Island of Doom

by Arthur Slade

  “Through the gates!” she shouted, pointing madly at the bureau gates. “Donnez la porte!” She didn’t know if those were the right words. “Through the gates right now!”

  “Non! Non!” he shouted back.

  “Well, off with you, then!” She gave him a shove. He tumbled from the driver’s seat and bounced along the street. Octavia grabbed the reins and shook them, shouting, “Go! Go!” She had only a thimbleful of experience with horses, but she knew they answered to the whip, so she grabbed it from the holder and snapped it above their backs.

  The man who’d been fleeing was now standing about twenty yards from the gates, two soldiers pointing rifles at him. Another soldier was holding a pair of hounds by their leashes as he approached the man from behind.

  Octavia turned the fiacre toward the gates. The horses had worked themselves into such a frenzy that they were frothing at the mouth. She began yelling, “Mad horses! Mad horses!”

  Then Colette shouted out, “Ces chevaux sont fous!”

  The horses smashed through the gates, knocking two guards out of the way. “Sorry, sorry!” she shouted. Colette kept yelling “Ils sont les chevaux fous!” The guards were so taken aback that they didn’t think to raise their guns.

  Octavia turned the horses, and as the guards scattered, she pulled up right in front of Modo. She would have paid a thousand quid for a painting of that moment: his eyes wide, mouth hanging open in shock. She pulled back on the reins and let out a laugh, slowing the horses and turning them so that Modo had time to leap through the open fiacre door. She yanked hard on the reins to circle back toward the gate.

  They were heading straight for the fence! The hounds had been released and were nipping at the hooves of the horses, causing them to kick and buck. One gave a hound a good kick and he rolled away; a second hound was soon outdistanced as they began to gallop again. Octavia brought the horses parallel to the gate as she urged them to gallop harder. They were going with such speed that she worried the carriage would shake apart.

  Behind them orders were shouted. A bullet hit the back of the driver’s seat and split the wood. Octavia laughed. As mad as the horses, she thought. Then the fiacre was through the gates and bouncing down the cobblestones. She laughed again when she thought about Modo and Colette rolling around in the cabin; soon they’d be scrambled eggs. She raced down the empty streets, turned sharply left, then right, then left, having no idea where she was going, only wanting to get as far from the bureau as possible.

  “You can stop now!” Colette shouted through the window after several more minutes.

  Octavia pulled on the reins, but the horses didn’t obey. In desperation, she yanked so hard that one rein snapped. “They’ve gone wild!” Octavia shouted to Colette. The horses were still frothing, their excited frenzy turning to fear. They wouldn’t stop whinnying as they galloped even faster through the night.

  “I said stop!” Colette yelled. “Stop!”

  “Easier said than done,” Octavia shouted back. She yanked on the remaining reins, digging her feet into the driver’s box. Another rein snapped and the horses veered to the right. She had lost all control. The carriage was already off the road and bumping along the sidewalk, missing lampposts by inches. They brushed against a wall and a wheel was knocked from the fiacre.

  “Jump!” Octavia shouted. “Jump for your lives!” And she leapt, aiming for the straw piled at the edge of the street, landing hard and rolling. She was on her feet again immediately, pleased she hadn’t brained herself. The carriage had already careened down the street and was breaking into pieces as the horses dragged it out of sight. Momentarily she thought her companions were still inside, but then she saw something move in the gutter. It was Modo! He was helping Colette to her feet.

  “This way,” Colette said, gesturing.

  Curious men and women, alarmed by the noise, were opening windows and stumbling out of doors, rubbing the sleep from their eyes or shaking the drink from their heads. Colette grabbed Modo and pulled him down an alley, Octavia a few steps behind. They ran, twisting and turning up ever-narrowing alleys, until Octavia felt her heart would burst. Finally Colette led them into an abandoned building and they stopped to rest next to a stinking cistern.

  “Remind me never to let you drive again,” Modo said.

