Double Cross

by Stuart Gibbs

  He had a way into the atelier; now all he had to do was get two stories down to the floor.

  For this, he used the operating chain. He lowered himself through a gap in the louvers, clenched his legs around the chain, and then climbed down it.

  The atelier was eerie in the darkness. Everywhere, lurking in the shadows, were the contorted shapes of statues half-completed: headless bodies, limbless torsos, men and women who were part human and part unhewn rock. Greg spotted the half-finished statue of King Henry on horseback. In the future, it would probably look stately and gallant, but for now, it looked like a man and a horse being swallowed by a large piece of stone.

  Greg hurried to the plaza window and unlatched it.

  The others were waiting. Aramis and Greg’s father boosted his mother up, and Greg helped her inside. The others followed quickly, and they locked the shutters again.

  There was a fire burning in the fireplace: No one ever let their fire go out in 1615. A torch sat by it. Aramis lit this, then moved about the atelier quickly, lighting the oil lamps. Soon, the atelier was much more inviting, if still a bit shadowy.

  It wasn’t hard to locate the bust of King Louis. It was the largest sculpture by far, a massive monumental head. The sculptors had taken some liberties with it; rather than merely re-create the awkward teenage face of the current king, they had apparently tried to envision the king in the future. This Louis had aged well. He was handsome and regal, with long, flowing hair and a roguish glint in his eye.

  The bust sat prominently in the center of the atelier. The sculptors had obviously been working on it recently. There were ladders and scaffolds around it to allow them access to the upper portions, and the floor surrounding it was thick with marble chips and rock dust. The face appeared finished, however, smooth and clean and free of scaffolding. Greg walked up to it. He could stand directly below Louis’s giant nose.

  There was nothing there. Only a blank wooden floor.

  “Do you think this is the right place?” Greg asked.

  Aramis came over and stood with Greg. Then he cocked his head thoughtfully and took a few steps back. Then he returned. Then he took a few steps back again.

  “What are you doing?” Greg asked.

  “Listen,” Aramis said. He walked toward Greg again, placing each foot down firmly and deliberately on the wooden floor. The sound of his footsteps changed subtly as he got closer. There was a bit of an echo to each one.

  “It’s hollow under the floor!” Greg’s father exclaimed.

  Greg spotted a rack of large chisels nearby. One was so big—nearly three feet long—he figured it was designed to split chunks of rock in two. He ran over, grabbed it, and brought it back to the spot in front of the bust of Louis. Aramis helped him lift it, and the two of them slammed it into the floor.

  Cool, musty air suddenly hissed upward through the cracks between the floorboards, as though it had been trapped below for centuries and was thrilled to escape.

  Greg couldn’t help but smile. “I think we’re on the right track,” he said.

  He and Aramis wedged the chisel between two floorboards and used it as a crowbar, pressing down on it. Greg’s parents rushed to lend a hand. The wood was old and brittle and with a resounding crack, a piece ripped free, leaving a six-inch gap in the floor. Everyone jammed the chisel in again and quickly pried loose another plank and another, so that there was now a big enough hole for a person to fit through.

  They all stood around it. Although they couldn’t see anything but darkness below, they could sense that they had tapped into something large. To Greg, it felt like standing at the edge of a cave.

  Aramis dropped the lit torch through the hole. It fell another ten feet, then landed in a puff of dust. The torch barely lit a fraction of the huge space below, although Greg could just make out a few broken stone walls. They formed two right angles near the torch, like the corners of urban homes along a sidewalk.

  “What is that?” Greg asked.

  “I think,” Aramis replied, “we’ve found an entire city underneath Paris.”

  Athos had far more trouble that he’d expected getting to the city’s eastern gate.

  The streets were filled with panicked Parisians who were all going in the opposite direction. They were fleeing, fearing the wall was about to be breached by the enemy. Athos had to fight against the rush, ducking into alleys multiple times to avoid being trampled.

