' Cal! Bring Wil over here!'
There was an immediate lull in the chatter around them, and in the silence all heads turned toward Will. Uncle Tam emerged from a group of people and extravagantly waved over the two boys. The faces in the crowd outside the tavern were varied: curious, grinning, blank — but for the most part sneering with unbridled hostility. Tam seemed not the slightest bit bothered by this. He threw his thick arms around the boys' shouders and turned his head to face the crowd, staring back at them in mute defiance.
The cacophony continued inside the tavern, only serving to make the yawning silence outside, and the rising tension that accompanied it, even more intense. This horrible hush filled Will's ears, crashing and swelling and drowning everything out.
Then an earsplitting belch, the longest and loudest Will had ever heard, ripped from someone in the crowd. As the last echoes rang back from the neighborhood buildings, the spell was broken, and the whole crowd exploded into peals of harsh laughter, intermingled with cheers and the random wolf whistle.
It wasn't long before all this merriment subsided and people settled down again, the chatter resuming as a small man was widely congratulated and patted on the back so forcibly that he had to cover his drink with his hand to prevent it from slopping onto the pavement.
Still acutely self-conscious, Will kept his head bowed. He couldn't help noticing when Bartleby, stretched out under the bench where the men sat, jerked suddenly, as if some parasite or other had bitten him. Doubling up, the cat began to lick his nether regions with a hind leg pointing heavenward, looking remarkably like a badly plucked turkey.
'Now that you've met the great unwashed,' Uncle Tam said, his eyes briefly flicking back over the crowd, 'let me introduce you to royalty, the crиme de la crиme. This is Joe Waites,' he said, maneuvering Will face to face with a wizened old man. His head was topped with a tightly fitting skullcap that seemed to compress the upper half of his face, making his eyes bulge out and hoisting his cheeks up into an involuntary grin. A solitary tooth protruded from his top jaw like an ivory tusk. He proffered his hand to Will, who shook it reluctantly, somewhat surprised to find it warm and dry.
'And this' — Tam inclined his head to a dapper man sporting a tawdry checkered three-piece suit and black-rimmed glasses — 'is Jesse Shingles.' The man bowed gracefully and then chuckled, raising his thick eyebrows.
'And, not least, the one and only Imago Freebone.' A man with long, dank hair plaited into a biker's ponytail shot out a mittened hand, his voluminous leather coat flapping open to reveal his immense deep-chested barrel of a body. Will was so intimidated by the sheer mass of the man, he almost took a step back.
'Deeply pleased to meet such a hallowed legend, we being such 'umble personages,' Imago said, bending his bulk forward and tugging a nonexistent forelock with his other hand.
'Uh… hello,' Will said, uncertain what to make of him.
'Knock it off,' Tam warned with a grimace.
Imago straightened up, offering his hand again, and in a normal voice said, 'Will, very good to meet you.' Will shook it again. 'I shouldn't tease,' Imago added earnestly. 'We all know what you've been through, only too well.' His eyes were warm and sympathetic as he continued to clasp Will's hand between both of his, finally releasing it with a comforting squeeze. 'I've had the pleasure of the Dark Light myself several times, courtesy of our dear friends,' he said.
'Yeah, gives you the most god-awful heartburn,' Jesse Shingles said with a smirk.
Will was more than a little daunted by Uncle Tam's associates and their strange appearances, but, looking around, it struck him that they weren't that different from most of the revelers outside the tavern.
'I got you both a quart of New London,' Tam handed the two tankards to the boys. 'Go easy on it, Will, you won't have tasted anything like that before.'
'Why? What's in it?' Will asked, eyeing with suspicion the grayish liquid with a thin froth on top.
'Ya don't wanta know, my boy, really, ya don't,' Tam said, and his friends laughed; Joe Waites made peculiar noises, while Imago threw back his head and gave an extravagant but completely silent laugh, his great shoulders heaving violently. Under the bench, Bartleby grunted and noisily licked his chops.
'So you've been to your first service,' Uncle Tam asked. 'What did you make of it?'
'It was, um… interesting,' Will said noncommittally.
'Not after years of it, it ain't,' Tam said. 'Still, it keeps the White Necks at bay.' He took a deep swig from his tankard, then straightened his back and let out a contented sigh. 'Yep, if I had a florin for every 'As above, so bloody below' I've said, I'd be a rich man today.'
''As yesterday, so tomorrow, ' Joe Waites said in a weary, nasal voice, mimicking a Styx preacher. ''So sayeth the Book of Catastrophes. ' He gave a huge exaggerated yawn, which afforded Will a rather unsettling view of his pink gums and the sad, lone tooth.
'And if you've heard one catastrophe, you've heard them all.' Imago nudged Will in the ribs.
'Amen,' chorused Jesse Shingles and Joe Waites, knocking their tankards together and laughing. 'Amen to that!'
'Now, now, it brings comfort to them that don't have minds of their own,' Tam said.
Will looked out of the corner of his eye at Cal and saw that he was joining in and laughing with the rest of them. This puzzled Will; at times his brother appeared to be filled with a religious zeal, but at others he didn't stint at showing a total lack of respect, even a contempt, for it.
'So, Will, what do you miss most about life up top?' Jesse Shingles suddenly asked, jerking his thumb toward the rock roof above their heads. Will looked uncertain and was about to say something when the little man went on. 'I'd miss the fish and chips, not that I've ever tasted them.' He winked conspiratorially at Imago.
'That's enough of that.' Tam's brow creased with concern as he cast his eyes over the people milling around them. 'Not the time or the place.'
Cal had been happily sipping his drink but noticed Will was being a little reticent with his. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and turned to his brother, gesticulating toward his so-far-untouched tankard. 'Go on, try it!'
Will tentatively took a mouthful of the chalky fluid and held it in his mouth for a moment before gulping it down.
'Well?' Cal inquired.
Will ran his tongue around his lips. 'Not bad,' he said. Then it bit. His eyes widened and watered as his throat began to burn. He spluttered, trying vainly to stifle the coughing fit that followed. Uncle Tam and Cal grinned. 'I'm not old enough to drink this stuff,' Will gasped, putting the tankard back on the table.
'Who's to stop you? Whole different set of rules down here. As long as you stay within the law, pull your weight, and attend their services, nobody minds if you let off a little steam. It's nobody's business, anyway,' Tam said, slapping him gently on the back.
As if to show their agreement, the assembled group raised their tankards and clanked them together with salutations of 'Up yer cludgy!'
And so it went, drink after drink, until about the fourth or fifth round — Will had lost count. Tam had just finished telling a convoluted and unfathomable joke about a flatulent policeman and a blind orb-juggler's daughter that Will could make neither head nor tail of, although all the others found it hilarious.
Picking up his tankard and still chuckling, Tam suddenly peered into his drink and, with his thumb and forefinger, pulled something out of the froth. 'I got the bloody slug again,' he said as the others burst once more into fits of uncontrolled laughter.
'You'll be married within the month if you don't eat it!' Imago roared.
'In that case…!' Tam laughed and, to Will's amazement, placed the limp gray object on his tongue. He moved it around inside his mouth before chewing and then swallowing it, to shouts of applause form his friends.
In the lull that followed, Will felt sufficiently emboldened with Dutch courage to speak up.
'Tam — Uncle Tam — I need your help.'
'Anything, lad,' Tam said, resting his hand on Will's shoulder. 'You only have to ask.'
But where did he start? Where did he begin? He had so many concerns swirling through his befuddled mind… finding his father… and what about his sister… and his mother… but
