As they descended, the air grew colder. Serena tried not to think of how much land was over her head, nor of the cave-ins from the previous century, and after one hundred steps, she stopped counting.
The catacombs themselves were chilly, but the walls weren’t slimy, and there wasn’t a spiderweb in sight. Moreover, it smelled like the dirt in her grand-mère’s garden at their vineyard in Saint-George-sur-Loire and not at all unpleasant.
There was no evidence of Malcolm when they reached the limestone floor in a moderate-sized chamber with a table bearing neatly stacked papers, and two curiosity cabinets with glass fronts. When Pierre held up his lantern, she could see one had a sign above it with the wordMineralogyand the other proclaimedPathology. Sure enough, the first had many rocks inside and the second displayed pieces of bones.
“They have some printed information about the ossuary,” Pierre told her, gesturing to the table, but he strolled past it and entered a long, arched tunnel, which stretched forward into pitch blackness.
“Don’t worry,” he said, as she gripped his arm. “The first thing you see will be something beautiful, not bones.”
She hoped the first thing she saw wasn’t Malcolm getting caught trespassing. And in order to warn him of their arrival, she began a steady stream of loud conversation, which Pierre tolerated, probably thinking her an incessant chatterbox. At least if Malcolm had found his friend and was trying to free him, he would know to be quiet and stay out of sight.
Pierre led her into a chamber where someone had carved directly into the limestone, creating intricate buildings and fortresses.
“Theyarebeautiful,” she agreed, having read of them in a book her grand-père had given her about old Paris and its outskirts.
“Monsieur Decuré was a quarryman,” Pierre said. “They say he carved these on his lunch breaks. That one,” he added, nodding to the largest sculpture that looked like a medieval castle, “was a place he was imprisoned during the war.”
He said that as if there’d been only one war, but Serena already knew the carving represented Port Mahon, a Spanish fortress where the miner had been imprisoned after the Seven Years War, so she asked nothing further.
Besides, the only other thing Pierre might tell her was how the unfortunate quarryman had died in a cave-in, which she’d also read about and didn’t want to be reminded.
Suddenly, the guard held his lantern up high so she could read the inscription over the passageway they were about to enter. She gasped.
“Arrête, c'est ici l'empire de la mort!” Stop! This is the empire of death!
Under the bodice of her dress, Serena’s skin felt cool and clammy, and she longed to turn around. Instead, she kept going.
In a few steps, she was surrounded by walls of bones, both skulls and legs, as he’d promised. A stone plaque told her the remains were from the Cemetery of the Innocents, placed there when the Parisians complained of the terrible smell of the obscenely full cemetery in the heart of the city, right near the bustling markets. Even worse, bodies had begun to come up in nearby cellars during rainstorms. Finally, by 1780, the city had closed the cemetery and almost immediately began exhuming the remains and dropping the dead down the wells into the catacombs. Eventually, the bones were arranged with some artistry and respect.
Countless people, countless tales to tell.Serena hurried past, but the guard held her arm.
“I wish we had more wine,” he said, his back to the stacked, arranged bones as if they were nothing more than patterned wallpaper. “Your family produces the drink of love, don’t you think?”
She gawked at him. If he thought the ossuary was going to arouse romantic feelings in her, he was sadly mistaken. Her skin prickled and she desperately wanted to be back above ground, breathing fresh air and seeing any stars she might view through the Parisian chimney smoke.
“Let’s keep moving,” she said. “I’m cold.”
“I’ll warm you up, mademoiselle.”
“I would like that,” she lied, “but not near the bones.”
He chuckled. “Very well. Let’s keep going.”
As they rounded a passage, the guard suddenly halted.
“That’s odd. There is lamplight coming from up ahead, perhaps in the next chamber. Stay here,” he ordered.
It had to be Malcolm, so even though Pierre was only a few yards away, she called loudly, “Where are you going, monsieur? What’s in that chamber?”
The guard didn’t answer. As the last vestiges of her voice echoed around her, she trailed after him, determined not to be left behind without a lamp.
***
MALCOLM KNEW OTHERSwere in the tunnel besides him and Versanne, whom he’d located and just managed to get out of his chains. A lockpick, nearly as useful as his pistol, was always in his pocket.
“These idiots think I am the Fox,” the Frenchman had explained. “I wish I werele Renard. I would run circles around these fools.”
“We need to run like foxes now,” Malcolm said. Then he realized one of the voices he heard coming closer was Serena’s. “Are there others being held down here?” he asked, hating to leave any poor soul behind in the catacombs.
