Neverwhere

NIGHTINGALE LANE

said the old signs on the wall. Brother Fuliginous wished Richard well and told him to wait there and he would be collected, and then he clambered down the side of the wall, and he was gone.

Richard sat on the platform for twenty minutes. He wondered what kind of station this was: it seemed neither abandoned, like British Museum, nor real, like Blackfriars: instead it was a ghost-station, an imaginary place, forgotten and strange. He wondered why the marquis had not said good-bye. When Richard had asked Door, she had said that she didn't know, but that maybe good-byes were something else, like comforting people, at which the marquis wasn't much good. Then she told him that she had something in her eye, and she gave him a paper with his instructions on, and she went away.

Something waved from the darkness of the tunnel: something white. It was a handkerchief on a stick. "Hello?" called Richard.

The feather-wrapped roundness of Old Bailey stepped out of the gloom, looking self-conscious and ill at ease. He was waving Richard's handkerchief, and he was sweating. "It's me little flag," he said, pointing to the handkerchief.

"I'm glad it's come in useful."

Old Bailey grinned uneasily. "Right. Just wanted to say. Something I got for you. Here you go." He thrust a hand into a coat pocket and pulled out a long black feather with a blue-purple-green sheen to it; red thread had been wound around the quill end of the feather.

"Um. Well, thanks," said Richard, unsure of what he ought to do with it.

"It's a feather," explained Old Bailey. "And a good one. Memento. Souvenir. Keepsake. And it's free. A gift. Me to you. Bit of a thank-you."

"Yes. Well. Very kind of you."

Richard put it in his pocket. A warm wind blew through the tunnel: a train was coming. "This'll be your train now," said Old Bailey. "I don't take trains, me. Give me a good roof any day." He shook Richard's hand, and fled.

The train pulled in at the station, its headlights were turned off, and there was nobody standing in the driver's compartment in the front. It came to a full stop: all the carriages were dark, and no doors opened. Richard knocked on the door in front of him, hoping that it was the correct one. The door gaped open, flooding the imaginary station with warm yellow light. Two small, elderly gentlemen holding long, copper-colored bugles stepped off the train and onto the platform. Richard recognized them: Dagvard and Halvard, from Earl's Court; although he could no longer recall, if he had ever known, which gentleman was which. They put their bugles to their lips and performed a ragged, but sincere, fanfare. Richard got onto the train, and they walked in behind him.

The earl was sitting at the end of the carriage, petting the enormous Irish wolfhound. The jester- Tooley, thought Richard, that was his name-stood beside him. Other than that, and the two men-at-arms, the carriage was deserted. "Who is it?" asked the earl.

"It's him, sire," said his jester. "Richard Mayhew. The one who killed the Beast."

"The Warrior?" The Earl scratched his red-gray beard thoughtfully. "Bring him here."

Richard walked down to the earl's chair. The earl eyed him up and down pensively and gave no indication that he remembered ever meeting Richard before. "Thought you'd be taller," said the earl, at length.

"Sorry."

"Well, better get on with it." The old man stood up and addressed the empty car. "Good evening. Here to honor young Mayflower. What was it the bard said?" And then he recited, in a rhythmic alliterative boom, "Crimson the cuts in the carcass, Fast falls the foe, Dauntless devout defender, Bravest of boys… Not really a boy anymore, though, is he, Tooley?"

"Not particularly, Your Grace."

The earl reached out his hand. "Give me your sword, boy."

Richard put his hand to his belt and pulled out the knife that Hunter had given him. "Will this do?" he asked.

"Yes-yes," said the old man, taking the knife from him.

"Kneel," said Tooley, in a stage whisper, pointing to the train floor. Richard went down on one knee; the earl tapped him gently on each shoulder with the knife. "Arise," he bellowed, "Sir Richard of Maybury. With this knife I do give to you the freedom of the Underside. May you be allowed to walk freely, without let or hindrance… and so on and so forth… et cetera… blah blah blah," he trailed of vaguely.

"Thanks," said Richard. "It's Mayhew, actually." But the train was coming to a stop.

"This is where you get off," said the earl. He gave Richard his knife-Hunter's knife-once more, patted him on the back, and pointed toward the door.

The place that Richard got off was not an Underground station. It was above ground, and it reminded Richard a little of St. Pancras Station-there was something similarly oversized and mock-Gothic about the architecture. But there was also a wrongness that somehow marked it as part of London Below. The light was that strange, strained gray one only sees shortly before dawn and for a few moments after sunset, the times when the world washes out into gloom, and color and distance become impossible to judge.

There was a man sitting on a wooden bench, watching him; and Richard approached him, cautiously, unable to tell, in the gloaming, who the man was, whether it was someone he had met before. Richard was still holding Hunter's knife-his knife- and now he gripped the hilt more tightly, for reassurance. The man looked up as Richard approached, and he sprang to his feet. He tugged at his forelock, something Richard had previously only seen done on television adaptations of classic novels. He looked both comical and unpleasant. Richard recognized the man as the Lord Rat-speaker.

"Well-well. Yes-yes," said the rat-speaker, agitatedly, beginning in mid-sentence, "Just to say, the girl Anaesthesia. No hard feelings. The rats are your friends, still. And the rat-speakers. You come to us. We'll do you all right."

