Journey to the Core of Creation, page 17
If Guérande had been hesitating, he was not hesitating any longer. He practically bounded to his feet, and I was not slow to follow him. We took our leave as politely as we could contrive to do—which, in the circumstances, seemed rude regardless—and then we left the camp, with hundreds of eyes upon us.
“Do your really think that Sophie is in danger?” Guérande asked, as soon as we were out of earshot of the camp.
“Not if she is maintained under careful surveillance,” Dupin said. “Your wife and Madame Cormontaigne are already doing that, I think. She should be safe enough.”
“Are you really in so much hurry to see the Bishop, then?”
“I do believe that I ought to talk to him—but no, there’s no urgency on that score, unless he makes a sudden move of his own accord.”
“Why such haste, then?”
“First of all, to avoid drinking any more of that infernal tea.”
“But Lebrun and the elders drank far more than any of us, and it all came out of the same kettle. How could it possibly be poisoned?”
“They had no intention of poisoning us—but I suspect that they were trying to tranquilize us, and perhaps make us a little somnolent. Lebrun was trying to tantalize us, too, with his vague but intriguing account of his people’s beliefs. He wanted us to ask questions. The most revealing thing of all in what he said, however, was his careful and continual repetition of the word tomorrow. He warned us and implored us, not once but repeatedly, not to go into the caves tomorrow, or at any later date—and he knew, as he readily admitted when accused of it, that the likely effect of what he said was to make us do exactly what he was asking us not to—exactly what he was asking us not to do.”
“You mean,” I said, “that he was actually trying to suggest that we should go into the caves tomorrow....or any later date. Not today...or tonight.”
“He has been the one, all along,” Dupin said, “with the greater sense of urgency. He and his people have a very acute sense of the timing of this strange crisis, and whether they have the slightest real understanding of what is about to happen or not, I am prepared to believe that they have a fairly clear idea of when—as we would too, had we been better able to accomplish what I suggested that we attempt to do last night, and listen for something beyond the snoring of the imaginary dragon.”
“You want to go into the caves today, then?” Guérande put in. “I’m not even sure, as yet, that the way is clear.” He did not seem at all unhappy about the prospect, though—indeed, he seemed positively eager. His stride was lengthening already.
“If we want to have any chance of seeing the flameflower boom—or whatever phenomenon it is that Lebrun was prepared to dress up in that twee phrase—I think it might be as well to start soon: this afternoon, perhaps, if we can make our preparations in time. If we were to leave it until tomorrow, however early, we might be too late to reach the heart of the mountain in time—which is, I think, exactly what Lebrun and the Thierachian elders wanted to happen.”
“But they’ve tranquilized themselves in the process,” I pointed out.
“The elders never had the slightest intention of going into the caves,” Dupin said. “That’s not their job, any more. The Bishop, I suspect, spoke more truly than he could possibly have suspected when he asked us how many Thierachian children had gone into the caves over the years, never to come out again and never to have their disappearances noted in any parish record. Perhaps he is also right in his belief that the entrances ought to be blocked up, in spite of the artifacts sheltered within, in order to save future Thierachian children from the same risk. But before then....if there is a chance that we might see something, no matter what, that will not be accessible to human eyes again for a thousand years, I think we ought to do our utmost to take advantage of the opportunity, don’t you?”
“Absolutely,” said Guérande. “I knew that I could rely on you, Dupin.”
But this, I could not help thinking, is exactly what Madame Guérande was and is relying on Dupin to prevent. Suddenly, the adorable Julie’s little finger seemed a very weak reed indeed. How could she ever have thought it capable of competing with the machinations of the dragon under the hill?
“We could have learned more, though,” I reminded them. “Just a few well-judged questions....”
“No,” said Dupin, “I don’t believe that we could. I’m even prepared to suspect that the information Lebrun just laid out as a lure might be a tissue of lies, intended to conceal rather than explain the Thierachians’ true beliefs—perhaps intended to appeal specifically to our own prejudices, our own presumptions. Even if it was deliberately deceptive, however, it was a mask that had to be fitted over superficial phenomena that we can perceive as well as they can, and it’s not impossible that the explanation they’ve concocted is more accurate than the one they’re still trying to keep secret.”
“You believe, then...,” Guérande began—although he really should have known better.
“It’s not a matter for belief,” Dupin snapped. “All we have—and I suspect that we’re not at any great disadvantage in relation to the Thierachians, in this regard—are fancies and hypotheses. Of one thing, and one thing only, can we be reasonably certain: that something very unusual, anticipated for a very long time by those sensitive to its timescale, is likely to happen tonight or early tomorrow morning. If we want to be close enough to it to experience it as fully as we can, we need to hurry.”
“Do you discount what Lebrun said about the danger, then?” I asked.
“Of course not,” Dupin replied, trying hard to match Claude Guérande’s generous stride, but failing miserably. “I’m convinced that the danger is very real—but I won’t shirk it, given that the opportunity is likely to be unique within my lifetime.”
“Good man!” said Guérande, slowing down slightly in order that Dupin and I could keep up with him. “I wouldn’t have thought that of you, you know, in the old days. You weren’t so bold back then.”
