Chapter 5—Adjusting to the New Reality
Location: Grand Hotel, Casablanca
Time: August 30, 1878
Tom opened the door at the tap. Sir William was in his room, charging up the magical items. The visitor was Achmed, one of the clerks at the hotel.
"Herr van Helsing is out," Tom said.
"I know. He's been arrested. The manager sent me to fetch Sir William. There's a fine involved, and it must be paid to Captain Renault's office."
"What? What on Earth did he do?"
"I don't know what it was all about, but he spilled water all over one of the singers at Rick's."
"Holy water?"
"I have no idea."
"Wait here."
Tom went to the door of Sir William's bed chamber and quietly opened it. You didn't want to go banging about when someone was crafting spells, even into magical items. Nine times out of ten it wouldn't bother anything at all, but that tenth time could be a disaster. It was exacting work, spell crafting, and you didn't want to let the spell get loose before it was properly loaded into the item. Sir William, now wearing the goggles that normally resided on his top hat, was wiggling his fingers and muttering over an amulet of lifting. The top hat was on the desk, positioned to face the work area from an angle about ninety degrees from Sir William's position. The third eye pin near the top of the hat was glowing with an amber light. Tom waited until he was finished before coughing quietly into his hand.
Sir William looked up. The lenses of the goggles produced a rainbow pattern that hid his eyes from Tom. "Yes, Tom? Thank you for waiting. That was a delicate bit of work, but it's all done now. Attach this to our luggage and it will weigh less than half what it would until next it's opened. What did you need?"
"Herr Alan has been arrested, sir," Tom said. "Yes, I recognized the item."
"What? Alan arrested? What did he do? Not that it would have taken much. The Frenchies are still smarting over that last dust up with the Germans and Captain Renault's about as Frenchy as the Frenchies get."
It took them the rest of the day and two trips to the Casablanca branch of the bank of Angland before they got Alan out of jail. And even at that, he was only released to house arrest in the hotel.
✽✽✽
"Really, Alan, old chap, you're always getting us in trouble. What happened this time?" Sir William tried not to laugh, but he didn't try all that hard.
"I'm not going to talk about it." Then, muttering, "The hypnotizing effect that girl had, she almost had to be a vampire."
✽✽✽
William went back to crafting spells into magical items, consciously making an effort to see what he was doing through Bill Goldman's eyes. The jewel of perspective was amber, but not just any amber. The jewel had the eye of an insect from the Cretaceous period encased in it. The eye and the amber had been together a very long time and they had been manipulated into even greater congruence by a master mage, who had also tied the amber and eye into the structure of the pin. The jewel of perspective had cost Sir William over two hundred pounds. The goggles were different. He had made those himself in his student days. They had been stored out of his sight and reach for over a year when he was sixteen and seventeen, to give the spell a chance to set up in the item.
Bill Goldman had known about the rule of aging in WarSpell and mostly considered it only in terms of how he might get around it. The more powerful the magical item, the longer it had to be aged to work correctly. See magic was the most minor of spells, one that every wizard had to learn whether they be book or amulet wizards. Natural wizards didn't have to learn that spell, they were born seeing magic. But even such a minor little cantrip as that, when placed into a magical item, required that the magic item be set aside for months to age. Now Bill understood why. As the crafted spell sat in the magical item without being cast, the structure of the magic gradually imbued the item, changing its structure so that it fit the magic. Once that happened, reloading the magical item became easier until, eventually, if the item were allowed to sit long enough, it would come to load itself from the always present flow of magic.
William's goggles hadn't been allowed to sit that long. They had stayed in a magic safe just long enough to be sure that they wouldn't leak magic. That was the other issue of aging. If that first copy of the spell were cast from the object before it had fully set up, the casting ripped out part of the magical seal that kept the spell in place. When the spell was crafted back into an improperly aged item, it would leak out the holes. Usually that just meant that the magic item had to be reloaded after a time, even if it hadn't been used to cast the spell. But occasionally the leaking magic would interfere with other spells, sometimes catastrophically.
William remembered times he had seen that happen. A student wizard at Cambridge who was trying to craft a spell when another student had carried in a leaking magical item had been turned halfway into a horse. Not like a centaur. The student had been turned into a horse-shaped man with one and a half stomachs, hands turned halfway to hooves, and a brain that failed to function either as a human or horse's mind.
