The first hour was spent searching every pillar and wall of that gallery, minutely, for any sign. They moved beyond, then, and lit their way into the next gallery and searched that.
In the fifth hour, they stopped to eat in a domed niche cut within the rocks. They ate on the circles of steps that led down to where water lived within the rocks. Eight feet below them lay a round pool, the drinking water, and perhaps the footbath, of the old quarrymen. It was water of such complete clarity it almost did not exist, except that it reflected back the flame of their candles. They ate the excellent tarts and cheeses served in the whorehouse and drank wine and spoke very little to one another.
Papa was tiring. She had made him bring a warm coat, but he was chilled. It would be late afternoon in the outside world.
Their tenth hour under the earth, six o’clock in the evening, they had traced and retraced and circled the center of their search and were in a new gallery. Bats spiraled upward and escaped through some vent in the arched ceiling. A weak shaft of light infiltrated from far above and struck all the way down to the cavern floor, fresh and beautiful as a spring in the desert.
It was a ventilation shaft, drilled in the rock. She went to it as if pulled by strings and stood in the light and looked up. She had been in darkness for a century.
“I’ll track this, up top, and find it,” Poulet said. “It’ll show exactly where we are. But that’s going to take a day or two. It probably comes up in somebody’s garden.”
They stood, all of them, looking up.
“It’ll be big enough for a man to go through, lowered by a rope. Always good to have one more entrance,” Poulet said.
They were close. She knew it. If she could tear these rock walls and rock stanchions apart, she’d find it. We will not be in time. I made a mistake, trying this.
Jean-Paul came up beside her. “We can do the ploy with a prison transfer, just after dawn. We have time to forge the papers if we head back now. We’ll use Harrier’s carriage and he’ll go as driver. I still play a convincing guard.”
You will not risk your life—you, who have a wife and a child and another baby coming. “No.”
“Marguerite . . .”
“I have decided, Jean-Paul. It is this or nothing. We are committed.”
They did not discuss it, but none of them moved from the spot. They would look further, but they all knew it was pointless.
A wind exhaled from the quarries, beginning who knew where, and leaving through that hole far above. The thin flowing of air would have been imperceptible anywhere else. Here, she could hear it whisper past her ears.
This is the kingdom of utter silence. Noise is a visitor here. In her hand, the candle flickered as she exhaled.
And she knew.
She said, “A well is not merely a hole in the ground. It is for bringing up water. The chain clinks of metal. The bucket splashes at the bottom. The load squeals going up again. We’ve been wrong. We do not look for the well. We listen for it.”
Perhaps they were not cautious. Perhaps they raced too quickly from one chamber to another, to listen, with ears to the rock. But no harm came of it.
Justine was the one who heard. Less than thirty feet from where they had dropped their packs she heard the faint, sharp creaking of the chain behind a wall of mortared stone blocks.
Adrian ran for the picks and crowbars. It took five minutes to break the mortar and pry a stone loose. Carefully. Quietly.
Jean-Paul whispered, “If this is the well, they can hear us down here. I don’t want them wondering why the frogs are talking.”
He took the block out and stepped back. In that hand-width of opening, they saw the void behind. There was the most fragile and imaginary suggestion of light.
“We’ve done it,” she said.
Forty-three
WHEN THE OPENING WAS LARGE ENOUGH, SHE leaned into the well and twisted around to look upward to the coin-sized circle of light above. Only a sou-sized coin, but it dazzled. Contrast is everything.
They spoke in whispers. Every few minutes, the bucket came down the shaft and went up again, full.
She chose a spot away from the opening of the well so her candles would not spill light into the well shaft, in case someone should look down. There was a corner where a block wall met another wall. This was where she would wait.
“I want to say you can’t stay here.” Jean-Paul sighed. “But you’ll do exactly what you want.”
“There is nothing useful for me to accomplish above ground. Victor is on the hunt for me. I’m in danger from him every step I take on the street. I endanger anyone with me.” That wasn’t why she had to stay. Jean-Paul would know that.
“In La Flèche, we don’t make grand gestures, Marguerite.”
“This one, I will make.”
He knew the futility of arguing with her.
She settled in to wait. Poulet came and kissed her on both cheeks and left his coat behind for her to wrap herself in and sit upon. He unpacked candles and flint and tinder and set them next to her. Also his flask of wine and all the food they had not eaten.
Jean-Paul left his gold watch, his father’s watch, putting it into her hand as if it were a casual nothing. He unrolled a ball of twine, beginning at her feet, that would lead all the way out. “In case,” he said. He left his coat also and would not be talked into keeping it.
Papa gave her the sticky dates he had found in the bottom of his pocket, wrapped in a handkerchief. He had been struck by several interesting observations of the magnetic waves beneath the ground. He began to describe them to her.
But he proved perfectly willing to talk about his list of geniuses. The very one he gave Robespierre. Yes. There was a copy in the library at home. Not in his desk. He had left it in a book . . . He would find it for her.
She pointed out that Victor had tried to poison her. Victor was very likely the man who had set assassins on his trail. And Victor was currently encamped at Hôtel de Fleurignac.
“I see.” Papa absentmindedly ate one of the dates he’d given her.
Justine, wide-eyed and unafraid, small and competent, took charge of Papa and led him away.
Adrian stayed till last. “Don’t worry if we’re late.”
“I am not addicted to worrying. I have a number of candles to keep me company.”
“We have to fetch rope and the ladder rungs from the workshop in the Jardin des Plantes. Get them across town to the café. Bring everything all the way down here. It’ll take a while.”
“So I should think.”
“There might be gusts of wind coming out of that well shaft, the way it comes down a chimney sometimes. Set some of the candles where they can’t get blown out.” He pointed. “Over there.”
“That is wise. Thank you.”
“Don’t wander off and get lost. You need to piss, do it here.” Earthy, practical words in the lyric, slurring pronunciation of the South.
“That is good advice, Adrian. I am sufficiently afraid of this huge darkness that I will not be careless with it.”
“Put those coats over you before you feel the cold. You don’t notice it, but it’ll eat your strength up if you don’t cover up.”
“I will.”
“Probably not. I know I can’t make you.” His lips quirked. “Nobody tells you what to do but Doyle. And not him, much. I’ll let him know you’re here, waiting, keeping the gate. It’ll give him incentive. I’m leaving this coat behind because it’s got bloodstains inside. I can’t be seen in something like that. You want a knife? I got extras.”
“You are kind, Adrian, but it would be of no use to me.”
“My friends call me Hawker.”
“Then I will call you Hawker.”
He stayed an instant, looking at her closely, then followed the others, leaving her in this empire of dark and uneasy silences.