Clive awoke with his cheek to cold stone. His clothes were soaked. A memory flooded back: of falling through black water, of being seized in an iron grip, and the sudden rush of being dragged along at high speed...
Losing consciousness had been a mercy.
Clive sat up quickly. Where the hell was he?
He did not have to wait long to find out! Torches guttered into life around the walls, lit by something large and fast that kept to the shadows! The room was rectangular with a single open portal to one end. The portal was not dark – dancing light within suggested a large fire somewhere off to the side. The walls were draped in red velvet, forming soft arches around artful frescoes, frescoes depicting vistas of London in the soft pastels of daylight: St. Paul’s Cathedral; the Bridge; Hampton Court; Whitehall; even the Globe (though it had been pulled down years ago)157 all rendered with unerring realism, the scenes filled with Londoners in motion: windows to another world, yet viewed as if from a distance, not amongst, as if the artist who had drawn them had been seated in a hole in a wall.
At the centre of the room, a table had been laid with a cloth and candlestick and crockery for dinner, complete with two chairs. Clive assumed one of the chairs was his. The other would not be empty for long, for someone was coming...
A voice, deep and rich, bellowed forth from the portal. “Who DARES to defile the sanctity of the Rat King’s holy tabernacle?”
Clive stood, and brushed himself down. “Erm…”
“Who has the TEMERITY to disturb the immortal contemplations of the father of rat-kind?”
“Erm… ’tis I… Hucklefish – of Devon!”
“Huckle-what?”
“Fish!”
“No thanks! I got cheese in the oven!”
A shuffling sound, and a shadow began to grow on the dancing left wall of the corridor beyond the portal. The ears on whatever was approaching were simply immense! The shadow grew exponentially, until the light was eclipsed almost entirely! Whatever was coming was vast!
Then the shadow was gone. What bowed into view, was a diminutive figure: smaller by far than Pinky, almost child-like in size, erect yet bent almost double, deformed by a hair-split hunch for a back, large of ear and long of whisker, and clad in black pants, white shirt and suspenders, the father of rat kind stepped forward with a grin!
“Clive! It’s you! So glad you could make it!” scampering forward with a surprising turn of speed, the Rat King clasped Clive’s hand in his paw. “Been dying to meet ya!” He flapped airily at the portal. “Forgive the whole voice-of-Jehovah act! I’m a big believer in first impressions! Let me get you a drink: what’s y’poison?”
Clive’s fear was fast transmuting to bewilderment. “Um. Arsenic?”
The King doubled over in laughter (quite a feat given how bent he already was). “Hahaha. Clive – you’re a squeak! Most rats don’t like to talk about poison! But me: I’m easy! What’s life without a little spice?”
The King hopped over to a large wine cask that formed the centrepiece of a large walk-in drinks cabinet. The frieze behind it offered a vista of Parliament.
“How about a glass of wine? We rats love wine! This barrel was taken from the cellars of Parliament itself. Chateau de Fawkes – 1605 – great year! I’ve been saving it for a special occasion! Wanna try?”
Clive was too busy trying to remember what had happened in 1605 to answer. Hadn’t someone gotten an arrow in their eye?158
The King poured out two goblets from the tap on the barrel. Handing one to Clive, he raised his glass.
“Bottoms up!”
Clive knocked back his glass – God only knew he needed a real drink (that wasn’t the river) – only to find himself sputtering and coughing as a fine dry powder poured into his mouth! “It’s – gunpowder!” he spluttered!159
The King looked into his own glass and shrugged. “Ok. Maybe 1605 wasn’t such a great year!160 That Fawkes had some strong tastes! What a Guy!161 So much for the pair of teeth162 – let’s eat!”163
The King motioned to the table and chairs. Clive, still trying to summon enough saliva to rid his mouth of explosive residue, joined him.
Seating himself with the help of a suddenly apparent Scratchfella, who held his chair for him, the King leaned toward Clive, conspiratorial in tone. “Enough small talk! Clive, I’m gonna be honest with you. I need your help with something. In return, I can save your business! In fact, I can do you one better: I can make you so rich that you’ll be paying the Lord Mayor to iron your linen! What d’ya say?”
Clive started to wonder if the Lord Mayor would really work those creases out, but then stopped himself. “But why me? What can I possibly do for you that someone else couldn’t?”
