A dark place that resisted the ascending light of morning; to this came a figure whose pale face and hands con trasted with his dark cloak. He pushed open the narrow, craze-hinged door and entered, leaving behind him the cramped street where the buildings leaned together to provide pools of shadow for the tattered forms of men and women, London's human refuse, that loitered at the base of the dark walls.
Candles guttered in the room, and shapes moved and watched beyond the yellow circles of light. Another face, so pale it seemed to shed its own ghastly radiance in the dark, turned away from its companion and up at the newcomer. "Dr. Ambrose." The voice was flat, unemotional. Only a nar rowing of the eyes revealed the hate and loathing beneath.
"You left a chess game unfinished," said the newcomer. "That's not like you, Merdenne."
Pale also was the flesh of the other figure sitting at the table, but unhealthily so, like the belly of a rotting fish, damp and repellent to the imagined touch. A pair of blue glass lenses beneath the skull's fringe of fine white hair completed the face that followed the words of the two identical men.
"I have larger amusements to pursue," said Merdenne levelly. "In fact, you have come upon me in the midst of discussing a point of strategy with my associate here." The sick-looking face with the blue glasses nodded in hollow politeness. "I fear I have no time for that smaller game."
"No time?" Ambrose smiled. "I think otherwise." His hand darted forward and locked about the wrist of his double. The candles flicked out and the room was plunged into darkness. When the candle was lit again, the eyes be hind the blue glasses saw a turned-over chair beside himself, and nothing else.
Ambrose painfully raised himself from the rubble strewn ground. He touched his hand to the side of his face, looked and saw blood bright against his fingers. A ringing noise filled his ears.
A few yards away, Merdenne staggered to his feet. He shook his head, then gazed about him at the vista of ruined masonry, the crumbling fragments of a once great city. His eyes shifted focus for a few seconds, as if looking beyond the scene's material aspect.
"You fool!" He spun about on his heel and glared in fury at Ambrose. "You've trapped us here!"
Wearily, Ambrose sat upon the base of a shattered mar ble column. "We're not trapped," he said, gazing at grey clouds moving across a grey sky. "Just removed from the game for a little while. Let our pawns play out the moves we've arranged for them." He gestured at the scene around them. "This will pass, one way or another, when the strug gle is decided." With a sharp-pointed stone he began to scratch at the dirt in front of his boots.
"What are you doing?" snapped Merdenne.
A cross-hatch of sixty-four squares showed in the dust. Ambrose began picking through the small stones around him, sorting out the darkest and the lightest and arranging them on the squares. "This will do for a rook," he said. "And here's your king… I believe you had just castled when we left off, though I'll let you take that move back, if you wish." He glanced up at Merdenne's scowling face. "Come, come." he chided. "We have a little time here. Can you think of a better way to pass it?"
Merdenne glared at him for a few more seconds, then without speaking sat down on the other side of the board inscribed in the dust.
I drew the envelope from my pocket and once more read Ambrose's message – Tom Clagger can be trusted – followed by a house number in Rosemary Lane. As the three of us – Arthur, Tafe and myself – had set out from Ambrose's lodgings just as dusk was setting upon the city and had spent some time searching fruitlessly for the mysterious Mr. Clagger's residence, it had now gotten quite dark. The mazy streets and alleys of this poor section of London, packed tight with the most wretched of the urban refuse, seemed even denser and less penetrable at night. I pocketed the envelope again and turned to my companions.
"I fear we have lost our way," said I. This, though we were not out of sight of some of the city's tallest landmarks! Such is the intricacy of these lesser explored urban parts. "Stay here and I shall seek directions." I crossed the narrow street and headed for a group of roughly clad men standing about the open door of an ale shop.
My undertaking was accompanied by a little trepidation, for in an area such as this the possibility of violence for the sake of robbery or even mere amusement is always something to be reckoned with. Our little expeditionary party had tried to dress as plainly as possible, but our great-cloaks simply by their cleanliness attracted the sinister attention of the loiterers on the street. But the urgency of our mission propelled me on toward the men who were even now scowling at my approach.
"Gentlemen," I said brazenly. "I'm looking for a Mr. Thomas Clagger. The price of a drink all around if you can direct me to him."
"Clagger? Clagger?" muttered one of the rag-tag band. "Don't know of no damn Clagger." His blacknailed hand strayed toward his pocket.
The others whispered among themselves until suddenly the face of one brightened. "Oh, you mean Rich Tom!" he called out. "Whyn't you say so?" His companions' faces took on less menacing expressions, as they now regarded me with some measure of respect. Clearly the name Clagger was one that carried a little weight in this district.
"Yes, that's the one," I said, hoping it really was. "Do you know him?"
