by Neil Gaiman
The woman shrugged. “Yes. Or as good as. I trust your visit to the market will make her loss worthwhile.”
Richard shivered. “I don’t think it could,” he said. He felt empty, and utterly alone. They were approaching the front of the line. “What do you do?” he asked.
She smiled. “I sell personal physical services.”
“Oh,” he said. “What kind of personal physical services?” he asked.
“I rent my body.” She did not elaborate.
“Ah.” He was too weary to pursue it, to press her to explain just what she meant; he had an idea, though. And then they stepped out into the night. Richard looked back. The sign on the station said KNIGHTSBRIDGE. He didn’t know whether to smile or to mourn. It felt like the small hours of the morning. Richard looked down at his watch and was not surprised to notice that the digital face was now completely blank. Perhaps the batteries had died, or, he thought, more likely, time in London Below had only a passing acquaintance with the kind of time he was used to. He did not care. He unstrapped the watch and dropped it into the nearest garbage can.
The odd people were crossing the road in a stream, walking through the double doors facing them. “There?” he said, appalled.
The woman nodded. “There.”
The building was large, and it was covered with many thousands of burning lights. Conspicuous coats of arms on the wall facing them proudly proclaimed that it sold all sorts of things by appointment to various members of the British Royal Family. Richard, who had spent many a footsore weekend hour trailing behind Jessica through every prominent shop in London, recognized it immediately, even without the huge sign, proclaiming it to be, “Harrods?”
The woman nodded. “Only for tonight,” she said. “The next market could be anywhere.”
“But I mean,” said Richard. “Harrods.” It seemed almost sacrilegious to be sneaking into this place at night.
They walked in through the side door. The room was dark. They passed the bureau de change and the gift-wrapping section, through another darkened room selling sunglasses and figurines, and then they stepped into the Egyptian Room. Color and light broke over Richard like a wave hitting the shore. His companion turned to him: she yawned, catlike, shading the vivid pinkness of her mouth with the back of her caramel hand. And then she smiled, and said, “Well. You’re here. Safe and, more or less, sound. I have business to attend to. Fare you well.” She nodded curtly and slipped away into the crowd.
Richard stood there, alone in the throng, drinking it in. It was pure madness—of that there was no doubt at all. It was loud, and brash, and insane, and it was, in many ways, quite wonderful. People argued, haggled, shouted, sang. They hawked and touted their wares, and loudly declaimed the superiority of their merchandise. Music was playing—a dozen different kinds of music, being played a dozen different ways on a score of different instruments, most of them improvised, improved, improbable. Richard could smell food. All kinds of food—the smells of curries and spices seemed to predominate, with, beneath them, the smells of grilling meats and mushrooms. Stalls had been set up all throughout the shop, next to, or even on, counters that, during the day, had sold perfume, or watches, or amber, or silk scarves. Everybody was buying. Everybody was selling. Richard listened to the market cries as he began to wander through the crowds.
“Lovely fresh dreams. First-class nightmares. We got ’em. Get yer lovely nightmares here.”
“Weapons! Arm yourself! Defend your cellar, cave, or hole! You want to hit ’em? We got ’em. Come on darling, come on over here . . .”
“Rubbish!” screamed a fat, elderly woman, in Richard’s ear, as he passed her malodorous stall. “Junk!” she continued. “Garbage! Trash! Offal! Debris! Come and get it! Nothing whole or undamaged! Crap, tripe, and useless piles of shit. You know you want it.”
A man in armor beat a small drum and chanted, “Lost Property. Roll up, roll up, and see for yourself. Lost property. None of your found things here. Everything guaranteed properly lost.”
Richard wandered through the huge rooms of the store, like a man in a trance. He was unable to even guess how many people there were at the night market. A thousand? Two thousand? Five thousand?
