David Clarke

Excelsior

Chapters 9-12

Chapter Nine

Now that there was no obvious way for me to go back to the other world even if I had wanted to, I had no objection when my uncle said that I ought to start learning about the running of the estate. So for the next few days I spent the mornings with Mr Hall, learning about our own farming activities, and about our income from the rental of land (mostly not too far from the estate) and housing (in Oxford and London). In addition to the properties we rented out to tenants I discovered that we still had a town house in Westminster. My father had used it a lot while he was on the army general staff, but since his death the family had only made occasional visits to it. I couldn't remember going there myself and I thought it might be interesting to see something of this world's version of London, and so I suggested to my uncle that I'd like to visit it, perhaps the following weekend, and he said he could see no reason why not.

In the afternoons I was able to spend time with my friends, although the bad weather that had hampered us at Stonehenge was still with us, and that made it impossible to do anything outdoors. But it stopped raining on the Wednesday afternoon, and although the wind kept blowing through Wednesday night, by Thursday morning the sun had reappeared, and so after lunch I called for Billy and told him to go and change into his old clothes.

"We're going riding," I said, "so you can do the stable-boy thing for us and sort us out some horses. Wolfie's got his own, I suppose, but…"

"No," he interrupted. "Wolfie doesn't ride – leastways, he's never been on a horse since I've worked at the stables. I thought as how his leg… well, you understand…"

"It really shouldn't stop him riding," I said. "Okay, probably it would be tricky jumping, because I suppose it affects his balance, but a gentle ride on flat ground shouldn't overstretch him. Let's go and find him."

Wolfie and Alex were sitting on the terrace playing chess. I almost backed away again without interrupting them because I was really happy to see them getting on well together, but then Alex looked up and saw me.

"What's happening?" he asked me.

"Well, I was thinking of going for a ride, but Billy tells me that Wolfie doesn't ride any more. Why's that, Wolfie?"

"Well, at first I couldn't, because of the leg. And then I just didn't want to, because it just wouldn't be the same without you."

"Is there any reason why you can't come with us this afternoon?"

"Well… I haven't been on a horse for four years, for a start, and I have never ridden one at all with only one leg. Suppose I have a few gentle rides on my own first – or maybe Billy could come with me, just in case I fall off? Then, once I'm used to it again, maybe we could all go out together."

"Erm… I'd just like to remind you all that I don't know one end of a horse from the other," Alex put in. "I don't mind learning, but I'm not just going to get on a horse and gallop all over the country today."

"You could come out with me," said Wolfie. "We can learn together, because I'm sure I will need to pick up some new techniques. Maybe we could go out in the mornings, while Leo is with Mr Hall? If we do that a few times, I should think that by next week we'll be able to ride out with him, as long as we don't go too far or too fast."

"I think that's a great idea," I said, because this would certainly give Alex and Wolfie a chance to get to know each other. "Billy ought to go with you, though, just in case anything happens… You, can ride, can't you, Billy?"

"Of course I can! I wouldn't be much of a stable lad otherwise. And I'll definitely go with them, at least until they feel confident enough to ride on their own."

"That's settled, then. But I still fancy a ride this afternoon, so you two can stay here and carry on with the chess, and Billy and I will give the horses a bit of a run and get some air. I'm not used to poring over figures all morning – at least, not in the school holidays."

So Billy went and put his stable clothes on and then we went together to the stables, where he found me a horse that he thought would suit me, found one of his former colleagues to saddle it for me, and went and saddled up a horse for himself.

We rode out of the stables, around the rear of the house and off to the east, passing the æthership hangers and then breaking first into a canter and then a full gallop. It was the first time I'd been on a horse for four years, but it felt like only yesterday, and I revelled in the sense of freedom. We rode side by side until we reached the fence that marked the boundary between our estate and that of Lord Brookhampton, and there we wheeled to the left and rode down to the river.

"You've missed that, haven't you?" asked Billy. "Your face is almost shining."

"God, yes," I said. "I'd forgotten how good that feels. I'm looking forward to teaching Alex how to ride… well, actually, I'm counting on you to do most of the teaching. But it'll be really good when the four of us can do this together."

We trotted along the river bank until we reached the edge of the wood, and there we dismounted, hitched the horses to a tree and lay back on the bank to watch the clouds.

"I hope you're not missing the horses too much now that you're working indoors," I said, after a bit. "I suppose it's a bit of a sacrifice. I can only say that when I asked you to come and work with me I couldn't remember what it felt like to ride."

"I don't mind. I'd never have got to fly in an æthership if you hadn't asked me, and that was the best thing as has ever happened to me. Look…. Alex said as how I should make sure you know how much I enjoyed that, because otherwise you might not ask me to come next time. And I'll really like to – so as long as that's not presuming on you…"

"Of course it isn't. If you're sure that's what you want, then I promise that every time I fly you'll be with me."

He rolled onto his side facing me and propped himself up on his elbow, looking at me.

"You really mean it?" he asked.

"Yes," I said. "I do."

He hesitated – I'm sure there was some part of his brain that was screaming at him that what he was about to do was completely unthinkable, but somehow he overcame it, pulled me up to face him and hugged me hard. And of course I hugged him back. After a few seconds I started to find the position uncomfortable, so I flopped down onto my back once more, pulling him down on top of me. We lay like that for a couple of minutes, and then I realised that he was crying.

"Hey, Billy," I said, "what's wrong?"

"Nothing," he said. "Nothing at all. I'm just happy."

"Well, that's all right, then." And I hugged him a bit harder.

Eventually he pulled himself together and stood up.

"Come on," he said. "Let's have another ride – and there's something I want to show you."

So we got back onto the horses and Billy led me up the side of the wood and then back the way we had come, past the æthership hangars and on into the Long Meadow. But instead of either going down the path to the boathouse or up the meadow to the house, he took me straight across it to the far corner, where there was another path leading into the wood that was almost impossible to see until you got really close to it. Here we dismounted, tying the horses to a tree a bit further along the edge of the wood.

Billy took me along the path, which led deep onto the wood and sloped downhill, and I was fairly sure that if we followed it far enough we'd reach the river again. But before we got to the river the path opened out into a clearing, and here there was significant evidence of human activity: a couple of platforms had been built in the trees, and there were aerial runways dropping down from them, and other ropes which could be used for climbing or swinging. In one corner there was a proper hut, quite well constructed out of old planks and other bits of timber.

"This is our place," Billy told me. "The stable-lads, I mean. It's where we come to play when we're not working. The river is about another thirty yards away, so we swim sometimes, too, depending on the weather. I'm breaking our strictest rule by telling you about it, because nobody who isn't a stable-lad is supposed to know about it, but I thought it would be fair to tell you about it – it's your land, after all. And I thought as maybe you and your friends could come here if you can't think of nothing else to do."

"Nice," I commented, and I climbed the ladder to the nearest platform. It was well-constructed, too, fixed to the tree with several solid-looking supports.

"Who built this?" I asked Billy, who had followed me up.

"We had some help with the platforms," he admitted. "Two or three fathers helped us to build them. We wanted to be sure they were safe. But we made everything else ourselves."

I had a look at the pulley on the aerial runway that started on this platform. The Health and Safety people back in Alex's world would have thrown a fit if they had seen this: there were no safety features at all, no harness, no helmets and no brakes.

"Go on, then," invited Billy.

"After you," I replied, and so he took hold of the handle and launched himself into space. It seemed to go pretty quickly, and I wasn't convinced it would be safe to use, but Billy reached the ground unscathed and called to me to follow him. There was a rope attached to the pulley, so I pulled it back up to the platform, grabbed the handle, took a deep breath and jumped. And it felt great, and I even managed to land without falling over.

"Of course, that's only the small one," observed Billy, as we walked back to the clearing. "Wait till you try the big one."

The other platform was quite a bit higher up, and the runway from it was correspondingly higher and longer. A path had been cleared for this one – branches cut from trees, and so on – allowing it to reach the ground right next to the river.

"Sometimes we swim back from here," Billy said. "About a hundred yards downstream there's the place where the path from the clearing reaches the river, and it's easy to get out there. Maybe we can do that next time we come, seeing as how we haven't got any towels today."

"But then you'd have to walk all the way back here to get your clothes," I said.

"No, we undress in the clearing and leave our clothes in the hut in case it rains. Then we come down the rope to here and jump straight into the river."

"You mean you come down the line naked?"

"Of course. It feels strange, but sort of nice, too. I expect as how you'd be too afeared to do that, though…"

"Oh, do you? There's nothing you can do that I can't do too, you know."

"We'll see," he said, and led me back to the clearing. I thought maybe he was going to challenge me to use the line naked, but he didn't. Instead he took me from the clearing down the short bit of path that led to the river. A couple of ropes had been set up here for swinging out above the water, and the bank was clear of vegetation, making it easy to get in and out of the river.

Once I'd seen that we went back to the clearing and tried the rope swings and the aerial runways a few more times, and then we just lay on our backs in the middle of the clearing and watched the clouds some more, and that was so peaceful that I fell asleep. I was woken up by a voice I didn't know.

"What's this?" it said. "An outsider? Oh, boy, are you in trouble."

I sat up. The speaker was a tough-looking kid who looked older than me, with untidy mid-brown hair and a scowl on his face, and he was holding a riding-crop. Behind him were four or five younger boys, I guessed that they had to be stable-lads, but when I turned to ask Billy for confirmation of this I found that he was nowhere in sight.

"Look," I said, standing up. "I'm sorry about…"

"Shut up!" ordered the brown-haired boy. "You're not allowed to say anything until I tell you to, understand? You're trespassing, and boys who trespass here get stripped, whipped and thrown in the river, and if you can't swim that's just too bad. Now normally if someone is out of line we'd have a trial, but since you're obviously guilty – you're here, after all – we won't need to bother ourselves with that. Tommy, Bert, get his clothes off, then we'll draw lots to see who gets to whip him."

Two of the boys advanced on me.

"Wait!" I said. "You don't understand – I'm…"

"I said shut up!" shouted the leader. "One more word and we won't just whip you – we'll drag you through every bramble bush we can find before we chuck you in the river. Tommy, if he opens his mouth again, thump him."

The two boys grabbed me, pushed me over and started to undo my shirt. When I tried to protest one of them punched me in the stomach, and after that I was too winded to say anything. My shirt came off, and my boots, and then my trousers, and no matter how much I wriggled, there was nothing I could do: my socks and pants were removed and thrown off to one side. Then I was pulled to my feet once more.

"You've got a really small dick, you know?" commented the leader, grinning. "All right, tie him to the ladder."

The two boys pulled me to the tree that contained the lower platform and started to tie my hands to two of the rungs above my head, and then, just when I'd given up hope, there was an intervention.

"Reed, what the hell are you doing?" cried Billy, entering the clearing from behind the hut.

"Hello, Rodgers. Thought you were supposed to be working inside these days… anyway, we've caught an outsider – some stupid kid from the village, I suppose – and we're about to teach him not to trespass. I'll add your name to the list – I was about to draw lots to see who gets to beat him."

"You'd better not," said Billy. "Don't you realise who he is?"

"No. Should I?"

"Yes, you should. You've only gone and stripped the duke, you idiot!"

"The duke?" said the leader, turning pale.

"Yes, you cretin! Have you any idea how much trouble you're in?"

"Oh, my god… let him go!" cried the leader, frantically. "Oh, god, I'm sorry, Your Grace… but why didn't you say something?"

"I tried," I pointed out. "Three times. The first twice you shouted me down, and the third time Tommy knocked the wind out of me."

"Oh, bloody hell…"

I walked over to my clothes and got dressed once more, and while I was doing it the stable-lads were apparently contemplating all sorts of dire possibilities: the leader was trying hard to keep from trembling, and Tommy, who of course had actually hit me, had started to cry. I let them stew until I was dressed.

"All right," I said. "Now we'd better sort this out. You said something about holding a trial if someone steps out of line, so I suppose that's what we'd better do. How do you normally do it?"

"Well, usually we tell the accused what he's done wrong, and then he gets a chance to explain himself, and then we decide whether or not to punish him."

"That sounds fair," I said. "Does everyone get an equal vote?"

"Yes, but if there's a tie I get to decide."

"That sounds fair. Obviously you can't decide if you're the one on trial, though, and it wouldn't be fair for me to do it, since I'm the victim here, so who is the next senior of you?"

"I think that's me," said the other boy who had helped to strip me.

"And your name is..?"

"Bert Whitacre, Your Grace."

"Okay, Bert, you're in charge. I'll just let you do whatever you normally do."

"But… well… alright, then. Graham, I suppose you'd better get undressed."

The leader looked shocked. "But that's only… I mean… do I have to?"

"Do boys on trial normally have to strip?" I asked him.

"Well, yes – it's so we don't waste time if they're guilty: we can just tie them to the ladder and whip them straight away. But… look, can I talk to you for a moment, Your Grace?"

I let him lead me out of earshot of the others.

"So what's the problem?" I asked.

"Look, Your Grace, I have to tell the other lads what to do all the time. But if I have to strip in front of them I'll lose their respect."

"Why? Is there something wrong with you?"

"No, but… well, you know."

"Not really. I've just been stripped in front of you. Have you stopped respecting me?"

"Well, no…"

"There you are, then. Look… Graham, was it? Look, Graham, actually they'll respect you more of you're prepared to show that the rules apply to you, the same as to anyone else. If you try to wheedle your way out of it you'll just look like you're scared. Don't worry, I'll back you up if there's any problem."

He didn't look happy, but he nodded and began to get undressed. Once he was naked he came back and stood in front of the ladder facing his colleagues. There were one or two stifled giggles, but I'd got that too and I thought he could live with it, especially as there was nothing wrong with him: he had a fairly normal set of equipment for a boy of fifteen. Okay, his penis wasn't very long, but it was thick enough, his balls were a decent size, and he had plenty of hair, so he didn't really need to feel ashamed. About the only thing about him that was unusual was that he was circumcised, which I didn't think was common around here.

"What should we charge him with, Your Grace?" asked Bert.

"Oh, that he ordered his ruling duke to be assaulted, stripped and whipped, and that he acted illegally in denying an accused person the right to a trial," I suggested.

"That sounds fair. So how do you plead, Graham?"

"Guilty, I suppose."

"Anything to say in your defence?"

"Well, I didn't know he was the duke, obviously."

"You didn't give him a chance to tell you, so I don't think that's a valid excuse," said Bert.

"I think I'd accept it as valid," I said. "I'm quite sure he wouldn't have acted like that if he'd known who I was, so I'm happy to drop that charge. That just leaves the charge of denying me a trial."

"Who thinks he's guilty of that?" asked Bert, and everyone raised their hand.

"How do you think we should punish him, Your Grace?" asked Bert.

"Well, if I was feeling vindictive I'd say he should be whipped and thrown in the river," I said. "But I'm not, and as he isn't going to be the only person on trial I'd suggest we hold the sentencing for a bit. Probably we can all come to some sort of agreement on that later on. So, who's next? Tommy, I think you're charged with thumping your ruling duke in the stomach. How do you plead?"

"Shouldn't I get undressed first?"

"Go on, then," I said, thinking that this was proving to be a thoroughly interesting afternoon.

Tommy had some quite nice muscles but hadn't got too far into puberty yet: his penis was a bit bigger than mine, but his balls were still quite small and he didn't have any hair. Still, he made no attempt to cover it up.

"All right… I suppose I'm guilty," he said. "In my defence, I didn't know who he was either."

"And you were just obeying orders," I added helpfully. "Not that that's really a very good excuse."

"I suppose not… but I was just obeying orders, anyway."

"Who thinks Tommy is guilty?" asked Bert, and once again everyone did.

"Okay, next," I said. "Billy, I think that's you."

"Huh? What did I do?"

"You told me about this place, even though you'd promised not to."

"Well, yes, but… I mean, this is…"

"Clothes, Billy?" I interrupted.

He glared at me, but then stripped off.

"Now – you were saying?" I prompted.

"Well, this is all your land, so you ought to know about it."

"True, but you didn't actually have to tell me about it, did you? I mean, I'm glad you did, but technically you broke your word to the other lads, didn't you?"

"Well… yes, I suppose so."

Bert and the others once again quickly reached a verdict of 'guilty'.

"Okay, then," I said. "Next I think it has to be me." And I stood up and got undressed again, ignoring the various questions that were aimed at me until I was naked.

"I trespassed into a place that I knew was supposed to be only for stable-lads," I said. "I could say that, like Billy says, this is my land and I have a right to come here, but that's not necessarily true. I can't just barge into any of the cottages on the estate, and I can't just march unannounced into a servant's room in the house, either. Legally I suppose I might have the right, but morally I have to respect other people's rights, the same as I expect them to respect mine. The fact that I'm the duke makes no difference: the rules have to apply to me, just like they do to you, otherwise we get chaos. Once I start saying, 'I'm the duke, so the rules don't apply to me,' what's to stop Graham saying 'I'm senior lad, so the rules don't apply to me either'? The rules apply to everyone, including me.

"So probably all of us are guilty of something, and I suppose we all deserve to be punished. But can I suggest we just forget about it instead? Put it this way: I'll forgive Graham and Tommy for what they did to me if you can forgive Billy for spilling the beans about this place, and me for coming here even though I knew it was your place. What do you think?"

Bert consulted briefly with the other three boys and then said, "That's very generous, Your Grace. If you're sure? Then I'd say that all charges are dismissed."

"Good. Graham, did you guys bring some towels with you?"

"We always bring towels with us, Your Grace."

"Then I'd like to borrow one, if I might, because… well, since half of us are already dressed for it, I'd suggest we go swimming."

"All right. Um… did Billy tell you how we get to the river?"

"Oh, yes, and I want to try it."

"Then let's go," said Graham, dumping his clothes in the hut and then climbing up to the upper platform.

The next hour or so was a lot of fun: coming down the zip-line naked was an exhilarating sensation, and the water was pleasantly cool, rather than cold. Probably Wolfie would have told me that splashing about in the river naked with a bunch of stable lads was beneath my dignity, but I didn't care, because I was enjoying myself.

Eventually we got out and went back to the clearing. Graham handed me a towel, which I shared with Billy, and then we got dressed again.

"Graham, I'd like to make this place legally yours," I said. "I'll still be the landowner, obviously, but you'll be the legal tenants of this part of the wood, and that means that nobody can come here without your permission – including me. Yes, I can come to inspect my land, but only by appointment, and if I want to come here at any other time I have to ask you first, the same as I would have to with any of the other places I lease out. How do you feel about that?"

"That would be great – we could put up a proper 'Keep out' sign and it would actually be legal – we could even put up a sign that says 'Trespassers will be stripped, whipped and thrown in the river' and then nobody could say as how they hadn't been warned… thanks, Your Grace!"

"Of course, if it's a proper tenancy there would have to be rent," I said, enjoying the way his face suddenly fell. "We can discuss that later, once the papers have been drawn up."

"Oh. How much were you thinking?"

"I haven't decided yet. Probably something like a halfpenny a year."

His face lit up again. "I wouldn't mind paying that!" he said, enthusiastically.

"I didn't think you would. See, as far as I'm concerned you've put a massive effort into building all this, and you deserve to be able to enjoy it. The only condition would be that if you decide to build anything else you tell me about it first, all right? I'm supposed to know what's going on around here, after all."

"All right. We don't have any more plans anyway, but if we do think of something else to put up we'll make sure we tell you first."

"Good." I pulled my watch out of my pocket and looked at it. "And now we'd better move or I won't have time to change for supper. Come on, Billy."