" Everyone knows old Rich Tom. Why, he loaned me a crown when me wife was last confined and the nurses wouldn't give us the baby 'til we had paid a bit on the bill. Of course I know Rich Tom."
I signalled for Tafe and Arthur to come across the street and join me. "Can you take us to him?" I said, turning back to my newfound informant.
"I should think so," said he. "You're nowt but a few paces from his door where you're standing."
"Splendid." I distributed coins to the other men, who touched their caps and mumbled thanks, then stepped into the ale shop to test their value. "Can we hurry along? We've got some important business with Mr. Clagger."
"I'm on to you. Lord, I had no idea old Tom had such spiffy friends, but it makes as much sense as him having pots of money in the first place."
He escorted us to the opening of a courtyard that we had passed by several times earlier. "You probably missed it," said our guide, "cause the lane takes a little jog in right here. See? There's 'nother building around the corner." We followed him under the low arch. "That's his door right there."
In truth, we would have never found the well-hidden lodgings without the man's aid. I bestowed a coin of gratitude upon him and received a cheerful thanks.
Arthur looked about the cramped, crumbling courtyard with distaste as I rapped upon the door. The old king was most likely filled with bitter reflections about the degradation of his land. On the other side of the door I could hear shuffling footsteps. "Coming!" cried a man's voice from inside.
The door opened and a man's face peered out. He was not quite so old as Arthur, but well up in years, with a fringe of grey hair around the shining pink dome of his head. "Yes?" he inquired politely. "What is it?"
"Mr. Clagger?" I asked. "Tom Clagger?"
"That's right." He nodded happily, apparently quite pleased with being recognised.
"We're friends of Dr. Ambrose-"
"Ambrose!" he cried. "Well then, come in. Don't stand out there in that mucky courtyard." He ushered us into a small, well-lit parlour. The room was surprisingly clean and tidy in a fussy bachelor's manner, in contrast to the decaying neighbourhood surrounding it. It was comfortably, if not expensively furnished, with a few framed sporting prints on the walls above the time-worn chairs. An astonishing number of books lay about on the tables and tops of cupboards, and arranged in rows upon several sets of bookshelves. Most of them showed the marks of having been acquired at bargain pricescracked or mismatched bindings, water stains and the like. There were no cheap novels among them, but were all an impressively weighty collection of philosophy, history and similar topics. One that lay open on the arm of a chair bore in the margins the pencil marks of studious perusal.
"And how is Dr. Ambrose?" said our host, gesturing for us to seat ourselves. His voice bore just a trace of the uncultured accent of the people in the nearby streets.
"I'm afraid he may be in some danger." I sat down and studied the old man's expression. "There is, unfortunately, nothing we can do to aid him at this time."
Clagger nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, I imagine such could very well be the case. Dr. Ambrose is a man of powerful great learning, but- something more than that, too, as you might well know." His bright eyes peered sharply at me. "Mister… ahh…"
"Hocker," said I. "Edwin Hocker. And this is, ah, Mr. Tafe, and Brigadier-General Morsmere."
"Tut, tut," said Clagger reprovingly. "I'm at least a little ways into Ambrose's confidences. I'm honoured to have you in my home, my lord Arthur." He gravely inclined his head toward the king.
Arthur lifted his hand. "Please. No formalities. I hold a man of learning such as you as my equal"
"Yes, well, I'm not exactly what you'd call schooled, but as you can see I read a fair bit." Clagger waved a hand at his scattered library. "Quite famous for it in these parts, you know. Mr. Mayhew was the one who put me on to it."
"Mayhew?" said I. "Not Henry Mayhew, I take it?"
"Yes," said Clagger with obvious pride. "I've got a signed first edition of his London Labour and the London Poor somewhere around here. I was one of the people he interviewed in his research. Let's see – Lord, that was back in '49 or '50, I believe. How my heart broke when he died a few years back, for he'd become a true friend to me, and done me all the good in the world." He sniffed in sad remembrance of the great chronicler of London society.
My eye darted to an object I had seen when we had first entered the room, and had caused me a little wonder. Suspended on hooks over the fireplace was a pole some eight or nine feet in length with a curved hook on one end. His mention of Mayhew's book, which, like most educated Londoners, I knew to some degree, sparked my recognition of the singular object's function. "Why, you're a tosher!" I said. "A river-man, a sewer-hunter."
"Retired," he corrected. "Though I miss me old trade like anything on a clear morning, when the sun's just tinting the river's water by the outlet grates, and that stew of smells comes wafting out of the sewers at low tide isn't that fine, though." He pointed to the long object over the fireplace. "You see I've kept me old probing pole – many's the time it's served to save me very life, I tell you! – and I've got me old lanterns and leather aprons tucked about somewhere as well. Ah, what a grand life has a sewer-hunter, there's no doubt about that."
