Journey to the Core of Creation, page 21
The heart of the world is, after all, not so very far away...closer even than the Moon, let alone the Sun, or the stars, or the distant nebulae that are continuing the Great Work of Creation elsewhere and everywhere.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE RESCUE PARTY
When I returned to myself, I was alone and in the dark. I did not wake up, because I had never been asleep. I saw the flameflower retreat and fade; I lost the taste and smell of it: I felt its grip upon me relax, and heard its song became fainter and fainter and fainter, although it never died away completely.
The dragon was silent, though. The mountain was inert. I groped around in every direction, hoping to lay my hand on a lantern. It would not have mattered had its wick gone out, or even if its reservoir of oil had been exhausted. I had a tinder-box, and safety-matches, and a wax candle.
When I could not find a lamp, I lit the candle, and found a niche in the rock where I could wedge it in an upright position, in order to take stock of my situation. The good news was that I was no longer precariously perched on a ledge above a precipice. The bad news was that I was in a cave I was certain that I had never seen before, which had two very narrow exits, neither of which was marked with any kind of a scratch to indicate a direction I might usefully take.
I was lost. I did not know which way to go, or whether either way would be negotiable for a person of my bulk.
I knew that I had to make a choice, because the candle would not last forever, but I sat there for a few moments studying its flame, trying to read the air currents by means of its flickering and the drift of its smoke. I do not know what I would have deduced from the direction that the smoke was drifting—whether to follow the current or to go toward the apparent source of the air-flow, but I did not have to.
Lantern-light suddenly flooded one of the two narrow issues, and someone came through, walking calmly and purposively.
It was the very last person I expected to see.
“Have you seen my father, Monsieur Reynolds?” Sophie asked, with scrupulous politeness. “I’ve been searching for hours, but I can’t find him.”
I looked behind her for companions, but she had none. She had come alone—presumably because her mother would never have given her permission, had she asked. In spite of the vigilance with which he had been watched, the little girl had contrived to get away.
“Hours?” I queried. “Did you see the flameflower, then?”
“No,” she admitted, “but I heard it.”
“Did it touch you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What time was it when you set out?”
“About noon. I slipped away after my morning lessons. Everything was confused, and Mother was busy with the Thierachians and the monks. Everyone’s searching—but more for the children and the Bishop, so far as I could tell, than Papa. Nobody asked me, or told me anything, so I came on my own. Nobody will mind, if I can find my father. Do you know where he is?”
“No,” I said. “Dupin, the Bishop and I were together when the flameflower bloomed, but we became separated when it touched us, and I suspect that we’re all lost. If anyone can find his own way out, though, it’s your father. He went to help some children. With luck, they weren’t separated, and the children will be able to show him a way out, even if he can’t find one on his own.” It sounded better, I thought, to say that he had gone to help the Thierachian children, even though I wasn’t entirely sure what his motives had been. I wasn’t surprised to learn that we had been inside the mountain all night and half of the following day, even though I’d lost track of the time.
It took a moment or two for another thought occurred to me. “Are you sure that you can find your way back?” I asked her.
“Oh yes,” she said. She showed me a piece of chalk in her hand. “I made my own marks. Better to be safe than sorry.”
She was staring at me, and I knew why. There was a conflict going on inside her between desire and duty, purpose and obligation.
I was having a similar conflict of my own. How could I possibly let her go on, knowing what the dangers were? How could I even go on with her, knowing what her mother would say? And yet, I ought to look for Dupin.
In the end, I said, very tentatively: “I’ll help you look for your father, Sophie. I need to look for my friend—Monsieur Dupin.”
“Monsieur Dupin is looking for my father too,” the little girl told me.
“Have you seen him?” I asked, sharply.
“No,” she said, “but I heard him. Didn’t you?”
I didn’t understand. “Where did you hear him?” I asked.
“I was in my room. Mother told me that it was a dream, but it wasn’t. I don’t know where he was, exactly.”
“What did he say?” I asked, utterly confused.
“He didn’t say anything. He was singing—with the children. I might not have made any noise, but I was singing. He might not have been making any noise either, but he sang as well. I heard him.”
I had not been able to sing with the children. Nor, with my adult ears, had I been able to hear Dupin singing with them—but if Sophie had heard Dupin join in with the song, I was prepare to take her word that he had. He was, after all, a very exceptional man, even if he was no wizard.
“The Bishop heard him too,” Sophie put in, apparently unsure that I believed her.
“The Bishop?” I repeated. “The Bishop joined in the song?”
“No—he was too busy with his own chanting. But he could hear Monsieur Dupin, and the children—I’m sure of it. Mother says that I dreamed it, but I didn’t. I couldn’t see, but I could hear. It was real, even though she couldn’t hear it. I want to find my father—I think he’s hurt, but he’s not dead. I can still hear him. And Monsieur Dupin’s looking for him too.”
“Can you find them, do you think?” I asked her, quite ready to believe that she knew the secret of the labyrinth.
