And everything was normal again. The guests, and guards, and serving staff, blinked, shook their respective heads, and, having dealt with something entirely outside of their experience, agreed, somehow, without a word, that it had simply never happened. The string quartet began to play once more.
Mr. Stockton walked off, nodding brusquely to various acquaintances as he did so. Jessica walked over, to Clarence. “What,” she asked, quietly, “are those security guards doing in here?”
The guards in question were standing among the guests, looking around as if they were themselves unsure what they were doing there. Clarence began to explain just what the guards were doing there; and then he realized he had absolutely no idea. “I’ll deal with it,” said Clarence, efficiently.
Jessica nodded. She looked out over her party and smiled benignly. It was all going rather well.
Richard and Door walked into the light. And then it was dark, and chill, and Richard was blinking at the retinal afterimage of the light, which left him almost blinded: a ghostly series of orange-green splotches that slowly faded, as his eyes accustomed themselves to the darkness that surrounded them.
They were in a huge hall, carved from rock. Iron pillars, black and rust-dusted, held up the roof, went off into the distant dark, perhaps for miles. From somewhere he could hear the gentle splash of water: a fountain, perhaps, or a spring. Door was still holding his hand, tightly. In the distance, a tiny flame flickered and flared. And another, and then another: it was a host of candles, flickering into flame, Richard realized. And walking toward them, through the candles, was a tall figure, dressed in a simple white robe.
The figure seemed to be moving slowly, but it must have been walking very fast, as it was only seconds before it was standing beside them. It had golden hair and a pale face. It was not much taller than Richard, but it made him feel like a little child. It was not a man; it was not a woman. It was very beautiful. Its voice was quiet. It said, “The Lady Door, yes?”
Door said, “Yes.”
A gentle smile. It nodded its head to her, almost humbly. “It is an honor finally to meet you and your companion. I am the Angel Islington.” Its eyes were clear and wide. Its robes were not white, as Richard had initially thought: they seemed to have been woven from light.
Richard did not believe in angels, he never had. He was damned if he was going to start now. Still, it was much easier not to believe in something when it was not actually looking directly at you and saying your name. “Richard Mayhew,” it said. “You, too, are welcome here, in my halls.” It turned away. “Please,” it said. “Follow me.”
Richard and Door followed the angel through the caverns. The candles extinguished themselves behind them.
The marquis de Carabas strode through the empty hospital, broken glass and old syringes crunching beneath his square-toed black motorcycle boots. He stepped through a double door that led into a back staircase. He went down the stair’s, to the cellars beneath the hospital.
He walked through the rooms beneath the building, stepping fastidiously around the heaps of moldering rubbish. He walked through the showers and the toilets, down an old iron staircase, through a wet, swampy place; and then pulled open a half-rotted wooden door, and went inside. He looked around the room in which he found himself; he inspected, with magnificent disdain, the half-eaten kitten and the heap of razor blades. Then he cleared the debris off a chair, sat down, comfortably, luxuriantly, in the dankness of the cellar, and closed his eyes.
Eventually the door to the cellar was opened and people came in.
The marquis de Carabas opened his eyes and yawned. Then he flashed Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar a huge smile. “Hello boys,” said de Carabas. “I thought it high time I came down here to talk to you in person.”
TEN
“Do you drink wine?” it asked.
Richard nodded.
“I had a little wine once,” said Door, hesitantly. “My father. He. At dinner. Would let us taste it.”
The Angel Islington lifted the bottle: it looked like some kind of decanter. Richard wondered if the bottle was made of glass; it refracted and reflected the candlelight so strangely. Perhaps it was some kind of crystal, or one huge diamond. It even made it seem that the wine inside was glowing, as if it were made of light.
The angel took the top off the crystal and poured an inch of the liquid inside it into a wine glass. It was a white wine, but a wine unlike any Richard had ever seen. It threw light around the caverns, like sunlight on a swimming pool.
Door and Richard sat around an age-blackened wooden table, on huge wooden chairs, and said nothing. “This wine,” said Islington, “is the last bottle of its kind. I was given a dozen bottles by one of your ancestors.”
It handed the glass to Door, and began to pour another inch of the glowing wine from the decanter into another glass. It did this reverently, almost lovingly, like a priest performing a ritual. “It was a welcome gift. This was, oh, thirty, forty thousand years ago. Quite a while ago, at any rate.” It passed the wine glass to Richard. “I suppose that you could accuse me of squandering something I should treasure,” it told them. “But I receive guests so rarely. And the way here is hard.”
“The Angelus . . . ” murmured Door.
“You traveled here using the Angelus, yes. But that way works only once for each traveler.” The angel raised its glass high, staring at the light. “Drink it carefully,” it advised them. “It is most potent.” It sat down at the table, between Richard and Door. “When one tastes it,” it said, wistfully, “I like to imagine that one is actually tasting the sunlight of bygone days.” It held up its glass. “A toast: to former glories.”
“Former glories,” chorused Richard and Door. And then, a little warily, they tasted the wine, sipping it, not drinking.
“It’s amazing,” said Door.
“It really is,” said Richard. “I thought old wines turned to vinegar when they were exposed to air.”
The angel shook its head. “Not this one. It is all a matter of the type of grape and the place it was grown. This kind of grape, alas, perished when the vineyard vanished beneath the waves.”
“It’s magical,” said Door, sipping the liquid light. “I’ve never tasted anything like it.”
“And you never will again,” said Islington. “There is no more wine from Atlantis.”
Somewhere inside Richard a small, reasonable voice pointed out that there never was an Atlantis, and, thus emboldened, went on to state that there were no such things as angels, and that furthermore, most of his experiences of the last few days had been impossible. Richard ignored it. He was learning, awkwardly, to trust his instincts, and to realize that the simplest and most likely explanations for what he had seen and experienced recently were the ones that had been offered to him—no matter how unlikely they might seem. He opened his mouth and tasted the wine once more. It made him feel happy. It made him think of skies bigger and bluer than any he had ever seen, a golden sun hanging huge in the sky; everything simpler, everything younger than the world he knew.