir, the statue.”

“Which one?” Lewis inquired politely, for there were before him nearly thirty figures decorating the slope up to the temple, among the bright fallen leaves: boys bearing shields, various smaller figures of fauns, nymphs, cherubs, and what looked suspiciously like a contingent of garden gnomes.

“Venus herself,” said Sir Francis, leading the way up the hill. “The one actually in the temple, you see? Regard the rather better execution than in all the little figures; I got those at a bargain price, though, by God. Someone’s plaster yard in Genoa had gone bankrupt and was closing out its stock. This, sir, is a copy of the Venus de Medici; rather fine, don’t you think?”

“Profoundly so,” said Lewis, wondering whether Sir Francis was guiding him away from something. Sir Francis stepped back and swung his hand up to point at the dome of the temple.

“And, see there? Look closely. It’s a little hard to make out, at this angle, but that’s Leda and Jove in the guise of a swan.”

Lewis stepped back and looked.

“Oh,” he said. “Oh! Well. She, er, certainly looks happy.”

“I think the sculptor caught perfectly the combination of ecstatic convulsion and divine-regarding reverie,” said Sir Francis. “Pity we can’t have it down here where it might be better viewed, but… well, perhaps better not. Awkward to explain to the children.”

“I expect it would be, yes.”

“And down here we put Venus’s Parlor,” Sir Francis went on. “That one represents Mercury, you see? Rather an ironic reminder to incautious youth. Observe the many elegant references to sweet Venus’s portal of bliss, or, as some have called it, the Gate of Life itself, whence we all are come.”

“How evocative, my lord,” said Lewis, stammering rather.

“And that yonder is a temple to the nymph Daphne,” said Sir Francis, pointing. “Must have the laurels trimmed back somewhat, so as to disclose it with more art. I put that in during my druidical days.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Was going to worship trees, once,” said Sir Francis. “Applied to Stukeley—the Head Druid, you know—for initiation and all that. Got a charter to start up a grove, as it happened; but they grew vexed with me and withdrew it. No sense of humor, those fellows.”

“Not the eighteenth-century ones, at any rate,” Lewis murmured.

“And I don’t know that I see much to worship in mere trees, in any case,” said Sir Francis. “They’re not good company, eh?” He nudged Lewis. “Same thing with the Freemasons; I always did my best to behave with them, but ’pon my soul I couldn’t keep a straight face. Though I trust I give no offense, sir?”

“Oh, none, I assure you.”

“I suppose I ought to have inquired whether you were a Christian,” said Sir Francis.

“I frankly own myself a pagan,” confided Lewis. “Though I have Christian friends.”

“Oh, I too! I’d never mock Christ himself, you know; it’s the institution I can’t abide. Loathsome, cruel, sanctimonious greedy hypocrites! But regard my little church up there, on the hill; what d’you think of that, sir, hey?”

“I did wonder what the golden ball was for,” said Lewis.

“It represents the Sun,” said Sir Francis. “To my mind, much the more appropriate symbol for the ‘Light of the World,’ wouldn’t you say? But certain folk took umbrage, of course. Though I expect I only made things worse by having drinking parties up there, for I had it built hollow, you know, with seats inside. Then I slipped and nearly broke my neck climbing down out of it… dear, dear.” He began to snicker shamefacedly. “Still, you ought to have seen the vicar’s expression!”

They walked on a little, and Sir Francis pointed out the lake, with its swans and authentic fleet of small ships, useful for mock sea battles at parties (“Though last time a fire broke out—burning wadding flew everywhere—so we haven’t fired the cannons in years”). On an island in the center of the lake was another folly, with yet more statues.

“Looks rather like the temple of Vesta in Rome,” Lewis observed.

Hastily he added, “At least, as it might have looked before it became a ruin.”

“Ah! You saw that, did you?” said Sir Francis. “Very good! That was my intent, you know. You are a scholar, sir. I sketched the ruins myself, once. Dearly loved classical Rome when I was a young man. Still think its religion was quite the most sensible men have ever made for themselves.”

“You know, I’ve thought that too,” said Lewis.

“Have you?” Sir Francis turned to him, positively beaming. “Their gods are so like us, you know; ordinary people, with faults and family quarrels. Some of them quite dreadful, but others rather endearing. Much more likely to have made this dirty, silly world than some remote Perfection in th’ether. Or wouldn’t you say?”

“It has always seemed that way to me,” said Lewis, thinking wistfully of his human ancestry. He considered Sir Francis, and decided to cast out a hook. “Of course, there wasn’t much prospect of an afterlife for mere mortals in antiquity.”

“Not so!” said Sir Francis. “Or what would you make of the Eleusinian Mysteries, then?”

Lewis drew a deep breath and thanked Mercury, god of schemers.

“Well, what can one make, my lord? The Eleusinian rites are unknown, because their initiates were sworn to secrecy,” he said.

“Ha! I can tell you how much an oath of secrecy’s worth,” said Sir Francis, shaking his head. “Depend upon it, my young friend, people blabbed. Life everlasting was offered to mortals long before St. Paul and his cronies claimed the idea.”

True enough, thought Lewis, reflecting on the Company’s immortality process. “So it’s rumored, my lord; but, alas, we’ve not a shred of proof for that, have we?”

“That’s as may be,” said Sir Francis blandly. “If I were to tell you that there are certain sacred groves in Italy where satyrs yet dance, you’d think me mad; yet I have seen something pretty near to them. Ay, and nymphs, too!”

Lewis did his best to look like a man of the world. “Well, I could name you a nymph or two here in England, if it comes to that,” he said, attempting a nudge and wink. Sir Francis clapped him on the back.

“I dare say you could! Yes, we really must have another chapter meeting. I’ll sponsor you, if you like.”

“Oh, sir, what kindness!”

“Not at all,” said Sir Francis, looking immensely pleased. “We’ve needed some young blood in our ranks. I’ll send to Twickenham for Whitehead; he’ll arrange it.”



Lewis looked at the box of fragments and shook his head sadly. The pornographic papyrus was in shocking condition, nearly as bad as some of the Dead Sea scrolls would be; though this damage seemed due to recent abuse of some kind. Worse still, some of the little bits were gummed together with something, and it wasn’t gooseberry jam. Lewis had begun to have a queasy notion as to the circumstances of his immediate predecessor’s departure.

“Well, let’s see if we can’t put things to rights,” he muttered to himself, and set out the larger pieces. Three nymphs, five satyrs, and… possibly a horse? And a flute player? And a lot of bunches of grapes. Three sets of unattached, er, bits. Part of a… duck?

Frowning, the tip of his tongue between his teeth in intense concentration, Lewis sorted through all the fragments of wildly posturing limbs. With a cyborg’s speed in analysis, he began to assemble the bits of the puzzle.

“There… and he goes there and she goes there and… no, that doesn’t look anatomically possible, does it? Ah. But if this leg goes up this way… no, that’s an elbow… oh, it’s a centaur! Well, that makes much more sense. Silly me.”

The door to the library opened, admitting a draft and Sir Francis. Lewis spread out his hands to prevent the reassembled orgy scene from sailing across the tabletop.

