hms _belfast_ is a gunship of 11,000 tons, commissioned in 1939, which saw active service in the second world war. since then it has been moored on the south bank of the thames, in postcard-land, between tower bridge and london bridge, opposite the tower of london. from its deck one can see st. paul's cathedral and the gilt top of the columnlike monument to the great fire of london erected, as so much of london was erected, by christopher wren. the ship serves as a floating museum, as a memorial, as a training ground.
there _is_ a walkway onto the ship from the shore, and they came down the walkway in their twos and threes, and in their dozens. they set up their stalls as early as they could, all the tribes of london below, united both by the market truce and by a mutual desire to pitch their own stalls as far as possible from the sewer folk's stall.
it had been agreed well over a century before that the sewer folk could only set up a stall at those markets held in the open air. dunnikin and his folk dumped their booty in a large pile on a rubber sheet, beneath a large gun tower. nobody ever came to the sewer folk's stall immediately: but toward the end of the market they would come, the bargain hunters, the curious, and those few fortunate individuals blessed with no sense of smell.
richard and hunter and door pushed their way through the crowds on the deck. richard realized that he had somehow lost the need to stop and stare. the people here were no less strange than at the last floating market, but, he supposed, he was every bit as strange to them, wasn't he? he looked around, scanning the faces in the crowd as they walked, hunting for the marquis's ironic smile. "i don't see him," he said.
they were approaching a smith's stall, where a man who could easily have passed for a small mountain, if one were to overlook the shaggy brown beard, tossed a lump of red-molten metal from a brazier onto an anvil. richard had never seen a real anvil before. he could feel the heat from the molten metal and the brazier from a dozen feet away.
"keep looking. de carabas'll turn up," said door, looking behind them. "like a bad penny." she thought for a moment, and added, "what exactly is a bad penny anyway?" and then, before richard could answer, she squealed, "hammersmith!"
the bearded mountain-man looked up, stopped hitting the molten metal, and roared, "by the temple and the arch. lady door!" then he picked her up, as if she weighed no more than a mouse.
"hello, hammersmith," said door. "i hoped you'd be here."
"never miss a market, lady," he thundered, cheerfully. then he confided, like an explosion with a secret, "this's where the business is, y'see. now," he said, recollecting the cooling lump of metal on his anvil, "just you wait here a moment." he put door down at eye level, on the top of his booth,, seven feet above the deck.
he banged the lump of metal with his hammer, twisting it as he did so with implements richard assumed, correctly, were tongs. under the hammer blows it changed from a shapeless blob of orange metal into a perfect black rose. it was a work of astonishing delicacy, each petal perfect and distinct. hammersmith dipped the rose into a bucket of cold water beside the anvil: it hissed and steamed. then he pulled it out of the bucket, wiped it, and handed it to a fat man in chain mail who was standing, patiently, to one side; the fat man professed himself well satisfied and gave hammersmith, in return, a green plastic marks and spencer shopping bag, filled with various kinds of cheese.
"hammersmith?" said door, from her perch. "these are my friends."
hammersmith enveloped richard's hand in one several sizes up. his handshake was enthusiastic, but very gentle, as if he had, in the past, had a number of accidents shaking hands and had practiced it until he got it right. "charmed," he boomed.
"richard," said richard.
hammersmith looked delighted. "richard! fine name! i had a horse called richard." he let go of richard's hand, turned to hunter, and said, "and you are . . . hunter? hunter! as i live, breathe, and defecate! it is!" hammersmith blushed like a schoolboy. he spat on his hand and attempted, awkwardly, to plaster his hair back. then he stuck his hand out and realized that he had just spat on it, and he wiped it on his leather apron, and shifted his weight from foot to foot.
"hammersmith," said hunter, with a perfect caramel smile.
"hammersmith?" asked door. "will you help me down?"
he looked shamefaced. "beg pardon, lady," he said, and lifted her down. it came to richard then that hammersmith had known door as a small child, and he found himself feeling unaccountably jealous of the huge man. "now," hammersmith was saying to door, "what can i do for you?"
"couple of things," she said. "but first of all--" she turned to richard. "richard? i've got a job for you."
hunter raised an eyebrow. "for him?"
door nodded. "for both of you. will you go and find us some food? please?" richard felt oddly proud. he had proved himself in the ordeal. he was one of them. he would go, and he would bring back food. he puffed out his chest.
"i am your bodyguard. i stay by your side," said hunter.
door grinned. her eyes flashed. "in the market? it's okay, hunter. market truce holds. no one's going to touch me here. and richard needs looking after more than i do." richard deflated, but no one was watching.
