AN EXHIBITION AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM 3 page

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.

ELEVEN

"So 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.

Door shivered. "I'm so stupid," she muttered. "I should have known. Three of us. I should never have come straight here."

Hunter's head was moving from side to side. She had noted the position of each of the friars and each of the crossbows; she had calculated the odds of getting Door over the side of the bridge first unharmed, then with only minor injuries, and lastly with major injury to herself, but only minor injury to Door. She was now recalculating. "And what would you have done differently if you had known?" she asked.

"I wouldn't have brought him here, for a start," said Door. "I'd have found the marquis."

Hunter put her head on one side. "You trust him?" she asked, directly, and Door knew she was talking of de Carabas, not Richard.

"Yes," said Door. "I more or less trust him."

Door had been five years old for just two days. The market was being held in the Gardens at Kew on that day, and her father had taken her with him, as a birthday treat. It was her first market. They were in the butterfly house, surrounded by brightly colored wings, iridescent weightless things that entranced and fascinated her, when her father crouched down beside her. "Door?" he said. "Turn around slowly, and look over there."

She turned, and looked. A dark-skinned man wearing a big coat, his black hair tied behind him in a long pony tail, was standing by the door, talking to two golden-skinned twins, a young man and a young woman. The young woman was crying, in the way that grown-ups cry, keeping it inside as much as they can, and hating it when it still pushes out at the edges, making them ugly and funny-looking on the way. Door turned back to the butterflies. "You saw him?" asked her father. She nodded. "He calls himself the marquis de Carabas," he said. "He's a fraud and a cheat and possibly even something of a monster. If you're ever in trouble, go to him. He will protect you, girl. He has to."

Door looked back at the man. He had a hand on the shoulder of each of the twins and was leading them from the room; but he glanced back over his shoulder, as he left, and he looked straight at her, and smiled an enormous smile; and then he winked at her.

The friars who surrounded them were dark ghosts in the fog. Door raised her voice. "Excuse me, brother," she called to Brother Sable. "But our friend, who's gone to get the key. If he fails, what happens to us?"

He took a step toward them, hesitated, and then said, "We escort you away from here, and we let you go."

"What about Richard?" she asked. Beneath his cowl, she could see him shaking his head, sadly, finally. "I should have brought the marquis," said Door; and she wondered where he was, and what he was doing.

The marquis de Carabas was being crucified on a large X-shaped wooden construction Mr. Vandemar had knocked together from several old pallets, part of a chair and a wooden gate. He had also used most of a large box of rusting nails.

It had been a very long time since they had crucified anybody.

The marquis de Carabas's arms and legs, were spread into a wide X shape. Rusty nails went into his hands and feet. He was also roped around the waist. After experiencing terrible pain, he was now, more or less, unconscious. The whole construction dangled in the air, from several ropes, in a room that had once been the hospital staff cafeteria. On the ground below, Mr. Croup had assembled a large mound of sharp objects, ranging from razors and kitchen knives to abandoned scalpels and lancets. There was even a poker, from the furnace room.

"Why don't you see how he's doing, Mister Vandemar?" asked Mr. Croup.

Mr. Vandemar reached out his hammer, and prodded the marquis experimentally with it.

The marquis de Carabas was not a good man, and he knew himself well enough to be perfectly certain that he was not a brave man. He had long since decided that the world, Above or Below, was a place that wished to be deceived, and, to this end, he had named himself from a lie in a fairy tale, and created himself-his clothes, his manner, his carriage-as a grand joke.

There was a dull pain at his wrists and his feet, and he was finding it harder and harder to breathe. There was nothing more to be gained by feigning unconsciousness, and he raised his head, as best he could, and spat a gob of scarlet blood into Mr. Valdemar's face.

It was a brave thing to do, he thought. And a stupid one. Perhaps they would have let him die quietly, if he had not done that. Now, he had no doubt, they would hurt him more.

And perhaps his death would come the quicker for it.

The open kettle was boiling fiercely. Richard watched the bubbling water, and the thick steam, and wondered what they were going to do with it. His imagination was able to provide any number of answers, most of which would have been unimaginably painful, none of which turned out to be correct.

