Neverwhere

NINETEEN

For a moment, upon waking, he had NO idea at all who he was. It was a tremendously liberating feeling, as if he were free to be whatever he wanted to be: he could be anyone at all-able to try on any identity; he could be a man or a woman, a rat or a bird, a monster or a god. And then someone made a rustling noise, and he woke up the rest of the way, and in waking he found that he was Richard Mayhew, whoever that was, whatever that meant. He was Richard Mayhew, and he did not know where he was.

There was crisp linen pressed against his face. He hurt all over; in some places-the little finger on his left hand, for example-more than others.

Someone was nearby. Richard could hear breathing, and the hesitant rustling noises of a person in the same room he was in, trying to be discreet. Richard raised his head, and discovered, in the raising, more places that hurt. Some of them hurt very badly. Far away-rooms and rooms away-people were singing. The song was so distant and quiet he knew he would lose it if he opened, his eyes: a deep, melodious chanting…

He opened his eyes. The room was small, and dimly lit. He was on a low bed, and the rustling sound he had heard was made by a cowled figure in a black robe, with his back to Richard. The black figure was dusting the room, with an incongruously brightly colored feather duster. "Where am I?" asked Richard.

The black figure nearly dropped its feather duster, then it turned, revealing a very nervous, thin, dark brown face. "Would you like some water?" the Black Friar asked, in the manner of one who has been told that if the patient wakes up, he is to be asked if he would like some water, and has been repeating it to himself over and over for the last forty minutes to make sure that he didn't forget.

"I… " and Richard realized that he was most dreadfully thirsty. He sat up in the bed. "Yes, I would. Thank you very much." The friar poured some water from a battered metal jug into a battered metal cup and passed it to Richard. Richard sipped the water slowly, restraining the impulse to gulp it down. It was crystal cold and clear and tasted like diamonds and ice.

Richard looked down at himself. His clothes were gone. He had been dressed in a long robe, like one of the Black Friars' habits, but gray. His broken finger had been splinted and neatly bandaged. He raised a finger to his ear; there was a bandage on it, and what felt like stitches beneath the bandage. "You're one of the Black Friars," said Richard.

"Yes, sir."

"How did I get here? Where are my friends?"

The friar pointed to the corridor, wordlessly and nervously. Richard got out of the bed. He checked under his gray robe: he was naked. His torso and legs were covered in a variety of deep indigo and purple bruises, all of which seemed to have been rubbed with some kind of ointment: it smelt like cough syrup and buttered toast. His right knee was bandaged. He wondered where his clothes were. There were sandals beside the bed, and he put them on, then he walked out into the corridor. The abbot was coming down the passage toward him, holding onto the arm of Brother Fuliginous, his blind eyes pearlescent in the darkness beneath his cowl.

"You are awake, then, Richard Mayhew," said the abbot. "How do you feel?"

Richard made a face. "My hand… "

"We set your finger. It had been broken. We tended your bruises and your cuts. And you needed rest, which we gave you."

"Where's Door? And the marquis? How did we get here?"

"I had you brought here," said the abbot. The two friars began to walk down the corridor, and Richard walked with them.

"Hunter," said Richard. "Did you bring back her body?"

The abbot shook his head. "There was no body. Only the Beast."

"Ah, um. My clothes… " They came to the door of a cell, much like the one Richard had woken in. Door was sitting on the edge of her bed, reading a copy of Mansfield Park that Richard was certain the friars had not previously known that they had. She, too, wore a gray monk's robe, which was much, much too big for her, almost comically so. She looked up as they entered. "Hello," she said. "You've been asleep for ages. How are you feeling?"

"Fine, I think. How are you?"

She smiled. It was not a very convincing smile. "A bit shaky," she admitted. There was a loud rattling in the corridor, and Richard turned to see the marquis de Carabas being wheeled toward them in a rickety and antique wheelchair. The wheelchair was being pushed by a large Black Friar. Richard wondered how the marquis managed to make being pushed around in a wheelchair look like a romantic and swashbuckling thing to do. The marquis honored them with an enormous smile. "Good evening, friends," he said.

"Now," said the abbot, "that you are all here, we must talk."

