Chapter II
“Wake up…”
Navarr woke with a sudden jolt and sat straight up in his bed, his right hand holding his parrying dagger at the ready. Slowly he glanced around with squinting eyes in an attempt to pierce the darkness of the room. The fire he had made was now nothing more than a few smoldering coals providing little in the way of light. Peering into the gloom showed that aside from Gaston, who was snoring softly in his own bed a few feet away, there was no one else there with them.
It must have been a dream, he thought to himself.
Laying back down Navarr closed his eyes. It was late at night and soon he felt himself beginning to drift once more to sleep.
“You’d best wake, monsieur.”
This time Navarr didn’t just sit, this time he was up and out of bed with his dagger in one hand while reaching for his pistol with the other. He knew without a doubt that he had heard a voice. It sounded like a child, a little girl. It had spoken softly and it had to be within the room. A quick look about in the gloom revealed nothing. Gaston was still asleep in his bed, but aside from the two of them there was nobody else in the room.
Even so, Navarr knew he heard a voice, and he knew what it had said. The tone of the child’s voice sounded as if it was pleading with him to wake up, and to do so quickly.
Carefully he made his way towards the room’s small table and quickly lit a candle. The room was bathed in faint white light as the candle’s flame flickered and pushed back at the darkness. Navarr held the candle up over his head and peered into the far corners of the room, yet all he saw there was an empty space with dark paneled walls. Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary.
“They come in the darkness.”
“Who said that?” Navarr demanded. “Show yourself.”
He glanced about the room with darting eyes. The voice sounded like it came from the center of the room, but he wasn’t certain for there was still no one there.
After several quiet moments passed Navarr moved to Gaston’s bed and gave it several firm shakes with his foot. “Get up,” he barked.
Gaston, comfortably covered up beneath a couple of blankets, rolled over with a yawn and began to softly snore once again. Navarr gave Gaston’s face a sharp slap and this time the Duke’s eyes popped open his face blank and his eyes expressing no emotion.
“I just had the strangest dream,” Gaston mumbled. “My goodness, is it morning already?” He slowly sat up and stretched as he watched Navarr begin to hurriedly get dressed.
“Get your clothes on, there’s something amiss.”
Gaston frowned slightly and stretched again. “If we’ve overslept a little I’m sure you’ll find a way to make up the time.” He didn’t understand Navarr’s urgency. Still feeling tired he wanted nothing more than to go back to bed for a little while longer.
“They come for gold and blood.”
“Mon Dieu, what was that?” Gaston exclaimed as his eyes widened with fright.
Even in the dimly lit room Navarr could see the other man’s face go completely white. Just then the candle’s flame began to flicker softly. Navarr thought it odd it was doing that, since there was nothing near the candle to disturb the flame. As he stepped closer to the table the flickering stopped and Navarr began to look around the room once again, this time his eyes focused on the walls.
“I fear we may have to make a hasty exit from this inn.” Navarr finished buckling on his sword belt and reached for his vest and gloves, leaving his wide brimmed hat resting on the corner post of his bed.
While Gaston scrambled to put his clothes on Navarr took a moment to examine the room more closely. He held the candle before him as he walked slowly around the room, examining the walls with careful scrutiny. As he approached the southwest corner of the room the candle flame began to flicker a little more. Reaching out with his left hand that was holding his parrying dagger, he used the pommel of the weapon to lightly tap the walls. The south corner wall had sounded different than the west corner.
Navarr tested the difference in sound several more times before deciding the south wall did not sound as solid as the west.
Suddenly the room grew brighter and Navarr turned slightly and saw that Gaston had lit the room’s lantern. He turned his attention back towards the corner walls as Gaston continued to get dressed. Without a doubt Navarr knew there was a secret door cleverly hidden in the south corner wall. Sheathing his dagger he began running his left hand over the wood panels. Past experiences had told him that usually there was a release mechanism that would open and close secret doors. Before too long he found what he was searching for. Up high on the wall there was a small knot in the wood. When he pushed harder on the knot it gave way slightly. Pushing a little harder produced a barely audible click followed by what sounded like a spring being released on the other side of the wall. At that same instant a section of the wall panel popped open two inches revealing the hidden door.
Whoever had built the secret door had done a marvelous job of it, Navarr thought to himself, as he examined the edges around the narrow doorway. It was not at all detectible with the naked eye or by touch. If it wasn’t for the slight draft coming from within the passageway that caused the candle to flicker, and his tapping on the walls, Navarr knew he would not have detected the door otherwise.
“I’m so cold.”
Navarr and Gaston shared a questioning look after hearing the whispering voice once again. There was no doubt it was the voice of a little girl they were hearing, but the question was why?
“Obviously the whispers have something to do with that secret door you found,” said Gaston.
Navarr nodded. Of that he was certain, but beyond that he would be hard pressed to offer further explanation.
“Please tell me we’re leaving, and not through yonder passageway,” Gaston said imploringly.