“There you are, Owens,” Sir Francis said. He sounded a trifle hesitant. Lewis looked up at him sharply, but he did not meet Lewis’s gaze; instead he kept his eyes on the papyrus as he approached.

“Well! H’em. What a splendid job you’re doing! Deplorable state that one was in; should have had this seen to ages ago, I suppose. But, then, I’ve been busy these last years bringing myrtles to Venus myself, rather than reading about other people doing it. Eh?”

“Very wise, my lord.”

He pulled out a chair and sat at the table, looking on in silence a moment as Lewis went back to fitting fragments together.

“I remember acquiring that one as though it were yesterday,” Sir Francis said. “I was seeing Naxos. My guide was a shrewd man; you could trust him to find you absolutely anything. Girls fair or dark, plump or slender, whatever your mood; and the very best houses for drinking, you know, whether you wanted wine or stronger spirits. If you wanted to see temples, he could find those too; and I had but to mention that I was interested in antiquities, and, by God, sir, he showed me…”

“A certain shop?” said Lewis, carefully applying Papyro-Fix from a plain jar, with a tiny brush. He fitted two fragments together. They reunited so perfectly it would have been impossible to say where they had been sundered. “A dark little place down a winding street?”

“Look at that! I declare, sir, you are a very physician of books!… But no, it wasn’t such a shop. I’ve seen those places; they’re all too eager to snare a young fool on his first Grand Tour, and sell him Homer’s very lyre and Caesar’s own laurels to boot. All impostures, you may be certain. No… this was another sort of place entirely.”

Lewis was silent, waiting for him to continue. He looked up and saw Sir Francis gazing out the window, where the autumn forest showed now black branches through the drifting red and gold.

“The man led me up a mountainside,” said Sir Francis. “A mountain of golden stone, only thinly greened over with little gnarled holm oaks, and with some sort of herb that gave off an aromatic perfume in the sunlight. And, what sunlight! White as diamond, clear and hot. The sunlight of the very morning of the world. Transparent air, and the dome of blue overhead so deep a man could drown in it.

“Well, the path was less than a goatpath, and we climbed for the best part of an hour, through thorns half the time, and how I cursed the fellow! He kept pointing out a little white house, far up the mountainside, lonely and abandoned-looking. But I followed him, very surly indeed as you may imagine by the time we’d gained the house at last.

“Up there it was a little better; there was a great old fig tree that cast pleasant shade. I threw myself down in the coolness and panted, as an eagle sailed past—at eye level, sir—and the sea so far below was nothing but a blue mist, with little atomies of ships plying to and fro.

“I could hear murmuring coming from the house, but no other noises at all, not so much as the cry of a bird, and the drone of the insects had ceased. It was all very like a dream, you know; and it became more so when I got to my feet and went inside.

“There in the cool and the dark, a row of antique faces regarded me. They were only the heads of statues that had been ranged along a shelf, but upon my life I took them for persons at first, perhaps interrupted in conversation.

“My guide introduced the old man and his daughter. He’d been a scholar, evidently—dug amongst the ruins and through forgotten places to amass his collection—penniless now, and selling off the better pieces when he could find buyers. She was a beauty. Very Greek, gray-eyed and proud. Brought me a cup of cold water with all the grace of Hebe.

“Well, we commenced to do business. I’d a well-lined purse—stupid thing to carry in such country, of course, but some god or other protects young idiots from harm. He sold me the scrolls at once. His daughter brought out a few painted urns, very fine some of them, and I bought one or two. I had my man ask if there were any more. They talked that over between them, the father and his girl, and at last she signed for us to follow her.

“We went out through the back of the house. There was a spring, trickling from the rock, and a sort of pergola joining the back of the house to a grotto there. It was all deep in vine-shade, with the little green grapes hanging down. Blessedly refreshing. That Achaean charmer led me back into the shadows, and I was upon point of seeing whether I might coax a kiss from her when—there—on my life and honor, sir, I tell you I looked on the face of God.”

“What did you see?” said Lewis, enthralled.

“I think it must have been a little temple, once,” said Sir Francis. “It certainly felt sacred to me. There were figures carved at the back of the grotto, into the living rock; Bacchus with all his train of satyrs and nymphs, coming to the rescue of Ariadne. Primitive, but I tell you, sir, the artist could do faces. The revelers were so jolly, you wanted to laugh with them—and, oh, the young Divinity, immortal and human all at once, smiling so kindly on that poor girl, seduced and deserted on her island! Holding out his hand to save her, and, in his compassion, granting her the golden crown of eternal life.

“It was a revelation, sir. That’s what a God ought to be, I said to myself: wild joy in flesh and blood! And, being flesh and blood, generous enough to preserve we wretched mortals from death’s affliction.

“I was desperate to buy the panel, but it wasn’t to be had; no indeed. The girl had brought me in there simply to show some few small bronzes, stacked on the floor for want of room in the cottage. I sought by gestures to convey I wished to break the figures free of the wall; she understood well enough, and favored me with a look that nearly froze my blood.You’ll think me a booby, sir, but I wept.

“I never close my eyes at night but I see that grotto still. I have had the god’s likeness made many times, by some tolerably good painters, and bought me several images of him; yet none can compare with his countenance as I saw it on that bright morning in my youth.

“And I cannot but believe that, for a brief moment on that morning, I escaped this world’s confines and walked in the realm of the ineffable.”

“An enchanting story, my lord,” said Lewis. He looked down at the bits of paper before him, fragments of some long-dead mortal’s imagination.

How different their perception is, from ours. How I wish…

“Not the story I came in here to tell, alas,” said Sir Francis, looking sheepish. “The past rules the present when you reach my age; you’ll understand in your time, my boy. I, er, haven’t quite been able to arrange the party. Not the initiation party into the Order, in any case. Paul’s been ill, and our friend Dr. Franklin sends his regrets, but he’s otherwise engaged—still trying to salvage something from this calamity with the Americans, I’ve no doubt.”

“I quite understand,” said Lewis.

“And Bute’s quite taken up with his gardening now… Montagu sent word he’d certainly come, but for the entertainment he owes his guest—you’ve heard of Omai, the wild South Seas fellow? Captain Cook brought him back for show, and he’s been feted in all the best homes. I said, bring him with you; we’ll initiate a noble savage! But it seems his time’s all bespoke with garden parties… well. You see how it is.”

“Quite,” said Lewis. “Perhaps another time, then.”

“Oh, indeed! In point of fact, sir…” Sir Francis turned his head to peer at the doorway, then turned back and spoke with lowered voice. “I had contemplated something else, a rather more exclusive affair entirely. We haven’t had one in a while; but now and again the need presents itself, and you being such an agreeable pagan, I thought…”

Lewis, scarcely believing his luck, put down the brush and leaned forward.

“This wouldn’t have anything to do with a certain mystery we spoke of in the garden, would it?”

“Yes! Yes! You understand?” Sir Francis looked desperately hopeful.

“I believe I do, my lord. Trust me, you may count on my discretion,” said Lewis, setting a finger beside his nose.

