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Excerpt

Excerpt

The Children’s Book

Two boys stood in the Prince Consort Gallery, and looked down on
a third. It was June 19th, 1895. The Prince had died in 1861, and
had seen only the beginnings of his ambitious project for a
gathering of museums in which the British craftsmen could study the
best examples of design. His portrait, modest and medalled,was done
inmosaic in the tympanum of a decorative arch at one end of the
narrowgallery which ran above the space of the South Court. The
South Court was decorated with further mosaics, portraits of
painters, sculptors, potters, the "Kensington Valhalla." The third
boy was squatting beside one of a series of imposing glass cases
displaying gold and silver treasures. Tom, the younger of the two
looking down, thought of Snow White in her glass coffin. He thought
also, looking up at Albert, that the vessels and spoons and
caskets, gleaming in the liquid light under the glass, were like a
resurrected kingly burial hoard. (Which, indeed, some of them
were.) They could not see the other boy clearly, because he was on
the far side of a case. He appeared to be sketching its
contents.


Julian Cain was at home in the South Kensington Museum. His father,
Major Prosper Cain, was Special Keeper of Precious Metals.

Julian was just fifteen, and a boarder at Marlowe School, but was
home recovering from a nasty bout of jaundice. He was neither tall
nor short, slightly built, with a sharp face and a sallow
complexion, even without the jaundice. He wore his straight black
hair parted in the centre, and was dressed in a school suit. Tom
Wellwood, boyish in Norfolk jacket and breeches, was about two
years younger, and looked younger than he was, with large dark
eyes, a soft mouth and a smooth head of dark gold hair. The two had
not met before. Tom's mother was visiting Julian's father, to ask
for help with her research. She was a successful authoress of
magical tales. Julian had been deputed to show Tom the treasures.
He appeared to be more interested in showing him the squatting
boy.


"I said I'd show you a mystery."


"I thought you meant one of the treasures."


"No, I meant him. There's something shifty about him. I've
been keeping an eye on him. He's up to something."


Tom was not sure whether this was the sort of make-believe his own
family practised, tracking complete strangers and inventing stories
about them. He wasn't sure if Julian was, so to speak,
playing at being responsible.


"What does he do?"


"He does the Indian rope trick. He disappears. Now you see him, now
you don't. He's here every day. All by himself. But you can't see
where or when he goes."


They sidled along the wrought-iron gallery, which was hung with
thick red velvet curtains. The third boy stayed where he was,
drawing intently. Then he moved his position, to see from another
angle. He was hay-haired, shaggy and filthy. He had cut-down
workmen's trousers, with braces, over a flannel shirt the colour of
smoke, stained with soot. Julian said


"We could go down and stalk him. There are all sorts of odd things
about him. He looks very rough. He never seems to go anywhere but
here. I've waited at the exit to see him leave, and follow him, and
he doesn't seem to leave. He seems to be a permanent
fixture."


The boy looked up, briefly, his grimy face creased in a frown. Tom
said


"He concentrates."


"He never talks to anyone that I can see. Now and then the art
students look at his drawings. But he doesn't chat to them. He just
creeps about the place. It's sinister."


"Do you get many robberies?"


"My father always says the keepers are criminally casual with the
keys to the cases. And there are heaps and heaps of stuff lying
around waiting to be catalogued, or sent to Bethnal Green. It would
be terribly easy to sneak off with things. I don't even know if
anyone would notice if you did, not with some of the things, though
they'd notice quickly enough if anyone made an attempt on the
Candlestick."


"Candlestick?"


"The Gloucester Candlestick. What he seems to be drawing, a lot of
the time. The lump of gold, in the centre of that case. It's
ancient and unique. I'll show it to you. We could go down, and go
up to it, and disturb him." Tom was dubious about this. There was
something tense about the third boy, a tough prepared energy he
didn't even realise he'd noticed.


However, he agreed. He usually agreed to things. They moved,
sleuthlike, from ambush to ambush behind the swags of velvet. They
went under Prince Albert, out onto the turning stone stairs, down
to the South Court. When they reached the Candlestick, the dirty
boy was not there.


"He wasn't on the stairs," said Julian, obsessed.


