by Neil Gaiman
“Lamia,” she said. “I’m a Velvet.”
“Ah,” he said. “Right. Are there a lot of you?”
“A few,” she said.
Richard collected the containers with the curry. “What do you do?” he asked.
“When I’m not looking for food,” she said, with a smile, “I’m a guide. I know every inch of the Underside.”
Hunter, who Richard could have sworn had been over on the other side of the stall, was standing next to Lamia. She said, “He’s not yours.”
Lamia smiled sweetly. “I’ll be the judge of that,” she said.
Richard said, “Hunter, this is Lamia. She’s a Velcro.”
“Velvet,” corrected Lamia, sweetly.
“She’s a guide.”
“I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”
Hunter took the bag with the food in it from Richard. “Time to go back,” she said.
“Well,” said Richard. “If we’re off to see the you-know-what, maybe she could help.”
Hunter said nothing; instead, she looked at Richard. Had she looked at him that way the day before, he would have dropped the subject. But that was then. “Let’s see what Door thinks,” said Richard. “Any sign of the marquis?”
“Not yet,” said Hunter.
Old Bailey had dragged the corpse down the gangplank tied to its baby carriage-base, like a ghastly Guy Fawkes, one of the effigies that, not so very long ago, the children of London had wheeled and dragged around in early November, displaying to passersby before tossing them to their flaming demise on the bonfires of the fifth of November, Bonfire Night. He pulled the corpse over Tower Bridge, and, muttering and complaining, he hauled it up the hill past the Tower of London. He made his way west toward Tower Hill Station and stopped a little before the station, beside a large gray jut of wall. It wasn’t a roof, thought Old Bailey, but it would do.
It was one of the last remnants of the London Wall. The London Wall, according to tradition, was built on the orders of the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, in the third century A.D., at the request of his mother Helena. At that point, London was one of the few great cities of the Empire that did not yet have a magnificent wall. When it was finished it enclosed the small city completely; it was thirty feet high, and eight feet wide, and was, unarguably, the London Wall.
It was no longer thirty feet high, the ground level having risen since Constantine’s mother’s day (most of the original London Wall is fifteen feet below street level today), and it no longer enclosed the city. But it was still an imposing lump of wall. Old Bailey nodded vigorously to himself. He fastened a length of rope to the baby carriage, and he scrambled up the wall; then, grunting and ‘bless-me’-ing, he hauled the marquis up to the top of the wall. He untied the body from the carriage wheels and laid it gently out on its back, arms at its side. There were wounds on the body that were still oozing. It was very dead.
“You stupid bugger,” whispered Old Bailey, sadly. “What did you want to get yourself killed for, anyway?”
The moon was bright and small and high in the cold night, and autumn constellations speckled the blue-black sky like the dust of crushed diamonds. A nightingale fluttered onto the wall, examined the corpse of the marquis de Carabas, and chirruped sweetly. “None of your beak,” said Old Bailey, gruffly. “You birds don’t smell like flipping roses, neither.” The bird chirped a melodious nightingale obscenity at him, and flew off into the night.
Old Bailey reached into his pocket and pulled out the black rat, who had gone to sleep. It stared about it sleepily, then yawned, displaying a vast and ratty expanse of piebald tongue. “Personally,” said Old Bailey to the black rat, “I’ll be happy if I never smell anything ever again.” He put it down by his feet on the stones of London Wall, and it chittered at him, and gestured with its front paws. Old Bailey sighed. Carefully, he took the silver box out of his pocket, and, from an inner pocket, he pulled the toasting fork.
He placed the silver box on de Carabas’s chest, then, nervously, he reached out the toasting fork, and flipped open the lid of the box. Inside the silver box, on a nest of red velvet, was a large duck’s egg, pale blue green in the moonlight. Old Bailey raised the toasting fork, closed his eyes, and brought it down on the egg.
There was a whup as it imploded.
