Will Thomas: To Kingdom Come

“Is something wrong, sir?”

He shook off the mood. “Nothing, lad. You must forgive a Scotsman’s brooding. I was just thinking that the world is very like this vase. It seems exactly as it was before, but there are hairline cracks all through it, and I know that it shall never completely be as it was before.”

Our thoughts were interrupted by the comforting toll of Big Ben in our ears.

“Peckish?” he asked.

Over the meal, I disappointed the waiter at Ho’s by setting down my near empty bowl of shark’s head soup before he had the opportunity to rip it out of my hand. Ho’s hadn’t changed. The room was still as dark and smoky and the clientele still half mad. Ho deigned to leave the kitchen and come to our table.

“You are fatter than ever,” he complained to my employer by way of greeting.

“I was on a case,” Barker responded, not nettled in the least.

“You ate garbage, I think.”

“Yes, but only because I couldn’t take you with me.”

“What happened to him?” Ho asked, jerking a thumb in my direction. Things were actually improving. Ho rarely acknowledged my existence.

“Stick fight,” my employer stated. Ho grunted, possibly in approval, then waddled off into the gloom beyond the reach of the penny candle on our table.

We tucked into an assortment of battered vegetables and meats, accompanied by a ginger sauce and wheat dumplings. I’d like to think my use of chopsticks had improved since I first came here months before. More probably, I’d progressed to the level of the average Chinese four-year-old.

“Try these mushrooms, lad,” Barker suggested. “They must have come in aboard ship. England had nothing to do with them.”

For once, Barker was caught unaware. We were so engrossed in Ho’s bowl of wonders that we hadn’t noticed the arrival of a new customer. Seamus O’Muircheartaigh appeared at our table and slid into the seat beside me. He crossed his legs and set his walking stick across them.

“Cyrus,” he greeted.

“Seamus,” my employer replied. Stiffly he set his bowl down on the table in front of him, the mushroom he’d just put into it untasted.

“Welcome back.”

“As you are aware, I’ve been here a few days, actually,” Barker responded.

“Yes, your timing was impeccable, as always.”

“I hope we have not inconvenienced you too much, Seamus.”

“You haven’t. I cannot say the same for your assistant.” The Irishman turned his deep-set eyes in my direction. He looked at me as if I were a black beetle he’d found on his plate.

“What is your name, sir?” he asked coolly.

“Thomas Llewelyn.”

“You are responsible for the death of someone I cared very deeply for.”

“Perhaps not,” Barker stated. “It is likely the bomb had simply reached its proper time to detonate.”

“Possibly,” O’Muircheartaigh acknowledged, “but you will not deny that it was the two of you that chased her onto the bridge.”

Barker snorted. “I will not apologize for saving the life of the Prince of Wales.”

O’Muircheartaigh shook his head sadly. “A Scotsman and a Welshman helping the English government. Do you think they gave the slightest thought about you?”

“That is our concern, not yours.”

The Irishman gave a little tap to his cane, and the small circlet of metal at the tip swung open on a hinge. I was looking into the barrel of a gun, which had been cunningly built into O’Muircheartaigh’s stick.

Barker had his gun out instantly, but a cleaver bit into the wood of the table in front of us. We all looked up.

“Take it outside, gentlemen,” Ho’s voice came from the shadows. “You know the rules.”

“This is not your concern, Ho,” the Irishman warned. The room fell silent.

“Need I remind you that you are in Blue Dragon Triad territory, Mr. O’Muircheartaigh. Mr. K’ing will no like if this boy is killed without his authority.”

What, I wondered, was the Blue Dragon Triad, and who was Mr. K’ing?

O’Muircheartaigh sighed, as if he were a child caught in some petty naughtiness, and he latched the cover on his walking stick again.

“Rice and tea, Mr. Ho,” he said. “Would you gentlemen care to dine with me?”

“I fear we have a prior engagement,” Barker said icily. He stood slowly, and I noticed his hand was still in his pocket.

“Good day, gentlemen,” O’Muircheartaigh said.

The last I saw, the waiter was setting his rice and tea carefully on the table, as one sets down a plate of meat in the tiger cage at the zoo in Regent’s Park.

I was breathing heavily in the musty air of the tunnel, and I stumbled up the stairs twice at the other end. Barker kicked the door open, allowing air and light to flood in, and sat me down roughly on the ledge among the naphtha lamps Ho provides for his visitors.

“You’re in bad shape, Thomas,” he said. “I think it best if you take off the rest of the day.”

I was prepared for a number of things, but an afternoon off was not one of them. Barker’s hansom let me off in New Kent Road near our home, and I watched him rattle away to his appointment. My employer had kept me occupied all morning, but now I was alone with thoughts of Maire and what had happened on the bridge. I began to feel low again.

I went upstairs to read, but it was too hot in the house on a June afternoon, and so I took a turn in the garden. Harm came over to sniff my trousers, took a few laps from the miniature pond under my window, and went back to lie in the bed of thyme. I bent down and scratched him between his ears. He seemed to like that.

I stood for a moment with my hands in my pockets, listening to the gurgle of the stream and the swishing of the windmill that pumped it from underground, if a bit sluggishly. Then the strangest thing happened, or perhaps it was the most natural. One of my hands rose to form a beak and the other went out in the opposite direction as if to ward off a blow. What was the next move Barker had taught me? Ah, yes, hands together, one atop the other, with the right foot forward, toe pointed up. I was doing Barker’s internal exercises. I started at the beginning and went through the entire form twice. It calmed my wounded spirit.

“Very impressive,” a familiar voice said.

I looked over my shoulder. Israel Zangwill leaned against the frame of the back door. He had never come to the house before, but I remembered he and Jacob Maccabee were acquainted.

“Israel! Good to see you!” I said, pumping his hand.

“I heard you were back in town. That’s quite a pair of black eyes you’re sporting.”

“Yes, well, it’s better than the spectacles I was wearing,” I said. “I think Barker’s trying to turn me into a lesser version of himself. Come into the kitchen. I will make some coffee.”

“Thank you. This garden is amazing. I’d hardly imagine such a place existed in London.”

His voice suddenly awakened the diminutive dragon that stood guard over our secret garden. I had just enough time to scoop him up before he sank his teeth into Zangwill’s trouser leg.

“My word, that’s the ugliest dog I’ve ever seen,” my friend said over the animal’s frantic barks and howls.

“He’s a Chinese imperial dog, and his name is Harm. He belongs to my employer,” I explained as the dog screeched in his face.

“Yes, well, your employer is welcome to him. I shall wait in the kitchen, if you don’t mind.” He backed away slowly and went into the house.

After I brewed coffee on the stove, we sat at the deal table overlooking the garden, while outside Harm attempted to launch an assault upon the window, making quite impressive aerial leaps to see if we were still there.