Silence except for his labored breathing. It was nearly full dark now. The sound of the children playing had all but died out; I imagined they had gone indoors. I stood next to Dr. Silverthorn, both of us staring up at the implacable stone faces for several minutes. At last he sighed and climbed the remaining steps to the transept gate. He placed one hand on the door and turned to me, and said, “When people first found dinosaur fossils in the cliffs, they thought they had discovered the remains of Angels and dragons.”
He waited for me to push open the massive door. I paused, the gate’s iron ring biting my hand. “I have seen one,” I said. “Walking in the Narrow Forest, one of them spoke to me. But he did not have wings.”
Dr. Silverthorn nodded. “Yes,” he replied after a moment. “I believe you may have seen one.”
With a creak the iron-bound door swung inward, and we entered the Cathedral.
5. An exceeding barbarous condition of the human species
THE SMELL ASSAULTED ME first: bitter smoke from uncured wood, roasting flesh, human excrement, burning wax. Over all of it the reek of incense of turpentine smoldering in countless braziers, many of them toppled to the marble floor so that their contents had spilled but continued to burn, igniting whatever material was near at hand: cloth, twigs, hair. I blinked, covered my eyes against the smoke, then my nose to keep out the stench. The marble beneath my feet was slick with putrid water. I forced my eyes open, lest I slip and find myself awash with the filth clotting the floor.
A dim expanse swept before me in every direction. It stretched upward to the very stars, since chunks of the ceiling had collapsed to leave great ragged holes open to the cool sky. Were it not for this, the Cathedral’s inhabitsants would probably have suffocated from the smoke and foul air. Bonfires burned everywhere, each surrounded by little groups of chattering children feeding graying embers or livid flames with green sticks and bark. In the lurid light they looked like one of the dioramas at the Museum, naked tousled silhouettes squatting before ill-tended fires, rocking back and forth upon their heels as they sang or talked or ate. Many of them sprawled in the filth, panting or seeming scarcely to breathe at alclass="underline" the ones who would die next. The sight of them eating sickened me, no matter that it had been nearly two days since I’d had anything like a proper meal.
“Look at them,” said Dr. Silverthorn softly. “Dying of gangrene and evil humors and sarcomas and sheer ignorance, just as they did a thousand years ago. Refugees of a war fought with rocks and sticks and rain; a war they have never even heard of.”
From the bonfires shrill voices called out to us. They greeted Dr. Silverthorn by name, but fell silent as I followed him toward the center of the great space, where most of the fires were clustered. Marble benches stood here and there, some of them pulled free from their moorings and tilted or thrown to the floor. I wondered who could have done that: not plaguey children, surely. The benches were seats of privilege. The oldest lazars sat there crosslegged, some of them with crowns of twisted branches and dead leaves upon their brows. They snapped at the younger children, bullying them to bring morsels of food toasting upon twigs and water (I hoped it was water) from a large standing basin near the middle of the vast room. As we approached they stopped their playing and arguing and turned to stare, the oldest ones standing upon the benches and letting their younger favorites join them. I pulled my torn robe tight and held my head up, trying hard not to look foolish, though I knew I was as filthy as they were. They twittered and pointed and called to one another through the smoky air—
“Look—look—”
“He has come, the Doctor found him, the one Pearl said, the one, the one—”
“He is here, look, look—”
Giggles and curses; scuffling behind us as they scrabbled across the floor to stare. I felt their small hands touch my ankle or arm, countless children circling me like starveling cats.
“Raphael! It’s me!”
In a patch of orange light Oleander popped up, grinning.
I smiled back. “Oleander! I’m glad to see you—”
And grew quiet; because I was glad.
“I told him, Dr. Silverthorn. Tast’ann—” He lowered his voice. “The Consolation of the Dead, ” he continued, walking between Dr. Silverthorn and myself and eyeing the other children scornfully. “I told him we had found him, you and me, I told him we found Raphael Miramar, the boy they call the Gaping One.”
Dr. Silverthorn nodded wearily. He handed his bag to Oleander. “Are we to have an audience, then?”
Oleander shook his head. “No. He took more of those pills you gave him, he is making the Saint-Alaban children perform “The Masque of Baal and Anat.’ I think he forgot he told us to bring him.”
Dr. Silverthorn snorted, then waved his hand to indicate that Oleander was to open his bag.
“One yellow and one green one, please,” he said. We had crossed the center of the Cathedral and stood before a door opening onto a dim passage. The air blew fresher from this portal. I breathed gratefully, glancing back at the children scurrying through the nave. They had already forgotten us, all but Oleander.
“Tast’annin will remember about Raphael,” Dr. Silverthorn said after he had taken the capsules. “He has a plan. Worse: he has a vision. Always be wary of men with visions.”
He grinned as he said this, a skull ogling us from the shadows. “Well, Oleander, let us show Raphael to his chamber.”
The passage snaked along the outer wall of the Cathedral, branching often. Stone staircases loomed out of the darkness, a deeper black where they plunged or climbed to secret bays and chapels. Set high up along the smooth gray walls were empty recesses and narrow windows. Some were shattered; some held black traceries that I imagined would show elaborate scenes in colored glass, come daybreak: if day broke here. Oleander kicked through the debris and found a taper which he lit from a smoking pile someone had left beside a door. With him leading us we descended into the Crypt Church.
The air was better here: not the fresh air of trees and sun but cool and still nonetheless, redolent of ancient stone and hidden water. We met no one.
“The children are forbidden here without permission,” explained Dr. Silverthorn. He nodded at Oleander. “He is a clever boy; a sort of favorite of the Aviator’s, he runs errands and goes where he pleases. As do I; though nothing will hold me back soon, I will go wherever I wish.” A low whistling laugh, air seeping from throat and chest and mouth. “But Oleander races through here like a mouse in the walls. And there are other mice, too, mice in cages, rats in traps.”
I shuddered. I had seen small things scamper across the floor, disturbed by the taper’s uneven light; but I did not like to imagine what he might mean by mice in cages, rats in traps. Everywhere faces glowered at me, white stone figures and flowering columns and bizarre animals, plinths upholding those, whom Dr. Silverthorn had named as Saints and Angels and ordinary men. They observed us impassively, dignified in spite of the decay of years and the occasional spray of graffiti rippling across their severe faces. Oleander walked a few feet in front of us, his broken face pitifully young. He might have been a handsome boy, before the rain of roses; a Botanist for sure, but with a Paphian father I would guess.
“How long have you been here, Oleander?” I asked him.
He shifted the taper to his other hand, shaking wax from his fingers. “I don’t know. A few weeks? We were caught outside, some of us, we were working on the boxtree hedges at the Botanical Gardens. The older ones ran. They left me and a few of the others who couldn’t run fast enough.