“Oh, good. Although, you know…” Sir Francis leaned in and spoke so low that if he hadn’t been a cyborg, Lewis couldn’t have made out what he was saying. “It won’t be quite as, er, jolly as the services at the abbey. Perhaps we’ll have a little dinner party first, just to warm us up, but then things will be rather solemn. I hope you won’t be disappointed.”

“I’m sure I shan’t be,” said Lewis.

When Sir Francis had left, after several winks, nudges, and hoarse declarations of the need for utter secrecy, Lewis jumped up and did a buck-and-wing down the length of the library.



There were certain comings and goings over the next week, nothing to indicate anything out of the ordinary to the unsuspecting observer, but significant. Sir Francis packed his present mistress, the children and their nurses off to Bath, with a great many sloppy kisses and endearments. Guests arrived at odd hours: Sir Francis’s half-brother John, and another elderly gentleman who turned out to be a Regius Professor of Civil Law.

Lewis, placidly piecing together ancient carnal acrobatics, scanned the household as he worked, and picked up more snippets of information. He learned that the seamstress had been given a great deal of last-minute work to do, because someone’s costume hadn’t been tried on in three years and didn’t fit anymore. A young pig was driven over from an outlying farm and made a nasty mess in the kitchen garden, about which the cook complained; then Sir Francis himself went down and slaughtered it, somewhat inexpertly, judging from the noise and the complaints of the laundress who had to get the blood out of his garments.

The gardener was sent off with a shovel and wheelbarrow, and was gone all day, and grumbled when he returned; the footman and butler loaded a table and several chairs into a wagon, and drove them away somewhere.



Lewis was applying Parch-Fix to a codex purporting to tell the secrets of the Vestal Virgins when he heard the trumpets announcing a coach’s arrival. He scanned; yes, a coach was coming up the drive, containing five… no, six mortals.

He set the brush down and closed his eyes, the better to focus.

Jingling ring of metal-shod wheels on gravel, with dreadful tooth-grinding clarity. The hollow thunder of the horse’s hooves slowing to distinct clop-clop-clop, like the final drops in a rain shower, counterpointed by slippered feet crossing the marble floor of the entry hall in the house below.

Boom! Sir Francis seemed incapable of using a door without flinging it wide.

“Ladies! Ladies, my charmers, my beauties, welcome, welcome one and all! Dear Mrs. Digby, it has been an age! How d’ye do? By Venus and her son, my dear, you’re looking well!”

“La, bless you, my lord, and ain’t you the ’oney-tongued flatterer!”

“Never in the world, sweetheart. Sukey! Pretty Bess! My arm, ladies, pray step down, mind your gown there—welcome once again—ah, Joan, you did come after all! We’d have missed you sorely. A kiss for thee, my love—and who’s this? A new rose in the bouquet?”

“That’s our young miss. Ain’t been with us long. We reckoned she’d do for— ” And here the voice dropped to a whisper, but Lewis made it out: “For our you-know-who.”

“Ah!” Sir Francis likewise resorted to an undertone. “Then a chaste kiss for you, fair child. Welcome! Where’s Mr. Whitehead?”

“I’m just getting my hat—”

“A word in your ear, my lord—’e ain’t well. ’Ad a fainting fit and frighted us something awful. Sukey brought ’im round with a little gin, but ’e’s that pale—”

“I know—I know, my dear, but—Ah, here you are, Paul! What a rascal you are, swiving yourself into collapse with a carriageful of beauties! Eh? I declare, you’re like a spawning salmon. Couldn’t wait until tonight, could you?”

“’Ere then, dearie, you just take my arm—”

“What nonsense—I’m perfectly well—”

“Bess, you take ’is other arm—come now, lovey, we’ll just go inside for a bit of a lie-down afore dinner, zoon’t we?”

“Perhaps that would be best—”

“Yes, let’s give this rampant stallion a rest before the next jump. John! Have Mrs. Fitton send up a restorative.”

“At once, my lord.”

The voices louder now, because everyone had come indoors, but more muffled and indistinct. Lewis pushed back from the table and tilted his head this way and that, until he could pick up sounds clearly once more. There was Sir Francis, whispering again: “—looks dreadful, poor creature. We ought to have done this sooner.”

“’E looked well enough this fortnight past, when ’e was down to London. My sister’s ’usband, ’e done just the same—sound as a bell at Christmas, and we buried ’im at Twelfth Night. Well, we must just ’ope for the best, that’s what my mother used to say, my lord. What think you of the girl?”

“A little obscured by the veil, but she seems a pretty creature. She’s observed all the… er…?”

“Yes, my lord, you may be sure of that. And you ’ave a boy?”

“A capital boy! You shall meet him presently.”

“Oh, good, ’cos I didn’t care for’t’ other young gentleman at all…”

Lewis sneezed, breaking his focus and sending a bit of Vestal Virgin flying. “Drat,” he muttered. He got down on hands and knees to retrieve her from under the table and wondered once again, as he did so, just what exactly had happened to his predecessor.

Any unease he might have felt, however, was being rapidly overpowered by a certain sense of hopeful anticipation. A dinner party composed almost entirely of old men and nubile and willing ladies! Was it possible his perpetual bad luck was about to change, if only for an evening’s bliss?



He had repaired the Vestal Virgins and was busily pasting the spine back on a copy of A New Description of Merryland when Sir Francis’s butler entered the library, bearing a cloak draped over his arm.

“I beg your pardon, sir, but my lord requests your presence in the garden. You are to wear this.” He held up the cloak, which had a capacious hood.

“Ah! A fancy dress party, is it?” Lewis took the cloak and slung it around his shoulders. The hood fell forward, blinding him. John, unsmiling, adjusted it.

“If you say so, sir. You want to go out by the east door.”

“Right-ho! I’m on my way,” said Lewis, and trooped off with an eager heart.

In the garden he encountered a huddle of other cloaked figures, and was greeted by the foremost of them, who in speaking revealed himself as Sir Francis: “That you, young Owens? We’re just waiting for the ladies, bless ’em. Ah, they approach!”

Indeed, a procession was winding its way around the side of the house. Lewis saw five cloaked figures, and the foremost carried a torch held high. The gentlemen bowed deeply. Lewis followed suit.

“Goddess,” said Sir Francis, “We mortals greet you with reverence and longing. Pray grant us your favor!”

“My favor thou shalt ’ave, mortal,” said she of the blazing torch. “Come with me to yon ’allowed shrine, and I shall teach thee my ’oly mystery.”

“Huzzay!” said the old Regius Professor, under his breath. He gave Lewis a gleeful dig in the ribs. His elbow was rather sharp and Lewis found it quite painful. All discomfort fled, however, when a little cloaked figure came and took his hand.

They paired up, a lady to each gentleman. Sir Francis took the arm of the torch-bearer, and led them away through the night in solemn procession, like a troupe of elderly Guy Fawkes pranksters. The line broke only once, when one of the gentlemen stumbled and began to cough; they stopped and waited until he recovered himself, and then moved on.

Lewis, checking briefly by infrared, saw that the procession was moving in the general direction of the high hill crowned by the Church of the Golden Ball. Most of his attention was turned on the girl who walked beside him. Her hand was warm; she was young, and shapely, and walked with a light step. He wondered what she looked like.

