AN EXHIBITION AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM 2 page

"Say the word," said Mr. Vandemar, who was now standing behind the marquis's chair, "and it'll be off his neck before you can say Jack Ketch."

The marquis breathed heavily on his fingernails and polished them on the lapel of his coat. "I have always felt," he said, "that violence was the last refuge of the incompetent, and empty threats the final sanctuary of the terminally inept."

Mr. Croup glared. "What are you doing here?" he hissed.

The marquis de Carabas stretched, like a big cat: a lynx, perhaps, or a huge black panther; and at the end of the stretch he was standing up, with his hands thrust deep in the pockets of his magnificent coat. "You are," he said, idly and conversationally, "I understand, Mister Croup, a collector of T'ang dynasty figurines."

"How did you know that?"

"People tell me things. I'm approachable." The marquis's smile was pure, untroubled, guileless: the smile of a man selling you a used Bible.

"Even if I were… " began Mr. Croup.

"If you were," said the marquis de Carabas, "you might be interested in this." He took one hand out of his pocket and displayed it to Mr. Croup. Until earlier that evening it had sat in a glass case in the vaults of one of London's leading merchant banks. It was listed in certain catalogues as The Spirit of Autumn (Grave Figure). It was roughly eight inches high: a piece of glazed pottery that had been shaped and painted and fired while Europe was in the Dark Ages, six hundred years before Columbus's first voyage.

Mr. Croup hissed, involuntarily, and reached for it. The marquis pulled it out of reach, cradled it to his chest. "No no," said the marquis. "It's not as simple as that."

"No?" asked Mr. Croup. "But what's to stop us taking it, and leaving pieces of you all over the Underside? We've never dismembered a marquis before."

"Have," said Mr. Vandemar. "In York. In the fourteenth century. In the rain."

"He wasn't a marquis," said Mr. Croup. "He was the earl of Exeter."

"And marquis of Westmorland." Mr. Vandemar looked rather pleased with himself.

Mr. Croup sniffed. "What's to stop us hacking you into as many pieces as we hacked the marquis of Westmorland?" he asked.

De Carabas took his other hand out of his pocket. It held a small hammer. He tossed the hammer in the air and caught it by the handle, ending with the hammer poised over the china figurine. "Oh, please," he said. "No more silly threats. I think I'd feel better if you were both standing back over there."

Mr. Vandemar shot a look at Mr. Croup, who nodded, almost imperceptibly. There was a tremble in the air, and Mr. Vandemar was standing beside Mr. Croup, who smiled like a skull. "I have indeed been known to purchase the occasional T'ang piece," he admitted. "Is that for sale?"

"We don't go in so much for buying and selling here in the Underside, Mister Croup. Barter. Exchange. That's what we look for. But yes, indeed, this desirable little piece is certainly up for grabs."

Mr. Croup pursed his lips. He folded his arms. He unfolded them. He ran one hand through his greasy hair. Then, "Name your price," said Mr. Croup. The marquis let himself breathe a deep, relieved, and almost audible sigh. It was possible that he was going to be able to pull this whole grandiose ruse off, after all. "First, three answers to three questions," he said.

Croup nodded. "Each way. We get three answers too."

"Fair enough," said the marquis. "Secondly, I get safe conduct out of here. And you agree to give me at least an hour's head start."

Croup nodded violently. "Agreed. Ask your first question." His gaze was fixed on the statue.

"First question. Who are you working for?"

"Oh, that's an easy one," said Mr. Croup. "That's a simple answer. We are working for our employer, who wishes to remain nameless."

"Hmph. Why did you kill Door's family?"

"Orders from our employer," said Mr. Croup, his smile becoming more foxy by the moment.

"Why didn't you kill Door, when you had a chance?"

Before Mr. Croup could answer, Mr. Vandemar said, "Got to keep her alive. She's the only one that can open the door."

Mr. Croup glared up at his associate. "That's it," he said. "Tell him everything, why don't you?"

"I wanted a turn," muttered Mr. Vandemar.

