The Serpent Garden - Judith Merkle Riley

by The Serpent Garden (epub)

  “You’re not jealous, are you? I was thinking of taking on a girl, not a boy.”

  “There’s something wrong. It smells wrong to me. Someone’s following us. Duck into this archway here, and he’ll think we’ve gone around the corner, and when he follows us, we’ll see who it is.” In a flash, he’d pulled me in by the elbow, and I waited quietly and peered out, just to prove him wrong. A man driving a mule loaded with firewood passed by, and I was just about to step out when I saw him. A tall, cloaked figure glided from a shadowy doorway. I pressed myself back into the arch, and we saw him step purposefully past us and begin to round the corner toward the Hôtel de Cluny. There was no question who it was. A heavy black hood was pulled over his head, but the familiar square-cut beard and malicious pale green eyes, two glaciers set in pallid mounds of skin, made my blood freeze. It was Septimus Crouch. What was it he knew? Why was he following us? Maybe Robert was right about the message, after all.

  He paused at the corner and, not seeing us, began to retrace his steps. With Robert pulling my elbow, we fled down the narrow corridor behind the archway. A high wooden gate barred our way. We thought we heard footsteps behind us. The gate wasn’t locked. We pulled open the gate and closed it behind us. We were in the tiny patch of winter garden within the walls of the monastery of the Mathurins.

  “Oh, Lord, Robert, we can’t be in here.”

  “We can’t be out of here, either.” We heard him fumbling at the gate. “Surely, he must know I’m armed. Is there someone with him?” As if in answer, we heard another set of footsteps approaching the gate, and the sound of hurried conversation. “That cellar door, there. They’ll think we’ve gone through the church,” Robert whispered. Crouch had another man with him. Maybe more. Robert could be cut to pieces if he confronted them. I looked at the cellar door. I looked again at the gate. I hate cellars; they are full of rats and spiders and disgusting damp darkness. If it weren’t for Robert, I’d have never thought of it. But quick as a wink we were on the narrow stony stairs behind the little door while we heard Crouch and whoever it was stamping around outside.

  “They came this way; I’m sure of it,” Crouch said. “You go search the church—aha! Look at this little door. Just the sort of place a rat like Ashton would scramble into.” We fled down the stairs just as the first crack of light from the opening door illuminated the gray stone around us. Crouch paused, and we could hear the slither of steel as he drew his long Italian rapier. As Robert pulled me deeper into the dark corridor, my heart began to pound. We came to a locked grating and felt a soft pulse of air.

  “It’s the cellar. Damn, it’s locked. They’ve protected their wine too well,” he whispered as he felt about. “But here—the tunnel goes on. It’s narrower; we’ll have to crawl.”

  “N-no, Robert, I can’t go there.”

  “You have to. Go ahead of me. Crouch has a rapier and a long reach. He’ll skewer you if you’re behind me. We need to stay far ahead of him. If we turn back, he’ll outreach the length of my sword and leave us here like a pair of dead rats. See here, they wouldn’t have made it if it didn’t go somewhere. It probably has an entrance in the church.” Softly, softly, muffled with his cloak, he drew his misericord. “With luck, he’ll give up,” he whispered, very softly, in my ear. Then I could hear a little click of his teeth and knew he was holding it in his mouth, so he could crawl better.

  My heart full of horror, I crawled into the narrow stone way. It was flat, paved with what felt like wide, smooth stones, and a trickle of damp from some unknown source was running down the center. I heard rattling at the gate behind us.

