“Dickens, what in the deuce are you going on about…” I stopped. There had been a stirring or footstep down the dark corridor, out of the weak glow of our single small lamp.
Dickens turned the bullseye but there was nothing in the cone of light but stone and shadows. The roof of the main passageway was flat stone, not arched brick. It went on for at least fifty yards. Dickens led the way down this corridor, pausing only to shine his beam in some of the niches that opened to the left and right of the passage. They were all loculi, niches holding stacks of massive coffins behind identical rusted-iron grilles. At the end of the passage Dickens passed his beam of light over the wall and even ran his free hand over the stone, pressing here and there as if searching for some spring-lever and secret passage. None opened to us.
“So…” I began. What was I going to say? You see? There’s no Undertown after all. No Mr Drood down here. Are you satisfied? Let us go home, please, Dickens, I need to take my laudanum. I said, “This seems to be all there is.”
“Not at all,” said Dickens. “Did you see that candle on the wall?”
I had not. We walked back to the next-to-last loculus and Dickens aimed the bullseye higher. It was there in a niche, a thick tallow candle burned to a stub.
“Left by the ancient Christians, perhaps?” I said.
“I believe not,” Dickens said drily. “Light it, please, my dear Wilkie. And walk ahead of me back towards the entrance.”
“Why?” I asked, but when he did not answer, I reached for the candle, fumbled matches out of my left pocket—the absurdly heavy pistol still weighed down my jacket on the right—and lit the thing. Dickens nodded, rather brusquely I thought, and I held the stub of candle in front of me as I walked slowly back the way we had come.
“There!” cried Dickens when we had covered about half the distance.
“What?”
“Didn’t you see the candle flame flicker, Wilkie?”
If I had, it hadn’t registered, but I said, “Just a draught from the entrance stairs, no doubt.”
“I think not,” said Dickens. His emphasis on the negative every time I spoke was beginning to annoy me.
Using his lantern, Dickens peered into the loculus on our left and then into the one on our right. “Ahhh!” he said.
Still holding the slightly flickering candle, I peered into the niche but saw nothing to evoke such an ejaculation of surprise and satisfaction.
“On the floor,” said Dickens.
I realised that the red dust there had been trod down into a sort of path that led to the iron grille and the coffins. “Some recent interment?” I said.
“I seriously doubt it,” said Dickens, continuing his string of negative assessments of my contributions. He led the way into the arched vault, handed me the lantern, and shook the iron grille with both gloved hands.
A section of the grille—its joints and edges and hinges invisible from even a few feet away—swung inward towards the stacks of coffins.
Dickens went through without a pause. In a second his lantern seemed to sink into the red dust beneath him. It took me a minute to realise that there were steps back there and that Dickens was descending them.
“Come along, Wilkie,” echoed the writer’s voice.
I hesitated. I had the candle. I had the pistol. I could be back at the base of the steps in thirty seconds and up them and out into the crypt above—under Detective Hatchery’s protection again—thirty seconds after that.
“Wilkie!” The lantern and the author were both out of sight now. I could see the brick ceiling still illuminated above the place where he had disappeared. I looked back towards the dark entrance to the loculus, then at the heavy coffins stacked atop their biers on either side of the path in the red dust, and then back towards the opening again.
“Wilkie, please hurry now. And snuff the candle but do bring it along. This bullseye does not have unlimited fuel.”
I walked through the open grille door and past the coffins and towards the still-not-visible stairs.
CHAPTER SIX
The stairway was of unsteady stone, the narrow vault ceiling of brick, and within a few minutes we had come out into another level of corridor and loculi.
“More crypts,” I said.
“Older here,” Dickens whispered. “Notice that this corridor curves, Wilkie. And the ceiling is much lower here. And the entrances to these loculi have been bricked up, which reminds me of a story by the late Mr Poe of whom I was speaking somewhat earlier.”
I did not ask Dickens to share the story. I was about to ask him why he was whispering when he whispered over his shoulder, “Do you see the glow ahead?”
At first I did not because of the bullseye lantern’s glare, but then I did. It was very dim and appeared to originate somewhere around the bend in the stone corridor.
Dickens lowered the shield over most of the bullseye’s lens and gestured for me to follow him. The paving stones on this lower, older level of the catacombs were uneven, and several times I had to use my stick to brace myself from falling. Just around the bend in the corridor, more main passageways branched to the right and left.
“Is this a Roman catacomb?” I whispered.
Dickens shook his top-hatted head, but I felt it was more to quiet me than to answer me. He pointed to the passage on the right from which the glow seemed to be coming.
It was the only loculus not bricked up. A dark and ragged curtain covered most of the arched opening, but not so completely as to hide the glow from within. I touched the pistol in my pocket as Dickens walked brazenly through the rotted gauze.
This loculus was long and narrow and opened into other niches and vaults and loculi. And the corpses here were not in coffins.
The bodies lay along wooden benches that ran from floor to ceiling for the entire length of the narrow passage. They were all corpses of men—and not Englishmen or Christians or Romans from the looks of them. They were skeletal, but not mere skeletons; the tanned skin and stringy flesh and glass marble–looking eyes appeared to have been mummified. Indeed, these might be Egyptian mummies we were walking past, lying there in their rotted robes and tatters, except for the Oriental cast to the mummified features and unblinking eyes. When Dickens paused for a moment, I leaned closer to inspect one of the mummies’ faces.
