The Doorkeepers

Twelve

“What do you want?” asked Josh. “If you’re thinking of mugging us, you’re out of luck. We don’t have any money at all.”

“You’re a Yank,” said the thin young man, cocking his head on one side like a parrot. “How about that, then? We don’t often get Yanks.”

“Look, we’re just tourists.”

“Tourists? You’re taking a chance, ain’t you?”

“What’s wrong with being a tourist?”

“What’s wrong with being a gob of spit in a hot frying pan? You ought to thank your lucky moons that the Hoodies didn’t catch a hold of you first.”

The Burmese-looking youth had his eyes half-closed in concentration and his hand cupped to his ear. “They’ve just turned the corner, Sy. We’d better get weaving.”

The thin young man took hold of Josh’s arm with a bony hand covered in silver rings. “Come on … let’s scarper before the dogs pick up the scent.”

“Listen, pal, we’re not going anyplace. Especially with you.”

“You ain’t got much in the way of viable choices,” said the thin young man. “You can’t get back through the door, not today. So it looks like the dogs’ll have you, less’n you follow us along. You ever see a man noshed on by dogs? Not an appetizing sight.”

“You know about the door?”

“What door?”

“You said we can’t go back through the door, not today. So you know about the door.”

“I know where you and your good lady come from, guvnor; and I’ve got a good guess where you’re going now. But it’s no use your trying to get back there, not till the same time tomorrow. Surprised you didn’t know that.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s as plain as mud, guvnor,” he said, and slowly spun his finger in the air. “You can only go through the door once in every turn of the earth. Don’t matter which way. Once only per diem and that’s your lot.”

“So we can’t go back until the same time tomorrow, at least?”

“Not now, guvnor. And if you and your good lady don’t want to end up as two matching dogs’ dinners, you’d better come along with me and San here, quickish.”

Josh hesitated. With the Hooded Men bearing down on them, he badly wanted to get them both back to the “real” London. But it looked as if they had run out of time. The dogs were barking and the drummers were drumming, and even if the thin young man weren’t telling the truth, they still didn’t have any candles.

Josh could hear the high excitement in the dogs’ voices, and he knew exactly what they were yapping about. These were dogs who could smell that their quarry was close. These were dogs who smelled blood.

“How did they pick up our scent?” asked Nancy.

“Simple, missus. You lot always smell different. I can smell you myself. Soap and scent and death, that’s what you lot always smell of. Even the geezers.”

The drums came racketing nearer. The Hooded Men reached the corner of Carey Street and began to ricochet like grapeshot off the Bankruptcy Court buildings.

“Josh,” said Nancy, urgently.

Without warning the dogs came sliding and snarling around the corner with their handlers barely able to hold them back. As soon as they saw Josh and Nancy and the two youths, however, the handlers let out whistles of encouragement and snapped the dogs off their leads. Josh didn’t recognize the breed, but he could see that they had the barrel chests and unlockable jaws of pit bull terriers. They came bounding across the street barking insanely – spit flying, claws scrabbling on the cobbles. One of them launched itself toward Nancy as if it had been shot out of a catapult. It knocked her down to the sidewalk and started to tear at the fringes of her leather coat.

The Burmese-looking boy turned and ran up Star Yard as fast as he could; but the thin young man stayed where he was, drawing out a triangular-bladed craft-knife and crouching down in front of the dogs, daring them to go for him. “Come on, pooches! Who wants their lights cut out?”

Josh twisted around and seized the collar of the dog that was raging on top of Nancy. He wrenched it clear off the ground and slapped it across the side of the head, twice. The dog went into a frothing fury, snarling and clawing and whipping its body from side to side, but Josh raised it right up to eye level and pointed his finger at it and said, “Stop.”

He had no idea if his usual dog hysteria management was going to work. Most of the dogs that he had dealt with before had been the neurotic pets of frustrated middle-aged women from Marin County. They hadn’t been trained to rip people’s hearts out, the way this animal obviously had, and he had never in his life encountered any animal in such a rage.

“Stop,” Josh told it. But the dog kept on snarling and twisting and trying to take a bite out of Josh’s forearm.