"Thanks," said Richard. Anaesthesia will take him, he thought. She's expendable.

The Lord Rat-speaker fumbled on the bench, and presented Richard with a black vinyl zip-up sports bag. It was extremely familiar. "It's all there. Everything. Take a look." Richard opened the bag. All his possessions were in there, including, on top of some neatly folded jeans, his wallet. He zipped the bag up, threw it over his shoulder, and walked away from the man, without a thank-you or a backward glance.

Richard walked out of the station and down some gray stone steps. All was silent. All was empty. Dead autumn leaves blew across an open court, a flurry of yellow and ochre and brown, a sudden burst of muted color in the dim light. Richard crossed the court and walked down some steps into an underpass. There was a fluttering in the half-dark, and, warily, he turned. There were about a dozen of them, in the corridor behind him, and they slipped toward him almost silently, just a rustle of dark velvet, and, here and there, the clink of silver jewelery. The rustle of the leaves had been so much louder than these pale women. They watched him with hungry eyes.

He was scared, then. He had the knife, true, but he could no more fight with it than he could jump across the Thames. He hoped that, if they attacked, he might be able to scare them away with it. He could smell honeysuckle, and lily of the valley, and musk.

Lamia edged her way to the front of the Velvets, and stepped forward. Richard raised the knife, nervously, remembering the chilly passion of her embrace, how pleasant it was and how cold. She smiled at him, and inclined her head, sweetly. Then she kissed her fingertips, and blew the kiss toward Richard.

He shivered. Something fluttered in the darkness of the underpass; and when he looked again, there was nothing but shadows.

Through the underpass, and Richard walked up some steps, and found himself at the top of a small grassy hill. It was dawn, and he could just make out details of the countryside around him: almost leafless oak, and ash, and beech trees, readily identifiable by the shapes of their trunks. A wide, clean river meandered gently through the green countryside. As he looked around, he realized that he was on an island of some kind-two smaller rivers ran into the larger one, cutting him off on his little hill, from the mainland. He knew then, without knowing how, but with total certainty, that he was still in London, but London as it had been perhaps three thousand years ago, or more, before ever the first stone of the first human habitation was laid upon a stone.

He unzipped his bag and put the knife away in it, beside his wallet. Then he zipped it up again. The sky was starting to lighten, but the light was odd. It was younger, somehow, than the sunlight he was familiar with-purer, perhaps. An orange-red sun rose in the east, where Docklands would one day be, and Richard watched the dawn breaking over forests and marshes that he kept thinking of as Greenwich and Kent and the sea.

"Hello," said Door. He had not seen her approach. She was wearing different clothes beneath her battered brown leather jacket: they were still layered and ripped and patched, though, in taffeta and lace and silk and brocade. Her short red hair shone in the dawn like burnished copper.

"Hello," said Richard. She stood beside him and twined her small fingers into his right hand, the hand that was holding the sports bag. "Where are we?" he asked.

"On the awesome and terrible island of Westminster," she told him. It sounded as if she were quoting from somewhere, but he did not believe he had ever heard that phrase before. They began to walk together over the long grass, wet and white with melting frost. Their footprints left a dark green trail in the grass behind them, showing where they had come from.

"Look," said Door. "With the angel gone, there's a lot of sorting out to do in London Below. And there's only me to do it. My father wanted to unite London Below… I suppose I ought to try to finish what he started." They were walking north, away from the Thames, hand in hand. White seagulls wheeled and called in the sky above them. "Richard, you heard what Islington said to us about keeping my sister alive, just in case. I may not be the only one of my family left. And you've saved my life. More than once." She paused, and then, all in a rush, blurted, "You've been a really good friend to me, Richard. And I've sort of got to like having you around. Please don't go."

He squeezed her hand in his, gently. "Well," he said, "I've sort of got to like having you around, too. But I don't belong in this world. In my London… well, the most dangerous thing you ever have to watch out for is a taxi in a bit of a hurry. I like you, too. I like you an awful lot. But I have to go home."

She looked up at him with her odd-colored eyes, green and blue and flame. "Then we won't ever see each other again," she said.

"I suppose we won't."

"Thanks for everything you did," she said, seriously. Then she threw her arms around him, and she squeezed him tightly enough that the bruises on his ribs hurt, and he hugged her back, just as tightly, making all of his bruises complain violently, and he simply didn't care.

"Well," he said, eventually. "It was very nice knowing you." She was blinking hard. He wondered if she were going to tell him again that she had something in her eye. Instead she said, "Are you ready?"

He nodded.

"Have you got the key?"

He put down his bag and rummaged in his back pocket with his good hand. He took out the key and handed it to her. She held it out in front of her, as if it were being inserted in an imaginary door. "Okay," she said. "Just walk. Don't look back."

He began walking down a small hill, away from the blue waters of the Thames. A gray gull swooped past. At the bottom of the hill, he looked back. She stood at the top of the hill, silhouetted by the rising sun. Her cheeks were glistening. The orange sunlight gleamed on the key. Door turned it, with one decisive motion.

The world went dark, and a low roar filled Richard's head, like the maddened growling of a thousand enraged beasts.