Neverwhere (17 page)

He sees its eyes, wet and vicious and gloating, as they float toward him, all in a fraction of a second that becomes a tiny forever. And then it is upon him . . .

The water was cold, and it hit Richard’s face like a slap. His eyes jerked open, and he caught his breath. Hunter was looking down at him. She was holding a large wooden bucket. It was empty. He reached up one hand. His hair was soaked, and his face was wet. He wiped the water from his eyes and shivered with cold.

“You didn’t have to do that,” said Richard. His mouth tasted like several small animals had been using it as a rest room. He tried to stand, and then he sat down again, suddenly. “Ooh,” he explained.

“How’s your head?” asked Hunter, professionally.

“It’s been better,” said Richard.

Hunter picked up another wooden bucket, this one filled with water, and hauled it across the stable floor. “I don’t know what you drank,” she said. “But it must have been potent.” Hunter dipped her hand into the bucket and flicked it at Door’s face, spraying her with water. Door’s eyes flickered.

“No wonder Atlantis sank,” muttered Richard. “If they all felt like this in the morning it was probably a relief. Where are we?”

Hunter flicked another handful of water at Door’s face. “In the stables of a friend,” she said. Richard looked around. The place did look a little like a stable. He wondered if it were for horses—and if so, what kind of horses would live beneath the ground? There was a device painted on the wall: the letter S (or was it a snake? Richard could not tell) circled by seven stars.

Door reached a tentative hand up to her head and touched it, experimentally, as if she were unsure just what she might find. “Ooh,” she said, in a near-whisper. “Temple and Arch. Am I dead?”

“No,” said Hunter.

“Pity.”

Hunter helped her to a standing position. “Well,” said Door, sleepily, “he did warn us it was strong.” And then Door woke up completely, very hard, very fast. She grabbed Richard’s shoulder, pointed to the device on the wall, the snaky S with the stars surrounding it. She gasped. “Serpentine,” she said to Richard, to Hunter. “That’s Serpentine’s crest. Richard, get up! We have to run—before she finds out we’re here . . .”

“And do you think,” asked a dry voice from the doorway, “that you could enter Serpentine’s house without Serpentine knowing, child?”

Door pushed herself back against the wood of the stable wall. She was trembling. Richard realized, through the pounding in his head, that he had never seen Door so actually and obviously scared before.

Serpentine stood in the doorway. She was wearing a white leather corset and high white leather boots, and the remains of what looked like it had once, long ago, been a silk-and-lace confection of a white wedding dress, now shredded and dirt-stained and torn. She towered above them all: her shock of graying hair brushed the door lintel. Her eyes were sharp, and her mouth was a cruel slash in an imperious face. She looked at Door as if she took terror as her due; as if she had become so used to fear that she now expected it, even liked it.

“Calm yourself,” said Hunter.

“But she’s Serpentine,” wailed Door. “Of the Seven Sisters.”

Serpentine inclined her head, cordially. Then she stepped out of the doorway and walked toward them. Behind her was a thin woman with a severe face and long dark hair, wearing a black dress pinched wasp-thin at the waist. The woman said nothing. Serpentine walked over to Hunter. “Hunter worked for me long ago,” said Serpentine. She reached out a white finger and gently stroked Hunter’s brown cheek with it, a gesture of affection and possession. And then, “You’ve kept your looks better than I, Hunter.” Hunter looked down. “Her friends are my friends, child,” said Serpentine. “You are Door?”

“Yes,” said Door, dry-mouthed.

Serpentine turned on Richard. “And what are you?” she asked, unimpressed.

“Richard,” said Richard.

“I am Serpentine,” she told him, graciously.

“So I gathered,” said Richard.

“There is food waiting for all of you,” said Serpentine, “should you wish to break your fast.”

“Oh God no,” whimpered Richard politely. Door said nothing. She was still backed against the wall, still trembling gently, like a leaf in an autumn breeze. The fact that Hunter had clearly brought them here as a safe haven was doing nothing to assuage her fear.

“What is there to eat?” asked Hunter.

