He frowned at me.
“The island and everything else have been getting smaller and messier ever since I came here and found him,” I explained. “He must be too ill to sustain the magic or something.”
“That’s most unlikely,” Maxwell Hyde told me sternly. “The island and its contents have to be self-sustaining or he’d never be able to go away. My guess is that it all ought to draw energy from each of the worlds it’s part of. Not much from each, to keep the balance. Cunning stuff. Romanov is good at it, lad. Where is he? We’d better look into this.”
“Along here,” I said, and took him to the bedroom.
It was awful in there. It had become a tiny, poky room with thick walls, dribbling wetness and covered with black flecks of mildew. It was a fug of sickness. Romanov looked like a corpse laid out on the narrow bed, almost as bad as the Prayermaster. His cheeks had sunk in, and his hair had got pasted to his head with sweat, so that his face was a sharp, gray, zigzag skull. I was relieved when I saw he was still breathing.
“Faugh!” said Maxwell Hyde.
I made for the window to get it open—or try to—but he barked at me, “Stop! Stand just where you are and don’t move!”
I stood still, more or less treading on Romanov’s suede jacket. “What has he got?” I asked.
“Let’s find out,” Maxwell Hyde said. He leaned over and, very delicately, touched Romanov’s sweaty forehead. He grunted, but Romanov never moved. Then, to my surprise, Maxwell Hyde took his fingers away, rather as if he were running them along an invisible line of string, and felt across through the air until he was all but touching my forehead. “Thought so,” he muttered, and felt away again, back to Romanov.
“What is it?” I said.
“Look,” he said. “Or can’t you see it?”
I could see it as soon as he told me to look. There was a blurred line of filthy-looking grayish yellow light stretching between Romanov’s head and mine. It was really nasty. It made me almost want to throw up again. “Yes, I can see it,” I said.
“How often did you touch him?” Maxwell Hyde asked sharply.
I thought. As far as I could tell, I hadn’t. “I don’t think I did,” I said. “I didn’t quite like to. I mean …”
“Well, that’s something to be thankful for, at least,” Maxwell Hyde said. “He could well be dead now if you had.” He stood up straight and stared me in the eye. “I’m going to want a detailed report from you, of everything you’ve done since you vanished from London, my lad. But before you do anything else, you’re going to oblige me by going and joining the elephant in the sea. Take all your clothes off, leave them on the beach for me to delouse, and go right under. There’s nothing like saltwater for cleaning black magic off. If you find the elephant’s in fresh water, don’t go in there. Find a piece that’s genuine sea. Go on. I’m going to be busy working on this end while you bathe.”
I crawled away, feeling as if I’d been convicted of leprosy. I wondered if I’d ever like myself again. Even the sight of Mini on her side in crystal blue water, spraying her own back through her trunk, failed to cheer me up.
“Is that water salt?” I asked her.
“Very,” she said merrily. “It makes me sneeze.”
I tasted it untrustingly, and it was. Very. It practically skinned my tongue. In fact, it was so salty and so easy to swim in that I wondered whether Romanov had included a piece of the Dead Sea at this point. Mini was so delighted to have me in the water, too, that I began to feel quite a bit better quite soon. We churned about and threw swaths of water at one another. She rolled and I splashed.
Eventually I looked up to see Maxwell Hyde on the grass, going carefully over my clothes. He was blowing into my shoes as I got out and went up to him.
“That’s better,” he said. “Clothing’s clear. Let’s look at you. Turn round. Raise your arms. Bend down so that I can see the top of your head. Right. Fine. You’re clear, too, now,” he said, handing me a ragged old towel. “Get dry and get dressed.”
He walked away. “Is Romanov okay?” I called after him.
“He will be,” he called back. “Don’t be long. Lunch.”
When I got to the kitchen, he was standing over the range stirring a vast pan of eggs. My miserable lettuce and manky tomatoes had been turned into a halfway decent salad, and there was another new loaf to go with it.
“I thought you didn’t want eggs,” I said, scratching at my salt-sticky hair.
“That was this morning,” he said. “Dig me out a tray and some cutlery. I’m hoping Romanov will be up to eating some of this.”
When everything was ready, I offered to take the tray in to Romanov, but he wouldn’t let me. “I’m not letting you near him,” he said. “Don’t you understand? Someone laid a pretty vici
ous working on you, designed to destroy Romanov and get you blamed for it. I think I’ve scotched it, but I’m not taking any chances.” He carried the tray off to Romanov himself, along with a vast pot of tea and an enormous mug, and came back looking pleased with himself. “That seems all right,” he said. “Got his appetite back. Get eating, lad. While you’re getting yourself round this lot, I want a detailed account of exactly what you’ve been up to since you were standing by my elbow in London.”
So I told him. Maxwell Hyde interrupted me several times and insisted on going back over what I’d just said and making me tell it again. The first time was over the magic I’d done with Arnold, Chick, Dave, and Pierre, to make the cricket stadium safe.
“Oh, I get you!” he said when I’d explained again. “That world. English Empire over most of Europe and paranoid over the Russian-Turkish bloc. Well, one thing’s certain, and that’s that this anti-Romanov stuff wasn’t put on you there. Half their paranoia is because their mages aren’t any good, if you ask me. Typical slipshod working, the one you had your hand in, lad. Why are you looking so doleful?”