"I had no idea the calling enabled one to live as well as this," I said, gesturing about at his cozy residence.
"Ah, well, there's the kindness Mr. Mayhew did me. The calling does pay well, for all manner of valuable objects is lost into the sewers for the finding by those that know the ways. But most toshers spend their earnings on drinks and suchlike sprees as fast as they can get it. Mr. Mayhew, bless his memory, was the one who pointed out to me the folly of such rude practices, and how fast a little put by from one's findings would soon amount to a tidy sum. I followed his advice, though Lord! I got thirsty at times, and now the people in this district hereabouts call me 'Rich Tom,' though I'm prouder yet of the learning I've done meself in these years since I left the toshing trade. For it's that what prompted our mutual friend Dr. Ambrose to seek me out and enlist me in his projects."
My eyebrows raised in unbidden scepticism. "What exactly is it Ambrose consults you about?"
Our host lifted his chin with a measure of disdain. "Dr. Ambrose is a man of great knowledge, as you might expect, knowing who he really is, and he knows more about the London sewers than many of the toshers mucking about down there. But he doesn't know as much as I do."
"How much is there to know?" said I. "About sewers?"
"Sir, you reveal your ignorance. There's marvels beneath the street that would fair scatter the wits of the average fellow walking about on the pavement all unaware of what's below his feet. Places and ways deeper and older than you can imagine, my dear Mr. Hocker. And things, too – certain valuable things, if you catch me drift."
I did indeed. "So you know then what it is we are seeking?"
"I believe I do," said Clagger. "Though I can tell you the fetching of it will be no easy matter."
"The harder the task," said Arthur sternly, "the greater the glory." Tafe, seated away from him, rolled her eyes heavenward at his statement but said nothing.
I looked at the old king dubiously, then turned back to Clagger. "There's little time." I said. "How soon can we start down there?"
"Me old pals have loaned me from their gear some of the stuff we'll need for our little expedition – lanterns and aprons, mostly. And I've got me old pole to help me test the way ahead of us. So I believe we can start at most any time you please."
"You'll guide us?"
"Of course," said Clagger. "Who else? And I can't bloody well give you a map, you know."
"I suppose not. Well, that's most kind of you then."
"I'll go fetch the gear." He got up and disappeared into the rear of his lodgings, coming back a few moments later with the traditional leather aprons used by sewer-hunters draped over his arm. From one hand dangled some battered tin lanterns with leather straps affixed. These, as I knew from my reading of Mayhew, were worn on the toshers' chests to light their way in the dark passageways under the London streets. Clagger deferentially handed one of the aprons to Arthur, but before his hand could grasp it the old king doubled over in a fit of coughing. As the choking and hacking died inside him, he straightened up, pressing his handkerchief to his lips. Before he could put the cloth away I was up from my chair and had grabbed his thin wrist. He was able to put up only the most feeble resistance as I turned his hand over and revealed the spots of blood upon the handkerchief.
We looked in grim silence at the blood, then Clagger spoke. "You'll have to stay here, my lord," he said. "You mustn't come down into the sewers with us."
"Nonsense," said Arthur angrily. "I'm more than capable." He jerked his hand free from my grasp. "No," said Clagger, shaking his head. "The cold and the damp and the noxious gasses make it no fit place for weak lungs. It'd kill you for sure, and then where would we all be?"
"He's right," said I. "Come, you're an old soldier. Would you endanger the success of a mission by sending along a man in your condition?"
His red-flecked eyes glared fiercely at me for a moment, then clouded with moisture as he sank back into the chair. "Go on, then," he said, gesturing weakly at us. He looked very old and shrunken now. "I'll… I'll keep watch on the situation from up here. Yes, that's what I'll do. Stand guard."
We completed our preparations in silence, then left the old king there in the parlour, staring before him into his memories of ancient glories.
As we crossed the courtyard I drew Clagger toward me. "You see the urgency of our task," I whispered. "Not only his strength but his very life depends upon our finding the swords." He nodded and led us quickly on toward the river, his pole carried in his hand like some odd weapon of battle.
"Down here," said Clagger when we had reached a section of sagging wharves along the bank of the Thames. "There's a bit of a rope here you can lower yourself down on. I'm afraid those fancy boots of yours will be most ruined." He went before us to show the way down to the muck at the river's edge. The moon and stars glittered upon the oily, garbagespecked waters.
Tafe and I dropped down behind him. I reached over my shoulder and felt the bundled Excalibur where I had securely strapped it so that it would not impede my movements. We had decided to take it with us for whatever aid it might furnish us in locating its fraudulent brothers.
