The Neil Gaiman Reader

by Neil Gaiman

  In addition to its unusual pockets, it had magnificent sleeves, an imposing collar, and a slit up the back. It was made of some kind of leather, it was the color of a wet street at midnight, and, more important than any of these things, it had style.

  There are people who will tell you that clothes make the man, and mostly they are wrong. However, it would be true to say that when the boy who would become the Marquis put that coat on for the very first time, and stared at himself in the looking glass, he stood up straighter, and his posture changed, because he knew, seeing his reflection, that the sort of person who wore a coat like that was no mere youth, no simple sneak-thief and favor-trader. The boy wearing the coat, which was, back then, too large for him, had smiled, looking at his reflection, and remembered an illustration from a book he had seen, of a miller’s cat standing on its two hind legs. A jaunty cat wearing a fine coat and big, proud boots. And he named himself.

  A coat like that, he knew, was the kind of coat that could only be worn by the Marquis de Carabas. He was never sure, not then and not later, how you pronounced Marquis de Carabas. Some days he said it one way, some days the other.

  The water level had reached his knees, and he thought, This would never have happened if I still had my coat.

  IT WAS THE market day after the worst week of the Marquis de Carabas’s life and things did not seem to be getting any better. Still, he was no longer dead, and his cut throat was healing rapidly. There was even a rasp in his throat he found quite attractive. Those were definite upsides.

  There were just as definite downsides to being dead, or at least, to having been recently dead, and missing his coat was the worst of them.

  The Sewer Folk were not helpful.

  “You sold my corpse,” said the Marquis. “These things happen. You also sold my possessions. I want them back. I’ll pay.”

  Dunnikin of the Sewer Folk shrugged. “Sold them,” he said. “Just like we sold you. Can’t go getting things back that you sold. Not good business.”

  “We are talking,” said the Marquis de Carabas, “about my coat. And I fully intend to have it back.”

  Dunnikin shrugged.

  “To whom did you sell it?” asked the Marquis.

  The sewer dweller said nothing at all. He acted as if he had not even heard the question.

  “I can get you perfumes,” said the Marquis, masking his irritability with all the blandness he could muster. “Glorious, magnificent, odiferous perfumes. You know you want them.”

  Dunnikin stared, stony-faced, at the Marquis. Then he drew his finger across his throat. As gestures went, the Marquis reflected, it was in appalling taste. Still, it had the desired effect. He stopped asking questions; there would be no answers from this direction.

  The Marquis walked over to the food court. That night, the Floating Market was being held in the Tate Gallery. The food court was in the Pre-Raphaelite room, and had already been mostly packed away. There were almost no stalls left: just a sad-looking little man selling some kind of sausage, and, in the corner, beneath a Burne-Jones painting of ladies in diaphanous robes walking downstairs, there were some Mushroom People, with some stools, tables and a grill. The Marquis had once eaten one of the sad-looking man’s sausages, and he had a firm policy of never intentionally making the same mistake twice, so he walked to the Mushroom People’s stall.

  There were three of the Mushroom People looking after the stall, two young men and a young woman. They smelled damp. They wore old duffel coats and army-surplus jackets, and they peered out from beneath their shaggy hair as if the light hurt their eyes.

  “What are you selling?” he asked.

  “The Mushroom. The Mushroom on toast. Raw the Mushroom.”

  “I’ll have some of the Mushroom on toast,” he said, and one of the Mushroom People—a thin, pale young woman with the complexion of day-old porridge—cut a slice off a puffball fungus the size of a tree stump. “And I want it cooked properly all the way through,” he told her.

  “Be brave. Eat it raw,” said the woman. “Join us.”

  “I have already had dealings with the Mushroom,” said the Marquis. “We came to an understanding.”

  The woman put the slice of white puffball under the portable grill.

  One of the young men, tall, with hunched shoulders, in a duffel coat that smelled like old cellars, edged over to the Marquis, and poured him a glass of mushroom tea. He leaned forward, and the Marquis could see the tiny crop of pale mushrooms splashed like pimples over his cheek.