“An excellent question, Clive!” The Rat King snapped his fingers at the shadows. Pinky materialised from the darkness, complete with a waiter’s napkin over her arm and a silver cloche in hand. The mirrored dome rose upon a steaming vision of a baked brie. Clive’s stomach rumbled – he hadn’t eaten all day, and breaking out of a buried coffin sure did give one an appetite! Warm french bread and a generous dish of butter were added to the table’s bounty, and a small serving of what looked like fruit chutney.
Clive reached for the butter knife but Pinky expertly snapped her napkin at his knuckles, and he recoiled in pain. “Ow!”
“Give the cheese a moment to breathe!” said the King. “Trust me, you’ll thank me for it! And, while we wait, I want to tell you a story...” The King made a bridging gesture between them. “Our two kinds, Clive... we haven’t exactly always seen eye to eye. Time was, men were like any other species – transitory. But then, men got smart – perhaps too smart! And one day, they stopped their wandering, and they stayed. They put down roots. They watered the soil, they sowed and they reaped. And, since no-one else was doing the same, before very long, they had decided that the whole world was theirs. Just like that! And everything that did not walk on two legs – and even some that did – were enslaved, or – worse – condemned to the shadows!”
“But men weren’t the only ones with the smarts! We rats have a saying: ‘there’s no such thing as a free lunch, except when the other guy’s buying!’ True, man had dispossessed us for all time, but man had granaries and food to spare, and no rat I know has ever been accused of turning down a free meal. So it was that men grew the crops, and rats ate the grain. In turn, men took their sweet revenge with poison! Scavenger and scavenged, vermin and thieves, locked in eternal conflict, on and on, for millennia! So it was, and so it is, and so it goes. What d’ya gonna do?”
Clive chewed at his lip nervously and glanced at the brie. “I feel like, perhaps, I should apologise on behalf of–”
The King chuckled and waved his embarrassment away. “Ah look at yus! Credit to your kind! Forget about it! It’s the natural order of t’ings – survival of the fittest! Men weren’t exactly smarter, but they were bigger. And besides...” the King waggled a four fingered paw. “Opposable thumbs!”
“Oh, my thumbs never opposed anything, I can assure you!”
The King slapped the table. “And nor should they! That’s why we chose you, Clive. Your total lack of opposition! But back to my tale – the real story is yet to come!”
“Now I said this conflict was eternal, and that was true. It was not, however, inevitable. And one man, and one rat, were about to change the narrative forever! That man’s name was Elman Squatcherd.”
“Elman... Squatcherd,” Clive repeated, somewhat unnecessarily. It was a name so peculiar, he just had to try it on for size. Like leopard skin tights.
The King nodded. “Legend has it, he was an oar slave on a Turkish galley, and that his only friend was a rat called Nicodemus. The story goes that it was with Nicodemus’ help that Elman escaped the horror of slavery, for the canny rat had learned to pick locks with its tail. And so, together, they made their way back to the Christian world, and there they forged a pact. No more would man and rat war and wrangle over scraps. All animals were henceforth to be considered equal. Even humans. They called it ‘speciesism.’”
“Elman taught Nicodemus to speak, read, even to write! To mix cocktails. And, in turn, Nicodemus taught Elman the wisdom of what lies beneath. The bounty of a world forgotten by man; treasures from bygone civilizations: civic sanitation; piped water; baths. This very hall, right here, was one such! Together, man and rat, past and future, would be unstoppable!”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Clive raised a hand. “What’s a cocktail?”
“A racehorse. But let’s not get snagged on the details. Now, word of Elman and Nicodemus’ détente was spreading! Soon, hundreds all across Europe were flocking to the five-four fingered banner of speciesism! Then thousands! Soon word had reached the Inquisition, then the Vatican, then the Holy Roman Emperor himself! Heresy was declared, armies were raised against them!”
“But to Elman and Nicodemus came Europe’s poor, her hungry, her downtrodden. And they were fed, if only with scraps, but fed, nonetheless – crumbs dropped into outstretched hands from willing incisors, stolen from the granaries of the corrupt and the rich by a million scurrying scallywags! And there was warmth too, insulation from the winter frosts: every larger body blanketed in dozens of the smaller. And there was no poison, no theft, only sharing and harmony. And in return, the masses, both two-legged and four, gave to Elman and Nicodemus the most precious gift of all: absolute loyalty!”
