The Secret City

by C. J. Daugherty

  * * *

  When Taylor headed downstairs, she found herself walking slowly, taking in the building in daylight. Last night it had been too dark to see much. Now, with the sun streaming through the windows, she could see all that she’d missed.

  The hallway was broad and panelled in oak that must once have been polished to a high sheen, but now was faded and rough. Marble urns that would have held flowers, stood empty on plinths. The parlour was glorious, with tattered silk wallpaper, and huge mirrors above the two fireplaces that bookended the long, rectangular space. It might have been a ballroom at some point – it was easy to imagine it filled with women in luxurious gowns, dancing by candlelight.

  By the time she walked into the kitchen a few minutes later, the others had finished breakfast.

  Deide and Louisa were still at the table. Alastair stood at the sink, up to his elbows in suds, washing the dishes.

  Taylor gaped.

  They’d all dressed like tourists. Deide wore a baggy t-shirt and jeans. Alastair’s cargo shorts exposed pale, muscled legs covered in fine, gold hair. Above it, he wore a t-shirt with a Union Jack on the front.

  Seeing her expression, he held out his arms to show it off, soap dripping from his fingertips onto the stone floor. ‘You like?’

  ‘Very chic,’ she said.

  Louisa was the most transformed. A long-sleeved white top covered the tattoos on her arms. Full-length trousers disguised the ink on her legs. Her blue hair was hidden beneath Alastair’s Oxford University baseball cap.

  ‘You look horribly normal,’ Taylor observed.

  ‘Horribly normal is what I was going for,’ Louisa said.

  For her part, Taylor wore black shorts and a white t-shirt with the words ‘Accio Book’ on the front. But this was pretty much her normal look. She wondered if this meant she always sort of looked like a tourist.

  Standing, Louisa gathered cups and glasses and ferried them to the sink for Alastair to wash. ‘You missed breakfast. You better grab something quick if you want.’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  Taylor’s stomach was tight with nerves.

  ‘Where’s Sacha?’ she asked, noticing he was the only one missing.

  ‘Getting the bike ready.’ Louisa headed for the door. ‘We’re leaving in five. I’m going to grab my stuff.’

  Taylor poured herself a glass of water and walked over to join Deide, who stood by the tall kitchen window looking out. The view was breathtaking. Dry hills rolled down into a deep valley. In the distance, Taylor could see an exquisite white castle, round turrets shining in the sun, looking like it had dropped straight from a fairy-tale.

  It was almost too beautiful to be real.

  ‘What is that?’ she asked, pointing.

  ‘That,’ Deide said, ‘is Carcassonne.’

  Twenty-Nine

  It was late morning when Sacha rolled the sleek black motorcycle into a barely legal parking space between a long tourist coach and a mini-van, and cut the engine.

  The car park was packed. Rows of cars and coaches stretched across the hilltop lot in every direction. In fact, the whole town of Carcassonne seemed jammed with thousands upon thousands of people.

  Removing his helmet, he glanced over his shoulder at Taylor. ‘This is crazy.’

  The air had the familiar tourist-town smell – a mixture of popcorn, burned sugar, and diesel exhaust. Hordes of tourists streamed by on foot, walking up from the town below.

  ‘This is worse than Legoland.’ Taylor handed him her helmet. ‘I knew it would be busy but I didn’t think it would be like this. Where are they all coming from?’

  ‘Everywhere.’

  A family gave the motorcycle suspicious looks as they skirted around it. Their three little kids ran ahead, clutching balloons in sticky hands and screaming with excitement.

  Sacha shook his head. ‘It’s worse than I remembered.’

  It wasn’t yet noon but it was already hot. From where they’d parked, Sacha could barely see the town at the base of the hill – workaday limestone houses with red tile roofs. On the other side of the road, the castle towered – its formidable white stone walls flowing around dozens of watch towers, each with a fanciful pointed roof.

  It looked timeless. Eternal.

