The River of No Return

for a moment, waiting to see if Mibbs was going to direct him again. But he felt nothing. All right; he was clearly free to roam, within certain boundaries. Arkady and Alice were probably waiting in St. James’s Square and Mibbs was their equivalent of an electric fence, making sure Nick didn’t go far. That was humiliating, to be sure, but it wasn’t life-threatening. Nick’s battle-readiness faded, and he turned and held up his hands to show that he surrendered. Mibbs was eight feet away. Nick could see himself in those mirrored shades, small and belligerent. He wheeled around again.
    Which way? He was facing Guilford Street . . . Guilford Street . . . he searched his memory.
    Guilford Street! The Foundling Hospital. It should be right there.
    But when he looked to the left he could see that the great curving walls that used to enclose the grounds were gone. Nick crossed the street, staring. Not only the walls, but the imposing dormitories themselves, and the grand central hall that had joined them—all gone. Nick walked slowly along the iron fence that now enclosed a large park until he reached the entrance. Here was the marble centerpiece to the grand double gateway that had once stood here. One lonely little relic of the single most imposing monument erected by eighteenth-century benevolence.
    The Foundling Hospital had been a favorite charity of his mother’s, and Nick well remembered being seven or eight years old and going on visitor’s day in the grand Blackdown carriage, his mother glorious in her enormous wig, to look at the children all scrubbed and regimented for presentation. At the end of their visit, they had seen a few women bringing infants to this gateway. Back then the marble had been decorated with a compass rose, and a man stood before it, receiving the little ones. The mothers had to put their hand into a bag and draw out a colored ball. Two women drew out black balls; they had to take their babies away. The third drew out a white ball, and the man reached out and took the little baby from her with a tenderness that fascinated Nick. The mother left a jet button with her newborn, as identification in case she ever had the means to come back and claim him.
    Nicholas’s mother stepped forward after the woman turned away and asked the man at the gate if the baby had a name. He explained that all babies were named anew upon being accepted, and Nick’s mother said that the child must be named Nicholas, “for my son, who will be a marquess one day.” She tugged Nick forward: “Come and see your namesake.” The baby’s white-blond hair stood up all around his head in a frothy cloud, exactly like Nick’s mother’s wig. Nick laughed when he saw it. His mother asked why he laughed, and when he told her, she laughed, too. Then they watched as the man entered the new name in a big book: Nicholas Marquess—black button.
    Now Nick stood again on the spot where Nicholas Marquess had lost his mother and gained his name, and where Nicholas Falcott had laughed with his mother, the only time he could remember sharing a joke with her. A heartless joke—and yet they had felt so good about themselves, going to see the foundlings. He read the sign adorning the simple iron gate that now opened into the park: CORAM’S FIELDS: NO ADULTS UNLESS ACCOMPANIED BY A CHILD.
    Nick put his hand to the gate, wanting to feel the cold of it against his fingers. He peered in at the empty football pitches, the bare trees. Blinking, he realized that tears were in his eyes. Then he felt a pressure on his arm and his feelings lost their footing: He hung over an abyss of fathomless despair, and he felt it sucking him downward . . . he cried out as every joy was lifted from him as gently and as easily . . .
    Nick clung now to the iron gates with both hands, his vision narrowing, darkening, a terrible vertigo rushing in his ears. From far away somewhere, chattering, like the sound of children’s voices, a fading echo of pleasure . . . if he could just tear through these iron bars, just him . . .
    With a last effort he summoned up those calm dark eyes . . . calm dark eyes . . . and he forced his own vision to focus. There, just beside him, Mibbs’s face. Mibbs’s breath on his face. Mibbs’s hand on his arm. Mibbs was holding him poised above the pit, as easily as he might hold a spider over a flame, and his eyes burned toward Nick. In a moment the fire would singe the thread, burn it