Splashing through the shin-deep, odorous mud, we made our way to one of the large iron gates of the sewer outlets. These were hinged so that they only opened outwards, to allow sewage to exit into the river yet prevent the water from backing up into the drains when the river was swelled by high tide.
Clagger got his hands under the edge, of the gate and lifted it far enough for Tafe and me to scramble into the circular opening beyond. He ducked himself under the gate, then let it fall behind him. With a resounding clang that echoed down the passageway, we were thus enclosed in the darkness of the London sewers.
A match sputtered into flame, then a shaft of light coursed in front of us from the lantern strapped to Clagger's chest. He helped us light our own lanterns. By their combined glow we could see quite well the drain's slime-encrusted walls leading on into blackness, and the torpid stream of filthy water that washed about our ankles. For several moments my breath, laden with the sewer's stagnant odours, caught gagging in my throat.
"It's a roughish smell at first," said Clagger. "But you'll get used to it. Just step along right behind me as we go and you'll be all right!"
His words proved true. After a few yards, both Tafe and I found our breaths coming easier to our lungs. The human body, prompted by the human will, is a marvel of accommodation to all manner of wretched conditions.
A scurry of tiny clawed feet sounded from somewhere beyond the reach of our lamps. Rats eyes, red in the lantern light, glared at our passage, then disappeared back into the crevices that served as their nests.
"Don't mind the little beasties," said Clagger. "They're not dangerous but when they're cornered. And then, Lord! How they'll fly at you! Some toshers think it's grand sport to hunt em, and probably think for all the world that they're just like the landed gentry on a fox hunt, but I've no mind for such foolishness."
Our little band was like an island of light moving through the dark world of the sewers. Our boots splashed in the shallow rivulets while our lanterns danced their beams over the walls covered with layer upon layer of ancient filth. More than once we had to squeeze past a throng of wet stalactites compounded from slow decades of flowing sewage. The damp air curled in our lungs.
My voice echoed from the curved walls as I broke the silence. "Clagger," I said, "where exactly are we headed down here? It strikes me that we've already gone some distance."
He turned around with one finger pressed to his lips. "Quiet," he whispered, then covered the aperture of his lantern and ordered Tafe and me to do the same. "There's a street grating up ahead," came his hushed voice.
I understood his meaning. Though sewer-hunting was a well-known profession among the lower classes, forming as it did something of an aristocracy among them, it was still technically illegal for people to enter the sewers for any reason other than the maintenance of them. If our lights and the noise of our passing caught the attention of a constable on the street overhead, our mission could be considerably interfered with. With Clagger to guide us there was little doubt that we would elude any efforts by the police to apprehend us, but the noise and general fuss of their search would frustrate the secretive nature of our quest.
Cautiously, we filed under the parallel slits of the street grating. I glanced up and saw the narrow sections of the night sky, the stars blotted out for a moment by someone's bootsoles as he crossed the street.
Once safely past, we uncovered our lanterns and proceeded. Our path curved downward and we were soon out of hailing distance of the surface world. At a wide point in the tunnel Clagger held up his hand for us to stop. "Quite a little stroll, eh?" he said, smiling. He took a small parcel from a pocket on the inside of his leather apron, unwrapped it and divided hunks of stiff bread and cheese among us.
"So," said I, swallowing a dry mouthful, "where are we, Clagger? It all seems to go on forever down here."
"Patience, lad." The old tosher gestured with a hard crust. "We've gone quite a ways, there's no disputing that. But the hardest part is all ahead of us. Down we go now into the deepest and darkest parts of the city's sewers. And even beyond that…"
"What do you mean?"
"You'll see." Without further explanation he hoisted his probing pole and started in a sloshing trudge down the length of sewer tunnel. Tafe and I exchanged glances, then followed after.
We had gone what seemed like several more leagues when we halted at the edge of a crevice a couple of feet wide that ran alongside our path. "Look down here," said Clagger, bending over so that his lantern shone down into the hole.
From the extreme dampness of the crevice's walls I assumed that it was periodically flooded, perhaps by the high tide seeping in through an underground channel. At the bottom I could see a dully glinting mass of metal.
"See that?" Clagger's arm extended, indicating the metal amalgam. "Must be a hundred-weight or more of valuables – silver coins, brass nails and ship fittings, jewellery, what looks like a pewter christening mug… Lord, you'd be surprised at all the stuff what gets washed down here. It all gets rolled by the water into low places such as this, then becomes all stuck together by virtue of the constant passage of dirty water over it. A lump such as that is what we call a 'tosh' and other people call us 'toshers' because of 'em. Many's the time when I was younger that I've found toshes big as me own head, taken 'em out under the bridge to bust 'em apart, and made more than five pounds from the coins alone. That one you see down there would be the making of someone's fortune, easy."
