Neverwhere

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 with eyes like a slow-burning fuse, 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 beet red 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 had been gutted, first . . . like . . . “

“Perchance—then dried 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 with fear. Richard looked at Hunter. She seemed untroubled by this: she was watching it almost with amusement, like someone attending the theater.

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 regard 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 that 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 that glance 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 and pointed it toward the marquis’s 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 with an elaborate flourish. The door hissed closed behind him.

The earl sat down on his huge chair at the end of the car. 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 drumbeat. “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 car. No one seemed to notice that anything was at all unusual.

Dagvard walked over to a vending machine on the side of the platform. He took off his metal 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’s Fruit and Nut chocolate bars, one after another. Dagvard held his 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.”