  “Curses,” I heard Crouch’s voice mutter. “They must have gotten in here. I’ll have to give up.” But his speech sounded suspiciously loud and forced. Behind me, Robert seemed to breathe easier. But I thought I could still hear the soft shuffle, shuffle sound of a man on his hands and knees behind us. It was all a ruse, the little speech, to make us think he’d left so we’d go back. As long as he’s crawling, and we’re crawling faster, he can’t hurt us, I thought. There’s no room. But the thought wasn’t consoling. We couldn’t go back. That’s what he was hoping we’d do. We’d go back and he’d cut our throats; I just knew it. A man like Septimus Crouch doesn’t follow people for no reason, especially when they have received a message that might be a forgery after all. My brain was seething with desperate questions, the kind you think of when you are in a place you hate and wish you were home and are afraid you might die in the place you are. Like, why did the man hate me so much he wouldn’t back out and give up? I couldn’t ask Robert to back up; the man hated him, too. He’d run Robert through and fill the narrow way with Robert’s body and leave me trapped behind him to die there. No one would ever know he’d done it, and they’d never find us. That must be his plan. How stupid we were not to have faced him on the street. But there had been two of them up there—maybe even more. Who could have stopped them from killing us? Still we pitched downward in the dark, and I thought I could feel strange slithering things on my ankles, which made me shudder.

  The corridor leveled off, then turned slightly and sloped downhill again. I felt a strange sort of cold breath on my cheek and, even in the blackness, knew it meant there was another, wider corridor on my right side. But far away down the trickling damp stones of our own, low, way, I could make out a flicker of light. I nearly cried out with relief to see it. A cellar! One with a cellerer, counting his casks! I could imagine him there, all homely, with his big apron, humming to himself. Oh, God, I’ll never think badly of cellars again! Oh, my dress, it’s ruined! The mittens, they’re no loss, but I really liked this dress. My best wool, the one Cat and Mistress Hull and Nan and I made, with all the nice little tucks and touches here and there. How can I be seen, even in a cellar, with such a woeful dress? Now Robert saw the light, and urged me on by poking me on the ankle with one hand.

  At last I came to the opening, scrambled out, and stepped down beside something like a dripping fountain without even thinking, hurrying for fear Robert would be trapped behind me. He dropped out behind me with a thump, and I saw we were in the strangest room I had ever seen. Entirely underground, it had no natural source of light, and yet it must have had once, for among the strange, high shadows made by candlelight up under the vault, I saw windows that were entirely filled in with a rubble of dirt and stone. There was an ugly smell of damp and decay, of old water that hid ugly secrets in its depths. An eerie plink, plink, plink sound went on monotonously as single drops of water made their way from our corridor down into the wall fountain from behind which we’d climbed, and dropped into a square pond that filled the center of the room. On the far side of the water was a long table on which stood a large silver candelabrum filled with flickering candles that cast strange, pale patterns of light up among the shadows through the strange, colonnaded brick room. A servant with a candle was lighting the first of a row of torches that stood in iron brackets along the walls, between the ancient pillars that supported the roof. It caught with a whoosh, and orange light danced across the surface of the black waters of the pool. With a start, I recognized the man in black. And then I heard a measured, cultivated voice address us in French:

  “Why, Suzanne Dolet, what a pleasant surprise. We were expecting you later, in the company of our Helmsman. But you have come here ahead of our appointed time and brought company as well. This, I assume, is Robert Ashton, no longer dead?” Behind me, I could feel Robert freeze with surprise at this speech. But I knew the man in the doctor’s gown who spoke. I had last met him in London. It was Maître Bellier.

  “Where are we?” I asked him, foolishly mistaking him for a friend and relieved to see him in this strange place. The man in black paused beneath the second torch, turning toward us, the candle in his hand, to hear his master’s answer.

  “Where? Somewhere beneath the gardens of the Hôtel de Cluny, I imagine. It is of no concern. Eustache, please go at once and inform the Helmsman that the guests he awaited have preced
ed him here.” On the far side of the pool, beyond the table, was a marble-framed doorway with an eagle on the top of it. Beyond it into the dark stretched the rocky walls of a tunnel.

  I could hear Robert roar, “No!” and heard him draw his sword to pursue Eustache, who dropped his candle and drew his knife. But Bellier was armed, too, and from beneath his gown drew his own shortsword, rushing to save his servant. Without stopping to think, I ran after him around the far side of the pool, grabbing up the candelabrum from the table to batter at the man in black. Candles rolled every which way and guttered out on the floor, as the man in black tried to ward off the fiery blows. At that very moment, I heard a clatter and glanced back. Ashton and Bellier had frozen in surprise. A third person had emerged from the tunnel, rapier drawn. Septimus Crouch had joined us. The orange light crackled across his malignant face.