I pondered the lump below. "Why hasn't anyone taken it then?"
"Why, bless you, there's many that's tried! Old Rollicker Jim near cracked his skull open trying to rig a block and tackle to fetch it up, and only succeeded in bringing a piece of the sewer masonry down on his head. No, I fear that bloody tosh down there is too damn great and heavy to be gotten out. It'll sit there growing bigger by every dropped sovereign and penny-piece that comes to it until the end of time."
"It's growth may be over sooner than you think, then," said I. "We've no time to waste gawking at such things if we are to avert the disaster that faces us."
Clagger nodded, causing the beam of his lantern to shift back and forth across the metal lump. "You must know somewhat of where you're going, though, before you go rushing down there. I'm showing you this for reasons other than as a pretty sight on a Sunday promenade. Just where do you think you'll find that for which you're looking?"
"You mean that one of the Excaliburs created by Merdenne has been incorporated into a tosh like this?" I pointed to the glittering mass.
"Not just a tosh, if you please, but the greatest of all! The Grand Tosh!" The sewer walls rang with the sudden fervour in his voice. "Bigger nor houses, it is! Like a cold moon swimming up from the bottom of the sea!"
"You've seen such a thing?" said I. "How much farther is it?"
He sadly bowed his head. "Ah, well, if there was a tosher who'd seen the Grand Tosh, I'd be the one. I've been through every slimy foot of these sewers but never laid eyes on it. But it exists! God's truth, it does! I know it, and there – where else but there, in that hidden magnetic lode of all that's most precious and lost – there's the place you'll find the Excalibur that was thrown into these sewers."
By the time he had finished his impassioned outburst I was in despair. It appeared obvious that Ambrose's confidence in this man had been sadly misplaced, as he seemed now to be either senile or crazed from his long associations with the sewers. Our position looked desperate. What if the old sewerhunter collapsed, or refused to guide us farther, abandoning us to the dark, mazy pathways? Even if we were able once again to obtain the sunlight on our own, what purpose would it serve! We would be no closer to locating the precious sword that lay hidden somewhere in the depths. And all the while, time running out…
Clagger apparently perceived my anxious thoughts, for he straightened up from his stance over the crevice. "Have no fear," he said quietly. "I get a little emotional sometimes when I think about the mysteries of the sewers. But I assure you that I'm in complete control of my faculties. And while neither I nor any other tosher has ever seen the Grand Tosh, it does exist, all for the finding of that which you seek."
"But how can that be?" said I in perplexity. "If you've been all through the sewers and not seen it, then where is it? What folly are we pursuing down here?"
"Calm yourself, for God's sake." Clagger raised his palm in a placating gesture. "It's not in the sewers, and that is God's truth. You must go beyond the sewers."
Again that hint that had baffled me before. Had the man's acquaintanceship with Ambrose engendered in him a taste for mystery-mongering? The problem with secret knowledge, I mused bitterly, is that no one ever wants to tell you any of it.
"See here," I exploded. "I'll be damned if I know what you're talking about. Beyond the sewers? What could possibly be beyond them except dead rock and earth?"
"Ah." Clagger tucked his pole under his arm in preparation for resuming progress. "Let's go along a little farther, and you'll see all soon enough."
I lagged a few yards behind him in order to pass a word in secret with Tafe. Although she was laconic at all times, she had not even spoken once since we had descended into the sewers, and I was curious to know her mind about our situation. Was it trust or suspicion behind her silence?
"What do you think?" I whispered to her. Ahead of us, Clagger led the way without turning around. "Our guide's inclined to be a touch peculiar at times. Is he on the up or not?"
"I don't know," said Tafe in a choked voice. "Maybe… maybe he is. I just don't know."
The strain in her voice startled me. I could see now that her lips were bloodless, clamped tight, and that her brow was furrowed with some anxiety greater than that troubling me. "What's wrong?" I asked in concern.
She shook her head. "Nothing. Just leave me alone."
"Are you sick? Do you want to stop and rest for a moment?"
"No," she snapped. "Just go on, will you? I'm all right." Suddenly her words exploded out of her. "My God, Hocker, don't you feel it? It's so far down here underneath the whole damned world, and so tight and dark. I can feel the walls pressing in on me and I can't breathe -" Her words choked off, and in her wide, staring eyes I could see the effort with which she forced control over herself.
Clagger had heard the outburst and now came back to study the situation. "Afraid of being so far underground, eh?" he said, then shook his head. "Should have left you topside along with the old king. You'll not be much good a-toshing down here, and we've got deeper to go yet."