Tom stopped to stare at the Candlestick. It was dully gold. It
seemed heavy. It stood on three feet, each of which was a
long-eared dragon, grasping a bone with grim claws, gnawing with
sharp teeth. The rim of the spiked cup that held the candle was
also supported by open-jawed dragons with wings and snaking tails.
The whole of its thick stem was wrought of fantastic foliage,
amongst which men and monsters, centaurs and monkeys, writhed,
grinned, grimaced, grasped and stabbed at each other. A helmeted,
gnomelike being, with huge eyes, grappled the sinuous tail of a
reptile. There were other human or kobold figures, one

in particular with long draggling hair and a mournful gaze. Tom
thought immediately that hismotherwould need to see it. He tried,
and failed, to memorise the shapes. Julian explained. It had an
interesting history, he said. No one knew exactly what it was made
of. It was some kind of gilt alloy. Itwas probable that it had been
made in Canterbury—modelled in wax and cast—but apart
from the symbols of the evangelists on the knop, it appeared not to
be made for a religious use. It had turned up in the cathedral in
Le Mans, from where it had disappeared during the French
Revolution. A French antiquary had sold it to the Russian Prince
Soltikoff. The South KensingtonMuseum had acquired it from his
collection in 1861. There was nothing, anywhere, like it.


Tom did not know what a knop was, and did not know what the symbols
of the evangelists were. But he saw that the thing was a whole
world of secret stories. He said his mother would like to see it.
It might be just what she was looking for. He would have liked to
touch the heads of the dragons.


Julian was looking restlessly around him. There was a concealed
door, behind a plaster cast of a guarding knight, on a marble
plinth. It was slightly ajar, which he had never seen before. He
had tried its handle, and it was always, as it should be, since it
led down to the basement storerooms and workrooms, locked.


"I bet he went down there."


"What's down there?"


"Miles and miles of passages and cupboards and cellars, and things
being moulded, or cleaned, or just kept. Let's stalk him."


There was no light, beyond what was cast on the upper steps from
the door they had opened. Tom did not like the dark. He did not
like transgression. He said "We can't see where we're going."


"We'll leave the door open a crack."


"Someone may come and lock it. We may get into trouble."


"We won't. I live here."


They crept down the uneven stone steps, holding a thin iron rail.
At the foot of the staircase they found themselves cut off by a
metal grille, beyond which stretched a long corridor, now vaguely
visible as though there was a light-source at the other end. The
passage was roofed with Gothic vaulting, like a church crypt, but
finished in white glazed industrial bricks. Julian gave the grille
an irritated shake and it swung open. He observed that this, too,
should have been locked. Someone was in for trouble.


The passage opened into a dusty vault, crammed with a crowd of
white effigies, men, women and children, staring out with sightless
eyes. Tom thought they might be prisoners in the underworld, or
even the damned. They were closely packed; the boys had to worm
their way between them. Beyond this funereal chamber, two corridors
branched. There was more light to the left, so they went that way,
negotiated another unlocked grille, and found themselves in a
treasure-house of vast gold and silver vessels, croziers,
eagle-winged lecterns, fountains, soaring angels and grinning
cherubs. "Electrotypes," whispered the knowledgeable Julian. A
faint but steady light rippled over the metal, through little glass
roundels let into the brickwork. Julian put his finger

to his lips and hissed to Tom to keep still. Tom steadied himself
against a silver galleon, which clanged. He sneezed.


"Don't do that."


"I can't help it. It's the dust."


They crept on, took a left, took a right, had to force their way
between thickets of what Tom thought were tomb railings, surmounted
by jaunty female angel-busts,with wings and pointed breasts. Julian
said they were cast-iron radiator covers, commissioned from an
ironmaster in Sheffield. "Cost a packet, down here because someone
thought they were obtrusive," he whispered. "Which way
now?"


Tom said he had no idea. Julian said they were lost, no one would
find them, rats would pick their bones. Someone sneezed. Julian
said


"I told you, don't do that."


"I didn't. It must have been him."


Tom was worried about hunting down a probably harmless and innocent
boy. He was also worried about encountering a savage and

dangerous boy.


Julian cried "We knowyou're there. Come out and give yourself
up!"


He was alert and smiling, Tom saw, the successful seeker or catcher
in games of pursuit.


There was a silence. Another sneeze. A slight scuffling. Julian
and


Tom turned to look down the other fork of the corridor, which was
obstructed by a forest of imitation marble pillars, made to support
busts or vases. A wild face, under a mat of hair, appeared at knee
height, framed between fake basalt and fake obsidian.


"You'd better come out and explain yourself," said Julian, with
complete certainty. "You're trespassing. I should get the
police."