Serpentine looked at the wasp-waisted woman in the doorway. “Well?” she asked. The woman smiled the chilliest smile Richard had ever seen cross a human face, then she said, “Fried eggs poached eggs pickled eggs curried venison pickled onions pickled herrings smoked herrings salted herrings mushroom stew salted bacon stuffed cabbage calves-foot jelly—”

Richard opened his mouth to plead with her to stop, but it was too late. He was suddenly, violently, awfully sick.

He wanted someone to hold him, to tell him that everything would be all right, that he’d soon be feeling better; someone to give him an aspirin and a glass of water, and show him back to his bed. But nobody did; and his bed was another life away. He washed the sick from his face and hands with water from the bucket. Then he washed out his mouth. Then, swaying gently, he followed the four women to breakfast.

“Pass the calves-foot jelly,” said Hunter, with her mouth full.

Serpentine’s dining room was on what appeared to be the smallest Underground platform that Richard had ever seen. It was about twelve feet long, and much of that space was taken up with a dinner table. A white damask cloth was laid on the table, and a formal silver dinner-service on that. The table was piled high with evil-smelling foodstuffs. The pickled quails’ eggs, thought Richard, smelled the worst.

His skin felt clammy, and his eyes felt like they had been put in their sockets wrong, while his skull gave him the general impression that someone had removed it while he had slept and swapped it for another two or three sizes too small. An Underground train went past a few feet from them; the wind of its passage whipped at the table. The noise of its passage went through Richard’s head like a hot knife through brains. Richard groaned.

“Your hero is unable to hold his wine, I see,” observed Serpentine, dispassionately.

“He’s not my hero,” said Door.

“I’m afraid he is. You learn to recognize the type. Something in the eyes, perhaps.” She turned to the woman in black, who appeared to be some kind of majordomo. “A restorative for the gentleman.” The woman smiled thinly and glided away.

Door picked at a mushroom dish. “We are very grateful for all this, Lady Serpentine,” she said.

Serpentine sniffed. “Just Serpentine, child. I have no time for silly honorifics and imaginary titles. So. You’re Portico’s oldest girl.”

“Yes.”

Serpentine dipped her finger in the briny sauce that held what appeared to be several small eels. She licked her finger, nodded approvingly. “I had little time for your father. All that foolishness about uniting the Underside. Stuff and nonsense. Silly man. Just asking for trouble. The last time I saw your father, I told him that if he ever came back here, I’d turn him into a blindworm.” She turned to Door. “How is your father, by the way?”

“He’s dead,” said Door.

Serpentine looked perfectly satisfied. “See?” she said. “My point exactly.” Door said nothing. Serpentine picked at something that was moving in her gray hair. She examined it closely, crushed it between finger and thumb, and dropped it onto the platform. Then she turned to Hunter, who was demolishing a small hill of pickled herrings. “You’re Beast-hunting then?” she said. Hunter nodded, her mouth full. “You’ll need the spear, of course,” said Serpentine.

The wasp-waisted woman was now standing next to Richard, holding a small tray. On the tray was a small glass, containing an aggressively emerald-colored liquid. Richard stared at it, then looked at Door.

“What are you giving him?” asked Door.

“Nothing that will hurt him,” said Serpentine, with a frosty smile. “You are guests.”

Richard knocked back the green liquid, which tasted of thyme and peppermint and winter mornings. He felt it go down and prepared himself to try to keep it from coming back up again. Instead he took a deep breath and realized, with a little surprise, that his head no longer hurt, and that he was starving.

Old Bailey was not, intrinsically, one of those people put in the world to tell jokes. Despite this handicap, he persisted in trying. He loved to tell shaggy-dog stories of inordinate length, which would end in a sad pun although, often as not, Old Bailey would be unable to remember it by the time he got there. The only public for Old Bailey’s jokes consisted of a small captive audience of birds, who, particularly the rooks, viewed his jokes as deep and philosophical parables containing profound and penetrating insights into what it meant to be human, and who would actually ask him, from time to time, to tell them another of his amusing stories.

“All right, all right, all right,” Old Bailey was saying. “Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. There was a man walked into a bar. No, he wasn’t a man. That’s the joke. Sorry. He was a horse. A horse . . . no . . . a piece of string. Three pieces of string. Right. Three pieces of string walk into a bar.”

