by Jon Steele
‘How do we make them trans … thing?’
Harper pointed to Katherine.
‘They want her, they’ll have to come and get her.’
‘But there’s very little room in the belfry and it’s high from the ground.’
‘That’s just it.’ Harper turned the drawings of the belfry towards Rochat. ‘The layout of the belfry acts as a force multiplier.’
‘Is that a good thing?’
‘Worked well enough for us at Thermopylae.’
‘I don’t know where that is. Do I have to know where that is to help the angel go home?’
‘No, mate. All you need to know is how to get Miss Taylor down the tower, through the roof and out of the cathedral. You get down Escaliers du marché. Don’t look back, keep going.’
‘Where do we go?’
‘To the train station, should take you no more than fifteen minutes. Don’t stop, don’t look back. Take the first train anywhere out of Lausanne. Then make your way to Gare de Lyon in Paris. Go to the main hall and head upstairs to the bistro called …’
‘… Le Train Bleu. It has funny pictures on the ceiling.’
‘You know the place?’
‘Papa took me to Paris once and we had lunch there. I had croquemonsieur and Papa had entrecôte. But Gare de Lyon is very big and there’s lots of people and I might forget how to find things.’
‘Don’t worry, Miss Taylor will get you there.’
‘Are we going there for lunch?’
‘No, you’re going to meet someone. Someone like me.’
‘A detectiveman?’
‘Sure, a detective man. He’ll be waiting for you, and he’ll get Miss Taylor some help.’
Rochat thought about it.
‘But how will the detectiveman like you know I’m bringing the angel to Le Train Bleu?’
‘I phoned ahead.’
‘Pardon?’
Harper nodded to the hundreds of candles alight on the crossing square, the light rising to the high windows of the lantern tower. Rochat watched the light against the leaded glass form into repeating shapes of shadows and light. Three flashes, six flashes, three flashes, six flashes.
‘I can see it. It’s the same as the warning sound Clémence makes. Can the detectiveman in Paris see it?’
‘He can see it.’
‘Can the bad shadows see it?’
‘No, they’ve lost the ability to read light. Too much shadow jumping, too much dead black in their blood.’
Rochat had no idea what that meant.
‘Oh.’
Harper watched the lad continue to stare into the lantern tower as if seeing light for the first time. He tapped gently at Rochat’s arm, Rochat looked at him, his eyes sparkling with reflected light.
‘You remember what you have to do?’
Rochat thought again about all the things the detectiveman told him. He imagined himself helping the angel down from the belfry, through the cathedral roof, out of the cathedral. He imagined them going to Gare Simplon, taking a train to Paris. He imagined another detectiveman taking the angel to a doctor and giving her a new place to hide.
‘Will the other detectiveman know she’s an angel?’
‘He’ll look at you and know everything.’
‘Will he bring me back to Lausanne in time to call the hour?’
Harper shook his head.
‘You don’t come back.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You’re in as much danger as Miss Taylor, you can’t stay in Lausanne.’
‘But … but … what will you do?’
‘Stay behind, buy you time.’
‘How can you buy time?’
‘I kill them.’
‘You can kill the bad shadows?’
‘Told you, it’s my job, it’s why I’m here. And you can’t be here when I do my job.’
‘But it’s my duty to call the hour.’
‘Listen to me, it’s not the bad shadows that want you killed, you’ve been listed.’
‘I don’t know what that means.’
‘It means your life, this life, it’s running out of time. You’re going to die.’
‘When?’
‘Soon.’
Rochat took off his black floppy hat and scratched his head, pulled down the hat again.
‘Maman said people shouldn’t be afraid of death.’
‘You’re not like other people.’
‘Will I be dead for ever?’
‘If they get their way, yes.’
‘Can you stop it from happening, monsieur?’
‘It’s against the rules but I’m going to try. But you need to get out of Lausanne and hide. And you can never come back.’
Rochat turned away and shuffled a few steps. He stopped and turned back to Harper, almost speaking but then turning again and picking up his lantern instead. He shuffled to the pillars of the chancel dome and rapped the stone boots of the form in the white sarcophagus. Harper listened to Rochat talking quietly.
‘Bonsoir. Yes, I know it’s very late but it’s never very late till midnight and then it’s very early. The detectiveman wants me to leave the cathedral and take the angel to another hiding place because she’s sick. And if I don’t go I’ll be dead for ever and …’
Another voice echoed at Harper’s back.
‘He won’t leave the cathedral, Harper, and I won’t leave without him.’
He turned, saw Katherine propped on one elbow. She looked half asleep.
‘Miss Taylor?’
‘Yeah, I know, you thought I was sleeping, so did I. Maybe I still am and this is a dream. Because it feels like one of those dreams where you know you’re dreaming and you sort of wake up, but you know you’re still asleep.’
‘How much did you hear?’
‘Enough to know you want us to go to Paris and meet someone like you at Gare de Lyon. What the hell are you doing, Harper?’
‘It’s the only chance the two of you have to survive the day.’
‘Too bad, you’re stuck with us.’
‘Miss Taylor …’
‘We’re not leaving.’
