Labyrinth

CHAPTER 24

Chartres

In the kitchen of the house in rue du Cheval Blanc in Chartres, Will Franklin drank the milk straight from the plastic bottle, trying to kill the taste of stale brandy on his breath.

The housekeeper had laid the breakfast table early that morning before going off duty. The Italian coffee percolator was on the stove. Will assumed it was for Francois-Baptiste’s benefit, since the housekeeper didn’t usually go to such trouble for him when Marie-Cecile was away. He guessed Francois-Baptiste was also sleeping late since everything was immaculate, not a spoon or knife out of place. Two bowls, two plates, two cups and saucers. Four different types of jams as well as honey stood next to a large bowl. Will lifted the white linen cloth. Beneath it were peaches, nectarines and melon, as well as apples.

Will had no appetite. The previous night, to pass the time until Marie-Cecile appeared, he’d had first one drink, then a second and a third. It was well after midnight when she put in an appearance, by which stage, he had drunk himself into an alcoholic haze. She’d been in a wild mood, keen to make up for their argument. They hadn’t gone to sleep until dawn.

Will’s fingers tightened around the piece of paper in his hand. Marie-Cecile hadn’t even bothered to write the note herself. Once again, it had been left to the housekeeper to inform him she’d gone out of town on business and hoped to be back before the weekend.

Will and Marie-Cecile had met at a party to launch a new art gallery in Chartres back in the spring, through friends of friends of his parents. Will was at the beginning of a six-month sabbatical traveling around Europe; Marie-Cecile was one of the backers of the gallery. She’d hit on him rather than the other way round. Attracted and flattered by the attention, Will had found himself pouring out his life story over a bottle of champagne. They’d left the gallery together and been together ever since.

Technically together, Will thought sourly. He turned on the tap and splashed cold water on his face. He called her this morning, not sure what he wanted to say, but her phone was switched off. He’d had enough of this constant state of flux, never knowing where he stood.

Will stared out of the window at the little courtyard at the back of the house. Like everything else in the house, it was perfectly designed, and precise. Nothing as nature intended. Light gray pebbles, high terra-cotta planters with lemon trees and orange trees along the back, south-facing wall. In the window box, rows of red geraniums, their petals already swollen by the sun, stood tall. Covering the small wrought-iron gate in the wall was ivy, centuries old. Everything spoke of permanence. It would all be here long after Will was gone.

He felt like a man waking from a dream to discover the real world was not as he’d imagined. The smart thing would be to cut his losses, no hard feelings, and move on. However disillusioned he felt about their relationship, Marie-Cecile had been both generous and kind to him and, if he was honest, had kept to her side of the bargain. It was his unrealistic expectations that had let him down. It wasn’t her fault. She’d broken no promises.

Only now could Will see how ironic it was he’d chosen to spend the last three months in precisely the same sort of house he’d grown up in and had fled to Europe to escape. Cultural differences apart, the atmosphere in the house reminded him of his parents’ place back home, elegant and stylish, somewhere designed for entertaining and display rather than as a home. Then, as now, Will had spent much of his time alone, rattling from one immaculate room to another.

The trip was Will’s opportunity to work out what it was he wanted to do with his life. His original plan had been to work his way down through France to Spain, gathering ideas for his writing, getting inspired, but since he’d been in Chartres, he’d barely written a single sentence. His subjects were rebellion, anger and anxiety, the unholy trinity of American life. Back home, he’d found plenty to rage against. Here, he’d been left with nothing to say. The only subject that occupied his mind was Marie-Cecile and it was the one subject off limits.

He finished the last of the milk and threw the plastic bottle into the rubbish bin. He took another look at the table and decided to go out for breakfast. The thought of making polite conversation with Francois-Baptiste turned his stomach.

Will emerged out of the pass corridor. The high-ceilinged entrance hall was silent except for the precise ticking of the ornate grandmother clock.,

To the right of the stairs, a narrow door led down to the extensive wine cellars beneath the house. Will grabbed his denim jacket from the newel post and was about to cross the hall when he noticed one of the tapestries was crooked. It was only a little out of line, but in the perfect symmetry of the rest of the paneled hall, it stuck out.

Will reached out to straighten it, then hesitated. There was a thin sliver of light running down the wall behind the polished wood. He looked up at the window above the door and stairs, even though he knew the sun wasn’t in the hall at this time of day.

The light seemed to be coming from behind the dark wooden paneling. Puzzled, he lifted the tapestry away from the wall. Concealed deep within the pattern of the wood was a small door, cut flush with the paneling. There was a small brass bolt sunk into the dark wood holding it shut and a flat circular pull, like the handle of a door of a squash court. All very discreet.

Will tried the bolt. It was well oiled and slid open easily. A gentle creak, then the door sprang open away from him, releasing a subtle smell of subterranean spaces and hidden basement rooms. His hands on the edge of the door, he peered in and straight away found the source of the light, a single frosted bulb set at the top of a steep flight of stairs descending into the gloom.

He found two switches just inside the door. One operated the single bulb above the door; the other, a line of dim, yellow candle bulbs which hung from metal spikes drilled into the stone wall all the way down the left-hand side of the stairs. On both sides blue braided cord had been threaded through black metal hoops to make handrails.

