Using the cab as a shield from the eyes of neighbors or patroling bobbies, Malarkey directed the group toward the steps of the only house on the north side that looked like a war had been waged on its façade. The portico had been completely obliterated, except for the stubs of two pillars that stood like elephant’s feet on the top step. Not a pane of glass remained in the windows, boarded against the London rain—which fell hard as nails in February—and the masonry was pockmarked with shrapnel gouges that sprayed outward from a shiny new front door, painted a lurid purple. The upper facade was wreathed in painters’ drop cloths, supported by a rigging of wooden scaffolding.
Riley poked his head forward from Malarkey’s armpit and caught Chevie’s eye.
“Charismo’s gaff. The militia blew it to smithereens, remember?”
Chevie did remember. In her current timeline—or lifespan, or whatever—they had been held captive at Tibor Charismo’s house—this house—mere months ago, in the summer of 1898. She wondered briefly whether it was more likely that she was lying in a psycho ward somewhere and all of this was an elaborate hallucination, or that she was a time-traveling federal agent partnered with a kid magician.
It doesn’t matter. I have to play the cards in front of me the best I can.
What else could she do besides lie down and die?
Tempting.
She suddenly remembered her father, who had raised her in their little house on the Malibu bluffs.
Whatta ya gonna do, squirt? Give up? There ain’t many Shawnee left, and we need someone to protect us.
That was when she’d been on the point of throwing in her judo lessons after a botched match cost her a tournament.
The memory gave Chevie strength and focus. She put her back into her task and hefted Otto to the top step.
“Come on, kid,” she said. “Someone’s gotta protect the Shawnee.”
There were no spare hands in the group for tugging on a bell pull, so Otto kicked the lurid door several times until it was whipped open by a horrified little man, buttoned up tight from his polished boots to the collar of his glaring white shirt.
“Excuse me!” said the diminutive fellow, voice shrill, face florid. “This is a spanking brand-new door, so it is. Commodore Pierce will have your foot for an ashtray if you do not immediately desist with your infernal drumming and remove your pestilential selves from this respectable threshold. Where do you think you are? A dockside gin hovel?”
The little man was one of those singular individuals who inspire a degree of contentment wherever they appear, in spite of the caustic nature of their verbiage. Had there been such a thing as a happiness meter, the beleaguered gang at the doorstep would have seen their collective mercury rise at the sight of this ruddy-jowled five-footer. A skinnier specimen would be difficult to find outside of the bone shop. He wore a narrow suit of gray tweed with creases sharper than his own scythe of a nose. The man’s eyebrows curled imperiously, if such an attitude is possible for mere eyebrows. But these eyebrows were not mere—they were splendid and quivering. The face was a handsome miniature; child-sized man features, which confused a body on first look. And the hands that flapped at Malarkey and Co. were disproportionately large and articulate, seeming to play an invisible piano as he spoke.
“You are idiots, is that it?” continued the furious little man. “The idiot complement of three villages, congregated to set about people’s fine new front doors. Well, you have idioted at the wrong door, idiots. Commodore Pierce may be a denizen of the square, but he is a son of the United States navy, and he will trounce you soundly, so he will.”
The so he will tagged on to the little man’s sentence revealed him to be a native of the Emerald Isle, so not just a little man, but a little Irish man.
Leprechaun, thought Chevie, and immediately felt guilty. As a Shawnee Native American, she had been on the receiving end of stereotyping often enough not to engage in it.
“Figary,” said King Otto wearily.
“Don’t you name my name, you scoundrel,” said Figary, fingers tapping a polka in the air. “Commodore Pierce will…” He paused before the threat materialized and actually looked at Malarkey.
“Commodore? Is it yourself? Or some ghastly doppelganger recently dragged through a tart’s dressing room? The latter, please say the latter! And I see you brought the tart with you. Or perhaps this lady is some class of circus performer?”
Malarkey coughed. “Enough chatter, you tater muncher. I be…I mean, I am bleeding, Michael Figary. Help us inside and fetch the maggots.”