It blinked.
I let out a cry and leaped back, dropping the candle. Dickens picked it up and came closer, holding the bullseye high to illuminate the shelf and the corpse on it.
“Did you think them dead, Wilkie?” the author whispered.
“Are they not?”
“Did you not see the opium pipes?” he asked softly.
I had not. I did now. These pipes—largely lost to sight where they were clutched against the mummies’ bodies, the bowls and mouthpieces in the mummies’ hands—were much more elaborately carved than the cheap pipes in Sal’s emporium in Shadwell above.
“Did you not smell the opium?” whispered Dickens.
I had not but I did now. It was a softer, sweeter, infinitely more subtle smell than the drug stench in Sal’s. I looked back the way we had come and realised that the dozens of dead men on these rotted shelves in this crypt were all ancient but still-breathing Asiatics lying there with their pipes.
“Come,” said Dickens and led me into a side room from whence came the glow.
There were more shelves and bunks there, some with cushions visible, and a heavier cloud of opium, but in the middle—sitting cross-legged in a Buddha posture atop a backless wooden couch set on a stone bier so that his Oriental eyes were at the same height as ours—was a Chinaman who looked as ancient and mummified as those forms on the shelves behind us and ahead of us. But his gown or robe or whatever it should be called, as well as his headpiece, were made of bright, clean silk, all reds and greens with gold and blue patterns sewn throughout, and his white moustache drooped down ten inches beneath his chin. Behind this figure were two huge men, also Chinamen but much younger, shirtless, stand
ing against the empty stone wall with their hands folded over their crotches. Their muscles gleamed in the light from the two red candles that rose on either side of the thin Buddha-figure.
“Mr Lazaree?” said Dickens, stepping closer to the cross-legged man. “Or should I say King Lazaree?”
“Welcome, Mr Dickens,” said the figure. “And welcome to Mr Collins as well.”
I took a step back at hearing my name spoken in such perfect and unaccented English from this pure stereotype of Yellow Peril. In truth, I realised later, his English had been lightly accented… but it was a Cambridge accent.
Dickens laughed softly. “You knew we were coming.”
“Of course,” said King Lazaree the Chinee. “Very little occurs in Bluegate Fields or Shadwell or Whitechapel or London itself, for that matter, that I do not hear about. News of a visit from someone of your fame and eminence… and I include both of you literary gentlemen, of course, in that phrase… is conveyed to me almost instantly.”
Dickens made a slight but graceful bow. I could only stare. I realised that I was still holding the unlighted candle in my left hand.
“Then you know why we have come down here,” said Dickens.
King Lazaree nodded.
“Will you help us find him?” continued Dickens. “Drood, I mean.”
Lazaree held up one open hand. I was shocked to see that the fingernails on that hand must have been six inches long. And curved. The nail on the little finger of that hand was at least twice that long.
“The benefit of Undertown,” said King Lazaree, “is that those who wish not to be disturbed here are not disturbed. It is the one understanding that we share with the dead who surround us here.”
Dickens nodded as if this made eminent sense. “Is this Undertown?” he asked.
It was King Lazaree’s turn to laugh. Unlike Opium Sal’s dry rattle, the Chinaman’s laughter was easy and liquid and rich. “Mr Dickens, this is a simple opium den in a simple catacomb. Our customers once came from—and returned to—the world above, but now most prefer to stay here through the years and decades. But Undertown? No, this is not Undertown. One might say that this is the foyer to the antechamber of the porch of the vestibule of Undertown.”
“Will you help us find it… and him?” asked Dickens. “I know you do not wish to disturb the other… ah… inhabitants of this world, but Drood let me know that he wanted me to find him.”
“And how did he do that?” asked King Lazaree. I admit to being curious on that point myself.
“By going out of his way to introduce himself to me,” said Dickens. “By telling me where in London he was going. By creating such a mystery around himself that he knew I would try to find him.”
The Chinaman on the wooden couch did not nod or blink. I realised then that I could not remember seeing him blink during this entire interview. His dark eyes seemed as glassy and lifeless as those belonging to the mummified figures on the benches all around us. When Lazaree did finally speak, it was in a lower tone, as if he were debating with himself.
“It would be very unfortunate if either of you gentlemen were to write and publish anything about our subterranean world here. You see how fragile it is… and how easily accessible.”
I thought of Hatchery’s having to put his heavy shoulder so energetically to the crypt bier that hid the upper doorway, about the barely visible path in the red dust to the invisible door in the iron grate, about the narrowness and eeriness of the stairway descending to this level, and the labyrinth we had traversed just to find this second opium den.… All in all, I was not so sure I agreed with the Chinaman king about the accessibility of this place.
Dickens appeared to, however. He nodded and said, “My interest is in finding Drood. Not in writing about this place.” He turned to me. “You feel the same, do you not, Mr Collins?”