  Octavia laughed. “You should be thanking me. Not that I’m keeping count, but if I were, that would be the fourth time I’ve saved your life.”

  “I had the situation under control.”

  She chortled.

  “Well, perhaps I am thankful,” he admitted, between panting breaths. “However, you did come within inches of running me down.”

  “Did you get the documents?” Colette asked.

  “I managed to take several, but then I was interrupted by someone: a man named Laroche.”

  “Laroche? Has he been assigned to your case now?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s a good agent. Very thorough,” Colette said.

  “Far too thorough; he saw through my disguise. We had a pleasant conversation and a struggle, and then I escaped.” He patted his bulging pocket. “I do hope the answers we seek will be found in one of these pages.”

  Colette smiled with anticipation. “We’ll go through them as soon as we reach my apartment.”

  Modo shook his head. “No. Laroche said they’ve been watching you for several weeks. We can’t go there. We’ll need to find some other shelter. Any suggestions?”

  “Obviously we can’t go to a hotel. Nor would the home of my mother be safe. No, they’ll have eyes on all those places within the hour.”

  “We need a safe spot for just a night,” Octavia said. “A place where we can read the documents and sleep.”

  Colette snapped her fingers. “I know the perfect location to hide.”

  16

  Sanctuary

  Modo ducked behind a half-collapsed wall, out of sight of Colette and Octavia, and struggled to change his shape back to the Knight. He was exhausted, and switching to another form was only going to make it worse. But if he walked around Paris with a netting mask on he’d be easily remembered by any passersby or gendarme.

  When he was done he joined his companions. They both gave him a long look, as though searching for imperfections. “Good, good,” Colette said, but he sensed disappointment in her voice.

  She turned on her heel, leading them out of the ruined building and down an alley that opened onto a wide street. Several feet away was a fiacre stand, not much more than a shed painted black; a place for a driver to warm himself. Colette grabbed Modo by the elbow and marched him up to the stand. She knocked on the side to wake the driver, a white-haired man who sat with a blanket of open newspapers over his legs. He shook the papers off and stood up. Without a word, he climbed into his fiacre.

  Colette elbowed Modo and whispered, “Tell him to take us to Notre Dame Cathedral.”

  “Really?” he asked. “Why?”

  “Give the instructions. He will expect them to come from the man.”

  Modo gruffly told the driver their destination and they climbed inside. It began to rain softly and his heart went out to the driver, though the man had likely been through much worse. The window was fogged and spattered with droplets; it was hard to see the outside world, as though they were traveling underwater.

  “Shouldn’t we worry about the driver identifying us?” Octavia asked.

  “The gendarmes won’t post our descriptions until tomorrow,” Colette replied. “The afternoon paper may publish them, but we’ll be gone by then.”

  “Why are we going to the cathedral?” Modo asked.

  “It is a sanctuary,” Colette said.

  “We won’t find sanctuary from the bureau there,” Octavia said.

  “I do not expect true sanctuary, but I know the building. There are places to hide if only for a night, and if we need to escape quickly it is easy enough to dive into the river. Let us hope it does not come to that.”

  “
Once we’re there, what next?” Octavia asked.

  “We will make our decision at the cathedral. You seem to think this is all my fault.”

  “It was your plan to enter the bureau,” snapped Octavia.

  “Modo, how do you work with such a viper?” Colette asked.

  “Very carefully,” Modo said.

  They glared at him and he imagined them both slapping his face at the same time. He snickered. A moment later they were laughing too.

  “The church will be as safe as anywhere,” Modo said finally. “No one would expect us to go there.”

  The fiacre jostled down the street. When the rain let up, Modo could see that the city planners hadn’t been stingy with the gas lamps; the city really was a “city of light.” The buildings were just as close together as those in London, but they were more colorful and better kept. The night air certainly wasn’t as foggy.

  After forty minutes they crossed a stone bridge onto an island on the Seine. The fiacre passed a large building lined with pillars and countless windows. “Is that Notre Dame?” Modo asked.