Suddenly William was up and moving to the toilet. Sir William Deforest was used to that memory and it no longer affected him save as a warning to be careful around improperly aged magical items, but Bill Goldman had never remembered that particular event before and lacked some of the hardness of heart that Sir William had been forced to gain over the years. And it was affecting him the way it had affected William Deforest when he first saw it as a student at Cambridge.
William retched again and wiped his mouth. He needed a scotch to settle his stomach. He left his room to find Alan reading a book and Tom with Alan's monocle in his eye, going over William's new pulse gun.
William remembered from the game, Leroy's voice as clear as if he were in the hotel with them. "Make a note on your character sheet. One fifty-two caliber pulse gun suitable for small dragons with a possibly defective power jewel. Cost one hundred fifty-seven silver sovereigns."
He looked at Tom, who had the gun opened. Tom was examining the coiled jet rope that circled the Damascus steel barrel, inch by inch, looking for any cracks that might interrupt the flow of the magic. There on the end table was the blood-red "possibly defective" power jewel. "I'm going to want to have a look at that power jewel, Tom, just as soon as I've had a scotch."
Tom looked at him, then at the jewel. "Looks all right to me, Gov'ner."
"It's something I remember from Bill Goldman, Tom."
Tom's expression went studiously blank and William hid a grin by looking to the sideboard with the whisky and glasses. Tom, even more than Alan, was uncomfortable with Sir William's extra set of memories.
"What could Bill Goldman remember that would affect the quality of a power jewel?" Alan asked, looking up from his book.
"The game was . . . managed, I guess you'd call it . . . by Leroy Johnson, and Leroy had me mark down in my character sheet 'with a possibly defective power jewel,' along with the price and caliber."
"Why would he say something like that? Surely, the jewel is either defective or it is not defective."
"It's a matter of quantum mechanics," William said, taking a bit more scotch and swishing it around in his mouth before swallowing. But then he thought, No, it's probably a bit of Game Master foreshadowing.
"What's a quantum and why does it need a mechanic?" asked Tom.
"Quantum mechanics is a field of science and mathematics having to do with probabilities and non-Newtonian physics. It proposes—and experiments have shown—that our universe is not so solid as we think, but instead is a series of probability states interacting."
William looked back and forth between Alan and Tom, to see in both faces looks of uncomprehending disbelief, not at all different from a group of sixth graders responding to their first introduction to non-Newtonian physics and the vague pseudo-mysticism of it all. William wondered how Schrodinger's cat would fare in this universe. Were quantum mechanics in play in a world with magic?
"Never mind, gentlemen. I don't actually understand quantum mechanics myself, and until this world produces an Einstein or a Bohr, it's unlikely that anyone will. You know, I don't think there is any real understanding of radio waves or electronics in this world. But in Bill Goldman's world, they had telegraphs by this time. And I think they had some sort of spark gap radios. Wait a minute . . . have either of you ever heard of a bloke called David E. Hughes?"
"You know, I think I have," Alan said surprised. "He's an experimental wizard, working with certain aspects of the magical field. I think he has presented some papers on magic to the Royal Institute."
"Well, in Bill Goldman's history he was one of the people responsible for the invention of the radio," William said. "Funny that bit stuck in my mind. I don't know anything else about the man. Just that he developed a microphone and picked up radio waves this very year."
William picked up the power jewel, went back to his room, and carefully examined it. It was what might be better called a spark jewel. It, when touched by a hammer, caused a point of intense heat to come into being a quarter inch away from it. By placing it in the right place, it could ignite a gunpowder charge in the barrel of the pulse gun. The explosive force of igniting powder was contained by the magic of the jet coil as much as by the metal of the gun barrel. The coil of jet also spun the bullet, acting like rifling, and acted to extend the containment of the force out beyond the barrel, causing the black powder charge to propel the bullet faster than the speed of sound, and carry enough force to penetrate the scales of a dragon.
The power jewel was red amber and inlaid with magic moss. It was an amulet in its own right, and this one under careful examination, proved to be not quite fully aged. There were a series of very small gaps in the magical containment that made it over-sensitive. It might send out its spark of heat early or fail to send it for a few seconds after it was struck. It wasn't very likely to happen, as the holes in the magical structure were very small, but they were there.
