John Hawks - The Dark River

After wandering aimlessly for a few hours, Gabriel found his way to an Internet café on Goodge Street near the University of London. The café was run by a group of amiable Koreans who spoke only a few words of English. Gabriel got a payment card and walked by a row of computers. Some people were looking at pornography, while others were buying cheap plane tickets. The blond teenager sitting at the computer next to him was playing an online game where his avatar would hide in a building and kill any stranger who showed up alone.

Gabriel sat at a computer and entered different chat rooms trying to find Linden, the French Harlequin who had sent money to New York. After two hours of failure, he left a message on a Web site for collectors of antique swords. G. in London. Needs financing. He paid the Koreans for his computer time and spent the rest of the day in the library reading room at the University of London. When the library closed at seven o’clock, he returned to the Internet café and discovered that no one had responded to his message. Back out on the street, it was cold enough to see his breath. A group of students brushed past him, laughing about something. He had less than ten pounds in his pocket.

It was too cold to sleep outside, and there were surveillance cameras on the underground. As he drifted down Tottenham Court Road past brightly lit shops selling televisions and computers, he remembered Maya telling him about a location in West Smithfield where heretics, rebels, and Harlequins were executed by authorities. Once she used her father’s language when she mentioned the area, calling it Blutacker . The German word originally denoted the cemetery near Jerusalem bought with the silver given to Judas, and then it acquired a more general meaning. It was any accursed place-blood ground. If this really was a Harlequin site, then perhaps there was a message board in the area or some indication of where he could find help.

He headed toward East London, asking for directions from people who all seemed to be either drunk or lost. One man who could barely walk straight started waving his arms around as if he were swatting flies. Finally, Gabriel walked up Giltspur Street past St. Bartholomew’s Hospital and found two memorials that were only a few feet apart. One was in memory of the Scottish rebel William Wallace, while the other plaque was placed a few feet away from where the Crown had burned Catholics at the stake. Blutacker , thought Gabriel. But there were no Harlequin signs anywhere.

Turning his back to the memorials, he approached St. Bartholomew the Great, a small Norman church. The stone walls of the church had been chipped and darkened over the years, and the brick walkway was smeared with mud. Gabriel passed through an archway and found himself in a burial ground. Directly in front of him was a heavy wooden door with iron hinges that led into the church. Something was scrawled on the lower edge of the door, and, as he came closer, he saw four words written with a black felt pen: HOPE FOR A TRAVELER .

Was the church a place of refuge? Gabriel knocked on the door, and then pounded on it with his fists, but no one answered. Maybe people were hoping for a Traveler, but he was cold and tired and needed help. Standing in the burial ground, he felt a strong desire to break free of his body and abandon this world forever. Michael was right. The battle was over and the Tabula had won.

As he turned away, he remembered how Maya had used the message boards she set up in New York City. What she wrote looked like graffiti, but every letter and stroke of the pen conveyed information. He knelt in front of the door and realized that HOPE was underlined. Perhaps it was just an accident, but the black line had a slight barb at the end, almost like an arrow.

When Gabriel came back out through the archway, he saw that the arrow-if it was an arrow-was pointing toward Smithfield Market. A big man wearing a white butcher’s apron walked by carrying a shopping bag stuffed with beer cans. “Excuse me,” Gabriel said. “Where’s…Hope? Is that a location?”

The butcher didn’t laugh or call him a fool. He jerked his head in the general direction of the market. “Just up the road, mate. Not far from here.”

Crossing Long Lane, Gabriel approached the Smithfield meat market. For hundreds of years, the district had been one of the most dangerous areas of London. Beggars, harlots, and pickpockets mingled with the surging crowds while herds of cattle were whipped through the narrow streets to the slaughterhouse. Warm blood flowed through the gutters, giving off a faint white steam in the winter air. Flocks of ravens circled above the butchery, dropping down to fight over scraps of flesh.

Those times were gone, and now the central square was lined with restaurants and bookstores. But at night, when everyone had gone home, the spirit of the old Smithfield returned. It was a dark place, a shadowy place, dedicated to killing.

The main square between Long Lane and Charterhouse Street was dominated by the two-story building used to distribute meat throughout London. This huge market was the length of several city blocks and divided into sections by four streets. A modern Plexiglas awning ran around the circumference of the building to protect truck drivers loading supplies in the rain, but the market itself was a renovated example of Victorian confidence. The walls of the market were constructed with white stone arches, the gaps filled in with London brick. Massive iron gates painted purple and green were at each end of the building.

He circled the building once, then twice, looking for graffiti. It seemed absurd to search for “hope” in such a place. Why had the man in the butcher’s apron told him to walk up the street? Exhausted, Gabriel sat down on a concrete bench in a little square across the street from the market. He cupped his hands in front of his mouth and tried to warm his fingers with his breath, then gazed around the square. He was at the junction of Cowcross Street and St. John’s. The only business still open was a pub with a wooden façade about twenty feet away.

Gabriel read the name on the sign and laughed for the first time in several days. Hope. It was the Hope Pub. Leaving the bench, he approached the warm lights that glowed through the beveled glass and studied the sign swinging over the entrance. It was a crude painting of two shipwrecked sailors clinging to a raft in a turbulent sea. A sailing ship had appeared in the distance and both men were waving desperately. Another smaller sign indicated that a restaurant called the Sirloin was upstairs, but it had stopped serving an hour ago.

He entered the place half expecting a grand moment. You’ve solved the puzzle, Gabriel. Welcome home . Instead, he found the landlord scratching himself while a sullen barmaid wiped the counter with a rag. Little black tables were at the front, and benches were in the back. A glass case displaying some stuffed pheasants sat on an upper shelf beside four dusty bottles of champagne.

There were only three customers: a middle-aged married couple having a whispered argument and a weary old man who was staring at his empty glass. Gabriel bought a pint of beer with a few of his remaining coins and retreated to an alcove with cushioned benches and dark wood paneling. The alcohol was absorbed by his empty stomach and dulled his hunger. Gabriel closed his eyes. Just for a minute , he told himself. That’s all . But he gave in to his weariness and fell asleep.

His body felt the change. An hour ago, the room was cold and static. Now it was filled with energy. As Gabriel began to wake up, he heard the sound of laughter and voices, felt a draft of cold air as the door squeaked back and forth.