The procession did not climb the hill, but wound around its base. Presently Lewis was able to drag his attention away from the girl long enough to observe another church that lay straight ahead of them, seemingly dug into the hill. As they drew closer, he saw that it was only a façade of flint, built to conceal the entrance to a tunnel.

The famous Hellfire Caves! thought Lewis, and his heartbeat quickened.

They entered through gates, to a long tunnel cut through chalk, and here they must go single file. To his amazement, Lewis felt his racing heart speed into a full-blown panic attack; it was all he could do not to break from the line and run. He scanned the strata above his head: wet chalk, fractured and unstable. Plenty of rational reasons to fear this place; no need to summon demons from the unconscious…

The little girl reached forward and gave his hand a squeeze. It made him feel better.

They followed the tunnel gradually downhill, past niches opening off to the left, and then around in a loop that seemed to have taken them in a complete circle. It was black as pitch but for the torch flaring ahead of them, and silent, and damp, and cold as the grave. Another long straight descent; then a tight maze of turns and multiple openings where anyone but a cyborg might have had difficulty keeping a sense of direction. But now light showed ahead, down a straight passage, and Lewis picked up the scent of food.

They emerged into a great open chamber, well lit by flaring torches. Four figures stood perfectly motionless against the far wall. Each was draped in a black veil that dropped from the crown of the head nearly to the floor, in long straight lines. Each wore a mask. Two were black and featureless; two were painted in black and gold, resembling insect faces.

In the center of the room, looking incongruous, was a dining table set for ten.

Sir Francis’s voice boomed into the silence, shattering the tension with echoes: “And now, a pause in our solemnities! Supper in Hell, my friends! Though I promise you, you shall not be long tantalized. Tantalus, hey? In Hades? D’y’ get the joke?”

“What a witty fellow you are, my lord, to be sure,” said the lady with the torch dryly. She threw back her hood to reveal a svelte woman in early middle age. Her hair was a flaming and unnatural red. Painted, plastered, and upholstered as she was, she had nonetheless maintained a certain charm.

All the party now threw off their cloaks, and Lewis blinked in surprise. The gentlemen, himself excepted, wore white jackets and pantaloons, as well as extraordinary floppy blue and red hats embroidered on the front with the words Love and Friendship. The ladies wore white robes, cut in what must have been intended as a Greek fashion; all save the youngest, who, like Lewis, wore ordinary street dress. Her features remained hidden by her veil, however.

“It’s cold in here,” complained a buxom wench somewhat past her prime. “Why couldn’t we done this at the Abbey? It’s ever so nice there. Remember the times we used to have?”

“I know, my dear, a thousand apologies—” said Sir Francis. “But the Abbey’s not so convenient as it was, I fear—”

“And we ain’t a-doing of our sacred rites in no profane place, Sukey Foster, so just you shut your cake’ole,” reproved her mistress. She cast a somewhat anxious eye upon Sir Francis. “All the same, dearie, I ’ope I’ll get a cushion to put under my bum this time? That altar ain’t ’arf cold and ’ard.”

“Everything has been seen to, dear Demeter,” Sir Francis assured her. “Very kind of you, I’m sure, Lord ’Ermes,” she replied. Gazing around at the assembled party, she spotted Lewis. “’Ere now! Is ’e the…?”

“Yes,” Sir Frances replied.

“Well, ain’t you the pretty fellow!” Demeter pinched Lewis’s cheek.

“Might we perhaps sit?” said the old professor. “My leg is positively throbbing, after that march.”

“Yes, please,” said Whitehead faintly. He looked sweating and sick, a ghastly contrast with his clownish attire. Lewis scanned him, and winced; the mortal was terminally ill.

They shuffled to their places. To his disappointment, Lewis found himself seated far down the table from the little girl in the veil. The masked figures, who had been still as statues until now, came to life and served in eerie silence. A whole roast pig was brought from a side passage, as well as a dish of fruit sauce, loaves of barley bread, and oysters. Chocolate was poured from silver urns. (“No wine?” said the professor in disappointment. Sir Francis and Madam Demeter gave him identical looks of disapproval, and he blushed and muttered “Oh! So sorry—forgot.”)

Lewis, cold, hungry, and depressed, took a reckless gulp of chocolate and at once felt the rush of Theobromine elevating his spirits.

They feasted. Perhaps to make up for the lack of alcoholic cheer, the mortal party became terrifically loud, in riotous laughter and bawdy witticisms that made Lewis blush for the veiled girl. She sat in silence at her end of the table, except for once when she began to lift her veil and: “’Ere! Just you keep your face covered, girl!” said Madam Demeter.

“’Ow the bloody ’ell am I supposed to eat anything?” the girl demanded.

“You pushes the cloth forward, and slips little bites under, like you was a proper lady,” explained Sukey. “That’s how I done it, when it was me.”

The girl said nothing more, but folded her arms in a monumental sulk. Lewis, well into his second cup of chocolate and with his cyborg nervous system now definitely under the influence of Theobromine, regarded her wistfully. He thought she looked enchanting. He wondered if he could rescue her from her degrading life.

How to do it?… Not enough money in the departmental budget. They’d all laugh at me anyway. But what if I went to one of the gambling houses? I could count cards. Prohibited of course but the Facilitator class operatives do it all the time, for extra pocket money. Nennius himself, in fact. Win enough to set her up with, with a shop or something. Poor child…

“Have another slice of this excellent pork, my boy!” roared Sir Frances, reaching across to slap meat on his plate. “And you haven’t tried the fruit sauce! It’s sublime!”

“Thanks,” Lewis shouted back, leaning out of the way as a servant buried the pork in dollops of fruit compote. He leaned back in, took up a spoon, and began shoveling compote into his mouth, aware he needed to take in solid food.

No sooner had he set the spoon down, however, than the red letters began to flash before his eyes with all the vividness of migraine distortion: TOXIC RESPONSE ALERT!

“God Apollo,” he groaned. Peering down at his plate, he made out one or two gooseberry seeds in the syrupy mess, when the flashing letters allowed him to see anything. “What have I done to myself?”

He sat very still and waited for the flashing to stop, but it didn’t seem to; too late, he wondered if the Theobromine might have combined badly with whatever it was in the gooseberries to which his organic body objected.

Judge, then, with what sense of dread he heard the ping-ping-ping of spoon against water glass, and the creaking chair as Sir Francis rose to his feet to say: “Now, my dears! Now, my esteemed brothers in revelry! Let us put aside our jollity! Our sacred business begins!”

“Huzzay!” shrieked the old professor.

“A little more decorum, sir, if you please,” said Madam Demeter. “This is a solemn h’occasion, ain’t it?”

“I’m sorry, my dear, it’s my sense of enthusiasm—”

“Quite understandable, sir,” said Sir Francis. “But we ought to remember that we have a new celebrant amongst us, who, though but a youth, has shown a true spirit of—er—Mr. Owens, are you quite all right?”

Lewis opened his eyes to behold a revolving wheel of faces staring at him, peeping in and out between the flashing red letters.

“Quite,” he said, and gave what he hoped was a confident smile. The smile went on longer than he had intended it to; he had the distinct impression it was turning into a leer and dripping down one side of his face.

