“But I am forced to say that I will take an act of violence against my companion as an act of aggression against myself and my house.” The girl stared up at the old man. He towered over her. They stood for some moments, frozen. He tugged on his red and gray beard, agitatedly, then he thrust out his lower lip like a small child. “I will not have him here,” he said.
The Marquis took out the golden pocket watch he had found in Portico’s study. He examined it, carelessly. Then he turned to Door, and said, as if none of the events around them had occurred, “My lady, I will obviously be of more use to you off this train than on. And I have other avenues to explore.”
“No,” she said. “If you go, we all go.”
“I don’t think so,” said the Marquis. “Hunter will look after you as long as you stay in London Below. I’ll meet you at the next market. Don’t do anything too stupid in the meantime.” The train was coming into a station.
Door fixed the Earl with her look: there was something more ancient and powerful in those huge opal-colored eyes in their pale heart-shaped face than her young years would have seemed to allow. Richard noticed that the room fell quiet whenever she spoke. “Will you let him go in peace, Your Grace?” she asked.
The Earl ran his hands over his face, rubbed his good eye and his eye patch, then looked back at her. “Just make him go,” said the Earl. He looked at the Marquis. “Next time”—he ran a thick old finger across his Adam’s apple—“kipper.”
The Marquis bowed low. “I’ll see myself out,” he said to the guards, and stepped toward the open door. Halvard raised his crossbow, pointed it toward the Marquis’ back. Hunter reached out her hand, and pushed the end of the crossbow back down toward the floor. The Marquis stepped onto the platform, turned and waved an ironic good-bye flourish at them. The door hissed closed behind him.
The Earl sat down on his huge chair at the end of the carriage. He said nothing. The train rattled and lurched through the dark tunnel. “Where are my manners?” muttered the Earl to himself. He looked at them with one staring eye. Then he said it again, in a desperate boom that Richard could feel in his stomach, like a bass drum beat. “Where are my manners?” He motioned one of the elderly men-at-arms to him. “They will be hungry after their journey, Dagvard. Thirsty too, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“Stop the train!” called the Earl. The doors hissed open and Dagvard scuttled off onto a platform. Richard watched the people on the platform. No one came into their carriage. No one seemed to notice that anything was at all odd, or in any way unusual.
Dagvard walked over to a vending machine on the side of the platform. He took off his helmet. Then he rapped, with one mailed glove, on the side of the machine. “Orders from the Earl,” he said. “Choc’lits.” A ratcheting whirr came from deep in the guts of the machine, and it began to spit out dozens of Cadbury Fruit and Nut chocolate bars, one after another. Dagvard held his metal helmet below the opening to catch them. The doors began to close. Halvard put the handle of his pike between the doors, and they opened again, and began bumping open and shut on the pike handle. “Please stand clear of the doors,” said a loudspeaker voice. “The train cannot leave until the doors are all closed.”
The Earl was staring at Door lopsidedly, with his one good eye. “So. What brings you here to me?” he asked.
She licked her lips. “Well, indirectly, Your Grace, my father’s death.”
He nodded, slowly. “Yes. You seek vengeance. Quite right too.” He coughed, then recited, in a basso profundo, “Brave the battling blade, flashes the furious fire, steel sword sheathed in hated heart, crimsons the . . . the . . . something. Yes.”
“Vengeance?” Door thought for a moment. “Yes. That was what my father said. But I just want to understand what happened, and to protect myself. My family had no enemies.” Dagvard staggered back onto the train then, his helmet filled with chocolate bars and cans of Coke; the doors were permitted to close, and the train moved off once more.
RICHARD WAS HANDED a bar of vending-machine-sized Cadbury Fruit and Nut chocolate, and a large silver goblet, ornamented around the rim with what appeared to Richard to be sapphires. The goblet was filled with Coca-Cola. The jester, whose name appeared to be Tooley, cleared his throat, loudly. “I would like to propose a toast to our guests,” he said. “A child, a bravo, a fool. May they each get what they deserve.”
“Which one am I?” whispered Richard to Hunter.
“The fool, of course,” she said.
“In the old days,” said Halvard dismally, after sipping his Coke, “we had wine. I prefer wine. It’s not as sticky.”
“Do all the machines just give you things like that?” asked Richard.
“Oh yes,” said the old man. “They listen to the Earl, y’see. He rules the Underground. The bit with the trains. He’s lord of the Central, the Circle, the Jubilee, the Victorious, the Bakerloo—well, all of them except the Underside Line.”
“What’s the Underside Line?” asked Richard.
Halvard shook his head, and pursed his lips. Hunter brushed Richard’s shoulder with her fingers. “Remember what I told you about the shepherds of Shepherd’s Bush?”
“You said I didn’t want to meet them, and there were some things I was probably better off not knowing.”
“Good,” she said. “So now you can add the Underside Line to the list of things you’re better off not knowing.”
Door came back down the carriage toward them. She was smiling. “The Earl’s agreed to help us,” she said. “Come on. He’s meeting us in the library.” Richard was almost proud of the way he didn’t say “What library?” or point out that