He led them to a large room, warmed by a roaring scrap wood fire. They arranged themselves around a table. The abbot gestured for them all to sit down. He felt for his chair and sat down in it. Then he sent Brother Fuliginous and Brother Tenebrae (who had been pushing the marquis's wheelchair) out of the room.

"So," said the abbot. "To business. Where is Islington?"

Door shrugged. "As far away as I could send him. Halfway across space and time."

"I see," said the abbot. And then he said, "Good."

"Why didn't you warn us about him?" asked Richard.

"That was not our responsibility."

Richard snorted. "What happens now?" he asked them all.

The abbot said nothing.

"Happens? In what way?" asked Door.

"Well, you wanted to avenge your family. And you have. And you've sent everyone involved off to some distant corner of nowhere. I mean, no one's going to try and kill you anymore, are they?"

"Not for right now," said Door, seriously.

"And you?" Richard asked the marquis de Carabas. "Have you got what you wanted?"

The marquis nodded. "I believe so. My debt to Lord Portico has been paid in full, and the Lady Door owes me a significant favor."

Richard looked to Door. She nodded. "So what about me?" he asked.

"Well," said Door. "We couldn't have done it without you."

"That's not what I meant. What about getting me back home?"

The marquis raised an eyebrow. "Who do you think she is-the Wizard of Oz? We can't send you home. This is your home."

Door said, "I tried to tell you that before, Richard."

"There has to be a way," said Richard, and he slammed his left hand down on the table, hard, for emphasis. It hurt his finger, but he kept his face composed. And then he said, "Ow," but he said it very quietly, because he had gone through much worse.

"Where is the key?" asked the abbot.

Richard inclined his head. "Door," he said.

She shook her pixy head. "I don't have it," she told him. "I slipped it back into your pocket at the last market. When you brought the curry."

Richard opened his mouth, and then he closed it again. Then he opened it and said, "You mean, when I told Croup and Vandemar that I had it, and they were welcome to search me… I had it?" She nodded. He remembered the hard object in his back pocket, on Down Street; remembered her hugging him on the ship…

The abbot reached out. His wrinkled brown fingers picked up a small bell from the table, which he shook, summoning Brother Fuliginous. "Bring me the Warrior's trousers," he said. Fuliginous nodded and left.

"I'm no warrior," said Richard.

The Abbot smiled gently. "You killed the Beast," he explained, almost regretfully. "You are the Warrior."

Richard folded his arms, exasperated. "So, after all this, I still don't get to go home, but as a consolation prize I've made it onto some kind of archaic underground honors list?"

The marquis looked unsympathetic. "You can't go back to London Above. A few individuals manage a kind of half-life-you've met Iliaster and Lear. But that's the best you could hope for, and it isn't a good life."

Door reached out a hand, and touched Richard's arm. "I'm sorry," she told him. "But look at all the good you've done. You got the key for us."

"Well," he asked, "what was the point of that? You just forged a new key-" Brother Fuliginous reappeared, carrying Richard's jeans; they were ripped, and covered in mud, and splashed with dried blood, and they stank. The friar handed the trousers to the abbot, who commenced to go through the pockets. Door smiled, sweetly. "I couldn't have had Hammersmith copy it without the original," she reminded him.

The abbot cleared his throat. "You are all very stupid people," he told them, graciously, "and you do not know anything at all." He held up the silver key. It glinted in the firelight. "Richard passed the Ordeal of the Key. He is its master, until he returns it to our keeping. The key has power."

"It's the key to Heaven… " said Richard, unsure of what the abbot was getting at, of what point he was trying to make.

The old man's voice was deep and melodious. "The key is the key to all reality. If Richard wants to return to London Above, then the key will take him back to London Above."

"It's that simple?" asked Richard. The old man nodded his blind head, beneath the shadows of his cowl. "Then when could we do this?"

"As soon as you are ready," said the abbot.

The friars had washed and repaired his clothes and returned them to him. Brother Fuliginous led him through the abbey, up a vertiginous series of ladders and steps, up into the bell tower. There was a heavy wooden trapdoor in the top of the tower. Brother Fuliginous unlocked it, and the two men pushed through it and found themselves in a narrow tunnel, thickly cobwebbed, with metal rungs set in the side of one wall. They climbed the rungs, going up for what seemed like thousands of feet, and came out on a dusty Underground station platform.