  When he finally reached the gate, he found the king’s guard just as disorganized as the general public.

  Despite the chaos, it took Athos only a few seconds to figure out what had happened. There had been a storeroom full of ammunition and gunpowder just north of the gate. Condé’s men appeared to have attacked this first and blown it up. The explosion had severely damaged the city wall and thrown the guards into disarray. The fire still blazed; no one had done anything to fight it, and it had spread from the wall to the homes nearby, adding to the bedlam in the streets.

  The city wall still stood north of the gate, although Athos could tell it was in bad shape, teetering like a house of cards. One good strike from a battering ram might bring it down. The king’s guard had abandoned their posts on it, rightfully fearing it might collapse with them atop it, but now no one was in position to repel the army gathered outside.

  The drawbridge that normally should have sealed off the entrance to the city had fallen—although, thankfully, the portcullis was still in place. The thick steel grate was the only thing keeping Condé’s army from flooding into the streets. Athos glanced toward the winch that controlled it, expecting to see the king’s guard protecting it with their lives. Instead, he spotted four of Condé’s men there.

  The men had already begun winching the portcullis up. It was hard work—usually a team of horses worked the winch to hoist the massive portcullis—but the men had already raised it a few inches. Outside the gate, Condé’s army was pressed against the portcullis, whooping with excitement, eager to stream beneath it and take the city.

  Where was Henri? Athos wondered. Who was in command here?

  He could find none of the king’s guard in the streets, however. So he turned to the few fleeing Parisians left. “Countrymen, I need your help! We must hold off Condé!” With that, he charged Condé’s men.

  The enemy foursome laughed when they saw him coming. Athos had no uniform. He simply looked like a boy with a sword. Only one man turned to face him, expecting to dispatch him quickly. Instead, Athos made quick work of him. Within seconds, the man was sprawled on the ground—and now Athos had his sword as well.

  Now the remaining three abandoned the winch, letting the portcullis drop back to the ground. They came at Athos as one, swords gleaming in the firelight. They were all big men, but that simply made them slower in a sword fight. On a normal day, Athos could have defeated them all with ease. But today, his leg was still recovering and he’d already been using it far too much. He didn’t have the strength or agility he usually did. Instead, the best he could do was fend off the three swords while his attackers forced him backward across the square.

  Behind them, Athos saw more of Condé’s men appear from the shadows and race to the winch. There was nothing he could do to stop them. He didn’t even think he could handle the three men coming at him. They were pushing him perilously close to the blazing fire. He could feel the heat from it searing the skin on the back of his neck.

  Two of Condé’s men attacked him in concert, each knocking a blade from his hand. The third brought his sword back with a laugh, preparing to run Athos through.

  Suddenly, someone hit him from behind. The man rose up out of the darkness and clobbered Condé’s soldier on the head with something heavy. The soldier collapsed, and before the other two could even react, they were assaulted by two other men. As the soldiers dropped, unconscious, Athos could see his saviors’ faces in the firelight.

  They were three men he’d never seen before. They were merely normal Parisian men who had answered his call to
arms. All held blacksmith tools, which they’d used to fight the enemy.

  “Thanks,” Athos said.

  “We’re just trying to save our city,” one said.

  Beyond them, Condé’s soldiers had begun to raise the portcullis again. The steel spikes at the bottom emerged from the slots in the ground. On the other side of it, the front ranks of Condé’s army were ready to scurry beneath it the moment they had the chance.

  “The winch!” Athos cried. He snatched his sword off the street and charged. His newfound warriors came with him. Now, as a team, they quickly took out Condé’s men. The winch unspooled once again, and the portcullis slammed back to earth.

  When all Condé’s men lay at his feet, Athos found that even more Parisians had come forward to answer his call. They had stopped their flight and grabbed whatever they could use as weapons: tools, kitchen knives, farming implements. “What do we do now?” one asked.

