Doyle hurried away west, toward the Strand, praying that newspaper offices didn’t close down as early as Billingsgate market, and that one of them might have a position needing filling, and that he’d be able to shake his dizzy feverishness well enough to convince an editor that he was literate and educated. He rubbed his jaw—he’d shaved less than twenty-four hours ago, so that was no problem, but a comb would have been handy.
Oh, never mind looks, he told himself, a little deliriously—I’ll win a position by sheer eloquence and force of personality. He squared his shoulders and put a bit of spring into his step.
CHAPTER 4
“The fruit that was to grow upon this Tree of Evil would be great, for it should be fit to be served to Don Lucifer’s table as a new banqueting dish, sithence all his other meats, though they fatted him well, were grown stale.”
It was a subterranean grotto formed by the collapse, God knew how long ago, of roughly twelve levels of sewers, the debris of which had all long since been carried away by the scavengers and floods of other seasons. It formed a huge hall, roofed by the massive beams that supported the paving stones of Bainbridge Street—for the collapse hadn’t extended quite all the way up to the surface—and floored with stones laid by the Romans in the days when Londinium was a military outpost in a hostile Celtic wilderness. Hammocks on long ropes were suspended at various heights across the cathedral dimness, and ragged men were already crawling like spiders out along the lines to pouch themselves comfortably in the swinging sacks. Lights were beginning to be lit, smoky red grease lamps hung from the timbers exposed in cross section at the many open sewer-mouths in the walls. A rill of water ran steadily from one of the higher mouths, losing its solidity as it arched down through the dim air to splash in a black pool off to the side.
A long table was set up on the stone floor, and a misshapen white-haired dwarf was standing on tiptoe to set fine porcelain and silver on the linen cloth; he snarled softly whenever a bit of crumbled shoe-leather or a few spilled drops from a pocket flask fell onto the table from the beggar lords overhead. Chairs were set along the sides of the table, and a large highchair, as if for some huge infant, stood at the foot, but there was no chair at the head of the table—instead there was a sort of harness, at which the dwarf kept darting fearful glances, hung on a long rope from the very top of the vast chamber to swing in the sewer breeze only six feet above the floor. The thief lords were filing in now, their foppishly elegant clothes striking a macabre note in this setting, and taking their places at the table.
One cuffed the dwarf out of his way. “Take it from one who can see the top of the table,” he said absently, “you’ve finished setting it. Go get the food.”
“And the wine, Dungy!” called another of the lords to the dwarf. “Quick, quick!”
The dwarf hurried away down a tunnel, clearly glad of an excuse to leave the hall even for a few minutes. The lords produced clay pipes and tinderboxes, and soon a haze of opium and tobacco fumes was whirling up, to the delight of the beggar lords, who set their hammocks swinging back and forth across the abyss to catch as much of the smoke as possible.
The space around the table was beginning to fill up too, with shabbily clad men and boys who called greetings to each other. Beyond them, and studiously ignored by them, were groups of men far gone in poverty and psychic and physical devastation. They squatted on the flagstones in the dark corners, each one alone despite their proximity, muttering and gesturing from habit rather than from any desire to communicate.
The dwarf reappeared, hunching lamely along under the weight of a fishnet sack full of bottles. He set the burden down on the floor and began twisting a corkscrew into their necks and popping out the corks. A spaced knocking, as of wood on stone, became audible from one of the larger tunnels, and he worked faster as the sound echoed louder and closer.
“What’s the hurry. Dungy?” asked one of the thief lords, watching the dwarf’s haste. “Shy of meeting the host?”
“‘Course not, sir,” gasped old Dungy, sweating as he drew the last cork, “just wants to do me work prompt-like.”
The knocking sound, having become very loud, now ceased, and two white-painted hands appeared gripping the upper stones of the tunnel mouth’s arch, followed a moment later by a painted head that bobbed just under the keystone, twelve feet above the ancient pavement. Horrabin grinned, and even the arrogant thief lords looked away uneasily. “Tardy again, Dungy?” piped the clown merrily. “All the setting-up’s supposed to be done by now.”
“Y-yes, sir,” said old Dungy, nearly dropping a bottle. “It just—just keeps getting harder to get the table set, sir. Me old bones—”
“—Will be fed to the street dogs one of these days,” finished Horrabin, skillfully poling his way into the hall on his stilts. His conical hat and colorful coat with high, pointed shoulders lent an air of carnival to the scene. “My somewhat younger bones aren’t in the best of shape either, it might interest you to know.” He halted, swaying, in front of the dangling harness. “Get my stilts,” he commanded.
Dungy hurried over and held the stilts while Horrabin poked his arms through the harness straps and then jackknifed his legs into the two bottom loops. The dwarf carried the stilts to the nearest wall and leaned them against the bricks, leaving the clown swinging free a dozen feet off the ground.
“Ah, that’s better,” sighed Horrabin. “I think malign vibrations begin to travel up the poles after a few hours. Worse in wet weather, of course. Price of success.” He yawned, opening a great red hole in the colorful surface of his face. “Whew! Now then! To make it up to the assembled lords for being late with their dinner, perhaps you’d care to sing us a little song.”
The dwarf winced. “Please sir—the dress and wig is down in me cell. It’d take—”
“Never mind the props tonight,” said the clown expansively. “We won’t stand on ceremony. Tonight you can sing it without the costume.” He looked up toward the distant ceiling. “Music!”
The dangling beggar lords pulled a variety of instruments, ranging from kazoos and Jew’s-harps to, in a couple of cases, violins, out of cloth bags tied to their hammocks, and set up a din that was, if not musical, at least rhythmic. Echoes provided a counterpoint, and the ragged men and boys crouched on the floor around the table commenced keeping time with hand-claps.
“Put an end to this idiocy,” spoke a new voice, pitched so deeply that it cut through the cacophony. The music and clapping faltered to a stop as the assembly became aware of the newcomer—a very tall, bald-headed man wrapped in a cloak. He stepped into the hall with a weirdly bouncing gait, as though he were walking across a trampoline instead of the solid stone floor.
“Ah!” exclaimed Horrabin, his voice, at least, expressing delight—his facial expression, as always, was impossible to read under all the paint—”Our wandering chief! Well, this is one meeting in which your honorary chair won’t stand empty!”
The newcomer nodded, whirled the cloak off his shoulders and tossed it to Dungy—who gratefully scuttled out of the room with it—and stepped up to the highchair at the foot of the table. Now that the cloak was gone everyone could see the spring-soled shoes that he bobbed up and down on.