Seven bells rumbled through the belly of the nave as Rochat and Harper gathered the last of the wooden chairs and carried them to the north transept doors. Harper climbed a ladder and Rochat handed up the chairs. Harper drove the last chair into the doors with a heavy bang. Rochat lifted his lantern from the floor and studied the barricade.
“Will this keep out the bad shadows?”
“No, but it’ll make a huge bang when they do come in. Let them know they’re on our ground. Which reminds me, you know where there’re any floor plans of the nave? I’d best get familiar with what our ground looks like.”
Rochat thought about it. “When Papa was saving the cathedral from falling down, he made a book with drawings of the cathedral from the belfry spire to under the cathedral.”
“Just the thing.”
“You can buy one in the gift shop for one hundred Swiss francs.”
Harper felt his pocket where his wallet used to be. Nothing but a few coins.
“Suppose we could borrow a copy, just to look at it?”
“When she was alive, Sœur Fabienne told people who just looked at books in the gift shop that the cathedral wasn’t a lending library and all the books were for sale.”
“I bet she did. Thing is, I’ve only got some pocket change at the moment.”
Rochat reached in his trouser pocket and pulled out his own wallet. “I have money. I can leave one hundred francs and a note on the counter for Madame Buhlmann, because Sœur Fabienne doesn’t work there anymore and Madame Buhlmann can put it in the money box when she comes back from Unterwald with Monsieur Buhlmann. And I can push the big cabinets in front of the going-outside door of the gift shop, too. They’re metal and will make a lot of noise when they fall over, like Tom and Jerry on Cartoon Network.”
“Sorry?”
“Tom’s a big stupid cat, Jerry’s a clever little mouse who always gets away.”
“Cartoon Network, you watch it all the time?”
“Oui, it’s funny.”
“They had me watching a lot of the History Channel.”
“The History Channel lives next door to Cartoon Network on my TV. That makes us neighbors.”
Harper smiled. “It does at that.”
“Should I move the cabinets now, monsieur?”
“Sure. Need help?”
“Non, I’m very strong from the legs up.”
Rochat shuffled away with his lantern. Harper watched him almost floating through the dark and empty nave, remembering him that first night coming across the esplanade. Nice but dim lad who thought it was his duty to protect a lost angel. Turns out the lad’s the eighth wonder of the world, Harper thought. A half-breed of your own kind. Two and a half million years of rules and regs down the drain, and for what? Enemy’s ready to crash through the doors of the cathedral and take down what’s left of paradise, no backup in sight. Not even the little old nun in the bloody gift shop. Maybe that’s the inspector’s wham-bang triple bluff. Maybe he’s the bloody traitor in the ranks, the whole Paris story another bluff. Maybe he’s already taken what Yuriev hid in the cathedral and he’s long gone. Leave the woman and the lad and the whole bloody world in one putrid pile of collateral damage. Not the first time innocents have been left behind, Mr. Harper, won’t be the last.
Christ, get a grip. Think it through.
He rubbed the back of his neck, thinking the free will of men was tough going. Especially with the phantom of a dead man running through your form. Is it this way, is it that way? Drive yourself bloody mad every time you hit a fork in a road in the Wonderful Land of Now What? The rattle of keys and turning of a lock echoed through the nave. Harper watched the lad’s crooked form disappear into the gift shop.
“Hey, Harper.”
He saw Katherine, a good-sized cardboard box in her hands, step into the glow of a hundred candles alight and scattered over the flagstones of the crossing square.
“These are the last of Marc’s candles. Where do you want them?”
“On the bench. Just have a seat, I’ll take care of it.”
Katherine dropped the box, collapsed on the bench. “Where’d Marc go?”
“Gift shop, looking for a book.”
She could see Rochat through the glass doors at the back of the nave, dragging a huge cabinet across the room. “Of course he is. You know, he’s such a…I really wish…”
“What do you wish?”
“Forget it. I’m zoning out on fairy tales again.”
Harper stepped onto the crossing square and walked through the burning candles, watching the flickering flames. “Go ahead, tell me.”
“What you said before, about finding miracles in the cathedral.”
“Got one in mind?”
“Yeah, that guardian angels were real. That they’d protect him.”