  “You, here? You are not of the brotherhood!” gasped Bellier.

  “So, at last, I’ve found your little place. I thought when the Helmsman acted, they might lead me to it, but I never imagined how.”

  “This is forbidden!” cried Bellier. Crouch laughed at him. Robert, sword drawn, stood at the opposite edge of the pond from me, beneath the unlit torches, midway between Crouch and Bellier, uncertain as to which way to go.

  “My dear sir, let us first cut Ashton’s throat and argue later about propriety,” announced Crouch, in that cool, unpleasant way he had. I looked at my Robert trapped between them, and, in a flash of inspiration, heaved the single lit torch that stood above me out of its bracket and into the pool, plunging the whole room into pitch darkness. There was the sound of feet, and I knew that the man in black had vanished out the marble-framed door. From the opposite side of the pool there came a clattering and banging of swords engaging in the dark, and I heard Robert cry, “Ah, I’m hit!” Swiftly, so that they could not locate me by the sound of my footsteps, I tried to crawl around the pool toward him, feeling my way with one hand on the edge. My hand met another hand, feeling in the opposite direction. Robert’s. I’d know it in the dark, so often had I run my hands over the cast of it. Behind him, there was the sound of metal crashing against stone. A finger, not mine, found my lips in the dark, and crossed them. The sign of silence. How badly was he hurt? He could feel my thoughts. The hand took my hand and put it across his lips. I could feel him smile. I could feel him mouth, “I’m fine” without any sound. A trick. He’d set them on each other in the dark. But almost as soon as he touched me, the clattering stopped, and I could hear the heavy breathing of someone hunting for us in the dark.

  My visual memory is perfect. Once I’ve seen something, I don’t forget it, and in the first flash of sight, the plan of this room had been impressed on my brain. I felt for the corner of the pool, then pulled Robert toward the hole behind the lion fountain. And none too soon, either. There was a flickering of lanterns in the marble-framed doorway, and the room was lit again by feeble light.

  “What’s this?” inquired a commanding voice, and from where we were hiding, we could see the Constable de Bourbon, holding a lantern, surrounded by several armed men and led by the man in black.

  “They’re gone,” said Bellier, looking wildly about him in the sudden light. His gown was slashed and his flat hat with the earflaps was floating dolefully in the pool.

  “The Dolet woman and the man?”

  “And Sir Septimus Crouch, the English servant of that unspeakable demon you made partnership with. I warned you, and now he has wormed his way into the heart of our deepest secrets.” Bourbon, arrogant and dark, looked at Bellier with a stare that would paralyze a snake.

  “It’s the Helmsman,” whispered Ashton, curled up as tightly as an unborn baby with me, there in the tunnel. “Astonishing. Bourbon is the Helmsman.”

  “Brother Bellier, will you and your servant kindly remove the chest with our record books? Brothers, go at once and seal the entrances to our tunnels. Our meeting place has been discovered; it must be abandoned at once. It is the law. And those who violate our secrets must die. We will seal them in for all eternity. It is just.” Even before he had finished giving his commands, the armed men had gone by the way they had come, and we had begun crawling up the tunnel as fast as we could, in hopes of beating them to the entrance.

  The thoughts I had going up were even more unpleasant than the thoughts I had had going down. What if the way they’d come was short, and this way long? Then we’d meet a sealed entrance and die in the dark. My heart kept swelling up with horror and slowing me down. Robert kept poking me from behind to go faster, but it was darker and more horrible, with no light at the end to see by. We passed the broad opening, now on our left. “Robert,” I whispered, “let’s go this way; it’s bigger.”

  “No, the other way, it’s not far, and we know where we are.” We crawled for what seemed an eternity, and I was sure I would meet a snake or some horrible slithery thing, and I felt tears coming down my face and Mistress Hull’s very strong but ugly mittens tearing apart on my hands, worn straight through by all that crawling. But then I could go no farther.

  “Go on, go on,” Robert whispered in the dark.

  “I can’t—a big rock—something—they must have rolled it.”

  “Oh, damn, we’re not even at the grating yet. No one will even hear us.”