The boiling water was poured into a pot, to which Brother Fuliginous added three spoons of dried, shredded leaves. The resultant liquid was poured from the pot through a tea strainer, into three china cups. The abbot raised his blind head, sniffed the air, and smiled. "The first part of the Ordeal of the Key," he said, "is the nice cup of tea. Do you take sugar?"

"No, thank you," said Richard, warily.

Brother Fuliginous added a little milk to the tea, and passed a cup and saucer to Richard. "Is it poisoned?" he asked.

The abbot looked almost offended: "Good gracious, no."

Richard sipped the tea, which tasted more or less exactly like tea always tasted. "But this is part of the ordeal?"

Brother Fuliginous took the abbot's hands and placed a cup of tea in them. "In a manner of speaking," said the abbot. "We always like to give the seekers a cup of tea before they start. Part of the ordeal for us. Not for you." He sipped his own tea, and a beatific smile spread across his ancient face. "Rather nice tea, all things considered."

Richard put down his teacup, almost untouched. "Would you mind," he asked, "if we just began the ordeal?"

"Not at all," said the abbot. "Not at all." He stood up, and the three of them walked toward a door, at the far end of the room.

"Is there… " Richard paused, trying to decide what he was trying to ask. Then he said, "Is there anything you can tell me about the ordeal?"

The abbot shook his head. There really was nothing to say: he led the seekers to the door. And then he would wait, for an hour, or two, in the corridor outside. Then he would go back in, and remove the remains of the seeker from the shrine, and inter it in the vaults. And sometimes, which was worse, they would not be dead, although you could not call what was left of them alive, and those unfortunates the Black Friars cared for as best they could.

"Right," said Richard. And he smiled, unconvincingly, and added, "Well, lead on, Macduff."

Brother Fuliginous pulled back the bolts on the door. They opened with a crash, like twin gunshots. He pulled the door open. Richard stepped through it. Brother Fuliginous pushed the door closed behind him, and swung the bolts back into place. He led the abbot back to his chair and placed the cup of tea back in the old man's hand. The abbot sipped his tea, in silence. And then he said, with honest regret in his voice, "It's 'lay on, Macduff' actually. But I hadn't the heart to correct him. He sounded like such a nice young man."

TWELVE

Richard Mayhew walked down the underground platform. It was a District Line station: the sign said BLACKFRIARS. The platform was empty. Somewhere in the distance an Underground train roared and rattled, driving a ghost-wind along the platform, which scattered a copy of the tabloid Sun into its component pages, four-color breasts and black-and-white invective scurrying and tumbling off the platform and down onto the rails.

Richard walked the length of the platform. Then he sat down on a bench and waited for something to happen.

Nothing happened.

He rubbed his head and felt slightly sick. There were footsteps on the platform, near him, and he looked up to see a prim little girl walking past him, hand in hand with a woman who looked like a larger, older version of the girl. They glanced at him and then, rather obviously, looked away. "Don't get too near to him, Melanie," advised the woman, in a very audible whisper.

Melanie looked at Richard, staring in the way children stare, without embarrassment or self consciousness. Then she looked back at her mother. "Why do people like that stay alive?" she asked, curiously.

"Not enough guts to end it all," explained her mother.

Melanie risked another glance at Richard. "Pathetic," she said. Their feet pattered away down the platform, and soon they were gone. He wondered if he had imagined it. He tried to remember why he was standing on this platform. Was he waiting for a Tube train? Where was he going? He knew the answer was somewhere in his head, somewhere close at hand, but he could not touch it, could not bring it back from the lost places. He sat there, alone and wondering. Was he dreaming? With his hands he felt the hard red plastic seat beneath him, stamped the platform with mud-encrusted shoes (where had the mud come from?), touched his face… No. This was no dream. Wherever he was, was real. He felt odd: detached, and depressed, and horribly, strangely saddened. Someone sat down next to him. Richard did not look up, did not turn his head.

"Hello," said a familiar voice. "How are you, Dick? You all right?"

Richard looked up. He felt his face creasing into a smile, hope hitting him like a blow to the chest.

"Gary?" he asked, scared. Then, "You can see me?"

Gary grinned. "You always were a kidder," he said. "Funny man, funny."

Gary was wearing a suit and tie. He was cleanshaven, and had not a hair out of place. Richard realized what he must look like: muddy, unshaven, rumpled… "Gary? I… listen, I know what I must look like. I can explain." He thought for a moment. "No… I can't. Not really."

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 846