Mr. Croup began to giggle. “He didn’t,” he said. “He never did. That was us. What was it he actually said, Mister Vandemar?”
“Door, child, fear Islington,” said Mr. Vandemar, with her father’s voice. The voice was exact. “Islington’s got to be behind all this. It’s dangerous, Door—keep away from it—”
Islington caressed her cheek, with the key. “I thought my version would get you here a little faster.”
“We took the journal,” said Mr. Croup. “We fixed it, and we returned it.”
“Where does the door lead to?” called Richard.
“Home,” said the angel.
“Heaven?”
And Islington said nothing, but it smiled.
“So, you figure they won’t notice you’re back?” sneered the marquis. “Just, ‘Oh look, there’s another angel, here, grab a harp and on with the hosannas’?”
Islington’s gray eyes were bright. “Not for me the smooth agonies of adulation, of hymns and halos and self-satisfied prayers,” it said. “I have . . . my own agenda.”
“Well, now you’ve got the key,” said Door.
“And I have you,” said the angel. “You’re the opener. Without you the key is useless. Open the door for me.”
“You killed her family,” said Richard. “You’ve had her hunted through London Below. Now you want her to open a door for you so you can single-handedly invade Heaven? You’re not much of a judge of character, are you? She’ll never do it.”
The angel looked at him then, with eyes older than the Milky Way. Then it said, “Ah me,” and turned its back, as if it were ill-prepared to watch the unpleasantness that was about to occur.
“Hurt him some more, Mister Vandemar,” said Mr. Croup. “Cut off his ear.”
Mr. Vandemar raised his hand. It was empty. He jerked his arm, almost imperceptibly, and now he was holding a knife. “Told you one day you’d find out what your own liver tastes like,” he said to Richard. “Today’s going to be your lucky day.” He slid the knife blade gently beneath Richard’s earlobe. Richard felt no pain—perhaps, he thought, he had felt too much pain already that day, perhaps the blade was too sharp to hurt. But he felt the warm blood drip, wetly, from his ear down his neck. Door was watching him, and her elfin face and huge opal-colored eyes filled his vision. He tried to send her mental messages. Hold out. Don’t let them make you do this. I’ll be fine. Then Mr. Vandemar put a little pressure on the knife, and Richard bit back a scream. He tried to stop his face from grimacing, but another jab from the blade jerked a grimace and a moan from him.
“Stop them,” said Door. “I’ll open your door.”
Islington gestured, curtly, and Mr. Vandemar sighed piteously and put his knife away. The warm blood dripped down Richard’s neck and pooled and puddled in the hollow of his clavicle. Mr. Croup walked over to Door and unlocked the right-hand manacle. She stood there, rubbing her wrist, framed by the pillars. She was still chained to the pillar on the left, but she now had a certain amount of freedom of movement. She put her hand out for the key. “Remember,” said Islington. “I have your friends.”
Door looked at him with utter contempt, every inch Lord Portico’s oldest daughter. “Give me the key,” she said. The angel passed her the silver key.
“Door,” called Richard. “Don’t do it. Don’t set it free. We don’t matter.”
“Actually,” said the marquis, “I matter very much. But I have to agree. Don’t do it.”
She looked from Richard to the marquis, her eyes lingering on their manacled hands, on the heavy chains that bound them to the black iron pillars. She looked very vulnerable; and then she turned away, and walked to the limit of her own chain, until she stood in front of the black door made of flint and tarnished silver. There was no keyhole. She put the palm of her right hand on the door, and closed her eyes, let the door tell her where it opened, what it could do, finding those places inside herself that corresponded with the door. When she pulled her hand away, there was a keyhole that had not been there before. A white light lanced out from behind the keyhole, sharp and bright as a laser in the candlelit darkness of the hall.
The girl pushed the silver key into the keyhole. There was a pause, and then she turned it in the lock. Something went click, and there was a chiming noise, and suddenly the door was framed in light. “When I am gone,” said the angel, very quietly, to Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar, with charm, and with kindness, and with compassion, “kill them all, howsoever you wish.” It turned back to the door, which Door was pulling open: it was opening slowly, as if there was great resistance. She was sweating.
“So your employer’s leaving,” said the marquis to Mr. Croup. “I hope you’ve both been paid in full.”
Croup peered at the marquis, and said, “What?”
“Well,” said Richard, wondering what the marquis was trying to do, but willing to play along, “you don’t think you’re ever going to see him again, do you?”
Mr. Vandemar blinked, slowly, like an antique camera, and said, “What?”