“Stop!” Josh yelled at it; and quite unexpectedly, it stopped, even though it was still swinging around in the air and half-strangling in its collar. “Stop,” Josh said again, much more quietly. He turned around, stretching out his right hand, and pointed one by one at the jumping, barking animals.

“Listen to me!” he yelled at them. “You are going to be calm!” Then, as their barking diminished, “You are going to be calm. You are going to be reasonable. Listen to me. Don’t move. You are going to think this through.”

The thin young man came backing toward him, his knees bent, still waving his craft-knife from side to side. He glanced at Josh but he obviously couldn’t think of anything to say. The eight attack dogs were now milling around in front of them, their tongues hanging out like red neckties, confused. Their handlers were walking across the street now, their black capes billowing, snapping their leads.

The drummers beat a long, savage roll and then they were silent. They opened their ranks so that the Hooded Men could walk between them, with their swords raised.

“Go on, Max!” shouted one of the dog-handlers; and the other one shouted too, and whipped his dogs across their backs with his lead.

Josh kept his hand raised. In spite of the noise, in spite of the confusion, he tried to radiate calm, as if he were the center of all tranquility. “You are going to stay where you are until I tell you to move. You feel happier, being calm. You feel much more fulfilled.”

Strangely, he could feel the same rapport that he felt with the overfed lapdogs of Marin County, but this was even stronger, in a way. These were real dogs, little more than wild, and they had never been treated as if they were human – as if they were capable of thinking for themselves. It was a new experience for them, and they were bewildered.

“They’re bewildered,” he told Nancy.

“They’re bewildered?” said the thin young man. “I’m bleeding mystified.”

Josh dropped the dog that had attacked Nancy and it shook itself and trotted back toward its handler. The man threw back the hood of his cloak. He was shaven-headed and scarred, with a heavy gray moustache, and half of one of his ears was missing. Without taking his eyes off Josh, he reached down and looped the dog’s lead around its neck, and twisted it tight. Then, with a grunt, he started to throttle it.

The dog made a thick choking noise and struggled wildly, but the handler kicked it in the stomach. He kicked it again and again, until the animal was limp, and then he picked it up by its hind legs, swung it over his head, and smashed its skull against the granite curb. There was a hollow crack! and bright red blood and bright beige brains were spattered all over the other dogs, who visibly flinched. “Go!” the handler screamed at them, “Go! Or the same thing’s going to happen to you!”

The dogs hesitated, confused, yipping and yapping and thrashing their tails.

“Go!” screamed the handler; and it was now that the Hooded Men approached, their sackcloth faces blank and threatening, their swords held high.

“Take them!” ordered a harsh, thick voice. Josh couldn’t tell who it was, but one of the Hooded Men kicked the dog’s carcass to one side and deliberately stepped on its shattered head, so that its one remaining brown eye was squeezed out of its socket.

The thin young man took two or three steps back. “I hope you’re light on your feet, missus,” he told Nancy.

“Let’s just get out of here, shall we? You direct us, we’ll follow.”

“They’ll have you, if they catch you. You’ll wish you was dead, believe me.”

The Hooded Men were beginning to circle them now, but they were playing their attack very cautiously. Their swords were very long, thin-bladed, with plain cruciform handles, and they looked extremely sharp. Because of their hoods, their faces seemed even more threatening, like scarecrows that had come to life, to seek their revenge.

One of them said, in a muffled voice, “In the name of the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth you are detained for trespass. Come quiet, and you will have nothing to fear, so help me God. Resist, and your fate will be the talk of all damnation.”

Josh kept his hand raised and his eye on the dogs. Their handlers were whipping them now, and cursing them, and he knew that he couldn’t control them for very much longer. “When I say ‘run’,” said Josh, “don’t even think about it – go like hell.” He paused for two or three seconds, and then he shouted, “Run!”

Nancy galloped up Star Yard with her buckskin fringes flying, and even though she was wearing high-heeled boots Josh found it almost impossible to keep up with her. The thin young man was right behind him, his coat whirling up. The dogs were so close that they were almost biting at their heels, barking hysterically, but all the barking and the shouting of their handlers and the jingling of swords and scabbards were drowned out by a shattering drumbeat. Ratta-tatta-ratta-tatta-tat!