One stall was piled high with bottles, full bottles and empty bottles of every shape and every size, from bottles of booze to one huge glimmering bottle that could have contained nothing but a captive djinn; another sold lamps with candles, made of many kinds of wax and tallow; a man thrust what appeared to be a child’s severed hand clutching a candle toward him as he passed, muttering, “Hand of Glory, sir? Send ’em up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire. Guaranteed to work.” Richard hurried past, not wishing to find out what a Hand of Glory was, nor how it worked; he passed a stall selling glittering gold and silver jewelry, another selling jewelry made from what looked like the valves and wires of antique radios; there were stalls that sold every manner of book and magazine; others that sold clothes—old clothes patched, and mended, and made strange; several tattooists; something that he was almost certain was a small slave market (he kept well clear of this); a dentist’s chair, with a hand-operated manual drill, with a line of miserable people standing beside it, waiting to have their teeth pulled or filled by a young man who seemed to be having altogether too good a time; a bent old man selling unlikely things that might have been hats and might have been modern art; something that looked very much like a portable shower facility; even a blacksmith’s . . .
And every few stalls there would be somebody selling food. Some of them had food cooking over open fires: curries, and potatoes, and chestnuts, and huge mushrooms, and exotic breads. Richard found himself wondering why the smoke from the fires didn’t set off the building’s sprinkler system. Then he found himself wondering why no one was looting the store: why set up their own little stalls? Why not just take things from the shop itself? He knew better, at this point, than to risk asking anyone . . . . He seemed marked as a man from London Above, and thus worthy of great suspicion.
There was something deeply tribal about the people, Richard decided. He tried to pick out distinct groups: there were the ones who looked like they had escaped from a historical reenactment society; the ones who reminded him of hippies; the albino people in gray clothes and dark glasses; the polished, dangerous ones in smart suits and black gloves; the huge, almost identical women who walked together in twos and threes, and nodded when they saw each other; the tangle-haired ones who looked like they probably lived in sewers and who smelled like hell; and a hundred other types and kinds . . .
He wondered how normal London—his London—would look to an alien, and that made him bold. He began to ask them, as he went, “Excuse me? I’m looking for a man named de Carabas and a girl called Door. Do you know where I’d find them?” People shook their heads, apologized, averted their eyes, moved away.
Richard took a step back and stepped on someone’s foot. Someone was well over seven feet tall, and was covered in tufty ginger-colored hair. Someone’s teeth had been sharpened to points. Someone picked Richard up with a hand the size of a sheep’s head, and put Richard’s head so close to someone’s mouth that Richard almost gagged. “I’m really sorry,” said Richard. “I—I’m looking for a girl named Door. Do you know—” But someone dropped him onto the floor and moved on.
Another whiff of cooking food wafted across the floor, and Richard, who had managed to forget how hungry he was ever since he had declined the prime cut of tomcat—he could not think how many hours before—now found his mouth watering, and his thinking processes beginning to grind to a halt.
The iron-haired woman running the next food stall he approached did not reach to Richard’s waist. When Richard tried to talk to her, she shook her head, drew a finger across her lips. She could not talk, or did not talk, or did not want to talk. Richard found himself conducting the negotiations for a cottage cheese and lettuce sandwich and a cup of what looked and smelled like home-brewed lemonade, in sign language. His food cost him a
ballpoint pen, and a book of matches he had forgotten he had. The little woman must have felt that she had got by far the better of the deal, for, as he took his food, she threw in a couple of small, nutty cookies.
Richard stood in the middle of the throng, listening to the music—someone was, for no reason that Richard could easily discern, singing the lyrics of “Greensleeves” to the tune of “Yakkety-Yak”—watching the bizarre bazaar unfold around him, and eating his sandwiches.
As he finished the last of the sandwiches, he realized that he had no idea how anything he had just eaten had tasted; and he resolved to slow down, and chew the cookies more slowly. He sipped the lemonade, making it last. “You need a bird, sir?” asked a cheery voice, close at hand. “I got rooks and ravens, crows and starlings. Fine, wise birds. Tasty and wise. Brilliant.”
Richard said, “No, thank you,” and turned around.