  “Non, that is Hôtel-Dieu de Paris, a hospital.”

  The fiacre stopped and Modo got out, taking Octavia’s hand and then Colette’s, to help them to the ground. One had to keep up the pretense that they needed help. He gave the shivering driver five francs and bid him goodnight. When the fiacre moved on, Modo found himself standing in a small cobblestone courtyard, and right in front of him, blocking a good number of the evening stars with its massive size, was Notre Dame de Paris. The red quarter moon lit the stained-glass windows and the stone goblins that crouched along the side of the building.

  He had an overwhelming sense that he had stood on this very spot before. It was impossible for him to have any memory of this place; he had been an infant when he had been brought here by his parents. Perhaps it was the French blood in his veins that made him feel this way. Then he recalled how often he had read The Hunchback of Notre Dame—far too many times—and imagining that a mere book could make a place seem so familiar, he shook his head and laughed.

  “Why do you laugh?” Colette asked.

  “No reason,” he said, feeling his love of the book was a private matter. “Where exactly shall we hide? I do need to rest. Any moment now I’ll collapse from exhaustion.”

  “Follow me.” Colette led them to a side door on the east wall of the church and they quietly crept inside. It was dark, but Colette grabbed Modo’s hand and guided him through the pitch black. He in turn held his hand out to Octavia. Hers was warm.

  Colette’s eyes seemed to adjust much faster than his, for she was leading them past pews, around pillars, and up a set of winding stone stairs that were only dim shapes to him. Their footsteps sounded impossibly loud, as did their breathing. Even the thudding of his heart pounded in his ears, as if the church were amplifying his heartbeat. But the higher they climbed, the more comfortable he felt.

  Colette opened an iron grate door and they were hit by the cold. They crossed an open-air walkway lined with gargoyles who vigilantly watched over Paris. The lights of the city were far below, as though the stars and the earth had reversed themselves. They were nearing one of the bell towers! Modo was certain of it, even though the way ahead of them was dark.

  Colette pushed open another iron door, into a dark room. It was warmer, at least, but Modo shivered when he heard the fluttering of bat wings above him. Somewhere in that darkness were the bells of the church.

  “We’re safe here,” Colette said, patting Modo’s hand before she let it go. “Emmanuel will watch over us.”

  “Where is here?” Octavia asked. “And who is Emmanuel?” Modo had not yet let go of her hand.

  “We are in the southern bell tower,” Colette explained, “and Emmanuel is the bell above us.”

  “How do you know the way so well?” Modo asked.

  “As a youth I explored,” she said. “It was a game I played, to hide from the priests and my father. He would bring us here every Sunday. I would do my—what do you call it?—sneaking during the services.”

  “So began a lifetime of sneaking,” Octavia noted.

  Colette clicked on her petite lumière and Octavia let go of Modo’s hand as though she’d been caught with hers in a sweet biscuit jar.

  “Now, let us have a look at those documents.”

  Modo pulled the crumpled mess from his jacket and smoothed the papers out on the floor. Colette bent over to examine them, but Modo covered them with his hand. “There were documents about you, Colette.”

  “Oh,” she said. “And what did my kind bureaucratic friends have to say?”

  Modo cleared his throat. “There was a report on your mental faculties, including a description of your stay in an asylum.”

  “Oh, that,” Colette said. “Yes, I rested, as they like to say.” But she wasn’t quite able to make it sound inconsequential.

  “She was in a madhouse?” Octavia said. “We’ve been following a madwoman around on a merry chase?”

  “The proper term is sanatorium,” Colette said indignantly. “I was put there against my will. I—I really didn’t need it. They wanted my job. My desk. My soul.”

  “Soul?” Octavia echoed.

  “Everything,” Colette hissed. “Everything I’ve fought for! They’ve taken it all away.”

  She was shaking. Modo placed his hand on her cheek. “I’ve been inside those so-called madhouses,” he said. “Not everyone there was mad.”