  The Mushroom person said, “You’re de Carabas? The fixer?” The Marquis did not think of himself as a fixer.

  He said, “I am.”

  “I hear you’re looking for your coat. I was there when the Sewer Folk sold it. Start of the last Market it was. On Belfast. I saw who bought it.”

  The hair on the back of the Marquis’s neck pricked up. “And what would you want for the information?”

  The Mushroom’s young man licked his lips with a lichenous tongue. “There’s a girl I like as won’t give me the time of day.”

  “A Mushroom girl?”

  “Would I were so lucky. If we were as one both in love and in the body of the Mushroom, I wouldn’t have nothing to worry about. No. She’s one of the Raven’s Court. But she eats here sometimes. And we talk. Just like you and I are talking now.”

  The Marquis did not smile in pity and he did not wince. He barely raised an eyebrow. “And yet she does not return your ardor. How strange. What do you want me to do about it?”

  The young man reached one gray hand into the pocket of his long duffel coat. He pulled out an envelope, inside a clear plastic sandwich bag.

  “I wrote her a letter. More of a poem, you might say, although I’m not much of a poet. To tell her how I feels about her. But I don’t know that she’d read it, if I gived it to her. Then I saw you, and I thought, if it was you as was to give it to her, with all your fine words and your fancy flourishes . . .” He trailed off.

  “You thought she would read it and then be more inclined to listen to your suit.”

  The young man looked down at his duffel coat with a puzzled expression. “I’ve not got a suit,” he said. “Only what I’ve got on.”

  The Marquis tried not to sigh. The Mushroom woman put a cracked plastic plate down in front of him, with a steaming slice of grilled the Mushroom on it, soaking into a brown slice of crusty toast.

  He poked at the Mushroom experimentally, making sure that it was cooked all the way through, and there were no active spores. You could never be too careful, and the Marquis considered himself much too selfish for symbiosis.

  It was good. He chewed, and swallowed, though the food hurt his throat.

  “So all you want is for me to make sure she reads your missive of yearning?”

  “You mean my letter? My poem?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, yes. And I want you to be there with her, to make sure she doesn’t put it away unread, and I want you to bring her answer back to me.” The Marquis looked at the young man. It was true that he had tiny mushrooms sprouting from his neck and cheeks, and his hair was heavy and unwashed, and there was a general smell about him of abandoned places, but it was also true that through his thick fringe his eyes were pale blue and intense, and that he was tall, and not unattractive. The Marquis imagined him washed and cleaned up and somewhat less fungal, and approved. “I put the letter in the sandwich bag,” said the young man, “So it doesn’t get wet on the way.”

  “Very wise. Now, tell me: who bought my coat?”

  “Not yet, Mister Jumps-the-gun. You haven’t asked about my true love. Her name is Drusilla. You’ll know her because she is the most beautiful woman in all of the Raven’s Court.”

  “Beauty is traditionally in the eye of the beholder. Give me more to go on.”

  “I told you. Her name’s Drusilla. There’s only one. And she has a big red birthmark on the back of her hand that looks like a star.”

  “It seem
s an unlikely love pairing. One of the Mushroom’s folk, in love with a lady of the Raven’s Court. What makes you think she’ll give up her life for your damp cellars and fungoid joys?”

  The Mushroom youth shrugged. “She’ll love me,” he said. “Once she’s read my poem.” He twisted the stem of a tiny parasol mushroom growing on his right cheek, and when it fell to the table, he picked it up and continued to twist it between his fingers. “We’re on?”

  “We’re on.”

  “The cove as bought your coat,” said the Mushroom youth, “carried a stick.”

  “Lots of people carry sticks,” said de Carabas.

  “This one had a crook on the end,” said the Mushroom youth. “Looked a bit like a frog, he did. Short one. Bit fat. Hair the color of gravel. Needed a coat and took a shine to yours.” He popped the parasol mushroom into his mouth.

  “Useful information. I shall certainly pass your ardor and felicitations on to the fair Drusilla,” said the Marquis de Carabas, with a cheer that he most definitely did not feel.

