Free Country Mouse by Amy Lane

Square. What about Madame Tussauds? Wax figures? I think they have Hitler and Lady Gaga there now. And the Beckhams, of course. Kylie. We’ll grab a day pass on the Tube, it’s all pretty much within half an hour of each other, and then it depends what kind of food you like. If you’re more for Indian, I’ll take you to Veeraswamy; if it’s more Japanese, we’ll do Nobu.” He’d find a way to pay the bill without Owen working out how much it cost. Maybe that was the way to do it—get the Yank tired enough with sensory overload to exhaust him into financial complacency.
    “Sounds good,” Owen said, seemingly taking a lot of pleasure from that bagel now, and Malcolm reminded himself to eat. Mouthful of carbs, but wow, it was nice.
    “Great. We’ll start at Trafalgar Square, which is just across the road.”
     

     
    They set out soon after that, although Owen felt a sudden arrow of vanity as they were leaving and pulled out the knit cap he kept in the pocket of his hoodie. In spite of the fairly mild weather, he put it on as they stepped outside of Malcolm’s building. When Malcolm looked at him in askance, he felt his face heat and looked away.
    “It’s a fashion statement, okay?”
    “And what exactly is it saying?”
    Owen pulled up a corner of his mouth. “It’s saying my hair’s too long to stay neat in the wind,  that’s  what it’s saying.”
    Malcolm laughed at that, which was good, because it was true. But after that, Owen nearly forgot about the cap and the hair and his embarrassment. London was bigger than all of that put together—and then some. Massive groups of tourists, and they started on Trafalgar Square, which was really impressive. Malcolm pointed out a guy with a huge bird of prey on his arm across the square. “I bet you didn’t know London has an official hawk keeper . . . whatever they’re called, oh yes, falconer. The stupid animal rights people hate him, but he does keep the pigeons under control,” Malcolm said in that off-handed kind of way, just before they headed into the National Gallery.
    “That is so. Fucking. Cool.” Owen’s eyes were probably the size of dinner plates, but he didn’t care.
    Malcolm rolled his eyes. “Yanks,” he said, but Owen could see him smiling too.
    The gallery itself was enormous, so they only had time for highlights, like the painting with an optical illusion that, if you looked at it from a certain angle, had one elongated smear across the bottom turn into a three-dimensional skull.
    “Here’s the da Vinci Dan Brown wrote about.” Malcolm’s voice held suppressed excitement—certainly no tour-guide boredom. Owen could listen to him for hours. “For a while, you could barely get into this room. Or, of course, the Templar church. Want to see that? Should be open. Unless there’s a posh wedding going on. But it’s a nice walk along the Thames, anyway, if you’re interested.”
    Owen grinned. Why not?
    Getting into the Middle Temple area was a bit of an adventure, as the place was fenced off and housed a fair amount of lawyers and barristers in London. Those old houses, with the cobblestone streets and paths and small gardens in between, looked like something out of Dickens—a village where only law people lived.
    Malcolm led him through the gardens and past fountains, saying, “Apparently this is one of those spots where some famous writer or other liked to hang out,” but he couldn’t remember who exactly.
    Then there was a church that looked worn around the edges; it was clearly ancient. White stone, worn sculptures on the ground inside. Those were actually graves, and kings and Templars and national heroes lay here. Owen had thought they were all in Westminster Abbey, but clearly not.
    “There, those two knights on a horse. Seemed some people thought they were arse-fucking,” Malcolm announced cheerily, pointing at a pillar standing just outside the church.
    A tourist cast a baleful glance at Malcolm and hissed a