  “No. Not everyone,” Colette agreed, “though the man who believed he was Jesus Christ and Napoleon was certainly unhinged.”

  “Our debt is paid,” Modo said. “Not that I ever thought you owed me.”

  She shook her head. “It is kind of you to say so, but it is far from paid.”

  “Well,” Octavia huffed. “If you two lovebirds are done we had better read these files or nothing will be solved or paid.”

  Colette flipped through the pages. “Conjecture upon conjecture. Useless agents! And, wait—” She picked up a page, her eyes flitting back and forth across it. “No, my apologies, there is nothing.”

  “But there must be something,” Octavia said. Colette gathered up the documents and held them out to Octavia, her eyebrows knitted in despair. “I can’t read French, you know that.”

  Modo took them and leafed through, trying to hide his desperation. He used his pocket lucifer to study every page carefully. “I was interrupted,” he said. “If I’d had more time, I might’ve found something of use.”

  “Then we’ve come all this distance for nothing,” Octavia said.

  Colette sniffed. “We cannot stay in Paris, that much we know. Perhaps we should visit Nanterre—we may find others who remember your parents, Modo.”

  “But that will take days,” Modo said. “And the Deuxième Bureau will expect us to go there. They will have eyes everywhere.”

  “I am aware of that. I suggest we sleep. Perhaps in the morning an answer will come. We will want to leave before sunrise.”

  Modo sighed and nodded. They gathered what soft things they could find—they were lucky enough to discover a few cloth sacks—and made their beds on the cold stone.

  17

  More Meat, Please

  Lime, his pistol and knives hidden by a greatcoat, strode past the medieval ramparts that surrounded the outskirts of Montreuil-sur-Mer. The hut he was searching for was along the road to Étaples, if the drunks in the town pub could be believed.

  The town lay on the banks of the Canche river and Lime hated the place. He had grown up in the squalor of Kuala Lumpur, the son of an Irish merchant. It was a small settlement, made ugly by the tin mines that scarred the muddy rivers and lush countryside. He had embraced that ugliness; things were meant to be scarred. As a consequence he hated anything picturesque and perfect. Montreuil-sur-Mer brought out that loathing. Another perfect French town.

  His mute companion slouched a step behind him, eyes dead as ever. Typhon. Lime disliked the beast’s name. I
t should have been Grunt or Lump or Dunghead. But it had been named Typhon, and that was the only name the sack of flesh and muscle responded to. Oh, how the Guild Master loved his word games and his Greek mythology. Lime loathed the Greeks.

  Lime had spent the first three days in town looking for Monsieur and Madame Hébert. The French townspeople had begun to all look the same. And no one had any memory of potters with the last name Hébert. But there were many potters in Montreuil—half the population. He’d bought their wares, spoken with them, and uncovered nothing. He took pleasure in smashing the bowls and plates in the fireplace of his room at the hotel.

  The first potter he visited was the right age to have been Modo’s father, but he’d never been married. The second potter and his wife had ten squalid brats running around half naked; the mother was too young to have given birth to Modo.

  Every street Lime explored, Typhon slouched behind him. Why the Guild Master had sent the beast with him was obvious. Its brute strength was beyond any Lime had ever witnessed. And as far as he could tell, the thing was indestructible. Mute and dumb as a stone, with the occasional glimmer of intelligent light in its eyes.

  They approached the hut and he commanded Typhon to stand a few feet back. The size and extreme ugliness of the monster was helpful for intimidation, but not so helpful when one needed to appear friendly.

  The door creaked open and a gray-haired woman poked her head out. “May I help you?” she asked in French.

  He guessed her to be fifty-five, a little too old to have had a child fifteen years ago.

  “Are you Madame Hébert?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “Non, Lambert. I do not know an Hébert.”

  “So you have never met a potter named Hébert?”

  “I have not.”

  Typhon let out a rumbling grunt and the woman looked behind Lime and went pale. Leave it to the monstrous lump of flesh to make a noise now!