“I thought you wanted some adventure?” Navarr said, his right eyebrow raised in a questioning slant.
“Supernatural voices spoken from mid-air, secret doors…” Gaston stood across the room shaking his head defiantly. “My preference is for the sort of adventure that coincides with drinking, eating, spending large amounts of money, and coquettish women.”
“I’m going to check this passageway and see where it leads. You can stay here if you like, but I for one would like some answers.”
“You’d leave me alone now, with all this strangeness about? Are you mad?”
“Then grab the lantern and come along. Just stop being foolish and stay out of my way,” Navarr replied curtly. He was getting irritated with the Duke and turned his attention back towards the secret door.
Navarr reached out and pulled the door open wide. The light from the candle revealed a dusty and web covered narrow stairway constructed of flat field stones that descended down into the ground. He couldn’t see how far down the stairs went, for the candlelight did not penetrate deep into the darkness of the passageway. It was as if the blackness there repelled the light.
Navarr regarded the secret passage for a moment as thoughts of waking the innkeeper entered into his mind. Did the innkeeper know about the passage? Did he know about the strange whispering voice in the dead of the night? Both were questions Navarr wanted answered, and he was sure there would be other questions as well. After a moment of consideration he decided to first explore where the stone stairway led, and ask his questions later.
Navarr drew his wheel-lock pistol and checked that it was primed and ready, then stepped into the passageway and began to descend the stairs. The candlelight continued to have a hard time penetrating the darkness. He wondered if the damp and musty air that filled the passage had something to do with it, or if it was perhaps something else along the lines of the supernatural. He silently hoped it was the former opposed to the later of the two possibilities.
After having traveled down a handful of the steps, a brighter light flooded from behind Navarr as Gaston foll
owed with the lantern in hand, having set the shutters wide open to give off the most amount of light. Navarr turned his head slightly to regard the man and gave him a reassuring nod. He was glad to see that Gaston had his pistol in his other hand as well, pointed high but primed and ready.
The additional light from the lantern, though partially blocked by Navarr as he walked ahead in the stairwell, was able to provide enough illumination that the darkness did not seem so forbidding as before. There was enough light now that Navarr, moving slowly down the steps, could see that there was dust covering everything. His footprints were leaving slight marks in the dust. It appeared it had been sometime since the stairway had been used.
The stairs were narrow and just wide enough so that Navarr and Gaston could walk down them single file without having to do so at a sidestepping angle. Navarr counted each step as he descended, and at twenty-five he couldn’t help but wonder just how far down into the ground they were going to end up. At forty steps the stairs finally leveled off and came to an end, with the narrow hallway opening up into a tunnel carved out of the bedrock. The tunnel was several feet wide and just as high, and reached as far ahead of the two men as the lantern light allowed them to see, which was only about thirty feet. The two men stopped at the bottom of the stairs to examine their surroundings closer.
“What is this place, do you suppose?” Gaston said with a hushed tone. He stood an arm’s length away from Navarr and shifted uneasily on his feet. He was clearly nervous.
“I don’t know,” Navarr replied, in an equally quiet tone. “The town above certainly has sewers under their city streets, but this is both naturally eroded and carved stone, and not part of any sewer, to be sure.”
Cautiously, Navarr proceeded forward into the tunnel and tried to walk as silently as possible. He was calm and reserved, yet alert and ready for just about anything to come at him from the darkness ahead. People who knew him well were known to comment on his nerves of steel, and how he was always able to keep a clear head and make decisive decisions followed by quick and necessary action.
Gaston was the direct opposite of Navarr at that very moment. He was clearly on edge and shuffled his feet restlessly while gripping both the lantern and his pistol in white-knuckled fists. His eyes were firmly set on the edge of the darkness directly ahead, and he found himself swallowing often and hard.
After slowly advancing down the tunnel for a few minutes the walls began to gradually narrow, and the lantern light illuminated a doorway ahead. The door was old and made of wood. It looked blackened and was covered in small cracks that extended up and down its six-foot height. There were three large hinges on the left hand side and a large door handle on the right with a locking mechanism. At close examination Navarr could see that the hinges had a great deal of rust on them.
Navarr, still holding the candle in his right hand, tucked his pistol he was holding in his left beneath his right arm. Then, with his free hand, he reached forward and turned the door’s handle. With a light pull the door started to open with only slight creaking from rusted hinges. Once the door was opened wide it revealed many layers of thick spider webs on the other side, though no spiders were in sight. The webs were so thick and dusty that Navarr couldn’t see past them. He returned his pistol to his left hand and angled himself so he could partially face Gaston.
“I really don’t like spiders,” Navarr said.
“Not that anybody could tell by looking at you. Even standing this close to such a tangled nightmare of webbing you have that stone-like expression you wear so well,” Gaston smirked with just a hint of envy.
Navarr didn’t reply, instead he turned back towards the web and used the flame from his candle to slowly burn them away. After a few minutes he had created a large enough hole in the webbing where passage through would not be an issue.