“Ah; very well then; I think we’ll commence. Brothers and sisters! Let us drink together from the cup that will bind us in immortality,” said Sir Francis, and Lewis was aware that a servant was stepping up behind him and leaning down to offer something. Blinking at it, he beheld a figured wine krater, a modern copy, showing Bacchus rescuing Ariadne. He took it and drank.

Water, barley, pennyroyal… a memory buried for fifteen hundred years floated up into his consciousness. Lewis tasted it again.

“The kykeon!” he exclaimed, rather more loudly than he had meant to. “And you’ve even got the formula right! Well done!”

In the absolute silence that followed, he became aware that everyone was staring at him. You idiot, Lewis! he thought, and meekly passed the krater to Sir Francis. All the others at table drank without speaking. When the empty krater had been placed in the center of the table at last, Sir Francis cleared his throat.

“The time has come. Behold my caduceus.”

This provoked a shrill giggle from the professor, quickly shushed by the ladies on either side of him.

“If you ain’t going to take this seriously, you didn’t ought to be here,” said Bess severely.

Lewis peered and made out that Sir Francis had produced a staff from somewhere and was holding it up. It was in fact a caduceus, very nicely carved, and the twining serpents’ scales had been gilded, and their eyes set with faceted stones that glittered in the torchlight.

“I speak now as Hermes, servant of Jove,” said Sir Francis. “I but do his immortal will.”

“And I am Demeter, goddess of all that grows,” intoned the lady, with a theatrical flourish. “’Ow weary I am, after the bountiful ’arvest! I will sleep. I trust in Jove; no ’arm shall come to my dear daughter Persephone, ’oo wanders on Nysa’s flowery plain.”

Sir Francis indicated to Lewis that he ought to rise. Lewis got up so hastily his chair fell backward with a crash, and he was only prevented from going with it by the masked servant, who steadied him. The veiled girl rose, too, and dragged from beside her chair a basket.

“I am Persephone, goddess of the spring,” she announced. “Blimey, what a lovely great flower do I see! I shall pick it straightaway!”

Sir Francis took Lewis by the arm and led him to the dark mouth of another tunnel, opposite the one by which they had entered. Persephone followed on tiptoe, grabbing a torch from one of the wall sockets as she came. They went down the tunnel a few yards, and stopped. Persephone drew a deep breath and screamed at the top of her lungs: “Owwwwww! What dark god is this ’oo ravishes me away from the light of the world? Ow, ’elp, ’elp, will nobody ’ear my distress? Father Jove, where art thou?”

“Quickly now,” Sir Francis whispered, and they hurried on through the darkness, around a corner, around another and another, deeper into the labyrinth, and Lewis heard water rushing somewhere ahead. They passed through another, smaller chamber, where there was a low stone altar; Lewis nearly fell over it, but Sir Francis caught him again and the girl took his other arm. Somehow they made it into the next passage and shortly came out into another chamber.

“The river Styx,” announced Sir Francis, with a wave of his caduceus. “Here Hermes of the winged heels can conduct no farther. Away! He flits! He flies, back to lofty Olympus!” Throwing out his arms and springing into air with quite a remarkable balletic grace for a man his age, even crossing his ankles before he came down, and landing so lightly that his wig scarcely moved on his head, he turned and ran back up the passageway.

Lewis stood staring after him. The girl tugged on his sleeve.

“We’re supposed to get in the boat,” she said.

Lewis turned around to look. They stood on the edge of a dark stream that rushed through the cavern. On the farther shore was the entrance to yet another black passage. Before them was moored a quaint little boat, beautifully if morbidly carved with skulls and crossed bones, painted in black and gold.

“Oh,” said Lewis. “Yes, of course! But where’s Charon?”

“’Oo?” said Persephone.

“The ferryman,” said Lewis, making punting motions.

“Oh. Nobody told me nothing about no ferrymen; I reckon you’re supposed to get us across,” said the girl.

“Right! Yes! In we go, then,” said Lewis, who was finding the red flashes subsiding somewhat, but in their place was an increasing urge to giggle. “My hand, madam! Yo-heave-ho and hoist the anchor!”

“’Ere, are you all right?” The girl squinted at him through her veil.

“Never better, fair Persephone!” Lewis cast off and seized up the pole. He propelled them across with such a mighty surge that—

“Bleeding Jesus, mister, look out! You’ll—”

The boat ran aground and Lewis toppled backward, falling with a tremendous splash into the dark water. He came up laughing hysterically as he dogpaddled toward the boat, with his wig bobbing eerily in his wake.

“Oh, God Apollo, I’ve drowned in the river Styx—well, this is a first for me—but I wouldn’t be mister, you know, the technical term is mystes—”

Persephone stuck her torch in a rock crevice, grabbed his collar, and hauled him ashore. “You been drinking, ain’t you?” she said in exasperation.

“No, actually—it’s the drinking chocolate, it has an odd effect on our nervous systems—we cyb—I mean, we… Owenses,” said Lewis through chattering teeth, for the water had been like ice.

“Ow, your shoes’ll be ruined and—give me the bleeding pole, we got to fish your wig out. Damn it, I ain’t wearing this veil another minute,” said Persephone, and tore it off.

Lewis caught his breath.

She was a very young girl, pale by torchlight, but with roses in her cheeks. Her hair was red. Her eyes, rather than the blue or green one might expect, were black as the stream from which she’d pulled him. His heart—not the cyborg mechanism that pumped his blood—contracted painfully.

“Mendoza?” he whispered.

“’Oo’s that? ’Ere, what’s wrong?” she demanded. “You ain’t going be sick, are you? You look like you seen a ghost.”

“I—you—you look like someone I knew,” said Lewis. “I must apologize—”

A throaty scream came echoing down the passage from the banqueting chamber.

“My child!” cried Madam Demeter, in tones she had clearly picked up from watching Mr. Garrick at Drury Lane. “Ooooh, my chiiiiild! She is quite rrrravished away! Ow, somebody ’elp me quick! Wherever could she be?”

“Bugger,” said Persephone. “We got to go on. Come on, get up! You need a ’and?”

“Please—” Lewis let her haul him to his feet. He stood swaying, wondering if she was a hallucination, as she stuck the torch in his nerveless hand, retrieved his sopping wig, and grabbed up the basket. She did not wait, but started ahead of him through the dark doorway. Coming to himself, he ran squelching after her.

Only a few yards on they emerged into the last chamber; there was no way to exit but back the way they had come. It was a small room, very cold and damp indeed, and empty but for a squarish stone object in the middle of the floor. There were some carvings on the side; Lewis recognized it for a Roman sarcophagus. Persephone sat down on it and began to rummage through the basket.

“You want to get out of them wet clothes,” she advised. She held up one end of a length of white cloth. “This ain’t much, but at least it’s dry.”

He stared at it in incomprehension, trying to clear his wits. She sighed, set the basket down, and began to unbutton his waistcoat.

“Don’t tell me you ain’t drunk. Come on, old dear, we ain’t got all night,” she said. “’Ark at ’em going on!”

“I am Hecate, her what rules the night! I know where your daughter got to, Mistress Demeter!”

“Pray, speak thou!”

