Free The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers Page A

your voice down, please.”
    Coleridge looked horrified. “Sir, I couldn’t permit—”
    “I’m a disgustingly wealthy man,” Darrow said, his poise regained. “Money is nothing to me. Benner, fetch it from the coach while Mr. Lawrence here shows us to the banquet room.” He clapped one arm around Coleridge’s shoulders and the other around Doyle’s and followed the bustling, eager figure of the manager.
    “By your accents I surmise you are American?” said Coleridge, a little bewildered. Doyle noted that the man pronounced his r’s; it must be the Devonshire accent, he thought, still present after all these years. Somehow that added to the impression of vulnerability Coleridge projected.
    “Yes,” Darrow answered. “We’re from Virginia. Richmond.”
    “Ah. I’ve always wished to visit the United States. Some friends and I planned to, at one time.”
    The banquet room, on the far side of the building, was dark and very cold. “Never mind sweeping,” said Darrow, energetically flipping chairs off the long table and setting them upright on the floor. “Get some light in here, and a fire, and a lot of wine and brandy, and we’ll be fine.”
    “At once, Mr. Darrow,” said Lawrence, and rushed out of the room.
    Coleridge had another sip of the brandy and got to his feet. He looked around at the company, which now numbered twenty-one, for three men who’d been dining in one of the other rooms had heard what was going on and decided to join the group. One had flipped open a notebook and held a pencil expectantly.
    “As you all know doubtless at least as well as I,” the poet began, “the entire tone of English literature was altered, dropped into a minor and somber key, at the accession of Cromwell’s Parliament party, when the popularly styled Roundheads succeeded, despite the ‘divine right of kings,’ in beheading Charles the First. The Athenian splendors of Elizabeth’s reign, or rather her age, for her years embraced a combined glory of all disciplines that our nation has not at any other time seen, gave way to the austerity of the Puritans, who eschewed alike the extravagances and the bright insights of their historical predecessors. Now John Milton was already thirty-four years old when Cromwell came into power, and thus, although he supported the Parliament party and welcomed the new emphasis on stern discipline and self-control, his modes of thought had been formed during the twilight of the previous period… “
    As Coleridge went on, losing his apologetic tone and beginning to speak more authoritatively as he warmed to his subject, Doyle found himself glancing around at the company. The stranger with the notebook was busily scribbling away in some sort of shorthand, and Doyle realized that he must be the schoolteacher Darrow mentioned last night. He stared enviously at the notebook; if luck’s with me, he thought, I may be able to get my hands on that, a hundred and seventy years from now. The man looked up and caught Doyle’s eye, and smiled. Doyle nodded and quickly looked away. Don’t be looking around, he thought furiously—keep writing.
    The Thibodeaus were both staring at Coleridge through half-closed eyes, and for a moment Doyle feared the old couple was dozing off; then he recognized their blank expression as intense concentration, and he knew they were recording the lecture, in their own minds, as completely as any videotape machine could.
    Darrow was watching the poet with a quiet, pleased smile, and Doyle guessed that he wasn’t even listening to the lecture, but was simply glad that the audience seemed satisfied with the show.
    Benner was staring down at his hands, as though this was just an interlude, a rest period before some great effort to come. Could he be worrying, Doyle wondered, about the return trip through that slum area? He didn’t seem very concerned on the ride down.
    “Thus Milton refines the question down to a matter of faith,” said Coleridge, bringing