We walked back up the hill to where we had left the horses and rode them back to the stables, where a couple of on-duty stable-lads took them from us.

"So why did you do that?" Billy asked me.

"What?"

"Telling them you'd make them the legal tenants."

"I didn't just tell them that, I'm going to do it. It's fair, Billy: you all worked hard to build those platforms and put the lines up. Besides, I should imagine I'll be quite popular in the stables after that – I can't imagine that I'll ever have to wait for a horse in future. Anyway, they're a nice bunch of lads, and it didn't cost me anything, so why not?"

"Even after they nearly gave you a whipping?"

"Well, they didn't, quite, because you popped up in the nick of time. Where did you get to, anyway?"

"Oh – I had to go… you know."

"Bad timing, Billy. Next time you'll have to stay with me even if it means you wet yourself, just in case something like that happens again."

He looked at me for a moment, trying to decide if I was serious, but then he realised I wasn't.

"Better you should get whipped than I mess up my nice uniform," he said.

"Nice uniform? You're wearing your old stable-stuff, and it's already pretty mucky."

"So what? I still don't want to make work for the laundry-maids. That would be inconsiderate."

"You're learning, Billy! A week ago you'd have been far too scared to make a comment like that."

"You're getting me into bad habits, Your Grace."

That evening after supper but before bedtime I paid up on the bet I'd made four years previously with Wolfie: we both went down to the wine-cellar, and there I stripped naked. Wolfie packed my clothes into a bag and let me into the secret passage, closing the door behind me and telling me that he'd meet me in the attic, while I groped my way to the foot of the staircase and began to climb.

It's hard to describe just how scary it was. It was pitch black, for a start: the passages had been built to make sure that no light could escape from them, and consequently no light could get into them either. I was basically OK while I was shuffling my way up the staircase, but once I reached the first floor landing it got more difficult, because although we'd come down from the top to the bottom a few days previously, I hadn't been from the bottom to the top for over four years, and I was having trouble remembering the correct route. Nor had we got rid of all the spiders, either: some had been industriously rebuilding the webs we had cleared, and walking blindly into a spider's web when you're naked is an unpleasant experience.

On the second floor I took the wrong way and found myself in one of the long dead-end passages, and I had to be particularly careful when retracing my steps because the stair back down to the first floor started without warning, and if I moved too fast I could easily fall down it. In the end I dropped to my hands and knees and did it at a crawl, but I still couldn't find the staircase up to the third floor.

By now I was close to panic. Surely I couldn't have got that far lost? I mean, this was the second floor… was it? Could I possibly have inadvertently discovered a new passage, one we hadn't seen before? No, surely not: I hadn't opened any doors or panels – at least, I didn't think so – and in any case a new passage would surely be wall to wall cobwebs, and this one wasn't. But I could hear a scratching noise somewhere ahead of me, and I was desperately hoping it was a mouse and not something bigger, and that wasn't exactly helping me to think clearly.

I had no idea how long I had been in there. It seemed like hours, but I was sure it couldn't really have been that long, because I was confident that Wolfie would have come looking for me with a lamp if I'd been gone that long. Unless… suppose something had happened to Wolfie? What if he'd fallen down the stairs, or something? Suppose we were both stuck, him with injuries that prevented him from moving, and me because I was hopelessly lost inside the walls somewhere?

Actually it was worrying about Wolfie that got me moving again. I stood up carefully, put my back to the wall and began to shuffle along sideways, checking carefully before putting my weight onto my lead foot and sliding my outstretched arm along the wall in the hope of finding the staircase. And eventually I reached the foot of the stair leading up to the third floor.

I went up it cautiously and reached the passage that led, if I turned right, to our headquarters. This was the part of the passage system that I knew best, but by now I'd had more than enough of it and was desperate to get out, so I turned left and felt my way along until I reached the staircase that went up to the attic. And at last I came to the end of the system… and I couldn't find the catch to open the panel. I was sure I was in the right area, but the catch eluded me. I moved my hand a little further up and put it straight into a cobweb, and I could feel the spider run across my wrist. That was just about the final straw.

"Wolfie," I shouted, hoping that he was waiting beyond the panel and not lying in a heap at the foot of a staircase somewhere, "I can't get out. Please could you open the panel?"

There was a silence which seemed to stretch away for eons but which was probably no more than ten seconds.

"If I open the panel," came Wolfie's voice, "then you haven't completed the course and you'll have to do it again."

And that's when I snapped. I started screaming, swearing and hammering on the panel, threatening Wolfie with extreme violence if he didn't open the panel immediately, and a couple of seconds later the panel swung open and I was able to stumble through it into the attic.

"God," observed Wolfie, "you look awful. Are you all right?"

"No," I said. "Just get me down to our room."

The damned spider was still dangling from my elbow, so I brushed it off, though I could see that there were plenty of other bits of cobweb on me, not to mention dirt from the floors on my hands and knees. So when we finally got back to our room I took a towel and used it to clean myself up as best I could. Really I needed a bath, but that would have to wait until the next day, because all I wanted to do now was to get into bed and go to sleep.

Wolfie had been getting ready for bed while I was using the towel, and so as soon as I had finished I was able to turn the light out and get in next to him. He cuddled up to me, and that made me feel a bit better.

"Was it bad?" he asked.

"It was horrible," I replied. "We'd never have been able to do it when we were ten: you get sort of turned around, and you completely lose track of where you are. I wasn't even sure what floor I was on some of the time. Of course it's probably a good idea in theory to be able to find our way down to the cellar in the dark, just in case we ever have to for real, but until you try it you have no idea of just how black it is in there. And then you start imagining things: you start hearing noises that sound like rats, or bats, or maybe something worse… I think it's probably the hardest thing I've ever done."

He didn't say anything, but he did hug me again, and that helped to calm me down. And to my surprise I got through the night without having any nightmares about being stuck in small, black spaces.

***

"Feeling better?" he asked me when I woke up next morning.

"A bit," I replied.

"Good. Let's see if we can turn 'a bit' into 'a lot'." He took hold of me and set to work, and by the time he'd finished I felt a lot better. And then it was my turn to make sure he felt good, too, and apparently I managed that very well.

"Of course," he said, as we started to get dressed, "what I said last night is still true: you didn't complete the course on your own, so you'll still have to do it again."

"Okay," I said. "But not for a week or so – I'll need to psych myself up before I try that again. And I'll want to spend a while exploring the passages with lights first, too."

I felt rather less daunted by the prospect in daylight: last night I'd have said I was never going into the passages again, but after a night's sleep and with the sun streaming into the room I felt a lot better about it.

I spent most of that day learning about the tax system: I was surprised to discover how little tax we were paying, although perhaps we were able to claim the cost of building and running Excalibur as a tax exemption. But when I asked what level income tax was here I discovered that it was only two shillings in the pound, which worked out at ten per cent.

"That's really not very much, considering that we're fighting a war," I observed. "Why doesn't the government put the rate up?"

"The landowners wouldn't stand for it," Mr Hall told me. "In any event, the government say they can manage with what they've got, and that's the important thing."

I wondered about that. If they charged a sensible rate they'd be able to afford far more ships and ætherships and still run the railways and the hospitals and so on. Still, I suppose nobody likes tax increases.

***

On the Saturday morning the four of us went to London. We walked to Culham Station – well, three of us walked, while Wolfie used his chair – caught a train to Didcot, where we changed onto the Great Western line into London. We were accompanied by a surprising amount of luggage which was taken to the station by waggon and loaded up by station staff, and at Paddington a couple of porters carried it out to the taxi rank and loaded it into a horse-drawn cab. This took us to the family town house, which was just off Berkeley Square, and when we arrived a couple of servants emerged from the house to carry the luggage in for us. I was starting to think that I liked not having to carry my own luggage – perhaps I could put up with being a member of the aristocracy after all…

Obviously my uncle had sent word to open the house up, because I discovered that we had a staff of a cook, three maids, two footmen and a boots, which seemed like about five people too many. Still, I suppose we were helping to keep unemployment down. Allchorn had said that we ought to have a butler too, but I argued that I was only intending to stay in town for two or three days and that one of the footmen could probably deal with any callers during that period.

After lunch we decided to go for a walk: Alex and I wanted to see something of this version of London. Wolfie opted to leave his chair at the house, and so all four of us were on foot once more. We strolled down to Piccadilly and started to walk in the direction of Piccadilly Circus.

The differences between this place and our own London were obvious: most of the traffic was horse-drawn, although there were some steam-trucks and one or two private cars around, too, and there was a completely different smell to the place: instead of diesel fumes there were hints of smoke, steam and horse manure. On the whole I preferred it to exhaust fumes, and I said so to Alex.

"True," he agreed. "But I think we're lucky the wind is blowing, because it's taking the smoke away. If the wind drops I should think there'd be a blanket of smoke and steam over everything – and in the winter, when everyone lights their fires, it must be impossible. Four million people, all relying on coal fires? There'd be so much smoke hanging over the city that you probably couldn't see to the other side of the street."

I thought about that and realised that he was probably right. I remembered Uncle Jim telling me that when his father was a kid, just after the Second World War, London suffered from some appalling episodes of smog, including one where it had been so bad that four thousand people had died. Probably the same thing would happen in this world, unless some means could be found to generate a strong wind that would blow all through the winter, something that I didn't think was possible in Alex's world, let alone this one.. I decided that I'd stay out at Culham during the winter months if it was at all possible.

We reached Piccadilly Circus and found the statue of Eros was no longer there: instead there was just an empty island in the centre of the road. Obviously there were no neon signs, something the Circus in Alex's world is famous for, and there didn't appear to be a tube station here either. Since there was no electricity in this world I supposed that made sense, although I'd thought that when the London Underground network first started it had used steam trains…

Anyway, we crossed over Piccadilly Circus and headed for Leicester Square. I have to say that this part of London didn't look quite so welcoming: the square appeared to be residential, and low-level residential at that, consisting mainly of grimy-looking tenements, and as we emerged on the far side of the square, crossed Charing Cross Road and turned up St Martin's Lane, so we found ourselves in an area of dirty streets, nasty-looking alleys and a complete lack of traffic.

"I don't like the look of this," said Alex. "Let's go back."

I agreed with him: this didn't appear to be an area to which the word 'wholesome' was ever going to be applied. There were people around here too, and they didn't look wholesome, either: in fact most of them were very shabbily dressed, and there were also numbers of beggars sitting in doorways, some dressed in some sort of military uniform, and all holding out cups and asking for alms. We made it back as far as Charing Cross Road, and then suddenly Billy yelled, "No, you don't!" and grabbed a boy who was running past. The kid was barefoot and dressed in rags, and the tattered jacket he was wearing tore as Billy grabbed it, allowing the kid to wriggle free, but Alex jumped on him before he got more than a couple of metres, and after that he wasn't going anywhere.

"What's happening?" asked Wolfie, a question I could have echoed.

"Check your watch," Billy told him.

Wolfie did so. "It's gone!" he cried.

"Not far," said Billy, and going up to the ragged boy he thrust a hand into the pocket of his torn trousers and brought out Wolfie's watch.

"You little bastard!" cried Wolfie. "My father gave me that watch! We must find a constable!"

"I don't think we'll find one here," I said. "But if we go down to Charing Cross there'll probably be some around at the station."

The boy struggled, but I knew from personal experience that when Alex has hold of you it's generally impossible to get free, and when Alex started to frog-march him down the road he couldn't do anything about it.

"Why did you do that?" I asked him.

"Why shouldn't I?" the boy replied, defiantly. "If a bunch of rich nobs like you decide ter come slummin' it rahnd the Dials yer deserve ter get turned over."

"You could have just asked for alms," I suggested.

"Yeah, and you'd 'ave told me to fuck off. I know wot nobs is like."

"You don't know us," I said, though I was aware of the fact that we'd ignored everyone else in the area who was begging.

"Nobs is all the same. What you doin' here, anyway? You lost or somefink?"

"Yes, as it happens," I said. "We're from… out of town. It's the first time we've been here."

"Lucky you never came after dark, then. You'd have wound up in the river wiv your gizzards slashed."

"Friendly neighbourhood."

"Yeah, for them wot's like us. For your sort? I don't fink so."

I turned to Wolfie. "If we turn him in, what's he going to get?" I asked.

"What do you mean, if? Of course we're turning him in!"

"What's he going to get?" I persisted.

"'Ow much is that timepiece worf?" asked the boy.

"I don't know," said Wolfie. "It was a present. But I'd guess it cost three or four hundred thalers."

"Well, then… fer a piece like that? Abaht five years 'ard, in the Ville if I'm lucky, in Newgate if not," the boy said.

"Five years in prison? Was it worth it?"

"Piece like that would've kept me and me mates fed fer weeks. But five years? I dunno."

"Well, he's going to find out," said Wolfie, who was still fuming. "Come on, Alex, keep him moving."

"What do you think, Alex?" I asked.

"For trying to nick Wolfie's watch? Hell, yeah!"

"So you think people who nick stuff should go to prison, then?"

"Well, obviously!"

"And do you reckon it's worse to nick something because you're hungry and you can sell it to buy food, or because you fancy a new pair of trainers and don't want to pay for them?"

That stopped him dead, of course.

"What's your name?" I asked the boy.

"Sparrer," he answered.

"What sort of a name is that?"

He shrugged. "That's wot they call me."

"And where do you live?"

"Dahn Bazalgette's 'otel."

"Where's that?"

"Blimey, yer don't know nuffink, do yer?"

"I told you, we're from out of town."

"Yeah, yer said. D'yer wanna see?"

"Okay, then. Where is it?"

"Dahn by the River. The way we're goin' will get us there."

"And will your parents be there?"

He laughed, a laugh which degenerated into a bout of coughing. "Ain't got no parents," he said, when he got his breath back.

"Me neither," I told him and that did get his attention. "What happened to yours?"

"Me ole man wuz in the army. Got killed by the Ivans when I wuz four."

"Mine, too," I told him. "He died six years ago. What about your mother?"

"'Er lungs gave out. I wuz abaht six. 'Er friend tried lookin' after me fer a bit, but then she got ill and I cleared out, 'cos I didn't want no fucked up lungs meself. Since then I've been on me own."

"And how old are you now?"

"Dunno for sure. Firteen, maybe fourteen. I dunno when me birfday wuz."

"You don't look that old. I mean, I'm fourteen, but I'm small for my age, and you're smaller than me."

"Ah, but the likes of us don't get the fine kwizzine like wot you nobs do, do we?"

"I suppose not. Now which way?"

"Turn left past the church, then dahn the side of the station."

So we did that, and then we went left into an alley, and at the end of the alley was a manhole cover.

"Dahn there," said the boy. "There's a jemmy behind them bins wot you can use to open it."

Billy went and looked and came back with a short crowbar, which he used to pry up the manhole cover.

"You're not seriously thinking of going down there, are you?" asked Wolfie.

"Well, yes, I am," I said. "But I agree that it would be better if we don't all go. You and Billy stay here, and if we're not back in fifteen minutes Billy can run up to the station and find a constable."

"Don't go," he begged. "It's not safe."

"Sparrer here has lived there for seven or eight years," I pointed out. "How dangerous can it be?"

"Yes, but, like he says, you're not like him and you don't belong there."

"True, but I still think we need to go. We'll be okay, Wolfie – my favourite ox is indestructible."

Alex didn't look as if he felt indestructible, but he didn't say anything, and so I started down the ladder. The tunnel I found myself in at the bottom smelled a bit unpleasant, but it was dry and I thought I could handle the smell. Sparrer followed me down and I made no attempt to grab hold of him when he reached the foot of the ladder.

"Ain'tcha afraid I'm gonna leg it?" he asked.

"By now you should have worked out that we're not going to turn you in," I said, "so if you want to leg it, do. But I'd like to see where you live, if that's all right with you."

He started laughing again. "You're mad!" he said. "I nick a wotch worf four 'undred nicker and you don't care? Fuck me, you must be stinkin' rich!"

"It's got nothing to do with money," I said. "Besides, we got the watch back, so no harm done, and it would be a bit hard if you get sent down for an unsuccessful theft. So, where do you live?"

By now Alex had joined us, and when he reached out to grab Sparrer again I told him to let him be, and Alex didn't argue.

Sparrer led us along the tunnel. The light wasn't very good, but there was daylight filtering down from some rain gratings overhead, and that gave us enough light to see by. After a bit he took a smaller passage off to the right, and that one dropped down a gradient into a much larger tunnel. This one did have about a foot of water in and it smelled a lot worse, too.

"How do you get used to the stink?" I asked.

He shrugged. "You stop noticin' it after a bit," he said. "Mind yer 'ead on this bit."

He went up a couple of steps into a much smaller tunnel. This was was almost completely dark and we had to bend almost double to walk through it, but fortunately it wasn't too long. It led to another broader tunnel that went off at an angle, and a short distance up this there was a hatch in the wall.

"They put this in fer the workers while they wuz buildin' this bit," he told us. "They took aht all the innards when they went, but it's dry, so we use it."

He opened the hatch and climbed through, and we followed him. At the end of a short passage was an underground room, maybe fifteen feet square, that was lit by a single oil lamp, and on both sides of the room were heaps of old newpapers, rags, cardboard and other rubbish. It was only when I looked more closely that I realised there were people sleeping in amongst the rubbish – kids, to judge from the size of the heads I could see.

"Hey, Auntie!" yelled Sparrer. "We got visitors!"

That roused some of the sleepers, who crawled out of their nests and stared at us, and then through a door in the far wall came some more kids led by an older girl, who might have been fifteen. The rest ranged from about five or six up to my own age, all of them dressed – if that's the word – in rags, or in a couple of cases nothing at all, all filthy dirty and all stinking to high heaven.

"'Oo are you, then?" demanded the girl.

"'E's a nob," Sparrer told her. "I tried liftin' his mate's wotch an' 'e caught me. But 'e sez 'e ain't gonna turn me in."

"That true, Mister?" asked the girl.

"Yes, that's true," I confirmed. "How many of you are there?"

"'Ere, in our place, there's… wot is it, Sparrer, thirty-eight?"

"Firty-seven," said Sparrer. "Whiskers got lifted, 'member?'

"Oh, yeah. So there's thirty-seven 'ere. Course, most of 'em's out workin' right now – it's just the little 'uns and them as is too sick to work 'ere at the moment."

"Working?" I asked. "You do have jobs, then?"

Sparrer laughed. "When she sez workin', she means on the rob," he explained. "Like wot I wuz doin'."

"That's right," the girl agreed. "Course, if you mean how many is there in the sewers, well, fuck only knows. Thahsands, anyway. Mostly kids. Adults 'as places of their own."

"Thousands? You're joking, right?"

"Gawd strike me down if I utter a word of a lie," she said, "but there's probly five or six thahsand kids living in Bazalgette's right now."

Alex and I stared at each other. Up to now I suppose we'd both been thinking this world was a lot better than our own, but now, suddenly, here was evidence that we'd been horribly wrong…

Chapter Ten

Alex and I looked at each other and then back at the girl.

"Aren't there any orphanages here, then?" I asked.

"Sure, if you fancy working yerself stupid and then probly gettin' raped every night," she said. "Prisons is better than that, so most of us prefer it dahn 'ere."

I was distracted by a flash from beside me, and when I turned I found that Alex had pulled his mobile phone from his bag, reassembled it and started to take pictures.

"They'll never believe this unless we have evidence," he explained.

"You're right. Carry on," I said, wishing I'd brought my phone too. "I'm going to try to find out why this is allowed to happen, and if I can offer some evidence it'll carry more weight. So how long have you been here?" I asked the girl.