“Well, I hears this scream, see? And I says to all-seeing Helios, lord of the sun, I says, Whatever was that noise? Sounded like a virgin pure being carried off! And Helios says, he says, Oh that was fairest Persephone being ravished. It was that Lord Hades done it!”

“’E never!”

“S’welp me God! She’s gone to the Otherworld to be Queen of the Dead!”

“My CHIIIIILD! Almighty Jove, is there no rrrrremedy!”

Lewis stood nervelessly, letting the little girl peel off his soaked garments, until she unfastened his trousers.

“I—perhaps I’d better do that,” he said, clutching at himself and backing away.

“Please yourself,” she said, and matter-of-factly began to strip down. “Madam, be content!” A male voice came echoing down the passageway. “It is the will of All-Seeing Jove!”

“Whaaaaaat? What perfidy is this? It shall not be!”

“’Ow they do go on,” said Persephone. Lewis, hopping on one foot as he tried to get his breeches off, turned to answer her and nearly fell over; for she had skinned out of her garments with the speed of frequent practice, and stood unconcernedly brushing out her hair. He stared. She didn’t seem to notice.

“… why then, sir, ’Eaven shall learn a goddess may be wrathful, too! I shall with’old my gracious bounty from the woooorld! See if I don’t! The green corn shall wither in the field, and mortal men shall staaaarve!”

“They’re getting louder!” said Lewis. “Oh, dear, they’re not coming in here, are they?”

“Naow, just as far as the room with the h’altar,” said Persephone. “This is the sacred grotto. Nothing in ’ere but the sacred scroll.”

Lewis managed to get his breeches off. Clutching them to his lap, he shuffled crabwise to the basket, rummaging for something with which to clothe himself. He pulled out a voluminous length of gauze embroidered with flowers.

“That’s mine, ducky,” said Persephone, sliding past him to take it. Her bare breast grazed his arm. He started so violently he dropped the sodden bundle he’d been holding. Persephone looked down. Her eyes widened.

“… wander through the barren world, mourning the ’ole time for my dearest daughter! Oooooh, the perfidy of Jove!”

“I’m sorry,” said Persephone. “This ain’t ’arf awkward. Look, if we was anyplace else, I’d do you proper, a nice-looking boy like you; only I can’t ’ere, on account of it’d be sacrilege.”

“It would?” said Lewis piteously.

“’Ere will I rest awhile amid this sheltering grove, and in the shape of somebody’s old wet nurse I will appear. But, soft! ’Oo approaches wretched Demeter? I perceive they are the daughters of some king or other.”

“Why, who is this poor old thing as sits beside our washing well? Cheer up, good lady. You shall come home with us and nurse our young brother.”

“Didn’t ’is Lordship h’explain?” Persephone rolled her eyes. “I thought you’d done this afore.” She pulled the embroidered shift over her head, and yanked it down smartly to cover herself.

“Well—yes—but—it was a long time ago, and…” His distress seemed to aggravate the toxic response alert. He squeezed his eyes tight shut, and made an effort to sober up.

“Nooooow I am alone with the mortal babe, I will reward the kindness done to me! So! So! ’Ey presto! Another pass through the flaaaaames, and he shall become immortal—”

“Ow my gawd, lady, you’ll burn up my baby!”

“Now look what you went and done, foolish mortal! The spell’s broke—”

“I can’t do you because I’m being the Queen of h’Avernus,” Persephone explained. “Which it would be h’adultery, see, on account of me being married to the Lord of the Dead and all. Do your breechclout up like a nice bloke, won’t you? I know it don’t seem fair, what with ’is lordship and that lot getting to fornicate like mad. But it’s in aid of Mr. Whitehead, you know.”

“Oh,” said Lewis, blinking back tears as she fastened his loincloth in place for him and then draped a white scarf over her hair.

“Poor old thing’s dying,” said Persephone. “Ever such a nice gentleman, ’e is. I wonder why the nice ones always dies on you? But this way ’e won’t be scared, see—”

“—build a temple to meee, and so my divine wrath shall be appeeeeeeased! Nay, more! I shall grant eternal life to ’im as performs my sacred rites!”

“We thank thee, merciful goddess!” Now it became an exchange between the woman’s voice and the chorus of male voices:

“What ’ave you done?”

“We have feasted; we drank the kykeon!”

“Fasted,” Lewis corrected absently.

“What’ll you do next?”

“We’re taking something out!”

“What’ll you do with it?”

“We’re going to put it in something else!”

“Then come forward, mortals, and be’old the Sacred Flame! Die in the fire of my h’embrace, to live eternally!”

“Whu-huh-HEY!”

“I’m just as glad I ain’t got to watch this part,” remarked Persephone, settling down on the tomb lid. “Between you and me, Mrs. Digby ain’t so young as she was, and the thought of ’er on that h’altar with ’er knees up—it’s enough to curl your ’air, ain’t it?”

“I suppose so,” said Lewis, sitting down beside her.

Sounds of violent carnal merriment echoed down the passageway. Persephone twiddled her thumbs.

“So, er, ’ow’d you learn about the old gods and all that?” she asked.

Lewis stared into the darkness, through a hazy roil of red letters and memories.

“I was a foundling baby, left in a blanket by a statue of Apollo,” he said. “In Aquae Sulis.”

“Where’s that?”

“I mean, Bath. It’s in Bath. I was raised by a…” Lewis pondered how to explain a twenty-fourth-century corporation with the ability to time-travel and collect abandoned human children for the purpose of processing them into cyborg operatives. “By a wealthy scholar with no particular religious views. But I always rather liked the idea of the gods of old Rome.”

“Fancy that,” said Persephone. “Mrs. Digby, she learned it off his lordship. Ever such a comfort, for poor working girls, she says.”

“You shouldn’t be doing this,” said Lewis, taking her hand in his. “You should have a better life. If I helped you—if I set you up in business, or something—”

“That’s the liquor talking, dearie,” said Persephone, not unkindly. “Lord love us, you ain’t nothing but a clerk; you ain’t got any money. And it ain’t such a bad life; things is ’igh-class at Mrs. Digby’s, you know. Much rather do that than be somebody’s scullery maid.”

“I’m so sorry,” Lewis whispered.

“It’s all right; it’s what we’re born to, ain’t it?” she said. She inclined her head to listen to the tumult coming from the altar chamber. “I reckon it’s time for the seed, then.”

From her basket she produced a pomegranate, and, digging into the rind with her thumbs, prized it open. She picked out a seed and crunched it.

Lewis watched her hopelessly. She offered him the fruit.

“‘Ave some?”

“Yes,” said Lewis. “Yes, for you. I will.” He took a handful of ruby seeds and ate, and the bittersweet juice ran down his chin. She reached up a corner of her veil and wiped it clean. They huddled together for warmth, there on the lid of the tomb.

“Go to it, Paul!”

“Bravo, Whitehead! That’s the spirit!”

“Huzzay!”

“That’s it, lovey, that’s the way, ooh! Lord, plenty of life in this one yet! That’s it. You just rest in my arms, my dear. There ain’t nothing to he afraid of. Think about them Elysium Fields… that’s my darling, that’s my sweet gentleman…”

“Hup! Ho! Ha! Whitehead’s soul is to Heaven fled!”

