A Spark Unseen (32 page)

Henri put a foot experimentally on the leading edge of the stones. “There is a way,” he said, peering up at the pile. “It is not a hard climb. I will hold the candle.”

When we had all scrambled through — the climb, in my opinion, not being difficult if you were the height of a grown man — the candle went back to Joseph. Joseph’s hand was covered in pale, running drips of hardened wax, and I tied a handkerchief around it before we started off again. He smiled his thanks to me, showing the wrinkles around his eyes.

Twice more we climbed a rockfall, though none as difficult as the first, and then Henri held up his hand.

“What is it?” Lane asked. The stub of the candle showed me all of his suspicion.

Henri was looking about, as if he might be lost, but then his expression lightened, and he motioned for Joseph to bring the candle. There was a wooden door, with no handle or latch, covered in stone-colored dust and therefore barely distinguishable from the walls, not much different than we were. And then, all at once, a long, thin knife had appeared in Henri’s hand.

Joseph jumped back, hand to his pocket, and Lane had me instantly behind him, but Henri merely grinned as he knelt down and slid the knife into the crack between the door and the jamb. I waited behind Lane, feeling his tension increase while Henri worked the blade, jiggling it against something on the other side. Henri stood and used all his weight to jerk upward on the knife handle. Wood rattled and metal grunted on the other side, and Henri, triumphant, let the door swing open into the space beyond it. The knife was already gone, secreted to who knew where on his person.

“Shall I go first?” Henri offered. He stepped into the darkness, and Joseph went next, candle held aloft, hand in his pocket, watching Henri’s every step. I followed Lane cautiously.

“This is the crypt you described, is it not?” Henri said, voice echoing. “Where the man Aldridge held you?”

I walked a little way down the flagged floor of a barrel-shaped room, narrow and chill, rough arches forming the ceiling. Long rows of stone shelves ran down each side, as far as I could see in the candlelight, empty of bodies, though a few still contained the ancient webbing of long-dead spiders. I shuddered, crossing my arms over my chest. Lane was talking softly near the tunnel door, Joseph listening intently as he lit Lane a new candle with his stub. The door, I saw, had a very dusty and unused wine rack tacked to it, concealing it from view; I vowed to someday examine every bookcase in Stranwyne.

Lane came down the center of the crypt with his light, then stepped to the side and pushed open a wooden door. He held up the candle and I saw a plain, windowless room of the same stone as everything we’d seen, a dilapidated wine shelf sagging in one corner.

“This was where he held you?” I asked. He did not answer.

“The way to the church is here,” I heard Henri saying somewhere farther down, “up this ladder to open the floor of the crypt of Saint-Merri above, where they stored the brooms when I was a boy. I do not know if the priest even knew it was …”

Lane had still not answered. “Did he give you a light?” I asked abruptly. Lane shrugged, and I pressed my lips together. And in what sort of place was Ben keeping Uncle Tully? He would have almost certainly woken up by now. I moved my crossed arms to my stomach. “How did you get out?”

Lane waited a moment before he said, very low, “Picked the lock.” He looked at me sidelong. “With a sharpened fork.” I caught a hint of the wicked smile, and all at once, there was the Lane I knew, so much more than this new one whom Joseph obeyed so carefully and who walked the streets of Paris like a Frenchman. I took a step closer, basking in the cool gray of a gaze that was now examining me with minute attention. I wondered if he could find anything beneath the dirt and dust. He was still grinning.

“Katharine,” he said, voice almost at a whisper. I had to lean even closer to hear. “Is that my hat you’re wearing?”

I had the sudden urge to laugh, and then his brows came down, face darkening as if a storm wind had blown through the bright place inside him.

“What is that cut on your neck?”

I touched the scar, trying to think of what to say, but then Lane turned. Henri was standing behind us.

“Twice I followed the man Aldridge to this church,” Henri said, “and yet he was not inside. I searched, and stayed until the priest unlocked the gates. And yet the dust would say that the door to the tunnels has not been opened in some time. Do you not agree?” This last was directed at Lane.

“You let your man slip past you, I think,” Lane said.

“I think not,” Henri replied. “I …”

Joseph called softly from the other end of the crypt. He was near the tunnel door, and a bit to one side, meticulously dripping molten wax into a soft pile on the stone flags. He lit a new candle and stuck it in the hardening wax as we approached. Lane squatted down beside him, and then all four of us were staring at the same thing: a pool of bright new light showing a small, half circle of iron set into the flag seams, only just sticking out above the level of the stones. The crypt had a trapdoor.

“This, I did not know about,” Henri said.

I looked to Lane. “If he wasn’t coming out again, and he wasn’t using the tunnels, then it must be here.”

Lane nodded at Joseph, and Joseph got one finger through the ring and stood, jerking hard on the flagstone. He must have been expecting something heavier or more difficult to open, because the piece of floor sprang upward, much thinner than the other stones. I looked down into a dark, dank hole, where I could just make out the first rung of an iron ladder. But it was what I heard, not what I saw, that made me draw a sharp breath. Distant yelling, putting me immediately in mind of Charenton, echoing up from somewhere far below. The noise formed into words as I listened.

“No, no, no, no, NO!”

It was the sound of a grown man having a tantrum, and that could only be my uncle Tully.

T
he yelling faded, then immediately rose up again, the cries more intense. I turned to Lane.

“How many men came to feed you? Here, in the wine cellar. How many different men?”

Lane’s brows came together. “No way to know.”

“There were four last night, plus the two in the garden,” I said.

“There will be more of them than us,” said Henri, “of that we can be certain. Is he not expecting you,
mon ami
?”

That quieted everyone, because it was so obviously the truth. It was almost more than I could stand to sit there, hearing my uncle’s distress and being able to do nothing about it. I looked up.