  De Carabas reached across the table, and took the sandwich bag with the envelope in it from the young man’s fingers. He slipped it into one of the pockets sewn inside his shirt.

  And then he walked away, thinking about a man holding a crook.

  THE MARQUIS DE Carabas wore a blanket as a substitute for his coat. He wore it swathed about him like hell’s own poncho. It did not make him happy. He wished he had his coat. Fine feathers do not make fine birds, whispered a voice at the back of his mind, something someone had said to him when he was a boy; he suspected that it was his brother’s voice, and he did his best to forget it had ever spoken.

  A crook: the man who had taken his coat from the sewer people had been carrying a crook.

  He pondered.

  The Marquis de Carabas liked being who he was, and when he took risks he liked them to be calculated risks, and he was someone who double- and triple-checked his calculations.

  He checked his calculations for the fourth time.

  The Marquis de Carabas did not trust people. It was bad for business and it could set an unfortunate precedent. He did not trust his friends or his occasional lovers, and he certainly never trusted his employers. He reserved the entirety of his trust for the Marquis de Carabas, an imposing figure in an imposing coat, able to outtalk, outthink and outplan anybody.

  There were only two sorts of people who carried crooks: bishops and shepherds.

  In Bishopsgate, the crooks were decorative, nonfunctional, purely symbolic. And the bishops had no need of coats. They had robes, after all, nice, white, bishoppy robes.

  The Marquis was not scared of the bishops. He knew the Sewer Folk were not scared of the bishops. The inhabitants of Shepherd’s Bush were another matter entirely. Even in his coat, and at the best of times, at the peak of health and with a small army at his beck and call, the Marquis would not have wanted to encounter the shepherds.

  He toyed with the idea of visiting Bishopsgate, of spending a pleasant handful of days establishing that his coat was not there.

  And then he sighed, dramatically, and went to the Guide’s Pen, and looked for a bonded guide who might be persuaded take him to Shepherd’s Bush.

  HIS GUIDE WAS quite remarkably short, with fair hair cut close. The Marquis had first thought she was in her teens, until, after traveling with her for half a day, he had decided she was in her twenties. He had talked to half a dozen guides before he found her. Her name was Knibbs, and she had seemed confident, and he needed confidence. He told her the two places he was going, as they walked out of the Guide’s Pen.

  “So where do you want to go first, then?” she asked. “Shepherd’s Bush, or Raven’s Court?”

  “The visit to Raven’s Court is a formality; it is merely to deliver a letter. To someone named Drusilla.”

  “A love letter?”

  “I believe so. Why do you ask?”

  “I have heard that the fair Drusilla is most wickedly beautiful, and she has the unfortunate habit of reshaping those who displease her into birds of prey. You must love her very much, to be writing letters to her.”

  “I am afraid I have never encountered the young lady,” said the Marquis. “The letter is not from me. And it doesn’t matter which we visit first.”

  “You know,” said Knibbs, thoughtfully, “just in case something dreadfully unfortunate happens to you when you get to the shepherds, we should probably do Raven’s Court first. So the fair Drusilla gets her letter. I’m not saying that something horrible will happen to you, mind. Just that it’s better to be safe than, y’know, dead.”

  The Marquis de Carabas looked down at his blanketed shape. He was uncertain. Had he been wearing his coat, he knew, he would not have been uncertain; he would have known exactly what to do. He looked at the girl and he mustered the most convincing grin he could. “Raven’s Court it is, then,” he said.

  Knibbs had nodded, and set off on the path, and the Marquis had followed her.

  The paths of London Below are not the paths of London Above: they rely to no little extent on things like belief and opinion and tradition as much as they rely upon the realities of maps.

  De Carabas and Knibbs were two tiny figures walking through a high, vaulted tunnel carved from old, white stone. Their footsteps echoed.

  “You’re de Carabas, aren’t you?” said Knibbs. “You’re famous. You know how to get places. What exactly do you need a guide for?”

  “Two heads are better than one,” he told her. “So are two sets of eyes.”

  “You used to have a posh coat, didn’t you?” she said.

  “I did. Yes.”

  “What happened to it?”

