Voyages in the Underworld of Orpheus Black

by Marcus Sedgwick

  I feel like I’ve been away from myself. (Father would say impatiently, What the hell does that mean, Harry? You need to wake up, boy!)

  Well, I am awake now. And I am here, wherever here is. Around us is the usual tumble of masonry and beams, and amongst it all the dislocated objects of everyday civilized life: slippers and saucepans and books and a charred Christmas tree. Bells clanging in the distance as the fire and ambulance services sort out the chaos left by last night, a long, drawn-out howl of the all-clear.

  In short: the usual bloody mess. The rockets and so forth keep rearranging the deeply familiar and making it utterly unfamiliar. There’s a church in the fog that I feel I ought to recognize, but it’s surrounded by piles of rubble, and even the street has turned into a winding path like the track that animals would cut on a rocky hillside.

  But I wasn’t here for a bit. I was somewhere else. Sod it, head feels weird. Agatha and I were trying to cross that water, weren’t we? Weren’t we . . . I know this sounds crazy . . . underground?

  God, I can’t remember. I’m suddenly terrified I’m losing my marbles. That I dreamed the whole thing about the dark water, but it’s so hard to be sure. Everything is so disjointed. I can’t keep asking Agatha what I’m doing. I’m the adult; I should be making sure she’s OK, not the other way about. But everything is so confused.

  That story Oakley told me in the Royal Free comes back. How he nearly floated up and over the bloody rainbow. That phrase made me smile in the hospital bed, a weird mix of Judy Garland and Oakley’s solid language, but now the whole tale seems more real. That’s how I feel now, like I’ve been floating around somewhere for the last few hours, inhabiting some other kind of world — and only now have I come back to my senses. Literally. Looking at the last entry in this notebook. A boat? Was that an idea for Warriors? A dream?

  Well, first job is to find out where we are and get to the White Horse; it’ll be easier in the light. I’ll have another go at digging for Ellis, and then, whatever happens, help Agatha. Then it may be a good idea if I check back in with that worried-looking doctor at the Royal Free, just in case I’m not quite all there.

  Agatha looks keen to get going. She said she knows where she is now and that she recognizes the ruined church.

  Me: You mean this is where you were living? Where are we, then?

  Agatha: I just know we need to go right, Harry, then left.

  Me: To find your parents?

  You’re confused, Harry.

  Don’t you realize where you are?

  You have made the first step,

  and that’s far.

  But I feel the confusion in your head;

  I see the way you’re shaking with fear.

  You think you’ve lost me, but I’m still here.

  I’m with you, in you, every step of the way,

  as you’re walking through the damaged day,

  taking Agatha by the hand.

  And there’s one thing, Harry, you know for sure.

  Your brother needs you,

  as much as this girl,

  as much as he always needed you,

  and there’s a journey to be made.

  But I sense you need some help, some aid,

  So let me steer your stuttering steps,

  put you on the proper path.

  Come, Harry, and follow my lead;

  I’ll put you where you want to be;

  for the journey takes you

  here:

  the White Horse.

  This is where you need to be,

  and there’s a man you need to see.

  His name is Greene.

  You knew him once;

  a lifetime ago, in days gone by

  before the bombs fell from the sky

  and left you like this:

  a shattered and empty man.

  Go to him, Harry,

  see him! Speak!

  Do not believe that you’re too weak.

  There’s surely life in the old dog yet.

  I believe in you, Harry: I know you’re strong,

  but you’ve still to learn the power of song.

  And when you do, you’ll know like me

  that song can truly set you free.

  Back to the blooming beginning again, like that bus driver said. We’re sitting on the lip of the crater left by the V-2, and the smoke and fog have cleared to show us the full horror of the impact on the pub.

  But even with the daylight, it’s no bloody good. Worse somehow to see starkly how very hopeless our task is.