“I ’ope they don’t take all night,” said Persephone, a little crossly. “Blimey, I’m cold.” She rummaged in her basket again and pulled out a flask. Unstoppering it, she had a gulp of its contents and sighed, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Nothing like a bit of this to take the chill off,” she said, and passed the flask to Lewis. He drank without thinking, and handed it back.

“Oh,” he said. “That was gin, wasn’t it?”

Chants of rejoicing echoed down the tunnel.

“Eh? ’Course it was. I think our cue’s coming up now—”

“I’m afraid gin combines rather badly with Theobromine,” said Lewis unsteadily.

“With what?” Persephone turned her face to him. He watched in fascination as she became an equation of light and shadow, and then an image of stained glass shining with light. She was telling him something—she was rising and taking his hand, leaving trails of colored light where she moved—

He felt a gentle impact at the back of his head and a tremendous happiness. He was flying down the tunnel, bearing her along with him—the sundering water, rippling with subtle colors, was easily bounded across. He roared the ancient hymn as he came, and heard the eternal masses echoing it back from Paradise.

“Evohe! Evohe! Iacchus! Evohe!” He was in the cave with the altar but it was full of light, it was glowing like summer, and no longer cold but warm.

“I have taken in the seed, and see what I bring into the light!” Persephone declared. The mortals knelt around him, crowding close, weeping and laughing and catching at his hands.

“Blessed Iacchus, give us hope!”

“Iacchus! The boy Iacchus is come!”

“Iacchus, take away our fear!”

“Make us immortal, Iacchus!”

Demeter and Persephone were greeting each other, with elaborate palms-out rapture, and Persephone was saying: “Behold my son, which is Life come out of Death!”

“Please, Iacchus!” He looked down into old Whitehead’s pleading face, sweating and exhausted. “Let me not be lost in the dark!”

He wept for the mortal man, he touched his face and promised him the moon, he promised them all the moon, he babbled any comforting nonsense he could think of. He tried to stretch out his hand to Persephone but she had receded somehow, on the golden sea of faces. Everything was golden. Everything was melting into golden music.



Lewis opened his eyes. He looked up; he looked down; he looked from side to side. Doing anything more ambitious than this seemed a bad idea.

He was in bed in the room allotted to him by Sir Francis. Someone had laid him out as carefully as a carving of a saint on a tomb, with the counterpane drawn up to his chest. They had put one of his nightshirts on him, too. It seemed to be morning.

He closed his eyes again and ran a self-diagnostic. His body told him, quite pointedly, that he’d been extremely stupid. It implied that if he ever subjected it to that kind of abuse again, he was going to find himself in a regeneration tank for at least six months. It stated further that it required complex carbohydrates right now, as well as at least two liters of fluid containing high concentrations of calcium, magnesium, and potassium. He opened his eyes again and looked around to see if anything answering that description was within reach.

No; the nearest fluid of any kind was water on a table beside his bed, in a crystal vase containing a few sprays of late hedgeroses. It looked exquisitely wet. He wondered whether he could get the roses out and drink from the vase without making too much of a mess. His body told him it didn’t care whether he made a mess. Groaning, he prepared to sit up.

At that moment he heard the approach of footsteps, two pair. They were accompanied by a slight rattle of china.

The door opened and Sir Francis stuck his head into the room. Seeing Lewis awake, his face brightened extraordinarily.

“Mr. Owens! Thank all the gods you’re with us again at last! You… er, that is… that is you, Mr. Owens?”

“I think so,” said Lewis. Little lightning flashes of headache assailed him.

Sir Francis bustled into the room, waving the butler in after him. Lewis found his gaze riveted on the covered tray the butler carried. Sir Francis sat down on the edge of the bed, staring at Lewis no less fixedly.

“D’you recall much, eh?”

“Not a great deal, my lord,” said Lewis. “That wouldn’t happen to be breakfast, would it?”

The butler lifted the napkin to disclose a pitcher, a small pot of honey, and a dish of little cakes. Sir Francis twisted his fingers together selfconsciously.

“That’s, er, milk and honey and, ah, the closest my cook could approximate to ambrosia. The honey comes from Delos,” he said, with a peculiar tone of entreaty in his voice.

Lewis dragged himself into a sitting position, though his brain quailed against the red-hot lining of his skull. The butler set the tray on his lap; he grabbed up the pitcher, ignoring the crystal tumbler provided with it, and drank two quarts of milk straight down without pausing to breathe. Sir Francis watched with round eyes as he gulped the ambrosia cakes one after another, and, seizing up a spoon, started on the honey.

“Wonderful stuff,” said Lewis, remembering his manners. “Might I have a little more?”

“Anything you like,” said Sir Francis, beckoning distractedly at John. Lewis held the pitcher up.

“Another round of this, please, and three or four loaves of bread?”

“With jam, sir?”

“No! No jam. Thank you.”

John took the pitcher and hurried out of the room.

“I don’t wonder you’ve an appetite,” said Sir Francis. “That was an astonishing evening, my boy. We’re all greatly indebted to you. Never saw anything quite like that in my life.”

“But—I received the impression you’d—er, enacted certain rites before,” said Lewis, scraping the bottom of the honey jar with the spoon.

“Why, so we had. But never with such remarkable results!” said Sir Francis. “What an improvement on your predecessor. He was no fit vessel for Divinity at all! Treated the ladies most disrespectfully. I sent him packing; then we discovered he’d helped himself to the spoons. Apprehended him in the very act of boarding the coach with my best silver coffee urn in his trunk too, would you credit it?

“Not at all like you. Such Olympian presence! Such efficacy! Whitehead looked positively well. ‘How d’ye feel now, Paul?’ I said, and bless me if he didn’t reply, ‘Why, sir, I declare I could pile Mount Pelion upon Mount Ossa, and straightwise mount to Heaven!’”

“I’m gratified, my lord,” said Lewis cautiously. “Though I confess the evening is somewhat indistinct in my memory.”

“I expect it would be, sir. I suspect you were scarcely there at all! Eh?” Sir Francis winked at him. “But I’ll leave you in peace; John will lay out your clothes. All fresh-laundered; though the wig’s at the barber’s for a fresh setting and powdering. It was in a sad state, I fear. And I’ve taken the liberty of having a new pair of shoes made; one of yours seems to have gone missing in the Styx. You’ll find them in the bottom of your wardrobe.”

“New shoes?” Lewis said. “Made overnight?”

“Overnight? Bless you, no! You’ve slept for three days! A very Endymion,” Sir Francis told him. He lingered shyly by the door a moment, his eyes downcast. “You have rendered me a greater service than I can ever repay. Your servant, sir.”



Lewis enjoyed an unaccustomed luxury of idleness over the next few days; the servants tiptoed in his presence, looked on him with awe, and leaped to bring him anything he requested. He used the time to access and review his memory, and found, to put it mildly, some difference between what his conscious mind had perceived and what his augmented perception had recorded.

He was chagrined by this, but his embarrassment was ameliorated somewhat by the relaxation of pressure as regarded his mission for the Company.