“To the great powers of Europe, such an interspecial truce could not be tolerated! For, if rat could stand tall beside man, if the hierarchy of the beasts ceased to exist – what other hierarchies might be challenged? Pauper and King? Church and State? God and man? A secret conclave in Rome declared speciesism the greatest heresy since someone suggested that the Eucharist was just a piece of bread. And, for once, state and church were in perfect lockstep: speciesism would be killed in the crib, or the hierarchists (as they came to be known) would die trying!”
“War seemed inevitable. A war for the very soul of the civilized world! Was the future to be one of brotherhood between the species? Or of dominance, of one brother standing above the body of the other: Cain above Abel?”
“But then, tragedy struck. Before the final battle could be joined, Elman was taken sick with a terrible disease, and died. Some pointed to the fact that Elman had been perfectly healthy before meeting a delegation of hierarchists who had driven a mysterious carriage into the heart of the speciests’ camp, but nothing could be proven, and it would have mattered little even if it could! The disease was virile, and struck down many in the camp, though only the humans, never us rats. On his deathbed, Elman bid Nicodemus swear to him to continue the revolution, no matter the cost!”
“But the problem was men. For with Elman’s death, the humans that had followed him, already decimated by the mysterious outbreak, had lost all their will to fight, and Nicodemus alone could not quell their fears. And so, the next morning, the rats stood alone upon the field. In the night, men had quite deserted them!”
“What followed was less a battle, more a slaughter. Millions of my brethren were trampled beneath charging hooves, torn apart by cannon fire, or skewered on pikes like giant şiş kebabs. It was an extermination! In a single day, ratkind in Europe was driven to the point of extinction!”
“And that, it seemed, was to be all the legacy of Elman Squatcherd, and his loyal friend, Nicodemus.”
Clive was stunned to silence. Almost. “But, Nicodemus survived, did he not?”
The King spread his arms. “Who can know? Some say he lives yet, hiding in the shadows, an old rat, spinning tales of a man he once loved...”
Clive’s brow furrowed.
Moments passed.
The King sighed, and persevered. “Some say he leads them still, a King of sorts, a father figure to rats everywhere...”
Clive looked back up at the King.
The King waited, eyebrows raised expectantly, palms open, ready for the big reveal.
Clive blinked three times in quick succession. The wheels were turning, certainly, but the clock hands seemed to still be in the shop.
The King rolled his eyes. Once more unto the breach...
“Some even say,” the King whispered, “that Nicodemus made his way here, to London Town, to this very sewer!”
Clive’s eyes widened!
The King nodded encouragingly.
Clive jumped to his feet! “You’re...”
“That’s right, Clive!”
“You’re–”
“I sure am, Clive!”
“You’re Nicodemus’ best friend!”
The King slumped but instantly rallied. “Near enough!”
“But,” Clive said, the brie quite forgotten, “I mean it’s a great story, really it is! Worthy of the Bard himself! Elman and Nicodemus! Wait – didn’t he write something similar? Tony and Cleo the Cat? But what does it have to do with me?”
“Ah! Finally, we get to it!” said the King. “You see, the story did not end there! Nicodemus brought Elman’s body with him to London, and Elman was buried here in the city grounds with great ceremony. Before long, that grave had become a shrine! Pilgrims, both rat and man, flocked to Elman’s grave from all over Europe! Soon, his ideas were spreading once more. And that was something the London authorities could not tolerate! One night, they exhumed Elman’s body, and moved it to an unmarked grave. You’ve probably heard that in 1650, London was overrun with vermin?”
Clive nodded. He hadn’t.
“That was the year every rat for miles around took to the streets in protest! But bodies don’t just rebury themselves, Clive… There had to be at least one person who knew where Elman was buried...”
Clive gasped. “You’re talking about the Undertaker!”
“Bingo! Clive! I want to retrieve Elman’s body, give him a decent burial – down here, among friends – where he belongs! And perhaps... just perhaps... I can build a new shrine, and continue the work he began all those years ago!”
“Well, that all sounds terribly noble! But, why didn’t you just go to the Undertaker about this – or Jerry?”
The King sighed. “Believe me, we’ve tried... But your friend Jerry had a bad run in with some of our country cousins a few years back – he hasn’t forgiven them yet. Frankly, I don’t blame him – those rustic rats play dirty! And, unfortunately, the Undertaker has heard Jerry’s stories. Whenever I send Pinky and Scratchfella to see him, he turns them down flat! But you Clive, you’re young, you’re bright! You haven’t made your mind up yet. And, most importantly, you can gain access to the Undertaker’s ledger!”
Clive blinked. “You need me because of my job!”
