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was half choked with debris – much of it pieces of wood, some of them sharp as knives – and all the other detritus that had last night been dislodged. But to Dodger’s astonished gaze it appeared that most of the debris was a man, and that man did not look well; there was nothing very much where one eye should have been, but the other one was opening now and it looked Dodger in the face. It stank, the face Dodger looked into, and he shuddered, because he knew it.
    He said, ‘That’s you, Grandad, isn’t it?’
    The oldest tosher in London looked as if he had been tortured, and Dodger almost threw up when he saw the rest of him. He must have been working by himself, just like Dodger, and got caught up when the flood came down, and there would have been everything in it, anything that someone had thrown away or lost or wanted to hide and dispose of. A lot of it had apparently smashed into Grandad, who was nevertheless trying to sit upright, covered in bruises, bleeding and coloured with all sorts of nastiness, such as only a flooded sewer could provide.
    Grandad spat mud – at least, Dodger hoped it was only mud – and said weakly, ‘Oh, it’s you, Dodger. Good to see you in such fine fettle, in a manner of speaking; you’re a good lad, I always said so, smarter than I ever was, see. So what I want you to do now, right now, is to get a pint of the worst brandy you can find, and bring it back down here and pour it down this thing what used to be my throat, right?’
    Dodger tried to pull some of the stuff away from the old man, who groaned and mumbled, ‘Trust me on this one. I am banged about like nobody’s business, fool that I am, and at my age too! Should have known better, silly old fool. I reckon I have eaten more than my peck today and so it’s time to die. Be a lovely lad and get me the liquor right now, there’s a good boy; there’s a sixpence and a crown and five pennies in my right hand, and they’re still there ’cos I can feel it, and that is all for you, my lad, you lucky boy.’
    ‘Here,’ said Dodger, ‘I’m not taking anything from you, Grandad!’
    The old tosher shook his head, such as was left of it, and said, ‘Firstly I ain’t your grandad really, you boys only give me the name just ’cos I’m older than what you lot are, and by the Lady you
will
take my stuff when I’m gone, ’cos you are a tosher and a tosher will take what he finds! Now I knows where I am and I knows there is a bottle shop just round the corner, up there downstream. Brandy, I said, the worst they’ve got, and then remember me fondly. Now piss off right now, or be followed by the curse of a dying tosher!’
    Dodger came out of the next drain cover at a run, found the rather greasy bottle shop, bought
two
bottles of a brandy that smelled as if it could cut a man’s leg off and was back climbing down the drain almost before the echoes of his leaving Grandad died away.
    Grandad was still there, and was dribbling something cruel, but there was something like a smile when he saw Dodger, who handed him the first open bottle, which he threw down his throat in one long glug. Some of it spilled out of his mouth as he beckoned for the other, saying, ‘This will suit me right enough, oh yes indeed, just the way a tosher should go.’ Then his voice dropped to a whisper, and with his one relatively good hand he grabbed at Dodger and said, ‘I
saw
her, lad; the Lady, standing large as life just where you are now, all crimson and gold and shining like the sun on a sovereign. Then she blew me a kiss and beckoned to me and scarpered, only in a ladylike way, of course.’
    Dodger didn’t know what to say, but managed to say it anyway. ‘You’ve taught me a lot, Grandad. You taught me about the Lady of the Rats. So look, get the taste of the sewer out of your mouth, and then I reckon I can pull you out of here to somewhere better. Let’s give it a try,
please
?’
    ‘Not a chance, lad. I reckon if you were to pick me