But that can’t happen, can it, Roberto?
For all those years he had quashed emotion. He never got close to another person. All he remembered about caring was that it hurt. It wrenched your guts and made you scream in pain. But humans were human. They laughed, cried, confided, shared jokes and secrets— they developed genuine relationships. Philippe was the first person in Roberto’s adult life that could have become his friend. But Roberto wouldn’t allow it. He wouldn’t accept the pain that came with attachment.
And he didn’t want a friend to die because that friend learned Roberto Maas’s secrets.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
London
When you strolled the narrow lanes of the area known as the City of London, literally everything you saw – buildings, houses, sidewalks, streets – hid secrets that lay below. Today the City, a tiny, square-mile part of the sprawling metropolis of London, was the financial hub of England. But its roots were ancient. In the 1500s when Henry VIII’s wives were imprisoned in the Tower of London, the City was already very old. When William the Conqueror was crowned King on Christmas day 1066 at Westminster, the City had been occupied for more than a thousand years. When Jesus Christ was born, Romans already lived here.
Today much of the old City had been demolished to make way for modern skyscrapers housing banks and insurance companies, but a simple one-block turn off one main thoroughfare or another would land you squarely back in medieval times. Fifteenth-century buildings lined the mazes of narrow lanes so cramped a modern car couldn’t possibly navigate them. Names like Milk Street, Fishmonger Lane and Bakers Hall were the same as they were in the Middle Ages when merchants of all types sold their wares in the twisted avenues.
Most of the secrets that lay hidden below the modern City of London were ancient indeed. Every time a construction crew began demolition of a block of old structures, a team of archaeologists stood ready to respond to the inevitable. One never knew what he would find down there. But it was guaranteed to always be something old and something interesting.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Three Years Earlier
St. Mary Axe Street, London, 2006
The morning Thomas Russell discovered the crypt began uneventfully in his basement. Belinda had told him a hundred times not to go down there when she wasn’t around. “You’re not as young as you once were, Thomas. If something happened to you, I don’t know what I’d do.”
He knew her chiding was a labor of love – he didn’t consider Belinda a nagging wife. They cared deeply for each other. They’d been married over fifty years, and life wouldn’t be the same for old Thomas if she weren’t right there every day.
Now, having ignored her stern admonitions, he lay in a heap of rotted flooring, dust everywhere. And she was gone to the hairdresser’s for two hours. Damn the luck. She won’t be happy.
He tested first one arm, then the other. They seemed okay although they were sore as hell. One leg was twisted underneath him; that would be the problem. He tried to straighten it, but a jolt of pain stopped that plan immediately. He couldn’t lift himself.
Thomas Russell shifted a bit to be more comfortable and settled in to wait for Belinda’s return. He was seventy-five years old and had gone to the basement to find a crate that would hold a few books he was shipping to a customer in Yorkshire. Business slowed a little this time of day, and he doubted anyone who came into the store two stories above would hear his cries for help anyway.
The building that housed The Necromancer’s Bookshop had been built in 1620. The two-block-long street named St. Mary Axe had mostly escaped the Great Fire of London in 1666; fortuitously, the thatched-roof wooden row houses that crowded the rest of the City were absent in this primarily commercial area. The ancient building occupied today by Thomas and Belinda’s bookshop was built partially of stone – that had helped too when the fire roared through central London. It had withstood the passage of time well.
In Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta The Sorcerer, the street of St. Mary Axe was where the sorcerer’s shop was located. And today, on the very spot where the ancient Church of St. Mary Axe had stood more than fifteen centuries before, there was Thomas and Belinda Russell’s occult bookstore.
The world was a different place in 1950 when they married. With very little money but a great love of books, they decided to open a bookstore. The building in St. Mary Axe Street was in disrepair from years of neglect, and the landlord was pleased to sign a long-term lease. For two years, provided the Russells made improvements and occupied the building, the rent was forgiven. For a time the owner received the benefit of the improvements the couple had made, but before the two years was up, he went bankrupt.
A representative from Lloyds Bank showed up at the shop one morning and offered the couple a proposal – in order to get the foreclosed property off its books, the bank entered into a rent-to-own arrangement with them. Thirty years later, through times of alternating struggle and prosperity, the couple finally paid off the building they’d carefully maintained. Today it was a valuable property in a bustling area of the City. St. Mary Axe itself was still coming into its own; there were empty structures here and there, but things were definitely looking up. Today one of its primary draws was tourism. The appearance of the two-block street had changed very little since the Middle Ages. People found it quaint and interesting. Guides led groups of tourists along its narrow sidewalks every day.
Competition from major chain retailers made it harder and harder for independent booksellers to survive, so Thomas and Belinda opted to specialize. Situated in a street straight out of a Harry Potter film, the store became a haven for those seeking to learn about the dark arts – witchcraft, communication with the dead, potions, spells and the like. The Russells weren’t that interested themselves – this niche was purely a business decision – but it made them a good living. The store sold not only books but an extensive array of supplies used by those who were followers of black magic. It was unique in London and therefore had a steady, albeit unusual, base of customers.
