Neverwhere(75)

They walked through winding narrow corridors, Richard leaving a trail of wet mud behind him. “If I fail the ordeal, then we don’t get the key, do we?”

“No, my son.”

Richard thought about this for a moment. “Could I come back later for a second try?”

Brother Fuliginous coughed. “Not really, my son,” said the abbot. “If that should happen, you will in all probability be . . . ” he paused, and then said, “beyond caring. But do not fret, perhaps you will be the one to win the key, eh?” There was a ghastly attempt at reassurance in his voice, more terrifying than any attempt to scare him could have been.

“You would kill me?”

The abbot stared ahead with blue-milk eyes. There was a touch of reproof in his voice. “We are holy men,” he said. “No, it is the ordeal that kills you.”

They walked down a flight of steps, into a low, cryptlike room with oddly decorated walls. “Now,” said the abbot. “Smile!”

There was the electric fizz of a camera flash going off, blinding Richard for a moment. When he could see again, Brother Fuliginous was lowering a battered old Polaroid camera and was yanking out the photograph. The friar waited until it had developed, and then he pinned it to the wall. “This is our wall of those who failed,” sighed the abbot, “to ensure that they are none of them forgotten. That is our burden also: memorial.”

Richard stared at the faces. A few Polaroids; twenty or thirty other photographic snapshots, some sepia prints and daguerreotypes; and, after that, pencil sketches, and watercolors, and miniatures. They went all the way along one wall. The friars had been at this a very long time.



Door shivered. “I’m so stupid,” she muttered. “I should have known. Three of us. I should never have come straight here.”

Hunter’s head was moving from side to side. She had noted the position of each of the friars and each of the crossbows; she had calculated the odds of getting Door over the side of the bridge first unharmed, then with only minor injuries, and lastly with major injury to herself, but only minor injury to Door. She was now recalculating. “And what would you have done differently if you had known?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t have brought him here, for a start,” said Door. “I’d have found the marquis.”

Hunter put her head on one side. “You trust him?” she asked, directly, and Door knew she was talking of de Carabas, not Richard.

“Yes,” said Door. “I more or less trust him.”

Door had been five years old for just two days. The market was being held in the Gardens at Kew on that day, and her father had taken her with him, as a birthday treat. It was her first market. They were in the butterfly house, surrounded by brightly colored wings, iridescent weightless things that entranced and fascinated her, when her father crouched down beside her. “Door?” he said. “Turn around slowly, and look over there.”

She turned, and looked. A dark-skinned man wearing a big coat, his black hair tied behind him in a long pony tail, was standing by the door, talking to two golden-skinned twins, a young man and a young woman. The young woman was crying, in the way that grown-ups cry, keeping it inside as much as they can, and hating it when it still pushes out at the edges, making them ugly and funny-looking on the way. Door turned back to the butterflies. “You saw him?” asked her father. She nodded. “He calls himself the marquis de Carabas,” he said. “He’s a fraud and a cheat and possibly even something of a monster. If you’re ever in trouble, go to him. He will protect you, girl. He has to.”

Door looked back at the man. He had a hand on the shoulder of each of the twins and was leading them from the room; but he glanced back over his shoulder, as he left, and he looked straight at her, and smiled an enormous smile; and then he winked at her.

The friars who surrounded them were dark ghosts in the fog. Door raised her voice. “Excuse me, brother,” she called to Brother Sable. “But our friend, who’s gone to get the key. If he fails, what happens to us?”

He took a step toward them, hesitated, and then said, “We escort you away from here, and we let you go.”

“What about Richard?” she asked. Beneath his cowl, she could see him shaking his head, sadly, finally. “I should have brought the marquis,” said Door; and she wondered where he was, and what he was doing.



The marquis de Carabas was being crucified on a large X-shaped wooden construction Mr. Vandemar had knocked together from several old pallets, part of a chair and a wooden gate. He had also used most of a large box of rusting nails.