  Standing in front of those walls it was suddenly easy to believe in curses and alchemists, dungeons and public burnings.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ Taylor murmured, following his gaze. ‘It’s hard to believe a place like this still exists.’

  Barely glancing up at the gorgeous edifice, Sacha hung the helmets from the handlebars.

  ‘It’s fake,’ he said.

  She looked at him in surprise. ‘What do you mean, fake?’

  ‘The castle.’ He climbed off the bike, waiting as she followed. ‘It looks medieval but it was rebuilt a hundred and fifty years ago by some lunatic. It’s not medieval at all. It’s fake.’

  Taylor stood with her hands on her hips, staring up at the elegant castle shining on the hill.

  ‘It’s still an ace castle.’

  Having a normal conversation broke some of the tension that had overshadowed their short journey from the chateau. As they made their way out of the car park, and allowed themselves to be absorbed into the crowds heading towards the huge arched gateway into the citadel, Sacha felt more confident. He’d been here once when he was a kid, on a school trip, and there was a familiarity to it that made it all a little less terrifying.

  Maybe if he just treated this like a normal outing, he could get through this.

  They passed through the archway, into a confusion of narrow, cobblestone lanes. Sacha glanced around with interest. Mostly he’d forgotten the old town – all he remembered of his first visit here were arguments in the coach and kids throwing up after eating too much junk food.

  But now, as they were carried along by the throng onto the bridge spanning what had once been a wide moat, but which was now nothing more than a grassy dip, it felt familiar in a hazy way.

  Although the castle had, as he told Taylor, been rebuilt, before then, it had been here for many hundreds of years, much as it was now. It was more than a castle, though. It was a city behind thick, fortified walls.

  A whole community had lived here, and their houses still remained. These were the people who’d burned Isabelle Montclair. She’d been dragged past these houses the night she was killed.

  Maybe his own ancestors lived in one of these houses.

  It seemed as if he ought to feel some connection to this place beyond his visit here as a child. After all, he was so connected to his family’s past, he might be about to die for it.

  But he didn’t.

  The little shops selling candy and hand-made soaps, with their leaded glass windows and wooden signs – they were just stores. The narrow, stone-paved lanes, lower in the middle than at the edges, were pretty, but he didn’t feel like he knew them.

  He glanced over at Taylor to tell her about it, but her eyes held a far-away look of intense concentration. He knew what that meant.

  ‘Do you sense anything?’

  ‘It’s very strange,’ she said, a worried frown creasing her brow. ‘I can’t seem to sense much of anything.’

  A man in a red t-shirt and shorts shoved past them, and Sacha pulled Taylor to one side.

  ‘What? Nothing?’ He gazed down at her, perplexed.

  ‘It’s sort of like the safe house,’ she explained. ‘Only more so. Like something’s been done to it to make it unreadable. To protect it.’

  She spun a circle, searching the faces of those around them before turning back to him. He could see the panic in her eyes.

  ‘I can’t describe it, Sacha. I can’t see any of these people – their energy, I mean. It’s not there. It’s like they’re not real. They’re ghosts. I can’t sense yours either. And I know it’s there. It’s like… It’s like I’m all alone on this street, but I know I’m not.’ She took a quick, nervous breath. ‘Someone’s blocking me.’
>
  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She looked at him helplessly. ‘I get it now, what Mr Deide said last night. There’s no trace of Mortimer because there’s no trace of anything.’

  Sacha looked around the ancient street. There were people everywhere – families, couples holding hands, elderly people with canes. What she was saying made no sense.

  Those people were real. The little nougat shop they stood in front of was definitely real. He could hear the conversation taking place inside (‘Do you have a smaller box?’ ‘Of course, madam…’). The scent of icing sugar and almonds on the air-conditioned breeze flowing through the open door, that was real, too.

  ‘There’s something else.’ Taylor bit her lip as if deciding how much to tell him, then leaned towards him, talking rapidly. ‘There’s something awful here, Sacha. Something Dark and horrible. I can’t see it, but I can feel it. It feels like suffocating. It feels like… like death.’

