Neverwhere

them here as a safe haven was doing nothing to assuage her fear.
«What is there to eat?» asked Hunter.
Serpentine looked at the-wasp-waisted woman in the doorway. «Well?» she asked. The woman smiled the chilliest smile Richard had ever seen cross a human face, then she said, «Fried eggs poached eggs pickled eggs curried venison pickled onions pickled herrings smoked herrings salted herrings mushroom stew salted bacon stuffed cabbage calves-foot jelly—»
Richard opened his. mouth to plead with her to stop, but it was too late. He was suddenly, violently, awfully sick.
He wanted someone to hold him, to tell him that everything would be all right, that he’d soon be feeling better; someone to give him an aspirin and a glass of water, and show him back to his bed. But nobody did; and his bed was another life away. He washed the sick from his face and hands with water from the bucket. Then he washed out his mouth. Then, swaying gently, he followed the four women to breakfast.
«Pass the calves-foot jelly,» said Hunter, with her mouth full. Serpentine’s dining room was on what appeared to be the smallest Underground platform that Richard had ever seen. It was about twelve feet long, and much of that space was taken up with a dinner table. A white damask cloth was laid on the table, and a formal silver dinner-service on that. The table was piled high with evil-smelling foodstuffs. The pickled quails’ eggs, thought Richard, smelled the worst.
His skin felt clammy, and his eyes felt like they had been put in their sockets wrong, while his skull gave him the general impression that someone had removed it while he had slept and swapped it for another two or three sizes too small. An Underground train went past a few feet from them; the wind of its passage whipped at the table. The noise of its passage went through Richard’s head like a hot knife through brains. Richard groaned.
«Your hero is unable to hold his wine, I see,» observed Serpentine, dispassionately.
«He’s not my hero,» said Door.
«I’m afraid he is. You learn to recognize the type. Something in the eyes, perhaps.» She turned to the woman in black, who appeared to be some kind of majordomo. «A restorative for the gentleman.» The woman smiled thinly and glided away.
Door picked at a mushroom dish. «We are very grateful for all this, Lady Serpentine,» she said.
Serpentine sniffed. «Just Serpentine, child. I have no time for silly honorifics and imaginary titles. So. You’re Portico’s oldest girl.»
«Yes.»
Serpentine dipped her finger in the briny sauce that held what appeared to be several small eels. She licked her finger, nodded approvingly. «I had little time for your father. All that foolishness about uniting the Underside. Stuff and nonsense. Silly man Just asking for trouble. The last time I saw your father, I told him that if he ever came back here, I’d turn him into a blindworm.» She turned to Door. «How is your father, by the way?»
«He’s dead,» said Door.
Serpentine looked perfectly satisfied. «See?» she said. «My point exactly.» Door said nothing. Serpentine picked at something that was moving in her gray hair. She examined it closely, crushed it between finger and thumb, and dropped it onto the platform. Then she turned to Hunter, who was demolishing a small hill of pickled herrings. «You’re Beast-hunting then?» she said. Hunter nodded, her mouth full. «You’ll need the spear, of course,» said Serpentine.
The wasp-waisted woman was now standing next to Richard, holding a small tray. On the tray was a small glass, containing an aggressively emerald-colored liquid. Richard stared at it, then looked at Door.
«What are you giving him?» asked Door.
«Nothing that will hurt him,» said Serpentine, with a frosty smile. «You are guests.»
Richard knocked back the green liquid, which tasted of thyme and peppermint and winter mornings. He felt it go down and prepared himself to try to keep it from coming back up again. Instead he took a deep breath and realized, with a little surprise, that his head no longer hurt, and that he was starving.
Old Bailey was not, intrinsically, one of those people put in the world to tell jokes. Despite this handicap, he persisted in trying. He loved to tell shaggy-dog stories of inordinate length, which would end in a sad pun although, often as not, Old Bailey would be unable to remember it by the time he got there. The only public for Old Bailey’s jokes consisted of a small captive audience of birds, who, particularly the rooks, viewed his jokes as deep and philosophical parables containing profound and penetrating insights into what it meant to be human, and who would actually ask him, from time to time, to tell them another of his amusing stories.
«All