She was holding the lamp up, so that its light fell on her face. She was still staring at me, with a slight expression of perplexity. “Perhaps,” she said. She didn’t move, though. She just continued looking at me.
“It’s all right,” I assured her, although I knew that I had to take her back to the surface, to her mother. “I’ll help you. You’ll be safe with me.”
She shook her head slowly. “I can’t,” she said, as if speaking to herself. “Now I’ve found you, I ought to show you the way out. I need to help you. If I can, I’ll come back to look for my father—but if there are people at the entrance, they probably won’t let me.”
She wanted me to know what she was giving up, in order to obey the call to duty that was instructing her to help me. Perhaps she wanted me to volunteer to follow her chalk marks on my own, and let her continue her search, or perhaps she wanted me to insist that I would go on with her, deeper into the mountain, in search of Dupin and her father—but she wasn’t hopeful. She knew, deep down, that I couldn’t let her do that, any more than the people waiting at the entrance could let her do it. We each had a duty, to make sure that the other was safe before going on. She was right; now that she had voiced the issue, I could see that she was right.
“Thank you, Sophie,” I said, eventually. “It pains me to admit it, but I needed rescuing. You’ve done that I think. I’m sorry that I’m not your father.”
“It’s not your fault,” she observed, although she didn’t seem entirely convinced.
She was as good as her word. It took a long time, but she guided me out, to the same entrance by which I’d entered the caves. We passed half a dozen Thierachians on the way—not without difficulty, given the narrowness of the passages. I didn’t know any of them; they weren’t elders. They were parents, anxious for the children they had sent forth, perhaps foolishly, to see and hear what they could no longer hear and see themselves.
There were people waiting by the entrance, as Sophie had feared: Brother Michael, one of the Thierachian elders, and Julie Guérande. The lady might have hugged me if she hadn’t been so enthusiastic to imprison her daughter in her arms, but she tried hard to thank me through her tears.
“You’re mistaken,” I said, dutifully. “It wasn’t me who rescued Sophie, but she who rescued me. I’m only sorry that it was me she found, not Claude. Is there any news of Dupin?”
“Not yet,” Brother Michel told me. “You’re the first of your company to be found.”
“Brother Xavier is a very brave man,” I told him. “The Bishop too, after his fashion. I truly hope that God protects them.”
I wanted to stay by the entrance, or at least somewhere on the mountainside, to wait for the others to emerge, but I was utterly exhausted. I hadn’t slept a wink for more than thirty hours, and had not slept well for many hours before that. In response to everyone’s urging, I went back down the slope with Julie and Sophie, in order to wait in the house.
The Bishop was carried down on a stretcher by two friars a little while later, exhausted but uninjured. I hastened to ask him whether he had seen anything of Dupin since the event had begun.
“No,” he said. “When you and he fled, I faced the Devil alone. I have looked into the fires of Hell, and have seen the Devil.”
I doubted that, but I didn’t contradict him. “Did your exorcism work?” I asked, curious to know what he believed that he had experienced.
“It did,” he said. “I sent the fires of the Inferno back into the bowels of the Earth, and the Devil with them—but the victory was not really mine. God sent a choir of angels to help me in my hour of need, with Christ himself at their head. He it was who extended his merciful hand, and saved the world from catastrophe. He did not come to save me, I suppose, but to save the children. Pagans they might be, but...the Lord, it seems, considered them worthy of salvation.”
Sophie had told me that the Bishop had heard Dupin’s voice, as she had. I believed, now, that he had heard Dupin’s song too...but that he had interpreted the voice in the light of his own prejudices, and his own desires. I was not about to argue with him; it would have been unwise as well as unkind.
“You must be proud,” I said, a trifle ironically—and more than a trifle thoughtlessly.
“Pride is Satan’s sin,” he reminded me. “I have conquered pride. I have seen the army of angels, with Christ at their head, but I am not proud. I am humble. I know now, what humility is worth.”
I looked into his eyes, and remembered them as I had seen them in the depths of the mountain, ablaze with fanaticism. They were not ablaze now, nor even aglow with the faintest ember of reckless ambition. Whether he knew it or not, the flameflower had carried him off, not to the gates of Pandemonium but to somewhere closer to its own fiery but unadversarial bosom. The song was within him still, and in him, it really had taken on the form, and the significance, of an angelic anthem. He was not the same man that I had seen before.
I wondered, as he looked at me, whether I was the same man that he had seen before—but I did not invite him to make any comparison.
I left him to rest.
Julie Guérande was waiting for me outside the room where the Bishop had been placed.
“Does he have any news?” she demanded.
“We were separated from your husband before we were separated from one another,” I told her. “Aignan was alone with his particular hallucination—but he has survived, with a little help from his faith. Claude was better equipped than any of us to withstand the experience. He’ll come through it, I’m sure.”
“What experience?” she demanded.