‘You don’t know what you’re up against.’
‘Read my lips, Harper. I won’t leave without Marc and Marc won’t leave the cathedral. Will you, Marc?’
Harper looked over his shoulder. He saw Rochat shuffle towards him.
‘I’m le guet de Lausanne, monsieur. It’s my duty to protect the cathedral.’
‘See, Harper? It’s his duty to protect his cathedral.’
‘This cathedral’s about to become a battleground.’
‘I can help you fight them, monsieur, I’m very strong from the legs up.’
‘They’re coming for blood, mate, you’re no match for them.’
‘Oh, get with my dream, Harper. Because in my dream, I’m a princess trapped in a tower by the evil wizard and you two are pirates in paper hats and you’re telling me none of this was an accident and there’s all these intersecting lines of causality and that the three of us were brought to Lausanne and ended up in the tower for a reason. And I’m dreaming Marc helps you imagine where the future-teller diamond is, because I’m not the only thing the evil wizard wants from the tower. So you guys best jump on your flying caterpillar and get busy and come up with Plan B.’
Katherine laid her head down, she closed her eyes.
‘And keep it down. Otto and I need our rest.’
Rochat and Harper stood still a long minute, staring at the sleeping woman on the bench.
‘Monsieur?’
‘Hmm?’
‘Was the angel talking in her sleep?’
Harper rubbed the back of his neck. ‘“Sleep hath its own world, And a wide realm of wild reality.”’
‘I don’t know what that means.’
‘It means I’m not sure it was even her talking. More like someone was sending us a message through her.’
Rochat looked around the nave, it was empty.
‘Oldest trick in the book. Feed them Plan A, clobber them with Plan B.’
‘What’s a Plan A?’
‘A hundred lines of causality set in motion long before you were born, before Miss Taylor was born. All meant to intersect and collide in one big bang, right here in Lausanne Cathedral.’
‘Oh. What’s a Plan B?’
‘You, you’re Plan B.’
Rochat almost took off his hat to scratch his head to think about it. He looked at Harper instead.
‘Monsieur, I’m very confused.’
‘Mate, I’ve been here two and a half million years, and this place still confuses the hell out of me now and again.’
Harper looked around the altar, Rochat followed his gaze.
‘Is something else wrong, monsieur?’
‘Who’s … who is Otto?’
Rochat pointed to the sarcophagus in the pillars.
‘Over there. He’s the brave knight from longtimes ago. Sometimes I imagine he stumbles around the cathedral at night looking for something. I like to imagine he’s looking for his lance but it’s outside, under the belfry. It’s the spire from the top of the Apostles’ entrance but I like to imagine it’s his lance and that when he picks it up he falls over and can’t get up. He told me I have to stay because it’s my duty.’
Harper looked at Rochat.
‘Really is full of dreams and wonder, this place, isn’t it?’
‘Oui, it’s Lausanne Cathedral.’
‘That it is. Back in a tick.’
Rochat watched Harper walk to Katherine and slowly pass his open palm down across her eyes as if closing them. He heard his voice.
‘“Dulcis et alta quies placidaeque similima morti …”’
‘What did you do to her?’
‘Making sure she gets some rest while you and I imagine a few more things.’
Rochat watched the detectiveman tap the flagstones with his shoe.
‘Are we imagining something now, monsieur?’
‘As a matter of fact, we are.’
‘Oh, what are we imagining?’
‘We’re imagining that the earth under these stones is sacred.’
Rochat thought about it.
‘Because the skeletons live down there?’
‘I rather think it’s something else.’
Rochat watched the detectiveman walk slowly between the burning candles on the crossing square, reading the light, kneeling and rearranging the flames like rearranging the words on a page.
‘Are you making another phone call?’
‘I am.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘Message received, will comply.’
Harper finished with the candles, he walked the perimeter of the altar, his eyes looking at the candles on the flagstones, then up to the lantern tower and down again. Rochat watched him walk in ever-smaller circles, wondering if they were getting there and why he was walking in circles. Just then the detectiveman stopped and looked up into the lantern tower and pointed to one high-above thread of light amid the glow of a hundred candles. Rochat could see it. How perfectly straight it was. And he watched the detectiveman follow the thread of light 70 metres down to the one candle on the flagstone amid a hundred others. The one candle marking the exact centre of the crossing square. He watched the detectiveman tap the stone with the tip of his shoe.
‘What’s under this stone, mate, right here?’
‘The well.’
‘The well.’
‘Oui.’
‘What kind of well?’
‘A very old kind of well.’
‘And what do we imagine might be in a very old kind of well?’
Rochat thought about it.
‘A lunchbox.’
thirty-eight
They crossed the transept to the ambulatory, took the three steps down to the iron gate of the crypt. Rochat stopped.
‘What if the angel wakes up?’
‘She won’t wake up till I tell her to.’
‘Non?’
‘Old trick we detectives have.’
‘Oh.’
Rochat pulled his ring of keys from his overcoat, found the oldest key, slipped it in the rusting lock. Kaklack. He pulled open the gate, ducked under the low stone lintel, turned back to Harper.