  Agatha led me across town this morning, sure somehow of her route, past smoking piles of ruined lives, through streets that look almost like normal just a few yards away. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that transition, the way you find a row of solid houses, and then that blank of a cleared site from ’41 or the Little Blitz, just a rubbed-out space as if I’d taken a putty eraser to a charcoal drawing and left a blurred pale nothingness. Or the more recent transitions to blackened and charred chaos. These doodlebugs and their supersonic companions take a house and lift it up, muddle all the bits, then dump them back down, burnt and broken in a thousand pieces, and trapped in there somewhere are possessions and bodies and pasts and potential futures. Lines of people sifting, truck cranes cranking up fallen beams, the blank wet sky overhead oblivious.

  I was tired, but it must have been Agatha’s determination that led me on as we plowed across Finchley Road, got a cup of tea in a fugged-up café, windows running with condensation, to steady ourselves, and arrived back here as feeble sunshine started to spill down on the dying hours of the year.

  It was an otherworldly scene, with a handful of figures standing like specters in the cold, veiled light. I expected a full-out effort to finish excavating the rocket site, but nothing much was happening. The few people around were like the lonely figures you see walking down to the sea or a river at the start or end of a day, gazing at the water for answers to questions they haven’t really worded properly. Nothing to be done but stare at the horizon.

  To one side, miraculously in one piece it seemed, the pub piano.

  As soon as we reached the site, my energy returned. I threw myself down into the pit, wading through the remains, pulling at the bricks with my hands, trying to figure out where I dropped that eyeball, going at it like a madman with Agatha doing sterling work beside me.

  I told her it might not be safe, but she just shook her head and kept toiling away.

  I feel responsible for you, I said. You’re only just out of the hospital yourself.

  It is fine, she muttered. I promised you we would help each other.

  If anything, the crater seemed deeper than before, the rim of it way up above us, as if the whole thing had sunk since I was last here, the heavy ruins dropping into a void of some kind below.

  Then I heard someone shouting my name over and over. It was Greene.

  He clambered down through the rubbish, shaking his head, telling me there was no bloody point, lad. That it wasn’t safe and that even if E had been trapped, with this cold and no food or water, he’d be a goner by now.

  Think of the blast damage alone, Greene said. I thought the whole bloody world had ended when that one came down! And why the hell aren’t you in the hospital?

  I ignored him and kept pulling at the dust and debris with my fingers.

  It’s not safe, he said again. We’ve shouted and listened, and they had dogs on it. There’s no one down there, Harry. I’m sorry.

  I told him I didn’t believe it, and Agatha turned to Greene and said — so solemnly and carefully it almost made me laugh — I do not bloody believe it either.

  And who do you think you are, young lady? Greene said, with one of those smiles of his. Queen of bloody Sheba?

  I am helping Harry, she replied, jaw set in determination. God bless her.

  That’s the ticket, Agatha, I said. Let’s keep digging.

  Greene shrugged and said to blooming help yourselves and walked awa
y.

  Agatha and I kept up a steady effort, moving a few more barrowfuls of brick and timber — and then, marvelously, a few minutes later Greene came back down into the crater again, with a shovel and a crowbar, and without a word rolled up his sleeves and got those big forearms of his working, the blurred tattoo of a snake there moving over the sinews.

  Thanks, I said, after another handful of minutes.

  Can’t leave it to a girl — and a bloody conchie! he said with a wink, and we kept digging and digging as the last of the year ran out.

  For a while it felt like we were making progress. Hauled some big timbers out and managed to crawl under a whacking big column of some kind into a cold pocket of air beneath. Encouraging to know breathing spaces exist down there. Every now and then, we stopped and I called again and listened, heart thudding away, straining to hear for anything, a tapping maybe, or a cry.

  But there was nothing.

  Come on, lad, Greene said, wiping sweat off his forehead, face lined by the effort. Give it up. There’s nothing. And they’re going to fill it in later today anyway. Stabilize it, the council man said. Come on. I’ll bring you a sandwich from home. I’ve got some bacon for the first time in weeks!