Harper looked at her, nodded to the wool blankets on the bench. “You should wrap up, Miss Taylor, it’s getting cold.”
“Yeah, it does feel cold. What do they say, it’s always coldest before the dawn?”
“I think it’s darkest before the dawn.”
“Whatever, it’s still cold.”
She pulled the blankets over her shoulders, watched Harper set a hundred more candles about the flagstones, lighting them one by one from a single candle, then rearrange the glowing things as if marking positions on a chessboard.
“What the heck are you doing?”
“Lighting candles.”
“I see that. Looks like something else.”
“Like what?”
“Don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.” Katherine watched the light swell and form at the edges of the crossing square like a lucent fortress. She tipped back her head and watched the light rise into the lantern tower where it radiated against the still-dark windows of leaded glass. “Once, in the belfry, I asked Marc why they called this one the lantern tower when the guy with the lantern was in the tower with the bells. You should’ve seen him. His hands were going back and forth like he was trying to figure it out. He said it was because the bells wouldn’t fit.”
Harper leaned back and looked up into the lantern tower. “He’s right.”
“Yeah, but just now I’m thinking with all these candles burning, the cathedral must look like a big lantern to anyone who might be watching.”
Harper lit the last candle, leaned back, and looked up into the lantern tower again. “You’re right.”
“So is that what you’re doing? Calling all angels in the coldest and darkest hour before the dawn?”
Harper sat next to Katherine, offered her the burning candle in his hand. “You never can tell, Miss Taylor.”
“About what, angels, or fairy tales?”
“How about both?”
Katherine smiled, took the burning stub. “Those freaks must’ve really fried your brains on drugs, Harper. You’re talking like a nice guy. Not sure it suits you.”
“Wouldn’t worry, I’m sure it’ll pass.”
Katherine giggled, peeled bits of melting wax from the side of the candle. “You know, I think I’m going to turn over a new leaf, give up the game. I’ll learn to make candles, open a little shop. Somewhere really, really quiet.”
“Sounds good.”
She looked at Harper. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Komarovsky and his freaks, the ones Marc calls the bad shadows. What do you call them?”
“The enemy.”
“Yeah, because you’re some kind of sneaky-beaky soldier boy. So tell me, soldier boy, you know what Komarovsky and his freaks did to me, and you know what’s going to happen to me if they get their hands on me, don’t you?”
Harper stared into her eyes. He didn’t answer.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
Shuffling sounds echoed through the nave. Katherine turned her head, saw Rochat’s crooked shape coming through the dark.
“What’s he got in his hand?”
“That would be his lantern.”
“No, the other hand.”
“That would be Lausanne Cathedral.”
Rochat stepped into the lucent fortress of the crossing square, a completed maquette of the cathedral balanced atop a book.
“Bonsoir, it’s only me.”
“I see that. Where’d you get the little cathedral?”
“I made it.”
“What, like, now?”
“I made it for Sœur Fabienne before she died three years ago. She said it was very good and she’d leave it in the gift shop for everyone to see. I remembered it when I was moving things and finding the book Papa made. I imagined it could help the detectiveman.”
“This Sœur Fabienne, is she one of your beforetimes pals who drops by the cathedral now and then in the middle of the night to say hello?”
“I haven’t seen her since she died, but the detectiveman saw her in the gift shop.”
Katherine looked at Harper. “You see dead people in the gift shop?”
“Couple days ago. But I wouldn’t call her dead, not really.”
“You know, the more you talk, the more you sound like Marc.”
Harper rose slowly from the bench. “You should get some rest, Miss Taylor, you look tired.”
“Yeah, I am. It just comes over me, you know.”
Rochat shuffled toward her. “Do you want to go to the belfry and sleep with Monsieur Booty? It’s warm in the loge.”
“No, Marc, I’ll stay here, keep an eye on you guys. But don’t go wandering off without me, okay?”
Katherine stretched out on the wooden bench and covered herself with the blankets. She watched Rochat and Harper walk up the steps to the main altar under the chancel dome. Rochat with his shuffling limp, Harper holding his beat-up sides. Rochat setting his lantern and the maquette next to the wrought-iron cross on the marble altar, then opening the book, the two of them huddling over the pages like a couple of…
…a couple of…
She sleeps a lot. Is it because of what the bad shadows did to her?”