As Thomas Russell lay sprawled on the floor of the dank room, he wondered where he was. It was common knowledge that every building in central London had secrets below it. Sometimes it was the foundation of a building centuries older – maybe one from medieval times or even the Dark Ages. Other times it was the wall or casement from the days of Roman occupation. Often a construction project was put on hold for weeks or months while the people charged with archaeological preservation conducted excavations on whatever had been found.
In the fifty years they’d occupied this building, the Russells had never known there was a room below their basement. As far as they knew, the entire floor of the basement was made of stones with the earth underneath. No one ever thought there could be a chamber down here.
The building was erected in 1620; logically the basement was too. But this place he now lay, this dark room two stories below the bookstore, looked far older than that. In the basement they had found old fruit jars, ancient tools and a few seventeenth-century coins from time to time but nothing that interesting. This place wasn’t like that at all. This place looked exactly like a crypt.
Today Thomas had been down in the basement, puttering around in a dark corner, looking for something to put books in, when unfortunately he learned that a small area of the floor was made of wood, not stone. He made that discovery when he took a step to one side and fell through rotten planks. Fortunately the wood crashed to the floor in a pile, helping ease his six-foot fall into the chamber. If he’d hit the stone floor outright, he’d have been in far worse shape.
Right now the heavy stones that made up the floor of the basement were six feet above him. It wasn’t just a basement floor – they also formed the ceiling of this place. That room’s single overhead bulb provided a tiny shaft of light, the only illumination in the subterranean chamber where he lay. Once his eyes adjusted, he could see that the room was around fifteen feet square. There were heavy wooden poles spa
ced throughout. They supported large wooden beams that held up this room’s stone ceiling. He ran his hand along the floor where he lay – like the basement above it, this too was made of stone. So were the walls. There were several dark-colored boxes sitting on the floor across the room. Maybe they were made of wood. Thomas wondered if wood would rot after centuries in this dampness. There was also a heavy door with a large keyhole in the opposite wall. That door absolutely was wood; it had strips of metal like one would see in a dungeon, and it was closed. He wondered where it led.
Seeing a sudden movement to his left, he jumped and cried out in pain as he jerked the leg that lay useless under his body. The eyes of a huge rat glinted in the dim light. Curious about this intruder, he came to check Thomas out. Within seconds he saw another set of eyes, then more. The rats were everywhere and some were as large as a small dog. He’d have to stay alert – no need to have one of those nasty creatures gnawing on a finger or an ear.
A piece of the rotten flooring lay next to him and he closed his hand around it, sat up slightly and banged it on the floor. The sound made the rats scurry off; he watched them slide under the wooden door.
Thomas couldn’t remember if he’d closed the door leading from the shop to the basement. If it were open, Belinda would come looking faster, although his absence in the shop would alert her that something was wrong regardless. He glanced at his watch frequently and listened every time he thought he heard a sound from above.
“Help! Help me!” he yelled loudly now and then. “I’m down here!” Each attempt shot arrows of pain through his injured leg, but no one heard.
Finally he thought he heard a noise; then someone started down the wooden stairs that led from the shop into the basement above him.
“Help! Help!”
“Grandfather? Are you all right?”
Thomas’s relief was palpable. “Edward! Thank God! I’ve fallen through the floor. Be careful, son. It all looks like stone, but I just found out it isn’t! It’s rotten in places.”
Edward Russell, the only living direct descendant of Thomas and Belinda, peered down through the hole where Thomas had fallen. “Where are you? I can’t see anything in the dark.”
“There’s a torch in the drawer under the cash register. Grab it and let’s see how I can get out of here. I think I’ve broken my leg, so this could take a while.”
Within a minute Edward was back, shining the flashlight into the subbasement. Without a ladder and ropes, there was no way he could descend, rescue his grandfather and get back up.
“I’m going to call 999. We’ll need help to get you out.” He carefully tossed the flashlight down to Thomas so he could have illumination in the dark room. The younger man went up into the shop, dialed the emergency number, and shortly the shrill sound of sirens permeated the narrow street of St. Mary Axe.
Firemen and an EMT were hard at work in the chamber when Belinda returned from her appointment at the hairdresser’s. She had been terrified when she turned into St. Mary Axe Street and saw the Fire Brigade and an ambulance outside the bookshop, but her grandson quickly gave her an assessment of the situation. Thomas’s leg was severely sprained, but he was otherwise fine. The EMT gave him a sedative, splinted his leg and secured him on a stretcher. They raised him up to the basement level, then up again into the bookshop and finally carted him to the waiting ambulance.
