The Neil Gaiman Reader

by Neil Gaiman

  RICHARD WAITED AGAINST the wall, next to Door. She said very little; she chewed her fingernails, ran her hands through her reddish hair until it was sticking up in all directions, then tried to push it back down again. She was certainly unlike anyone he had ever known. When she noticed him looking at her she shrugged and shimmied down further into her layers of clothes, deeper into her leather jacket. Her face looked out at the world from inside the jacket. The expression on her face made Richard think of a beautiful homeless child he had seen, the previous winter, behind Covent Garden: he had not been certain whether it was a girl or a boy. Its mother was begging, pleading with the passersby for coins to feed the child, and the infant that she carried in her arms. But the child stared out at the world, and said nothing, although it must have been cold and hungry. It just stared.

  Hunter stood by Door, looking back and forth down the platform. The Marquis had told them where to wait, and had slipped away. From somewhere, Richard heard a baby begin to cry. The Marquis slipped out of an exit-only door, and walked toward them. He was chewing on a piece of candy.

  “Having fun?” asked Richard. A train was coming toward them, its approach heralded by a gust of warm wind.

  “Just taking care of business,” said the Marquis. He consulted the piece of paper, and his watch. He pointed to a place on the platform. “This should be the Earl’s Court train. Stand behind me here, you three.” Then, as the Underground train—a rather boring-looking, normal train, Richard was disappointed to observe—rumbled and rattled its way into the station, the Marquis leaned across Richard, and said to Door, “My lady? There is something that perhaps I should have mentioned earlier.”

  She turned her odd-colored eyes on him. “Yes?”

  “Well,” he said, “the Earl might not be entirely pleased to see me.”

  The train slowed down and stopped. The carriage that had pulled up in front of Richard was quite empty: its lights were turned off; it was bleak and empty and dark. From time to time Richard had noticed carriages like this one, locked and shadowy, on Tube trains, and had wondered what purpose they served. The other doors on the train hissed open, and passengers got on and got off. The doors of the darkened carriage remained closed. The Marquis drummed on the door with his fist, an intricate rhythmic rap. Nothing happened. Richard was just wondering if the train would now pull out without them on it, when the door of the dark carriage was pushed open from the inside. It opened about six inches, and an elderly, bespectacled face peered out at them.

  “Who knocks?” he said.

  Through the opening, Richard could see flames burning, and people, and smoke inside the car. Through the glass in the doors, however, he still saw a dark and empty carriage. “The Lady Door,” said the Marquis, smoothly, “and her companions.”

  The door slid open all the way, and they were in Earl’s Court.

  * * *

  There was straw scattered on the floor, over a layer of rushes. There was an open log fire, sputtering and blazing in a large fireplace. There were a few chickens, strutting and pecking on the floor. There were seats with hand-embroidered cushions on them, and there were tapestries covering the windows and the doors.

  Richard stumbled forward as the train lurched out of the station. He reached out, grabbed hold of the nearest person, and regained his balance. The nearest person happened to be a short, gray, elderly man-at-arms, who would have looked, Richard decided, exactly like a recently retired government employee, were it not for the tin hat, the surcoat, the rather clumsily knitted chain mail, and the spear; instead he looked like a recently retired government employee who had, somewhat against his will, been dragooned into his local amateur dramatic society, where he had been forced to play a man-at-arms.

  The little gray man blinked shortsightedly at Richard, as Richard grabbed him, and then he said, lugubriously, “Sorry about that.”

  “My fault,” said Richard.

  “I know,” said the man.

  An enormous Irish wolfhound padded down the aisle, and stopped beside a lute player, who sat on the floor picking at a gladsome melody in a desultory fashion. The wolfhound glared at Richard, snorted with disdain, then lay down and went to sleep. At the far end of the carriage an elderly falconer, with a hooded falcon on his wrist, was exchanging pleasantries with a small knot of damozels of a certain age. Some passengers obviously stared at the four travelers; others, just as obviously, ignored them. It was, Richard realized, as if someone had taken a small medieval court and put it, as best they could, in one carriage of an Underground train.

  A herald raised his bugle to his lips and played a tuneless blast, as an immense, elderly man, in a huge fur-lined dressing gown and carpet slippers, staggered through the connecting door to the next compartment, his arm resting on the shoulder of a jester in shabby motley. The old man was larger than life in every way: he wore an eye patch over his left eye, which had the effect of making him look slightly helpless and unbalanced, like a one-eyed hawk. There were fragments of food in his red-gray beard, and what appeared to be pajama pants were visible at the bottom of his shabby fur gown.