  “First, sever the rope that controls the portcullis,” Athos commanded. “Condé may have more men inside the city, and we don’t want anyone lifting that gate.”

  Three men dutifully set about cutting the rope.

  “Next, we need people to take positions on the wall,” Athos said. “Not on the weakened part, of course, but there are still some sturdy areas around that and south of the gate. Condé’s army will surely be planning to attack the weak spot, and we’ll need to fight them off with whatever we have.”

  “But all the army’s weapons were destroyed when the ammunition shed blew,” a blacksmith protested.

  “Then we must use whatever we can find,” Athos said. “We’ll throw rocks and stones if we have to. Get the flaming debris from the burning homes and rain that down on the enemy. See if we can set their battering rams on fire.”

  The Parisians nodded and went to work.

  Athos heard a groan from close by. To his surprise, he spotted Henri on the ground. His friend was sitting up, looking dazed, his clothes blackened from the fire.

  “Henri!” Athos ran to his side and helped him up. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” Henri replied. “I was trying to guard the ammunition shed, but they got the jump on me. I must have been thrown clear by the blast.” He gasped, seeing the aftermath of the explosion. “My men! Where are they?”

  “I think they all fled,” Athos replied.

  “Cowards!” Henri spat.

  “But I have found some reinforcements.” Athos pointed to the civilians who were now climbing onto the sturdy parts of the wall, armed with stones and rubble.

  Henri shook his head. “Regular men and women armed with rocks won’t be able to hold off that army for long. Our wall is about to come down. It probably won’t take Condé more than an hour to breach it.”

  “Then we’ll hold it as long as we can.” Athos worriedly glanced back toward Notre Dame. Whatever Greg and Aramis hoped to do, they now had less than an hour to do it.

  FIFTEEN

  THE RUINS OF THE UNDERGROUND CITY WERE SURPRISINGLY large.

  Greg, his parents, and Aramis had found a ladder and climbed down through the hole they’d smashed beneath the bust of King Louis. All of them held torches, but the light barely made a dent in the giant cavern where they stood. Greg had expected they would find one building, perhaps two beneath them. But they now stood in the ruins of an entire ancient city.

  The streets and buildings of Paris were above their heads now, as though the city was the first floor of a giant house and a whole Roman city lay in the basement. Modern Paris—or at least this section of it—was supported by a vast network of pilings and columns.

  The ancient, subterranean Paris was amazingly well preserved. Most of the roofs had collapsed, but almost everything else remained. The walls of homes and stores still stood. There were streets and sidewalks laid out in a neat, simple grid pattern. Gaps in the streets revealed that clay pipes ran under them, the remnants of an ancient sewer system. The ruins stretched away into the shadows, appearing to go on forever.

  “How could all this be here?” Greg asked.

  “This is the way old civilizations worked,” his father explained. “They just built one city on top of the old one. Paris originally began as a Roman outpost called Lutetia, which was built on this very island because it was easy to defend. However, cities in the middle of rivers tend to flood, and a few hundred years ago, the Parisians realized they needed to shore up their banks. So they raised the city above the ruins here and then built on top of them.”

  To his surprise, Greg had never realized how high Paris was built above the Seine. Even in 1615, Notre Dame perched a good two stories above the water. In twenty-first-century Paris, the river was flanked by steep walls for miles, as though in a man-made canyon, while the city sat high above the waterline. It had never occurred to him that there might be something below the city before. “Why didn’t they just fill all this in with dirt and build the city on that?” Greg asked. “Wouldn’t that have been sturdier?”

  “Not necessarily,” his father replied. “Plus, it would have required an incredible amount of dirt in a time well before there were dump trucks to move it.”

  “In our time, you can actually visit these exact ruins,” his mother added. “There’s an underground museum across the street from Notre Dame. We were going to take you there.”

  “Looks like we get to visit for free now,” Dad said with a chuckle.

  “Can anyone see any place that the other half of the stone might be hidden?” Greg asked.