"and what if someone violates the truce?" asked hunter.
hammersmith shivered, despite the heat of his brazier. "violate the market truce? brrrr."
"it's not going to happen. go on. both of you. curry, please. and get me some papadums, please. spicy ones."
hunter ran her hand through her hair. then she turned and walked off into the crowd, and richard went with her. "so what would happen if someone violated market truce?" asked richard, as they pushed through the crowds.
hunter thought about this for a moment. "the last time it happened was about three hundred years ago. a couple of friends got into an argument over a woman, in the market. a knife was pulled and one of them died. the other fled."
"what happened to him? was he killed?"
hunter shook her head. "quite the opposite. he still wishes he had been the one to have died."
"he's still alive?"
hunter pursed her lips. "ish," she said, after a while. "alive-ish."
a moment passed, then _"phew,"_ richard thought he was going to be ill. "what's that--that stink?"
"sewer folk."
richard averted his head and tried not to breathe through his nose until they were well away from the sewer folk's stall.
"any sign of the marquis yet?" he asked. hunter shook her head. she could have reached out her hand and touched him. they went up a gangplank, toward the food stalls, and more welcoming aromas.
old bailey found the sewer folk with little difficulty, following his nose.
he knew what he had to do, and he took a certain pleasure in making a bit of a performance of it, ostentatiously examining the dead cocker spaniel, the artificial leg, and the damp and moldy portable telephone, and shaking his head dolorously at each of them. then he made a point of noticing the marquis's body. he scratched his nose. he put on his spectacles and peered at it. he nodded to himself, glumly, hoping to give the vague impression of being a man in need of a corpse who was disappointed by the selection but was going to have to make do with what they had. then he beckoned to dunnikin, and pointed to the corpse.
dunnikin opened his hands wide, smiled beatifically, and gazed up toward the heavens, conveying the bliss with which the marquis's remains had entered their life. he put a hand to his forehead, lowered it, and looked devastated, in order to convey the tragedy that losing such a remarkable corpse would be.
old bailey put a hand in his pocket and produced a half-used stick of deodorant. he handed it to dunnikin, who squinted at it, licked it, and handed it back, unimpressed. old bailey pocketed it. he looked back at the corpse of the marquis de carabas, half-dressed, barefoot, still damp from its journey through the sewers. the body was ashen, drained of blood from many cuts, small and large, and the skin was wrinkled and prunelike from its time in the water.
then he pulled out a bottle, three-quarters filled with a yellow liquid, and passed it to dunnikin. dunnikin looked at it suspiciously. the sewer folk know what a bottle of chanel no. 5 looks like, and they gathered around dunnikin, staring. carefully, self-importantly, he unscrewed the top of the bottle and dabbed the tiniest amount on his wrist. then, with a gravity the finest parisian _parfumier_ would have envied, dunnikin sniffed. then he nodded his head, enthusiastically, and approached old bailey to embrace him and conclude the deal. the old man averted his face and held his breath until the embrace was concluded.
old bailey held up one finger and tried his best to mime that he was not so young as once he was and that, dead or not, the marquis de carabas was a bit on the heavy side. dunnikin picked his nose thoughtfully, and then, with a hand gesture indicating not only magnanimity but also a foolish and misplaced generosity that would, obviously, send him, dunnikin, and the rest of the sewer folk, to the poorhouse, he had one of the younger sewer folk tie the corpse to the bottom half of the old baby carriage.
the old roof-man covered the body with a cloth, and he pulled it away from the sewer folk, across the crowded deck.
"one portion of vegetable curry, please," said richard, to the woman at the curry stall. "and, um, i was wondering. the meat curry. what kind of meat is it, then?" the woman told him. "oh," said richard. "right. um. better just make that vegetable curries all round."
"hello again," said a rich voice beside him. it was the pale woman they had met in the caves, with the black dress and the foxglove eyes.
"hullo," said richard, with a smile. "--oh, and some papadums, please. you, um. here for curry?"
she fixed him with her violet gaze and said, in mock bela lugosi, "i do not eat . . . curry." and then she laughed, a lavish, delighted laugh, and richard found himself realizing how long it had been since he had shared a joke with a woman.
"oh. um. richard. richard mayhew." he stuck out his hand. she touched it with her own hand, in something a little like a handshake. her fingers were very cold, but then, late at night, at the end of autumn, on a ship out on the thames, everything is very cold.
"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."
"vel-vet," 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 brazier. 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.