  I said Agatha would need something other than bacon, but she just smiled and said she wasn’t really hungry.

  You’ve got to eat, love, I said. Keep your strength up. (She hasn’t had anything since we left the hospital.)

  I’ll see what I can rustle up, Greene said. (There is kindness as much as cruelty, even now. And when we work out how to brush away the ignorance, you can only hope that it will bloom even harder, like a plant cut back hard responds in the spring.)

  Greene climbed out, but still I couldn’t stop. The sight of the void beneath that pillar had given me fresh hope to go with the desperation, and for a good while longer I kept clawing away at anything that would shift, chipping nails, snagging the skin on my hands. All the time Agatha kept pace, breathing hard, glancing at me when she moved a decent chunk to show what she’d done and fire me on.

  But there were no more big spaces to crawl into, just crushed-up brick and dust, all compacted tight. I felt my newfound sense of hope floundering, felt the return of fear and dread stealing through my veins. I pushed them away as firmly as I could, and kept burrowing like Ellis’s fox, that animal pull to get underground overwhelming my body again even though my head was telling me it was useless.

  In the end I only stopped when I saw Agatha slump down exhausted on a mound of rubble beside me. She looked even paler than normal. That brought me back to my senses with a slap, and at last I felt my own exhaustion, the nagging throb in my scalp.

  I must look after Agatha. Can’t let anything happen to this girl before I somehow reunite her with her parents.

  I’ve got my wind back now, and again, despite the return of despair, I have the nagging feeling that the game isn’t up yet. It’s like I can feel Ellis somewhere close by, the kind of sensation I used to get when we played hide-and-seek in the woods and the hairs on the back of my neck told me he was creeping up on me from behind. Problem is now, maybe that sensation’s just a product of the concussion and morphine and whatever else they pumped into me.

  Sod it, maybe I’m just losing it. Maybe food will help us both. We’re waiting for that sandwich, cold, tired — and very hungry. Agatha has wandered over to the rescued piano and is pecking away at the keys, some of them ringing out across the bomb site, some of them just making dead, percussive thumps. Think she must be good on a decent instrument, the way she sits there, the way her long fingers chase each other over the ivory and ebony. She looks the part.

  Harry! Look out!

  There are demons here!

  A horde of monsters in human form,

  like vultures scenting the weak and bleeding;

  they’re heading for you,

  you and the girl.

  Oh, they come wheeling in,

  flailing and screeching,

  and even their voices are like nails across slate,

  so filled they are with hate.

  Don’t misunderstand me.

  I am not a saint.

  I am no better than anyone

  alive or dead.

  I’ve had my share of anger;

  I’ve been afraid,

  frustrated

  and I’ve uttered words of hate,

  but these are things behind me now

  and I can tell you when they went.

  I left them behind when I went underground.

  The things I saw there:

  the suffering, the pain,

  the blood pouring like rain,

  the torments and anguish.

  Unspeakable.

  It was unspeakable.

  And all the result of men and women who lived their lives carrying one terrible thing inside themselves.

  Hate.

  Strange.

  Like a bundle of ice on a throbbing wound,

  the sights I saw in Hell were a salve to my own anger,

  and I swore I would never hate again. Just sing.

  Sing.

  And now my song is loud!

  Look out, Harry!

  Look out!

  They’re coming!

  Well, that was a rum do and a half. If I was cold before, now my blood’s up, running hot.

  A crowd of women gathered round me as I drew, like people tend to. I don’t mind normally, but thought I recognized some of them from the pub the other night — and now they were in a foul mood. Angry from the start and looking to pick a fight. Agatha was still at the ivories, and she called out to me over the half a tune she was playing.

  Harry, I am imagining the notes I cannot hear. Can you hear them?

  The women closed tighter all around me, shoving, trying to wrestle this book out of my hands.

  Whatcha doing? one shouted, jabbing her finger at the rough sketch map I’d made of where we’d been: the deep shelter, the bomb site, and the Royal Free all marked with X’s.