  He said nothing. Then he said, “I’ve changed my mind. We’re going to Shepherd’s Bush first.”

  “Fair enough,” said his guide. “Easy to take you one place as another. I’ll wait for you outside the shepherds’ trading post, mind.”

  “Very wise, girl.”

  “My name’s Knibbs,” she said. “Not girl. Do you want to know why I become a guide? It’s an interesting story.”

  “Not particularly,” said the Marquis de Carabas. He was not feeling particularly talkative, and the guide was being well recompensed for her trouble. “Why don’t we try to move in silence?”

  Knibbs nodded, and said nothing as they reached the end of the tunnel, nothing as they clambered down some metal rungs set in the side of a wall. It was not until they had reached the banks of the Mortlake, the vast underground Lake of the Dead, and she was lighting a candle on the shore to summon the boatman, that she spoke again.

  Knibbs said, “The thing about being a proper guide is that you’re bonded. So people know you won’t steer them wrong.”

  The Marquis only grunted. He was wondering what to tell the shepherds at the trading post, trying out alternate routes through possibility and through probability. He had nothing that the shepherds would want, that was the trouble.

  “You lead them wrong, you’ll never work as a guide again,” said Knibbs, cheerfully. “That’s why we’re bonded.”

  “I know,” said the Marquis. She was a most irritating guide, he thought. Two heads were only better than one if the other head kept its mouth shut and did not start telling him things he already knew.

  “I got bonded,” she said, “in Bond Street.” She tapped the little chain around her wrist.

  “I don’t see the ferryman,” said the Marquis.

  “He’ll be here soon enough. You keep an eye out for him in that direction, and halloo when you sees him. I’ll keep looking over here. One way or another, we’ll spot him.”

  They stared out over the dark water of the lake. Knibbs began to talk again. “Before I was a guide, when I was just little, my people trained me up for this. They said it was the only way that honor could ever be satisfied.”

  The Marquis turned to face her. She held the candle in front of her, at eye level. Everything is off, here, thought the Marquis, and he realize
d he should have been listening to her from the beginning. Everything is wrong. He said, “Who are your people, Knibbs? Where do you come from?”

  “Somewhere you ain’t welcome anymore,” said the girl. “I was born and bred to give my fealty and loyalty to the Elephant and the Castle.”

  Something hard struck him on the back of the head then, hit him like a hammer blow, and lightning pulsed in the darkness of his mind as he crumpled to the floor.

  THE MARQUIS DE Carabas could not move his arms. They were, he realized, tied behind him. He was lying on his side.

  He had been unconscious. If the people who did this to him thought him unconscious then he would do nothing to disabuse them of the idea, he decided. He let his eyes slit open the merest crack, to sneak a glance at the world.

  A deep, grinding voice said, “Oh, don’t be silly, de Carabas. I don’t believe you’re still out. I’ve got big ears. I can hear your heartbeat. Open your eyes properly, you weasel. Face me like a man.”

  The Marquis recognized the voice, and hoped he was mistaken. He opened his eyes. He was staring at legs, human legs with bare feet. The toes were squat and pushed together. The legs and feet were the color of teak. He knew those legs. He had not been mistaken.

  His mind bifurcated: A small part of it berated him for his inattention and his foolishness. Knibbs had told him, by the Temple and the Arch; he just had not listened to her. But even as he raged at his own foolishness, the rest of his mind took over, forced a smile, and said, “Why, this is indeed an honor. You really didn’t have to arrange to meet me like this. Why, the merest inkling that your prominence might have had even the teeniest desire to see me would have—”

  “Sent you scurrying off in the other direction as fast as your spindly little legs could carry you,” said the person with the teak-colored legs. He reached over with his trunk, which was long and flexible, and a greenish-blue color, and which hung to his ankles, and he pushed the Marquis onto his back.

  The Marquis began rubbing his bound wrists slowly against the concrete beneath them, while he said, “Not at all. Quite the opposite. Words cannot actually describe how much pleasure I take in your pachydermic presence. Might I suggest that you untie me, and allow me to greet you, man to—man to elephant?”