Tim Powers - Hide Me Among the Graves

This end of the street was brighter, for the windows of the Angel public house glowed amber in the fog ahead of him, and, when he had rounded both corners of the place, he could see the blurry lights of the bookshops that had driven the old-clothes business into the next street — though the gigantic masks over the vacated costume warehouse still grimaced down from the murky shadows overhead as he passed by.

The Spotted Dog was at the far end of Holywell Street, almost to Newcastle Street, and Crawford, his gloved hands deep in his overcoat pockets, peered in at the shop windows he passed. Three-volume novels, newspapers, pamphlets denouncing Darwin … he wondered if the young authoress of the Lunar Encomium was represented by any published books. On the whole, he hoped not.

MCKEE HAD ARRIVED at their rendezvous before he did and pulled the door open for him.

“We’ll have to buy two tickets,” she said, “even though we’re only going downstairs.” She had four pennies in her hand, and she pushed the big brown coins across the counter of a little window set into the wooden wall of the entry hall; and a moment later she turned and handed Crawford a dented tin card, keeping another in her gloved hand.

She gestured toward the open doorway beyond the counter, and Crawford shrugged and stepped through into what proved to be a vast kitchen lit by gas jets between the beams of the ceiling, with at least twenty people standing around on the flagstone floor or sitting on a bench that ran like a continuous shelf around the whole room. A big black iron stove stood in a far corner, and something was cooking that involved bacon and onions. Some people were lining up with plates.

Crawford looked hopefully at McKee, but she shook her head. “Downstairs,” she said, nodding toward a doorway in the back wall, which was papered with posters announcing various music-hall performers.

Crawford followed her across the room, promising himself a good supper when he got back home.

A couple of the men on the bench called, “Addie!” and another said, “Back in trade, girl?”

“Don’t you just wish, Joey,” she said to him, not pausing.

Beyond the doorway was a dark hall and a flight of wooden stairs leading down. A cold draft welled up from below, smelling of wet clay and wood smoke.

McKee paused at the top of the stairs to shed her coat and bonnet and hang them on a couple of hooks in the wall. “Leave your hat and coat here,” she said. “And take off your gloves. You’ll want to be able to feel the walls.”

Crawford sighed and carefully hung his coat and hat on another hook and stuffed the gloves in his trousers pocket.

The stairs were unlit, and as McKee and Crawford descended below the level of the floor, he held the banister rail and felt for each step with his boot.

He was holding the little tin card in his left hand. “Will we need to show these to anybody?” he whispered. “The tickets.”

“Those are for bed check,” came her voice from the darkness below him. “We’re not going to be sleeping here.”

“No,” he agreed, tucking the thing in his pocket on top of his gloves. He peered uselessly upward, wondering what sort of beds the Spotted Dog offered. “Shouldn’t we have brought lanterns?”

“It’s considered arrogant. There’ll be light after a while, farther down.”

Considered arrogant by whom? he wondered. “Shouldn’t we be talking in whispers?”

“Not yet. This is still the Spotted Dog basement, really.”

The banister ended in a splintery stump, and as they descended farther he had to press his right palm against rough bricks.

Crawford cleared his throat and spoke a little more loudly. “You’ve been here before?”

“A couple of times. But there are ways down all over the City.”

“Are we … going into the sewers?” Crawford had heard stories about feral rats and pigs that lived in the London sewers. “What I mean to say is — I’m not going into the sewers.” Her definition of downstairs was proving to be more far-reaching than he had expected.

“Old sewers,” she said in what was apparently meant to be a reassuring tone. “Ones that have been cut out of the system by newer ones. Just damp tunnels now, except when it rains. Right below us was a regular Phlegethon a couple of years ago, but the new interceptory Piccadilly Branch drained it.”

“Phlegethon,” said Crawford, largely to gauge the volume of the unseen space they were in by the way his voice rang in the dark. “Plato’s flaming river to the underworld, in Phaedrus. You’re well-read.”

“This one caught fire too, sometimes. Oil and decaying ghosts on the water igniting — smoke coming up out of street gratings — you probably noticed it. I’ve always been one for having the nose in a book, and at Carpace’s there was plenty of spare time for reading.” He heard her pause below him. “Steps ending here, flat floor for a while. Not level, but flat.”

“I,” said Crawford carefully, “killed her. Carpace.”

The sound of her steps changed from clumping on wood to tapping on stone, and he stepped carefully down onto the sloping floor.

“If you had not,” McKee said, “she would have killed me.” He heard her sigh. “I suppose I parade it, sometimes. Quoting things. So people at least won’t assume I’m a typical ex-whore and Hail Mary dealer.”

So much for Carpace, Crawford thought. “Not just one more of that lot,” he agreed, and she laughed quietly.

“Your holy well is up ahead,” she said. “Roman stonework, I’m told. It was probably on the surface once, along with a lot else — London keeps shifting underground. One day people will—” Her footsteps stopped. “Yes, here it is. One day people will have to go down into tunnels to see St. Paul’s.”

Crawford could see … not a glow, but a lessening in the darkness ahead; and after a few more steps, his outstretched palms collided with a waist-high stone coping. The smoky smell seemed to be rising from beyond it, and now it bore a faint salt-and-rot tang of the river.

Then McKee startled him by saying, loudly, “Origo lemurum.”

He jumped again when McKee’s hand touched his face — she brought her head close to his and breathed in his ear, “Whispers from here on, I think. And not loquacious. Feel over the rim — there’s rungs, leading down.”

He let her carry his hand over the rim of the well and press it against the stones of the curved inner wall, and his fingers brushed an iron bracket.

Downstairs! he thought. “Is this the only way?” he whispered desperately.

“No. Best, for now.”

Then she had released his hand, and he heard her long skirt rustle against stone; and when he heard a scuff from down in the well, he realized that she had swung over into the shaft and that one of her shoes was on a lower rung.

He was about to call her back and absolutely refuse to climb down — but the tunnel they were in apparently extended on past the well, and now he heard a sort of whistling moan from far away in that direction.

It was answered by a similar sound, but shriller and perhaps not so far away, from behind him.

He was sweating, and now he had to restrain himself from clambering over the well coping until he heard McKee’s shoes on rungs a good distance below. Finally he slid one leg over the edge and scuffed around with his boot until it rested on the iron rung, and, trembling and mouthing frightened curses, he lowered himself into the well until he could feel the next rung down with his other foot. As soon as it seemed possible, he let go of the stone coping with one hand and grabbed the topmost rung, and after that he was able to descend steadily.