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“Sangappa,” came a voice.
The explorer looked up and saw a street sweeper standing on the pavement nearby.
“What?”
“Sangappa,” the man repeated. “It's the best leather softener money can buy. They send it over from India. Hard to find and a mite expensive but worth every pe
Burton used his sleeve to wipe beads of sweat from his forehead.
The street sweeper leaned on his broom and asked, “Are you quite all right?”
“Yes,” Burton replied. “But I'm having a bad day.”
“It looks like it. Don't you worry, you'll forget it by tomorrow!”
The man suddenly looked confused. He scratched his head.
“It's odd-I can't even remember this morning. I must be going loopy!” He lifted his broom and stepped from the pavement into the street. With a look of bemusement on his face, he began to sweep horse manure from it and into the gutter.
Burton swallowed and licked his lips. He needed a drink. He was feeling strange and disorientated. He wasn't sure where he was, what he was doing, why he was doing it.
He retrieved the rifle and jewels and started to move away.
“Hey!” the man called after him. “Don't forget! Sangappa! You can buy it at Jambory's Hardware Store on the corner of Halfmoon Street.” He pointed. “Thataway! Tell old Jambory that Carter the Street Sweeper sent you!”
Burton nodded and limped on. He tried to piece together what had just occurred, but his mind was a jumble.
He crossed the road, passed Jambory's Hardware Store, kept going, and entered Berkeley Street, where he saw an elderly man peering out of a ground-floor window. He stopped and examined the white-bearded and scarred face, the sharp cheekbones and deep, dark, tormented eyes.
The man gazed back.
The man moved when he moved.
What? No! It can't be! That's me! My reflection! But how? How can I be old? I'm-I'm nineteen! Just nineteen!
He looked down at his hands. They were brown and wrinkled and weathered. They were not the hands of a young man.
What has happened? How is this possible?
He stumbled away and passed through Berkeley Square into Davies Street, then onto Oxford Street, which was filled with horse-drawn traffic. Only horse-drawn. Nothing else. That surprised him. He had no idea why.
What am I expecting to see? Why does it all feel wrong?
Burton reached Portman Square, staggered into the patch of greenery at its centre, dropped his luggage, and collapsed onto a bench beneath a tree. He'd been walking toward Montagu Place, but it had just occurred to him that there was no reason to go there.
He laughed, and it hurt, and tears poured down his cheeks.
He cried, and thought he might die.
He was quiet, and suddenly hours had passed and a dense fog was rolling in with the night.
Muddled impressions untangled and emerged from behind a veil of shock. He tried to force them back but they kept coming. Around him, London vanished behind the murk. Inside him, the truth materialised with horrible clarity.
She had flinched to one side.
Just as he'd pulled the trigger, she'd moved.
The assassin's second bullet had clipped her ear.
Sir Richard Francis Burton's bullet had hit her in the head.
It was me. I did it.
He had killed Queen Victoria.
Here it begins.
Here it ends.
Not the source, but just another part of a circle.
He sat in Portman Square.
The thick fog embraced him.
It was silent.
It was mysterious.
It was timeless.
And, behind it, the world he had created was very, very real.
APPENDIX I
by Algernon Charles Swinburne,
from Poems and Ballads, 1866.
I.
Who hath known the ways of time
Or trodden behind his feet?
There is no such man among men.
For chance overcomes him, or crime
Changes; for all things sweet
In time wax bitter again.
Who shall give sorrow enough,
Or who the abundance of tears?
Mine eyes are heavy with love
And a sword gone thorough mine ears,
A sound like a sword and fire,
For pity, for great desire;
Who shall ensure me thereof,
Lest I die, being full of my fears?
Who hath known the ways and the wrath,
The sleepless spirit, the root
And blossom of evil will,
The divine device of a god?
Who shall behold it or hath?
The twice-tongued prophets are mute,
The many speakers are still;
No foot has travelled or trod,
No hand has meted, his path.
Man's fate is a blood-red fruit,
And the mighty gods have their fill
And relax not the rein, or the rod.
Ye were mighty in heart from of old,
Ye slew with the spear, and are slain.
Keen after heat is the cold,
Sore after summer is rain,
And melteth man to the bone.
As water he weareth away,
As a flower, as an hour in a day,
Fallen from laughter to moan.
But my spirit is shaken with fear
Lest an evil thing begin,
New-born, a spear for a spear,
And one for another sin.
Or ever our tears began,
It was known from of old and said;
One law for a living man,
And another law for the dead.
For these are fearful and sad,
Vain, and things without breath;
While he lives let a man be glad,
For none hath joy of his death.
II.
Who hath known the pain, the old pain of earth,
Or all the travail of the sea,
The many ways and waves, the birth
Fruitless, the labour nothing worth?
Who hath known, who knoweth, O gods? not we.
There is none shall say he hath seen,
There is none he hath known.
Though he saith, Lo, a lord have I been,
I have reaped and sown;
I have seen the desire of mine eyes,
The begi
The season of kisses and sighs
And the end thereof.
I have known the ways of the sea,
All the perilous ways,
Strange winds have spoken with me,
And the tongues of strange days.
I have hewn the pine for ships;
Where steeds run arow,
I have seen from their bridled lips
Foam blown as the snow.
With snapping of chariot-poles
And with straining of oars
I have grazed in the race the goals,
In the storm the shores;
As a greave is cleft with an arrow
At the joint of the knee,
I have cleft through the sea-straits narrow
To the heart of the sea.
When air was smitten in sunder
I have watched on high
The ways of the stars and the thunder
In the night of the sky;
Where the dark brings forth light as a flower,
As from lips that dissever;
One abideth the space of an hour,
One endureth for ever.
Lo, what hath he seen or known,
Of the way and the wave
Unbeholden, unsailed-on, unsown,
From the breast to the grave?
Or ever the stars were made, or skies,
Grief was born, and the kinless night,
Mother of gods without form or name.
And light is born out of heaven and dies,
And one day knows not another's light,
But night is one, and her shape the same.
But dumb the goddesses underground
Wait, and we hear not on earth if their feet
Rise, and the night wax loud with their wings;
Dumb, without word or shadow of sound;
And sift in scales and wi
Men's souls, and sorrow of manifold things.