"Damn," William muttered, because there was nothing that he could do about it. The item couldn't be repaired. It would work or it would fail and there was no way to tell which or when. "When we get back to Londinium, I am going to have a chat with that gun shop owner. A very serious talk."
William got up to go give Alan the bad news. They could buy a new power jewel for the pulse gun, but it was probably going to cost a pretty penny and William had already paid too much for this.
As he walked, he wondered again if Jane had gotten Alice Blake's memories, and if so what effect they had.
Location: Paris sewers
Time: September 3, 1878
Jane woke as the sun went down. That always happened. No matter how late she stayed up, she always woke at sunset. Jane thought it was part of the magic. By now she could stay up almost half the daylight hours and yesterday she had. She was trying to remember what she had read in The Vampire Compendium IV.
Jane examined her body, forcing herself to feel the aches and pains of life. That, Jane thought, is the hardest thing about being a vampire. I don't have to hurt. I can ignore the pain signals from my arms, legs, guts, and so on. Feel no pain, use magic to move it about like a puppet. In spite of the temptation, she forced herself to feel, trying to feel the pain and at the same time keep a level of detachment.
As she looked back on her condition before she gained Alice Blake's memories, she was sure she had been suffering vitamin D deficiency. The deficiency had been masked by pulled muscles and bruising. As a vampire she went from totally motionless to hypervelocity in an eyeblink. That was fine for her projected form, but her body wasn't built for it. When she took her body along, it got hurt. The healing that had come with Alice Blake's memories and the eggs and yogurt from the farm helped with the vitamin D deficiency, but since she couldn't use sunlight, she was going to have to be careful of her diet. As she thought of it, she realized that the gradual loss of vitamins affected vampires, and perhaps other undead as well. She wondered if that was why zombies were always after brains.
Jane focused on her body and inhaled, then exhaled. She set up a rhythm, inhale, heartbeat, exhale, heartbeat. She made sure her body was breathing and her heart was beating and that they would continue to do so while she was elsewhere. Then she slipped out of her body into her projected form. She looked down. Her body was sleeping, but not in the semi-death that it fell into when she ignored it.
Then she looked at herself, her projected form. She was wearing the gown she had been buried in, but by now she had some practice and she carefully changed it to a peasant dress, a faded blue wool skirt and an off-white blouse. She changed the white slippers into work shoes, feeling like the other side of Cinderella. Then it was time to move.
She moved quickly and quietly through the sewers, traveling almost a mile in four minutes. She reached a drain that went from a grating on a back street to the sewer system.
Placing her hand on the wet surface, she focused her will on the shape of a rat. Not a generic rat. A very specific brown rat that she had bled yesternight. The feel and flavor of the blood carried information that the spell translated into a knowledge of the form.
Using that information, she put herself into the form of the rat. It was hard to think in the rat's form. Rats don't have the world's biggest brains, after all. And, to an extent, Jane was limited by the form her projection took.
She was standing on the bank of the drain pipe. Her paws were wet, but that didn't bother her much. Quickly she ran up the pipe and squeezed through the grate, putting her on a Paris street a few yards from an inn. She ran into an alley and looked around, then resumed her natural projected form.
She realized she had slipped again. She was back in the gown she was buried in. The truth was that in spite of Alice Blake's knowledge and the healing that the Merge effected, Jane Alexander was still a very young vampire, not in full control of her powers. Staying in the alley, she started to change her outfit. It took a few minutes to get everything right.
Now in human form, Jane walked along the Paris streets. She was not seen because she was either still or moving very fast at any given time. Two miles further into the center of Paris to a wealthy neighborhood. Finding the townhouse that was her home before her death, she turned back into the rat and climbed the wall to a second story window that had been left open a crack to let in the breeze. She tried to crawl through the gap and couldn't. The gap was wide enough, but she couldn't enter the window. She pushed, but couldn't move forward. Her rat brain couldn't figure out what was wrong, and she kept struggling with the whatever it was that was blocking her for what seemed a long time. Almost, she turned back into herself in her frustration, but then remembered that she was a full floor up on a window ledge. Instead of going down, though, she went up until she was on the roof of the townhouse, then turned herself back into her human form. Sitting in her burial gown on the roof of her Paris home, she tried to figure it out.
