Neverwhere(31)

She nodded. “It was my father’s.”

He closed the cover with a click. “Time to go to market. It starts soon. Mister Time is not our friend.”

She blew her nose once more, put her hands deep into the pockets of her leather jacket. Then she turned to him, elfin face frowning, odd-colored eyes bright. “Do you honestly think we can find a bodyguard who will be able to deal with Croup and Vandemar?”

The marquis flashed his white teeth at her. “There’s been no one since Hunter who’d even have a chance. No, I’ll settle for someone who could give you the time you might need to get away.” He fastened the fob of the watch chain to his waistcoat, slid the watch into his vest pocket.

“What are you doing?” asked Door. “That’s my father’s watch.”

“He’s not using it anymore, is he?” He adjusted the golden chain. “There. That looks rather elegant.” He watched the emotions flicker across her face: quiet anger and, finally, resignation.

“We’d better go,” was all she said.



“The Bridge isn’t very far now,” said Anaesthesia. Richard hoped that was true. They were now on their third candle. The walls flickered and oozed, the passageway seemed to stretch on forever. He was astonished that they were still under London: he was half-convinced that they had walked most of the way to Wales.

“I’m really scared,” she continued. “I’ve never crossed the bridge before.”

“I thought you said you’d been to this market already,” he asked, mystified.

“It’s the Floating Market, silly. I told you already. It moves. Different places. Last one I went to was held in that big clock tower. Big . . . someone. And the next was—“

“Big Ben?” he suggested.

“Maybe. We were inside where all the big wheels went around, and that was where I got this—” She held up her necklace. The candlelight glimmered yellow off the shiny quartz. She smiled, like a child. “Do you like it?” she asked.

“It’s great. Was it expensive?”

“I swapped some stuff for it. That’s how things work down here. We swap stuff.” And then they turned a corner, and saw the bridge. It could have been one of the bridges over the Thames, five hundred years ago, thought Richard; a huge stone bridge spanning out over a vast black chasm, into the night. But there was no sky above it, no water below. It rose into darkness. Richard wondered who had built it, and when. He wondered how something like this could exist, beneath the city of London, without everyone knowing. He felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He was, he realized, deeply, pathetically scared of the bridge itself.

“Do we have to go across it?” he asked. “Can’t we get to the market some other way?” They paused at the base of the bridge.

Anaesthesia shook her head. “We can get to the place it’s in,” she said. “But the market wouldn’t be there.”

“Huh? But that’s ridiculous. I mean, something’s either there or it’s not. Isn’t it?”

She shook her head. There was a buzz of voices from behind them, and someone pushed Richard to the ground. He looked up: a huge man, crudely tattooed, dressed in improvised rubber and leather clothes that looked like they had been cut out of the inside of cars, stared back down at him, dispassionately. Behind the huge man were a dozen others, male and female: people who looked like they were on their way to a particularly low-rent costume party. “Somebody,” said Varney, who was not in a good mood, “was in my way. Somebody ought to watch where he’s going.”

Once, as a small boy walking home from school, Richard had encountered a rat in a ditch by the side of the road. When the rat saw Richard it had reared up onto its hind legs and hissed and jumped, terrifying Richard. He backed away marvelling that something so small had been so willing to fight something so much larger than itself. Now Anaesthesia stepped between Richard and Varney. She was less than half his size, but she glared at the big man and bared her teeth, and she hissed like an angry rat at bay. Varney took a step backwards. He spat at Richard’s shoes. Then he turned away, and, taking the knot of people with him, he walked across the bridge and into the dark.

“Are you all right?” asked Anaesthesia, helping Richard back to his feet.

“I’m fine,” he said. “That was really brave of you.”

She looked down, shyly. “I’m not really brave,” she said. “I’m still scared of the bridge. Even they were scared. That was why they all went over together. Safety in numbers.”