“Yes. She’s…she’s not well.”
“Should I make her tea? She likes my tea.”
Harper looked at Rochat, remembering him again from that first night on the esplanade. Seeing how much the lad wanted to do the right thing, and the lad clueless how horribly dead he’d end up doing it.
“She needs more than a cup of tea. She needs a doctor.”
“We can take her to the University Hospital. It’s very close to the cathedral.”
“No, we need to get her to someone who can fix her, the way you fixed me.”
“Because they broke her wings and she can’t fly anymore.”
“That’s right, mate, because they broke her wings.”
Harper pulled the maquette between them. “Is there a way down from the belfry, besides the tower steps?”
“Oui.” Rochat tapped the north side of the belfry, just above the cathedral roof. “There’s a drainpipe here, and you can climb down to the cathedral roof. I used to play hide-and-seek with Monsieur Buhlmann and he could never find me when I climbed down the pipe because I’d sneak through the roof.”
“The roof?”
Rochat tapped the gable above the main doors. “There’s a little door here, and I sneak through and walk on the ceiling above the nave. It’s like walking through a field of giant turtles.”
Harper looked up to the domes of the vaulted ceiling fifty meters above their heads. “It would at that. But this time you’re not playing hide-and-seek. You want to get to the ground as fast as you can.”
Rochat turned through the book, pointed to the drawings of high balconies running just under the vault. “You can go down to le coursier, then there’s lots of ways down to the floor of the nave.”
“But you’re still inside the cathedral and we’ve barricaded all the doors. Is there a way outside, besides the doors?”
Rochat turned to the next page. “There’s some stairs to the triforium and a passageway to the balcony here. It goes behind the organ. We can go outside, behind the big stained glass of Jesus to where the monks had a garden behind the gargoyles.”
Harper watched Rochat’s face, knew the lad was giving it all he had. “And then?”
“Oh.” Rochat turned the maquette, the façade facing them, pointing to just above the statues at the cathedral doors. “There’s an old chain ladder from middles of ages, for when the monks had to run away from invadermen and fires. They could toss it down the façade and climb down to the esplanade by Monsieur Moses.”
“Where?”
Rochat pointed to one of the statues at the main doors of the cathedral. Harper traced his finger from the doors and over the cobblestones of the maquette.
“And the wooden stairs down to Place de la Palud…”
“Escaliers du Marché.”
“…it’s what, fifteen meters away from the main doors?”
“Five. I counted the steps with Papa and he said fifteen steps means five meters. Was he right?”
“Exactly.” Harper skimmed through the drawings of the belfry, the two levels for the bells, a roof position to serve as lookout. “Right. I need you to imagine something with me.”
“I’m very good at imagining things.”
“I know, that’s why you’ll understand. When they come, they’ll hide in the shadows. And they’ll come as a full killing squad this time. That’ll make it a total of their six against you and me.”
“How do you know, monsieur?”
“Dealing with the bad shadows is my job, mate. Look, they can manipulate physical things from the shadows, so they’ll be dangerous. But to take anything out of the cathedral, they must transmigrate into form.”
“When they look like people.”
“That’s right, when they look like people. And that’s when I can slaughter them.”
“How do we make them trans…thing?”
Harper pointed to Katherine. “They want her, they’ll have to come and get her.”
“But there’s very little room in the belfry, and it’s high from the ground.”
“That’s just it.” Harper turned the drawings of the belfry toward Rochat. “The layout of the belfry acts as a force multiplier.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“Worked well enough for us at Thermopylae.”
“I don’t know where that is. Do I have to know where that is to help the angel go home?”
“No, mate. All you need to know is how to get Miss Taylor down the tower, through the roof, and out of the cathedral. You get down Escaliers du Marché. Don’t look back, keep going.”
“Where do we go?”
“To the train station, should take you no more than fifteen minutes. Don’t stop, don’t look back. Take the first train anywhere out of Lausanne. Then make your way to Gare de Lyon in Paris. Go to the main hall and head upstairs to the bistro called—”
“—Le Train Bleu. It has funny pictures on the ceiling.”