"Of course," she blurted aloud. "I'm an idiot," she finished more quietly. Vampires were a part of Jane Alexander's world. She knew the rules as soon as she considered them. Besides she had tried this before, before she got Alice Blake's memories. Not in Paris, but in Petite Lorain. In the months since, she had put the whole adventure out of her mind as she sank further and further into the blood addiction that was the core of vampirism. A vampire can't enter a private home uninvited and while this had been her home when she was alive, it now belonged to Cousin Frances, who was married to Jean Pierre Picard, a supercilious stick-in-the-mud who had never liked her even when she was legally alive.
Jane suffered another one of those moments of confusion that came from a conflict between her memories and Alice Blake's. In this case, as Jane sat on the roof of her home, her knowledge fought not with Alice's knowledge, but Alice's assumptions. Alice assumed inheritance would be by primogeniture, as it usually was in Angland. But Jane knew that even in Angland it was up to the family, and here, in her family, inheritance went to the eldest child, regardless of gender. Frances was the new baroness of Petite Lorain, and she owned the property and income. She could do with it whatever she chose, and legally Jean Pierre had no say at all. Which wouldn't keep the bald stick from trying to tell Frances what she could and couldn't do. Frances was likely to go along, just to keep peace in the family.
The trick would be to catch Frances alone. Not easy. Frances wasn't a night person. She was at home by sunset and stayed in until the sun rose. Frances was afraid of vampires, as Jane had never been.
Who would invite her into her own home, Jane wondered, and came to the unhappy conclusion. No one. Part of that was the fact that she was a vampire, but at least a little of it, Jane was forced to admit, was because she had been a spoiled little bitch before she was turned. Utterly self-centered and not really caring about anyone but herself. The servants hadn't liked her and she hadn't cared.
Having to be invited in didn't apply to taverns or hotels or other public places, though it did apply to the private rooms in a hotel. It also, she knew from her time with Roderick, didn't apply if she was in her body. It was her projected form which couldn't be seen in mirrors that had to be invited in. That meant almost all the time for most vampires, except the oldest and most powerful. For Jane it meant she either needed to find someone who would invite her in, or go fetch her body. And she didn't want to move her sprained ankle too much until it was a bit more healed. Slowly and carefully, Jane stepped to the edge of the roof she was standing on and tried to decide on her next move.
Jane had never bitten a bat, so she had no notion of how to take the shape of a bat. She had bitten birds, but birds were harder—more genetically distinct, so requiring more will and skill to assume the form.
She could, she knew, just step off the roof and fall to the ground below. Her body was safe in the sewers and would not be harmed. She would not be harmed, but she just couldn't bring herself to do it. Instead, she returned to the form of the rat and ran down the side of the building to the alley.
Once in the alley, she turned back into herself, feeling rather drained after so many transformations. She headed back to the sewers, starting to wonder if that wasn't where she belonged.
✽✽✽
Back in her nook and back in her body, she discovered she was hungry. She ate a stale half loaf of bread she had from Jacques' farm and then went hunting for a rat to drain. She found two before the sun came up and a third one after. Then she crawled into her nook, rubbed down her ankle and let herself sleep.
Location: Paris sewers
Time: September 4, 1878
Jane went back to the farm but in her projected form. Jacques was waiting for her and gave her food, but didn't invite her in. Practical, yes. Trusting? Not so much. Jane was irritated, but understood. Also, she was a little amused. Jacques was right here, looking right at her. She could hypnotize him and force him to let her in, or suck his blood right here. Instead, she sighed, took the food and walked back to the sewers of Paris, where she ate a good meal and did a series of stretching exercises to try and restore her body to good condition.
By now, between the magical healing that had come with Alice Blake's memories that night, the food and exercise, Jane was probably as physically healthy as she had been before she was bitten. But she was coming to realize that wasn't enough. The magic of her vampirism moved her at superhuman speed and gave her superhuman strength, but her body wasn't built to withstand the strains that put on it. With the speeds and the strength she now had, a bump against a wall could easily break both arm and wall. Her body would have to gain greater strength and toughness or she would be constantly injuring herself. Jane needed the body of a professional athlete.
She looked down at the rags she was wearing and realized that she also needed clothes. She thought about the gowns and jewels that she wore before she was turned. Diaphanous pastels, soft and gentle as a spring dawn. Jane realized they just wouldn't do. She needed armor; whale bone, hardened leather and even steel. Jane was horrified by the thought, but Alice Blake's memories came to her aid. Alice had been interested in steampunk styles, how those sorts of outfits could be if not delicate exactly, still—to put it bluntly—sexy as hell.