"'Bout eight years, I fink," she told me.

"And how do you manage? Do you manage to nick enough stuff to keep everyone fed?"

"Usually. Course, nah and again we lose someone, and sometimes we 'ave to spend the money on med'cine instead… I know this dodgy doc 'oo passes me stuff for cash, off the books, like. And we can get food from uvver places – the Savoy 'Otel's just over our 'eads, and when the kitchen chucks aht its leftovers at the end of the night there's good stuff in the bins. Course, we're not the only ones as knows abaht that, so we 'as to fight for it…"

That conjured up a picture that I didn't want to think about. "Bloody hell…" I said. "Sparrer, come here a moment."

The ragged boy came close and I whispered in his ear.

"If I give her some money," I said, "will she spend it getting food and stuff for all of you, or will she just head for the gin-shop?"

"Ah, now yer sahnd like yer not so stupid!" he said, grinning at me. "Nah, she's alright. She might get 'erself 'arf a bottle, but the rest'll go on the kids 'ere. She's wot keeps us togevver."

"What's your name?" I asked the girl.

"Me name's Annie, but the kids 'ere all call me Auntie," she said. "I looks after 'em, see?"

"Right," I said, getting my wallet out and handing her all the notes in it. "There's about fifteen pounds here – that should help you out for a bit. I'm going to try to raise some more, and I'm also going to try to do something more permanent for you as soon as I can. But in return I need to borrow Sparrer for a bit."

"Fancy 'im, do yer?"

"No!" I denied loudly, feeling myself blushing at the very idea. "I just need someone who knows his way around your world, and he seems to."

"Oh, right. Didn't fink anyone could fancy 'im, to be honest – 'e's an ugly little sod."

"Fuck you, Auntie," said Sparrer, though without any animosity. "If we 'ave to sell ourselves, I'll make more than you every time."

"Only if the punters are blind. Anyway, milord, I dunno what you fink you're doin' dahn 'ere, but fanks for the folding stuff. We won't need to 'it the bins tonight."

"Don't spend it all on gin," I said.

"Don't knock it," she said. "When the world looks more like shit than usual, Muvver Geneever makes it look better… but, nah, we'll get food wiv this. I swear it."

"Come on, then," I said to Alex. "We'd better get back or Billy will be looking for the nearest copper. Sparrer, like I said, I need your help for a bit. Will you come with us?"

"Yer not gonna turn me in?" he asked, distrustfully.

"My word on it," I promised him.

"Then, orlright, I'll tag along. You're an entertainment, right enuff."

He led us back the way we had come. By the time we got to the manhole that led out of the system Wolfie and Billy were looking very jumpy: Wolfie had his watch in his hand, and Billy had already edged his way back along the alley.

"You're late," said Wolfie, accusingly. "We've been having kittens here."

"Sorry," I said. "We've been finding out about what passes for life down there. Why in God's name hasn't anything been done about it?"

"I think people up here like to pretend that the poor people don't exist," said Wolfie. "If you're out for a night at the theatre, or in an expensive restaurant, you don't want someone looking like our friend here hovering in the background, so they make sure the police do their job and keep them out of sight. And talking of the police – can we go and hand him over now?"

"No, we can't," I said. "I need him. I want to find out how widespread this problem is, and he's going to be my guide."

"What! No, Leo – you can't trust him! He'll drop you down a drainshaft somewhere, or arrange for you to get stabbed, or something!"

"No, he won't. Why would he?"

"To get hold of your wallet and watch, obviously!"

"My wallet is empty, and he knows that. And as for my watch… I don't think he will. Anyway, I'm going to trust him. After all, he owes me for not turning him in."

"That just means he thinks you're a soft touch!"

"'E's right," said Sparrer, unexpectedly. "I've never met a softer. But I still ain't gonna fuck yer abaht. I'll do what you want me to – at least until I get bored wiv it!" And he gave me another flash of his dirty teeth.

"Right. Then I want to see some of the other places the homeless use – adults as well as kids."

"Not wiv an empty wallet, yer don't," he said. "Kids is orlright, but grownups would do yer over fer yer wallet, an' when they find it empty they'll do yer in fer wastin' their time."

I thought about that. "Thanks, Sparrer," I said. "Okay, maybe we ought to postpone the expedition until I can get to the bank, or at least get some food to take with us. So let's just get back to the house for now. We can decide how to do this this evening."

"You're not bringing him with us, are you?" asked Wolfie, indicating Sparrer.

"Why not?"

"Because he'll sneak away in the middle of the night, taking everything that isn't nailed down with him."

"E's not stupid, yer mate," commented Sparrer. "E's got my number, orl right."

"You'd have to be pretty stupid yourself to do that," I replied. "Stick with me and I'll see that you're well looked after."

I thought that Wolfie had done enough walking for one day, and so once we were at the front of Charing Cross station I hired a cab. Of course, when we got back to the house I remembered that my wallet was empty, so I had to borrow a couple of pounds from Wolfie to pay the fare.

The reaction of the staff was interesting: it was a question of whether their professional poise could survive an encounter with someone who wouldn't normally have got within ten yards of the door without someone calling the police. In the end the senior footman's poise just about held out.

"Will the, er… gentleman be staying?" he asked me.

"Yes, but don't bother making up a room. He can come in with one of us," I said.

"Don't yer trust me?" asked Sparrer, grinning.

"Ask me again in the morning," I said. "Anyway, the first thing we're going to have to do is to find you some decent clothes… Billy's about the closest to your size, but I don't suppose you brought too many changes of clothing, did you, Billy?"

Billy shook his head. "I only brought one change of everything, and I'll want to use that myself tomorrow. I suppose we're going to church?"

"I suppose we will," I said, unenthusiastically. "Well, then I suppose I'm next closest. I'll see what I can find, but first, Sparrer, you're going to need a bath."

"Are you saying I smell?"

"You might not notice it yourself, seeing that you live in a sewer, but trust me, the rest of us can certainly smell it. Colby, can you check the cleaning cupboard and see if we've got anything suitable for disposing of, er…"

"Lice?" suggested the footman, looking at Sparrer over his glasses. "Fleas? Nits? Crabs, maybe?"

"Oi!" objected Sparrer. "I ain't got crabs!"

"Then we'll confine our search to methods of removing the other assorted livestock," said the footman. "And if we don't have any in the house I'll send out for some."

"Thank you, Colby," I said. "Bring them up to my room. It'll be easiest if we use my bath, I think."

We escorted Sparrer up to my room. Here I'd been unable to escape using the ducal bedroom, and although it wasn't quite as monumental as the one at Culham, it was still big enough. Sparrer's reaction wasn't so very different from my own.

"Bugger me!" he exclaimed. "Is this just for you? Yer could sleep fifty in 'ere wivaht any trouble:"

"I didn't choose it," I said, defensively. "Anyway, the bathroom's through there."

"Wot? No gold taps?" he said sarcastically, when he saw the bathroom.

"No," I said. "We had some, but we got rid of them because we thought that if you nicked them we'd end up with water all over the floor."

"Now yer getting' it!" he said, grinning. "Seriously, though, this is class. I ain't never seen nuffink like this!"

I started running the bath. "Okay," I said, "get those rags off. We'll find you something to wear afterwards."

"Fuck off! I ain't gettin' naked in front of this lot! I don't trust 'em."

"Why not?"

"Curly's a thug, Ginger-nut 'ates my guts, an' I don't need no lackey starin' at me."

"You're not making any friends here, you do know that?" I remarked. "Still, if that's what you want… go on, guys, we'll come and find you once we're finished."

"Watch him," said Wolfie, glaring at Sparrer. "I don't trust him an inch."

"Don't worry. Somehow I can't see him murdering me in my own bedroom."

Wolfie looked unconvinced, but the three of them went out, closing the bedroom door behind them

"Does that mean you trust me?" I asked.

"I don't trust nobody, but I reckon yer better than them. Anyway, yer soft, so if you laugh at me I'll smash yer face in."

"Why would I laugh at you?"

"'Cos I'm skinny as fuck and I ain't got much where it counts."

"Don't worry, neither have I," I admitted. "So I'm certainly not going to take the piss out of you."

"You better not." He started to remove his clothes, which were virtually falling off him anyway: everything was torn and patched and horribly dirty, and I thought that the best thing we could do with them would be to chuck the lot in the furnace.

"If there's anything in the pockets you want, get it out now," I said. "You won't be wearing that stuff again."

"Why not?" he asked. "Height of fashion, these are!"

"I doubt that, somehow. Look, I'll wait in the bedroom of you prefer."

"Nah, yer can stay. Maybe yer can scrub me back for us."

"Okay."

There was a knock at the bedroom door and Colby came in carrying a large block of soap, a scrubbing brush and two bottles.

"Put some of this in the water," he said, indicating the first bottle. "And wash his hair with this one. I've taken the liberty of asking a barber to call in an hour or so."

"Thank you, Colby, that's an excellent idea. If we cut most of it off the nits will have nowhere to hide."

"My thinking exactly, Your Grace."

Colby bowed his way out again and I took the first bottle through to the bathroom and poured most of it into the bath. Sparrer was waiting by the window wearing something that had presumably been a pair of underpants when they started out but which now looked like a scrap of rag that had been used for cleaning a particularly grimy kitchen.

"Come on, then," I invited him, and he whipped them off, dropping them on top to the pile of his other rags, and then came over to the bath, his hands held strategically over his main assets, and stepped into it.

"Fuck!" he gasped. "It's 'ot!"

"Oh shit, I'm sorry!" I said. "I thought I'd checked it and that it wasn't too hot."

"No, I mean… I ain't never 'ad a bath in 'ot water – we only got cold… is it safe?"

"It's safe," I promised him, "and it's a lot nicer than cold water, too. Sit down and see what you think."

Slowly he lowered himself into the water.

"It feels funny," he said, once he was sitting down, "but it's orl right… yeah, I like it."

"Good," I said. "Here's the soap. Get as far as you can, and give me a call when you want me to come and wash your back."

"You really gonna do that? I wasn't serious."

"Yes, I'll do it. It'll be easier than trying to do it yourself. Shout when you're ready."

I went back to the bedroom and started checking through my clothes. I'm not sure who had packed my trunk – Mrs Sweeting, probably – but they had put in far more stuff than I needed. I suppose the idea was to leave some of it here so that it would be ready next time I came to London, but whatever the thinking was, it meant that I had plenty of clothes here, and that meant that I could donate a set to Sparrer easily enough. I picked out a set of underwear, socks and a plain white shirt and then found the plainest trousers and jacket I could. That wasn't easy: apparently the tailor, perhaps on Uncle Gil's instructions, had made me a set of clothes that were, by the standards of Alex's world, distinctly ostentatious. But I found a pair of trousers whose purple colour wasn't completely ridiculous and a black jacket that, while unlike anything I'd seen in Alex's world, with an upright collar, wide lapels and a four-inch [10 cm] red cuff on each sleeve, looked fairly conservative for this world. Of course I was about four inches [10 cm] taller than he was, so the trousers wouldn't be a perfect fit, but they were a hell of a lot better than anything he owned right now.

"Oi, Your Nobbiness!"

"Watch it," I said, returning to the bathroom. "If you take the piss I might have to drown you."

"Sorry," he said, "but I dunno wot I'm sposed to call yer."

"My name's Leo," I told him. "That's what my friends call me, and I prefer it to the official stuff."

"Yeah, but I can't call a nob by his proper name, can I? There 'as ter be a law against that."

"Don't you start! I have enough trouble persuading Billy not to call me 'Your Grace' all the time. As far as I'm concerned you can call me Leo, and if anyone objects, refer them to me. Anyway, come to that, what sort of a name is Sparrer? That's never the name you were born with."

"Nah, but I got no idea wot me real name is. I spose I knew it once, but Auntie started calling me 'Sparrer' soon after I joined 'er mob, 'cos she reckoned I woz like a sparrer – there's thahsands of 'em in the sky an' in the parks and that, but nobody ever notices 'em. It's coz I can move abaht in crahds wivaht being noticed – well, usually. Your bloody lackey spotted me this time. Anyway, I been 'Sparrer' so long I forgot me real name."

"Well, Sparrow is a perfectly good surname. If you pick a first name to go with it you'll have an official name, although you can go on being called Sparrer if you want."

"Well… I'll fink abaht it. Sparrer will do for nah, though."

"Okay. So, you ready for me to wash your back?"

"I fink so. I done everyfink else."

He handed me the soap and leaned forward, and I set to work washing his back. When I'd done that I took the shampoo Colby had given me, turned on the spray attachment and washed his hair four times – I hoped that four times would be sufficient.

"Okay, that's enough," I said, rinsing it for the last time. "Now stand up and let's see what sort of job you've done."

"'Member wot I said abaht laughin'," he reminded me, and he stood up. I used the spray attachment to wash the soap off him and found that he'd done a pretty good job of getting rid of at least most of the grime. I also found that he hadn't been joking when he described himself as 'skinny as fuck' either: he was horribly thin, with every rib clearly defined. His limbs were mostly skin and bone, too. Of course, I couldn't resist checking out his other attributes, and he hadn't been kidding about those, either: he was smaller than me in every department, and he had no hair at all. I supposed that an inadequate diet might well result in late development. In any event, I decided that it would be better not to comment.

"Let's see your feet," I said, and he sat on the edge of the bath and raised his left foot. As I'd expected, the sole was still far from clean: I guess if you don't have any shoes and you live in a sewer it's going to be a while before all the dirt comes off the soles of your feet.

"You'll just have to give your feet a really good wash every time you have a bath," I said. "Provided that you wear shoes from now on you'll get them clean in the end. Okay, let's find you a towel."

I went to the cupboard and pulled out a large, fluffy towel, and while he used that I found a smaller one and used it to dry his hair. When he was done I led him through into the bedroom and showed him the clothes I had found for him.

"They won't fit perfectly, but we can get you something new on Monday," I said. "These'll do until then."

"Can I really wear these?" he asked.

"Well, you sure as hell can't keep wearing what you came in with," I pointed out, "and while it would be sort of fun if you were to walk about naked, I think the servants would object. So let's see if this stuff fits you."

The underwear and socks were fine, the shirt was a bit big but still looked pretty good, and the trousers needed the legs rolled up a bit and also called for a belt, because his waist was rather smaller than mine. And my shoes were a size too big, but that was obviously better than a size too small.

"They feel weird," he said. "I ain't worn shoes since… I dunno when."

"Time to get used to it again," I said. "Stick the jacket on and let's see how you look."

The jacket was a little large as well, but overall it didn't look too bad, and when I steered him in front of the full-length mirror beside the wardrobe his reaction was everything I could have wished: his face lit up.

"Fuck, look at me!" he exclaimed. "I'm a bleeding member of the uppah clarss!"

"You need to work on that accent a bit more," I said, grinning at him. "Okay, you can take off the jacket for now. Let's go and see if the barber has turned up yet."

By the time we sat down for supper Sparrer's hair was a lot shorter – in fact he looked like a new recruit who has just had his first military haircut. Actually, short hair suited him, though he wasn't quite sure about it himself.

Supper was interesting because we more or less had to teach him from scratch how to use cutlery, a lesson he wasn't particularly interested in learning, until I pointed out that he would have to learn if he was going to be staying with us for any length of time. Once he realised that if he did it our way he wouldn't have to return to his sewer for a couple of days at least he was much more amenable to learning, although it would be fair to say that the lesson was less than one hundred per cent successful.

That night I invited him to share my bed, mainly because I wanted to talk to him a bit more about life in the sewers, and he said he didn't mind where he slept, and that my bed would do as well as any other. But once we were in our room and getting ready for bed he said that I didn't have to share with him if I didn't want, and that he would quite happily sleep in the bath.

"No, I want you to find out how it feels to sleep in a normal bed for once," I said. "And, besides, we won't be able to talk if you're in the bathroom."

"Sure yer don't jus' fancy me?" he asked. "Maybe Auntie was right."

"What, when she called you an ugly little sod? Although I bet she'd say something else if she could see you now: now you're clean and you're hair's been cut I reckon you look pretty good."

"So yer do fancy me, then!"

"No, I don't. I said you're not bad looking, not that you're my type."

"Aha, so you do like boys! So wot is yer type, then?"

"I haven't got a type! I just said… oh, never mind. If you'd prefer to go and sleep with one of the others, feel free."

"No, fanks. Ginger-nut would strangle me in me sleep, and Curly would probly roll over in the night and crush me. I spose Billy ain't bad looking, but I've never been big on blonds, meself. I prefer nice black 'air, 'cept I like it straight, so you can stroke it easy, so Curly is gonna be aht of luck. So wot do I do wiv me clofes, then?"

"Oh, hang them up in that wardrobe. If you want something to wear in bed I can give you a nightshirt."

"No, fanks. Wot's the point of stuff you only wear in bed? If it's cold, keep yer clofes on; if it ain't, you don't need to wear nuffink."

And he removed his clothes, put them in the wardrobe and got into bed wearing 'nuffink'.

I stripped to my underpants, turned out the light and got in on the other side.

"Fuck, this bed is sumfink else," he commented. "It's that soft… I ain't never slept in a bed like this. It's good, though… so, orl right, nah yer can tell me the troof: why did yer bring me 'ere reely? 'Cos I don't believe all that bollocks abaht wantin' a guide."

"It's true," I insisted. "I want to find out just how bad the homelessness problem is, and you're the best person to teach me about it."

"Yeah, like you'd reely trust me not ter lose yer in the sewers, deliberately-like, or ter make sure no piss-head wiv meths fer brains don't cut yer up 'cos yer went where yer shouldn't."

"That's exactly why I want you, to make sure I don't do anything stupid."

"Yeah, right. An' wot's in it fer me? 'Cos you ain't doin' me no favours 'ere: ter gimme a bath and a set of clofes is orl fine, but 'ow d'yer reckon I'll feel goin' back ter Bazalgette's after this? Yer give me a glimpse of 'ow nobs live and then jes' tell me ter piss off back to me sewer when yer done wiv me? Fink I'm gonna be grateful, do yer?"

"I'm not going to send you back," I said. "I'll find you a proper job somewhere, either here or back at Culham. I'm not sure that Wolfie will approve, but it's my estate, so it's my decision. Because you're right: letting you live like us for a couple of days and then just dumping you back in your rat hole would be seriously cruel. I mean, obviously if you want to go back, you can, but I'm not going to make you."

He was quiet for a while after that.

"Yer reely mean that?" he asked, finally.

"Yes, I mean it. I'll definitely find you a job. Of course, it'll mean you have to work, and you might find it pretty boring after a life spent nicking stuff, but you'll have a home and you'll be fed and clothed and looked after. You'll get paid, too, so you'll be able to buy yourself sweets and stuff instead of having to steal like you do now."

He wriggled across the bed, grabbed me and hugged me hard.

"If yer do orl that fer me, I swear I won't never let yer dahn," he said. "And I'll even be polite to yer mates, even Ginger-nut."

I'd flinched slightly when he grabbed me, but then I realised that he now smelled of medicated shampoo and disinfectant, rather than of sewers, and that was actually quite nice. So I relaxed and hugged him back.

"D'yer wanna fuck me?" he asked, after a bit. "'Cos I won't mind if yer do."

I didn't know how to respond to that. I hadn't ever considered doing that with anyone, male or female, and so far my entire sex life had consisted of mutual masturbation with Wolfie or Alex, and I hadn't done even that more than a couple of times – at least, not in the past four years.