‘Don’t step on the skeletons, monsieur, they’re very old.’
Harper smelled ancient dirt. He saw a dozen skeletons in open graves, their chalky bones glowing in the lantern light. He followed the lad’s shuffling steps along a narrow dirt path between the graves, not quite able to stand upright for the low ceiling. He felt a slash of pain and pressed his hand on the bandage covering the wound. Rochat pointed ahead.
‘That’s the stone arch where I hit my head. And over there’s where I dropped my pencils and those are the skeletons that were laughing at me.’
Rochat lowered the lantern to a grave at the arch where a fragile-as-dust skeleton lay with its skull turned to the side.
‘And this skeleton was looking at the well and I imagined he was telling me one of my pencils fell inside. That’s how I found the lunchbox.’
Rochat ducked through the arch. Harper followed the lad and his lantern to a bigger cavern and hundreds more graves. All filled with skeletons on their backs, all with their hands crossed over their chests, all looking melded into the earth. The ground dipped and Harper straightened up, his head just brushing the stone ceiling. He saw the field of bones around him.
‘Are they all like this, arms crossed over their chests?’
‘They’re all like this. I imagined they were seeds and someone planted them in the earth to grow again.’
‘Not too far off, actually.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, I’ll tell you all about it later.’
They moved further through the bone garden to a third cave where the skeletons lay in concentric rings. Dead centre was a round stone structure standing a metre and a half above the graves.
‘Is that it, the well?’
‘That’s the well.’
Harper saw the heavy iron grate and the twelve spikes emanating from the centre, each one stretching 20 centimetres beyond the rim of the well. He made a slow 360 around it, touching each point of the spikes.
‘I imagined it looked like a compass,’ Rochat said.
‘That’s exactly what it is. With the well as the centre point from which all directions lead.’ Harper’s eyes followed the lines of the compass, each one pointing to more arches and tunnels. ‘Where do the tunnels lead?’
‘To more caves with skeletons.’
‘And all the tunnels and graves are on this level? None of them go deeper than the foundations of the cathedral?’
Rochat thought about it.
‘Is that the feet?’
‘What?’
‘The feet of the cathedral?’
‘Sure, the feet.’
‘Nothing’s under the feet but solid rock, that’s what Papa said.’
‘Did he ever mention any false walls or hidden doors anywhere down here?’
‘Non.’
Harper looked down through the iron grate.
‘So where’s the lunchbox?’
Rochat held his lantern over the grate and pointed down through the spikes.
‘It’s there, stuck in the stones.’
Harper set his shoulder under one of the spikes and heaved. It wouldn’t budge.
‘How did you reach it?’
Rochat set the lantern on the edge of a grave and shuffled to a pile of timber, he drew a thick length and carried it to the well.
‘I imagined I could use this to hold up the compass then I squeezed under and reached down.’
‘Good thinking.’
‘Merci.’
They worked the plank under the iron spikes and lifted the grate. Harper braced his weight against it and Rochat squeezed through the opening, hanging over the lip of the well, reach
ing down.
‘I have it, monsieur.’
Harper grabbed the back of Rochat’s coat and pulled. He slid from under the grate and held up a silver box by its handle. Bloody hell if it didn’t look like a schoolboy’s lunchbox, Harper thought. They knelt in the dirt, the silver box between them. Harper tapped it gently.
‘Titanium.’
‘I don’t know what that means.’
‘It means it’s a very expensive lunchbox.’
Harper set it upright, saw the combination lock set to triple zero. He flipped at the latches with his thumbs.
‘Nine nine eight are the numbers to open it.’
‘You know the combination?’
‘I imagined all the numbers the wheels could make, then I made a phone book and checked them one by one. It took me all day.’
‘You’re telling me you opened it and you know what’s inside?’
‘I saw what’s inside but I didn’t know what it is.’
‘You tell anyone else you opened it?’
‘Monsieur Buhlmann told me to put it back where I found it and forget about it before I remembered to tell him what was inside. So I put it back and forgot till we imagined it in the nave because I’m very good at forgetting things.’
‘Right. So, nine nine eight, then?’
‘Nine nine eight. Do you want to see?’
‘I certainly do.’
Rochat lifted the lantern over the box.
Harper turned the three dials … click.
He flipped the latches, raised the lid. Lantern light sparkled along a narrow rod of polished iron, 15 centimetres long. A starlike cluster of delicate iron spikes at one end, a small holed-out oval at the other end. It was fitted into a slab of black foam.
‘Do you know what it is, monsieur?’
‘A key.’
Rochat pulled his ring of keys from his overcoat.
‘It doesn’t look like a key, and I have lots of them.’
‘It’s a key all right. Question is, to what?’
Harper lifted the key from the box, stood and held it by the oval, letting the tiny spikes hang down towards the iron grate.
‘Let’s have your lantern up here a sec.’
Rochat jumped up and lifted the lantern over their heads. Harper lowered the key to the centre of the grate. Twelve spikes on the well grate, twelve spikes on the key, all pointing in the same twelve directions.
‘They look alike, monsieur.’