As they rounded the first corner, the thin young man said, “In here!” and pushed open a flaking, black-painted door. Nancy had run so far ahead that Josh had to give her a sharp dog-whistle to call her back.

The thin young man slammed the door behind them and jammed it with a broken chair. “Where does this lead?” asked Josh, as he stumbled along a hallway stacked with faded rolls of floral wallpaper, paint-caked buckets and stepladders.

“Upstairs, guvnor,” panted the thin young man. “Upstairs and over the roof. Dogs can’t follow you through thin air.”

Gasping for breath, they climbed up one bare-boarded flight of stairs after another. There was a strong smell of damp and mildew in the building and as they climbed higher, Josh could see that half of the slates were missing, and the attic was open to the sky. On either side they passed derelict rooms with no floorboards, still decorated with faded wallpaper, their fireplaces clogged with ash.

Four floors below them, they heard the front door being kicked open, and the wild barking of dogs. The thin young man said, “Follow me,” and led them up a narrow staircase into the attic. Again, all of the floorboards were missing, and they had to cross the attic by balancing from one joist to the next, taking care not to catch their feet on any protruding nails. They could look down and see the rooms two and even three floors lower down, and hear the clattering of dogs coming up the stairs.

The far side of the roof was already stripped of tiles, and the wind made gusty, fluffing noises through the rafters. The thin young man led them out on to the narrow parapet, ninety feet above Chancery Lane. “Oh God, Josh,” said Nancy. “You know how much I hate heights.”

“You climbed up Spirit Rock, didn’t you?” Josh reminded her. “That was three times higher than this.”

“That was different. I had my ancestors around me then, to catch me if I fell.”

Josh gripped her hands and kissed her forehead. “I’ll catch you, if you fall.”

They stepped out on to the parapet, one after the other, with the thin young man leading the way. There was nothing between them and the street below except for a low wall of sooty bricks, and they didn’t look very safe. They could see the tops of buses and taxis and people hurrying along the sidewalk. Although it was such a pearly, overcast day they could see right over the rooftops of the Public Record Office toward the misty dome of St Paul’s, and the twin Gothic towers of Tower Bridge. Josh was surprised to see that there were no tall buildings in the City – no NatWest building, no Canary Wharf.

“Hurry up,” snapped the thin young man. “We ain’t got time for seeing the sights.”

He balanced along to the very end of the parapet, and Josh and Nancy followed him, their arms spread wide. “Eat your heart out, Blondin,” said Josh, his heart thumping. Nancy gave a nervous, hysterical laugh.

When the thin young man reached the corner of the building, he crouched down behind the parapet and beckoned them to join him. They looked over the edge and saw the Hooded Men gathered in Star Yard, directly below them. A few curious people were standing around, but only a few, and when the Hooded Men turned their heads toward them they covered their faces with their hands and hurried off.

“Who are these characters?” asked Josh. “Are they like cops, or what?”

“Cops?”

“Policemen. Bobbies. Is that what they are?”

The thin young man didn’t answer him, but stood up, and pointed to the parapet of the building opposite. It was about a foot higher than the building on which they were standing, and it had a curved coping on top of it, encrusted with pigeon-droppings. In fact there was a matronly pigeon sitting on it not far away, blinking at them with suspicion.

“We’ve got to jump,” said the thin young man.

“You’re kidding me,” Josh retorted.

“It’s the only way, guvnor. It’s jump, or give yourself up to the Hoodies. Do you know what they do? They eat the pancreas out of you, while you’re still alive. Or else they make you play the Holy Harp.”

“The Holy Harp? What the hell’s that?”

“I’ll give you the SP later, guvnor. But, believe me, you don’t really want to find out. Not first-hand, anyway.”

Nancy gripped Josh’s arm. “I can’t do this, Josh. I can’t jump across there. It’s much too far.”