"I'm clean," he went on, when I didn't answer him. "I know, 'cos I've never done it, yer know? Yeah, some of the boys at Auntie's are on the game, but I've never 'ad ter, 'cos I'm a good dipper. A couple of 'em like it – they reckon it makes 'em feel good, an' my mate Albie reckons getting' shagged makes 'im come ev'ry time, but I don't fancy lettin' some drunk ole man 'ave me up the arse for 'alf a crahn. So I stuck ter dippin' wallets an' wotches. And I ain't never done no-one else, neether – not even Albie, an' 'e wanted me to – 'cos… well… my prick ain't reely big enuff yet. So I'm a genwine virgin. So if yer want ter 'ave me, I'm not gonna give yer nuffink 'orrible, like the clap an' that."

"Why, Sparrer, what an enticing, romantic invitation!" I said, and he cracked up laughing, and so did I.

"Thanks," I said, when we had both recovered. "I mean that. But I'm a virgin too, and I don't think I'd know how – and to be honest I'm not all that big either, so it probably wouldn't do a lot for either of us. Maybe if you still want to when we're both a bit older – and bigger – I might take you up on it, but for now I'm happy just to cuddle a bit. If you don't mind, that is?"

By way of answer he hugged me again, and that felt good, and so eventually I fell asleep with the scent of medicated shampoo in my nostrils.

Next morning after breakfast we went, accompanied by the servants, to St James's Church. Fortunately the vicar here didn't know who I was, and I managed to prevent Colby from telling him, which meant that I was able to remain safely anonymous throughout the service.

After lunch the five of us went to the library. It was a bit smaller than the one at Culham, but it still held a good number of books, and also – and this was what I had been hoping for – a street map of central London. Sparrer couldn't read, of course, but got the idea of which blob on the map represented what, and when I pointed out the entrance to his own part of the system, and the Savoy Hotel, which was almost above Auntie's place, he was able to indicate some other places where homeless people lived.

So on the Monday we went to a large bakery and bought up as many rolls and small loaves as we could carry, and then Sparrer took us to some of the places where homeless men tended to congregate – around and beneath the main line railway stations seemed to be a popular choice.

"If this goes wrong, maybe I'll get a chance to see how fast I can run," Wolfie said as we approached Westminster Bridge Station (which in Alex's world was called Waterloo).

"Good point," I said. "Maybe you and Billy should wait outside."

"Oh, no! We did that last time, and I was worried sick. This time I'm coming in – I'm sure I'll manage to move fast enough if I have to."

"We should have brought his chair," commented Alex. "I can't imagine that anyone would attack a kid in a wheelchair."

"That's a really good point," I said. "Wolfie, maybe we should do that tomorrow."

"Yer wouldn't get a chair dahn where we're goin'," said Sparrer, and a couple of minutes later we saw what he meant: getting down to the area the homeless used meant scrambling down a dirt slope and almost crawling under a disused platform. And even though it was daytime, when anyone who could do so was out begging or stealing or whatever else they did to pass the day, there were still close to fifty people down here, most of them in poor health, to judge by the amount of coughing that was going on.

At least none of them had the energy to attack us, though a few gave us some verbal abuse about 'fucking do-gooders' who ought to just leave them alone. But most seemed happy to grab some bread from us, and I was able to talk to some of them and got their stories – invalided out of the army, or got too ill to work and so lost their job, or had come to London from the country but couldn't find work and didn't have the money to travel back home… Today I'd brought my mobile, and so both Alex and I snapped off some photos.

Then Sparrer took us somewhere else, and so on for the rest of the day. When we ran out of bread we bought some more and carried on.

We spent Tuesday in much the same way, and by the time we got back to the house on Tuesday evening we had plenty of photos and even some spoken testimony: that day I'd taken the computer with us and used the inbuilt recorder.

I'd have liked to go straight to the authorities, but even though I was supposed to be an adviser to the king I thought it unlikely that I could just march straight into the palace and start stirring things up. So instead I decided to go back to Culham and ask Uncle Gil for his advice. I checked with Sparrer that he wanted to come with us, and he said he'd like to see what the country looked like, and so on the Wednesday morning after breakfast we left the house, intending to walk down to Piccadilly to find a cab. And we found that the weather had changed: we were in thick mist.

"Wind's dropped," observed Sparrer. "There's always mist when there ain't no wind. It comes off the River, see?"

"Well, it's a damned nuisance," I said. "Come on – if we walk up to the Ritz we should be able to get a cab there."

We walked carefully along the pavement. At one point I almost walked into a pillar box that loomed up through the mist. Then I realised that Alex had stopped.

"What's up?" I asked him.

"Does this remind you of anything?" he asked me.

"Like what?"

"Like the night the Anagrams dropped us off by Stonehenge. The stones inside the circle appeared out of the mist just like that post box did…and I was wondering – suppose the hole can only appear when there's no wind? If it's not very stable, maybe a strong wind could blow it away. Perhaps it can only appear when the weather is calm…"

"Calm enough for mist, you mean? You could be onto something there," I said. "Remember the guide saying there was often mist around the stones even when there wasn't any anywhere else? Maybe the mist appears when the hole is open. They'd never realise it because in your world nobody is allowed inside the stones except on special occasions like the solstices, and in this one people hardly ever go there anyway… good one, Alex. Maybe we've got a way back after all. All we have to do is find out when the weather's expected to be calm – and we know they have a fairly decent weather forecasting system here because you need it to know when it's safe for ætherships to fly. I'll have a word with Uncle Gil when we get back and find out how far ahead they can forecast the weather, and then we can arrange to have another go at looking for the hole."

"And if we find it, will you come with me, now you know this world isn't quite as perfect as we thought?"

"No, I don't think so. Maybe I can actually do something about it – I want to try, at least. But it would be good to know that it's possible to go back if things change."

We reached Piccadilly and walked up it as far as the Ritz Hotel, and there, as I had hoped, we were able to get a cab back to Paddington.

We didn't have to wait too long for a train, and soon we were on our way back to Didcot. Once we got clear of London the mist cleared, and Sparrer stared out of the window.

"Where's all the 'ouses?" he asked.

"There aren't any out here – well, there are a few, but it's not like in London. This is mostly farmland, where most of the country's food comes from. Haven't you been out of the city before?"

Sparrer shook his head slowly. "I mean, yeah, yer sorta know London 'as to end somewhere, but I'd never imagined it like this."

"It was the opposite for me," Billy told him. "I'd spent my whole life in the country, so when I saw London from Excalibur it was like seeing another world."

"Wot's an Excal… wotever you said?"

"It's my uncle's æthership," I told him. "We flew over London a week or so ago."

"You got a flying machine? Fuck, I'd like to go up in one of them."

"It's amazing," Billy told him. "I'd never been up in one before, and it's incredible – everything is spread out underneath you, and you can see for miles and miles. It was the best day I've ever had. And Leo says as how I can join his crew when I'm old enough. I expect he'll let you join too, if you're going to come and live at the house."

"Yer fink? Oh, wow – I can't imagine it, but I sure as fuck wanna try."

"I'm sure it'll be all right – won't it, Leo? After all, sparrows are supposed to fly, aren't they?"

"I don't see why not. I'm not sure when we'll be going up next, but of course I'd like you all to come."

"Great!" said Billy. "You're really going to enjoy it, Sparrer."

"Tell us all about it – please?"

"Well, first of all, it's really big. You can't really tell when you see them flying overhead, but when it's on the ground it looks really huge. And there are little rooms attached to the bottom of it…."

Billy went on giving Sparrer a blow-by-blow description, and I was pleased, if a little surprised, to see them chatting happily together. Maybe flying can do that – bring people together, I mean.

We got off the train at Didcot, rescued Wolfie's chair from the guard's van and crossed to the Oxford platform.

"You realise you've hardly used your chair once since we set out for London?" I asked him.

"I know. I still get a bit sore, but it's not as bad as when I first stopped using it. Maybe next time we come to London I'll risk leaving it at Culham."

"See? I knew you could do it!" And although we were not alone on the platform I still gave him a hug.

It was only two stops up the line to Culham, and so we were back at the house shortly after midday. I hadn't thought to send a message warning them that we were coming back and so there was no meal prepared, but I told Cook we'd settle for a sandwich and catch up with a proper meal at supper time, and that solved that problem.

Once we'd eaten Billy volunteered to give Sparrer the tour of the house and said he'd speak to Mrs Sweeting and get a room made up for him on the third floor, and that left the rest of us free to go and talk to my uncle, but that didn't turn out to be a very encouraging conversation.

"Nobody wants to know," he told us. "The Government has other things to worry about, and in any case they'll tell you there's no money available."

"Then why don't they raise taxes? Ten pee… I mean, two shillings in the pound is ridiculously low. They'd only have to raise it by a couple of pence, and if they don't want to admit it's going to help the homeless they can always claim they need it to build more ships or something."

"No government likes raising taxes, because it almost guarantees they'll lose the next election. And even if you could persuade them to raise taxes, they'd really want to spend the extra on defence. There aren't any votes in helping the homeless."

"Votes aren't everything, surely? And…" I thought of Squire Cheevers. "Isn't it our Christian duty to help the poor?"

"I don't want to sound cynical here, but most people are happy to do their Christian duty as long as it doesn't cost anything. In fairness, the churches do their best to help out, providing food and a few beds where they can, but the churches aren't exactly rolling in money. But I can almost guarantee that the response, if you tried persuading people to donate money, would be that the poor should learn to stand on their own two feet."

"Really? On Monday I was talking to a man who didn't have two feet, because the Russians shot one of them off. These men fought for us, and now we're prepared to let them starve in the gutter? What kind of world is this?"

"Leo, it's good that you care, but really there isn't a lot you can do to change people's attitudes. And to be honest I doubt if your friend's world is so very different."

I had to admit that was true, but even so… "Well, can I at least try?" I asked. "Am I allowed to address the House of Lords? I presume I've got a seat there."

"Not until you're twenty-one," my uncle told me. "But it might be possible to arrange something. Just don't get your hopes up – an extra two pence in the pound would hit most landowners hard. Oh, they can afford it, but if you think they're just going to nod and smile and blithely hand over an extra two thousand a year in tax without a pause, you're going to be disappointed. Still, I'll see what can be arranged. Maybe if you can interest the newspapers it'll help, but I'd still advise you not to get your hopes up."

"Well, that wasn't very hopeful, was it?" I said, once we were back in my room.

"No, but then your uncle was right," said Alex. "If the government tried raising taxes to help the homeless in my world… well, you can imagine the response. About the only way you're going to persuade the government to put more money into helping the poor is if you persuade the Tsar to abandon the war and go back to Moscow. Then the money could be used for helping the poor instead of building airships."

"St Petersburg," I corrected, absently. "Here that's the Russian capital. But you're right: if the war ended… Okay, we're going to have to do what we talked about before: when you go back home – and let's hope you're right about the hole being there in calm weather – you'll have to get hold of everything you can find about electricity, radio, telephones and helium – and anything else you can think of apart from petrol engines and nuclear energy – and bring it back here. Maybe we can patent some of it – that ought to bring in some money, and we can use that to sort out some sort of decent accommodation for the kids in the sewers. And whether we can do that or not, we ought to be able to find some means of using it to win the war, and then maybe the government won't have any excuse."

I'd already started to sort out some jewellery to give to Alex that would enable him to buy books and so on. I wasn't sure how much it would fetch in his world, but I thought it would be enough for what we wanted.

"You realise I might be gone some time?" he said. "After all, presumably the weather is different here from in my world, and I suppose the hole won't open unless it's calm on both sides. So even if I do manage to get through it from this side there's no way of knowing how long it'll be before I can get back. I don't think you'll be able to camp out waiting for me – it could be weeks."

"I hadn't thought of that," I admitted. "What'll you do?"

"Well, I could start by going and rescuing the tent. I should think the guy at the camp-site will have held on to it, since we still owe him some money. And then I suppose I could camp out there for the return journey too and just wait until weather conditions are right. Better hope that doesn't take too long, though."

"There's often mist in the autumn," I pointed out.

"Yes, but we're still in August! Maybe if the police aren't after me I could stay at home until the forecast looks right… anyway, that'll be my problem. I'm not sure how I can get from Stonehenge back here if the hole does reopen, though – I can hardly go and bother Squire Cheevers again."

"I don't think he'd mind, but maybe it would be better not to. Let's find out where the nearest railway station to Stonehenge is – if it's in walking distance you can walk there and get a train back here. Just make sure you take some of this world's money with you."

We went to the library and checked in Bradshaw's and found that the nearest station to Stonehenge was either Porton or Wishford. Wishford was probably slightly closer, but from there he would have to go into Salisbury and change.

"I'll worry about that if I get that far," he said. "Now, how do we get the local weather forecast?"

My uncle had disappeared, so we went and asked Mr Hall, and he told us that there was a page in the daily paper which was generally very reliable for the day ahead and, as he put it, just about better than nothing for the next two days after that. And according to today's paper it was likely to be windy at least through the following day.

Eventually Billy and Sparrer finished their tour and came and found us.

"This 'ahse is massive!" commented Sparrer. "I reckon all us lot wot live wiv Auntie could get in 'ere easy!"

"Maybe you could," I said. "But I'd never find work for everyone, and I think you'd miss London. It'll be far better if I can find you somewhere to live there, where you can get to schools easily and the older ones can find work."

"I know. I was jus' sayin', that's all."

For the next day or so we took it easy. Billy showed Sparrer round the grounds, including a visit to the hanger where Excalibur was kept, while Alex and I tried to think of modern technology that might be of use in the war. We thought that probably a lot of military hardware might be useful – like guided missiles, for a start – but we thought it might not be easy to get too much information on stuff like that.

On the Friday the weather was calm, and according to the paper it was supposed to stay that way throughout the day, and so Alex got his belongings together and I arranged for Murdoch to run us back to Stonehenge straight after supper, as that would give him time to get back to Culham before it got dark. We took the tent again, because if we found the hole I'd still need somewhere to stay overnight until Murdoch could come and pick me up on the Saturday morning. And because I didn't fancy staying in the tent on my own I asked Sparrer if he'd like to come with us to keep me company. He didn't really understand where Alex might be going, but he agreed all the same.

"It's going to be crowded if we don't find the hole," Alex pointed out.

"I'm sure we'll manage, I said.

Billy and Wolfie came to see us off.

"You're definitely coming back, aren't you?" Billy asked Alex.

"Of course I am. This world is far more interesting than mine."

"Promise?"

"I promise."

"Sounds like Billy's going to miss you," I commented, once we were in the steam-car.

"We get on pretty well," said Alex. "I shared his bed while we were in London, as well as here, and we've got used to each other."

"Have you?" I asked, grinning. "Is there anything else you want to tell me?"

"No," said Alex, virtuously. "We're just friends."

"Hah!" put in Sparrer. "So 'ow come Billy reckons you got a big prick, then?"

"He told you that?" asked Alex in surprise.

"'E told me lots of stuff. But 'e certainly likes yer."

"He's only human," said Alex, grinning.

This time Murdoch dropped us off right next to the stones, and so we were able to get the tent up, in the same place as on our previous visit, very quickly. We had an hour or so to wait before it got dark, so we went into the tent and Alex got his cards out. And I wasn't particularly surprised when Alex suggested playing strip poker, nor when Sparrer agreed. What did surprise me was how well Sparrer played – in fact he did so well that I found myself wondering if he was cheating. I didn't care too much, though, because I wasn't the one losing: that was Alex, comprehensively. He lost his boxers before either Sparrow or I had even had to remove his shirt.

"Shit, Billy was right!" commented Sparrer, staring. "That's a nice package! Bit too much 'air for my liking – it gets in the way – but yer got big bollocks and a huge prick. Betcha I can get it bigger, though."

He took hold of it and Alex didn't object in the slightest, and pretty soon it was fully erect.

"Fuck, that's big," said Sparrer. "'Ow long is it?"

"Five point six inches [12.2 cm]," said Alex, promptly.

"Huh? When did you start measuring it?" I asked.

"Billy measured it for me on Sunday evening," he admitted.

"Oh, did he? That doesn't sound like acceptable Sabbath behaviour!"

"You're just jealous!"

""Well, if Leo ain't, I sure am," said Sparrer. "An' I bet you got lots of spunk too. Lie dahn an' we'll find aht."

Alex lay down without any hesitation and Sparrer lay down next to him, took hold and started to rub slowly.

"Leo, lie on 'is uvver side and stroke 'is balls," suggested Sparrer, and I thought that was a nice idea, and so I did.

We had plenty of time, and so we didn't rush it at all. Sparrer and I took it in turns to rub, the non-rubber stroking Alex all over, but especially round his balls, and by stopping every now and again we were able to draw it out for a very long time. Eventually Sparrer took hold once more and began to do it a little faster, and this time he didn't stop. Alex arched his back, cried out and spurted several times, the first jet reaching his neck, and by the time Sparrer finally let go there was quite a lot of sticky white stuff on his chest and stomach.

"Bloody 'ell," commented Sparrer, his eyes almost popping out, "I ain't never seen no-one 'oo can make that much!"

I dug into Alex's bag and found his tissues. By the time he had cleaned himself up and we'd all got dressed it was almost dark outside, and when we looked towards the stones we could see that it was misty all around them. Alex picked up his bag and we walked to the circle, making our way around to the north-west arch – and when we looked through it this time we could see the path and the rope, although looking from any other angle there was nothing there but grass.

"So now we know," I said. "The hole is through this arch, so at least you won't have to spend ages looking for it next time. Is the battery in your phone?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Then disconnect it before you go through. Take mine – there's no reason for the police to be looking for me – and then go through and call your parents."

He dismantled his phone, took mine and stepped through the arch, and once he reached the path he called his home number. We couldn't hear the conversation, but after a couple of minutes he hung up and came back to the arch.

"It's okay," he reported, handing me back my phone. "Nobody seems to be looking for me. I'll call a cab to take me into Salisbury, and I should think I should still be able to get a train back to London tonight. Then I'll start getting together all the stuff we talked about. I'll be back as soon as I can, but obviously it'll take me a while to find everything we need, and then I might have to wait for the weather, so I suppose I'll see you when I see you. But thank you both for just now in the tent: that was a hell of a send-off!"

And he grinned at us, hoisted his bag onto his back and set off down the path. I watched him go until he disappeared into the mist, and at that point I turned and led Sparrer back to the tent.

"It's a bit early ter go ter sleep," he said, "so let's you an' me play some more cards."

Alex had kindly left his pack in the tent, and so we closed the flap and started playing again – and once again Sparrer was soon winning. And then he got clumsy.

"Cheat!" I accused him. "You just dealt off the bottom!"

"Took yer long enuff ter spot it," he said, grinning.

"I thought you'd been winning a bit too often this evening!"

"A mate of mine at Auntie's does the three-card trick – find the lady, yer know? – an' 'e taught me some moves. First time I've 'ad a chance ter try wiv a real sucker – no offence."

"Plenty taken," I said, glowering. "Take off everything except your trousers and underpants, and I'm dealing from now on."

But despite that I still lost, though at least I was confident that I'd lost fair and square. Soon I was lying on my back and he was stroking me.

"See wot I mean abaht 'air getting' in the way?" he said, tickling the base of my penis. "You ain't got much, but if we was goin' ter do this a lot I'd tell yer ter pluck 'em aht. Albie does that 'cos the punters prefer 'im smooth – not that 'e 'ad much anyway, an' 'e sez 'e likes it better wivout 'air… Course, I'd like ter 'ave the choice…"

"You will," I promised him. "Once you've been eating properly for a bit your body will get back to where it should be and you'll start to grow, and then you'll reach puberty."

