“Quarry,” said Lane. “We’re in stone quarries.”
“Yes. Where they took the stone away. Maybe it was so with the catacombs as well. But these tunnels are long before France.”
“Then how do you know of them?”
Henri grinned back at me, a smile of actual pleasure, with no teasing in it. “I played here, Miss Tulman, with my brother, many, many times. We found a way through our cellar, and it was like another world. We were explorers, we made maps. And all without leaving the house. Or that is how we explained it to our mother, rest in peace. Our explanations were not always so successful.”
“And the church?”
“There is a crypt, but it is an old one, below the crypt of Saint-Merri. From the church that was there before, I think, and in there is a door to the tunnels. Very old. I am sad to say that my brother and I were sometimes guilty of using it to steal the priest’s wine, which my mother told us was a very large sin. She made us go to confession, but, being a good mother, she took us to a different priest. But twice I have followed the man you call Aldridge to Saint-Merri from the Tuileries, and twice he has not come out again. I do not think he is confessing that many sins, do you, Miss Tulman? He is getting into the tunnels, I think. But I have not been here for many years now, so we shall … ah.”
We all stopped. The tunnel was blocked by a long, cascading tumble of fallen stone.
“Donnez-moi la chandelle, s’il vous plaît,” Henri said softly, and I saw the quick look of permission Joseph got from Lane before he handed Henri the candle. I wondered if Henri knew he was on a leash, and probably a rather short one, if I had to guess. I’d been bumping against Joseph’s jacket, and had felt the pistol in his pocket. But I had accomplished what I wished. Lane had met my eyes before we stopped.
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.