The May Fair disappeared like a fast-forwarded video of an ice sculpture melting, the vibrant colors replaced by the drabber, grayer reality; the medieval stench by vehicle exhausts; and the human hubbub of the May Fair by the sound of twentieth-century Mayfair.
They were on the footpath, on Curzon Street, near the laneway entrance to Shepherd Market. The rain was coming down harder, a drop splashing right in Susan’s eye. Two young Americans, clearly tourists, were standing nearby.
“Did you see those little kids?” one of the tourists asked her friend. “The ones that ran through a second ago?”
“What? Sorry, I kind of phased out there for a few seconds. Must be jet lag. Hey, look down this cute alley! A real British pub.”
“They’re in for a shock,” said Susan. “Room-temperature pints of real ale and young Americans do not go well together—”
“That was actually a wolf biting my stick, you know,” said Merlin. He frowned and inspected the deep tooth marks in the bog oak, sighed, and brushed some flecks of mud off his dress, smearing them into streaks that somehow looked punky, intentional, and cool. “So now I really wonder who . . . or what . . . you are.”
“I’m me,” said Susan slowly. The rose was in her hand, but it was only glass now, rigid and fragile. “I’ve always had a way with dogs.”
“Have you now?” asked Merlin cheerfully. He put his stick over his shoulder in best Gene Kelly style and skipped through a puddle, sending his dress swirling as he spun about to look back at Susan, who was motionless, lost in thought. “Come on, it’s not far to the bookshop now!”
Chapter Six
It is not music that soothes those savage hearts
Our soldiers, left-handed, of many parts
Stories and tales leech their wrathsome blood
The beast is calmed, embanked the flood
THE NEW BOOKSHOP HAD ONLY A SMALL BRONZE PLATE BY THE front door of the imposing five-story Georgian town house to announce that it was, in fact, a shop of any kind. As the front door was itself shielded by a columned portico, it was unlikely anyone who wasn’t already looking for the shop would ever step inside.
Unusually, there was a kind of vestibule beyond the front door, a short hallway that was closed off by an inner metal door of antique bronze, etched with the figure of two bearded giants raising nailed clubs, their eyes large inset crystals that looked like diamonds but were far too big to be actual gems. As Merlin ushered Susan inside, the outer door swung shut behind him and clicked heavily as it locked itself.
“We have unwanted visitors from time to time,” explained Merlin. He stepped past her and pressed the bell button next to the inner door. “We won’t have to wait long.”
“That’s beautiful work,” said Susan, looking at the giants etched in the door.
“Gog and Magog,” said Merlin.
The giants’ crystal eyes suddenly lit up, making Susan start and step backwards.
“The door was made by the ‘Great Rondelhyde, Magic Artificer’ in 1899,” said Merlin. “One of the right-handed. His real name was Ronald Biggins. Amongst other things, he made apparatus for stage magicians in the last half of the nineteenth century, disappearing cabinets and so on. He loved this kind of stuff. Our customers enjoy it, too.”
“Does it do anything?” asked Susan. “I mean, is it actually a magical door?”
“No,” said Merlin. “The eye lights are electric and mainly to make sure we can clearly see who’s waiting. It is a very solid door, though, two-inch bronze on a steel frame.”
Susan looked up. There was an odd-looking mirror set into the ceiling.
“One-way glass,” she said.
“Oh no, that is magical,” said Merlin. “Two handfuls of water from . . . let’s say a sacred lake . . . cupped in the same moment from different shores. If it was big enough you could walk through to the other side, though as that is just the tea room here, it would be disappointing. Here we go.”
With considerable creaking and rumbling, the bronze door began to open. It got halfway, with one of the two giants sliding out of view, and then stopped. Through the gap, Susan saw a charming, comfortable book room lit by bright electric chandeliers above six rows of glass-door bookcases full of old tomes bound in green and red and blue and black leather or buckram; or more exotic materials like animal hides and even metal. Each row of shelves was bookended with a well-worn leather chair, for the most languid book-browsing experience.
Straight ahead there were two long mahogany tables stacked with more old books, and in the aisle between them stood a bright-eyed, middle-aged bookseller with a surprisingly long beard, which had been plaited into three braids. He wore a green apron with numerous pockets over his untidy, shiny-at-the-elbows blue suit; a checked shirt; and a limp, pale green bow tie. He wore a white cotton glove on his right hand and Susan noticed his apron had a scabbard pocket for very long, thin paper knife.
“Door’s stuck again,” he said. “At half Gog, as we like to say. Welcome back, Merlin. Practically everyone from both shops is out looking for you.”
“Audrey got here, then?”
“She did, with her surprising and rather disturbing news,” replied the man. “No one can recall the urchins daring such a dance, at least to one of us. Oh, please forgive me. You must be Susan. My name is Eric. Can I offer you a towel, perhaps?”
Susan looked down at herself. So much had happened so quickly she hadn’t had time to take in that she was soaking wet and her Docs were muddied to the ankle. Merlin was drenched, too, but he somehow looked glamorous, as if he’d gotten wet on purpose.
“Uh, yes, please,” she said, correctly interpreting Eric’s quick sideways glance that he was really concerned she didn’t drip on any of the books.
“Come straight along between the tables here and out to the staff washrooms,” said Eric. “And then they’re expecting you upstairs, Merlin.”
“Both Greats?” asked Merlin. “Merrihew came in?”
“Yes, they’re both here today,” said Eric. He hesitated, then added, “Good luck.”
Merlin grimaced and handed him the blackthorn stick.
“Give that to Audrey, will you, when she gets back?”
Eric nodded, and popped it into a tree stump umbrella stand by the door, complete with sawn-off roots, which held several similar sticks, two ivory-handled black umbrellas of some antiquity, and a two-handed sword with a bronze entwined dragon hilt that was longer than he was tall.
“Would you like me to take your glass rose, too?” asked Eric.
“Uh, no, I’ll keep it,” said Susan. She wasn’t sure why, except that she wanted to look at it more closely when she got the chance. She’d seen it swaying and bending, the petals fluttering, and even though it was now stiff and solid glass, it had a naturalistic feel and looked like a work of very fine art, not something from some factory mold.
Susan followed Merlin between the tables towards a door at the back of the showroom, trying not to turn her head too quickly to look at interesting books and shower them with droplets of water. Because the books were old and most didn’t have dust jackets, it was hard to see what they were while rapidly passing by, particularly without turning her head, but she did manage to read the gilt or silver embossed type on some as she went past, noting titles and names she knew like The Tempest and Ivanhoe and Persuasion and Wuthering Heights, Shakespeare and Walter Scott, Austen and Brontë. Several shelves contained only Bibles, some of them obviously very old indeed, and there was a special display case between two bookcases where she paused for a moment, awed by its contents: William Blake’s Poetical Sketches, a first edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence, and the crowning presence of a Shakespeare First Folio.