The hand-painted sign above the stall said:
OLD BAILEY’S BIRDS AND INFORMATION
There were other, smaller, signs scattered about: YOU WANTS IT, WE KNOWS IT, and YOU WON’T FIND A PLUMPER STARLING!!!! and WHEN IT’S TIME FOR A ROOK, IT’S TIME FOR OLD BAILEY!! Richard found himself thinking of the man he had seen when he had first come to London, who used to stand outside Leicester Square Tube station with a huge hand-painted sandwich board that exhorted the world to “Less Lust Through Less Protein, Eggs, Meat, Beans, Cheese and Sitting.”
Birds hopped and fluttered about small cages that looked as if they had been woven out of TV antennae. “Information, then?” continued Old Bailey, warming to his own sales-pitch. “Roof-maps? History? Secret and mysterious knowledge? If I don’t knows it, it’s probbly better forgot. That’s what I says.” The old man still wore his feathered coat, was still wrapped about with ropes and cords. He blinked at Richard, then pulled on the pair of spectacles tied about his neck with string. He inspected Richard carefully through them. “Hang on— knows you. You was with the marquis de Carabas. On the rooftops. Remember? Eh? I’m Old Bailey. Remember me?” He thrust out his hand, pumped Richard’s hand furiously.
“Actually,” said Richard, “I’m looking for the marquis. And for a young lady named Door. I think they’re probably together.”
The old man did a little jig, causing several feathers to detach themselves from his coat; this provoked a chorus of raucous disapproval from the various birds around them. “Information! Information!” he announced to the crowded room. “See? I told ’em. Diversify, I said. Diversify! You can’t sell rooks for the stewpot forever—anyway, they taste like boiled slipper. And they’re so stupid. Thick as custard. You ever eaten rook?” Richard shook his head. That was something he could be certain of, at any rate. “What’ll you give me?” asked Old Bailey.
“Sorry?” said Richard, awkwardly leaping from ice floe to ice floe in the stream of the old man’s consciousness.
“If’n I give ye your information. What’ll I get?”
“I don’t have any money,” said Richard. “And I just gave my pen away.”
He began to pull out the contents of Richard’s pockets. “There,” said Old Bailey. “That!”
“My hankie?” asked Richard. It was not a particularly clean handkerchief; it had been a present from his Aunt Maude, on his last birthday. Old Bailey seized it and waved it above his head, happily.
“Never you fear, laddie,” he sang, triumphantly. “Your quest is at an end. Go down there, through that door. You can’t miss them. They’re auditioning.” He was pointing towards Harrods’ extensive network of Food Halls. A rook cawed maliciously. “None of your beak,” said Old Bailey, to the rook. And, to Richard, he said, “Thank’ee for the little flag.” He jigged around his stall, delighted, waving Richard’s handkerchief to and fro.
Auditioning? thought Richard. And then he smiled. It didn’t matter. His quest, as the mad old roof-man had put it, was at an end. He walked toward the Food Halls.
Fashion, in bodyguards, seemed to be everything. They all had a Knack of one kind or another, and each of them was desperate to demonstrate it to the world. At the moment, Ruislip was facing off against the Fop With No Name.
The Fop With No Name looked somewhat like an early eighteenth-century rake, one who hadn’t been able to find real rake clothes and had had to make do with what he could find at the Salvation Army store. His face was powdered to white, his lips painted red. Ruislip, the Fop’s opponent, resembled a bad dream one might have if one fell asleep watching sumo wrestling on the television with a Bob Marley record playing in the background. He was a huge Rastafarian who looked like nothing so much as an obese and enormous baby.
They were standing face to face, in the middle of a cleared circle of spectators and other bodyguards and sightseers. Neither man moved a muscle. The Fop was a good head taller than Ruislip. On the other hand, Ruislip looked as if he weighed as much as four fops, each of them carrying a large leather suitcase entirely filled with lard. They stared at each other, without breaking eye contact.
The marquis de Carabas tapped Door on the shoulder and pointed. Something was about to happen.
One moment there were two men standing impassively, just looking at each other, then the Fop’s head rocked back, as if he’d just been hit in the face. A small, reddish purple bruise appeared on his cheek. He pursed his lips and fluttered his eyelashes. “La,” he said, then stretched his rouged lips wide, in a ghastly parody of a smile.
The Fop gestured. Ruislip staggered, and clutched his stomach.
