Chapter III

Justin awoke with a slight headache. He seemed to be resting on some sort of hospital cot. Even as he sat up he could feel it move slightly beneath him. It was obviously portable. And, while the mattress was comfortable enough, it lacked pad, pillow or covering of any kind. He was, he noted flickeringly, still wearing the blue-piped grey nylon pajamas in which he had gone to bed.

Nor was he in the old house on Louisburg Square. Walls, floor and ceiling of the windowless cubicle around him were all of a neutral composition. Such light as there was was indirect. Evidently, he decided, some sudden sickness had landed him in a hospital room.

At first glance the man who stepped forward from a corner added to the hospital illusion. In knee-length Prince Albert and with grave bewhiskered countenance he looked the picture of a conservative man of medicine. In accents only a little too British to be Bostonian he said, "I was beginning to fear you weren't going to awaken at all."

* * * * *

But as he moved forward it became quickly apparent that this was no twentieth century Boston physician. His hair and whiskers were of much too full and luxurious a cut, the octagonal steel-rimmed spectacles upon his nose much too archaic--as was the upright stiff collar that held his black ascot tie, and his Prince Albert itself.

Justin's eyes ranged downward and froze. For his dignified companion wore neither trousers nor shoes. Below the skirts of his long coat thin shanks protruded, clad only in tight-fitting long drawers, to end in blue morocco slippers with up-pointed Turkish toes. Justin said, not wanting to be too obvious, "How long have I been asleep?"

"It is difficult to tell," said the bewhiskered one. He fumbled beneath his Prince Albert, produced a parsnip of a silver stem-winder, looked at it and shook his head sadly. "My timepiece seems to have stopped utterly since my arrival here."

"All right then," said Justin, running a hand through his close-cut hair, "Where in hell am I anyway?"

"That too is difficult. I believe it is called Belvoir. By the way, I am Dr. Ian Phillips, at your service."

"Then you _are_ a doctor!" Justin exclaimed. "Would you mind explaining what's happened to me?"

"A doctor of philosophy," was the gentle reply. "I was rather hoping that _you_, sir, were a physician."

"Charles Justin, alleged banker, at your service." Justin swung his legs over the side of his cot, tested the floor, stood up. He discovered he was holding the spider clutched in his right hand, dropped it unobtrusively into his pocket. He must have taken it while falling asleep.

"You must be an American, Mr. Justin," said Dr. Phillips.

Justin, slightly bemused, said, "What? Oh--yes, Boston."

"Remarkable," Dr. Phillips said unexpectedly, "that we should have _two_ Bostonians with us."

"Let's count ten and start over again," Justin told him. "Isn't this Boston?"

"Hardly!" Dr. Phillips' laugh was dry and sharp. "This is Belvoir. As to myself, I was in my diggings in London, taking a doze after tea before marking some tests, when I made the trip here."

Justin made his way to a chair in the corner and sat down heavily. Dr. Phillips said, "Perhaps I'd better get your fellow Bostonian. I don't seem to be doing you much good."

"Perhaps you'd better, doctor--thanks," murmured Justin. He put his head in his hands and tried not to think of what was happening.

A minute or two passed. Then quick soft footsteps sounded and a pleasant voice said in utterly indefinable accents, "Ye mustn't feel so upset, Master Justin--we're all in the same boat."

The girl had heavy brown hair that fell in neat slow ripples well below her shoulders. Like himself she was barefoot and her figure looked enormous in a tentlike white nightgown that covered her from shoulder to ankle. She had fine healthy pink-and-white skin, made intriguing rather than marred by an occasional pockmark, and her eyes were as blue as the waters of Cohasset Bay.

Instinctively, despite a growing conviction that he was utterly mad, Justin scrambled to his feet. He said, "It does take a bit of getting used to--but perhaps you can help."

"That's why I'm here, Master Justin," she said. "Poor Dr. Phillips tells me ye too are from Boston. I must say I do not find ye'r countenance familiar."

Her accent, her phraseology--both were alien. As, come to think of it, was the nightgown she was wearing. Yet it was of a piece with his own pajamas and the dignified Dr. Phillips' lack of trousers. And those pockmarks--Justin studied them, then felt a surge of excitement. He said, "Pardon me for not knowing your name but--"

"Deborah Wilkins, spinster, of Prince Street," she cut in.

