‘Hello?’ he called. ‘Hello there?’
‘We’re closed,’ came the reply from the back room of the shop.
Will tried again. ‘Your door was open. I thought perhaps you might—’
‘I said we’re closed. You can come back at eight, when we—’
The boy broke off.
‘Could I persuade you to open early?’ Will put his hand on his purse.
The boy was staring at him across the length of the shop, a pale smudge of a youth wide-eyed near the only lamp.
Will recognised him at once from Violet’s description. The colourless features, the lank white hair under the cap. His pulse kicked up a notch. This was really happening. The boy was Devon, Robert Drake’s clerk, and part of Simon’s pseudo-court.
‘Perhaps for a small fee?’ Will touched his purse again. Filled mostly with rocks, it looked substantial.
‘My apologies,’ said Devon, after a moment. ‘I forgot myself.’ He stood, lifting the lamp. Touching flame to candles, he lit the shop as he came forward, multiple sources of light that glowed on the surfaces of the ivory. ‘I am your servant.’ He didn’t take his eyes off Will.
‘No need for formalities,’ said Will.
‘No?’ Devon said. ‘Why – why is it you’re here?’ Devon glanced at the purse again, then back at Will. ‘At this hour.’ It was early. And Will was a stranger. Devon’s caution appeared to be warring with the potential to earn money. Will knew what he had to do. Show himself, get Devon talking, and then—
‘I’m looking for something.’
‘Looking for something?’
‘A gift.’
His tension rose as Devon came out from behind the counter. It seemed that Devon had believed his pretext. But Will could still feel that he was inside the property of one of Simon’s loyalists. It was like being inside Simon’s home, the same dangerous feeling.
‘Ivory is a splendid gift,’ Devon was saying. ‘Each piece is irreplaceable. You have to kill for it. Look.’ Devon gestured in the dim light to a Roman ivory diptych of men with dogs that looked like leopards. ‘This piece is an antique. The Romans hunted elephants throughout their empire. Now the elephants in Northern Africa are gone. For all we know, this was the last.’
Will looked at the ivory in the flickering light and felt a twist of unease as he thought of those great creatures, now vanished. He looked back at Devon, who was continuing his tour through the shop.
‘These days we hunt elephants south of the Sahara, where there are some remaining herds. More juvenile pieces make billiard balls, walking stick tops, hand mirrors, piano keys. The highest grade is reserved for ornamental sculpture and jewellery.’ Devon drew him through the pale shapes of the dead. ‘Perhaps one day a lady will wear the world’s last elephant as a hairpin.’
Will stopped in front of a wall-mounted specimen, and the hairs rose on the back of his neck. The ornate fixture held a horn both familiar and different. It was long, straight and spiralled, tapering to a pointed tip – a shape he’d seen before.
But where the horn in the Hall of the Stewards had been a white spire, silver spume, helical fire – this one was yellowed in places, brown-lined where the curves of the spirals met, with the overall look of an old, dead tooth. καρτ?ζωνο?, the plaque beneath it said in Ancient Greek. Cartazon.
‘A unicorn horn?’ he said.
‘It’s a fake,’ said Devon. ‘It comes from a narwhal, a type of whale they hunt in the northern seas. Others are crafted … Artisans in the Levant have a method of boiling walrus tusks. If you steep a horn for six hours it becomes soft and pliant so that you can work it, straighten it as you like. They fetch a good price.’
A fake. One dead thing masquerading as another, like rabbit skins stitched together to make a lion pelt. The horn in the Hall had been so different, this one felt like a mockery.
‘You can touch it,’ said Devon.
Will looked at him. Devon was gazing back at him. It felt like some kind of test.
Lifting a hand, Will ran his fingertips along its length. It felt ordinary – a bull horn; a piece of old bone.
‘Robert collects the fakes as curios,’ Devon said. ‘An expensive hobby. People will pay a lot for the idea that something pure exists. Even if the trophy means they killed it.’
‘Have you ever thought one might be real?’
‘The true cornu monocerotis?’ Devon gave a thin smile. ‘The horn that neutralises poison, cures convulsions, leads you to fresh water? That if you hold it in your hand will compel you to tell the truth?’ Devon leaned back, a pale shape against the counter. ‘I’ve seen stacks of horns as high as buildings, entire herds slaughtered, carcasses littering beaches as far as the eye can see. It’s never real.’