"Right," said Mr. Croup. "So you've got three answers, for all the good that will do you. My first question: why are you protecting her?"

"Her father saved my life," said the marquis, honestly. "I never paid off my debt to him. I prefer debts to be in my favor."

"I've got a question," said Mr. Vandemar.

"As have I, Mr. Vandemar. The Upworlder, Richard Mayhew. Why is he traveling with her? Why does she permit it?"

"Sentimentality on her part," said the marquis de Carabas. He wondered, as he said it, if that was the whole truth. He had begun to wonder whether there might, perhaps, be more to the upworlder than met the eye.

"Now me," said Mr. Vandemar. "What number am I thinking of?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"What number am I thinking of?" repeated Mr. Vandemar. "It's between one and a lot," he added, helpfully.

"Seven," said the marquis. Mr. Vandemar nodded, impressed. Mr. Croup began, "Where is the-" but the marquis shook his head. "Uh-uh," he said. "Now we're getting greedy."

There was a moment of utter silence, in that dank cellar. Then once more water dripped, and maggots rustled; and the marquis said, "An hour's head start, remember."

"Of course," said Mr. Croup. The marquis de Carabas tossed the figurine to Mr. Croup, who caught it eagerly, like an addict catching a plastic baggie filled with white powder of dubious legality. And then, without a backward glance, the marquis left the cellar.

Mr. Croup examined the figurine minutely, turning it over and over in his hands, a Dickensian curator of the Museum of the Damned contemplating a prize exhibit. His tongue flicked out, from time to time, like a snake's. A perceptible flush appeared on his pallid cheeks. "Oh, fine, fine'," he whispered. "T'ang dynasty indeed. Twelve hundred years old, the finest pottery figurines ever made on this earth. This was created by Kai Lung, finest of potters: there is not a twin to it in existence. Examine the color of the glaze; the sense of proportion; the life… " He was smiling now, like a baby; the innocent smile looked lost and confused on the shady terrain of Mr. Croup's face. "It adds a little wonder and beauty to the world."

And then he grinned, too widely, and lowered his face to the figurine, and crushed its head in his teeth, chomping and chewing wildly, swallowing in lumps. His teeth ground the china to a fine powder, which dusted the lower part of his face.

He gloried in its destruction, throwing himself into it with the strange madness and uncontrolled blood lust of a fox in a henhouse. And then, when the statue was nothing but dust, he turned to Mr. Vandemar. He seemed strangely mellow, almost languid. "How long did we say we'd give him?"

"An hour."

"Mmm. And how long has it been?"

"Six minutes."

Mr. Croup lowered his head. He ran a finger across his chin, licked the powdered clay from his fingertip. "You follow him, Mister Vandemar," said Mr. Croup. "I need a little more time in which to savor the occasion."

Hunter could hear them walking down the steps. She was standing in the shadows, with her arms folded, in the same position she had been in when they left her. Richard was humming loudly. Door was giggling helplessly; then she would stop, and tell Richard to be quiet. Then she would start giggling again. They walked past Hunter without noticing her. She stepped out of the shadows, and said, "You have been gone for eight hours." It was a statement of fact, without reproach or curiosity.

Door blinked at her. "It didn't seem that long." Hunter said nothing.

Richard grinned wearily at her. "Don't you want to know what happened? Well, we got ambushed by Mister Croup and Mister Vandemar. Unfortunately we didn't have a bodyguard around. Still, I gave them a good run for their money."

Hunter raised a perfect eyebrow. "I am in awe of your pugilistic talents," she said coolly.

Door giggled. "He's kidding. Actually-they killed us."

"As an expert in the termination of bodily functions," Hunter said, "I must beg to differ. You are neither of you dead. At a guess, you are both very drunk."

Door stuck her tongue out at her bodyguard. "Nonsense. Touched hardly a drop. That much." She held out two fingers to show how tiny an amount "that much" was.

"Just went to a party," said Richard, "and saw Jessica and saw a real angel and got a little black pig and came back here."