  That, thought Richard, correctly, must be the Earl.

  The Earl’s jester, an elderly man with a pinched, humorless mouth and a painted face, looked like he had fled from a life as an all-round entertainer near the bottom of the bill in the Victorian music halls a hundred years before. He led the Earl to a throne-like carved wooden seat, in which, a trifle unsteadily, the Earl sat down. The wolfhound got up, padded down the length of the carriage, and settled itself at the Earl’s slippered feet.

  Earl’s Court, thought Richard. Of course. And then he began to wonder whether there was a Baron in Barons Court tube station, or a Raven in Ravenscourt, or . . .

  The little old man-at-arms coughed asthmatically, and said, “Right then, you lot. State your business.” Door stepped forward. She held her head up high, suddenly seeming taller and more at ease than Richard had previously seen her, and she said, “We seek an audience with His Grace the Earl.”

  The Earl called down the carriage. “What did the little girl say, Halvard?” he asked. Richard wondered if he were deaf.

  Halvard, the elderly man-at-arms, shuffled around, and cupped his hand to his mouth. “They seek an audience, Your Grace,” he shouted, over the rattle of the train.

  The Earl pushed aside his thick fur cap and scratched his head, meditatively. He was balding underneath his cap. “They do? An audience? How splendid. Who are they, Halvard?”

  Halvard turned back to them. “He wants to know who you all are. Keep it short, though. Don’t go on.”

  “I am the Lady Door,” announced Door. “The Lord Portico was my father.”

  The Earl brightened at this, leaned forward, peered through the smoke with his one good eye. “Did she say she was Portico’s oldest girl?” he asked the jester.

  “Yus, Your Grace.”

  The Earl beckoned to Door. “Come here,” he said. “Come-come-come. Let me look at you.” She walked down the swaying carriage, grabbing the thick rope straps that hung from the ceiling as she went, to keep her balance. When she stood before the Earl’s wooden chair she curtseyed. He scratched at his beard, and stared at her. “We were all quite devastated to hear of your father’s unfortunate—” said the Earl, and then he interrupted himself, and said, “Well, all your family, it was a . . .” And he trailed off, and said, “You know I had warmest regards for him, did a bit of business together . . . Good old Portico . . . full of ideas . . .” He stopped. Then he tapped the jester on the shoulder, and whispered, in a querulous boom, loud enough that it could be heard easily over the noise of the train, “Go and make jokes at them, Tooley. Earn your keep.”

  The Earl’s fool staggered up the aisle with an arthritic mop and a rheumatic mow. He stopped in front of Richard. “And who might you be?” he asked.

  “Me?” said Richard. “Um. Me? My name? It’s Richard. Richard Mayhew.”

  “Me?” squeaked the Fool, in an elderl
y, rather theatrical imitation of Richard’s Scottish accent. “Me? Um. Me? La, nuncle. ’Tis not a man, but a mooncalf.” The courtiers sniggered, dustily.

  “And I,” de Carabas told the jester, with a blinding smile, “call myself the Marquis de Carabas.” The Fool blinked.

  “De Carabas the thief?” asked the jester. “De Carabas the body snatcher? De Carabas the traitor?” He turned to the courtiers around them. “But this cannot be de Carabas. For why? Because de Carabas has long since been banished from the Earl’s presence. Perhaps it is instead a strange new species of stoat, who grew particularly large.” The courtiers tittered uneasily, and a low buzz of troubled conversation began. The Earl said nothing, but his lips were pressed together tightly, and he had begun to tremble.

  “I am called Hunter,” said Hunter to the jester.

  The courtiers were silent then. The jester opened his mouth, as if he were going to say something, and then he looked at her, and he closed his mouth again. A hint of a smile played at the corner of Hunter’s perfect lips. “Go on,” she said. “Say something funny.”

  The jester stared at the trailing toes of his shoes. Then he muttered, “My hound hath no nose.”

  The Earl, who had been staring at the Marquis de Carabas like a slow-burning fuse, pop-eyed, white-lipped, unable to believe the evidence of his senses, now exploded to his feet, a gray-bearded volcano, an elderly berserker. His head brushed the roof of the carriage. He pointed at the Marquis, and shouted, spittle flying, “I will not stand for it, I will not. Make him come forward.”