"I 'ope so. You got any spunk yet?"

"A little."

"I 'aven't. So let's see wot we can get outa you."

Once again he took his time, and it felt really, really good. Wolfie was good at this, and so was Alex, but Sparrer was better, and I suppose that if he'd practised with friends who were rent boys he'd have learned some pretty good techniques.

"'Ow's it coming?" he asked, stopping yet again after about fifteen minutes.

"It's amazing, but I'm not there yet," I told him.

"Yer not meant ter be," he told me, grinning. "Yer don't get ter come until I fink yer deserve it! I don't fink this fing of yours is gonna get any bigger, though, is it? 'Ow long is it?"

"I don't know. Billy's never asked to measure me."

"Let's find out, then," he said, and he held one of the playing cards against me and found that it was exactly the right length.

"If this is a standard card, that makes yer free and an 'alf inches [9 cm]. You 'ave ter know 'ow big the card is ter see if it'll fit up yer sleeve," he explained.

"That's pretty small, I suppose," I said, gloomily.

"It's smaller than Curly, right enuff, but it's still 'alf an inch more than I've got, so don't worry abaht it. An' we still 'aven't seen wot it can do yet, so let's get on wiv it." And he got on with it, and after a few seconds I stopped worrying about my lack of size and just enjoyed the sensation, a sensation that got better and better until finally I had an amazing orgasm – and I'm sure I produced more of my watery stuff than I had before.

"See?" he said, scooping some of it up with his finger. "You got nuffink ter worry abaht."

I grabbed a tissue – Alex had also left us the box – and wiped myself down.

"Okay," I said. "Get those pants off – it's your turn."

"Yer don't 'ave ter," he said.

"I know, but I want to. It's not fair that me and Alex both got to feel good and you didn't. I've told you, round here we all share stuff."

"Well… if yer really don't mind," he said, and he slipped his pants off and lay back. He was already stiff, so I was able to get straight to work, and soon I had him wriggling about, much like Wolfie did. I stopped a few times, but eventually I just kept going until his whole body tensed up and he gave a stifled gasp. I held on tight until his erection stopped throbbing and then slowly let go.

"Was that alright?" I asked.

He nodded. "Yer good," he said. "I bet yer done that a few times before."

"A few," I admitted. "Anyway, I'm going out for a pee. Back in a minute."

I took a few steps away from the tent and started to pee, but before I was finished Sparrer appeared at my side.

"Good idea," he said. "Yer strange, Leo: anyone 'oo saw yer ternight would never guess yer a duke, wot wiv 'avin' a wank wiv a guttersnipe like me an' then pissin' in the open like this…"

"Guess I'm just an unusual duke," I said.

"You are, at that," he agreed, "but I fink you'd be a good mate 'owever you lived an' 'ooever you were. If you lived wiv me dahn Bazalgette's I reckon we'd be solid. So I'm goin' ter try ter do me best livin' in yore big 'ahss not ter let yer dahn. I'll even let yer learn me ter talk proper – if yer can."

"Now there's a challenge!" I said. "To be honest, I don't care how you talk, but if you can posh it up a bit it might help other people to take you seriously – especially if Uncle Gil can fix it for us to talk to the Lords. Because I want you to come with me and tell everyone what it's like in the sewers."

We went back to the tent and I got into my sleeping bag while Sparrer wrapped himself in the blankets he'd brought. I lay awake for a while, trying to think of things to say to convince people that we should be doing more for the homeless, but instead I found myself worrying about Alex. Just how stable was the hole? Maybe it only appeared very occasionally, in which case it might be ages before he was able to get back. And would it really be safe for him to go back home? It was still only three weeks since the riots – probably the police were still working their way through all the CCTV evidence. If things went badly it might be months, or even years, before I saw him again…

Chapter Eleven

When I woke up next morning I saw Sparrer propped up on one elbow looking at me.

"You orlright?" he asked.

"I think so. Why?"

"'Cos you was wrigglin' abaht an' talkin' to yerself. I fort you was 'avin' a bad dream or sumfink."

"I can't remember one."

"Then maybe yer worryin' abaht Curly. 'E'll be orlright – e's tuff enuff."

"I hope you're right," I said. "It's whether or not he can get back that worries me. We've been friends for a long time, and I'd really miss him if he couldn't get back here"

"Well, there ain't no point in worryin' abaht it. 'Ave we got ter get up yet?"

I looked at my watch, which I'd put down beside the sleeping bag. "No, not yet," I told him. "Murdoch won't be coming to pick us up for a couple more hours."

"Then d'yer wanna play some more cards – or shall we skip the cards an' jus' get on wiv the sex?"

"You don't believe in subtlety, do you?" I commented. "Still, when you put it like that… let's skip the cards this time."

"Good! I was 'opin' you'd say that. Open yer bag aht so we can both lie on it."

So I unzipped the sleeping bag and laid it flat, and Sparrer came and lay down next to me, pulling his blankets over us to keep us warm. To start with we just lay quietly with our arms around each other, and that felt good, and I wondered if we shouldn't in fact just stick to that – after all, I was supposed to be committed to Wolfie… or I supposed that I was supposed to be committed…

Actually I wasn't quite sure how sex fitted into our relationship. Before the day Daedalus went down we'd certainly masturbated each other, but I don't think either of us had considered it to be in any way separate from the rest of our friendship, and certainly I hadn't really thought of it as 'sex' at the time: it had just been something we'd done to make each other feel good. Now that we were older, however, it did seem more significant, but we hadn't taken any vows of exclusivity, and I hadn't felt guilty about doing stuff with Alex, not even after I got my memory back. But did that mean that it was okay to do stuff with Sparrer? And if Sparrer, why not Billy, or why not even get into a complete orgy with Graham Reed and a dozen of his fellow stable-lads? How would Wolfie feel about that?

Actually I thought that Wolfie would probably be fine about it as long as he got to join in, but maybe that was just wishful thinking on my part. I decided that I probably ought to have a long talk with him when we got back, just to clarify how he felt about… well, sex and stuff.

In the meantime something – either my fantasising about an orgy with the stable lads or the way Sparrer was nuzzling against me – or possibly both – had got me aroused, and so I decided to seize the day and make the most of the fact that I was in bed with a nice-looking and completely naked boy. I pulled him on top of me and began to stroke his back, and he gave a sort of purr and nuzzled against me some more. Then, after a couple of minutes, he slipped off to my right side, took hold of my erection and began to stroke it gently.

"Nah," he said, after a couple of minutes of this, "I reckon as 'ow we should do it different today." And before I'd worked out what he was doing he had wriggled down beside me and taken my erection in his mouth. And that felt very, very strange, but at the same time very, very nice, and I made some sort of inarticulate noise in response.

"Ain't you never 'ad this done before?" he asked.

"No," I replied. "I've heard of it, obviously, but nobody's ever done it for me."

"Then I'll 'ave ter make sure that I don't fuck it up," he said, and he set to work once more, slowly sliding his lips up and down the shaft and licking away at it at the same time. And it felt… well, it's impossible to describe how it felt, because I'd never felt anything like it before, but I can certainly say that I liked it. A lot.

He wasn't hurrying, and it was some time before I felt things starting to build up, but when I finally warned him that I was getting close he simply made a sort of noise to indicate that he'd understood me, but otherwise just kept going exactly as he had been. And so I got closer and closer until…

It was better than being rubbed, somehow – it felt almost like an orgasm in slow motion, every bit as powerful but lasting longer than the one he'd given me by hand the previous evening. And when it was finally over he didn't even spit it out.

"So?" he asked, coming back to lie beside me.

"That was pretty amazing," I said, once I'd got my breath back. "Have you had a lot of practice at that?"

"Nah, but I've been on the uvver end a few times, so I know 'ow it's supposed to go. Albie used to blow me from time to time – 'e sed it kept 'is 'and in when 'e weren't working, like. An' 'e wuz fuckin' expert at it. So I jus' tried ter do wot 'e done."

"Well, you done… did it brilliantly. Now let's see if I've picked it up properly."

I started to move, but he grabbed me.

"No!" he said, firmly. "You ain't blowin' me. It wouldn't be right."

"Sparrer, what the hell are you talking about?"

"Yer a fuckin' duke, you dick'ead! They don't come much 'igher than you. An' I'm a dipper from the sewers, and they don't come no lower than me. So there's no way you can suck me, is there?"

"Why the hell not? Look, I'm tired of this – people keep going on about the difference between me and them, like that's all that matters. What about all the ways we're the same? We're the same age, more or less, we live in the same house, we're both orphans, both our fathers died fighting the Russians…"

"An' my muvver was a whore an' yours was a duchess."

"So what? They're both dead. And, most important, we're friends – aren't we? I didn't ask to be a duke, any more than you asked to be a sewer-rat. Right now we're just two boys in a tent, and we like each other… well, I like you, anyway…"

"Me an' all. I told yer that last night."

"Well, then, let's just forget who we are for half an hour and just be friends. And if you can do that for me, I want to be able to do it for you. Please?"

"Well… you sure?"

"I'm very sure." And I didn't give him any more opportunity to argue about it: I wriggled down under the blanket until I was contemplating his genitals from a distance of less than six inches [15 cm]. He was obviously still not sure about this because his penis was showing no signs of interest, and to be honest I wasn't completely sure about it either. Yes, I wanted to be fair to him, and it would have been completely hypocritical of me to have told him I wanted to be treated as an equal and then have refused to act in the same way, but of course I'd never actually done this, and there was still something a bit repellent about the idea of actually putting another boy's penis in my mouth.

But he'd already done it for me, and there was absolutely no denying how good it had felt to be on the receiving end. If I really wanted to act like a proper friend it was only right that I return the favour. So I took a deep breath and slipped Sparrer's little soft penis into my mouth.

There was no particular taste, and that made me feel a lot better – and even when I licked it, it only tasted of skin. So I did it again, and it began to stir, and within thirty seconds it had transformed into something hard and twitching. That made it possible for me to close my lips around it and to slide them slowly up and down, the way Sparrer had done to me. He gave a little groan, and that encouraged me to keep going, squeezing and licking as I slid it into and out of my mouth.

I managed to draw it out for a while, but soon Sparrer was moving against me, his hands on the back of my head, urging me to keep working, and after a little more of this his body went rigid and he gave a gasp. I stayed still until he moved his hands, and then I slipped it out of my mouth and returned to my place alongside him.

"Was that all right?" I asked, when he didn't say anything.

"Yeah, that was pretty good. Course, yer not in Albie's league, but then 'e's a pro. Fer a beginner yer done it fine. Couple of lessons an' you'll be good enuff ter go on the game."

"No, thanks!" I said. "I only ever want to do that for people I really like, and there aren't that many of them."

"Well, if yer goin' ter do it fer Curly you'll 'ave ter get used to the taste of spunk," he pointed out. "'Cos we know 'e's got loads of it."

"Does it taste bad?" I asked.

"Nah, not really. Course, I ain't done it fer anyone wiv as much as Curly, but I reckon as 'ow I could 'andle it. You got a little bit, an' yours tastes orlright."

"I'm glad to hear it! Anyway, shall we get up? We might as well pack up ready for when Murdoch gets here."

"'Ang on." He rolled up against me and put an arm round me, hugging me. "Yer strange, Leo. I ain't never met nobody like you. See, one fing yer learns in the sewers is ter watch out fer yerself an' not ter worry abaht anyone else, 'cos it's 'ard enuff ter keep yerself alive wivaht worryin' abaht uvver people. But you – yer spend all yer time finking abaht uvver people: will Curly be safe where 'e's going? Are you making Ginger-nut walk on 'is dodgy leg too much? Is Billy really 'appy away from 'is 'orses? 'Ow do all the 'omeless people cope, and wot can yer do fer 'em?" He looked at me seriously. "Yer can't fix the world, Leo, even if you 'ave got piles of money. It's too big, an' there's too much that's fucked up abaht it. You spend too long tryin' ter change fings an' yer'll do yer 'ead in. Yer need ter relax an' 'ave fun wiv yer friends. I reckon you an' Ginger-nut should just get in that bloody great flyin' machine and fuck off fer a few weeks. Go somewhere a long way away, 'ave some fun and let the rest of the world fuck itself."

"It's certainly tempting," I admitted. "Course, you'd have to come with us."

"Yer don't need no bloody gooseberry," he said. "I know 'ow yer feel about Ginger. If I came wiv yer I'd just be in the way."

"Well, we could take Billy as well. I'm sure he could keep you occupied."

He grinned at me. "I reckon 'e could, at that," he said. "Jus' persuade 'im ter dye 'is 'air black an' I might even start ter fancy 'im!"

"I think he likes being blond."

"Pity. Oh, well, yer can't 'ave everyfing."

I gave him a quick return hug. "Come on," I said. "Let's get up."

By the time Murdoch arrived we had the tent packed up and were leaning on one of the Stonehenge arches and waiting for him.

"Is Mr Demetriou not coming?" he asked as we got into the car.

"No, he's gone to visit his parents," I said. "He'll be coming back in a week or two."

At least, I hoped he would, I thought: although I knew that I was actually in the world I belonged in, I still thought of Alex's world as 'home' sometimes, and with him gone I'd lost my connection to it. I hoped he wouldn't be gone for too long.

***

Over the next two weeks I managed to get my campaign to help the homeless off the ground, but it was a depressing experience: nobody seemed to want to know. Those politicians I managed to speak to, from both Houses of Parliament, made vague noises indicating moral support for the notion while at the same time declining to get involved financially, claiming that the war was taking up all available funds. The concept of a tax rise to pay for extra housing went down like a concrete æthership, and exactly as my uncle had predicted I ran into plenty of people who said that the poor should stand on their own two feet instead of looking for handouts from anyone else.

A couple of my fellow peers did seem to have some concept of what it meant to do their 'Christian duty' and pledged to donate some money to help, and I was very grateful to them, but overall I came away profoundly unimpressed with this world's ruling class. By the time I got back to Culham I'd come to the conclusion that the best way to raise a decent amount of money would be to patent some of the technology I was hoping Alex would provide on his return. But Alex was still missing, and worrying about him didn't make me feel any better.

On my first night back from London – this was Saturday September 17th – Wolfie and I slept in our headquarters on the third floor. I'd been thinking about showing him what Sparrer had taught me, but I wasn't really in the mood, and I was also having second thoughts: maybe Wolfie would think it was really disgusting, and the last thing I needed at the moment was to lose my closest friend. So in the end I kept my lips to myself, except for returning Wolfie's kiss when I got into bed beside him after turning the lamp out.

"Leo, you've got to relax," he told me. "If you insist on going on with this quest to house all the poor people in London you should find a couple of professionals to run things for you. Start a proper charity, find someone to manage it and maybe someone else to deal with the money and let them get on with it. At the moment you're trying to do everything yourself, and it's going to make you ill. You need to step away from it and let other people do the work. According to my uncle, that's what good leadership is all about."

"He's probably right, but… it's hard, Wolfie. I keep thinking that I should be doing something, but I can't work out what."

"What you need to do is to forget it completely for a bit. We should just go away somewhere, preferably in the opposite direction to London."

"That's what Sparrer said," I told him. "He reckoned you and I should just get on board Excalibur and fly off somewhere for a bit."

"Did he? But I bet you said he'd have to come too, didn't you?"

"Well, yes. But I also said we'd have to take Billy along, so they could entertain each other while you and I just did… whatever we wanted, I suppose."

"Then maybe you're not so stupid after all."

"Who are you calling stupid?" I asked, jabbing him in the ribs. He jabbed me back, and by the time the fight ended and I'd remade the bed I felt a lot better.

"Look," said Wolfie, snuggling up to me again, "let's take a day off tomorrow. I want to use that magic lamp of yours to explore the tunnels – and if we clean out the cobwebs again, maybe you can have another try at doing what you were too feeble to do last time… no, let's not fight again, I've just got comfy. But you could, couldn't you?"

"I suppose so," I said, unenthusiastically: the thought of groping my way through the passages naked again wasn't one that I particularly liked.

"Then that's decided. And if we look really closely at all the dead ends I'm sure we'll find some more exits. It wouldn't make sense for them to bother building passages that don't go anywhere."

So the following afternoon we collected a broom and dusters and headed off into the passages once more. Some of the spiders had been at work again since our previous visit, but it was a lot easier to clean up this time, and by the time we'd finished the tunnels were more or less clear of arachnid activity. I knew with my luck that one or two of them would be back before I came to try the naked run once more, but I decided not to worry about that right now. Instead, once we'd finished cleaning, we set off down the long passage on the second floor, the one that apparently came to a dead end somewhere close to the servants' part of the house. Wolfie had brought a triple candlestick, and of course I had my electric torch, and so we started to examine the end wall really closely, looking for signs of a hidden catch.

We must have pressed every inch of that wall, paying particular attention to the corners, but nothing we did had the remotest effect. We were getting ready to give up when I had a thought: by now we must be close to the rear wall of the house, and in that case…

I switched my attention to the left hand side, and here, a yard or so before the end of the passage, I found a small hole in the wall. It wasn't very big, only five or six millimetres [¼ inch] across, and it didn't look as if it went in very far, but I thought that it had to do something. The only problem was that we weren't carrying anything that would fit into it, so we made our way back to our room and started looking. There wasn't much in our room, so we went back downstairs to my room – I thought a pencil would probably fit, or maybe a screwdriver, if we could find one of those. Or a wire coat-hanger…

I opened my wardrobe and found that this world didn't believe in anything quite as basic as a wire coat-hanger: all the hangers here were hand-made of polished wood. But right at the end of the rail I spotted something I hadn't noticed before: it looked like a black skewer, or one of those metal tent pegs you can buy to replace the ones you've lost. It was about eight inches [20 cm] long, and it was exactly the right diameter to fit into the hole.

"Look what I've found!" I said, showing it to Wolfie. "I bet this fits – I reckon it's supposed to be a key to the bit of the system we haven't found yet!"

"It certainly looks old," he agreed. "That closet looks as if it was built into your room right from when the house was built, so it could have been there since the passages were built, too."

"Then I wonder…" I took the torch and examined the back of the closet very carefully indeed and, sure enough, there was a very small hole in the top right hand corner. You'd never have noticed it unless you'd been looking, because the wood was very dark, almost black, and there was no light in the closet itself – and obviously it would be very dangerous to bring a candle into a closet that had clothes all along the rack. Fortunately I didn't have too many clothes as yet, and some of the ones I did have were in London, and that made it possible to get at the back wall.

I took the skewer and inserted it into the hole. At first it didn't seem to do anything, and turning it had no effect either, but when I shoved it in a bit harder there was a click and part of the back wall swung open. We went through and found ourselves in what we had thought was a short dead-end of the passage system.

"That's probably why we couldn't get in from this side," I said, pulling the key from the hole and pushing the wall back until it closed with a click. "We were pushing and looking for catches, but we weren't looking for a keyhole. I wonder if you can use the key from this side too?"

I used my torch to examine the wall. Sure enough, there was a hole on this side, and when I pushed the skewer into it there was a click, but when I tried pulling the skewer it simply came out of the hole. I tried again, this time turning the skewer to the right after it clicked, and this time I was able to use the hook at the handle end of the skewer to pull the panel open once more.

"I bet there's another panel like this in the ducal bedroom downstairs," I said. "We'll have to look later."

We took the skewer along the passage to the hole we'd found earlier, and once again pushing it in firmly was rewarded with a click, although this time the section that opened only moved about an inch, and because it was only a small section at the foot of the wall, less than two feet high, we didn't notice it at first. When we did spot it we had to push very hard in order to persuade it to open further: although most of the panels we'd found so far opened without too much effort, this one seemed to have seized up. But eventually we got it fully open.

