“Who knocks?” he said.
Through the opening, Richard could see flames burning, and people, and smoke inside the car. Through the glass in the doors, however, he still saw a dark and empty carriage. “The Lady Door,” announced the marquis, smoothly, “and her companions.”
The door slid open all the way, and they were inside Earl’s Court.
SEVEN
There was straw scattered on the floor, over a layer of rushes. There was an open log fire, sputtering and blazing in a large fireplace. There were a few chickens, strutting and pecking on the floor. There were seats with hand-embroidered cushions on them, and there were tapestries covering the windows and the doors.
Richard stumbled forward as the train lurched out of the station. He reached out, grabbed hold of the nearest person, and regained his balance. The nearest person happened to be a short, gray, elderly man-at-arms, who would have looked, Richard decided, exactly like a recently retired minor official were it not for the tin hat, the surcoat, the rather clumsily knitted chain mail, and the spear; instead he looked like a recently retired minor official who had, somewhat against his will, been dragooned into his local amateur dramatic society, where he had been forced to play a man-at-arms.
The little gray man blinked shortsightedly at Richard as Richard grabbed him, and then he said, lugubriously, “Sorry about that.”
“My fault,” said Richard.
“I know,” said the man.
An enormous Irish wolfhound padded down the aisle and stopped beside a lute player, who sat on the floor picking at a melody in a desultory fashion. The wolfhound glared at Richard, snorted with disdain, then lay down and went to sleep. At the far end of the carriage an elderly falconer, with a hooded falcon on his wrist, was exchanging pleasantries with a small knot of damsels of a certain age. Some passengers obviously stared at the four travelers; others, just as obviously, ignored them. It was, Richard realized, as if someone had taken a small medieval court and put it, as best they could, in one car of an Underground train.
A herald raised his bugle to his lips and played a tuneless blast, as an immense, elderly man, in a huge fur-lined dressing gown and carpet slippers, staggered through the connecting door from the next compartment, his arm resting on the shoulder of a jester in shabby motley. The old man was larger than life in every way: he wore an eye-patch over his left eye, which had the effect of making him look slightly helpless, and unbalanced, like a one-eyed hawk. There were fragments of food in his red-gray beard, and what appeared to be pajama pants were visible at the bottom of his shabby fur gown. That, thought Richard, correctly, must be the earl. The earl’s jester was an elderly man with a pinched, humorless mouth and a painted face. He led the earl to a thronelike carved wooden seat in which, a trifle unsteadily, the earl sat down. The wolfhound got up, padded down the length of the carriage, and settled itself at the earl’s slippered feet. Earl’s Court, thought Richard. Of course. And then he began to wonder whether there was a baron in Barons Court Tube station, or a Raven in Ravenscourt or, . . .
The little old man-at-arms coughed asthmatically and said, “Right then, you lot. State your business.” Door stepped forward. She held her head up high, suddenly seeming taller and more at ease than Richard had previously seen her, and she said, “We seek an audience with His Grace the Earl.”
The earl called down the carriage. “What did the little girl say, Halvard?” he asked. Richard wondered if he was deaf.
Halvard, the elderly man-at-arms, shuffled around and cupped his hand to his mouth. “They seek an audience, Your Grace,” he shouted, over the rattle of the train.
The earl pushed aside his thick fur cap and scratched his head, meditatively. He was balding underneath his cap. “They do? An audience? How splendid. Who are they, Halvard?”
Halvard turned back to them. “He wants to know who you all are. Keep it short, though. Don’t go on.” “I am the Lady Door,” announced Door. “The Lord Portico was my father.”
The earl brightened at this, leaned forward, peered through the smoke with his one good eye. “Did she say she was Portico’s oldest girl?” he asked the jester.
“Yus, your grace.”
The earl beckoned to Door. “Come here,” he said. “Come-come-come. Let me look at you.” She walked down the swaying carriage, grabbing the thick rope straps that hung from the ceiling as she went, to keep her balance. When she stood before the earl’s wooden chair, she curtseyed. He scratched at his beard and stared at her. “We were all quite devastated to hear of your father’s unfortunate—” said the earl, and then he interrupted himself, and said, “Well, all your family, it was a—” and he trailed off, and said, “You know I had warmest regards for him, did a bit of business together . . . good old Portico . . . full of ideas . . . ” He stopped. Then he tapped the jester on the shoulder and whispered, in a querulous boom, loud enough that it could be heard easily over the noise of the train, “Go and make jokes at them, Tooley. Earn your keep.”
The earl’s fool staggered up the aisle with an arthritic step. He stopped in front of Richard. “And who might you be?” he asked.
“Me?” said Richard. “Um. Me? My name? It’s Richard. Richard Mayhew.”
“Me?” squeaked the fool, in an elderly, rather theatrical imitation of Richard’s Scottish accent. “Me? Um. Me? La, nuncle. Tis not a man, but a mooncalf.” The courtiers sniggered, dustily.
“And I,” de Carabas told the jester, with a blinding smile, “call myself the marquis de Carabas.” The fool blinked.
“De Carabas the thief?” asked the jester. “De Carabas the bodysnatcher? De Carabas the traitor?” He turned to the courtiers around them. “But this cannot be de Carabas. For why? Because de Carabas has long since been banished from the earl’s presence. Perhaps it is instead a strange new species of stoat, who grew particularly large.” The courtiers tittered uneasily, and a low buzz of troubled conversation began. The earl said nothing, but his lips were pressed together tightly, and he had begun to tremble.
“I am called Hunter,” said Hunter to the jester. The courtiers were silent then. The jester opened his mouth, as if he were going to say something, and then he looked at her, and he closed his mouth again. A hint of a smile played at the corner of Hunter’s perfect lips. “Go on,” she said. “Say something funny.”