“Then let me go. No,” I said, cutting off Lane’s protest, “listen to me. I’m the one who can calm Uncle Tully, and get him out if he can be convinced to go. Maybe he’s alone down there, and if so, two strangers and someone he hasn’t laid eyes on in a year and a half are only going to hinder me. I will see what can be seen and come back, either with my uncle or without. If I do not come back, then you will know what the situation is, or at least better than you do now, and there will be somebody left to do something about it. If we are expected and outnumbered, then to have all of us walk in and offer ourselves up is stupidity.”

On the surface my words had been for everyone, but my real conversation was happening with Lane. He was silent, elbows on his knees, considering while Henri muttered in French, my uncle rambled on below, and Joseph kept a sharp eye on all of us. I watched Lane thinking. We had often disagreed, fought even, but he had never yet dismissed me.

“I can do it,” I said.

“I know,” he replied. “I’ve always known that.” The gray eyes met mine, not looking away. “One hour, and we come after you both.”

I nodded while Henri leapt up, hands going to the back of his head, gesticulating wildly as he protested in French. But he did not try to do anything about it, I noticed. So far, he had teased and he had been insolent, but he had also not crossed Lane. I swung my legs into the hole as he ranted, my feet finding a firm hold, testing the first rung of the ladder.

“Not right, NOT RIGHT!” My uncle’s voice drifted up to join in with Henri’s. Lane handed me his candle.

“Be careful,” he said. His voice was very low.

“He won’t hurt me, not when he needs to control Uncle Tully.”

“I know.”

“But you will come?” I’d not wanted to ask that.

We both looked up at the metallic double click, and saw that Joseph had the pistol pointed at Henri, who in his rambling objections had gotten too close to Lane from behind. Henri threw up his hands in frustration.

“In one hour,” Lane said.

I looked down, readying my feet to find the next rung, and then there was a hand on the back of my head and Lane’s mouth had found the corner of mine. He held me only for a moment before letting me go.

I gave him a small smile. “Try not to shoot each other.” And I lowered myself down one rung.

It was awkward, climbing down a ladder with a candle, and this candle was fitful, unable to illuminate more than a small space around me. I couldn’t see how far down I had to go. But either way, this was a deep hole and I schooled myself not to think about the tons of rock and earth that must be over my head. Lane’s face and the square of light above grew smaller, as did the sounds of Henri’s protests. I was concentrating so completely on feeling for the next thin rung beneath my foot that I was a long way down before I looked to the side. When I did I held in a gasp, or perhaps, had I not clamped my mouth closed, it would have come out as a shriek. I hooked one arm securely around the iron rung, and stretched out the other, holding the candle at arm’s length.

The ladder was descending through bones. Legs, ribs, arms, skulls, and spines, some intact, some just chunks and parts. The faint light showed rusted metal, and a bit of cloth with a tarnished button, but mostly they were pieces, human beings gone yellow-brown and shiny with age, piled as far as I could see on both sides of the ladder. Something glittered at me from an eye socket and then scuttled away, making the bones rattle. I measured my breaths.

“Katharine?” Lane’s voice came down from above.

He must have seen that the candle wasn’t moving. I tilted up my head. “It’s only bones,” I hissed, though the words left out much that could have been said. These people had been tossed down a hole to rot by the hundreds.

“What?” he called.

“Bones,” I said slightly louder, and held out the candle again, hoping he could see what I did. The words echoed more than I’d wanted, probably more than either of us wanted, because we both chose not to speak again. And then I realized that all around me was silence; Uncle Tully had gone quiet.

I stepped down eleven more times, faster now, the bone piles growing closer and closer on each side, and then I was at the bottom, trying to let nothing touch me. The candle glow showed a few feet of narrow path between the disarticulated bodies, extending only in one direction. I walked as quickly as I was able, feet crunching on a fine, gravelly surface that I chose not to contemplate, instead wondering if my uncle Tully had seen this. Would it have frightened him, or would he think of the bones as merely parts, cogs and wheels broken loose from their machines?

The bone piles tapered down and then away, ending in scattered bits, and the tunnel turned left into a dark, much narrower passage. Uncle Tully had been silent for some time now. I prayed he had not wound down, as I thought of it, as he’d been known to do before, like a clock that has not had its key turned. He would need to be carried out if that had happened, and I was not going to be capable of that.

I wanted to hurry but I remembered Henri’s warnings and moved quietly down the passage, watching where each foot hit the ground. Surely Uncle Tully had to be close, but the underground of Paris seemed to be a maze, not only side to side, but up, down, and in depth as well; the proximity of noise might be deceptive.

The candle dripped wax on my hand, a brief, intense burn that faded almost instantly as the molten liquid hardened, and then I discovered a glow that was not my dripping candle, an unnatural shining in the tunnel far ahead of me. It was gaslight, coming from a passageway on my right. I became aware of a
tink
,
tink
, as I drew closer, a noise I knew to be a hammer hitting metal. I approached the lit passage, the tunnel beyond it noiseless and dark, and slowly craned my neck into the opening.

It was a cavern, huge, with a round, domed ceiling soaring at least thirty feet in the air, where the limestone had been quarried out, but it was also a workshop, the likes of which I had not seen since I first went to Stranwyne, blazingly lit with hanging gas lamps. Cut shafts shot upward through the ceiling, gas pipes running down from the surface and across the walls, tacked straight into the rough stone, both rock and pipes dripping with condensation. I blinked, disbelieving, at the steam engine, quiet at the moment, its brass gleaming with polish, and the many tall conglomerations of greased pulleys and iron wheels that I knew were machines for shaping metal. How many people walked above us, not knowing what was beneath their feet?