  “I can see a thousand places where it might be hidden,” Aramis said sourly. “These ruins could cover the entire island.”

  “No, it must be close,” Greg said. “Why else would Dinicoeur say it was under the king’s nose?”

  “Because the entrance to the ruins is under the king’s nose,” Aramis answered. “That’s all he was talking about. As for the stone, it could be anywhere down here.”

  Greg sighed. As usual, nothing concerning the Devil’s Stone was ever easy. “How about a Crown of Minerva?” he asked. “The stone ought to be near that. Does anyone see it? Or know where to start looking for it?”

  “I don’t see any crown around here,” Dad replied.

  “Neither do I,” Aramis said.

  “Minerva was the Roman goddess of wisdom, medicine, and commerce,” Mom told them. “I’d guess we’d find statues of her near the market, which would have been at the center of a Roman city.”

  “That would probably be a rectangle marked by a series of evenly spaced columns,” Dad put in. “I’m sure some of those must still be standing.”

  Greg looked to his parents, impressed. Sometimes he forgot how much they knew.

  “Any idea how to find that in all this darkness?” Aramis asked.

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” Dad replied. “I’ll be right back!” He scrambled back up the ladder through the hole in the ceiling.

  Greg heard him clattering around in the atelier above for a bit, and then he was back. “Help me with this!” he called.

  He was lowering something through the hole. Greg and Aramis helped ease it down to the ground. It was a large mirror, its surface chipped and pitted, but it still worked. The light from the torches reflected off it and bounced farther into the ruins.

  “I know mirrors aren’t too common these days,” Dad said, climbing down through the hole again, “but I figured a sculptor would probably have one to help him see his work from all angles.”

  “Nice thinking, Dad,” Greg said.

  They angled the mirror to reflect the light around the ruins. Sure enough, toward the center of the island, they spotted a rectangle of broken columns.

  “That’s it!” Aramis cried.

  They quickly picked their way through the ruins to the ancient marketplace. The subterranean city was like a ghost town and a dark, spooky cavern combined. Outside the dim reach of the torches everyone carried, there was only darkness. Anything—or anyone—could be out there. Greg realized he wasn’t the
only one who felt ill at ease. Everyone stayed clustered together, a small outpost of torchlight in a sea of darkness.

  The marketplace was only a shadow of what it had once been. None of the stately columns was intact; most lay toppled and shattered in the dust. Many appeared to have been pilfered to form the pilings supporting the city above.

  “I think we need to split up,” Dad said. “This place is much bigger than I expected, and we need to work as quickly as possible.”

  Everyone reluctantly spread out in the darkness to hunt for the Crown of Minerva. Greg’s feeling of unease grew worse the farther away from the others he got. It was easy to imagine his enemies lurking in the darkness close by. Surely there were other entrances to this underground world besides the one he’d come through. Dinicoeur or Richelieu could be only a few feet away and he’d never know until their hands were clenched around his neck. Greg gulped, trying to steady his nerves, and picked carefully through the ruins, keeping one eye out for trouble.

  Ahead, he spotted something massive, a sheer wall where the ruins stopped abruptly. He realized it was probably Notre Dame. The cathedral was too massive to simply prop atop pilings like most other buildings. Instead, its foundation had been laid on solid ground, right in the midst of the ancient Roman city.

  “Over here!” Mom called.

  Greg spun around. His mother was waving her torch excitedly. She was at the far end of the marketplace, and in the gloom, her flame looked as small as a firefly in the distance. The torches of Aramis and Greg’s father were already converging on hers.

  Greg raced back, relieved to be able to regroup, leaping over toppled columns and crunching through minefields of broken pottery. He found the others gathered in the remains of a large building that had dominated one end of the marketplace. Wide marble steps rose up to it, as though it had been of some importance. The columns that flanked this building—or at least, what remained of them—were far more ornate than those of the rest of the market. The floors were tiled with intricate mosaics, so well preserved that they looked as though they had only been created the day before.