  Halvard waggled a gloomy spear at the Marquis, who sauntered to the front of the train, until he stood, beside Door, in front of the Earl’s throne. The wolfhound growled in the back of its throat.

  “You,” said the Earl, stabbing the air with a huge, knotted finger. “I know you, de Carabas. I haven’t forgotten. I may be old, but I haven’t forgotten.”

  The Marquis bowed. “Might I remind Your Grace,” he said, urbanely, “that we had a deal? I negotiated the peace treaty between your people and the Raven’s Court. And in return you agreed to provide a little favor.” So there is a raven’s court, thought Richard. He wondered what it was like.

  “A little favor?” said the Earl. He turned a deep beetroot color. “Is that what you call it? I lost a dozen men to your foolishness in the retreat from White City. I lost an eye.”

  “And if you don’t mind my saying so, Your Grace,” said the Marquis, graciously, “that is a very fetching patch. It sets off your face perfectly.”

  “I swore . . . ,” fulminated the Earl, beard bristling, “I swore . . . that if you ever set foot in my domain I would . . .” He trailed off. Shook his head, confused, and forgetful. Then he continued. “It’ll come back to me. I do not forget.”

  “He might not be entirely pleased to see you?” whispered Door to de Carabas.

  “Well, he’s not,” he muttered back.

  Door stepped forward once more. “Your Grace,” she said, loudly, clearly, “de Carabas is here with me as my guest and my companion. For the fellowship there has ever been between your family and mine, for the friendship between my father and—”

  “He abused my hospitality,” boomed the Earl. “I swore that . . . if he ever again entered my domain I would have him gutted and dried . . . like, like something that’s been . . . um . . . gutted, first, and then . . . um . . . dried . . .”

  “Perchance—a kipper, my lord?” suggested the jester.

  The Earl shrugged. “It is of no matter. Guards, seize him.” And they did. While neither of the guards would ever see sixty again, each of them was holding a crossbow, pointed at the Marquis, and their hands did not tremble, neither with age nor fear. Richard looked at Hunter. She seemed untroubled by this, watching it almost with amusement, like someone watching a piece of drama played out for their benefit.

  Door folded her arms, and stood taller, putting her head back, raising her pointed chin. She looked less like a ragged street pixie; more like someone used to getting her own way. The opal eyes flashed. “Your Grace, the Marquis is with me as my companion, on my quest. Our families have been friends for a long time now—”

  “Yes. They have,” interrupted the Earl, helpfully. “Hundreds of years. Hundreds and hundreds. Knew your grandfather, too. Funny old fellow. Bit vague,” he confided.

  “But I am forced to say that I will take an act of violence against my companion as an act of aggression against myself and my house.” The girl stared up at the old man. He towered over her. They stood for some moments, frozen. He tugged on his red and gray beard, agitatedly, then he thrust out his lower lip like a small child. “I will not have him here,” he said.

  The Marquis took out the golden pocket watch he had found in Portico’s study. He examined it, carelessly. Then he turned to Door, and said, as if none of the events around them had occurred, “My lady, I will obviously be of more use to you off this train than on. And I have other avenues to explore.”

  “No,” she said. “If you go, we all go.”

  “I don’t think so,” said the Marquis. “Hunter will look after you as long as you stay in London Below. I’ll meet you at the next market. Don’t do anything too stupid in the meantime.” The train was coming into a station.

  Door fixed the Earl with her look: there was something more ancient and powerful in those huge opal-colored eyes in their pale heart-shaped face than her young years would have seemed to allow. Richard noticed that the room fell quiet whenever she spoke. “Will you let him go in peace, Your Grace?” she asked.

  The Earl ran his hands over his face, rubbed his good eye and his eye patch, then looked back at her. “Just make him go,” said the Earl. He looked at the Marquis. “Next time”—he ran a thick old finger across his Adam’s apple—“kipper.”

  The Marquis bowed low. “I’ll see myself out,” he said to the guards, and stepped toward the open door. Halvard raised his crossbow, pointed it toward the Marquis’ back. Hunter reached out her hand, and pushed the end of the crossbow back down toward the floor. The Marquis stepped onto the platform, turned and waved an ironic good-bye flourish at them. The door hissed closed behind him.