I was able to grunt and let the King of the Opium Living Dead take that as he wished. I was a novelist. Everything and everyone in my life was material. Certainly this writer whom I stood next to in the candlelight here had already proven that maxim more than had any other writer of our or any other age. How could he speak for me and say that I would never write about such an extraordinary place? How could he speak honestly for himself and say such a thing… this man who had turned his father, mother, sad figure of a wife, former friends, and former lovers into mere grist for his fictional-character wheel?
King Lazaree lowered his head and silken cap ever so slowly. “It would be very unfortunate if some harm were to come to you, Mr Dickens, or you, Mr Collins, while you were our guests here or explorers of Undertown beyond here.”
“We feel precisely the same way!” said Dickens. He sounded almost merry.
“Yet no guarantees for your safety can be made beyond this point,” continued the Chinaman. “You will understand when… if… you proceed.”
“We ask for no guarantees,” said Dickens. “Only for advice on how and where to proceed.”
“You do not fully understand,” said King Lazaree, his voice sounding harsh and Asiatic for the first time. “If something were to happen to one of you gentlemen, the other would not be allowed to return to the world above to write, tell, and testify about it.”
Dickens looked at me again. He turned back to Lazaree. “We understand,” he said.
“Not completely,” said the thin Buddha-figure. “If something were to happen to both of you down here—and if it were to happen to one, as you now understand, it must happen to both—your bodies will be found elsewhere. In the Thames, to be precise. Along with Detective Hatchery’s. The detective already understands this. It is imperative that you also do before you decide to proceed.”
Dickens looked at me again but did not ask a question. To be honest, I would have preferred at that instant that we retire for a moment to discuss the matter and to take a vote. To be completely honest, I would have preferred at that moment that we simply bid the Opium Chinaman King a pleasant evening and have retired altogether—up out of that underground charnel house and back into the fresh night air, even if that fresh air carried the stinking miasma of the overcrowded burial ground that Dickens called St Ghastly Grim’s.
“We understand,” Dickens was saying earnestly to the Chinaman. “We agree to the conditions. But we still wish to go on, down into Undertown, and to find Mr Drood. How do we do that, King Lazaree?”
I was in such shock at Dickens having made this life-and-death decision for me without so much as a consultation or by-your-leave that I heard Lazaree’s response as if from a great, muffled distance.
“Je suis un grand partisan de l’ordre,” the Chinaman was saying or reciting.
“Mais je n’aime pas celui-ci.
Il peint un éternel désordre,
Et, quand il vous consigne ici,
Dieu jamais n’en révoque l’ordre.”
“Very good,” replied Dickens, although, in my shock at Dickens’s speaking for me, at Dickens’s having gambled my life along with his in such cavalier fashion, I had not understood a word of the French.
“And how and where do we find this eternal disorder and order?” continued Dickens.
“Understanding that even eternal disorder has a perfect order such as Wells, find the apse and the altar and descend behind the rude screen,” said King Lazaree.
“Yes,” said Dickens, nodding as if he understood and even glancing at me as if telling me to take notes.
“All that they boast of Styx, of Acheron,” recited Lazaree,
“Cocytus, Phlegethon, our have proved in one:
The filth, stench, noise; save only what was there
Subtly distinguished, was confusèd here.
Their wherry had no sail, too; ours had none;
And in it two more horrid knaves than Charon.
Arses were heard to croak instead of frogs,
And for one Cerberus, the whole coast was dogs.
Furies there wanted not; each scold was ten;
And for the crie
s of ghosts, women, and men
Laden with plague-sores and their sins were heard,
Lashed by their consciences; to die, afeard.”
I tried to catch Dickens’s eye then, to tell him through sheer glare and intensity that it was time to leave, past time to leave, that our opium-lord host was insane, as were we for coming down here in the first place, but the Inimitable—d—— n his eyes!—was nodding again as if all this made sense and saying, “Very good, very good. Is there anything else we need to know to get us to Drood?”
“Only to remember to pay the horrid knaves,” whispered King Lazaree.
“Of course, of course,” said Dickens, sounding absolutely delighted with himself and the Chinaman. “We shall be going, then. Ah… I presume that the corrider we entered through and your… ah… establishment here are, in terms of, well, wells, part of the eternal disordered order?”
Lazaree actually smiled. I saw the gleam of very small, very sharp teeth. They looked to have been filed to points. “Of course,” he said softly. “Consider the former the south aisle of the nave and the latter the Cloister Garth.”
“Thank you very much indeed,” said Dickens. “Come, Wilkie,” he said to me as he led us back out of the opium den of mummies.
“One last thing,” said King Lazaree as we were ready to go out through the doorway into the main hall of the mummies.
Dickens paused and leaned on his stick.
“Watch out for the boys,” said the Chinaman. “Some are cannibals.”
WE HEADED BACK into and down the outer corridor the way we had come. The bullseye lantern seemed dimmer than before.
“Are we leaving?” I asked hopefully.
“Leaving? Of course not. You heard what King Lazaree said. We’re close to the entrance of the actual Undertown. With any luck at all, we shall meet with Drood and be back to take Detective Hatchery out to breakfast before the sun rises over Sain’t Ghastly Grim’s.”