Long Live the Queen (Book 5 of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Three: Dr Livingstone, I Presume?

Jack coughed into the sand while this tirade was going on, and for a long time afterwards. He felt as though he'd taken great, scalding gulps of the lake-water because, even after his lungs were clear, his throat burned.

His sense of self rushed back like displaced water, but he didn't open his eyes. He hugged his memories to him, half-shaky and half-angry, the way you'd hug a child who'd gone skipping into a busy road and frightened the life out of you.

He repeated Ellini's name under his breath until he felt better. It had almost happened again. He had almost been the old Jack – the amnesiac, the kisser of Alice Darwin and stabber of innocent girls in churches. He never, never, never wanted to go back there.

Finally, when he was sure he had her – every inch, from every angle – he rolled onto his back and opened his eyes.

His rescuer was a man – or at least appeared to be. He was young but bearded, handsome but unkempt, dressed in straggly grey furs that looked like wolf-skin. He dressed like a caveman, but talked like Danvers. Very puzzling.

"I don't know you," Jack muttered, and shut his eyes.

He opened them again. "I don't know you. You're not – you're not from my head." He sat upright so fast that the man, leaning over him, was almost knocked backwards. "Are you real?"

"As real as the next man, I daresay."

"As real as the next man," Jack repeated, shaking his head in disbelief, "you dare say?"

The disbelief gradually crumpled into a grin, and went from there into an unstoppable laugh. He launched himself at the man again, not to head-butt him this time, but to embrace him.

"A real person!" he exclaimed. "Not a symbol of God-knows-what or some terrifying figure from my childhood! I could kiss you!"

"I say, steady on," the man protested, pulling out of Jack's arms, and adjusting his furs with ruffled dignity. "That sort of thing may be all very well at Eton, but I'm a-"

"Eton! You're down here with the sulphur and the sea-witches, talking about Eton?"

"Well, of course," said the stranger. "A man can only talk about what he knows."

Jack resisted the urge to contradict him there. Instead, he said, "Not from round here, then?"

"Decidedly not."

This was said with a flicker of contempt which separated him forever from Danvers in Jack's mind. Still, contempt for this place would not be all that remarkable, and Jack was too happy to hold it against him. "What's your name?"

"James."

"James," said Jack, chuckling happily.

"James Wesley Merriman Darwin."

There was a pause, during which Jack's smile flickered, but didn't go out. When the silence had gone on for a second or two longer than was comfortable, he extended a hand and said, "Jack Cade. Two names, two syllables, no funny business."

The man, who had seized his hand to shake it, now let it drop and gaped at him. "Not the Jack Cade, surely?"

Jack tilted his head on one side. "I don't know which one's the Jack Cade. There was some kind of rebel in the Middle Ages. He's in one of Shakespeare's history plays. I've been in lots of newspapers, but I've never been in Shakespeare."

He looked again at the man, because – well, because he had to, now. It wasn't every day you met someone who had seen Alice Darwin naked. Handsome, certainly, but with rather a wide nose, and an expression of perpetual puzzlement which probably made him look younger than he really was. He was bearded – his dark hair had grown past his shoulders – but there was a suggestion of sleekness there, as if he had done the best he could with a toothless comb and a scrap of mirror. The man had standards.