The King nodded slowly. “And so... the penny drops.”
Clive looked down at the floor around him.
The King continued. “I need you, Clive, to break into the Undertaker’s most private sanctuary, read his ledger, and find the location of Elman’s grave. What d’ya say?”
Clive pursed his lips. “I don’t know... The Undertaker is very serious about that ledger…”
“He never has to know, Clive! Do you really think he cares about a single unmarked grave? All he cares about is saving his business! But he can’t do that alone, Clive. He needs your help! You needed a miracle, and here I am! I’m your living breathing furry Godfather!” Jizz hands.
“Look, I am not saying I am unmoved by your words – because I really am. And Lord knows I need a miracle! But it’s against the undertaker’s code to disturb a concealed grave – it’s usually concealed for a very good reason!”
The King sighed again (he did that a lot around Clive). “You drive a hard bargain, Clive! You leave me no choice…” he called into the shadows. “Scratchfella? Do your thing!”
The big rat materialised from the shadows, grinning broadly, violin case in hand. Pinky, still standing guard over the brie, swallowed audibly. The catches were flipped, the lid raised. Clive watched with interest as something was withdrawn from out of his sight, behind the lid. Scratchfella winked at Clive.
The lid dropped with a slam.
Scratchfella raised his violin to his chin.
Pinky’s hands leapt to her ears...
Scratchfella began to play. A horribly rending serenade.
“And that’s why we calls him Scratchfella!” winced the King. “Like nails on a blackboard!”
Clive scrunched up his nose. “Is this supposed to make me give in? Some kind of torture?”
The King grinned. “Why? Is it working?”
Clive looked alarmed.
The King guffawed. “No! It’s mood music. You see, Clive, what you have now is a... crisis of the heart! I don’t know much about love – never saw the need for it myself. We rats mostly choose our partners based on the smell of their urine... But one thing I do know about the females of your species, is they like their mates to have a little pzazz, a little ḥuṣpâ! Know what I’m saying?”
“Not really.”
“It’s all about success, Clive! You’ve got to show Isabella that you’re a guy who gets things done! Who has what it takes! A real man, who steps in, who takes charge! Imagine the look on her face when she realises it was YOU – NOT Jerry – NOT the Undertaker – who saved the business! Hell, imagine the look on ALL their faces!”
“Well, that does sound good... but I’m not entirely sure she wants the business saved. I mean her dad is quite set against–”
The King raised a single crooked finger. “Now, let me tell you what women DON’T like in their mates. They don’t like men with no home. No money. No prospects. Beggars with bowls.” The King smiled at Clive’s perturbed expression. He shrugged equitably. “Save the business... don’t save the business! It doesn’t matter what she wants! What matters is you want it! And you can get it! Just like you can get her! If you wants it bad enough...”
Isabella. Nightgown. Ankles.
Clive nodded quickly. “I do want it bad enough!”
“So what are you waiting for?” Taking a silver spoon, the King scooped out a generous helping of warm brie, and lathered it over a hunk of bread, proffering it to Clive’s hungry eyes. “Feast while the cheese is still warm!”
Clive reached for the bread, but hesitated. “How are you going to save the business, anyway? Even if I can bring you the location of Elman’s grave? The Undertaker’s not much for charity – and besides...” Clive flagged the room about them. “I mean, I'm sure you’re doing just fine, but no-one lives down here by choice, right? You said you can make us rich...”
Clive regretted his bold words almost immediately. For just an instant, the King’s facade seemed to crack, a glimpsed chasm, with something vast rising from the depths. And then, the folksy crust was whole again: whatever lay beneath, thankfully, never breached.
The King withdrew the proffered brie buttered bread, and took a bite. The answer was thus somewhat muffled. “’Eave ’at to me Clive!” (gulp) “Let’s just say, you’re gonna get a lot busier from here on after!” A toothsome smile.
Clive mulled that. “Well, busy is good, yes! God knows we could use the work...” Clive suddenly thought of all those coffins lying empty in the parlour – all waiting to be sold. And then, the one coffin. The special one. With its secret trapdoor to the room below... He baulked: “But, I can’t! I just can’t! I mean it’s the Undertaker, he’s... well, he’s scary!”
The King toyed with the bread. “Clive, did you ever hear the story about the Pied Piper and the milkmaid?”
“I’ll do it!”
The King grinned. “Never doubted it!” Suddenly looking from Clive to the bread basket. “Hey – why aren’t you eating?”