Neverwhere

Du

"Are you sure the marquis will be at the market?" Richard asked Door, as the path began, slowly, to climb.

"He won't let us down," she said, as confidently as she could. "I'm sure he'll be there."

FOURTEEN

HMS Belfast is a gunship of 11,000 tons, commissioned in 1939, which saw active service in the Second World War. Since then it has been moored on the south bank of the Thames, in postcard-land, between Tower Bridge and London Bridge, opposite the Tower of London. From its deck one can see St. Paul's Cathedral and the gilt top of the columnlike Monument to the Great Fire of London erected, as so much of London was erected, by Christopher Wren. The ship serves as a floating museum, as a memorial, as a training ground.

There is a walkway onto the ship from the shore, and they came down the walkway in their twos and threes, and in their dozens. They set up their stalls as early as they could, all the tribes of London Below, united both by the Market Truce and by a mutual desire to pitch their own stalls as far as possible from the Sewer Folk's stall.

It had been agreed well over a century before that the Sewer Folk could only set up a stall at those markets held in the open air. Du

Richard and Hunter and Door pushed their way through the crowds on the deck. Richard realized that he had somehow lost the need to stop and stare. The people here were no less strange than at the last Floating Market, but, he supposed, he was every bit as strange to them, wasn't he? He looked around, sca

They were approaching a smith's stall, where a man who could easily have passed for a small mountain, if one were to overlook the shaggy brown beard, tossed a lump of red-molten metal from a brazier onto an anvil. Richard had never seen a real anvil before. He could feel the heat from the molten metal and the brazier from a dozen feet away.

"Keep looking. De Carabas'll turn up," said Door, looking behind them. "Like a bad pe

The bearded mountain-man looked up, stopped hitting the molten metal, and roared, "By the Temple and the Arch. Lady Door!" Then he picked her up, as if she weighed no more than a mouse.

"Hello, Hammersmith," said Door. "I hoped you'd be here."

"Never miss a market, lady," he thundered, cheerfully. Then he confided, like an explosion with a secret, "This's where the business is, y'see. Now," he said, recollecting the cooling lump of metal on his anvil, "just you wait here a moment." He put Door down at eye level, on the top of his booth,, seven feet above the deck.

He banged the lump of metal with his hammer, twisting it as he did so with implements Richard assumed, correctly, were tongs. Under the hammer blows it changed from a shapeless blob of orange metal into a perfect black rose. It was a work of astonishing delicacy, each petal perfect and distinct. Hammersmith dipped the rose into a bucket of cold water beside the anvil: it hissed and steamed. Then he pulled it out of the bucket, wiped it, and handed it to a fat man in chain mail who was standing, patiently, to one side; the fat man professed himself well satisfied and gave Hammersmith, in return, a green plastic Marks and Spencer shopping bag, filled with various kinds of cheese.

"Hammersmith?" said Door, from her perch. "These are my friends."

Hammersmith enveloped Richard's hand in one several sizes up. His handshake was enthusiastic, but very gentle, as if he had, in the past, had a number of accidents shaking hands and had practiced it until he got it right. "Charmed," he boomed.

"Richard," said Richard.

Hammersmith looked delighted. "Richard! Fine name! I had a horse called Richard." He let go of Richard's hand, turned to Hunter, and said, "And you are . . . Hunter? Hunter! As I live, breathe, and defecate! It is!" Hammersmith blushed like a schoolboy. He spat on his hand and attempted, awkwardly, to plaster his hair back. Then he stuck his hand out and realized that he had just spat on it, and he wiped it on his leather apron, and shifted his weight from foot to foot.

"Hammersmith," said Hunter, with a perfect caramel smile.

"Hammersmith?" asked Door. "Will you help me down?"

He looked shamefaced. "Beg pardon, lady," he said, and lifted her down. It came to Richard then that Hammersmith had known Door as a small child, and he found himself feeling unaccountably jealous of the huge man. "Now," Hammersmith was saying to Door, "What can I do for you?"

"Couple of things," she said. "But first of all—" She turned to Richard. "Richard? I've got a job for you."

Hunter raised an eyebrow. "For him?"

Door nodded. "For both of you. Will you go and find us some food? Please?" Richard felt oddly proud. He had proved himself in the ordeal. He was One of Them. He would Go, and he would Bring Back Food. He puffed out his chest.

"I am your bodyguard. I stay by your side," said Hunter.

Door gri

"And what if someone violates the Truce?" asked Hunter.

Hammersmith shivered, despite the heat of his brazier. "Violate the Market Truce? Brrrr."

"It's not going to happen. Go on. Both of you. Curry, please. And get me some papadums, please. Spicy ones."

Hunter ran her hand through her hair. Then she turned and walked off into the crowd, and Richard went with her. "So what would happen if someone violated Market Truce?" asked Richard, as they pushed through the crowds.

Hunter thought about this for a moment. "The last time it happened was about three hundred years ago. A couple of friends got into an argument over a woman, in the market. A knife was pulled and one of them died. The other fled."

"What happened to him? Was he killed?"

Hunter shook her head. "Quite the opposite. He still wishes he had been the one to have died."

"He's still alive?"

Hunter pursed her lips. "Ish," she said, after a while. "Alive-ish."

A moment passed, then "Phew," Richard thought he was going to be ill. "What's that—that stink?"

"Sewer Folk."

Richard averted his head and tried not to breathe through his nose until they were well away from the Sewer Folk's stall.

"Any sign of the marquis yet?" he asked. Hunter shook her head. She could have reached out her hand and touched him. They went up a gangplank, toward the food stalls, and more welcoming aromas.

Old Bailey found the Sewer Folk with little difficulty, following his nose.

He knew what he had to do, and he took a certain pleasure in making a bit of a performance of it, ostentatiously examining the dead cocker spaniel, the artificial leg, and the damp and moldy portable telephone, and shaking his head dolorously at each of them. Then he made a point of noticing the marquis's body. He scratched his nose. He put on his spectacles and peered at it. He nodded to himself, glumly, hoping to give the vague impression of being a man in need of a corpse who was disappointed by the selection but was going to have to make do with what they had. Then he beckoned to Du