DASHWOOD OBJECTIVE OBTAINED, he transmitted on his credenza, long past midnight when he was unlikely to be disturbed by a servant. ATTENDED “ELEUSINIAN RITE” AND CAN REPORT THAT IT IS NOT, REPEAT NOT AUTHENTIC. DETAILS WELL-KNOWN IN ANTIQUITY WORKED INTO A PLAUSIBLE FAKE. SOURCE SCROLL NOT LOCATED BUT SUSPECT THE EUGENIKOS FORGER. AWAITING FURTHER ORDERS.

He sent the message and relaxed, but almost at once a reply shot out of the ether:


OBTAIN SOURCE SCROLL. CLIENT MADE SUBSTANTIAL OFFER.



Lewis gnawed his lower lip. He sent:



BUT ITS A FAKE.

IRRELEVANT.

BUT IT WOULDN’T FOOL ANYONE WHO’D ATTENDED THE MYSTERIES.

CLIENT IS MORTAL. WON’T KNOW DIFFERENCE.



With a certain sense of moral outrage, Lewis transmitted:


ACKNOWLEDGED. UNDER PROTEST. VALE.



He knew well enough, now, where the object of his quest was.

With a heavy heart, in the small hours following an evening during which Sir Francis had been particularly pleasant company, Lewis packed his valise. He drew on his cloak and slipped down through the dark house, and out a side door into the garden. He switched to night vision; the surrounding countryside leaped into focus, lurid green, unearthly. Pausing only to hide his bag in a clump of rhododendron, he set out.

He went quickly, though it was a long cold walk just the same. Once, a bat shrieked overhead; he looked up in time to see its smear of red light vanishing into the trees. Once a fox crossed his path, and stopped to regard him with eyes like fire. He missed the little girl walking at his side, and wondered whether he’d be too great a fool if he sought her out once he returned to London. He wondered whether he could bear watching her grow old and die.

This question so preoccupied him that he almost failed to notice that he was being followed. After a while, however, the laboring mortal heartbeat and steam-bellows breath distracted him, and he looked back. There, a great way off, a scarlet blur made its way along the track. Its dark lantern pulsed with heat. A poacher? Lewis shrugged and picked up his pace, until he reached the entrance to the Hellfire Caves.

The gates had been locked; a moment’s work with his cloak pin and Lewis had them open. Fighting panic once more, he hurried into true Stygian blackness, rendered more ghostly by his vision. Emerging from the maze into the banqueting chamber, he nearly shouted at what he took at first to be a lurking figure; but it was only a pair of serving tables stacked up on end, draped with oilcloth.

Muttering to himself, Lewis went on. In the chamber with its altar, he was almost surprised to see no spot of residual heat glowing still from Mrs. Digby’s bum. At the River Styx he proceeded soberly, poling himself across in the little boat with all the dignity of Charon, and stepped out dryshod on the other shore. There, trampled and forgotten in the chalk, Lewis spotted Persephone’s veil.

He bent and picked it up. He regarded it a long moment before folding it carefully and tucking it away inside his shirt, next to his heart.

In the Inner Temple, he lifted the lid from the sarcophagus. Within was a box of alabaster, something Egyptian from the look of it. He lifted the lid on that and found a box of cypress wood, a modern piece painted with figures of maenads dancing. Within, he found the scroll.

Lewis unrolled it, examined it briefly, and sighed. Yes: the work of the clever Russian. Let him not speak, he who has witnessed the rites sacred to holy Demeter and her slender-ankled daughter! But bear witness, oh furies, that this scribe breaks no oath in relating the true nature of what he has seen with his silent pen… He returned the scroll to its box, tucked it under his arm, and walked back toward the starlight.

He was on his way to the maze when he heard the crunch of footsteps coming. In a panic, he turned back and dodged into one of the alcoves opening off the banqueting chamber. There he stood, absolutely still as the mortal shuffled into the chamber.

It was Sir Francis, peering about by the single ray of light his lamp gave forth.

Lewis held his breath. Do not see me, mortal man… you will not see me, mortal…

A bat swooped through. Sir Francis gasped and dropped his lantern, which unfortunately did not go out; rather, its shutter was knocked open by the impact. The chamber was flooded with light.

Oh, crumbs.

Sir Francis bent to pick up the lantern, straightened with it, and looked full into Lewis’s face. His gaze fell to the box under Lewis’s arm.

“Oh, dear,” he said. “I was afraid of something like this.”

Lewis, ready to babble out an apology, was quite unprepared for what happened next. Scuffing sharp-edged gravel out of the way, Sir Francis knelt down laboriously.

“Please,” he said. “Which one are you? Apollo? Hermes? I was sure I recognized you, t’other night. Forgive my old eyes, I pray; I might have seen you more clearly, once.”

“I am only a messenger,” said Lewis, praying to both gods for help.

“Just as you wish, my lord,” said Sir Francis, and he nearly winked. He regarded the scroll box sadly. “Must you take it away? We were idle merry boys once, and we did blaspheme; but only as boys do. I had rather hoped you had come to dwell among us at last. We need you, we poor mortals.”

“But you no longer need this.” Lewis held up the scroll box, wondering if he could wink out without dropping it.

“I suppose not,” said Sir Francis, slumping. He clasped his hands. “Please, tell me, Bright One—will my friend die?”

“You know he must,” said Lewis, as gently as he could.

“Oh, Paul,” said Sir Francis. He said nothing more for a moment, as a tear rolled down his cheek. He looked up at Lewis hopefully. “But if you are here—why then, it’s a sign! The gods are not unkind. They must care for us. It’s all true, isn’t it? We will go to Paradise, and revel in the Elysian Fields, just as She promised us.”

“Believe, it, mortal man,” said Lewis. For all I know, it may be true.

He reached down his hand as though in blessing, setting it on Sir Francis’s head. Concentrating, he generated a pulse designed to have an effect on the temporal lobe of the mortal brain.

Sir Francis gasped in pleasure. He heard celestial choirs, had visions of glory, and knew a sublime truth impossible to put into words. The ecstasy was enough to send him into a dead faint.

Lewis picked him up and staggered out with him, far away through the night fields to the great house, where he laid Sir Francis down before the statue of Bacchus. He paused only a moment, leaning forward with his hand on the wall, gasping for breath; then he knocked, loud enough to rouse the servants.

Long before the fearful mortals had come to the door, he had retrieved his valise from the shrubbery and fled in the direction of London.



No more than a month later, a certain peddler wandered the streets of a certain district of London. The streets were crowded and filthy, even in this somewhat better-class part of the district. The mad king squatted on his throne, the American crisis was going from bad to worse, nay, the whole globe was reeling in chaos that would soon spit forth another age, and the first snow of winter had begun to drift out of a sullen and steely sky.

The peddler’s garments were shabby, not really adequate for the weather, and yet he carried himself with a style making it not outside the powers of imagination that he might in fact be a dashing hero of some kind. One temporarily down on his luck, perhaps. Conceivably the object of romantic affection.

He doffed his hat to all he met, and, when meeting any who looked as though he or she might know, discreetly inquired whether they knew the way to Mrs. Digby’s establishment.

Hoping, even as foolish mortals do, for some sign of a compassionate universe.

The End.