A huge old rook croaked a question. Old Bailey rubbed his chin, then shrugged. “They just do. It’s a joke. They can walk in the joke. He asks for a drink for himself and one for each of his friends. And the barman says, ‘We don’t serve pieces of string here.’ To one of the pieces of string. So. It goes back to its friends and says, ‘They don’t serve strings here.’ And it’s a joke, so the middle one does it too, three of them, you see, then the last one, he ties himself around the middle and he pulls the end of him all out. And he orders a drink.” The rook croaked again, sagely. “Three drinks. Right. And the barman says, ‘here, aren’t you one of those pieces of string?’ And he says, the piece of string, he says, ‘No. I’m a frayed knot.’
Afraid not
, y’see,
a frayed knot
. Pun. Very, very funny.”

The starlings made polite noises. The rooks nodded their heads, put their heads on one side. Then the oldest rook cawed at Old Bailey. “Another? I’m not made of hilarity, y’know. Let me think . . .”

There was a noise from the tent, a deep, pulsing noise, like the beating of a distant heart. Old Bailey hurried into his tent. The noise was coming from an old wooden chest in which Old Bailey kept those things he most prized. He opened the chest. The throbbing noise became much louder. The small silver box was sitting on the top of Old Bailey’s treasures. He reached down one gnarly hand and picked it up. A red light rhythmically pulsed and glowed inside it, like a heartbeat, and shone out through the silver filigree, and through the cracks and fastenings. “He’s in trouble,” said Old Bailey.

The oldest rook cawed a question. “No. It’s not a joke. It’s the marquis,” said Old Bailey. “He’s in deep trouble.”

Richard was halfway through his second plate of breakfast when Serpentine pushed her chair back from the table.

“I think I have had my fill of hospitality,” she said. “Child, young man, good day. Hunter . . .” she paused. Then she ran one clawlike finger along the line of Hunter’s jaw. “Hunter, you are always welcome here.” She nodded to them, imperiously, and stood up and walked away, followed by her wasp-waisted butler.

“We should leave now,” said Hunter. She stood up from the table, and Door and Richard, more reluctantly, followed her.

They walked along a corridor that was too thin to allow more than one of them to pass at a time. They went up some stone steps. They crossed an iron bridge in the darkness, while Underground trains echoed by beneath them. Then they entered what seemed like an endless network of underground vaults that smelled of damp and decay, of brick and stone and time. “That was your old boss, eh? She seemed nice enough,” said Richard to Hunter. Hunter said nothing.

Door, who had been somewhat subdued, said, “When they want to make children behave themselves in the Underside, they tell them, ‘Behave, or Serpentine will take you.’ ”

“Oh,” said Richard. “And you worked for her, Hunter?”

“I worked for all the Seven Sisters.”

“I thought that they hadn’t spoken to each other for, oh, at least thirty years,” said Door.

“Quite possibly. But they were still talking then.”

“How old
are
you?” asked Door. Richard was pleased she had asked; he would never have dared.

“As old as my tongue,” said Hunter, primly, “and a little older than my teeth.”

“Anyway,” said Richard, in the untroubled tone of voice of one whose hangover had left him and who knew that, somewhere far above them, someone was having a beautiful day, “that was okay. Nice food. And no one was trying to kill us.”

“I’m sure that will remedy itself as the day goes on,” said Hunter, accurately. “Which way to the Black Friars, my lady?”

Door paused and concentrated. “We’ll go the river way,” she said. “Over here.”

“Is he coming round yet?” asked Mr. Croup.

Mr. Vandemar prodded the marquis’s prone body with one long finger. The breathing was shallow. “Not yet, Mister Croup. I think I broke him.”

“You must be more careful with your toys, Mister Vandemar,” said Mr. Croup.

“S
o what are you after?” Richard asked Hunter. The three of them were walking, with extreme care, along the bank of an underground river. The bank was slippery, a narrow path along dark rock and sharp masonry. Richard watched with respect as the gray water rushed and tumbled, within arm’s reach. This was not the kind of river you fell into and got out of again; it was the other kind.

“After?”