There was a great stillness for several seconds after that; then the wind began. It had no direction, but seemed somehow to be coming from everywhere, a swirling sudden gale. Fallen leaves, newspaper pages, all the city’s detritus blew up from the ground and was driven through the air. The wind touched the surface of the Thames and carried the cold water into the sky in a fine and driving spray. It was a dangerous, crazy wind. The stall holders on the deck of the Belfast cursed it and clutched their possessions to keep them from blowing away.
And then, when it seemed that the wind would become so strong that it would blow the world away and blow the stars away and send the people tumbling through the air like so many desiccated autumn leaves—
Just then—
—it was over, and the leaves, and the papers, and the plastic shopping bags, tumbled to the earth, and the road, and the water.
High on the remnant of the London Wall, the silence that followed the wind was, in its way, as loud as the wind had been. It was broken by a cough; a horrid, wet coughing. This was followed by the sound of someone awkwardly rolling over; and then the sound of someone being sick.
The marquis de Carabas vomited sewer water over the side of the London Wall, staining the gray stones with brown foulness. It took a long time to purge the water from his body. And then he said, in a hoarse voice that was little more than a grinding whisper, “I think my throat’s been cut. Have you anything to bind it with?”
Old Bailey fumbled in his pockets and pulled out a grubby length of cloth. He passed it to the marquis, who wrapped it around his throat a few times and then tied it tight. Old Bailey found himself reminded, incongruously, of the high-wrapped Beau Brummel collars of the Regency dandies.
“Anything to drink?” croaked the marquis.
Old Bailey pulled out his hip-flask and unscrewed the top, and passed it to the marquis, who swigged back a mouthful, then winced with pain, and coughed weakly. The black rat, who had watched all this with interest, now began to climb down the fragment of wall and away. It would tell the Golden: all favors had been repaid, all debts were done.
The marquis gave Old Bailey back his hip-flask. Old Bailey put it away. “How are ye feeling?” he asked.
“I’ve felt better.” The marquis sat up, shivering. His nose was running, and his eyes flickered about: he was staring at the world as if he had never seen it before.
“What did you have to go and get yourself killed for, anyway, that’s what I want to know,” asked Old Bailey.
“Information,” whispered the marquis. “People tell you so much more when they know you’re just about to be dead. And then they talk around you, when you are.”
“Then you found out what you wanted to know?”
The marquis fingered the wounds in his arms and his legs. “Oh yes. Most of it. I have more than an inkling of what this affair is actually about.” Then he closed his eyes once more, and wrapped his arms about himself, and swayed, slowly, back and forth.
“What’s it like then?” asked Old Bailey. “Being dead?”
The marquis sighed. And then he twisted his lips up into a smile, and with a glitter of his old self, he replied, “Live long enough, Old Bailey, and you can find out for yourself.”
Old Bailey looked disappointed. “Bastard. After all I done to bring you back from that dread bourne from which there is no returning. Well, usually no returning.”
The marquis de Carabas looked up at him. His eyes were very white in the moonlight. And he whispered, “What’s it like being dead? It’s very cold, my friend. Very dark, and very cold.”
Door held up the chain. The silver key hung from it, red and orange in the light of Hammersmith’s brazi
er. She smiled. “Fine work, Hammersmith.”
“Thank you, lady.”
She hung the chain around her neck and hid the key away inside her layers of clothes. “What would you like in return?”
The smith looked abashed. “I hardly want to presume upon your good nature . . .” he mumbled.
Door made her “get on with it” face. He bent down and produced a black box from beneath a pile of metalworking tools. It was made of dark wood, inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl, and was the size of a large dictionary. He turned it over and over in his hands. “It’s a puzzle-box,” he explained. “I took it in return for some smithing a handful of years back. I can’t get it to open, though I’ve tried so hard.”
Door took the box and ran her fingers over the smooth surface. “I’m not surprised you haven’t been able to open it. The mechanism’s all jammed. It’s completely fused shut.”
