“It was some small poem,” said the author. He paused in the darkness, cleared his throat, and recited…
“I am a great partisan of order,
But I do not like the one here.
It depicts an eternal disorder,
And, when he consigns you here,
God never revokes the order.”
I looked left and right at the walled-up entrances to the ancient loculi. The poem almost—not quite—made sense.
“That and his mention of Wells made it all clear,” continued Dickens.
“Mention of wells?” I said stupidly.
“Wells Cathedral, certainly,” said Dickens, lifting the lamp and leading us on again. “You’ve been there, I assume.”
“Well, yes, but…”
“This lower level of the catacombs obviously is laid out in the design of a great cathedral… Wells, to be precise. What seems random is quite determined. Nave, chapter house, north and south transepts, altar, and apse. King Lazaree’s opium den, for instance, as he was kind enough to explain, would be where the Cloister Garth is in Wells Cathedral. Our entrance point from above would be at the western towers. We have just returned to the south aisle of the nave, you see, and have turned right towards the south transept. Notice how this corridor is wider than the one to the cloister?”
I nodded but Dickens did not look back to see the motion as we pressed on. “I heard some mention of an altar and a rude curtain,” I said.
“Ah, yes. But perhaps you did not follow that the word is ‘rood’— r-o-o-d—my dear Wilkie. As you must know, and certainly I must, since I grew up quite literally in the shadow of the great cathedral at Rochester, about which I hope to write someday, the apse is the semicircular recess at the altar end of the chancel. On one side of the high altar, to hide the work of the priests from the common eyes, is the altar screen. On the other side, the transept side, the opposing screen is called the rood screen. Fascinating, is it not, how that word… ‘rood’… rhymes so charmingly with ‘Drood.’ ”
“Fascinating,” I said drily. “And what was all that rot about Styx, of Acheron, more horrid knaves than Charon, and arses croaking instead of frogs?”
“You did not recognise that?” cried Dickens. He actually stopped in his surprise and swung the lamp in my direction. “That was our own dear Ben Jonson and his ‘On the Famous Voyage,’ written somewhere around the Year of Our Lord 1610, if I am not mistaken.”
“You rarely are,” I muttered.
“Thank you,” said Dickens, completely missing my sarcasm.
“But what did all that verse about Cocytus, Phlegethon, filth, stench, noise, and Charon and Cerebus have to do with Mr Drood?”
“It tells me that a river voyage lies before one or both of us, my dear Wilkie.” The lantern showed the corridor—the “nave” as it were—narrowing ahead towards multiple openings. Transept and apse? Altar screen and rood screen? Shelves of opium-smoking Asian mummies? Or just more foul, bone-filled crypts?
“A river voyage?” I repeated stupidly. I wanted very much to have my laudanum then. And I wished very much that I were at home to have it.
THE “APSE” WAS a circular area of the catacomb set under a dome of stone rising about fifteen feet above the floor. We came to it from the side, as if stepping in from the choir aisle, should this be the layout of an actual cathedral. The “altar” was a massive stone bier much like the one that Hatchery had shifted so far above us now.
“If we are meant to move that,” I said, pointing to the bier, “then our voyage ends here.”
Dickens nodded. “We’re not” was all he said. There was a rotted curtain to the left—perhaps once a tapestry, although all patterns had faded to black and brown in the subterranean darkness over the centuries—partially shielding the bier-altar from the apse-area under the dome. Another, plainer, even more rotted curtain hung against the stone wall to the right of this rude presbytery.
“The rood screen,” said Dickens, pointing with his stick at this second curtain. Still using his cane, he moved the rotted fabric aside to reveal a narrow gap in the wall.
The descent here was much steeper and narrower than anything we had yet seen. The steps were of wood; the tunnel appeared to have been gouged out of soil and stone; there were crude wooden pilings shoring up the sides and ceiling.
“Do you think this is older than the catacombs?” I whispered ahead to Dickens as we carefully descended the steep and winding staircase. “Earlier Christian? Roman? Some sort of Saxon Druidic passage?”
“Hardly. I think this is quite recent, Wilkie. No more than a few years old. Notice that the steps appear to be made from railway timbers. They still show signs of pitch. It is my guess that whoever tunnelled this staircase out, tunnelled up to the catacombs above.”
“Up?” I repeated. “Up from what?”
A second later the stench hit me as surely as if I’d stepped into a rural privy and answered my question. I reached for my handkerchief, only to be reminded once again that Dickens had taken it and used it for other purposes so many dark hours ago.
We emerged into the sewer proper a few minutes later. It was a low, vaulted channel only seven or eight feet across and less than six feet high, the floor of it more oozing mud than flowing liquid, the walls and vaulted ceilings of brick. The stench brought so many tears to my eyes that I had to wipe them in order to be able to see what Dickens’s pale cone of bullseye light illuminated.
I saw that Dickens held another silk handkerchief to his nose and mouth. He had brought two! Rather than use both of his, he had commandeered mine for the corpses of the babies, fully knowing, I was sure, that I would need it later. The anger in me deepened.
“This is as far as I go,” I told him.
Dickens’s large eyes seemed puzzled as he turned to me. “Why, for heaven’s sake, Wilkie? We have come so far.”
“I’m not wading in that,” I said, gesturing angrily at the deep and putrid ooze of the channel.
“Oh, we shan’t have to,” said Dickens. “Do you notice the brick walkway along each side? It’s several inches higher than the foul matter.”
“Foul matter” is what we writers call the manuscripts and written-upon galley pages that the publishers return to us. I wondered if Dickens was making some weak joke.
But the “walkways” were there on each side just as he said, curving out of sight in both directions along the narrow sewer tunnel. But they were hardly sidewalks; the one on our side could not have been more than ten inches wide.
I shook my head, unsure.
Handkerchief still held firmly over his lower face and walking stick now tucked under his arm, Dickens had retrieved a clasp knife from his pocket and quickly made three parallel marks on the crumbling brick where our crude staircase opened into the sewer.
“What is that for?” I asked, knowing the answer as soon as I asked the question. Perhaps the vapours were affecting my higher ratiocinative abilities.
“To find our way back,” he said. Folding the knife, he held it in the lamplight and said irrelevantly, “A gift from my American hosts in Massachusetts during my tour. I’ve found it very useful over the years. Come along; it’s getting late.”
“Why do you think our goal lies in this direction?” I asked as I shuffled behind him to the right along the narrow strip of brick, lowering my head to keep the low arching wall there from knocking my top hat into the muck.