They heard shouting inside the derelict building, and the noise of doors being broken and loose floorboards tossed aside. And above it all, the dogs barking. Josh could hear that their handlers had worked them up into a frenzy of fear and anger. They knew that if they didn’t catch their quarry, they would be beaten or even killed. They were hunting for their own survival and nobody could pacify them now.

“Come on, Nance. Those dogs are going to rip us apart.”

“Can’t we just give ourselves up? We haven’t done anything, after all.”

“Ha, ha,” said the thin young man. “You don’t think that you have to do anything, do you? The Hoodies will carve you up, guilty or innocent.”

“Nance,” Josh urged her. “You have to make this jump, whether you’re scared out of your mind or not.” He lifted his finger to her. “Concentrate. That’s all you have to do. Concentrate on the wall at the other side.”

She stood up on top of the parapet, on the very edge. The wind lifted her hair and made her bandanna flutter. Josh heard a banging sound inside the attic, and a handler appeared with two dogs shrieking for breath on the end of a leash.

“Jump!” he shouted at Nancy. She stumbled in her boot-heels and jumped. She managed to catch the top of the parapet opposite, but only just, and she almost lost her grip altogether.

“Josh!” she screamed.

Josh shouted, “I’m coming! Find yourself a toehold!”

“What toehold?” she said, her boots scrabbling at the brickwork. “Josh, there isn’t a toehold!”

“Listen, I’m coming across. I’m coming across and I’m going to take hold of your hand and pull you up.”

The thin young man stared at Josh with his wild blue eyes. “You’re going to have to jump right over her,” he said, in horror. “How are you going to do that?”

Josh looked at the roof behind him. There were no tiles left on it, but the rafters were intact and still studded with large rusty nails. He stood up and started to climb the nearest rafter, hand over hand, using the nails for toeholds.

“Josh!” screamed Nancy. “Josh, my hands are slipping!”

Josh climbed halfway up to the apex of the roof. He could see the dogs now: they were scrambling along the narrow gutter with their handlers close behind. The thin young man had picked up a heavy piece of rafter and was swinging it from side to side, ready to defend himself.

Josh turned, and stood up. He was caught by a sudden gust of wind, and for an endless three seconds he was desperately trying to stop himself from falling.

“Come on, Winward!” He could almost hear his instructor in the Marines, screaming at him in frustration. “Whatever the fuck you’re going to do, don’t just stand there – do it!”

He found his balance, and paused. Then he shouted out, “Yaaahhhhhhh!” and ran down the sloping rafter, jumping between the nails like a gazelle. It was mad, but he was running so fast that he didn’t fall over. He reached the edge of the roof and gave one last hop, skip and jump, which took him right up into the air. And in that split second he thought: Jesus, I’m not going to make it. The parapet loomed up in front of him, much higher than he had expected it to be.

“Hold on!” he screamed at Nancy, because he was sure he was going to hit her, and drag both of them down to the flagstones ninety feet below. But he cleared the parapet by less than an inch, his left heel actually clipping it, and he fell heavily on to the gray shingled roof of the building opposite, rolling over and hitting his shoulder on a chimney stack.

Immediately, he stood up and hobbled back to the parapet. He leaned over and took hold of Nancy’s hand. “Here! Pull yourself up! Quick!”

He heaved her up, inch by inch, and at last she was able to grip the top of the brickwork and pull herself over. “God, I thought I was going to meet my ancestors then, for sure!”

Back on the other side, the thin young man was lashing out at the dogs with his nail-studded rafter. One of them managed to dodge around his feet and jump up on to his shoulders, biting at his neck. But he swung the rafter right over his head and hit it in the back with an audible crunch. He twisted the rafter around and the dog dropped over the side of the building and into the yard below.

He climbed up on the edge of the roof, swaying. Josh shouted, “Jump! I’ll catch you!”

Nancy said, “Why, Josh? He was out to mug us!”

“He helped us escape, didn’t he? And he knows a whole lot more about this world than we do. He can help us, Nance. We can’t just leave him here!”

Nancy shook her head. But whatever she thought, it was too late, because the thin young man suddenly launched himself toward them, his arms outstretched. At the same instant, one of the dogs jumped after him, and caught his coat in its teeth.