  Sacha leaned closer, lowering his voice. ‘Is Mortimer doing this?’

  Her reply came without hesitation. ‘This is worse than Dark power.’

  Sacha scanned the area as if he might find the source of what Taylor had sensed. Some instinctual part of him could sense a fraction of what Taylor felt. Or maybe it was just fear. Either way, every nerve was firing now.

  Everything that had been benign appeared threatening. The splashing fountain where stone nymphs poured jugs of water into pools at their delicate feet. The small crowds of performers in medieval costumes across the square, performing magic tricks, juggling fire, rousing the crowds with their constant patter.

  He wanted to get out of here, but they couldn’t leave yet.

  ‘We have to keep going,’ he said grimly.

  Taylor nodded, but he could see the icy apprehension in her face.

  They stepped back into the stream of tourists with new caution. On a quiet side lane, the sound of hysterical laughter drew their attention towards a tiny stone cottage, set back in the shadows. It seemed to sell old-fashioned wooden puppets. A little stage, covered in black fabric, had been set up in front of the shop, and a small crowd of children had gathered to watch a puppet show.

  Taylor and Sacha paused at the fringe of the crowd in the shade of a plane tree.

  One puppet was dressed like a woman in a ragged black dress. The other, a man on horseback, played the villain. His little face was carved and painted with a thick brown beard. It took Sacha a second to realise what he was seeing. The man puppet was playing a judge. The woman puppet was on trial, accused of witchcraft and condemned to burn at the stake.

  Grimacing, Sacha turned to explain to Taylor what was happening.

  ‘I get it,’ she said, before he could explain. ‘It’s horrible.’

  Many witches had burned here, just like Isabelle Montclair. It wasn’t hard in this ancient space, that had changed so little over the centuries, to imagine the sound of horses’ hooves slamming on the pavement, the cries of the hunters, the terrified howls of the burning victims.

  They hurried away.

  The last they saw of the puppet show, the puppet woman was standing on a miniature pyre, as ‘flames’ of red-and-orange fabric scraps, stirred by a small fan, crackled beneath her wooden feet.

  A few minutes later, Taylor stopped to point.

  ‘Sacha,’ she said. ‘Look.’

  Looking where she indicated, Sacha saw a symbol, carved into the ancient stone. A triangle within a circle. An alchemical symbol for security. He’d seen dozens of them at St Wilfred’s.

  ‘What’s it doing there?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know. It looks really old. Maybe alchemists marked the town in the past,’ she guessed. ‘They tried to keep it safe.’

  They walked on, eyes scanning the buildings for more symbols. It turned out they didn’t have to go far. The symbols were everywhere.

  ‘There,’ she said, pointing to a sun and moon carved above a shop. ‘And there.’ A few feet away, an infinity symbol was carved into the stone.

  Each seemed to lead to the next.

  Sacha’s brow creased. ‘It’s like a trail.’

  They followed the symbols down the old street, past shops and little restaurants. They were so involved in hunting for them, it took Sacha a second to realise where the symbols had led them.

  They stood in a quiet stone square in front of the Basilica of St Nazaire – built atop the place where Isabelle Montclair had been executed. And where he was meant to die.

  The hulking church towered above the low medieval cottages around it, its bell tower thrusting up against the clear blue sky. Hideous gargoyles with freakishly long arched necks stretched out overhead. They had human hands but faces like dogs, lips pulled back to reveal jagged teeth.

  Cautiously, they made their way towards the church’s open arched doorway.

  ‘I guess we go in,’ Taylor said hesitantly.

  ‘I guess we do.’

  Tourists still walked past them, but even so, Sacha had the strangest sense of isolation – as if he were all alone.

  He didn’t remember taking Taylor’s hand, but he was holding it when they walked inside.

  It was cooler in here – almost cold. And surprisingly dark.

  The church didn’t look dangerous. Everything was just as you’d expect – dark pews in neat rows. The altar at the front held a plain table covered in vivid cloth beneath sword-shaped stained-glass windows that sent purple shards of light across the stone floors.