“You know the place?”
“Papa took me to Paris once and we had lunch there. I had croque-monsieur and Papa had entrecôte. But Gare de Lyon is very big and there’s lots of people and I might forget how to find things.”
“Don’t worry, Miss Taylor will get you there.”
“Are we going there for lunch?”
“No, you’re going to meet someone. Someone like me.”
“A detectiveman?”
“Sure, a detectiveman. He’ll be waiting for you, and he’ll get Miss Taylor some help.”
Rochat thought about it. “But how will the detectiveman like you know I’m bringing the angel to Le Train Bleu?”
“I phoned ahead.”
“Pardon?”
Harper nodded to the hundreds of candles alight on the crossing square, the light rising to the high windows of the lantern tower. Rochat watched the light against the leaded glass form into repeating shapes of shadows and light. Three flashes, six flashes, three flashes, six flashes.
“I can see it. It’s the same as the warning sound Clémence makes. Can the detectiveman in Paris see it?”
“He can see it.”
“Can the bad shadows see it?”
“No, they’ve lost the ability to read light. Too much shadow jumping, too much dead black in their blood.”
Rochat had no idea what that meant. “Oh.”
Harper watched the lad continue to stare into the lantern tower as if seeing light for the first time. He tapped gently at Rochat’s arm. Rochat looked at him, his eyes sparkling with reflected light.
“You remember what you have to do?”
Rochat thought again about all the things the detectiveman had told him. He imagined himself helping the angel down from the belfry, through the cathedral roof, out of the cathedral. He imagined them going to Gare Simplon, taking a train to Paris. He imagined another detectiveman taking the angel to a doctor and giving her a new place to hide.
“Will the other detectiveman know she’s an angel?”
“He’ll look at you and know everything.”
“Will he bring me back to Lausanne in time to call the hour?”
Harper shook his head. “You don’t come back.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’re in as much danger as Miss Taylor, you can’t stay in Lausanne.”
“But…but…what will you do?”
“Stay behind, buy you time.”
“How can you buy time?”
“I kill them.”
“You can kill the bad shadows?”
“Told you, it’s my job, it’s why I’m here. And you can’t be here when I do my job.”
“But it’s my duty to call the hour.”
“Listen to me, it’s not the bad shadows that want you killed. You’ve been listed.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means your life, this life, it’s running out of time. You’re going to die.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
Rochat took off his black floppy hat and scratched his head, pulled down the hat again. “Maman said people shouldn’t be afraid of death.”
“You’re not like other people.”
“Will I be dead forever?”
“If they get their way, yes.”
“Can you stop it from happening, monsieur?”
“It’s against the rules, but I’m going to try. But you need to get out of Lausanne and hide. And you can never come back.”
Rochat turned away and shuffled a few steps. He stopped and turned back to Harper, almost speaking, but then turning again and picking up his lantern instead. He shuffled to the pillars of the chancel dome and rapped the stone boots of the form in the white sarcophagus. Harper listened to Rochat talking quietly.
“Bonsoir. Yes, I know it’s very late, but it’s never very late till midnight and then it’s very early. The detectiveman wants me to leave the cathedral and take the angel to another hiding place because she’s sick. And if I don’t go I’ll be dead forever and…”
Another voice echoed at Harper’s back.
“He won’t leave the cathedral, Harper, and I won’t leave without him.”
He turned, saw Katherine propped on one elbow. She looked half asleep.
“Yeah, I know, you thought I was sleeping, so did I. Maybe I still am and this is a dream. Because it feels like one of those dreams where you know you’re dreaming and you sort of wake up, but you know you’re still asleep.”
“How much did you hear?”
“Enough to know you want us to go to Paris and meet someone like you at Gare de Lyon. What the hell are you doing, Harper?”
“It’s the only chance the two of you have to survive the day.”
“Too bad, you’re stuck with us.”
“Miss Taylor…”
“We’re not leaving.”
“You don’t know what you’re up against.”
“Read my lips, Harper: I won’t leave without Marc, and Marc won’t leave the cathedral. Will you, Marc?”
Harper looked over his shoulder. He saw Rochat shuffle toward him.
“I’m le guet de Lausanne, monsieur. It’s my duty to protect the cathedral.”