“Not nearly bold enough, I think,” Duping muttered, in a tone that was not even intended for my ears, although I contrived to catch the words.
Dupin did not think it necessary to ask, but Guérande turned to me then and said; “Are you with us, old man?”
Old man! I thought. Old man! Is that a gesture of friendship, an insult or a challenge?
“It’s my duty,” I told him, brusquely, with a sarcastic edge to my voice. “In Madame Lacuzon’s absence, who else is there to protect Dupin from the effects of his own intemperance? And he might not be the only one I’m obliged to protect, for, if my eyes don’t deceive me, the Bishop really has made the sudden move that Dupin half-anticipated.”
What I meant by that observation was that the Bishop was now clearly visible on the threshold of the Guérande house, having evidently been inside, awaiting our return. He had the same two Dominicans with him as before, but this time he was wearing a heavy ceremonial crucifix on his breast, supported by a chain around his neck, and he was carrying a leather-bound book.
“If I were a gambling man,” I said, “I’d lay odds that the Bishop dreamed about the Devil last night—and now is in haste to perform an exorcism, before he seals his supposed lair.”
There are times, as I almost said, when even the hardest skeptic begins to trust the luck, or intuition, of his guesses. They are, however, very rarely the times when he wants most ardently to be proved correct.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE DESCENT
The Bishop was, indeed, intent on performing an exorcism, and the gleam in his eyes was that of fanaticism as well as faith. He had, indeed, had a dire dream, vivid enough to be counted—in his estimation, at least—as a revelation and a divine command.
“Something is happening, Messieurs,” he declared, evidently in no mood to be contradicted. “I feel it; I know it. Whether you will consent to guide me or not, Monsieur Guérande, I am determined to go into the caves. I was summoned here for a purpose, without my quite knowing what it was at first. Now I do know, and must fulfill my mission. The Devil is abroad in this land, Messieurs, and not for the first time in recorded history. It is my duty to oppose the Father of Lies, and I shall not shirk that duty.”
“It will be dangerous,” Guérande told him, frostily.
“You have no idea how dangerous, Monsieur Guérande. I know that you will not be grateful to have a man of God with you, but you do not understand the true nature of your peril. I am here to save you from the forces of evil, whether you know it or not.”
“I am not in need of salvation,” Guérande told him, “and your presence would only slow us down, inhibiting our scientific research.”
“On the other hand,” Dupin said, placing his hand on his friend’s arm, “it might be safer for all of us if we were to stay together—and we cannot prevent the Bishop going where he will.”
“We can’t,” Guérande muttered, “but the landowner might.”
“It’s too late now to open that kind of discussion,” Dupin said, curtly. “Tomorrow, or next week, perhaps...but for now, we must make our preparations.” In a louder voice he said: “Monsieur Aignan will not mind waiting, I hope, while we gather equipment and supplies. If the Devil is there, I’m sure he won’t mind waiting for him—Churchmen are, after all, the tastiest morsels of all so far as the dark collector of souls is concerned.”
The Bishop scowled at the casual irreverence, but he did consent to wait for us. He was sufficiently intimidated by the caves to want a guide, if he could obtain one. He consented to come back into the house for a while and sit down in the drawing room.
There were other delays, of course—but Madame Guérande was not as furious with Dupin as I had expected. Indeed, she seemed reconciled to the fact that her husband could not be kept out of the caves, and rather glad of the fact that he was not going alone.
“Bring him back safely, Auguste, I beg you,” she murmured, when she was sure that her husband could not hear her. She too seemed glad to find Dupin a little bolder now than he had been when she first knew him—although I could not tell how deeply she might regret the fact that he had not been bolder then.
“I shall do my utmost, Madame,” Dupin replied, politely.
In fact, there was not very much in the way of gathering to be done, as Guérande had made is preparations in the house while waiting for the thaw, and had already taken the opportunity the day before to add extra ropes, helmets and safety-lamps to the pile. All that still needed to be freshly prepared and packed was food.
Even so, I noticed as the tools and instruments were distributed that Guérande had only made provision for three. I had observed that Brother Xavier and Brother Michael were carrying lanterns, and had bulging pouches at their waist, but they were markedly undersupplied by comparison with us.
“They have God on their side, and church candles,” said Guérande, when I raised the possibility of offering them extra equipment. “What need do they have of hand-axes and stout ropes?”
And so we finally set off, a not-entirely-disunited party. As we began to climb the slope I saw Sophie and Madame Cormontaigne watching us from the window of the improvised schoolroom. I waved, but neither the child nor the governess replied. Guérande was too preoccupied to have noticed. Guérande, I knew, must have given the strictest instructions to his wife and staff that the little girl was to be very closely watched, les her habitual goodness lapse and some strange whim take possession of her.
In spite of the thick vegetation, we must have been clearly visible from the Thierachian encampment for long period of time as we scaled the mountain slope, but I could not see any sign of activity there suggestive of the possibility that anyone might come after us.
I did wonder briefly, whether Lebrun might have anticipated Dupin’s cleverness, and made provision for it in advance, planning all along to encourage us to make our expedition today instead of postponing it until the morrow, but I decided that I was crediting him with to much slyness and subtlety, even for a lawyer trained in Lyon.