  For the most part, the crowds hadn’t made it inside. A few people stood looking at the windows. Two sat in the pews, apparently praying. In the dimness, it took Sacha a second to notice that one of them was Alastair. He kept his head bowed over his hands, never looking at them.

  Seeing him made Sacha feel safer. He could do this.

  They began their search, starting with the vast nave.

  Zeitinger had told them that the burning took place in the town square, and that the building had later expanded over that spot. That implied the room they were looking for was near the front of the existing building.

  The front wall was lined with a series of small chapels dedicated to individual saints. They stopped outside each one, peering into the shadows, looking for the carved ourobouros.

  They were so focussed on their search, at first they didn’t notice the atmosphere changing. It had gone deathly quiet.

  The perfume of incense and lilies lingered in the air, but now something new joined that – something unpleasantly sweet, and not unlike decay.

  The air felt heavy and thick. Sacha fought a sudden urge to run.

  Next to him, Taylor paled. Her fingers were clammy against his. He knew she could sense it, too.

  Something was very wrong here.

  At some point during their search, the church had emptied. Only Alastair remained. He stood up now, looking around in confusion.

  Whatever was happening they could all feel it.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Taylor whispered.

  Sacha shook his head. He didn’t know.

  ‘Let’s keep going,’ he said, although his stomach was churning and his head had begun to pound.

  They headed to the next chapel – they were nearly to the end of the wall, now, and so far they’d found nothing.

  Without a word, Alastair joined them. He didn’t look directly at them, and he was acting casual, but Sacha could see his alert posture, the way his eyes swept the room, waiting for an attack.

  Somewhere in the building someone began to play an organ – the music seemed ominous, full of portent. The feel of the building grew increasingly oppressive. The smell of sweet sickness grew with each step. The air seemed to have weight, pressing down on them.

  The music grew louder, building up and up into a disorienting wall of sound. The sweet deathly smell seemed to grow with it, until Sacha thought he would gag.

  Whatever was in this church, it seemed to him that it recognised him, and reached out to him hung
rily.

  He had to force his feet forward, as if walking into a blizzard.

  Somewhere a door slammed. An icy breeze blew through the building.

  Suddenly a voice, deep and guttural, whispered in his ear.

  ‘This is where it began with fire and blood. This is where it will end. Tomorrow night. In this room. On this floor. You will die.’

  Bile burned Sacha’s throat.

  Suddenly, Alastair was behind them, urging them towards the door.

  ‘Get out, now.’

  Sacha didn’t need more encouragement. Grabbing Taylor’s hand, he ran.

  As they stumbled out of the church and into the sun’s purifying light, he thought he heard a mocking laugh fill the nave. He kept going, beyond the square, away from those hideous gargoyles, which seemed to watch them.

  Then he fell to his knees in the shade of a tree and vomited.

  When he stood up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Taylor and Alastair stood next to him. Louisa appeared from nowhere to join them, eyes scanning the crowds.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Taylor asked, breathlessly.

  ‘I heard it,’ Sacha said. ‘The demon’s voice. I heard it. It said I was going to die.’ His voice shook, and he fought for control. Looking at Louisa he asked, ‘How can a demon be in a church?’

  It was Alastair who answered.

  ‘I don’t know.’ His expression was grim. ‘But it’s there. And it was waiting for us.’

  Thirty

  Back at the chateau that afternoon, the mood was subdued.

  They gathered in the parlour, sitting on the old chairs at the back of the room.

  ‘It was like there was this invisible wall between me and everyone else,’ Taylor said. ‘Mortimer could have been standing right next to me, I never would have known.’

  ‘We felt it too,’ Louisa said. ‘Never experienced anything like that in my life.’

  ‘The demon’s getting stronger.’ Deide’s face was stony. ‘We didn’t find the room for the ceremony, and Mortimer didn’t attack. He toyed with us. I’m sorry, but we must go back tonight and try again. We have to at least try to kill him. To end this before tomorrow comes and we run out of chances.’