"Just a little drink," continued Door, intently. "Old, old drink. Tiiiiny little drink. Very small. Almost not there." She began to hiccup. Then she giggled again. A hiccup interrupted her, and she sat down suddenly on the platform. "I think maybe we are a bit smashed," she said, soberly. Then she closed her eyes, and began, solemnly, to snore.

The marquis de Carabas was running through the underways as if all the hounds of Hell had his scent and were on his trail. He was splashing through six gray inches of the Tyburn, the hangman's river, kept safe in the darkness in a brick sewer beneath Park Lane on its way south to Buckingham Palace. He had been running for seventeen minutes.

Thirty feet below Marble Arch, he paused. The sewer divided into two branches. The marquis de Carabas ran down the left-hand branch.

Several minutes later, Mr. Vandemar walked through the sewer. And when he reached the junction he, too, paused for a few moments, sniffing the air. And then he, too, walked down the left-hand branch.

Hunter dropped Richard Mayhew's unconscious body into a pile of straw, with a grunt. He rolled in the straw, said something that sounded like "Forth-ril bjugly mobble wug," and went back to sleep. She put Door down in the straw next to him, more gently. Then she stood beside Door, in the dark stables under the ground, on guard still.

The marquis de Carabas was exhausted. He leaned against the tunnel wall and stared at the steps that went up ahead of him. Then he pulled out the golden pocket-watch and looked at the time. Thirty-five minutes had passed since he had fled the hospital cellar.

"Is it an hour yet?" asked Mr. Vandemar. He was sitting on the steps ahead of the marquis, picking his nails with a knife.

"Not even close," gasped the marquis.

"Felt like an hour," said Mr. Vandemar, helpfully.

There was a shiver in the world, and Mr. Croup stood behind the marquis de Carabas. He still had powder on his chin. De Carabas stared at Mr. Croup. He turned back to look at Mr. Vandemar. And then, spontaneously, the marquis de Carabas began to laugh. Mr. Croup smiled. "You find us funny, Messire Marquis, do you not? A source of amusement. Is that not so? With our pretty clothes, and our convoluted circumlocutions-"

Mr. Vandemar murmured, "I haven't got a circumlo… "

"-and our little sillinesses of manner and behavior. And perhaps we are funny."

Mr. Croup raised one finger then, and waggled it at de Carabas. "But you must never imagine," he continued, "that just because something is funny, Messire Marquis, it is not also dangerous."

And Mr. Vandemar threw his knife at the marquis, hard and accurately. It hit him, hilt first, on the temple. His eyes rolled up in his head, and his knees buckled. "Circumlocution," said Mr. Croup to Mr. Vandemar. "It's a way of speaking around something. A digression. Verbosity."

Mr. Vandemar picked up the marquis de Carabas by his waistband and dragged him up the stairs, his head bump-bump-bumping on each step as they went, and Mr. Vandemar nodded. "I wondered," he said.

Watching their dreams, now, as they sleep.

Hunter sleeps standing up.

In her dream, Hunter is in the undercity beneath Bangkok. It is partly a maze, and partly a forest, for the wilderness of Thailand has retreated deep beneath the ground, under the airport and the hotels and the streets. The world smells of spice and dried mango, and it also smells, not unpleasantly, of sex. It is humid, and she is sweating. It is dark, broken by phosphorescent patches on the wall, greenish grey fungi that give light enough to fool the eye, light enough to walk by.

In her dream Hunter moves silent as a ghost through the wet tunnels, pushing her way through vegetation. She holds a weighted throwing stick in her right hand; a leather shield covers her left forearm.

She smells it, in her dream, acrid and animal, and she pauses beside a wall of ruined masonry, and she waits, part of the shadows, one with the darkness. Hunting, like life, Hunter believes, consists chiefly of waiting. In Hunter's dream, however, she does not wait. Upon her arrival, it comes through the underbrush, a fury of brown and of white, undulating gently, like a wet-furred snake, its red eyes bright and peering through the darkness, its teeth like needles, a carnivore and a killer. The creature is extinct in the world above. It weighs almost three hundred pounds, and is a little over fifteen feet long, from the tip of its nose to the tip of its tail.