Will stepped down onto the first step. The ceiling was low, a mixture of old brick, flint and stone, only a couple of inches above Will’s head. It was confined but the air was clean and fresh. It didn’t have the feel of a place forgotten.

The deeper he went, the colder it got. Twenty steps and counting. It wasn’t damp, though, and although he couldn’t see any fans or form of ventilation, there seemed to be a flow of fresh air coming from somewhere.

At the bottom, Will found he was standing in a small lobby. There was nothing on the walls, no signs, just the stairs behind him and a door in front, which filled the width and height of the corridor. The electric light cast a sickly yellow glow over everything.

Adrenaline kicked in as Will walked toward the door.

The cumbersome, old-fashioned key in the lock turned easily. Once he was through, the atmosphere changed immediately. Gone was the concrete floor. Instead, there was a thick burgundy carpet that swallowed the sound of his feet. The functional lighting had given way to ornate metal sconces. The walls were made of the same mixture of brick and stone as before, except now they were decorated by tapestries, images of medieval knights, porcelain-skinned women and hooded priests in white robes, their heads bowed and their arms outstretched.

There was the trace of something else in the air too, now. Incense, a sweet heavy scent that reminded him of the long-forgotten Christmases and Easters of his childhood.

Will looked back over his shoulder. The sight of the stairs beyond the open door, leading back up to the house, reassured him. The short corridor came to a dead end, with a heavy velvet curtain hanging from a black iron rail. It was covered with embroidered gold symbols, a mixture of Egyptian hieroglyphs, astrological markings and signs of the zodiac.

He reached out and pulled back the curtain.

Behind it was another door, this one clearly much older. Fashioned from the same dark paneling as the hall upstairs, the edges were decorated with wooden scrolls and motifs. The central panels were entirely plain, punctuated only by woodworm holes no bigger than pinheads. There was no handle he could see, no lock, no way of opening it at all.

The lintel was crowned by ornate carvings, stone rather than wood. Will ran his fingers over the top looking for some sort of catch. There had to be a way through. He worked his way up from the bottom on one side, across the top of the door, and then back down the other until, finally, he found it. A small depression just above floor level.

Crouching down, Will pressed down hard. There was a sharp, hollow click, like a marble bouncing on a tiled floor. The mechanism released and the door sprang open.

Will straightened up, his breathing a little crazy and his palms damp. The short hairs on the back of his neck and the backs of his arms were standing on end. No more than a couple of minutes, he told himself, and he’d be out of here. He just wanted to take a quick look. No big deal. Firmly, he put his hand on the door and pushed.

It was totally black inside, although straight away he could sense he was in a bigger space, perhaps a cellar. The smell of burned incense was much stronger.

Will groped at the wall for a light switch, but he could find nothing. Realizing if he hooked back the curtain it would let in a little light from the corridor, he tied the cumbersome velvet into a huge figure-of-eight knot, then turned back to face whatever lay ahead.

The first thing Will saw was his own shadow, elongated and lanky, silhouetted over the threshold. Then, as his eyes got accustomed to the brown-black gloom, finally he saw what lay beyond in the dark.

He was standing at the end of a long, rectangular chamber. The ceiling was low and vaulted. Ecclesiastical-style wooden benches, like at a refectory table, lined the two longest walls, disappearing farther than his eye could see. Around the top, where the walls met the roof, was a frieze, a repeating pattern of words and symbols. They looked like the same Egyptian symbols he’d seen on the curtain outside.

Will wiped his hands on his jeans. Directly ahead, in the center of the chamber, was an imposing stone chest, like a tomb. He walked all the way round it, running his hand across the surface. It seemed smooth, except for a large circular motif in the middle. He leaned forward to get a better look and followed the lines with his fingers. Some sort of pattern of decreasing circles, like the rings around Saturn.

As his eyes farther adjusted, he could pick out that on each of the four sides a letter was carved into the stone: E at the head, N and S on the two longest sides opposite each other, O at the foot. The points of the compass?

Then he noticed the small block of stone, about thirty centimeters high, set at the base of the chest, aligned with the letter E. It had a shallow curve in the middle, like an executioner’s block.

The ground around it was darker that the rest of the floor. It looked damp, as if it had recently been scrubbed. Will crouched down and rubbed the mark with his fingers. Disinfectant and something else, a sour smell, like rust. There was something caught beneath the corner of the stone. Will scraped it out with his nails.

It was a fragment of cloth, cotton or linen, frayed at the edges as if it had caught on a nail and been ripped. In the corner, there were small brown spots. Like dried blood.

He dropped the material and ran, slamming the door and unhooking the curtain before he knew what he was doing. He charged along the corridor, through both doors and powered his way up the narrow, steep stairs, two at a time, until he was back in the hall.

Will doubled over, hands on his knees, and tried to get his breath back. Then, realizing that whatever else happened, he couldn’t risk anyone coming in and guessing he’d been down there, he reached in and killed the lights. With shaking fingers he bolted the door and pulled the tapestry back into place, until nothing was visible from the outside.

For a moment, he just stood there. The grandmother clock told him that no more than twenty minutes had passed.

Will looked down at his hands, turning them over and back as if they didn’t belong to him. He rubbed the tips of his forefinger and thumb together, then sniffed. It smelled like blood.