"Then lead the way, damn you!" Her anger flared up. "I may not like this hole you find so bloody cheerful, but I'm not afraid of it. So go on – we've wasted enough time already listening to you babble about one damn thing or another."
With an air of dubious resignation he turned away and resumed his place at the head of our little procession. This time I stationed myself last as we went, to be sure Tafe didn't fall behind, paralyzed by her fear. My thoughts were grim as I plodded along behind the two. I had not realised until this time how much my own strength was de pendent upon Tafe's. As a comrade-in-arms I had considered her first, and a woman second. Even now she bore up better under the burden of her unfortunate fear than most men who are similarly afflicted. Still, it left our expedition in a perilously weakened state.
We marched on through the twisting and turning passages, sometimes inching along on our hands and knees beneath some slimy mass, or wading thigh-deep in the turgid, odorous waters that ran beneath the great city. The scraping noises of claws and the bright red eyes of the sewer rats followed us from one niche in the walls to another.
Ahead, Clagger came to a halt and turned to face us. As we came up to him he began unstrapping the lantern from his chest. "Here's the place," he said, "that's been weighing on my heart since we started out. If we can't get past this point, all our efforts. have been in vain. Take a look ahead and see for yourself. Mind the edge there, it's a mite crumbly."
I stepped past him and found myself gazing out over what seemed a limitless underground ocean. The light from my lantern glittered across its still surface and was lost in the distance. The waters were dark and covered with an oily scum interrupted by faintly luminous patches like algae.
"It's not as wide as it is deep," said Clagger behind me. "But to be sure, it's some fathoms to the bottom."
"How are we to get across then?" Wading was obviously impossible here.
"Don't worry yourself. There's ways of doing that easy enough. First I must test the air, though."
He had fastened his lantern to the end of his long probing pole, and he now stepped beside me with it. Slowly he extended it over the dark waters. The flame bent with some subterranean draft but remained burning brightly.
"Ah, good," said Clagger. "There's air fit for us to breathe out there. Sometimes the putrefying masses that lodge in the depths rise up and break open, releasing such noxious vapours as would suffocate you like a giant candle snuffer. It's good luck for us that such is not the case at the moment." He pulled back the pole and removed the lantern from the end. "Go back down the tunnel a couple of yards," he said, restrapping the lantern to his chest, "and on the right you'll find a section of the brickwork that's been replaced with a dirty piece of canvas. Draw it aside and bring what you find out here."
The piece of canvas at the point of which he directed me was not merely dirty, but artfully daubed with plaster and mud so as to resemble a section of the sewer passage itself. Drawing the camouflage aside, I found in the hollowed-out niche behind a small boat complete to a pair of oars resting in the brass fittings on the sides.
Tafe and I dragged the boat to the edge of the dark underground sea where Clagger stood waiting for us. He placed a loving hand on the prow of the little craft, looking for all the world like some British admiral admiring his fleet's flagship. "It got washed into the sewers," he said, "when an India clipper sank at the docks during a storm. Somehow it drifted down here where I found good employment for it. I've kept it hidden so that less cautious folk might not try their luck on yon water and find it wanting."
The boat was soon lowered into the water and one by one we cautiously took our places in it. Clagger manned the oars and pushed us away from the ledge where we had been standing. With a few strokes it was out of sight and we were surrounded by the fetid ocean on all sides.
"What happens," I asked with a little trepidation "if one of the putrid masses you spoke of breaks open and releases its fatal gas while we're crossing this body of water?"
"In that case," said Clagger, laying his weight into the oars, "you hold your breath and I row like hell." His impassive face made no show if this was meant as humorous or not. "And now, sir," he continued, "I must caution you to hold your voice in check. For I know well that sounds travel over still water with great clarity, and it behooves us to go as subtly as possible."
"Why so? Who is there to hear us?"
He looked at me reproachfully. "Do I have to remind you who they are who've made their base here in the sewers?"
The Morlocks! My heart clenched with the remembrance of them. I had been blind to the true danger of the depths through which we were roaming, so intently had my mind been focused on the object to which our pursuit was aimed. Not only were we braving the natural hazards of the underground but perhaps the malevolent scrutiny of our most implacable enemies as well. Suddenly the darkness around us seemed alive with unseen but sensed eyes taking the measure of our very inch of progress and calculating the best moment for some treacherous blow.
I barely managed to suppress my growing apprehension, not eliminating it but only pushing it into a corner of my mind. No course but this one lay before us – but to pursue it called for as much bravery as we possessed. So we sailed on, so far beneath the streets I had once blithely walked upon, moving across an uncharted sea toward an unknown destination.