"--but," he went on, "would you mind telling me, Miss Wilkins, just _when_ it was that you were brought here?"

"To Belvoir? Why, I retired to my bed on a February evening in seventeen sixty-one, to dream of the great white ship that would carry me far from prosaic Boston to some fine city overseas, instead of which the ship brought me here to Belvoir."

"I'll be damned!" said Justin, stunned not only by the date of Deborah's transfer to Belvoir but by the similarity of her experience to his own.

"Methinks we are all damned," said Deborah Wilkins. "Certes we are not in heaven unless our good pastors have been led sorely astray. And if they have been led astray they must indeed be tools of the devil, which leaves us small chance of salvation."

There was a neat syllogistic logic to her reasoning that brought Justin up short. This girl, who or whatever she might be, possessed both fearlessness and intellect. He said, "You don't seem to be afraid of hell, Deborah."

An unexpected dimple appeared in one smooth cheek. She said, "Thus far there seems little to be afeard of, Master Charles." Then, eying him with frank curiosity, "What sort of attire are ye clad in? I have seen nought like it."

"I might say the same of yours," he replied as frankly.

She blushed. "And ye'r accent--surely 'tis not Boston."

"It has a Midwestern base," he told her. Then, "But yours too is strange, Deborah. You see, I come from a time almost two centuries after yours. And as for my 'attire'--like you I was snatched from sleep to come here. These are what is known as pajamas."

She came forward, fingered the material, said, "They are as fine as silk--yet they are not silk."

"If I told you what they were made of you wouldn't believe me," he said. "It is called nylon, Deborah."

"A strange term," she said thoughtfully. Then with a sudden flash of blue eyes, "Methinks ye make free of my name for a man so young and so recently acquainted."

"I'm not so young," he told her, "I'm forty-one. As for calling you by your first name, if you object...."

"Nay, to what avail?" she countered, blushed again, added, "Surely ye must be an agent of the devil himself, Master Charles--ye look no older than twenty-five or six."

"In two hundred years we have learned to take rather better care of ourselves," he added gently. "We don't age quite so fast."

"And ye'r women?" The question was blunt.

Justin said, "And our women too. Few of them show much age until they are in their forties--some not even then."

"Methinks I would appreciate ye'r time--if indeed it _is_ ye'r time," she told him. "But come--ye must be hungry."

Her remark made Justin conscious of the headache that was plucking at his temples. He said, "Come to think of it I'm starved."

"Then follow me, Master Charles," she said, moving toward the doorway. There she paused, turned to study him again, added, "But surely ye cannot be forty-one. Ye look such a _young_ man."

"I'll see what I can do," he replied. "Lead on, MacDuff."

He followed her down a long corridor, off which other cubicles opened, similar to that in which he had so recently awakened. And he noted that her walk was light and graceful, that her ridiculous tent of a nightgown swayed as she moved to suggest her figure filled only a fraction of it.

He said, "Why did you starch that ghastly gown, Deborah?"

Without turning she replied, "Mother made me do it--she is much afeard of my worldiness."

A couple strolled out of one of the cubicles ahead of them. The man wore the brief belted tunic of an Ancient Roman. His hair was short, his broken-nosed Latin features bordered by what looked like gigantic spit-curls.

With him was a dark-skinned woman, veiled to her liquid black eyes, her figure hidden more effectively than Deborah's by a voluminous bright silk sarong. Both of them waited while Deborah and Justin walked past them, regarding Justin with curious dark eyes. The Roman said, "_Ave._"

Culling a forgotten scrap of Latin from his schoolday memories, Justin replied, "_Pax vobiscum_," saw the Roman start with surprise. "Who are they?" he asked in an undertone of the strangers who had let them go ahead.

"Belvoir is full of their like--and even odder," was the girl's reply. "But ye will soon see for ye'rself."

"Have you been here long, Deborah?" Justin asked her.

"'Tis hard to say," was her reply. "Longer than Dr. Phillips or yourself--not as long as most of the others. Dr. Phillips says we have been waiting for ye, Master Charles--that soon we shall go home."

Curious, thought Justin, when she frowned slightly at mention of returning home. It seemed unlikely that any girl could be happy in this strange place.

They came to a large chamber filled with long tables. Running down the center of each was a sort of wall. Seated at perhaps half of the hundreds of modernistic comfortable-looking chairs was the oddest collection of humans Justin had ever seen.