This time, instead of a passage leading away, the panel had revealed a square hole in the floor. Shining the torch into it didn't reveal very much, but there were some metal bars set horizontally into the wall at one side that were clearly intended to serve as a ladder. I shrugged and backed into the opening, putting a foot on the first bar.

"Be careful!" said Wolfie, grabbing my arm. "If those bars have been there as long as the house they might not be safe any more!"

I tried slowly putting my weight on the bar and found that it seemed safe enough. Of course it would depend how far down this shaft went: if it went all the way down to the wine cellar I certainly wouldn't want to risk falling, but a quick flash of the torch revealed a floor not too far below me, and in fact the ladder was only half a dozen rungs long. I reached the floor, called up to Wolfie that I was safe, and turned to look around.

I was in a small room about three metres [10 feet] square. There was no furniture at all and considerably fewer cobwebs than I'd have expected in a part of the system that hadn't been used for a very long time, but then I realised that if the room had been sealed off for a long time there wouldn't have been too many insects in here, and hence nothing to keep the spiders alive. The fact that there were any cobwebs at all suggested that there had to be air coming into the room somewhere, and when I looked around I saw that there was a very small grille set into one wall, and at the far end of the room there was a small fireplace.

"I'm coming down," called Wolfie. "Can you get ready to catch me in case I fall?"

I took up position at the foot of the ladder and watched as Wolfie came slowly down. It was difficult for him because of his artificial leg, but he made it safely.

"I guess this is a sort of ancient panic room," I said. "If anyone broke into the house, the duke and his family could come and hide in here. I expect there's a way to close the door from down here…"

I looked around and, sure enough, there was a lever set into the wall opposite the foot of the ladder. I tried moving it and found it very stiff indeed, but at last I managed to shift it, and the panel at the top of the ladder swung closed. There was a hook on the wall next to the lever, and by putting it over the lever you could ensure that the panel couldn't be opened from outside, even if someone had a key.

"I hope you can open that again," commented Wolfie, nervously. "Nobody knows where we are, remember."

"It'll be fine," I said. "It was just a bit stiff, but now it's been moved it shouldn't give us any problem. It might still be a good idea to bring an oil-can next time we come, though. So I wonder where the other entrance is… After all, there's a long corridor coming this way on the first floor, too…"

We looked around the part of the room closest to the ladder, since it was logical that the other corridor – which I thought was directly underneath the one we had used to get here – would enter the room at the same end, but nothing sprang to the eye.

"Oh, well," I said, "if we try from the other side we'll probably find another keyhole. We'll go that way later on. So what are we going to do with this place? It would make a brilliant hiding place if they wanted us to go and do something boring, I suppose…"

"If we can find a way to disable that lever so the room can't be opened from the inside, I can think of something it would be perfect for," said Wolfie. "I could throw your pet gutter-rat in here and leave him, and if he calls me 'Ginger-nut' once more I swear I'll do it, too."

"Does it bother you that much?"

"It bothers me that the little bastard talks to me at all, let alone calling me stupid names. Look, Leo, I still don't understand why he's here: he's a thief, and he's completely unreliable. He's already told us that he doesn't care about anyone except himself. How do you know he isn't going to stab us in our sleep and make off with everything he can carry? Why can't you see how dangerous he is?"

I stared at him. "Is that what you think?" I asked. "If so, you're wrong. Yes, I know that 'Every man for himself' is the motto in the sewers, but he's not in the sewers any longer. He hasn't let me down since we got here, and he's had plenty of opportunities."

"He's just waiting for the right one! I just wish I could understand – the old Leo wouldn't have even looked at a piece of crap like that, far less tried to make friends with him."

"The old Leo didn't even know people like him existed. Until I was ten the only time I ever spoke to anyone not of our class was to give them an order – 'Polish my boots', 'Fetch my carriage', 'Saddle my horse', that sort of thing. And then I found myself in another world, with no memory of this one. For several months I lived in an orphanage with other kids that nobody wanted – kids whose parents were dead, or whose parents couldn't cope with them, or even abused them. We were lucky, I suppose, because we were in a decent orphanage where nobody beat us or abused us, like happens in some of the ones Sparrer told me about, but we were still basically just forgotten kids nobody cared about. Then I got lucky and got adopted, but by an ordinary couple of working class people – my new father drove a truck and my mother worked part time in a library, and I went to an ordinary state school with a lot of ordinary kids. And there my best friend was a builder's son and both of his parents were immigrants.

"So I've lived with people like Sparrer – it's just that the kids I knew were luckier than him. You've never been there – the only people you and I mixed with here were other nobles, so all you know about poor people is what you've read or been told by other aristocrats, and that's why you expect the worst of them. I know that if you treat people decently, most of them are capable of acting decently in return, and Sparrer hasn't given me any reason to doubt that yet. Yes, I could be wrong, and if I am you can say 'I told you so' as much as you like, but I'm no more going to send him back to the sewers than I would send you to Prussia to be kept under house arrest by the Russians. Okay?"

He didn't say anything, and I wondered if I'd gone too far in making a direct comparison between him and Sparrer. I could remember my old life well enough to recognise how uncomfortable Wolfie was with the way I now ignored boundaries of class and social convention: he'd just about been able to accept Billy, but that was probably because, at least to start with, Billy had been no more comfortable with it than he had been himself.

"Look," he said, eventually, "I can see that you want to do something about the homelessness in London, and that's a good thing. But why can't you do it like your peers do – find a good cause, give money and pay someone professional to deal with it? Why do you have to get so involved? Can't you see that isn't the way we do things here? This isn't Alex's world, Leo – you're the one who's out of step."

"It's the twenty-first century," I argued. "Queen Victoria isn't on the throne any longer… sorry, I mean Charles VI and Robert II. That was over a hundred years ago, so why do we still have to act as though this was 1875? Sure, the class system works for us, and it might even work for our staff, because this estate is well-run and the workers are taken care of. But not all estates are run like ours, and in the big cities I don't think the system works at all, if that number of people can fall through the cracks. I want to do something about it, and that means getting involved. And I'd like to think my friends will support me, because if not, well, maybe you're right: maybe I don't belong here after all. Maybe I ought to go back and live in a world that doesn't turn its back on thousands of people just because they didn't happen to be born with a 'Lord' – or a 'Margrave' – in front of their name."

I knew I was being unfair here, and I also knew that plenty of people in Alex's world did feel that nobody gave a monkey's about whether they lived or died – and quite possibly that feeling of hopelessness had contributed to the riots. But I was angry, and when you're angry you often say things that you normally wouldn't.

"'Margrave' comes after my name, not in front of it," he pointed out. "Or are you so tired of me that you can't even remember my name any longer? Are you so dazzled by your lower class friends that you've forgotten what we used to mean to each other? Maybe you're having so much fun running about the sewers with Rat-boy that you don't want to waste your time with a stupid cripple any longer."

"No!" I protested. "God, no, you know that's not true!"

"Are you sure? Because when you talk about going back to the other world it certainly sounds like you've had enough or me."

"I'm not going back. I only said that because I was angry. I know that I belong here with you, and nothing's going to change that. But I wish you'd give Sparrer a chance. Maybe if we can fix the lever I ought to lock both of you in here, and I wouldn't let you out until you agreed to get along with each other."

"No, thanks. I wouldn't mind being locked in here with you – at least, as long as you're not acting weird – but I wouldn't want to try it with anyone else."

"Well, will you at least talk to him? Maybe if you do you'll find out that he's just a kid like us, but who wasn't as lucky with his background – and then maybe you can stop worrying about him stealing from us. Because he won't – he knows he's better off staying here than he would be nicking a couple of watches and running, because where could he go except back to the sewers? And I know he doesn't want to end up back there again."

"And what are we supposed to talk about? We have nothing in common."

"You might be surprised, and you won't know unless you try. Please?"

"Well… if you really want me to, I suppose I could try. But if he calls me 'Ginger-nut' I'll strangle him."

"Fair enough, as long as you don't call him 'Rat-boy'. And if you can't talk to each other politely I'll strangle both of you. Put it this way: kings have to deal with all sorts of people, so you can think of it as a bit of practice in case you become king."

"I'm sure if I'm king I won't be expected to talk to too many guttersnipes, except perhaps to say «Off with his head!» or something. But I'll try to restrain myself. So – shall we go and see if we can find the other entrance?"

"Well, since we're here we might as well clear the cobwebs first," I said, and I took my duster and started to work my way down the far side of the room, while Wolfie set to work on the ladder side. And once I'd cleared the cobwebs away from the far end of the room I spotted another little hole in the wall, diagonally opposite the ladder.

"Hey, look at this!" I said. "Another keyhole!"

"Where do you think it goes?" he asked, eagerly. "Do you think it goes around to the other side of the house?"

"Only one way to find out," I said, and I fished the skewer out of my pocket. Actually, at that moment I didn't care where the new door led: its discovery seemed to have completely wiped away our argument, and that was more important to me than anything else.

I put the skewer into the hole and pushed, and once again a panel swung open. It took us to the top of a narrow flight of steep stairs that led down into the depths of the house somewhere.

"I don't know who built all this," I said, "but they did a brilliant job of hiding it. There must be dummy walls and short rooms all over the place. These look a bit steep, though: do you want to risk it?"

"Of course – I want to find out where this goes as much as you do. If you go first you can catch me if I slip."

So I set off down the stairs, moving fairly slowly so that Wolfie wouldn't be left behind. After about fifteen stairs we reached a small landing, but although I looked closely I couldn't see any keyholes, so I continued down the next flight, until finally I reached the bottom of the fourth flight and found myself in a little space about four feet [1¼ meter] square. I flicked the duster over the walls, but there was no keyhole on either the wall to my right or the one in front of me.

"Well, there has to be a way out of this," I said, running my fingers down the edge of the left-hand wall. "Otherwise this is the most pointless staircase ever."

We must have spent at least ten minutes pushing bricks, searching assiduously for keyholes and even saying 'Open sesame!' without success, and I was about ready to give up when Wolfie found it: four steps back up the staircase there was a small hole in the wall, an inch or so above the stair.

"If you didn't come equipped with a duster and a light I don't think you'd ever find that," he commented.

I handed him the skewer and he put it into the hole and pushed, and part of the left-hand wall swung open, revealing a tunnel heading off into the dark, beyond the reach of the beam of the torch.

"This has to be the escape tunnel," I said. "I bet it comes out somewhere in the woods… how's your leg? Shall we try this now, or do you want to leave it for now and come back tomorrow?"

"Well… would you mind if we come back tomorrow?" he asked. "Only that staircase was a bit difficult…"

"Of course we can," I said. "It'll be more fun if we have something new to look forward to, anyway. But if we stop now you're going to have to go back up the stairs. Do you think you can make it?"

"If I take it slow. Of course, you could carry me if you want…"

I looked up the stairs doubtfully.

"Well, I'll have a go if you want," I said, "but there's no handrail, so if I overbalance backwards we're going to fall, and you'll end up underneath. I think it would be a lot safer if you go first."

He sighed. "I suppose you're right," he said. "If we had an accident in here they'd never find us. Come on, then."

He led the way slowly back up to the hidden room. We'd had to leave the panel at the bottom of the stairs open because there seemed to be no way to close it from this side (the keyhole wasn't actually in the door itself, so we couldn't use the skewer to pull it closed – I supposed that if you were going to use the escape tunnel you'd just close it by pushing from the far side), although when we got back to the room at the top of the stairs we were able to use the skewer to pull that panel closed. It took an effort, but I thought that once the hinges were properly oiled we'd be able to pull it closed much more easily.

There was a nasty moment when I thought the lever in the hidden room wasn't going to move – even after I remembered to undo the hook it still refused to budge at first. But eventually I persuaded it to do its job by heaving on it with both hands and the panel at the top of the ladder creaked open. I climbed the ladder, pulled the panel the rest of the way open and climbed through, and then I leaned back through and helped Wolfie up and out.

We couldn't close this door either because once again the keyhole wasn't in the panel itself, but I could see how it was supposed to work: there was a metal peg on the top of the panel, right by the inside edge. If we looped a piece of string over the peg – and if the hinges were lubricated – we'd be able to pull the door shut, and it ought to be possible to pull the string free afterwards. But as we didn't have any string I wasn't able to test the theory. Instead we left the panel open and headed back to my room.

Once we were in the room Wolfie collapsed onto the bed and I closed the panel and came and sat next to him.

"Tomorrow we need to take an oilcan, some string and my compass," I said. "We ought to try mapping the system out, and I'd like to know which way that long tunnel in the basement is heading. But… look, Wolfie, do you think we ought to tell someone where we're going? If we'd fallen down the stairs, or if we hadn't been able to open the door at the top of the ladder, we'd have been in really bad trouble. At least if someone knows where we are they can come and look for us."

He looked doubtful. "It's supposed to be our secret," he said. "I know you wanted to tell Alex, but he's not here any more, so who were you thinking of telling? Your uncle?"

"Maybe. Or maybe we could tell Billy and swear him to secrecy. I'm pretty sure that if we did that he wouldn't tell anyone else about it, not even Sparrer."

"Well, perhaps that's true. But if we left all the doors open, would we need to tell anyone?"

"Leaving the doors open wouldn't stop us from falling downstairs. Okay, I suppose if we left everything open, including the panel in the closet here, someone would find it eventually. But it's still a big risk – if we were seriously hurt they might not find us until it was too late."

"I suppose so. But what if we wrote a letter explaining where we were and left it here in your bedroom? If we went missing someone would be sure to find it. We could put a map in, showing what we've found so far, and if anything happened they'd be able to follow it and rescue us."

I thought about that. "I suppose that would work," I said. "But we'd have to leave the doors open as well, otherwise they wouldn't be able to follow us."

"Yes, all right," he agreed. "At least that way if everything goes well nobody else will find out about the passages – and I'd really like to explore them completely before we tell anyone."

"Me, too," I admitted. "So, okay, we'll do that. How's your leg?"

"Sore – I don't like climbing much. But it'll be all right if I rest it for a bit."

"Or I could give you a massage," I suggested.

He thought that was an excellent idea, and so a couple of minutes later he had removed his trousers and his artificial leg and I was working on his left leg, the end of which did look red and sore. I stroked it gently for a couple of minutes and then fished my watch out of my pocket and checked it.

"We've got an hour and a half before supper," I said. "Perhaps we should just rest until then – you've definitely done enough walking for today, anyway. Get the rest of your clothes off and we'll get into bed for a bit."

I helped him off with the rest of his clothes and got him into bed, and then I threw my own clothes off and got in beside him. For a good ten minutes we just lay together, him lying on his back and me on my side facing him with my arm around him.

"Wolfie," I said quietly, "I'm sorry, all right? I was unfair to you earlier. Of course you don't know what the other world is like. I shouldn't have said half of what I did. Will you forgive me?"

"And you swear you're not going to go back to the other world?"

"I swear. This is where I belong."

"You really mean it? Because I've just gone four years without you and I couldn't stand it if I lost you again."

"Wolfie, I'm not going anywhere. I couldn't leave, because I love you."

He looked at me and then reached up, pulled me on top of him and hugged me hard.

"That's the first time you've actually said it since you came back," he said. "Not that I was actually doubting it… well, not really – but it's still nice to hear you say it. And I'm sorry too, because I know what happened in the other world is an important part of who you are, and I shouldn't ignore it. It's changed you, and if I'm honest I think it's changed you in a good way. Perhaps we do spend too much of our time just locked into our own social class without thinking about those outside. So I'll definitely talk to… to Sparrer, if you think it'll help."

Instead of saying 'thank you' I kissed him gently, and then we just snuggled for the next half hour or so. I wasn't sure how well their conversation would go, but getting them to talk to each other at all was definitely a step in the right direction.

So after supper I told Sparrer that Wolfie wanted to see him.

"I bet 'e doesn't," said Sparrer. "I bet this is your idea, innit?"

"Well, yes. But he knows you're coming. Look, I just want him to see that you're not just what…"

"Wot 'e finks I am?" he finished. "'Ow'm I gonna change 'is mind, then?"

"Just talk to him. Talk about something that interests you. Or you could ask him some questions, or something. I just want you to talk, that's all."

"Orlright. But I don't fink it'll do no good. 'E don't like me, see?"

"Then change his mind," I said. "Find something to talk about that interests him, or ask him questions about what he likes doing, or… well, I don't care how you do it, but I'd really like it if the two of you could get along. Please?"

"Well, I'll 'ave a go," he said. "But don't 'old yer breff."

"Good. Okay, wait here five minutes, and then go up to his room. I'll go and warn him you're coming."

So I did that. Wolfie wasn't looking forward to it any more than Sparrer was, but at least he hadn't changed his mind. I wished him luck and then left his room and ran along the corridor to the one next to it, which was the one that Alex had been using, letting myself into it and closing the door. The fireplace in this room backed onto the one in Wolfie's room, and by sticking my head a short way up the chimney I could hear what was happening next door. Yes, okay, I know I should have just left them to it, but I wanted to be able to intervene if they actually started hitting each other.

I heard a knock on the door and Wolfie calling for the knocker to come in, and as soon as Sparrer opened his mouth my heart sank.

"'Ello, Ginger-nut," he started. "I know yer don't want me 'ere, but that's fine 'cos I don't wanna be 'ere eiver. But I promised Leo as 'ow I'd talk ter yer, so 'ere I am."

"Yes, well, I'm only listening because Leo asked me to. I promise you this wasn't my idea. And don't call me 'Ginger-nut', unless you want me to start calling you 'Rat-boy'."

I almost ran next door to stop them then, because this was about the worst start I could have imagined.

"Fair enuff," said Sparrer. "Yer can if yer want, though. I lived in the sewer and I nicked stuff, so I ain't gonna argue. Come ter that, you 'ave got very red 'air."

"So? I've got a name, too. Why can't you use that?"

"Ain't I sposed ter call you "Your 'Oliness' or sumfink?"

"Probably not. Leo doesn't like titles much. Sometimes I think he's going to be the first ever anarchist duke."

Sparrer laughed. "That would be kinda funny," he said. "So d'yer want me ter call you 'Wolfie', then?"

"Well… I think that's what Leo would like."

"Yeah, but it's your name, so you oughta decide. Probly it's better than 'Ginger-nut', though."

"I suppose it is. So should I call you 'Sparrer', then?"

"Well, yeah, 'cept… you know as 'ow Leo said I should pick a first name ter go wiv it? Well, I fort abaht it, and I fink I got one. I wanted sumfink wot sounded classy an' sort of 'proper upstanding citizen', so I reckon… 'ow abaht Ebenezer?"

I burst out laughing. I couldn't help it: the idea of a little guttersnipe being called 'Ebenezer Sparrow' was just too much. And of course they heard me.

"Leo!" exclaimed Wolfie. "He's hiding in the chimney!"

"Sorry," I spluttered. "Give me a moment…"

I got myself under control and walked round to Wolfie's room, because there clearly wasn't any point in staying where I was.

"I'm sorry," I told them both. "I just wanted to make sure you weren't going to murder each other, that's all."

"Wot, yer don't trust us?" asked Sparrer.

"I'm sorry," I said again. "How could I not trust someone called Ebenezer Sparrow?"

"I've decided as 'ow me friends can call me 'Ben'," he said, trying to look dignified.

"Well, that's certainly better. But why 'Ebenezer'? To me, Ebenezer Sparrow is a character in Dickens. He…"

"'Oo's Dickens?" interrupted Sparrer.