At the back of the little boat Tafe sat with her head hanging over the side. Her restrained fear of the close spaces served to make the placid rowing into a rough crossing for her. I said nothing, knowing that her pride would flare into anger at any word of sympathy. Instead I turned and looked ahead to our not yet visible landing.
Suddenly she spoke. "I think something's coming up," came her voice from behind us.
"Just keep your head over the side," I said, not turning around. "I can't imagine a more fitting place in which to dispose of your last meal."
"No, you fool," said Tafe impatiently. "I mean coming up from down there."
Clagger stopped rowing. The boat rocked from side to side as I vaulted to a place next to Tafe and peered down into the inky water. A row of some dozen or more yellow lights was visible through the scum at a considerable distance below us. As I watched the lights grew larger and more distinct, indicating their gradual rise toward the surface.
"What can it be?" I asked Clagger as he appeared at my elbow.
"It looks worse even than anything I'd feared we'd encounter," he said, staring anxiously down into the water. "I'd heard rumours from some of the other toshers but I'd dismissed them as nonsense and arrant fabrications."
"What? You know what it is?"
"Yes." His voice was sepulchral – with foreboding. "The Morlocks have apparently placed a vessel for travelling underwater here to assist them in preparing for their invasion of the surface world."
The row of lights was ascending much faster toward us. "A submarine?" I said incredulously. "Such as Jules Verne imagined? The Morlocks are operating a submarine here beneath the city of London?"
"Aye," said Clagger, "that's the look of it, but I fancy we'll know for sure in a matter of a few seconds."
"The oars!" I pushed him back toward his position at the middle of the boat. "Row away!"
"Where to?" said Clagger despairingly. "Have you no eyes? That thing, whatever it is, is coming up faster than we could possibly move in any direction."
His words proved true. No sooner had he spoken them than our small craft was borne up by a swell of water, spun about, then capsized. With a shriek of expelled steam the submarine broke the surface while a churning weight of dark, filthy water pulled at my limbs and plunged me far below.
I had had time to catch only a fraction of my breath in the few chaotic moments before my immersion. The feeling of suffocation was heightened by the complete darkness – the lamp strapped to my chest was of course extinguished – and the slimy, scum-filled water pressing upon me. Oily ropes of decaying matter clung to my limbs and entwined about me as I thrashed desperately in the wake of the emergent submarine. Clumps of foul debris plastered themselves to my face, while my body's desire to fill its aching lungs with air drove my mind to sheer animal panic. I clawed and kicked at the swirling dark mass about me, not knowing whether I was scrabbling toward the water's surface or deeper below. Once my hand struck that of another person – Tafe, probably – and our fingers clutched at each other for a second before the turbulent currents tore them apart again.
Just as my mouth was about to break open in a scream, not caring whether it might be choked off under fathoms of this lightless sea, my head lifted into the air above the surface. A draft of the thick, fetid atmosphere was as welcome to me as any clear spring breeze. I gasped, fell back under the surface, then kicked myself up again. Treading water, I looked about to see what I could of the disaster's aftermath.
There was not a sign observable in the total dark of my companions Tafe and Clagger. More disheartening, I could hear nothing of them struggling in the water or calling out to locate each other or myself. The sound of my own voice was weak and quickly swallowed up in the vast area. "Tafe!" I cried. "Clagger!"
No answer came. I was forced to assume that they were both drowned or swept away into some inaccessible part of the subterranean ocean beyond my powers of assistance.
The only thing offered to my senses at all was the sight of the submarine now wallowing several yards away from me. What the function of the row of lights along its top was I could not guess; perhaps a signalling device of some kind. By their general illumination I could make out the details of the underwater vessel that had come upon us. An ovoid tapering to a point at both ends, it had indeed the baroque appearance of an illustration to one of Jules Verne's fantastic romances. Odd fins and propulsive devices jutted out at angles from the bolt-studded flanks. It lay without further motion in the slowly subsiding waters.
As my strength was quickly being exhausted by the effort of staying afloat in the cold water burdened as I was with my sodden clothes and Excalibur strapped to my back, I resolved to approach the submarine. Perhaps the Morlocks who piloted it now felt that their mission was accomplished in the sinking of our little boat and our deaths from drowning thereby. I could perhaps grasp one of the submarine's protuberances unseen and regather my strength until the vessel submerged again. Or if it stayed on the surface I could remain with it until it reached its home port, wherever that may be.
Beyond that I had no plan, only the faintest spark of hope kept alive by the weight of the clothwrapped sword across my shoulders. However diminished its state, Excalibur still inspired in me a bit of the courage of our heroic British ancestors, as well as that of my lost comrades. I couldn't let myself sink with it into the foul depths of the underground sea until my last ounce of will was gone. As noiselessly as possible, not letting my hands breach the water's surface, I swam toward the submarine.