Jane found herself smiling as she contemplated a new style. And in that moment realized that she was still Jane. In spite of being changed, in spite of the addition of Alice Blake's memories at her core, she was still Jane. She still loved clothes and turning heads. It was just that now she had greater scope for how she turned heads.
Jane started to plan. And as she planned, she wondered how William and Alan would react to the new Jane.
Location: Casablanca, Grand Hotel
Time: September 4, 1878
"Well, have you thought about Jane?" William asked.
They were in the sitting room of their suite, and had been for the last two days with only Tom going out on errands. Tom was on such an errand now, looking for a new power jewel for the pulse gun.
Alan stopped shadowboxing, went to the pommel horse, grabbed a towel off it, and wiped down his face and chest. "Thought, yes. Come to a conclusion, no. Assuming what you're . . ."
William started to object, but Alan held up a hand. "I am not doubting your word." He pointed to a table on which there was a coil of copper wire with an air space between the strands of copper. "The evidence is solid enough. That electromagnet you and Tom made is impressive, even if you say it is weak. Delusions don't tell one how to build things. All I am saying is that whatever this Leroy person said, it may not apply to this world."
"May not apply. Should Jane Alexander be condemned on a maybe?"
"Should Jane's victims be condemned on a may not be?" Alan turned back to the pommel horse and pounded down on the leather covering. "Do you think I like this, William? Do you know how many vampires I have staked?"
"I know it's a lot, my friend, and might that be part of the problem?" William hesitated, trying to find the right way of saying this. First, he knew that Roderick had needed to be staked. With his own soul or not, Roderick had been evil. So had Count Vaule, who they had hunted down before Roderick. Both were killers who bled their victims dry and often tortured them, apparently because it added to the intoxicating nature of the blood. "I have helped with the last half dozen or so, and you know that. And I believed with you that they were soulless monsters, no longer human. The trouble is that as I think back on driving the stake through the chests of those two minions of Vaule's we found in the crypt with him, I want them to be soulless creatures. His victims, not mine. And if that is true for me, my friend, how much more true for you who have staked so many more?"
"You think I don't know that?" Alan almost shouted. "Was my sister still my sister when I staked her? Do you imagine that thought isn't making my conscience into a field of shards, cutting me with every step I take?"
"It shouldn't be," came Tom's voice from the door.
They both spun around. Tom was standing there, arms full of packages, and a member of the hotel staff next to him, looking confused and more than a little frightened. Tom took a step to the left and laid a large round box on a table, then turned to the bellboy. "Run along now, Achmed. It's just the crazy Anglanders, fussing over nothing."
The bellboy, who was probably Tom's age, nodded and left. Tom turned back to them both. "You can only go by what you know at the time, Governor, and that's a fact. 'Sides, even if they had their own souls, if they were going about sucking people's blood, those souls were pretty filthy and getting filthier with every sip." Tom put his hands on his hips and said, "I've heard some of this, but only about the edges as they say. And I think that if we are going to continue together, I ought to hear the rest, so that I will know what I'm in for, don't you know?"
They did. Tom got the whole story of Jane Alexander and of her escape, While he opened packages and put things away.
"We had figured out where the lair was," Alan explained. "We got there just as the sun was setting and both Roderick and Jane were in that state of death like slumber that vampires assume during the daylight hours. Daylight is the best time to fight them and, really, the only safe time. But we were afraid that if we waited, they would escape in the night. Move to a new lair and the killings would continue."
"We staked Roderick just as the sun was setting," Sir William said. "And Evan made a good roll to get it done before Roderick woke and could react."
"Evan?" Tom asked, carrying a gentleman's evening cloak to the wardrobe.
"Evan Von," Sir William said, leaning back on the couch. "Alan's player." He pointed at Alan van Helsing, who was rubbing his hair with a towel. "Anyway, Evan was hamming it up about how Jane was a monster. The problem was I had known Jane before she got turned. A third cousin on her mother's side, as it happens. Doesn't matter. She was part of our set and the idea of putting a stake through her heart wasn't something I was looking forward to. It's strange, really. I have these two sets of memories of the same event, from my point of view and from Bill Goldman's. Bill was hamming it up too, and that's when the game master explained that he was using the version four rules."
"Version four rules?"