"Oh… well, he was a writer who wrote a lot of stories about a hundred and fifty years ago, and his characters always had strange names. I can see his 'Ebenezer Sparrow' now – he's about fifty, with big grey side-whiskers and a pot belly and he carries a silver-topped cane, and he owns… I don't know, an antiquarian bookshop, or something."

"And is 'e a pickpocket wot lives in a sewer?"

"Well, no."

"There yer are, then," he said, triumphantly. "Wiv that name I sahnd like an onnist citizen."

"Okay," I said, raising my hands in surrender. "Ebenezer it is, then. But I'd certainly feel happier calling you 'Ben'. And I'm sorry for listening in. I'll go and wait downstairs, in the front receiving room."

So I did, and about half an hour later they both came and joined me.

"We found something we agree on," Wolfie told me. "We both think you're weird. But it's a good sort of weird, if you can understand that. So we're going to try to get along if we can. That doesn't mean the two of us will be rushing off to do things together, but we won't fight or insult each other either. He's going to call me Wolfie, which I suppose I can put up with, and I'm happy to call him Ben, if that's what he wants to be called. Actually I'm not sure why you don't like the name 'Ebenezer' – it's not that uncommon."

"It is in Alex's world," I said. "It's very old-fashioned. Still, there aren't a lot of Leos there either, and certainly there weren't any Wolfgang-Christians where I used to live, so what the hell, why not?"

And I thought as I went to bed that evening that at least one problem had been solved. I just hoped Alex would manage to get back to us soon. Quite apart from the fact that I was missing him, I couldn't wait to see his face when he heard Sparrer's new name.

Chapter Twelve

In fact Wolfie and I didn't get a chance to resume our exploration of the escape tunnel next day because, as we had both forgotten, the next day was Monday September 19th, which was the day school began. In fact it should have been two weeks earlier, but Uncle Gil had deemed my work on drumming up support for the homeless was sufficiently educational, and consequently he had postponed the resumption of our classes until I got back from London. But he reminded us at breakfast that morning that we would have to work hard to make up for the missing two weeks, and that could mean working later into the evening, unless he heard good things about our efforts from our tutor.

So straight after breakfast we went up to the schoolroom on the second floor. Of course it had been four years since I had last had lessons here, but the room didn't seem to have changed at all in that time, and neither had our tutor, a strict forty-something professional teacher called Mr Devlin who had been lured from the nearby Radley College but who had lost nothing of his ability to keep a class of twenty in order. And that meant that the two of us had no chance at all.

However, he wasn't without a sense of humour.

"Master Leo, you're four years and twelve weeks late for school," he said when I entered the room. "I should think that merits a detention every day for the next… shall we say four years and twelve weeks?"

"No, we shan't," I said, firmly. "I've been going to school for the whole of that time, even if it wasn't here."

"So I understand," he said. "To be honest I'd be very interested to hear how another world handles the education of its young, and I'm sure Master Wolfgang would be interested in what you've been doing, too. So perhaps we could talk about that today, and then we can get back to normal lessons tomorrow."

So I explained the education system in Alex's England as best I could. Of course, there were some quite substantial differences in teaching methods: obviously there were no computers here, no language laboratories, no televisions, no videos or DVDs, and no interactive whiteboards. All we had was a very old-fashioned blackboard and some rather dry textbooks.

Some of the subjects taught were rather different, too: history and geography, for a start, were substantially different here, and science lacked a lot of the content I'd known at Alex's school (imagine physics in a world with no electricity!). And of course discipline was rather different, too: Mr Devlin was profoundly shocked to hear of a world in which teachers were not allowed to beat badly-behaved students. He said he couldn't begin to understand how discipline could be maintained if the children had nothing to fear. I pointed out that he'd never had to beat either of us, and he replied that we were both good students, and also that it's hard to hide misbehaviour in a class of two, and so sensibly we had never tried.

After that Mr Devlin wanted to know about the differences between the two worlds, and that subject kept us occupied for the rest of the morning. He found it hard to grasp that the two most powerful countries in Alex's world were America and China, because in this one China was still an inward-looking agrarian society stagnating under an emperor who had sat on the throne for the past seventy years without changing anything at all, just as his father and grandfather had done before him. As for America, here there was no such place: like Greenland, the New World was off-limits to the European powers by international treaty, and so was inhabited only by its indigenous people. Quite how that treaty had remained unbroken for five hundred years was hard for me to understand, but perhaps living in Alex's world had made me cynical, because here even the powers who had not signed up to the original treaty, like the Japanese Empire, had agreed to abide by it once they became aware of its existence.

In fact that discussion took up quite a lot of the afternoon as well, as we discussed history and geography and some elements of science, though I kept quiet about some developments, electricity in particular. I thought it would be best to wait for Alex to get back before I broached that one, because I was really no scientist and wouldn't have known where to begin an explanation of how to build a generator.

After that Mr Devlin laid out what we would be doing during the coming term, and I was disconcerted to discover that it included Latin and Greek, both of which I should have started long before this – Wolfie had been studying Latin for three years and Greek for two. I thought I might get into trouble for suggesting that in the current political climate Russian would be rather more use than Greek, but actually Mr Devlin agreed with me, saying that if he could find someone to teach us a little Russian he would certainly do so, but that it would be in addition to Greek, not instead of it.

I suppose we could have gone exploring in the secret passages after supper, but we decided instead to wait until the following weekend, when we would have a lot more time. And from Tuesday onwards it wasn't really possible, because we had homework to do after supper every day. Now I was really missing the internet: instead of getting answers to Mr Devlin's questions online in about ten seconds we had to trawl through the various encyclopaedias and reference books in the library, and that took ages.

I got an afternoon off on the Thursday because Uncle Gil had found someone to run my charity for me. This was an old friend of my father's, a military man who had been invalided out of the army and who said he would be only too happy to have something worthwhile to occupy his time. I showed him the pictures we had taken in the sewers and was able to play him a couple of the recordings I had made before the laptop's battery finally ran out, and I also rounded up Sparrer, who was getting some basic reading lessons from one of the footmen while the rest of us were in school, and persuaded him to give Colonel Edwards some first-hand stories of life underground.

I let Uncle Gil deal with issues like staffing and salaries, gave the colonel the names of all those who had expressed an interest in contributing, and with Uncle Gil's help drew up a draft on my bank for five hundred guineas to get things started. I did ask the colonel to make sure that, as soon as we had found suitable accommodation, Auntie and her collection of orphans from below the Savoy Hotel got the first places, but I told him that after that he was to exercise his own judgement.

"Fanks for that," said Sparrer, after we had left the reception room. "Yer will make sure they're goin' somewhere decent, won'tcha?"

"Don't worry. I'm going to inspect whatever accommodation they find and make sure it's suitable, and I'll also want to make sure whichever adults are put in charge are decent people who will treat the kids properly. Of course, I'll want the kids to behave properly, too: school for the younger ones, work for the older ones, and no more dipping or begging or selling themselves, all right? Any kids found breaking the rules can go back to the sewers."

"Can I come wiv yer when yer go ter visit? 'Cos I'd like ter see me mates again. And I can make sure they knows as 'ow yer serious 'bout stickin' to the rules, an' all."

"Sure. It might be a good thing if they hear it from you."

'Great! Fanks, Leo."

"So – how's the reading going?"

He scowled. "Not too good. Ter be onnist, it's a fuckin' pain in the arse. Do I 'ave ter know 'ow ter read?"

"Yes, you do. And I thought you'd promised to stop swearing, too."

"Sorry." He grinned. "Wot yer gonna do abaht it? You gonna smack my botty for me? 'Cos I'd like ter see yer try."

"No, I'll just wait until Alex gets back and then get him to do it. That way I get the fun of watching without having to exert myself."

"You're no fun," he said, grinning some more. "I wuz lookin' forward ter beatin' you up when yer tried ter do it yerself."

"You think you could? Right then, I'll see you after supper!"

"Yer gonna be sorry! So… you reckon Curly's orl right?"

"I hope so," I said, getting serious again. "I was hoping he'd be back by now."

"Yeah, an' I know Billy's missin' 'im, too," said Sparrer. "I 'spect 'e'll be orl right, though. Maybe 'e's 'avin' crap wevver where 'e is."

"I hope that's all it is… oh, well, I suppose there's no point in worrying about it. Let's get you back to your lesson."

I took him through to one of the prep rooms near the kitchen, where his temporary tutor was waiting for him.

"Good," said the footman/tutor. "Come along, Ebenezer – let's see if you can remember how to write your name."

"Thank you for your help, Foulkes," I said. "Is he doing his best, do you think?"

"I think so, Your Grace. If he works hard until Christmas, maybe he will be able to go to the village school with the others in the New Year."

"Let me know if he gives you any trouble," I said, and Sparrer flashed me a rude gesture, making sure that Foulkes didn't see. I grinned at him and went back to my own lessons.

After supper that night I went and found Sparrer – he was up in his room playing cards with Billy – and took him down to my bedroom, and there I handed him a piece of paper and a pencil.

"Come on, then," I said. "Let's see you write your name. Get it right and maybe I won't have to spank you so hard."

He sat down and slowly wrote 'BEN'.

"Good," I said. "Can you write all of it yet?"

"I fink so. An' I can do it proper, too, wiv little letters."

And this time he wrote 'Ebeneser', which was a good effort, I thought. I corrected the mistake and got him to write the correct version.

"About what Foulkes said earlier," I said. "Would you like to be able to go to school with the other kids?"

"Well… yeah, I spose. But I'd probly get inter fights, 'cos of where I come from – I bet the uvver kids would take the piss. And I bet they'd put me wiv the little kids, too, cos of 'ow I ain't never been ter school, an' I'd get called names fer that an' all. And if I started beatin' kids up I bet you'd be pissed off wiv me."

"Would that bother you?"

"Well, yeah, obviously. You're why I ain't in the sewers no more. I don't want you finking I'm a piece of crap."

"I'm not going to think that. And I reckon you'll be alright at school, too. I'll introduce you to the stable lads before you start school. If you get on alright with them – and I'm sure you will – they'll make sure nobody takes the Mick out of you at school. Of course, if you keep swearing I'll just have to keep punishing you, like I'm going to now… would you like to apologise?"

"Fuck off!"

"Good, I was hoping you'd say that!"

I grabbed him and pulled him onto the bed, and we started to wrestle. Since I was taller and heavier than he was I expected to win fairly easily, but it turned out to be hard work: every time I thought I had him pinned down he somehow managed to wriggle free. On the other hand, he couldn't pin me down either, and so after a few minutes I was ready to call it a draw.

"Nah," he said, when I suggested this, "let's make it more intrestin'. Let's get undressed."

I thought that would definitely make it more interesting, and so I said yes, and once we were both naked I grabbed him again. It was no easier to pin him down like this, but it was definitely fun, right up to the point where he grabbed my balls and started to squeeze.

"Billy reckons this is 'ow ter sort you aht," he told me. "'Grab 'is big balls', 'e sez, 'an' 'e'll give up right away'. So, yer wanna give up?"

I struggled for a few seconds, but it hurt and he clearly wasn't going to let go, and so I stopped struggling and just kept still. He flipped me onto my stomach, transferred my balls to his left hand and then spanked me firmly with his right.

"Nah yer know wot will 'appen if you moan at me fer swearin'," he said. "You'll get yer arse smacked."

He let go and stood up, and I rubbed my sore bum.

"Good fing Wolfie never saw that," he went on. "If 'e saw a duke get 'is arse warmed by a street-rat I reckon 'e'd 'ave an 'eart attack. Fings like that don't 'appen in 'is world."

"You called him 'Wolfie', not 'Ginger-nut," I pointed out.

"Huh? Oh, yeah, 'e don't like bein' called 'Ginger-nut' so I promised I wouldn't do it no more."

"Good," I said, seriously. "Thanks, Sparrer… I mean Ben. I really want to see you and Wolfie getting along."

"An' I'll try ter stop swearin' an' all," he said. "It's 'ard, 'cos that's 'ow we all talk dahn Bazalgette's, but I know it ain't right ter do it 'ere. An' if yer really want ter beat me fer swearin', I'll let yer."

Instead I stood up and hugged him. "It's fun to try to spank you like this, but I wouldn't do it for real, because I know you're trying hard to change the way you behave. And I think I can imagine how hard that is. I know you're working hard on your reading and writing, too. I'm really proud of you."

"Fanks. So… now d'yer wanna 'ave some sex?"

I thought having some sex was an excellent idea, and so we spent the next half hour or so feeling, rubbing and eventually sucking each other, and it was a lot of fun. I decided I was definitely going to introduce Wolfie to this sooner rather than later.

***

The week went by. On the Saturday the weather was so fine and warm that Wolfie and I decided to postpone our exploration of the tunnels in favour of taking the boat out again and going for a swim, and so this time it was Sparrer's turn to get a lesson from Billy on how to stoke a boiler. He wasn't keen on doing what he saw as 'work' at first, but when Billy pointed out that it could easily make him suitable to get a job on Excalibur when he was older he changed his mind in an instant, and after that he couldn't wait to learn what to do.

We spent an hour or so swimming – and this time Billy showed no reluctance to join us – and then sailed on, this time continuing through to the end of our private cut and then turning right and returning home through Abingdon. I decided that I definitely liked having my own boat, and made up my mind that once Alex got back we would have to take a longer journey – perhaps all the way down the river to London. Always assuming that I could convince my uncle that such a journey would be 'educational', and would thus merit an absence from school, of course…

Sunday was as usual devoted to virtuous and contemplative activities, and so, leaving Billy with the daunting challenge of keeping Sparrer quiet for an afternoon, after lunch Wolfie and I took a virtuous and contemplative walk through the secret passages. This time we went in through the ducal bedroom, where we were not too surprised to find another skewer and another well-hidden keyhole in the back of a closet. This led to the long first-floor passage, which came to a dead end, just as the one on the second floor had. But this time the keyhole was on the end wall, and when we inserted the key and pushed we found ourselves in the panic room once more. This time the panel into the room actually had the lower three rungs of the ladder attached.

"It would be bad luck if the person from the second floor was halfway down the ladder when the duke arrived," I said. "He'd get squished against the wall."

"I expect he could shout," Wolfie pointed out. "Or maybe the panel is too heavy to move if there's someone on the ladder."

We'd brought an oil can this time, so we set about lubricating the hinges for both this panel and the one at the top of the ladder, and then we oiled the lever that opened the upper panel. It took us a while to discover that the lever controlled both the upper and lower panels: if you pushed it closer to the wall it opened the first floor panel, and pulling it away from the wall switched it to the upper panel.

I'd brought a piece of string with me this time, and I found that it could be used to close the exit doors from the panic room in the way I had suggested, by looping it around the small pegs set into each door and then pulling. Now that the upper panel had been oiled this worked well enough.

Next we went down the narrow staircase to the start of the long brick-lined tunnel we had discovered the previous weekend. My compass told me that the tunnel led roughly north-north-east, which would take us up into the woodland of the Chase, and that made perfect sense, because once in the trees you would be hidden from any watchers on the roof of the house.

We set off to follow the tunnel, but after only about ten yards we found another tunnel going off to the right. This one was quite short and appeared to come to a dead end, but a careful search with my flashlight eventually revealed another keyhole. Out came the trusty skewer once more, and when this panel swung open we found ourselves at the foot of the other flight of stairs, the one we already knew about. And straight ahead was the panel that led out into the wine cellar.

"Well, at least now we know there's another way out," I commented, pulling the panel closed again with the skewer.

We went back to the main tunnel and set off along it once more. There were no further turnings, and the tunnel simply led off into the distance. After a bit I switched the flashlight off.

"Hey!" said Wolfie, nervously – suddenly the three candles on his candlestick seemed extremely feeble. "What's the matter?"

"I just want to save the batteries," I said. "We don't really need the torch here – there's nowhere to go but straight ahead, and I doubt if we're going to find any exits before we get to the other end. And if there is a draught and the candles go out I can always switch it on long enough for you to relight them. You did bring a box of lucifers, didn't you?"

He nodded and tapped his pocket.

"Then carry on," I said, gesturing him onwards, and after a moment he started walking again, though a little more slowly than before.

After another fifty metres [150 feet] or so we came across a small alcove with a big metal lever in it. It looked a bit like the manual levers used for switching the points on a railway track.

"Do you think this opens a way out?" I asked.

"I don't know. It seems strange: every other door has had a hidden catch or has needed the key. Why should this one be different?"

"Good question. I suppose there's only one way to find out." I took hold of the lever, but then I let go again. "Suppose it does something else? What if it sets off a booby-trap – like you pull the lever and a bomb goes off, or the roof falls in, or something like that? Maybe it's supposed to catch enemies. After all, we're thinking of pulling it even though we don't know what it does, and probably anyone else who found their way in would do the same thing. It would be a good way to stop intruders."

"Or it could just open a door."

"Yes, but, like you said, none of the other doors open like that except the one in the secret room, and that was a much smaller handle than this one. I think it might be safer to leave it alone. If we get to the end of the tunnel and find there's no way out, then okay, we can come back here and try this, but otherwise I think it'd be better not to risk it."

"Perhaps when we get back we should look in the library. Maybe there is a history book there that will tell us about the tunnels."

"Good idea, Wolfie! There must be a set of instructions somewhere. I like us doing it like this, exploring when we don't know where it goes, but perhaps it would be sensible to find out if there are some proper descriptions somewhere."

We walked on. The tunnel was now sloping downwards, suggesting that it was dropping down towards the river, and it continued to descend right up to the point where it came to an end at a brick wall. Hanging on a hook to the right of the end wall was a large, rusty old key, but there was clearly no keyhole in the wall that would take a key of that size. I switched my torch on again and looked for a hole small enough for the skewer, but instead I found another catch, like the one that opened the panel in our fireplace. I pressed this and the end wall swung away from us, leading into a dark, dome-shaped room. We stopped into this room and found that the floor sloped down gently towards a drain in the middle of the room.

"Now I know where we are," said Wolfie. "This is the old ice-house."

"I think you're right," I said. "And if you are, probably the tunnel was originally just to connect the ice-house to the cellar, so that you could bring ice up to the house on a hot day without it melting, and it only got used as the escape tunnel later."

I found the door, but the lock was seized up and the old key wouldn't turn, so I gave everything a good squirting from the oil can and we waited for ten minutes. And this time the key turned and the door creaked open, and we found ourselves a short distance above the river and not far from the boathouse. A set of steps led down to the river bank, and a path ran off to left and right, though that leading right was very overgrown. I went back into the ice-house, put the key back on its hook inside the tunnel and pushed the tunnel door closed, and then I rejoined Wolfie on the path outside. We pushed the ice-house door closed – of course we couldn't lock it without the key, but since it was empty I didn't think that mattered – and then we followed the left-hand path the short distance to the boathouse.

"I'm not sure that this is really such a good escape route," I commented, as we set off up the path that led back to the Long Meadow. "You'd have to hope the enemy were too busy ransacking the house to come after you, because you'd have to wait about half an hour before you got up enough steam to sail away."

"Probably the tunnel's been there longer than we've had steam," Wolfie pointed out. "Perhaps there was a sailing boat here back then, or even just a rowing boat – you could row across the river and disappear before they could find another boat and come after you."

"That could be it," I agreed. "We'll have to find a map and find out what's on the other side."

We walked up to the house, and then I went back onto the passages long enough to close all the doors we'd left open, while Wolfie went to the library and started looking for books about the history of our family and the building of the house, and that search kept us busy until supper time. We didn't find anything, but at least we thought that we'd now discovered the whole system – even if we still didn't know what that lever was for.

