The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers Page A

what it is, you know, sir, in the eyes of man and God—by helping us set up at the market, and carrying the baskets when Sheila goes the rounds with her bunts.” He eyed Doyle’s coat and boots. “And now fetch him a blanket to change out of his wet clothes under. We can let him have a suit of Patrick’s old work things in exchange for his ruined clothes, which we’ll have to try to sell as rags.”
    Doyle was tossed a blanket that reeked of onions, and from some sort of locker in the bow Meg dug out a heavy coat and a pair of pants, both of worn and much-mended dark corduroy, a once-white shirt, and a pair of old boots that looked like they might have graced old Chris’ feet when he was Doyle’s age. “Ah!” she exclaimed, producing last a dirty white scarf. “Patrick’s third-best kingsman.”
    The chill made Doyle eager to change into these wretched but dry clothes, and when he’d kicked his wet things out from under the blanket Meg gathered them all and stowed them so carefully that he knew they hoped to get a good price for them.
    He scrubbed his hair fairly dry with the blanket, then, feeling warm and restored, moved to the end of the thwart away from the puddle he’d been sitting in. He wished he had a pipe or cigar, or even a cigarette. The boat, he noticed, was filled with lidded wooden tubs and lumpy burlap sacks. “I smell onions and… ?”
    “Pea soup,” said young Sheila. “The fishermen and fishmongers get so cold at Billingsgate that they’ll fork out tuppence for a plate of it. Thruppence in winter.”
    “Onions… is the main enterprise,” panted Chris. “The soup’s just… a courtesy, like… we scarcely get for it… what it costs us to make.”
    I’ll bet, thought Doyle sourly.
    The moon was low on the horizon, looking big and gold and blurry, and its faery radiance on the trees and fields and creek ripples wasn’t dimmed when Meg leaned out to unhook the bow lantern, flint-scratch it alight, and replace it on its hook. The watercourse widened out, and Chris heeled the boat around to port.
    “On the Thames now, we are,” he said quietly. A couple of other boats, tethered together, were visible out on the broad expanse of the river; they were ponderous, low-riding things, each with a huge cubical canvas-covered burden visible under the tangles of rigging.
    “Hay boats,” said Sheila, crouched beside Doyle. “We saw one burning out there once, and men on fire were jumping from the top of the bale down into the water. That was a show—better than the penny gaffs, and free.”
    “I hope the… performers enjoyed it,” said Doyle. He reflected that this little voyage would make an interesting story to tell over brandy at the Boodles or White’s club some day, once he’d made his fortune. For he wasn’t in any doubt about that. The first few days would certainly be difficult, but the advantage of all his twentieth century knowledge couldn’t help but turn the scales in his favor. Hell, he could get a job for a while on a newspaper, and maybe make some startling predictions about the outcome of the war, and current literary trends; and Ashbless was due to arrive in London in only about a week, and he could easily strike up a friendship with him; and in two years Byron would be returning to England, and he could get an introduction before Childe Harold made him a superstar. Why, he thought, and I could invent things—the light bulb, the internal combustion engine, latakia tobacco, flush toilets… no, better not do anything to change the course of recorded history—any such tampering might cancel the trip I got here by, or even the circumstances under which my mother and father met. I’ll have to be careful… but I guess I could give Farraday and Lister and Pasteur and the gang a few smug suggestions. Ho ho.
    He remembered asking the portrait of William Ashbless whether the girls, scotch and cigars had been better in his day. Well, I’m by God going to find out , he told