The Fop With No Name smirked outrageously, waggled his fingers, and blew kisses to several spectators. Ruislip stared angrily at the Fop, redoubling his mental assault. Blood began to drip from the Fop’s lips. His left eye started to swell. He staggered. The audience muttered appreciatively.
“It’s not as impressive as it looks,” whispered the marquis to Door.
The Fop With No Name stumbled, suddenly, going onto his knees, as if someone were forcing him down, and fell, awkwardly, to the floor. Then he jerked, as if someone had just kicked him, hard, in the stomach. Ruislip looked triumphant. The spectators clapped, politely. The Fop writhed and spat blood onto the sawdust on the floor of Harrods’ Fish and Meat Hall. He was dragged off into the corner by some friends, and was violently sick.
“Next,” said the marquis.
The next would-be bodyguard was again thinner than Ruislip (being about the size of two and a half fops, carrying but a single suitcase filled with lard between them). He was covered in tattoos and dressed in clothes that looked like they had been stitched together from old car seats and rubber mats. He was shaven-headed, and he sneered at the world through rotten teeth. “I’m Varney,” he said, and he hawked, and spat green on the sawdust. He walked into the ring.
“When you’re ready, gentlemen,” said the marquis.
Ruislip stamped his bare feet on the floor, sumolike, one-two, one-two, and commenced to stare hard at Varney. A small cut opened on Varney’s forehead, and blood began to drip from it into one eye. Varney ignored it; and instead appeared to be concentrating on his right arm. He pulled his arm up slowly, like a man fighting a great deal of pressure. Then he slammed his fist into Ruislip’s nose, which began to spurt blood. Ruislip drew one long, horrible breath, and hit the ground with the sound of half a ton of wet liver being dropped into a bathtub. Varney giggled.
Ruislip slowly pulled himself back to his feet, blood from his nose soaking his mouth and chest, dripping onto the sawdust. Varney wiped the blood from his forehead and bared his ruined mouth at the world in an appalling grin. “Come on,” he said. “Fat bastard. Hit me again.”
“That one’s promising,” muttered the marquis.
Door raised an eyebrow. “He doesn’t look very nice.”
“Nice in a bodyguard,” lectured the marquis, “is about as useful as the ability to regurgitate whole lobsters. He looks dangerous.” There was a murmur of appreciation, then, as Varney did something rather fast and painful to Ruislip, something that involved the
sudden connection of Varney’s leather-bound foot and Ruislip’s testicles. The murmur was the kind of restrained and deeply unenthusiastic applause one normally only hears in England on sleepy sunny Sunday afternoons, at village cricket matches. The marquis clapped politely with the rest of them. “Very good, sir,” he said.
Varney looked at Door, and he winked at her, almost proprietorially, before he returned his attention to Ruislip. Door shivered.
Richard heard the clapping and walked toward it.
Five almost identically dressed, pale young women walked past him. They wore long dresses made of velvet, each dress as dark as night, one each of dark green, dark chocolate, royal blue, dark blood, and pure black. Each woman had black hair and wore silver jewelry; each was perfectly coiffed, perfectly made up. They moved silently: Richard was aware only of a swish of heavy velvet as they went past, a swish that sounded almost like a sigh. The last of the women, the one dressed in utter black, the palest and the most beautiful, smiled at Richard. He smiled back at her, warily. Then he walked on toward the audition.
It was being held in the Fish and Meat Hall, on the open area of floor beneath Harrods’ fish sculpture. The audience had their back to him, were standing two or three people deep. Richard wondered if he would easily be able to find Door and the marquis: and then the crowd parted, and he saw them both, sitting on the glass top of the smoked-salmon counter. He opened his mouth to shout out Door’s name; and as he did so, he realized why the crowd had parted, as an enormous dreadlocked man, naked but for a green, yellow, and red cloth wrapped like a diaper around his middle, came catapulting through the crowd, as if tossed by a giant, landing squarely on top of him.
“Richard?” she said.
He opened his eyes. The face swam in and out of focus. Fire opal-colored eyes, peering into his, from a pale, elfin face.