As it passes her, she hisses like a snake, and, momentarily, old instincts kicking in, it freezes. And then it leaps at her, nothing but hate and sharp teeth. She remembers, then, in her dream, that this had happened before, and that when it had happened, that time in the past, she had pushed the leather arm-shield into its mouth and crushed its skull with the leaden throwing stick taking care not to damage the pelt. She had given the Great Weasel's pelt to a girl who had caught her eye, and the girl had been appropriately grateful.

But now, in her dream, that is not happening. Instead, the weasel is reaching out a forepaw toward her, and she is dropping her throwing stick and taking its paw. And then and there, in the undercity beneath Bangkok, they are dancing together, in one intricate unending dance: and Hunter is watching them from outside herself, and she is admiring the elaborate movements they make as they move, tail and legs and arms and fingers and eyes and hair all tumbling and twisting powerfully and strangely into the underneath and out across forever.

There is a tiny noise in the waking world, a dreaming whimper from the child Door, and Hunter moves from sleeping to waking fluidly and instantly; she is alert once more, and on guard. She forgets her dream entirely upon waking.

Door is dreaming of her father.

In her dream, he is showing her how to open things. He picks up an orange, and gestures: in one smooth movement it inverts, and twists: the orange flesh is on the outside, now, and the skin is in the center, on the inside. One must always maintain parity, her father tells her, peeling off an inside-out orange segment for her. Parity, symmetry, topology: these will be our subjects for the months to come, Door. But the most important thing for you to understand is this: all things want to open. You must feel that need, and use it. Her father's hair is brown and thick, as it was a decade before his death, and he has an easy smile, which she remembers but which time had diminished as the years went on.

In her dream, he passes her a padlock. She takes it from him. Her hands are the size and shape of her hands today, although she knows that, in truth, this occurred when she was a tiny child, that she is taking moments and conversations and lessons from over a dozen years and is compressing them into one lesson. Open it, he tells her.

She holds it in her hand, feeling the cold metal, feeling the weight of the lock in her hands. Something is bothering her. There is something she has to know. Door learned to open some time after she learned to walk. She remembers her mother holding her tightly, opening a door from Door's bedroom to the playroom, remembers watching her brother Arch separating linked silver rings, joining them back together.

She tries to open the padlock. She fumbles at it with her fingers, and with her mind. Nothing happens. She throws the padlock down onto the floor and begins to cry. Her father reaches down and picks up the padlock, puts it back into her hand. His long finger brushes away a tear from her cheek.

Remember, he tells her, the padlock wants to open. All you have to do is let it do what it wants.

It sits there in her hand, cold and inert and heavy. And then, suddenly, she understands, and, somewhere in her heart, she lets it be what it wants to be. There is a loud click, and the padlock opens. Her father is smiling. There, she says.

Good girl, says her father. That's all there is to opening. Everything else is just technique.

She realizes what it is that is bothering her. Father? she asks. Your journal. Who put it away? Who could have hidden it? But he is receding from her, and already she is forgetting. She calls to him, but he cannot hear her, and although she can hear his voice in the distance, she can no longer make out what he is saying.

In the waking world, Door whimpers softly. Then she rolls over, cradles her arm around her face, snorts once, twice, then sleeps once more, sleeps without dreaming.

Richard knows it waits for them. Each tunnel he goes down, each turning, each branch he walks, the feeling grows in urgency and weight. He knows it is there, waiting, and the sense of impending catastrophe increases with every step. He knows that it should have been a relief when he turns the final corner, and sees it standing there, framed in the tunnel, waiting for him. Instead he feels only dread. In his dream it is the size of the world: there is nothing left in the world but the Beast, its flanks steaming, broken spars and juts of old weapons prickling from its hide. There is dried blood on its horns and on its tusks. It is gross, and vast, and evil. And then it charges.

He raises his hand (but it isn't his hand) and he throws the spear at the creature.

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."

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 822