I soon had hold of one of the fins near the vessel's waterline and managed to pull myself into a sitting position upon it, with only the lower part of my legs left dangling in the water. Pressing myself close to the hull, I could hear various scraping and scurrying noises inside. I took them to be the footsteps of the Morlocks and the incessant throbbing and clanking of the vessel's engine. A great exhaust of steam bubbled into the water from an aperture a few yards away from me, and I was grateful for the warmth it gave me. I could feel blood and life returning to my chilled limbs. Although my plight had not been improved a whit, a tiny bit more hope filtered through my irrational heart.
The submarine still had not moved from the point where it had erupted upon my late companions and myself. Was something amiss inside? The hurried noises that came to my ear through the metal seemed to grow more frantic, with the footsteps pounding back and forth from one end of the vessel to the other. The engine alternately roared or slowed almost to the point of stopping. Various propellers and fins dipped erratically in and out of the water. The one I was perched on tilted, but righted itself again before I could slide off. From a distance the foundering submarine might have given the bizarre impression of a giant sea turtle that had somehow lost the ability to coordinate its limbs.
My rapidly mounting suspicions about what was going on inside the vessel forced me now to revise my plans. I had saved myself from drowning by clinging to the submarine, but neither my lost companions, our overturned boat, nor any safe point to which I could swim had since appeared. The submarine gave no sign of progressing toward a landing, and was perhaps even in danger of inadvertently sinking. As the various noises banged through the hull like scrap metal in a dyspeptic mechanical oesophagus, I pondered my chances.
Finally, more from a lack of better ideas than anything else, I began to inch my way higher on the vessel. I had the vague notion that I could perhaps find a hatch or vent through which I could better discover the state of affairs inside. To what purpose I could put such knowledge I had no idea.
Using the various fins and propeller shafts for handles, I dragged myself to a point where I was lying prone upon the curved top surface, stretched between two of the glowing lights we had first spotted underwater. My calculations were at least partly correct. Through a tiny ventilator shaft with a cover that apparently closed with submersion in the water, I could hear distinctly the voices of the Morlocks inside. Their harsh gabbling was raised in argument – that much was clear, though I could understand none of the words. Volleys of scorn, accusation, contempt and other vocal passions sounded below me.
Had a mutiny split their ranks? I wondered. Their ferocious debate gave no sign of lessening, and the submarine's erratic twitches, meanwhile, continued. Perhaps, I hoped wildly, a fight would break out among them leading to a general slaughter, and I would be left the sole living tenant of the submarine. I dismissed the notion; it was too much to wish for.
So intent was I upon my eavesdropping that I almost didn't hear the slow opening of a hatchway behind me. Only when the circular metal door was thrown back upon its rasping hinges did I turn my head and see a pair of Morlocks come boiling out of the submarine's interior, their dead-white hands outstretched for me.
I leapt to my feet as they came scrambling across the hull toward me. Backing away as fast as I could upon the slippery metal, I interposed a large upright stanchion between myself and them. This brought me only a few second's grace, as I could see several more of their kind emerging from the open hatchway to join in the chase.
Hastily I decided to give up my position on the submarine. With no time to order my thoughts, I instinctively resolved that it would be better to swim or drown in the cold water than to be captured by the Morlocks and put to whatever filthy uses they could devise.
The curve of the submarine's hull was too great for me to clear if I tried to dive directly from it into the water. I quickly dropped to my stomach again and half-slid, half climbed down to the vessel's waterline. The hand of one of the Morlocks caught me by the collar of my jacket and stopped me from slipping into the water. I let go of the fin I was using as a handhold, grabbed his arm, then pulled him off his feet and in an arc over my head. I heard him collide with a spinning propeller, shriek as its blades tore at his flesh, then fall into the water.
More hands clutched at me from above, but I had slid far enough down the hull to be out of their easy grasp. A heavy iron bar whirred down toward my head. I twisted to one side and the weapon struck the submarine's metal flank with a dull clang. I turned my head away from my pursuers in order to spot the next foothold I needed for my descent.
A loop of rope fell across my throat and tightened in back of my neck. My hands flew to the noose in which one of the Morlocks had caught me, but it was already pressing into my flesh and cutting off my breath. I felt myself jerked back up the side of the submarine by the rope while the dimly lit waters grew even darker.
Hands I could no longer see grappled at me. I struck back in all directions, landing a few blows on their soft, clammy faces, until my weakened arms were at last forced behind me and tied with another section of rope. Gasping for air, with a spinning world roaring dizzily through my head, I felt myself dragged toward the submarine's hatchway.