  “Back down, Robert, and we’ll try the other way.” But I knew if they’d gotten this far, there was no hope. I could feel Robert back away, then hear him sigh, and the faint whisper of a prayer. If I get out of this, God, I’ll never go into a cellar again. No stone corridors, no halls I can’t see the end of. I don’t care if I have to live in a tent. Then I started praying, too, but in my mind, so that Robert wouldn’t know how terrified I was. We reached the broader way, and Robert disappeared into it, pulling at my skirts to make sure I knew where it was. Now we could stand up, but to my horror, I heard the patter and squeak of rats and felt their furry bodies brush against my ankles.

  “Rats, a good sign,” Robert muttered. “They’ve got to get in somewhere.”

  “Somewhere tiny,” I said. “Have you seen how little a hole a rat can get through?” I was shaking all over. I hate rats, too. And rats in the dark? That must be what they have in purgatory.

  There was a bit of cool breeze, and we saw a tiny hole in the upper part of the tunnel, a web of heavy roots, and the edges of broken, displaced bricks. “There’s your rat hole,” I said. “Not big enough for us.” We pressed on.

  “Look, light,” whispered Robert, and around a curve in the tunnel we saw a little niche in the wall, with a lamp with a deep oil well and floating wick, whose tiny flame glittered and shone in the dark like the answer to a prayer. Around it, stubs of candles were stuck onto the niche by their own wax. “It must be how they went in and out,” he said. We lit candles from the lamp, and could see the rest of the length of the tunnel. Sealed, too. We pressed against the heavy oak door. Not a crack, not a hope. We felt the edges, and the points of nails, poking through here and there, told the story. They had nailed it shut. I just sat there, all curled up, and cried, while Robert held me.

  “Don’t cry, don’t cry,” he said, his voice full of despair. “I’ll get you out of here, I swear.” Hadriel, Hadriel, I wept silently, where are you now, you careless thing? I’m needing more than the idea for a new kind of painting. You’ve got me into this; it’s all your fault for urging on my wicked ideas about leaving my proper place in life. Now look at how I’ve ended up! I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you. Open this hole and let me out, I shouted in my mind.

  “That’s a good idea,” said Robert. “Worth a try. Anything’s worth a try.”

  “What idea?” I asked.

  “The one you said. We’ll try to open up the rat hole.”

  “I didn’t say anything,” I said.

  “Of course you did. I heard it plainly.” He urged me up, and with the aid of the candles, we found the place much more quickly. Now as we looked about us with the light, we saw that we were not
actually in a tunnel but a half tunnel roofed with a low, crumbling arch of brick and mortar that looked like part of a ceiling. The floor was compacted rubble. Farther on, the tunnel was dug through some sort of earth and in places lined with stone or brick, as if it were following the line of old walls, and then crossing them.

  “These are buildings,” I said. “Buildings beneath the earth.”

  “Of course they are,” he answered. “You can see the top side of them in places where they poke through. Ruined walls in the gardens, parts of other buildings. Maybe even cellars. People never bothered to clear away the walls; they just built more on top of them. But I had no idea there was so much of this place. The palace of a very great king—outbuildings, baths. These fellows in the Priory must have hollowed them out.” He passed me his knife, then took his misericord and began to chip at the mortar of the bricks nearest the hole. I took off the remains of my mittens and did the same, my hands freezing with the cold. We worked and worked. Each loose brick was a triumph, each root-entangled stone a disaster. Gradually the little patch of sky we could see through the hole blazed red, then purple, then turned black. I was hungry, I was tired, and I thought the tears would freeze my face. Robert labored on, his jaw clenched, his expression grim.

  “You’re smaller,” he said, when the hole in the decayed brickwork had grown sufficiently. “I’ll put you on my shoulders and you must cut away the roots above the bricks.” So I hacked and chopped with his knife until he could push me up and through the hole. I lay on the frozen ground above, breathing deeply of real air and and weeping with relief. Then Robert’s own head popped up and through the hole and I grabbed the back of his leather doublet and pulled as he struggled up and out of the pit beneath the tangled roots of a wintering apple tree, like some midnight mole. We were in a walled garden. Above the walls stretched the night sky, spotted with winter stars.