Mr. Croup scratched his chin. “The corpses-to-be have a point,” he said to Mr. Vandemar. He walked toward the angel, who stood, arms folded, in front of the door. “Sir? It might be wise for you to settle up, before you commence the next stage of your travels.”
The angel turned, and looked down at him as if he were less important than the least speck of dirt. Then it turned away. Richard wondered what it was contemplating. “It is of no matter now,” said the angel. “Soon, all the rewards your revolting little minds can conceive of will be yours. When I have my throne.”
“Jam tomorrow, eh?” said Richard.
“Don’t like jam,” said Mr. Vandemar. “Makes me belch.”
Mr. Croup waggled a finger at Mr. Vandemar. “He’s welching out on us,” he said. “You don’t welch on Mister Croup and Mister Vandemar, me bucko. We collect our debts.”
Mr. Vandemar walked over to where Mr. Croup was standing. “In full,” he said.
“With interest,” barked Mr. Croup.
“And meat hooks,” said Mr. Vandemar.
“From Heaven?” called Richard, from behind them. Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar walked toward the contemplative angel. “Hey!” said Mr. Croup.
The door had opened, only a crack, but it was open. Light flooded through the crack in the door. The angel took a step forward. It was as if it were dreaming with its eyes wide open. The light from the crack in the door bathed its face, and it drank it in like wine. “Have no fear,” it said. “For when the vastness of creation is mine, and they gather about my throne to sing hosannas to my name, I shall reward the worthy and cast down those who are hateful in my sight.”
With an effort, Door wrenched the black door fully open. The view through the door was blinding in its intensity: a swirling maelstrom of color and light. Richard squinted his eyes, and turned his head away from the glare, all vicious orange and retinal purple. Is that what Heaven looks like? It seems more like Hell.
And then he felt the wind.
A candle flew past his head, and vanished through the door. And then another. And then the air was filled with candles, all spinning and tumbling through the air, heading for the light. It was as if the whole room were being sucked through the door. It was more than a wind, though. Richard knew that. His wrists began to hurt where they were manacled—it was as if, suddenly, he weighed twice as much as he ever had before. And then his perspective changed. The view through the doorway—it was looking down: it was not merely the wind that was pulling everything toward the door. It was gravity. The wind was only the air in the hall being sucked into the place on the other side of the door. He wondered what was on the other side of the door—the surface of a star, perhaps, or the event horizon of a black hole, or something he could not even imagine.
Islington grabbed hold of the pillar beside the door, and held on desperately. “That’s not Heaven,” it shouted, gray eyes flashing, spittle on its perfect lips. “You mad little witch. What
have you done?”
Door was clutching the chains that held her to the black pillar, white-knuckled. There was triumph in her eyes. Mr. Vandemar had caught hold of a table leg, while Mr. Croup, in his turn, had caught hold of Mr. Vandemar. “It wasn’t the real key,” said Door, triumphantly, over the roar of the wind. “That was just a copy of the key I had Hammersmith make in the market.”
“But it opened the door,” screamed the angel.
“No,” said the girl with the opal eyes, distantly. “I opened a door. As far and hard away as I could, I opened a door.”
There was no longer any trace of kindness or compassion on the angel’s face; only hatred, pure and honest and cold. “I will kill you,” it told her.
“Like you killed my family? I don’t think you’re going to kill anyone anymore.”
The angel was hanging onto the pillar with pale fingers, but its body was at a ninety-degree angle to the room, and was most of the way through the door. It looked both comical and dreadful. It licked its lips. “Stop it,” it pleaded. “Close the door. I’ll tell you where your sister is . . . She’s still alive . . .”
Door flinched.
And Islington was sucked through the door, a tiny, plummeting figure, shrinking as it tumbled into the blinding gulf beyond. The pull was getting stronger. Richard prayed that his chains and manacles would hold: he could feel himself being sucked toward the opening, and, from the corner of his eye, he could see the marquis dangling from his chains, like a string-puppet being sucked up by a vacuum cleaner.
The table, the leg of which Mr. Vandemar was holding tightly, flew through the air and jammed in the open doorway. Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar were dangling out of the door. Mr. Croup, who was clinging, quite literally, to Mr. Vandemar’s coattails, took a deep breath and began slowly to clamber, hand over hand, up Mr. Vandemar’s back. The table creaked. Mr. Croup looked at Door, and he smiled like a fox. “I killed your family,” said Mr. Croup. “Not him. And now I’m—finally—going to finish the . . .”