While he had waited for help to arrive, Thomas shined the torch all around the room. Half hidden in shadows there was a large stone box covered in grit and dust. He thought he could make out a symbol on the side and a raised area on its top. It was about six feet long – he couldn’t see how wide it was – and two feet tall. As he squinted his eyes to see better, he thought he made out a cross on the side. And those raised things on the top – were they – could this be – an ornately carved coffin bearing the likeness of the occupant on its ancient lid? Was he in a crypt?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It was fortunate Edward Russell had stopped by to see his grandparents that morning. A perpetual university student, the lanky man was in his mid-thirties but looked older. With his long, prematurely gray beard, he fit perfectly in the black magic bookstore. If he’d worn a robe and held a wand in his hand (several types of each were for sale at The Necromancer’s Bookshop), Central Casting could have used him as a magician. His visit had a dual purpose – he wanted to see if the store had an ancient book he needed in his thesis research, and he wanted to visit the only relatives he had.
A tragic event when Edward was sixteen left him both effectively orphaned and well off financially. In a rage his psychotic father had savagely murdered Edward’s mother, Ellen, the only child of Thomas and Belinda Russell. The man had hurt her many times before; this time he went too far. Convicted of first-degree murder, he was sent off to a prison in Scotland for the rest of his life. Edward’s mother was dead and his father removed from society permanently. With the exception of Thomas and Belinda Russell, the teen was on his own. As he grew more and more reclusive and eccentric, he also became very close to his grandparents, the only family he had.
When Edward was born, the Russells took out a life insurance policy on their daughter as a precaution against her untimely demise in an accident. The baby was the beneficiary and they were trustees until his majority. God forbid, if they ended up as guardians of their grandchild, they would require funds to provide for his well-being and upbringing. Oddly their fears were realized, although not in the accidental way they envisioned. At sixteen Edward Russell ended up with three million dollars in trust from the insurance proceeds. Five years later it was his, lock, stock and barrel. He had spent the next thirteen years engaging in two passions – ancient history and continuing his education. As he matriculated, he spent little money. The financial markets did well, and now, although you’d never know it by his appearance or his habits, Edward was wealthy.
Edward had two bachelor’s degrees, a master’s, and two PhDs so far, one in archaeology and the other in medieval literature. Studying now at the University of Central London, he was hard at work on his thesis for doctorate number three in early British history. He’d chosen his subject because of his grandparents’ occupations. His thesis was entitled “Dark Arts, Magic and Sorcery in the Middle Ages,” and he was savoring every minute of the extensive research such a project required.
That day Thomas Russell fell into the subbasement, Edward came into the bookstore and called out to his grandparents. Hearing no response, he stepped behind the counter and looked in the small sitting room-cum-kitchen where they usually ate lunch. No one was there, but the door to the basement stood wide open, lights on at the bottom of the wooden staircase. When Edward descended, he heard his grandfather’s cry for help.
His grandfather was never the same after that accident. It turned out he had torn ligaments in his leg, and at seventy-five, he mended slowly. Always a private man, he confided only to Belinda and Edward what he thought about the room down below The Necromancer’s Bookshop.
The firemen who rescued Thomas had wondered out loud what the room was. One of them said Thomas should call the authorities so an archaeological crew could be dispatched. But Thomas didn’t do that. It was no one else’s business and he didn’t want anybody poking around in his basement. Whatever was down there, it was extremely old. The past was past and the things in the basement belonged to them.
“I have to get down there,” he told Belinda repeatedly as his leg mended in a cast. “I looked online and I think that’s the crypt from the Church of St. Mary Axe. There’s nothing else it could be. No telling what we’ll find down there. I want you to help me go down there.”
“Everything in its time, dear. Don’t push the healing process. It may be a long time before you’re climbing down a ladder into a musty old crypt. How about asking Edward to go down and look around? He’s been anxious to see what’s there and you’ve kept him at bay.”
“No. I want to see what’s there first. Indulge an old man, dear. Th
is may be the most excitement I get for the rest of my life. Of course Edward will be part of our discoveries down below. I just want us to be the first.”
Thomas spent the next two months studying everything he could read about the ancient Church of St. Mary Axe. The church was originally called St. Mary, St. Ursula and her 11,000 Virgins, a reference to an entourage including St. Ursula and her handmaidens, who were beheaded with axes in 451 AD. Some thought the church itself was that old; others thought it was built a few hundred years later.
A document from the reign of King Henry VIII described one of the two actual axes used for the beheadings. The story was that the relic was displayed in the church; it gave both the church and the street their odd names. In the early 1560s, refugees from Spain used it as a place of worship, but by then it was in a state of disrepair. It was demolished shortly thereafter, taken down to the foundation. Another building, the one which Thomas and Belinda Russell owned today, was built in 1620 on the ruins of the ancient church.
Finally came the Sunday morning when Thomas and Belinda lowered a ladder down the hole he’d fallen through. She descended first with the idea she’d help him down. Neither of them was young anymore nor in great physical condition. It was an ordeal, but they both made it to the dank chamber, flashlights in hand and a camera around his neck.
Thomas wanted to examine the stone box first. It was clearly ancient and almost certainly a sarcophagus. There was a cross on its long side and the carved figure of a person on the lid. It was impossible to tell much about the carving due to its age and the encrustation of grime and dirt from centuries underground. The person appeared to be wearing a kind of hat and its right hand was wrapped around a long sword. He snapped several pictures of the coffin and the carving.
The Crypt Trilogy Bundle Page 5