“We saw the flameflower bloom,” I told her. “It does not mean to be harmful—quite the opposite, in fact—but I can imagine how it might seem disturbing to the unprepared. The Thierachian children are prepared, I suppose, after a fashion—but all six of our party were armored, one way or another, Claude and Dupin most securely of all. I have come through it; so will they. Your husband will doubtless tell you what he experienced when he returns, and anything I described would seem like a mere dream...as, perhaps, it was. Sophie can tell you more, I think. Don’t be angry with her for trying to find her father.”
“How can I be?” the lady complained. If she was angry with anyone, it was Claude Guérande—but it was also Claude Guérande for whom she was most fearful. She loved him.
“Don’t be angry with Dupin, either,” I said. “He did what he could—and I suspect that he will not come out of the caves until your husband has been found. He feels that he owes you an obligation, and will not rest until it is fulfilled.”
“I could always get him to do what I wanted,” she said, softly. “I could always get every last one of them to do exactly as I wished. It was unfair. I took advantage—but what choice did I have, as a mere decoration, a pretty bauble to decorate the arena of my father’s genius?”
“It was not wrong for you to take advantage,” I told her, “especially of Dupin. That is how he sees his role in life now. If no one took advantage of him, he would be bereft. You have no idea how delighted he was to reply to your appeal.” It was flattery of a sort, but it was probably not untrue—and in any case, she didn’t believe me.
“You’re very kind, Mr. Reynolds,” she told me. That too was flattery, and probably not true.
I was direly tempted to go to bed then, and make an attempt to sleep, but excited noises outside told us that someone else was being brought down to the house from the mountain. We ran out of the front door of the house and around to the side opposite the barn.
Whoever had been recovered was being carried down on a stretcher borne by two slow-moving Thierachians, and there was a long lapse of time before we could obtain information as to who the casualty was.
It turned out to be Brother Xavier. He was in good spirits, but in need of a bone-setter. When he finally arrived at the front door I inspected his bruises and his broken leg carefully, but the fracture did not seem to be serious. Wherever he had fallen, it was not into the abyss from which the flameflower had risen. He had been closer to the creature than I had, but he had been armored by his intelligence, his kind heart and his faith, perhaps better than the Bishop.
“They brought the injured child out first,” he said. “She is in no danger—but I fear for some of the others, who have not yet been found.”
“Do you know what happened to Guérande?” I asked.
“I fear not,” the Dominican replied. “He was with us when...it happened, but afterwards had disappeared. You saw it, did you not, Monsieur? You heard the children singing?” He seemed anxious for confirmation that he had not simply suffered a hallucination.
“Yes, I heard and saw,” I said. “The Bishop believes that he looked into Hell, but was saved by a choir of angels. That is not how I interpreted what I saw and heard, but I have no intention of arguing with him. Each to his own.”
The stonemason looked at Madame Guérande, and then at me. “He’s the Bishop of Viviers,” he said, in a carefully neutral voice. “It’s not for the likes of us to contradict a man of his standing in the Church. I bear him no ill will. If Heaven really thought it necessary to send a choir of angels on a rescue mission, he is surely the one they would have come to aid. Personally, I have no idea what it was that I saw, and would be glad of a little enlightenment, when Monsieur Guérande is found.”
I knew that he had said that for the lady’s benefit and did not take offence.
“You must stay here until the bone-setter comes,” Madame Guérande told him. “You cannot possibly go back to the château.”
“Thank you, Madame,” the Dominican said.
Once the friar was comfortable, I decided that I would not retire while the vigil was still in progress. Julie Guérande and Sophie needed someone a trifle sturdier than Madame Cormontaigne to keep them company, and I doubted that I would really be able to sleep while Dupin was still missing.
The mother was considerably more agitated than the daughter, although Sophie did risk saying at one point that she ought to have turned back as soon as she was sure that I could find the entrance, even if it meant giving me the slip.
“Dupin will find him,” I told her.
“I know,” she replied. “And he will be able to show Monsieur Dupin the way out.”
That was blind guesswork, of course. She was no longer hearing things—but it was good guesswork, for that is exactly what happened. Dupin found Claude Guérande, in the end, and Guérande, although hardly capable of unassisted locomotion, was able to indicate to Dupin which route to take in order to reach a place where the Thierachian searchers found them.
Arnauld Lebrun was with the party who eventually carried Guérande down, just as the sun was setting. Dupin was still able to walk, albeit a trifle unsteadily. I offered him my arms in case he wanted to collapse into them, but he did not—mercifully.
“Are all the children safe?” I asked Lebrun, when I was sure that Dupin was only tired.
“No,” the man of law said, flatly. “Three hurt, four still missing. We’ll keep searching—all week, if necessary. You should have done as we asked and stayed out of it.”
“I disagree,” I told him. “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world—and I can’t help resenting the sly way in which you tried to dissuade us.
He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m a Thierachian,” he said, “and a lawyer—if any such combination is really possible.” To get past his embarrassment he changed the subject, nodding in the direction of the group clustered around the recumbent Guérande and the seated Dupin. “Guérande will live,” he declared, “but he might never be the same man again. You and Dupin were a little further away, as I understand it?”