The third boy came out on all fours, shook himself like a beast,
and stood up, supporting himself briefly on the pillars. He was
about Julian's height. He was shaking, whether with fear or wrath
Tom could not tell. He pushed a dirty hand across his face, rubbing
his eyes, which even in the gloom could be seen to be red-rimmed.
He put his head down, and tensed. Tom saw the thought go through
him, he could charge the two of them, head-butt them and flee down
the corridors. He didn't move and didn't answer.


"What are you doing down here?" Julian insisted.


"I were hiding."


"Why? Hiding from who?"


"Just hiding. I were doing no harm. I move carefully. I don't
disturb things."


"What's your name? Where do you live?"


"My name's Philip. Philip Warren. I suppose I live here. At
present."


His voice was vaguely north country.Tomrecognised it, but couldn't
place it. He was looking at them much as they were looking at him,
as though he couldn't quite grasp that they were real. He blinked,
and a tremor ran through him. Tom said


"You were drawing the Candlestick. Is that what you came
for?"


"Aye."


He was clutching a kind of canvas satchel against his chest, which
presumably contained his sketching materials. Tom said


"It's an amazing thing, isn't it? I hadn't seen it before."


The other boy looked him in the eye, then, with a flicker of a
grin.


"Aye. Amazing, it is."


Julian spoke severely.


"You must come and explain yourself to my father."


"Oh, your father. Who's he, then?"


"He's Special Keeper of Precious Metals."


"Oh. I see."


"You must come along with us."


"I see I must. Can I get my things?"


"Things?" Julian sounded doubtful for the first time. "You mean,
you've been living down here?"


"S'what I said. I got nowhere else to go. I'd rather not sleep on
t'streets. I come here to draw. I saw the Museum was for workingmen
to see well-made things. I mean to get work, I do, and I need
drawings to show . . . I like these things."


"Can we see the drawings?" asked Tom.


"Not in this light. Upstairs, if you're interested. I'll get my
things, like I said."


He ducked, and began to make his way back amongst the pillars,
crouching and weaving expertly. Tom was put in mind of dwarves in
mine-workings, and, since his upbringing was socially
conscientious, of children in mines, pulling trucks on hands and
knees. Julian was on Philip's heels. Tom followed.


"Come in," said the grimy boy, at the opening of a small storeroom,
making a welcoming gesture, possibly mocking, with an arm. The
storeroom contained what appeared to be a small stone hut, carved
and ornamented with cherubim and seraphim, eagles and doves,
acanthus and vines. It had its own little metal gate, with traces
of gilding on the rusting iron.


"Convenient," said Philip. "It has a stone bed. I took the liberty
of borrowing some sacks to keep warm. I'll put 'em back, naturally,
where I found them."


"It's a tomb or shrine," said Julian. "Russian, by the look of it.
There must have been some saint on that table, in a glass case or a
reliquary.


He might still be in there, underneath, his bones that is, if he
wasn't incorrupt."


"I haven't noticed him," said Philip, flatly. "He hasn't bothered
me."


Tom said "Are you hungry? What do you eat?"


"Once or twice I got to help in the tea-room, moving plates and
washing them. People leave a lot on their plates, you'd be
surprised. And the young ladies from the Art School took notice of
my drawings and sometimes they passed me a sandwich. I don't beg. I
did steal one, once, when I was desperate, an egg-and-cress
sandwich. I were pretty sure the

young lady had no intention of eating it."


He paused.


"It isn't much," he said. "I'm hungry, yes."


He was rummaging behind the tomb in the shrine, and came out with
another canvas satchel, a sketch-book, a candle stub and what
looked like a roll of clothing, tied with string.


"How did you get in?" Julian persisted.


"Followed the horses and carts. You know, they turn in and drive
down a ramp into these underground parts. And they unload and pack
things with a deal of bustle, and it's easy enough to mingle wi'
them, wi' the carters and lads, and get in."


"And the upstairs door?" Julian queried. "Which is meant to be
locked at all times."


"I came across a little key."


"Came across?"


"Aye. Came across. I'll give it back. Here, take it."


Tom said


"It must be horribly frightening, down here alone at night."


"Not near so frightening as t'streets in t'East End. Not
near."


Julian said "Please come with me now. You must come and explain all
this to my father. He's talking to Tom's mother. This is Tom. Tom
Wellwood. I'm Julian Cain."




















































































































































































Excerpted from THE CHILDREN’S BOOK © Copyright 2010
by A. S. Byatt. Reprinted with permission by Vintage. All rights
reserved.

The Children’s Book
by by A. S. Byatt