Hammersmith looked glum. “So I’ll never find out what’s in it.”
Door made an amused face. Her fingers explored the surface of the box. A rod slid out of the side of the box. She half-pushed the rod back into the box, then twisted. There was a clunk from deep inside it, and a door opened in the side. “Here,” said Door.
“My lady,” said Hammersmith. He took the box from her and pulled the door open all the way. There was a drawer inside the box, which he pulled open. The small toad, in the drawer, croaked and looked about itself with copper eyes, incuriously. Hammersmith’s face fell. “I was hoping it would be diamonds and pearls,” he said.
Door reached out a hand and stroked the toad’s head. “He’s got pretty eyes,” she said. “Keep him, Hammersmith. He’ll bring you luck. And thank you again. I know I can rely on your discretion.”
“You can rely on me, lady,” said Hammersmith, earnestly.
They sat together on the top of the London Wall, not speaking. Old Bailey slowly lowered the baby carriage wheels to the ground below them.
“Where’s the market?” asked the marquis.
Old Bailey pointed to the gunship. “Over there.”
“Door and the others. They’ll be expecting me.”
“You aren’t in any condition to go anywhere.”
The marquis coughed, painfully. It sounded, to Old Bailey, like there was still plenty of sewer in his lungs. “I’ve made a long enough journey today,” de Carabas whispered. “A little farther won’t hurt.” He examined his hands, flexed the fingers slowly, as if to see whether or not they would do as he wished. And then he twisted his body around, and began, awkwardly, to climb down the side of the wall. But before he did so, he said, hoarsely and perhaps a little sadly, “It would seem, Old Bailey, that I owe you a favor.”
When Richard returned with the curries, Door ran to him and threw her arms around him. She hugged him tightly, and even patted his bottom, before seizing the paper bag from him and pulling it open with enthusiasm. She took a container of vegetable curry and began, happily, to eat.
“Thanks,” said Door, with her mouth full. “Any sign of the marquis yet?”
“None,” said Hunter.
“Croup and Vandemar?”
“No.”
“Yummy curry. This is really good.”
“Got the chain all right?” asked Richard. Door pulled the chain up from around her neck, enough to show it was there, and she let it fall again, the weight of the key pulling it back down.
“Door,” said Richard, “this is Lamia. She’s a guide. She says she can take us anywhere in the Underside.”
“Anywhere?” Door munched a papadum.
“Anywhere,” said Lamia.
Door put her head on one side. “Do you know where the Angel Islington is?”
Lamia blinked, slowly, long lashes covering and revealing her foxglove-colored eyes. “Islington?” she said. “You can’t go there . . .”
“Do you know?”
“Down Street,” said Lamia. “The end of Down Street. But it’s not safe.”
Hunter had been watching this conversation, arms folded and unimpressed. Now she said, “We don’t need a guide.”
“Well,” said Richard, “I think we do. The marquis isn’t around anywhere. We know it’s going to be a dangerous journey. We have to get the . . . the thing I got . . . to the Angel. And then he’ll tell Door about her family, and he’ll tell me how to get home.”
Lamia looked up at Hunter with delight. “And he can give you brains,” she said, cheerfully, “and me a heart.”
Door wiped the last of the curry from her bowl with her fingers, and licked them. “We’ll be fine, just the three of us, Richard. We cannot afford a guide.”
Lamia bridled. “I’ll take my payment from him, not you.”
“And what payment would your kind demand?” asked Hunter.
“That,” said Lamia with a sweet smile, “is for me to know and him to wonder.”
Door shook her head. “I really don’t think so.”
Richard snorted. “You just don’t like it that I’m figuring everything out for once, instead of following blindly behind you, going where I’m told.”
“That’s not it at all.”
Richard turned to Hunter. “Well, Hunter. Do you know the way to Islington?” Hunter shook her head.