It was at that moment that the fabric of Mr. Vandemar’s dark suit gave way. Mr. Croup tumbled, screaming, into the void, clutching a long strip of black material. Mr. Vandemar looked down at the flailing figure of Mr. Croup as it fell away from them. He, too, looked over at Door, but there was no menace in his gaze. He shrugged, as best as one can shrug while holding on to a table leg for dear life, and then he said, mildly, “Bye-bye,” and let go of the table leg.
Silently he plunged through the door, into the light, shrinking as he fell, heading for the tiny figure of Mr. Croup. Soon the two shapes merged into one little blob of blackness in a sea of churning purple and white and orange light, and then the black dot, too, was gone. It made some sort of sense, Richard thought: they were a team, after all.
It was getting harder to breathe. Richard felt giddy and light-headed. The table in the doorway splintered and was sucked away through the door. One of Richard’s manacles popped open, and his right arm whipped free. He grabbed the chain holding the left hand, and gripped it as tightly as he could, grateful that the broken finger was on the hand that was still in the manacle; even so, red and blue flashes of pain were shooting up his left arm. He could hear himself, distantly, shouting in pain.
He could not breathe. White blotches of light exploded behind his eyes. He could feel the chain beginning to give way . . .
The sound of the black door slamming closed filled his whole world. Richard fell violently back against the cold iron pillar, and slumped to the floor. There was silence, then, in the hall—silence, and utter darkness, in the Great Hall under the earth. Richard closed his eyes: it made no difference to the darkness, and he opened his eyes once more.
The hush was broken by the marquis’s voice, asking, drily, “So where did you send them?”
And then Richard heard a girl’s voice talking. He knew it had to be Door’s, but it sounded so young, like the voice of a tiny child at bedtime, at the end of a long and exhausting day. “I don’t know . . . a long way away. I’m . . . very tired now. I . . .”
“Door,” said the marquis. “Snap out of it.” It was good that he was saying it, thought Richard, somebody had to, and Richard could no longer remember how to talk. There was a click, then, in the darkness: the sound of a manacle opening, followed by the sound of chains falling against a metal pillar. Then the sound of a match being struck. A candle was lit: it burned weakly, and flickered in the thin air. Fire and fleet and candlelight, thought Richard, and he could not remember why.
Door walked, unsteadily, to the marquis, holding her candle. She reached out a hand, touched his chains, and his manacles clicked open. He rubbed his wrists. Then she walked over to Richard, and touched his single remaining manacle. It fell open. Door sighed, then, and sat down beside him. He reached out his good arm and cradled her head, holding her close to him. He rocked her slowly back and forth, crooning a wordless lullaby. It was cold, cold, there in the angel’s empty hall; but soon the warmth of unconsciousness reached out and enveloped them both.
The marquis de Carabas watched the sleeping children. The idea of sleep—of returning, even for a short time, to a state so horribly close to death—scared him more than he would have ever believed. But, eventually, even he put his head down on his arm, and closed his eyes.
And then there were none.
Eighteen
The Lady Serpentine, who was, but for Olympia, the oldest of the Seven Sisters, walked through the labyrinth beyond Down Street, her head held high, her white leather boots squashing through the dank mud. This was, after all, the furthest she had been from her house in over a hundred years. Her wasp-waisted majordomo, dressed from head to foot all in black leather, walked ahead of her, holding a large carriage-lamp. Two of Serpentine’s other women, similarly dressed, walked behind her at a respectful distance.
The ripped lace train of Serpentine’s dress dragged in the mire behind her, but she paid it no mind. She saw something glinting in the lamplight ahead of them, and, beside it, a dark and bulky shape.
“There it is,” she said.
The two women who had been walking behind her hurried forward, splashing through the marsh, and as Serpentine’s butler approached, bringing with her a swinging circle of warm light, the shape resolved into objects. The light had been glinting from a long bronze spear. Hunter’s body, twisted and bloody and wretched, lay on its back, half-buried in the mud, in a large pool of scarlet gore, its legs trapped beneath the body of an enormous boarlike creature. Her eyes were closed.
Serpentine’s women hauled the body out from under the Beast, and lay it in the mud. Serpentine knelt in the wet mire and ran one finger down Hunter’s cold cheek, until it reached her blood-blackened lips, where she let it linger for some moments. Then she stood up. “Bring the spear,” said Serpentine.
One of the women picked up Hunter’s body; the other pulled the spear from the carcass of the Beast and put it over her shoulder. And then the four figures turned, and went back the way they had come; a silent procession deep beneath the world. The lamplight flickered on Serpentine’s ravaged face as she walked; but it revealed no emotion of any kind, neither happy nor sad.
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 rais
ing, 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.