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.
“No, no, no, no, NO!”
It was the sound of a grown man having a tantrum, and that could only be my uncle Tully.
27
The yelling faded, then immediately rose up again, the cries more intense. I turned to Lane.
“How many men came to feed you? Here, in the wine cellar. How many different men?”
Lane’s brows came together. “No way to know.”
“There were four last night, plus the two in the garden,” I said.
“There will be more of them than us,” said Henri, “of that we can be certain. Is he not expecting you,
That quieted everyone, because it was so obviously the truth. It was almost more than I could stand to sit there, hearing my uncle’s distress and being able to do nothing about it. I looked up.
“Then let me go. No,” I said, cutting off Lane’s protest, “listen to me. I’m the one who can calm Uncle Tully, and get him out if he can be convinced to go. Maybe he’s alone down there, and if so, two strangers and someone he hasn’t laid eyes on in a year and a half are only going to hinder me. I will see what can be seen and come back, either with my uncle or without. If I do not come back, then you will know what the situation is, or at least better than you do now, and there will be somebody left to do something about it. If we are expected and outnumbered, then to have all of us walk in and offer ourselves up is stupidity.”
On the surface my words had been for everyone, but my real conversation was happening with Lane. He was silent, elbows on his knees, considering while Henri muttered in French, my uncle rambled on below, and Joseph kept a sharp eye on all of us. I watched Lane thinking. We had often disagreed, fought even, but he had never yet dismissed me.
“I can do it,” I said.
“I know,” he replied. “I’ve always known that.” The gray eyes met mine, not looking away. “One hour, and we come after you both.”
I nodded while Henri leapt up, hands going to the back of his head, gesticulating wildly as he protested in French. But he did not try to do anything about it, I noticed. So far, he had teased and he had been insolent, but he had also not crossed Lane. I swung my legs into the hole as he ranted, my feet finding a firm hold, testing the first rung of the ladder.
“Not right, NOT RIGHT!” My uncle’s voice drifted up to join in with Henri’s. Lane handed me his candle.
“Be careful,” he said. His voice was very low.
“He won’t hurt me, not when he needs to control Uncle Tully.”
“I know.”
“But you will come?” I’d not wanted to ask that.
We both looked up at the metallic double click, and saw that Joseph had the pistol pointed at Henri, who in his rambling objections had gotten too close to Lane from behind. Henri threw up his hands in frustration.
“In one hour,” Lane said.
I looked down, readying my feet to find the next rung, and then there was a hand on the back of my head and Lane’s mouth had found the corner of mine. He held me only for a moment before letting me go.
I gave him a small smile. “Try not to shoot each other.” And I lowered myself down one rung.
It was awkward, climbing down a ladder with a candle, and this candle was fitful, unable to illuminate more than a small space around me. I couldn’t see how far down I had to go. But either way, this was a deep hole and I schooled myself not to think about the tons of rock and earth that must be over my head. Lane’s face and the square of light above grew smaller, as did the sounds of Henri’s protests. I was concentrating so completely on feeling for the next thin rung beneath my foot that I was a long way down before I looked to the side. When I did I held in a gasp, or perhaps, had I not clamped my mouth closed, it would have come out as a shriek. I hooked one arm securely around the iron rung, and stretched out the other, holding the candle at arm’s length.