Josh stretched out with both hands and snatched at the young man’s wrists as he stumbled against the parapet. The dog, still clinging to the hem of his coat, was thrown against the wall. It didn’t yelp, though, or open its jaws.

There was a moment when Josh thought he was going to let the young man fall. He was holding his full weight, as well as the weight of the dog, and the young man’s wrists were gradually sliding between his fingers. But then he looked down at the dog, and the dog looked balefully back up at him, and their eyes locked.

“Let go!” Josh ordered.

The dog growled and swung from side to side on the tails of the young man’s coat, but it wouldn’t release its grip.

“Didn’t you hear me, you disobedient mutt? Let go!”

On the edge of the building opposite, the dog-handler shouted out, “Goethe! Hang on! You hear me, Goethe? Hang on, you miserable cur, or I’ll have your coddled brains for breakfast!”

“Christ, I’m slipping,” said the thin young man. He glanced down at the paving stones far below him and then he looked back up at Josh in desperation. “God save me! Please, God, I won’t ever steal again.”

At that moment, the dog-handlers started to throw lumps of timber and broken slates at them. One piece of wood hit Josh on the arm, and a slate hit him on the side of the head, cutting his ear. Blood ran down the side of his cheek and dripped on to the young man’s face.

A heavy piece of rafter hit the thin young man on the back. He shouted out in pain, and lurched around, and his right hand broke free from Josh’s fingers. Josh clawed the air, but he couldn’t reach his wrist again. The young man was dangling now from one wrist only, with a dog hanging from his coat, and Josh knew from experience that it could take two men and a crowbar to pry that dog’s jaws open.

Josh ducked his head as he was again pelted with slates and lumps of asphalt. Nancy, crouched behind the parapet, said, “Josh! You’re going to have to let him go!”

“How can I?” said Josh, one eye closed against the blood. “Jesus, Nance, if I let him go he’s going to die!”

He shouted down to the dog again. “Goethe! Are you listening to me, Goethe? You’re a great dog, Goethe, you’ve done real good! Why don’t you bark for me, Goethe? How about barking for me? Come on, Goethe! Bark!”

“Goethe! Silence!” his handler retaliated.

But Josh and the dog were staring at each other, and Josh knew that he had captured its complete attention. “Bark, Goethe,” he repeated. “Bark and show me what a good dog you are.”

The dog hesitated, but then it barked, just once – and once was enough. It tried to snap at the thin young man’s coat-tails again, but it missed, and it dropped howling all the way to the ground, its paws still scrabbling for something to cling on to. It hit the flagstones with a flat, barely audible thud. Josh saw its blood running across the paving and felt worse than Judas.

He tugged at the young man’s wrist, and pulled him up far enough to grab his other hand. Nancy seized his coat collar, and between the two of them they managed to heave him up over the parapet and on to the roof. He lay on his back for a moment, saying, “God, oh God. I thought I was ready for the cold cook then. I swear it. I really thought I was brown bread.”

“They’re breaking into the building downstairs,” said Josh. “We have to get out of here pronto.”

The thin young man sat up, and he was immediately showered in fragments of broken slate and pieces of brick. “Right, then. Let’s go. It’s not so difficult from here. We’ll be in Lincoln’s Inn Fields before the Hoodies even reach the second floor.”

Keeping their heads down, they negotiated their way between the chimneys and crossed the roof to the other side. The dog-handlers carried on pelting them with slates and rafters. A dead pigeon came cartwheeling across, thumping against Nancy’s back. But when the dog-handlers realized that they were getting away, they turned back from the building’s edge. They began to run downstairs again, shouting out to the Hooded Men to hurry.

Josh and Nancy jumped across to the next building, which was lower; and then to the next, and the next. A whole row of rooftops were connected by iron ladders, and then there was some more jumping, and a climb down a fire escape. By the time they reached the corner of Serle Street, the shouting and the drumming were nothing but echoes in another street.

The thin young man led them down the dusty, neglected staircases of another old building, and then they were out in Lincoln’s Inn Fields and across the gardens, just as it started to rain.