“Well,” he said. “Personally, I’m trying to get back to the real London, and my old life. Door wants to find out who killed her family. What are you after?” They edged along the bank, a step at a time, Hunter in the lead. She said nothing in reply. The river slowed and fed into a small underground lake. They walked beside the water, their lamps reflecting in the black surface, their reflections smudged by the river mist.

“So what is it?” asked Richard. He did not expect any kind of answer.

Hunter’s voice was quiet and intense. She did not break her step as she spoke. “I fought in the sewers beneath New York with the great blind white alligator-king. He was thirty feet long, fat from sewage and fierce in battle. And I bested him, and I killed him. His eyes were like huge pearls in the darkness.” Her strangely accented voice echoed in the underground, twined in the mist, in the night beneath the Earth.

“I fought the bear that stalked the city beneath Berlin. He had killed a thousand men, and his claws were stained brown and black from the dried blood of a hundred years, but he fell to me. He whispered words in a human tongue as he died.” The mist hung low on the lake. Richard fancied that he could see the creatures she spoke of, white shapes writhing in the vapor.

“There was a black tiger in the undercity of Calcutta. A man-eater, brilliant and bitter, the size of a small elephant. A tiger is a worthy adversary. I took him with my bare hands.” Richard glanced at Door. She was listening to Hunter intently: this was news to her too, then. “And I shall slay the Beast of London. They say his hide bristles with swords and spears and knives stuck in him by those who have tried and failed. His tusks are razors, and his hooves are thunderbolts. I will kill him, or I will die in the attempt.”

Her eyes shone as she spoke of her prey. The river mist had become a thick yellow fog.

A bell was struck, a little way away, three times, the sound carrying across the water. The world began to lighten. Richard thought he could see the squat shapes of buildings around them. The yellow-green fog became thicker: it tasted of ash, and soot, and the grime of a thousand urban years. It clung to their lamps, muffling the light.

“What is this?” he asked.

“London fog,” said Hunter.

“But they stopped years ago, didn’t they? Clean Air Act, smokeless fuels, all that?” Richard found himself remembering the Sherlock Holmes books of his childhood. “What did they call them again?”

“Pea-soupers,” said Door. “London Particulars. Thick yellow river fogs, mixed with coal-smoke and whatever rubbish was going into the air for the last five centuries. Hasn’t been one in the Upworld for, oh, forty years now. We get the ghosts of them down here. Mm. Not ghosts. More like echoes.” Richard breathed in a strand of the yellow-green fog and began to cough. “That doesn’t sound good,” said Door.

“Fog in my throat,” said Richard. The ground was becoming stickier, muddier: it sucked at Richard’s feet as he walked. “Still,” he said, to reassure himself, “a little fog never hurt anyone.”

Door looked up at him with big pixie eyes. “There was one in 1952 that they reckon killed four thousand people.”

“People from here?” he asked. “Under London?”

“Your people,” said Hunter. Richard was willing to believe it. He thought about holding his breath, but the fog was getting thicker. The ground was becoming mushier. “I don’t understand,” he asked. “Why do you have fogs down here, when we don’t have them up there anymore?”

Door scratched her nose. “There are little pockets of old time in London, where things and places stay the same, like bubbles in amber,” she explained. “There’s a lot of time in London, and it has to go somewhere—it doesn’t all get used up at once.”

“I may still be hung over,” sighed Richard. “That almost made sense.”

The abbot had known that this day would bring pilgrims. The knowledge was a part of his dreams; it surrounded him, like the darkness. So the day became one of waiting, which was, he knew, a sin: moments were to be experienced; waiting was a sin against both the time that was still to come and the moments one was currently disregarding. Still, he was waiting. Through each of the day’s services, through their scant meals, the abbot was listening intently, waiting for the bell to sound, waiting to know who and how many.

He found himself hoping for a clean death. The last pilgrim had lasted for almost a year, a gibbering, screaming thing. The abbot regarded his own blindness as neither a blessing nor a curse: it simply
was
; but even so, he had been grateful he had never been able to see the poor creature’s face. Brother Jet, who had cared for the creature, still woke in the night, screaming, with its twisted face before him.