Stepping through the remnants of the silky barrier, Navarr and Gaston found themselves standing in a small cavernous room about fifteen paces across that the lantern was able to easily illuminate. Looking around the room both men immediately knew they had entered into a section of catacombs underneath the city. Niches, two feet deep, two feet tall, and six feet long had been cut into the stone walls. Resting in the niches were skeletal remains, their clothes and burial garb having deteriorated away centuries ago. Most of the bones of the skeletons had crumbled into dust leaving only the largest of bones intact. A thin layer of spider webbing lined the walls all the way around the room that only added to the eerily illuminated scene. Across the room there were two passages, one that curved out of sight to the left, and another that curved out of sight to the right. A rat could be seen meandering at the base of the opposite wall.
“Mold, dust and decay,” Gaston murmured as he continued to look about the chamber. “It has the look and smell of death. I’m ready to be far away from this place.”
“First time in a catacomb?”
“Yes, and I don’t like it,” Gaston said with a little more apprehension in his voice than he would have liked. “I’m glad the practice of burying the dead has changed to cemeteries above ground. This all seems so morbid. I can’t help but feel like I’m intruding here.”
Navarr nodded in agreement. This was not the first time he had found himself wandering through catacombs. A few years ago he had ventured into the labyrinth of burial tunnels and chambers under Saint Bartholomew’s Cathedral. It was a time in his life that he would never be able to forget. The living had no business wandering among the dead. He had felt out of place then, and now that he was in another catacomb he felt much the same once again.
Walking across the burial chamber both men carefully examined the two passageways. Other than the fact that the passageways curved away from one another, there was really no difference between the two. Navarr shrugged and led the way into the passage on the right. Just like the burial chamber, the passageway also had niches cut into the wall that were occupied by dry and dusty remains. The passageway didn’t go very far before both men found themselves standing inside another chamber.
This new burial chamber was about twice the size of the first. Stepping further into the chamber both men noticed that the floor was littered in human bones, and the further the lamplight reached into the room the more numerous they became. The floor also became darker in color the further into the room the two men could see. There were a few dozen rats milling about, but both men paid them little attention.
“Look there,” Navarr pointed with his pistol to the far end of the chamber. There was a large pile of skeletal remains stacked as high as his waist. Ribcages, hipbones, spinal columns and skulls were easily identified from where they stood.
Gaston didn’t have anything to say. He just stood silently as he looked on at the heaping pile with a tight and uneasy expression on his face.
Navarr walked over to the pile of bones. As he did so he noted that shreds of clothing were also scattered around the room and could be seen inside the pile. Kneeling down at the edge of the bone heap he noticed some of the bones looked small, like they probably belonged to children. He also noticed that some of the bones were broken, in particular ribs appeared cracked and the occasional crushed skull.
Gaston set down the lantern in the middle of the chamber and picked up a small wooden doll, a child’s toy, dirty and stained with dried blood. He turned the doll over in his hand and then looked at Navarr as the younger man examined the pile of bones.
“What happened here?” Gaston asked uneasily.
“I'm fairly certain bodies were dumped in this room after they were murdered,” Navarr replied as he stood and continued to look upon the bones. Then he pointed to a skull sitting at the edge of the pile and looked to Gaston to make sure the other man saw what he was pointing at.
Gaston could see that the skull was cleft open above the left eye-socket and suddenly understood. “They were taken from their room in the dead of the night. Killed and robbed.” It was then t
hat he realized the dark coloring of the floor was probably the stain left over from dried up blood.
Navarr nodded in agreement. “Then their bodies discarded here were they would not likely be found. Their bones picked clean by rats.”
Gaston’s face paled at the thought of rats having their fill. He gingerly set the doll back down on the floor and picked up the lantern. He couldn't help but wonder if the doll belonged to the whispering voice they had heard. Awkwardly, with the hand that held the lantern, Gaston made a sign of blessing over the pile of bones, much like a priest would over somebody sick or recently deceased.
“I wonder if other chambers are filled with something similar,” Gaston commented absently.
Navarr wondered the same thing, but at the moment he was thinking about the innkeeper. He remembered how he had commented that few visitors came to his inn, that most who frequented his establishment were travelers passing through. Navarr knew that if a traveler’s absence was noted at their destination it would be impossible to track any misdoing back to the inn. Besides, accidents and brigands were frequent enough on the roads between towns, and all the innkeeper had to say if somebody did come around later asking about a missing person was to deny ever having seen them.
Gaston could see that Navarr was deep in thought. “What are you thinking?” he asked.
“About our gracious host, the innkeeper. As soon as you showed him that bulging coin purse of yours he planned for us to join these other poor wretches.”
“We must have words with him, and soon.”
“Words will not suffice enough for me,” Navarr said darkly, “I like not the thought of being murdered in my sleep.”
“Do you think that ghostly voice we heard was a victim now lying in yonder pile-”
“They’re coming!” the strange whispering voice returned, interrupting Gaston mid sentence.