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."
    The jester stared at the trailing toes of his shoes. Then he muttered, "My hound hath no nose."
    The earl, who had been staring at the marquis de Carabas with eyes like a slow-burning fuse, now exploded to his feet, a gray-bearded volcano, an elderly berserker. His head brushed the roof of the carriage. He pointed at the marquis and shouted, spittle flying, "I will not stand for it, I will not. Make him come forward."
    Halvard waggled a gloomy spear at the marquis, who sauntered to the front of the train, until he stood beside Door in front of the earl's throne. The wolfhound growled in the back of its throat.
    "You," said the earl, stabbing the air with a huge, knotted finger. "I know you, de Carabas. I haven't forgotten. I may be old, but I haven't forgotten."
    The marquis bowed. "Might I remind Your Grace," he said urbanely, "that we had a deal? I negotiated the peace treaty between your people and the Raven's Court. And in return you agreed to provide a little favor." So _there is a raven's court,_ thought Richard. He wondered what it was like.
    "A little favor?" said the earl. He turned a deep beet red color. "Is that what you call it? I lost a dozen men to your foolishness in the retreat from White City. I lost an eye."
    "And if you don't mind my saying so, Your Grace," said the marquis, graciously, "that is a very fetching patch. It sets off your face perfectly."
    "I swore . . . " fulminated the earl, beard bristling, "I swore . . . that if you ever set foot in my domain I would . . . " he trailed off. Shook his head, confused and forgetful. Then he continued. "It'll come back to me. I do not forget."
    "He might not be entirely pleased to see you?" whispered Door to de Carabas.
    "Well, he's not," he muttered back.
    Door stepped forward once more. "Your Grace," she said, loudly, clearly, "de Carabas is here with me as my guest and my companion. For the fellowship there has ever been between your family and mine, for the friendship between my father and--"
    "He abused my hospitality," boomed the earl. "I swore that . . . if he ever again entered my domain I would have him gutted and dried . . . like, like something that had been gutted, first . . . like . . . "
    "Perchance--then dried a kipper, my lord?" suggested the jester.
    The earl shrugged. "It is of no matter. Guards, seize him." And they did. While neither of the guards would ever see sixty again, each of them was holding a crossbow, pointed at the marquis, and their hands did not tremble, neither with age nor with fear. Richard looked at Hunter. She seemed untroubled by this: she was watching it almost with amusement, like someone attending the theater.
    Door folded her arms and stood taller, putting her head back, raising her pointed chin. She looked less like a ragged street pixie; more like someone used to getting her own way. The opal eyes flashed. "Your Grace, the marquis is with me as my companion, on my quest. Our families have been friends for a long time now--"
    "Yes. They have," interrupted the earl, helpfully. "Hundreds of years. Hundreds and hundreds. Knew your grandfather, too. Funny old fellow. Bit vague," he confided.
    "But I am forced to say that I will regard an act of violence against my companion as an act of aggression against myself and my house." The girl stared up at the old man. He towered over her. They stood for some moments, frozen. He tugged on his red-and-gray beard, agitatedly, then he thrust out his lower lip like a small child. "I will not have him here," he said.
    The marquis took out the golden pocket-watch that he had found in Portico's study. He examined it, carelessly. Then he turned to Door and said, as if none of the events around them had occurred. "My lady, I will obviously be of more use to you off this train than on. And I have other avenues to explore."
    "No," she said. "If you go, we all go."
    "I don't think so," said the marquis. "Hunter will look after you as long as you stay in London Below. I'll meet you at the next market. Don't do anything too stupid in the meantime." The train was coming into a station,
    Door fixed the earl with her look: there was something more ancient and powerful in that glance than her young years would have seemed to allow. Richard noticed that the room fell quiet whenever she spoke. "Will you let him go in peace, Your Grace?" she asked.
    The earl ran his hands over his face, rubbed his good eye and his eye-patch, then looked back at her. "Just make him go," said the earl. He looked at the marquis. "Next time . . . " he ran a thick old finger across his Adam's apple " . . . kipper."
    The marquis bowed low. "I'll see myself out," he said to the guards, and stepped toward the open door. Halvard raised his crossbow and pointed it toward the marquis's back. Hunter reached out her hand and pushed the end of the crossbow back down toward the floor. The marquis stepped onto the platform, turned and waved with an elaborate flourish. The door hissed closed behind him.
    The earl sat down on his huge chair at the end of the car. He said nothing. The train rattled and lurched through the dark tunnel. "Where are my manners?" muttered the earl to himself. He looked at them with one staring eye. Then he said it again, in a desperate boom that Richard could feel in his stomach, like a bass drumbeat. _"Where are my manners?"_ He motioned one of the elderly men-at-arms to him. "They will be hungry after their journey, Dagvard. Thirsty, too, I shouldn't wonder."
    "Yes, Your Grace."
    "Stop the train!" called the earl. The doors hissed open, and Dagvard scuttled off onto a platform. Richard watched the people on the platform. No one came into the............