"In version four, vampires aren't strictly evil and they aren't animated corpses, not exactly. Their body's—" Sir William paused and then, sounding a little shame-faced, continued. "The truth is, I don't remember the version four vampire rules that well. I never actually read the version four book. I'm just going by what Leroy, the game master, said."
"And why is what the game master said so important?" Tom asked.
"The game master creates the game world."
"Like God?"
"I honestly don't know. To Bill, it was just a game, and I know from Bill's memories that something was happening on his world just before I got his memories. Magic had started to work."
"About the vampires," Alan said.
"According to Leroy, in version four, the vampires are not quite dead. They have a curse that has both an illness and a spell component, but I don't know how it all fits together. I know that Leroy told Alice that Jane was now freed of the compulsion on her that Roderick had because he was her master vampire. The one who turned her. That she was herself again, if still a vampire. Alice wanted to play Jane as an angst-ridden vampire, but Evan and I were insisting that we would have to kill her because even if she wasn't a soulless monster, we thought she was one.
"Good Lord, that sounds horrible, doesn't it?" Sir William said. "Please remember it was just a game. None of us had any notion that it was or could be real."
"But now it is real and apparently always was," Alan said disgustedly. "For myself, I would like to take this Evan Von you say played me and throttle him."
"Evan is actually a quite nice guy, if rather cynical about religion," Sir William said, though Tom thought he heard a bit of doubt in his voice.
"So how could you tell if Jane Alexander is truly Jane Alexander?" Tom asked.
"I don't have a clue," William admitted.
"There may be a way," Alan said. "You got Bill Goldman's memories and I, thank the Lord, didn't get stuck with Evan Von's. But what about Jane? Might she have gotten the Alice Blake person?"
"I guess it's possible. But I wouldn't count on it. I think that was the only time Alice Blake played WarSpell. You may have had to play it a lot to get a character's memory or for the character to get yours. I played WarSpell a lot. It is a hobby, like some people play whist or croquet."
"And you think Alice might—"
Tom interrupted. "How would it be a way to tell?"
"Oh, that. If Jane got Alice's memories, that would strongly indicate, if not prove, that there is a soul there. My understanding, based on my observations of William's aura, is that he has blended soul and memory with Bill Goldman. That rather necessitates having a soul to blend, you see?"
"Well, the way I see it is you need to find this Jane Alexander person and figure out whether she is a person," Tom said. "And more than that, don't assume that just because she's a person she's a good person. She could still have her soul, but be a killer."
"Jane never struck me as the killer type," Sir William said. "A little spoiled, maybe, but not truly evil."
To Tom that sounded like most toffs he'd seen in his life, not excluding these two.
"There is still the situation in Symbaoe," Alan said.
"What's that about?"
"There is a rumor, Tom, that a group of Oxford alumni have been willingly turned into vampires. Exchanging life for the power of unlife, in order to establish Anglish dominance of the subcontinent. They are said to be searching for the Arc of the Covenant."
"You mean that Jewish thingamabob that's talked about in Exodus?"
"Exactly. It's supposed to be a magical item of great antiquity and power, containing all the power of all the prayers from Adam on. In real world terms, it would be something like a magical factory that could be used to make and power magical items. There is a story that's been around for centuries that says a bunch of Jews took it from the Second Temple and hid it away in Africa, though most of the rumors have it in north Africa, not southeastern Africa. Anyway, some of my contacts say that the cabal of Oxford vampires has found documents indicating that jews moved farther south and were involved in building this set of ruins in southeast Africa, and if that's so the Arc might have been shipped down there. Can you imagine a world where the Arc of the Covenant with all its power were to fall into the hands of vampires? They could rule the whole world."
"Aye, that does sound bad, Gov'ner, but I noticed that there was a boatload of maybes in there. How likely is it that this Arc of the Covenant is there? How likely is it that there is a cabal of vampires in Oxford? And . . . well, a whole boatload of how likely is its."
Sir William snorted. "Having studied at Cambridge, I'm willing to believe most anything of Oxford, Tom, but you make a good point."
"What are you saying, Tom?" Alan asked.
"Seems to me you have unfinished business back in Angland that you ought to get settled before you go haring off to Africa after a will 'o the wisp."
Alan van Helsing looked Tom up and down, then said. "Very well, Tom. See when the next transport for Londinium is leaving. Though I suspect we will end up heading for France, Angland will be where we pick up the trail."