  The Earl sat down on his huge chair at the end of the carriage. He said nothing. The train rattled and lurched through the dark tunnel. “Where are my manners?” muttered the Earl to himself. He looked at them with one staring eye. Then he said it again, in a desperate boom that Richard could feel in his stomach, like a bass drum beat. “Where are my manners?” He motioned one of the elderly men-at-arms to him. “They will be hungry after their journey, Dagvard. Thirsty too, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  “Stop the train!” called the Earl. The doors hissed open and Dagvard scuttled off onto a platform. Richard watched the people on the platform. No one came into their carriage. No one seemed to notice that anything was at all odd, or in any way unusual.

  Dagvard walked over to a vending machine on the side of the platform. He took off his helmet. Then he rapped, with one mailed glove, on the side of the machine. “Orders from the Earl,” he said. “Choc’lits.” A ratcheting whirr came from deep in the guts of the machine, and it began to spit out dozens of Cadbury Fruit and Nut chocolate bars, one after another. Dagvard held his metal helmet below the opening to catch them. The doors began to close. Halvard put the handle of his pike between the doors, and they opened again, and began bumping open and shut on the pike handle. “Please stand clear of the doors,” said a loudspeaker voice. “The train cannot leave until the doors are all closed.”

  The Earl was staring at Door lopsidedly, with his one good eye. “So. What brings you here to me?” he asked.

  She licked her lips. “Well, indirectly, Your Grace, my father’s death.”

  He nodded, slowly. “Yes. You seek vengeance. Quite right too.” He coughed, then recited, in a basso profundo, “Brave the battling blade, flashes the furious fire, steel sword sheathed in hated heart, crimsons the . . . the .
. . something. Yes.”

  “Vengeance?” Door thought for a moment. “Yes. That was what my father said. But I just want to understand what happened, and to protect myself. My family had no enemies.” Dagvard staggered back onto the train then, his helmet filled with chocolate bars and cans of Coke; the doors were permitted to close, and the train moved off once more.

  RICHARD WAS HANDED a bar of vending-machine-sized Cadbury Fruit and Nut chocolate, and a large silver goblet, ornamented around the rim with what appeared to Richard to be sapphires. The goblet was filled with Coca-Cola. The jester, whose name appeared to be Tooley, cleared his throat, loudly. “I would like to propose a toast to our guests,” he said. “A child, a bravo, a fool. May they each get what they deserve.”

  “Which one am I?” whispered Richard to Hunter.

  “The fool, of course,” she said.

  “In the old days,” said Halvard dismally, after sipping his Coke, “we had wine. I prefer wine. It’s not as sticky.”

  “Do all the machines just give you things like that?” asked Richard.

  “Oh yes,” said the old man. “They listen to the Earl, y’see. He rules the Underground. The bit with the trains. He’s lord of the Central, the Circle, the Jubilee, the Victorious, the Bakerloo—well, all of them except the Underside Line.”

  “What’s the Underside Line?” asked Richard.

  Halvard shook his head, and pursed his lips. Hunter brushed Richard’s shoulder with her fingers. “Remember what I told you about the shepherds of Shepherd’s Bush?”

  “You said I didn’t want to meet them, and there were some things I was probably better off not knowing.”

  “Good,” she said. “So now you can add the Underside Line to the list of things you’re better off not knowing.”

  Door came back down the carriage toward them. She was smiling. “The Earl’s agreed to help us,” she said. “Come on. He’s meeting us in the library.” Richard was almost proud of the way he didn’t say “What library?” or point out that you couldn’t put a library on a train. Instead he followed Door toward the Earl’s empty throne, and round the back of it, and through the connecting door behind it, and into the library. It was a huge stone room, with a high wooden ceiling. Each wall was covered with shelves. Each shelf was laden with objects: there were books, yes. But the shelves were filled with a host of other things: tennis rackets, hockey sticks, umbrellas, a spade, a notebook computer, a wooden leg, several mugs, dozens of shoes, pairs of binoculars, a small log, six glove puppets, a lava lamp, various CDs, records (LPs, 45s and 78s), cassette tapes and eight-tracks, dice, toy cars, assorted pairs of dentures, watches, flashlights, four garden gnomes of assorted sizes (two fishing, one of them mooning, the last smoking a cigar), piles of newspapers, magazines, grimoires, three-legged stools, a box of cigars, a plastic nodding-head Alsatian, socks . . . The room was a tiny empire of lost property.