***

Another week went by. Every evening when we went to the library to do our homework we spent a little while looking for a book that could tell us about the secret passages, but every evening we failed to find one. The weather was still warm and fairly calm, but still there was no sign of Alex, and I was really starting to worry now: although I told myself that the weather in his world might be too windy for the hole between worlds to open, the more time that went by, the more concerned I became.

There wasn't any news from the meteor watchers, either – at least, none that was of any use to us. The nearest we had come to success was a meteor that had landed in the sea about seven hundred miles north of the Faroe Islands. Still, the odds were that sooner or later one would hit Greenland, and so the only worry there was that the later in the year the expedition took place, the more difficult conditions would be.

By the beginning of October I was fully back into the routine of home-schooling. The weather was still not too bad, but I was afraid that if it turned nasty it would not only make any expedition to Greenland that much more difficult, but it could also prevent the hole between the worlds from reopening: too much autumnal wind and rain might leave Alex stranded in his own world. I began reluctantly trying to decide what I should do if Alex never came back.

But then on Monday October 3rd, during our mid-morning break, I looked out of the window and saw a pair of cyclists coming up the broad drive that led down to the station. At first I didn't recognise them, but the first one was wearing a baseball cap, and I hadn't seen any of those in this world. Come to that, I didn't think I'd seen any bicycles, either, and that had to mean that Alex was back – but who had he brought with him? The second rider was wearing a cap too, and so I couldn't see his face.

I headed for the stairs in a hurry. Could it be Carmody, I wondered – had he jumped bail, and had Alex felt sorry for him and offered him a place where he wouldn't be found? I hoped not – I didn't want Carmody around. Although I supposed he might stop calling me 'short-arse' once he discovered that I was a bit less insignificant in this world…

I ran down to the ground floor and out through the front door, reaching the bottom of the steps just as Alex reached the same point.

"I was starting to get worried," I said.

"Sorry. It took a while to get the stuff together, and then we had to wait for a few days before the hole opened. But at least we managed to get plenty of reference books for you."

It certainly looked that way: the bike had a pair of bulging panniers, and Alex was wearing a backpack too. And the second bike, which was just approaching, was similarly burdened. The rider wasn't Carmody, though – it was Joe Silver.

"Hi, Joe," I greeted him. "What are you doing here? Are you on the run?"

"No, I just wanted to see your new house," he said. "Alex told me a bit about all this, and when I finished calling him a liar – sorry again, Alex – I decided I had to see for myself. So is it true that you're a lord now?"

"'E's a duke, not jus' a lord," said a familiar voice from behind me. "Yer 'ave ter call 'im 'Your Grace'."

"Yes, all right, Ben," I said. "Joe's a friend. He gets to call me Leo – that's my real name, by the way, Joe. Anyway, Ben, how come you're not at your lessons?"

"'Cos it's break time, innit? Foulkes needed a ciggy. I 'ave that effect on some people, even though I can't fink why. So 'oo's yer new friend?"

"This is Joe," I told him. "Joe, may I present Ebenezer Sparrow?"

"Oh, come on!" said Joe. "His name's never 'Ebenezer'!"

"Chose it meself," said Sparrer, proudly. "Wot's wrong wiv it?"

"Well, it's just… nobody's called Ebenezer these days!"

"Yeah, they are – I am, fer a start. But me mates call me 'Ben', an' seein' as 'ow yer a friend of Leo's I reckon as 'ow you can call me Ben an' all."

"Okay. At least I can say 'Ben' without falling about laughing."

"Oi, wotch it – if yer make fun of my name I might 'ave ter beat yer up!"

"You can try!" invited Joe, who I was fairly sure wasn't much of a fighter. But he was around eight inches [20 cm] taller than Sparrer, and a fair bit heavier too, even though Sparrer was starting to fill out a bit after a month or so of decent food, and I suppose the size difference convinced Joe that this was one fight he couldn't lose.

"Yer on," said Sparrer. "Yer wanna fight now or after lunch?"

"Nobody's fighting," I intervened. "I don't want my guests beaten up before they even get in the house. Ben, can you go and find Billy? I'm sure he can find somewhere to store the bikes. Joe, you'd better come and meet my uncle."

Sparrer disappeared back inside the house while Joe and Alex dismounted and unstrapped the panniers from their bikes, and when I took Joe's panniers from him I found out that they were as heavy as they looked.

"Books, mostly," said Alex, when I asked. "But we did bring a few other bits and pieces. Have you decided what you're going to do about patents and stuff?"

"I'm hoping Uncle Gil knows a good lawyer," I said. "The sooner we get the legal stuff done, the sooner we can start making money out of this stuff, and the sooner we can get all the sewer kids rehoused. So… how much has he told you, Joe?"

"Well, I know that you're a member of the aristocracy who fell through a hole into our world about four years ago. And he's told me a bit about this world, how it's sort of stuck in the Victorian age with no electricity or petrol engines, and how we're at war with Russia, but it's more like a nineteenth century war with no civilians involved and strict rules of combat – but that's about all I know."

"I suppose that's the important stuff. So what's happening in your world? Have the police come looking for you yet?"

"No, and we're fairly sure they won't now, because we know Carmody didn't grass us up."

"How?"

"We went to see him. It was my brother's idea – he really likes Carmody… did you know I've got a kid brother?"

I shook my head. "Sorry," I said. "I suppose I don't really know all that much…"

"Hey, Alex!" shouted a voice, interrupting me. "You're back!"

Billy ran down the steps and gave Alex a big smile. "Let me carry those bags for you!"

"It's okay, I can manage. You need to find somewhere safe for our bikes," said Alex, indicating them. "Maybe we can get together after lunch, and then I'll be able to tell you anything you want to know."

I led Alex and Joe into the house, leaving Billy and Sparrer to move the bikes round to the stables, or wherever Billy decided to store them. I was about to invite Joe to continue his story, but my uncle had obviously heard us, or perhaps been notified of Alex's return by Allchorn, who was beside him as he came down the stairs.

"I'll have your room made up, Mr Demetriou," said Allchorn. "And will your friend be staying?"

"Yes, please," said Alex. "This is Joe Silver. Joe, this is Mr Allchorn – he's the butler."

"Just 'Allchorn', if you please."

"Uncle, this is my friend Joe, from where I lived in London," I said. "Joe, this is Lord Folliot of Chisbury, my uncle."

"Oh!" said Joe, looking flustered. "Hello, your lordship… do I bow?" he added to me in an audible whisper.

"I wouldn't bother," I said. "You don't want to have to bow to me every time we meet, do you? Because officially I outrank my uncle, so if you bow to him you probably ought to grovel and kiss my feet, or something."

"Oh… so you mean I don't have to, then?"

"No, Joe, you don't. Lighten up!"

I turned to my uncle. "Alex has brought back some of the reference material I told you about," I said. "So we'll need a good lawyer to sort out the patents, and then we're going to need a team of scientists to start actually making stuff. I should think electricity is the first thing, so we'll need to build a generator… anyway, we should probably do the legal stuff first. Do we have a good lawyer?"

"Yes, but we'd probably want an expert in copyright law. I'll ask our solicitor to call round and see if he has any recommendations. But aren't you supposed to be at your lessons at the moment?"

"Well… yes, I suppose so. I'll take Alex and Joe with me for now – that'll give Mrs Sweeting time to make up their rooms."

We carried all the bags up to the second floor and dumped them in my bedroom, and then we walked to the schoolroom, where Wolfie and Mr Devlin were waiting for us.

"New students?" asked Mr Devlin.

"Well, they're really guests," I said.

"They're school age guests, and this is term time," said Mr Devlin. "That means that they are supposed to attend classes, unless your uncle has expressed a wish for some sort of practical work as an alternative. Has he?"

"Well… not as such," I admitted.

"Then go to the storeroom and find them each a desk and a chair."

"Sorry," I muttered to Alex and Joe.

"Don't be. I reckon this could be a laugh," said Alex, which simply demonstrated that he didn't know Mr Devlin at all. Fortunately we were doing English this morning, a subject which was basically the same on both sides of the hole, although the way it was taught here – strict grammar to the fore – was a bit different to what we'd been used to in Palmer's Green, and Alex's inability to parse a sentence, or even to know what parsing was, didn't go down too well. But eventually lunchtime arrived and we were able to escape.

After we had eaten the four of us went to my room to talk. First we filled in a bit of the history for Joe, which gave me a chance to tell him that the boy I'd earlier introduced to him as 'my friend Wolfie' was actually the Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth, and that he was significantly senior to me in precedence – which, as I'd hoped, got Joe all nervous again, until Wolfie told him to relax.

"Leo doesn't bother much with precedence," he said. "That's why we spend most of our free time hanging about with a stable-lad and a London guttersnipe. To be fair, I like Billy, and I'm even starting to like Sparrer a bit, but I think if my uncle saw me wrestling with a sewer-rat he'd have a heart attack. And that would put me one step closer to a throne I really don't want, so when he comes visiting we'll have to make sure we lock Sparrer in the cellar first."

"Nobody's lockin' me nowhere!" objected Sparrer, arriving with Billy just in time to hear this. "Not even you, Wolfie. If yer don't want me arahnd, jus' say so an' I'll fuck off somewhere fer the afternoon."

"It's all right, Ben," said Wolfie. "I'll only want that when my uncle's around – or if you start talking about my hair colour again, of course!"

"I ain't done that fer ages," Sparrer pointed out. "So, new boy – d'yer want ter 'ave that fight nah?"

"I don't think so," said Joe. "I don't want to get your blood all over MM's… I mean Leo's room."

"It ain't gonna be my blood, Big-ears!"

"Hey, leave my ears out of this!"

"Orlright – is Bumpy-nose better? 'Ow abaht Forest-brows? Or jus' plain Ugly-Mug?"

"Go ahead, Joe," I invited. "Teach him some manners."

The rest of us sat and watched while Joe wrestled with Sparrer. If I'd been into gambling I'd have stuck a guinea or two on Sparrer, and I'd have been right: by the time Sparrer had kneed Joe in the nuts a couple of times and dug his thumb into various nerve points it was clear that Joe had had enough.

"I give in!" he gasped, and Sparrer grinned and got off him, helping him up.

"You fight dirty!" Joe complained.

"I'm a gutter–rat – wot d'yer expect?"

"Yeah, well, I can fight dirty too. Next time I'll get you."

"I don't fink so. But yer can try again after supper if yer like."

"Yes, okay! So… what do you mean by a gutter-rat, anyway?"

"I used ter live in a sewer, till Leo come an' got me aht. See…"

I decided that while Sparrer was giving Joe his life story I might as well do something useful, and so I asked Alex to show me what he'd brought back. Most of it was books, or sheaves of material printed off the internet, and it covered the theory and practice of electricity generation, radio, telephones and electric light bulbs. There was also some material on helium production, and after a quick look at that I realised that there was no chance at all of an immediate switch-over: distilling helium from natural gas involved extremely low temperatures and high pressure. It would probably be years before we would have enough helium to fill an æthership, let alone an entire fleet.

He had also brought some two-way radios, some more flashlights and several batteries, and both he and Joe had brought their laptops. If we could get an electric generator built before too long we'd be able to recharge them, too – well, we'd be able to if we could find some suitable connections, and the correct voltage and amperage, and a few other such minor details.

I still didn't get to hear Joe's story, though, because Sparrer had barely finished telling him about his life underground when we heard a bell ringing at the far end of the corridor, summoning us back to school. Sparrer went unenthusiastically back downstairs to resume his lessons with Foulkes; Billy went with him – he would normally have been at school, but today he and the other kids in his class had been sent home because two of the teachers were sick, and so today he was helping out wherever Allchorn thought he could be useful; and the rest of us went back to the schoolroom.

This afternoon we were supposed to be doing Latin, but neither Alex nor Joe knew anything about it, and I'd only been learning it for a couple of weeks, which suggested that Wolfie was going to have to sit twiddling his thumbs while Mr Devlin taught the rest of us to recite 'Amo, amas, amat' parrot-fashion. But when he discovered that his two new pupils had never learned Latin Mr Devlin asked them which languages they had studied, thereby finding out that Alex spoke Greek and Joe spoke Russian.

"Good," he said. "Then perhaps you can each pass on the fruits of your learning to the rest of us? I know Classical Greek, of course, but I've never had occasion to learn the modern language, and as Master Leo himself pointed out a while ago, Russian would be useful for all of us. I'll try to obtain a textbook for each, but perhaps we could spend a while this afternoon comparing the two alphabets…"

The rest of the afternoon would probably have been really interesting to anyone who spoke several languages, but I spoke only English, the German I'd learned from Wolfie – though in fairness that was pretty good – and some rather feeble school French, and consequently I was left floundering. But I still thought it would be useful to learn Russian and hoped that Joe might be able to teach us, if he stayed long enough.

We had some free time between school and supper, and so we returned to my room and I invited Joe to continue with his story. But now he didn't look quite so keen.

"If I'm going to tell you the whole story – and Alex thinks that I should – well, I'd prefer to keep it…" He tailed off, looking at Wolfie uncomfortably.

"Hey, you don't have to worry about Wolfie," I said. "He's like my second self."

"Yes, but… well, I don't know him at all, and…"

"It's all right," said Wolfie. "I understand. I'll go to my room. You can come and find me afterwards."

Wolfie got up and left the room.

"Okay," I said, "so what's the big issue?"

"Well… you remember asking me that time why I hung around with Carmody even though he treated me like shit? Well, it was because I didn't have any choice. See, I…oh, shit, this is difficult…"

"Just tell him," said Alex. "He'll understand. Remember what I told you?"

"Well, yes, but even so… Okay. See, MM – I mean Leo – I'm gay." He looked at me, obviously watching for any adverse reaction.

"Okay," I said. "I've already told Alex that it doesn't bother me, and I'm sure he's told you that, so stop worrying and carry on with the story."

"Oh. Great! I mean… anyway, I was stupid. I had some stuff on a flash drive – not porn… well, not pictures, anyway, but some stories off the net, and one I was trying to write myself, too… I don't normally carry that drive about with me, but I'd picked up the wrong one – I keep a separate one to use at school. Anyway, I used it for the IT class, and then… I thought I'd put it in my bag, but when I got home I couldn't find it. I decided I'd probably left it in my desk, but next morning I found out that Carmody had got hold of it. He said I'd left it in the machine after IT, but I'm almost certain I hadn't, and I think he'd actually nicked it from my bag when I was out of the room. And of course he'd got nosy, found the stories, and – to keep it short – said that unless I did what he told me to he'd make sure everyone in the class got to find out about my taste in fiction.

"I should probably have told him to get lost, but when he hinted that maybe my parents might get to find out about it I rolled over."

"What a bastard!" I said. "I mean, I knew he was a bit of a git, but that's well out of order!"

Joe shrugged. "It could have been worse," he said. "To be fair to Carmody he never breathed a word about it at school, and the only person he told – after swearing him to secrecy first – was my brother."

"Bloody hell!" I exclaimed. "That must have been bad. If I had a brother I'd hate him to know something like that about me."

"I wasn't too happy about it either," Joe went on. "Still, Simon's not a bad kid, and he certainly wouldn't have told our parents. See, he and Carmody always liked each other, even though Simon is two years younger than me and Carmody. I think it's because Simon's more interested in sports and stuff than I am – he and Carmody have been kicking a ball about in either his garden or ours for years. You know I'm rubbish at football… Anyway, Carmody thought it would be funny if my brother got to join in with bossing me about, and of course Simon couldn't wait. So I've been doing what they tell me to for months and months…"

"So what do they make you do?" I asked.

"I'd rather not say – at least, not right now. But obviously one thing was that I had to join in with whatever Carmody wanted to do, so when he decided to go to Enfield during the riots I didn't have any choice but to go with him."

"I don't know… I think I'd have said no, and if he told anyone about me being gay I'd have just called him a liar. After all, he could have downloaded that stuff onto the flash drive himself."

He shook his head. "There was a lot of other stuff on there that proved it was my drive – school work from that day, and some stuff I'd been doing at home – not just the story but other stuff. And by the time the riots started the flash drive was the least of it: by then he had some photos and bits of video that I wouldn't want anyone to see. There was no way for me to get out of it. And so when he got arrested I was absolutely sure they'd come for me as well.

"But he never said anything. He went to court and got eight months… actually, he got lucky there, because if he'd been two months older he'd have been old enough to go to Feltham, but instead he got sent off to some place on the south coast – apparently there weren't any spare places for fourteen-year-olds in London.

"Simon was really worried about him and kept going round to ask Carmody's mum if he was okay, and so one day when she went to visit him – they were allowed to visit every two weeks – she asked if Simon would like to go too, and in the end I went with them.

"Carmody didn't look too bad, though he was sort of quiet compared to how he used to be. He was surprised to see us, but happy too. There was a sort of shop there where visitors could buy tea, soft drinks and sweets and stuff, and his mother went to get something for us, which meant that we were able to talk to him on our own. And so of course I asked if the police were looking for me and Alex.

"«No,» he said. «They asked who I was with and I told them nobody, I'd just decided on the spur of the moment to go and see what was happening. Then they showed me some CCTV pictures and asked if I recognised anyone, but they were pretty poor quality and I doubt if even your mother would have recognised you, Joe. So I said sorry, I just found myself with a crowd of strangers and just went where they went. They asked a couple more times, but I got the impression they were just going through the motions.»

"«Thanks,» I said. «Didn't you think that giving them my name might have earned you some Brownie points?»

"He shrugged. «I reckon they'd just have looked down on me even more for being a grass,» he said. «Besides, you wouldn't have been there if I hadn't made you come with me. I'm not a complete bastard, you know.»

"So I said thanks again, and he said I could reward him when he gets out. And then his mother came back with the drinks, and we spent the rest of the time talking about how he was coping and so on. So the bottom line is, unless they have better CCTV pictures that Carmody didn't see, me and Alex are safe. And I think if they did have better pictures they'd have shown them to him."

"Great," I said. "So, Alex, does this mean you'll be going back?"

"Well, no. Like I said, this world's a lot more interesting, and I reckon my career choices are likely to be a lot better here, especially when my best friend is rolling in dosh!" And he grinned at me. "Especially if I get my name on some of those patents we're going to take out. In fact I was thinking that maybe I could bring my family here too. What do you think?"

"I don't see why not," I said. "There's always work for builders, so your dad would be able to work if he wanted to – although he probably won't need to if you become this world's version of Edison or Marconi. And now that you've raised it, I suppose I could ask Auntie Megan and Uncle Jim to move here too… What about you, Joe? Do you want to stay?"

"No… well, probably not. I was thinking of this as a bit of a holiday. I mean, I've only just got here, so I don't know anything about this world yet. Of course, if things work out half as well as Alex thinks they will, maybe I'll change my mind, especially if I could bring my family with me."

"I'd have thought you'd be glad to get away from your brother if he bosses you about all the time."

"Not really. I'd miss him a lot if we were separated. It's not like he does anything too horrible to me, and I think family is sort of important."

We went and collected Wolfie and then went down to supper. I was glad to know that Alex seemed to be off the hook as far as the riots were concerned, although I did worry a little that this might mean him changing his mind and going back to his own world. Yes, he was keen enough to stay now, but I thought it would take months, if not years, for us to sort out the patenting and then manufacturing the new technology he had brought with him, and in the meantime he'd have to put up with a life with no electricity and some very old-fashioned schooling. Once the winter came he would have to survive without central heating as well, and I was afraid that might turn out to be too much to ask…

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