The bell tolled late in the afternoon, three times. The abbot was in the shrine, on his knees, contemplating their charge. He pulled himself to his feet and made his way to the corridor, where he waited. “Father?” The voice was that of Brother Fuliginous.

“Who guards the bridge?” the abbot asked him. His voice was surprisingly deep and melodious for such an old man.

“Sable,” came the reply from the darkness. The abbot reached out a hand, grasped the young man’s elbow, and walked beside him, slowly, through the corridors of the abbey.

There was no solid ground; there was no lake. Their feet were splashing through some kind of marsh, in the yellow fog. “This,” announced Richard, “is disgusting.” It was seeping through his shoes, invading his socks, and making a much closer acquaintance with his toes than Richard was entirely happy with.

There was a bridge ahead of them, rising up out of the marsh. A figure, dressed in black, waited at the foot of the bridge. He wore the black robes of a Dominican monk. His skin was the dark brown of old mahogany. He was a tall man, and he held a wooden staff as tall as he was. “Hold fast,” he called. “Tell me your names, and your stations.”

“I am the Lady Door,” said Door. “I am Portico’s daughter, of the House of the Arch.”

“I am Hunter. I am her bodyguard.”

“Richard Mayhew,” said Richard. “Wet.”

“And you wish to pass?”

Richard stepped forward. “Yes, we do actually. We’re here for a key.” The monk said nothing. He lifted his staff and pushed Richard gently in the chest with it. Richard’s feet slid out from under him, and he landed in the muddy water. The monk waited a few moments, to see if Richard would swing up and begin to fight. Richard didn’t.

Hunter did.

Richard pulled himself up from the mud, and watched, mouth open, as the monk and Hunter fought with quarter-staves. The monk was good. He was bigger than Hunter, and, Richard suspected, stronger. Hunter, on the other hand, was faster than the monk. The wooden staves clacked and whapped in the mist.

The monk’s staff made sudden contact with Hunter’s midriff. She stumbled in the mud. He came in close—too close—as he discovered that her stumble had been a feint and her staff slammed into him, hard and precisely, on the backs of his knees, and his legs no longer held his weight. The man tumbled into the wet mud, and Hunter rested the tip of her staff on the back of his neck.

“Enough,” called a voice from the bridge.

Hunter took a step back. She stood beside Richard and Door once more. She had not even broken a sweat. The big monk got up from the mud. His lip was bleeding. He bowed low to Hunter, then walked to the foot of the bridge.

“Who are they, Brother Sable?” called the voice.

“The Lady Door, Lord Portico’s daughter, of the House of the Arch; Hunter, her bodyguard, and Richard Mayhew, their companion,” said Brother Sable, through bruised lips. “She bested me in fair fight, Brother Fuliginous.”

“Let them come up,” said the voice.

Hunter led the way up the bridge. At the apex of the bridge, another monk was waiting for them: Brother Fuliginous. He was younger and smaller than the first monk they had met, but he was dressed the same way. His skin was a deep, rich brown. There were other black-clad figures, just barely visible, further into the yellow fog. These were the Black Friars, then, Richard realized. The second monk stared at the three of them for a second, and then recited:

“I turn my head, and you may go where you want.

I turn it again, you will stay till you rot.

I have no face, but I live or die

by my crooked teeth—who am I?”

Door took a step forward. She licked her lips and half closed her eyes. “I turn my head . . .” she said, puzzling to herself. “Crooked teeth . . . go where you . . .” Then a smile spread over her face. She stared up at Brother Fuliginous. “A key,” she said. “The answer is, you’re a key.”

“A wise one,” acknowledged Brother Fuliginous. “That’s two steps taken. One more to take.”

A very old man stepped out of the yellow fog and walked cautiously toward them, his gnarled hand holding onto the stone side of the bridge. He stopped when he reached Brother Fuliginous. His eyes were a glaucous blue-white, thick with cataracts. Richard liked him on sight. “How many of them are there?” he asked the younger man, in a deep and reassuring voice.

“Three, Father Abbot.”

“And has one of them bested the first gatekeeper?”

“Yes, Father Abbot.”

“And did one of them answer the second gatekeeper correctly?”