Door sighed. “We should get a move on. Down Street, you say?” Lamia smiled with plum-colored lips. “Yes, lady.”
By the time the marquis reached the market they were gone.
Fifteen
They walked off the ship, down the long gangplank, and onto the shore, where they went down some steps, through a long, unlit underpass, and up again. Lamia strode confidently ahead of them. She brought them out in a small, cobbled alley. Gaslights burned and sputtered on the walls.
“Third door along,” she said.
They stopped in front of the door. There was a brass plate on it, which said:
THE ROYAL SOCIETY
FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY
TO HOUSES
And beneath that, in smaller letters:
DOWN STREET. PLEASE KNOCK.
“You get to the street through the house?” asked Richard.
“No,” said Lamia. “The street is in the house.”
Richard knocked on the door. Nothing happened. They waited, and they shivered from the early morning cold. Richard knocked again. Finally, he rang the doorbell. The door was opened by a sleepy-looking footman, wearing a powdered, crooked wig and scarlet livery. He looked at the motley rabble on his doorstep with an expression that indicated that they had not been worth getting out of bed for.
“Can I help you?” said the footman. Richard had been told to fuck off and die with more warmth and good humor.
“Down Street,” said Lamia, imperiously.
“This way,” sighed the footman. “If you’ll wipe your feet.”
They walked through an impressive lobby. Then they waited while the footman lit each of the candles on a candelabra. They went down some impressive, richly carpeted stairs. They went down a flight of less impressive, less richly carpeted stairs. They went down a flight of entirely unimpressive stairs carpeted in a threadbare brown sacking, and, finally, they went down a flight of drab wooden stairs with no carpet on them at all.
At the bottom of those stairs was an antique service elevator, with a sign on it. The sign said:
OUT OF ORDER
The footman ignored the sign and pulled open the wire outer door with a metallic thud. Lamia thanked him, politely, and stepped into the elevator. The others followed. The footman turned his back on them. Richard watched him through the wire mesh, clutching his candelabra, going back up the wooden stairs.
There was a short row of black buttons on the wall of the elevator. Lamia pressed the bottom-most button. The metal lattice door closed automatically, with a bang. A motor engaged, and the elevator began, slowly, creakily, to descend. The four of them stood packed in the elevator. Richard realized that he could smell each of the women in the elevator with him: Door smelled most
ly of curry; Hunter smelled, not unpleasantly, of sweat, in a way that made him think of great cats in cages at zoos; while Lamia smelled, intoxicatingly, of honeysuckle and lily of the valley and musk.
The elevator continued to descend. Richard was sweating, in a clammy cold sweat, and digging his fingernails deep into his palms. In the most conversational tones he could muster, he said, “Now would be a very bad time to discover that one was claustrophobic, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Door.
“Then I won’t,” said Richard.
And they went down.
Finally, there was a jerk, and a clunk, and a ratcheting noise, and the elevator stopped. Hunter pulled open the door, looked about, and then stepped out onto a narrow ledge.
Richard looked out of the open elevator door. They were hanging in the air, at the top of something that reminded Richard of a painting he had once seen of the Tower of Babel, or rather of how the Tower of Babel might have looked were it inside out. It was an enormous and ornate spiral path, carved out of rock, which went down and down around a central well. Lights flickered dimly, here and there in the walls, beside the paths, and, far, far below them, tiny fires were burning. It was at the top of the central well, a few thousand feet above solid ground, that the elevator was hanging. It swayed a little.
Richard took a deep breath and followed the others onto the wooden ledge. Then, although he knew it was a bad idea, he looked down. There was nothing but a wooden board between him and the rock floor, thousands of feet below. There was a long plank stretched between the ledge on which they stood and the top of the rocky path, twenty feet away. “And I suppose,” he said, with a great deal less insouciance than he imagined, “this wouldn’t be a good time to point out that I’m really bad at heights.”