  I told them I was drawing.

  Their leader, sharp face, cigarette in hand: Why? You a spy or something?

  Made the mistake of saying I was an artist.

  An artist? La-di-da! I tell you what you are. A ponce.

  I assured them I wasn’t and would they kindly leave me alone as I’d just lost someone. I pointed at the bandage on my head for good measure, hoping that would somehow help.

  Heavyset woman: Why aren’t you fighting, love? You can see what them Jerries are doing to us.

  I expect most of them Jerries are as bloody well fed up with this as we are, I said, too prickly for my own good. As usual.

  And then, for some reason, Agatha picked that moment to utter her first words of German since we left the Royal Free. Harry, möchtest du ein Duo mit mir spielen? Would you like to play a duet with me?

  Bloody Kraut, one of the women hissed, turning towards A. My darling Frank was killed at bloody Dunkirk, you little bitch. By your lot.

  Now I saw red. Leave her alone. She’s a Jew; she and her parents have fled Germany, you stupid woman.

  A conchie and a Yid, the leader of the ragged women sneered, fumbling for half-remembered words. Agents provocatives, that’s what you are. Fifth columnists I’ll be bound, reporting back to help guide your bloody rockets better. I’m getting the law.

  No, said another. I’ll fetch Jimmy and his mates. We’ll sort it ourselves. Like that other one.

  Agatha, bless her, she didn’t hear or understand — or even seem to recognize the problem. I couldn’t see her now, just hear her; she kept playing, the tune with its gaps and buzzes flying out from under her fingers. Shifting from something that could have been Schumann to something else, something that felt very familiar indeed.

  All the time I could hear Agatha playing — and suddenly a kind of miracle happened: the tune flowered under her hands. It’s hard to put it into words, but it was as if all the missing notes didn’t matter, and the melody soared
and changed pace, notes flying from the broken instrument, lively and uplifting and somehow smudging out the ugly words and anger in the air.

  The women hesitated, parted, turned towards Agatha, and for an awful moment I thought they were going to attack her.

  And then I saw him. A young man, tall and slim, had parked himself on the beer crates next to A and was playing the treble part of a duet, his head thrown back and hands moving fast, while Agatha, transported and smiling, made the bass notes rumble, and the whole effect was so beautiful and uncanny, it stopped everyone in their tracks.

  The tune tumbled from their fingers: it made me think of the hillside back home again, everything moving, clouds over Foxes Hill, the wind in the trees, the cascading stream. And suddenly I had the clearest, sharpest of memories that lifted my spirits from the hopeless task behind me as I watched the young man next to Agatha. I remembered a cold March day when Ellis and I made such a good job of the dam we were building in the stream that rolled down between our garden and the farm beyond, that we shifted the whole damn thing from out of its bed and sent it, glittering, silvering, snaking down the green grass of Grice’s meadow and flooding into his yard. We laughed, clapped our hands in glee, and capered around watching the results of our handiwork, numb fingers forgotten. (And then got a thrashing from Father that, though fierce, failed to dampen our spirits.) I’d forgotten that: two brothers on the edge of springtime arm in arm, delighting in our liberation of the stream.

  Oh, Ellis. What we achieved together! Could still do.

  The women lost their thread somehow and turned to listen to that crazy duet, their words stilled in their throats until, after a long while, one of them just said well and then tailed off. A strange look in her eyes. The sun had slipped through the gray and was almost warm on our faces now, and Greene came shuffling back with two steaming sandwiches, helping to lift the mood even more. Bacon! And cheese for Agatha. Though she just shook her head, turned hers down. Glad to see she lifted the cup from the thermos of soup to her lips at least. Gave me a reassuring smile over the brim, as if to say, There, you see, I am eating.

  This man, Greene said, turning to face the women and slapping me on the back at the same moment, is under my protection. Here, in what is left of my pub — the ground at least must still belong to me. Now, sling your hook.