Watch.”
Lang approached the huge doors, noting with surprise the ornate carvings on the stone frame were signs of the zodiac, more pagan than religious. Holding the big padlock in one hand, he inserted the key and then sharply rapped the bottom of the lock against the wooden door. There was an metallic snap and the lock sprung open.
Patrick was looking over Lang’s shoulder. “That is a very convenient thing to have in your pocket.”
“Us former Boy Scouts come prepared. Now, lets get inside and close the doors before someone gets suspicious and calls the cops.”
Patrick chuckled dryly. “It would take more than a suspicion to get the flics here at night. Even so, they will not come unless there are a number of them. The residents of Saint Denis do not like policemen.”
Once inside, Lang reached through the cracked-open doors and managed to drape the chain back into position along with the open lock. It would require a detailed examination for a passerby to notice the church was no longer secured.
The outside lights shone through huge, airy windows, creating a chiaroscuro of lofty arches soaring far above and columns with the circumference of redwoods marching in soldierly ranks. Lang regretted the outside lights did little to illuminate what he was certain would be exquisite stained-glass windows.
Their footsteps echoing against the marble floor, the pair made their way past candles flickering in front of side chapels from which pained saints suffered a variety of martyrdoms.
At last, Patrick tugged on Lang’s sleeve. “The entrance to the crypt.”
The ambient light from outside created as much shadow as illumination. Still, no matter what Patrick had said about the indifference of the police, Lang hesitated to use his flashlight for fear someone outside might see the flicker. Extending a hand toward Patrick, he felt an iron rail about waist high. Behind it, Patrick seemed to be sinking into the floor. Only when the Frenchman was beneath the level of the church did he turn on his light, revealing a set of steps that ended somewhere in darkness.
“It is OK to use the torch here,” Patrick said. “The crypt has no windows.”
As Lang descended, he could feel a dampness and chill that made him pull his new overcoat more tightly about him. There was the smell that he associated with places where there was little air circulation, a mustiness reminiscent of dust and cobwebs. The sound of outside traffic vanished; the stillness was like a tangible curtain between present and past, demanding any speech be in whispers.
Straight ahead, a low wooden door emerged from the gloom. There was no knob, only a rusted metal plate with a handle about two feet from the floor, below which its ancient keyhole yawned for a key far larger than the one in Lang’s pocket.
“Someone’s afraid the occupants will escape?” Lang asked in surprise.
“To keep out vandals?” Patrick suggested.
“Locking the barn door two hundred years after the horse is gone,” Lang muttered.
Patrick pushed on the iron plate with no result. Then he pulled the handle, surprising both himself and Lang when the door opened an inch or so toward them. Another tug and the door groaned on its hinges and opened another few inches. In seconds, the entrance stood open.
“Look.” Patrick was pointing with his flashlight’s beam. “The key is on the inside.”
Lang contemplated the iron key. The part outside the lock was nearly a foot long. “Either the residents insist on their privacy, or someone wanted to make sure the original key didn’t get swiped by some souvenir hunter.”
Inside, he played his light to his left. Like icebergs in an Arctic sea of darkness, sarcophagi floated in random groupings. Most displayed recumbent likenesses of the original occupant. One, a large mausoleum, depicted a well-dressed royal couple contemplating their nude likenesses. Many had been chipped, cracked or otherwise defaced, the handiwork of revolutionary vandals two centuries past.
It was clear the crypt, like the church itself, had been built in stages. He and Patrick had descended into the older portion, as evidenced by relatively crude barrel vaults. A short distance away, slender Gothic arches opened into dark emptiness.
The previous resting places of Charles Martel and Saint Louis immediately attracted Lang’s attention. He was trying to find an angle with his light that would make the words carved below the latter’s effigy legible.
“We are not here for a history lesson,” Patrick hissed. “We are here to look at this one.”
The tomb of Louis XVI and his queen stood in the beam from Patrick’s light. It was easily identifiable. All other likenesses were prone, as though sleeping. The unfortunate Bourbon monarchs knelt in prayer, the queen facing Louis’ left side. The statuary was placed on a plinth about two feet in height so that even in prayer, both faces were roughly even with the viewer’s.
Patrick ran the beam of his light over the carved marble. “There is nothing here but dust, no?”
Kneeling, Lang was studying the base of the plinth. “There is dust, yes.” He rubbed his hand across the base’s surface, leaving a deep furrow. “And we can’t tell much in this light.”
Patrick’s impatience was showing. “We can come back in the daytime when the lights are on down here.”
“The Chinese may not wait that long.”
The Frenchman sniffed his disagreement. “I do not understand why Bonaparte would have played such games, hiding things in churches.”
Lang was running a hand over the effigy of Louis. So far, all he had produced were dust motes that seemed to sparkle in the light of the flashes. “Remember, the whole time he was on Elba, his wife, the Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria, the woman he divorced Josephine for in order to have an heir, refused to return his letters. He had not even seen his son, who was, by the time of his escape, what? Four or five?”
“So?”
“I’m guessing, but I’d say Napoleon knew he was soon going to be fighting the combined armies of Europe and maybe his chances weren’t so good. For sure he knew that after his escape from Elba, any future exile would be much harsher, no thousand men to accompany him. In fact, he may have guessed he would be killed.”
Patrick began to show a glimmer of interest. “Killed?”
“Hair taken from Napoleon’s corpse was tested, oh, maybe ten years ago. There were definite traces of arsenic, probably administered in gradual doses.”
“You can never trust the English.”
“Perhaps. But also perhaps Napoleon wanted to make sure his prized possession was delivered to the son he never saw again. What better way than to hide it from those who wanted to destroy every trace of the French emperor, trust it to a friend to deliver at the appropriate time. A friend who for whatever reason was unable to do so.”
“But a secret hiding place in a church?” Patrick was skeptical. “Why not just give this… this whatever to someone to deliver?”
“Perhaps that wasn’t possible at the time. Besides, Napoleon was a master of the dramatic. You will recall, he took the emperor’s crown into his own hands to place it on his head himself.”
“And you believe this treasured item to be the mummy of Alexander? Hardly a gift for a small boy, yes?”
“A small boy in whose favor the emperor of France abdicated after Waterloo.”
“But, my friend, Napoleon II never ruled.”
Lang was examining the stature of Marie Antoinette. “His father could never have known that would be the case before being banished to Saint Helena. What better gift to leave his heir than the remains, and hence a legitimate claim to the legacy of the greatest warrior that ever lived?”
Patrick shivered, whether from the increasing cold or boredom, Lang couldn’t tell. “All a very interesting history lesson. But this crypt is not a schoolroom. You have examined the statues and they have no secret, yes? Let us go before we die of pneumonia from the cold.”
It was a tempting suggestion. Lang stepped back to survey the carving in its entirety. “What were Napoleon’s exact words? Something about ‘on the heel of a return from anonymity’?”
“It is but a figure of speech, it…”
Lang was circling the memorial. “The heel. You can’t see Marie Antoinette’s heels; they’re under the folds of her dress. One of Louis’ heels is covered by his cape.”
Patrick’s bored expression, or what Lang could see in the reflection of his flashlight, seemed to change. “You do not think.. .”
Reaching across the effigies, Lang grasped the heel of the marble shoe. “I can feel a crack between it and