Figary displayed not one feather of deference. “Maggot fetching, is it? For this, Mick Figary left his mammy’s knee. And where is your beautiful Boston brogue, Commodore? You sound like an English back-alley scoundrel with a dirk in his boot and a shadow of ill deeds stretched out behind him, so you do.” Figary’s eyebrows rose to new heights and arched like the wings of a bird in flight. “It is your house, sir, so of course you may enter, but try not to daub blood on the walls. They are fresh painted, so they are.”
Figary ushered them inside with a bow that reeked of insincerity.
Riley grunt-chuckled. “I ain’t never seen such a sarcastic bow.”
“I like him,” said Chevie. “He’s funny.”
“He referred to you as a circus tart,” Malarkey reminded her.
“A simple case of mistaken identity,” said Chevie. “Like when he called you Commodore.”
“Not a commodore, then,” said Figary. “And probably not many more things besides.” And with a disappointed cluck, the Irishman disappeared down the scullery stairs, his hard shoes clacking a jig rhythm on the steps.
They carried Malarkey into the kitchen—the same kitchen where Chevie and Riley had almost been dismembered barely six months previously, to ease their passage into a furnace. Riley remembered nothing of the incident, as he had been up to the gills in poisonous narcotics at the time. Chevron Savano’s recently resurfaced memories, however, were crystal clear, and she felt a pall of unease as soon as she set a booted foot in the room. It had not been a pleasant afternoon for the pair, and this one was not shaping up to be a gallon of giggles either.
They heaved Otto onto a wooden worktop and peeled the tattered vestiges of his opera shirt from his back.
“Silk,” moaned Otto. “The finest silk. I had it imported.”
Figary tip-tapped into the room just in time to hear this last comment.
“Imported, is it?” he said, depositing two jars in the porcelain sink. “From where? The Isle of Delusions, perhaps? Or the Peacock Peninsula?”
Malarkey groaned. “Michael Figary. I swear, you’re even more insolent than usual. Are you drunk?”
Figary opened the first quart jar, which was teeming with fat white maggots. “Of course I am drunk. It is evening, is it not? You would have me apply maggots to your repulsive back-flesh in full possession of my wits?”
“You damned brandy shunter,” said Malarkey weakly. “Belay that sauce and be about your business.”
Figary soaked a cloth in alcohol from the second jar and began to expertly clean King Otto’s back.
“Yes, Commodore. I am currently swabbing your wounds. Swabbing being a nautical term, much like belay. But no need to expound on seafaring lingo to your good self, you being a commodore, and all.”
Malarkey gritted his teeth. “Etherize me, you niminy-piminy Paddy. I can’t suffer no more of yer lip.”
Figary rolled up his sleeves, then plunged his arm into the maggot jar, scooping up a handful, which he molded into a poultice and then applied to one of his employer’s gaping wounds.
“It seems barbaric, does it not?” Michael Figary commented to the disgusted newcomers. “Smearing maggots on the lacerations? But these little blighters will devour the necrotic tissue and sterilize the healthy. The trick is to get them out before they colonize our commodore’
s flesh; that would not do at all, for though his title would appear to be bogus, his coin is genuine and pays for Missus Figary’s son’s brandy. And for that I would patch up all the copper captains in London town, so I would.”
“I thank thee for thy loyalty,” said Malarkey, wincing as another maggot dumpling plopped onto his back. “And I will shed light on this bizarre vignette upon regaining consciousness, as I intend to swoon dead away and think on my poor murdered brother.” And without another word, Malarkey closed his eyes and descended from the torture of his consciousness to the pain of his dreams.
Figary worked silently and efficiently while his master slumbered, sealing each crevice with maggots, then mummifying the broad back with linen bandages.
“Murdered brother,” he said at last, liberally dousing his own hands with disinfectant. “It would appear that the commodore and his juvenile japesters have passed a lively afternoon, so it does.”
Riley stepped forward. “Perhaps I can explain, sir.”
Figary halted his flow with a raised hand. “Oh, in the name of heaven, please forbear. Explanations from children invariably fail to explain, and as I will doubtless be forced to endure the commodore’s version of the day’s happenings when he awakens, I prefer to pass the intervening moments in blissful ignorance, perhaps fortified by a nip of the craythur.”
Riley felt that Figary’s statement could sacrifice half a dozen words without any loss of meaning.