“Yes, Father Abbot.”

There was regret in the old man’s voice. “So, one of them is left to face the Ordeal of the Key. Let him or her stand forward now.”

Door said, “Oh no.”

Hunter said, “Let me take his place. I will face the ordeal.”

Brother Fuliginous shook his head. “We cannot permit that.”

When Richard was a small boy he had been taken, as part of a school trip, to a local castle. With his class he had climbed the many steps to the highest point in the castle, a partly ruined tower. They had clustered together at the top, while the teacher pointed out to them the whole of the countryside, spread out below. Even at that age, Richard had not been very good at heights. He had clutched the safety rail, and closed his eyes, and tried not to look down. The teacher had told them that the drop from the top of the old tower to the bottom of the hill it overlooked was three hundred feet; then she told them that a penny, dropped from the top of the tower, would have enough force to penetrate the skull of a man at the bottom of the hill, that it would crack a skull like a bullet. That night Richard lay in bed, unable to sleep for imagining the penny falling with the power of a thunderbolt. Still looking like a penny, but such a murderous penny, when it dropped . . .

An ordeal.

The penny dropped for Richard. It was a thunderbolt sort of a penny.

“Hang on a sec,” he said. “Back up. Mm-mm: ordeal. Someone’s got an ordeal waiting for them. Somebody who didn’t have a little fight down in the mud, and didn’t get to answer the riddle . . .” He was babbling. He could hear himself babbling, and he just didn’t care.

“This ordeal of yours,” Richard asked the abbot. “How much of an ordeal is it?”

“This way now,” said the abbot.

“You don’t want him,” said Door. “Take one of us.”

“Three of you come. There are three tests. Each of you faces one test: that is fair,” said the abbot. “If he passes the ordeal, he will return to you.”

A light breeze eased the fog. The other dark figures were holding crossbows. Each crossbow was pointed at Richard, or Hunter, or Door. The friars closed ranks, cutting Richard off from Hunter and from Door. “We’re looking for a key—” said Richard to the abbot, in a low voice.

“Yes,” said the abbot, placidly.

“It’s for an angel,” explained Richard.

“Yes,” said the abbot. He reached out a hand, found the crook of Brother Fuliginous’s arm.

Richard lowered his voice. “Look, you can’t say no to an angel, especially a man of the cloth like yourself . . . why don’t we just skip the ordeal? You could just hand it over.”

The abbot began to walk down the curve of the bridge. There was a door, open at the bottom. Richard followed him. Sometimes there is nothing you can do. “When our order was founded,” said the abbot, “we were entrusted with the key. It is one of the holiest, and the most powerful, of all sacred relics. We must pass it on, but only to the one who passes the ordeal and proves worthy.”

They walked through winding narrow corridors, Richard leaving a trail of wet mud behind him. “If I fail the ordeal, then we don’t get the key, do we?”

“No, my son.”

Richard thought about this for a moment. “Could I come back later for a second try?”

Brother Fuliginous coughed. “Not really, my son,” said the abbot. “If that should happen, you will in all probability be . . .” he paused, and then said, “beyond caring. But do not fret, perhaps you will be the one to win the key, eh?” There was a ghastly attempt at reassurance in his voice, more terrifying than any attempt to scare him could have been.

“You would kill me?”

The abbot stared ahead with blue-milk eyes. There was a touch of reproof in his voice. “We are holy men,” he said. “No, it is the ordeal that kills you.”

They walked down a flight of steps, into a low, cryptlike room with oddly decorated walls. “Now,” said the abbot. “Smile!”

There was the electric fizz of a camera flash going off, blinding Richard for a moment. When he could see again, Brother Fuliginous was lowering a battered old Polaroid camera and was yanking out the photograph. The friar waited until it had developed, and then he pinned it to the wall. “This is our wall of those who failed,” sighed the abbot, “to ensure that they are none of them forgotten. That is our burden also: memorial.”

Richard stared at the faces. A few Polaroids; twenty or thirty other photographic snapshots, some sepia prints and daguerreotypes; and, after that, pencil sketches, and watercolors, and miniatures. They went all the way along one wall. The friars had been at this a very long time.