“See, Harper? It’s his duty to protect his cathedral.”
“This cathedral’s about to become a battleground.”
“I can help you fight them, monsieur. I’m very strong from the legs up.”
“They’re coming for blood, mate. You’re no match for them.”
“Oh, get with my dream, Harper. Because in my dream, I’m a princess trapped in a tower by the evil wizard and you two are pirates in paper hats and you’re telling me none of this was an accident and there’s all these intersecting lines of causality and that the three of us were brought to Lausanne and ended up in the tower for a reason. And I’m dreaming Marc helps you imagine where the future-teller diamond is, because I’m not the only thing the evil wizard wants from the tower. So you guys best jump on your flying caterpillar and get busy and come up with Plan B.”
Katherine laid her head down, and she closed her eyes.
“And keep it down. Otto and I need our rest.”
Rochat and Harper stood still a long minute, staring at the sleeping woman on the bench.
“Monsieur?”
“Hmm?”
“Was the angel talking in her sleep?”
Harper rubbed the back of his neck. “‘Sleep hath its own world, And a wide realm of wild reality.’”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means I’m not sure it was even her talking. More like someone was sending us a message through her.”
Rochat looked around the nave; it was empty. Harper laughed to himself.
“Oldest trick in the book. Feed them Plan A, clobber them with Plan B.”
“What’s a Plan A?”
“A hundred lines of causality set in motion long before you were born, before Miss Taylor was born. All meant to intersect and collide in one big bang, right here in Lausanne Cathedral.”
“You, you’re Plan B.”
Rochat almost took off his hat to scratch his head to think about it. He looked at Harper instead. “Monsieur, I’m very confused.”
“Mate, I’ve been here two and a half million years, and this place still confuses the hell out of me now and again.”
Harper looked around the altar; Rochat followed his gaze.
“Is something else wrong, monsieur?”
“Who’s…who is Otto?”
Rochat pointed to the sarcophagus in the pillars. “Over there. He’s the brave knight from longtimes ago. Sometimes I imagine he stumbles around the cathedral at night looking for something. I like to imagine he’s looking for his lance, but it’s outside, under the belfry. It’s the spire from the top of the Apostles’ entrance, but I like to imagine it’s his lance and that when he picks it up he falls over and can’t get up. He told me I have to stay because it’s my duty.”
Harper looked at Rochat. “Really is full of dreams and wonder, this place, isn’t it?”
“Oui, it’s Lausanne Cathedral.”
“That it is. Back in a tick.”
Rochat watched Harper walk to Katherine and slowly pass his open palm down across her eyes as if closing them. He heard his voice.
“‘Dulcis et alta quies placidaeque similima morti…’”
“What did you do to her?”
“Making sure she gets some rest while you and I imagine a few more things.”
Rochat watched the detectiveman tap the flagstones with his shoe. “Are we imagining something now, monsieur?”
“As a matter of fact, we are.”
“Oh, what are we imagining?”
“We’re imagining that the earth under these stones is sacred.”
Rochat thought about it. “Because the skeletons live down there?”
“I rather think it’s something else.”
Rochat watched the detectiveman walk slowly between the burning candles on the crossing square, reading the light, kneeling, and rearranging the flames like rearranging the words on a page.
“Are you making another phone call?”
“I am.”
“What are you saying?”
“Message received, will comply.”
Harper finished with the candles. He walked the perimeter of the altar, his eyes looking at the candles on the flagstones, then up to the lantern tower and down again. Rochat watched him walk in ever-smaller circles, wondering if they were getting there and why he was walking in circles. Just then the detectiveman stopped and looked up into the lantern tower and pointed to one high-above thread of light amid the glow of a hundred candles. Rochat could see it. How perfectly straight it was. And he watched the detectiveman follow the thread of light seventy meters down to the one candle on the flagstone amid a hundred others. The one candle marking the exact center of the crossing square. He watched the detectiveman tap the stone with the tip of his shoe.
“What’s under this stone, mate, right here?”
“The well.”
“The well.”
“Oui.”
“What kind of well?”
“A very old kind of well.”
“And what do we imagine might be in a very old kind of well?”
Rochat thought about it. “A lunch box.”