He noted one hirsute low-browed male, clad in a mangy looking hide, who seemed scarcely more than a giant ape. This specimen, with fierce concentration, was gnawing greedily on the scarcely-charred thighbone of a medium-sized animal without benefit of tableware. Beside him sat a squat mocha-skinned female whose skinny pendulous-breasted body was entirely innocent of clothing.

He saw a gentleman in ruffled shirt and magnificently brocaded waistcoat of the period of Louis XIV, who was methodically eviscerating a small roasted bird. Beside him, clad in what Justin could only conceive of as a shift, a lady in a towering headdress sipped champagne from a crystal goblet.

There were others, including an apparent Egyptian, clad in the briefest of loin-cloths with a marcelled spade-beard that recalled the statues of the Pharoahs--a cluster of Orientals of various shapes and skin colors and degrees of disarray, busy with chopsticks--a Hindu temple dancer whose modest demeanor denied her professional carnality.

Justin said, "It must be quite a job supplying each of these people with the food they want."

"'Tis truly remarkable, Master Charles," the girl told him. "Faith, never in my wildest dreams have I conceived of such a miracle."

"I wish you wouldn't call me 'Master Charles'," Justin said.

"And how else should I call thee?" she inquired.

"It's that 'Master' business," he explained. "In my time it means a boy, not a man. Just as 'Mistress', in my era, implies a kept woman rather than a wife."

"Mast--Charles, ye abash me!" she murmured demurely although twin blue devils danced in her eyes. "Here we are."

She had led him to the far end of one of the long tables, at which a small cluster of oddly assorted folk were seated. One of them, a rough-looking little specimen, who seemed to be wearing nothing but a shirt of slightly rusted chain mail, was slashing a large chunk of half-raw meat.

A plump motherly-looking grey-haired lady, clad in a petticoat from the waist down and nothing at all above, smiled at Deborah over her suet pudding and said in English even odder and quainter than Deborah's own, "Good day, Mistress Wilkins, be this the other guest?" And, when the girl nodded, "Truly a comely cod!"--to which Justin, quite aware of the phallic meaning of the word, felt himself blush.

"Ye must not mind her," Deborah whispered, directing him to a chair. Then, mischievously, "'Tis no more than truth--and she means it well."

"It's okay," said Justin. "Just a bit unexpected. _Hello!_"

At the base of the barrier, opposite his chair, his name was printed in gilt letters. He glanced to his left, saw that in front of Deborah's chair, in slightly more antique-looking script, her name was inscribed. She caught his glance, nodded toward the barrier, told him in a whisper, "'Tis but a trick. Ye speak ye'r wish into the hole and then lift it from the wall. Like this, see...?"

She leaned forward, said softly, "Prithee, fetch me a plate of turkey with brown sauce and wild chestnuts--white meat only. And a large tankard of ale."

Justin blinked, saw Dr. Phillips waving a friendly fork at him from a half-dozen places further along, decided to do things up right. He said, "One double Gibson, extra dry."

As he spoke a light went on in front of Deborah, disclosing the apparently solid barrier to be transparent. A window, reminiscent of similar windows in a New York City automat, opened and from a compartment behind it the girl took out her food and put it on the table in front of her. She had been given a savory-smelling well-heaped plate of turkey, gravy and chestnuts, a fine pewter tankard of ale, along with antique-appearing knife, fork, spoon and ringed napkin.

She picked up her fork, gestured toward his own section of the barrier. He followed her motion, saw an enticingly pale dry Gibson awaiting his disposal. Taking it out he toasted Deborah, who lifted her tankard, then asked, "Prithee, what is that?"

"A cocktail," he told her. He pushed it toward her, ordered another for himself. Deborah sipped it, made a face, then sipped again.

"Why!" she exclaimed. "'Tis like strong rum! I must tread warily or my poor head will spin like a windmill."

"Right," he told her. Finishing his drink he ordered himself a small steak, medium rare, with mushrooms, soufflé potatoes and a tossed green chef's salad. They arrived in seconds, perfectly done and equipped with the finest sort of silverware, bearing his initials.

He had just about decided that Belvoir, real or otherwise, was a promisingly pleasant if bizarre place, when a rasping voice filled the hall, saying, to Justin's ears at any rate, "Now hear this--now hear this. Your final briefing will follow immediately. Please return to your chambers and await further orders!"