Guérande led us, at an uncompromising stride, to the topmost of the three openings he had already shown us—the broadest of the three, and the one easiest for adults to penetrate, at least for a short distance. Once we had negotiated the first steep slope and the floor of the tunnel leveled out, we would have been in pitch darkness but for the lamps. We had lit three. Guérande, in the lead, was carrying one. I was carrying the second, positioned in the middle of the file after Dupin. Brother Xavier, behind the Bishop, was carrying the third. It took me a little while to realize that Brother Michael was no longer with us.
“You’ve left the other friar to guard the entrance?” I said to the Bishop.
“It seemed a wise precaution,” Aignan replied, a trifle sarcastically. “He will wait all night if necessary—but if we’re not back by dawn, he will summon help from the château, and from the Thierachian camp, if they’re willing to provide it.”
“They told us that they would make no promises in that regard,” I said, “but I think it was a stratagem, aimed to dissuade us. They will come, if need be, as they once did for the elder brother of your friend’s ancestor—the true Comte de Tibère.”
“What do you mean?” Aignan demanded, sharply.
I told him what Lebrun had told us about his researches. It helped to distract me from the difficulties and anxieties of the descent—for we were descending by degrees, as well as moving closer to the heart of the mountain. The path that Guérande had marked out was tortuous, but he had no need to be distracted by any blind alleys or unprofitable side-turnings. He knew where he was going; we had only to follow. There were narrow passages, and passages where we had to crawl, but there was a road of sorts.
Talking to the Bishop did not prevent me from taking note of the markers than Guérande and others before him had scored into the rock at various junctions, but their meaning seemed clear enough and they did not require overmuch mental effort to learn. Because talking seemed to be doing me more good than harm, I continued. By degrees, I told Philippe Aignan everything that Arnauld Lebrun had told us, including what he had said in the camp that morning. I refreshed my own memory in the reportage—gladly, because I had not yet had a chance to write any of it down.
Whether Aignan was as grateful for the opportunity to listen as I was for the opportunity to talk, I could not tell do it, but I dare say that it gave him abundant food for thought. He had more difficulty than any of us as we walked, crawled and occasionally clambered. I can only suppose that he listened to it all with a firm determination not to believe a single word about the Thierachians’ supposed beliefs—and perhaps rightly so—but the news that he had been correct about the fate of at least some of the children whose names he had collected was sufficiently flattering to command conviction, and I judged that he had some difficulty rejecting the tale of the true Comte out of hand. The Thierachians’ account of subterranean life and the blossoming of the flameflowers might be mere nonsense to a man whose conception of the world had been framed and limited by the Bible, but tales of stolen children and missing heirs were as plausible to him as they were to the audiences flocking into the cheap theaters of the Boulevard du Temple.
While I was telling my second-hand story, we heard numerous sounds, from above as well as below, much louder than those that were to be heard in Guérande’s house—but here, for some reason, they seemed much more obviously the sounds of water running and rock creaking. Now that we were inside the imaginary dragon, they were no longer suggestive of breathing or even of a rumbling gut. They were just sounds—to me, at least. I did not enquire of the Bishop of Viviers as to whether he heard them as the muted threats of the Devil Incarnate.
The way had been eased considerably by the work that Guérande had done over the years, installing footholds and handholds, and even ladders to make awkward slopes negotiable. The Thierachians had not made any attempt to destroy or sabotage his work—perhaps because they were glad of it themselves. There was no ice in evidence, and not much water, although many of the walls and floors were damp, and we passed by several vertical trickles that doubtless made up streams further down. There were several places where I had to squeeze myself through exceedingly narrow gaps, including at least two that I thought the Bishop would be unable to pass—but with a little pulling on my part and a good deal of shoving on the part of the wiry stonemason, we succeeded in maintaining the number of our party.
Guérande took the trouble to explain, even to the two clergymen, the meaning of the various guide-marks he had placed whenever there as a junction in the tunnels, in order that he would not lose his way. He also pointed out other scars in the rock, which were not his, but seemed to serve the same purpose.
“Made by the Thierachians, no doubt,” he said. “How long ago, I would not care to guess.”
“For the guidance of their children,” the Bishop muttered, disgustedly, having evidently absorbed that part of my narrative if not much else.
“Perhaps,” I said, “but I’m not sure that the children come this way. There are, as you have doubtless observed, paths to two further entrances than the one we used, but which children could scramble through. There might be a more direct way than this to where we are going.”
“This one certainly seems labyrinthine,” aid the Bishop. “I long ago lost track of the direction in with we are headed, in terms of the compass, although there is no doubt that we are making our way downwards. We must be deep within the hill by now—and it’s becoming fearfully hot.”
“It’s warmer than usual,” Guérande admitted, “especially for the time of year. Be careful along this ledge—I’ve no idea how deep the cleft alongside it is, but it’s not one in which I’d care to fall.” By way of illustration, he dropped a pebble into the gap. We heard it bounce of the wall three times before it stopped tumbling—but even then, it could have been caught in some cleft rather than falling as far as it might have done.
