The Graves of Saints (9 page)

To most tourists, the main attraction at the basilica was likely the tomb of Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette. Hannah had never been inside the place, but as she and Charlie walked along
the street toward it, she glanced around for a cake shop, certain that someone must have taken advantage of the opportunity. When she didn’t find one, she wasn’t sure if she was
disenchanted or pleased; home in the US, she felt sure there would have been a shop called Let Them Eat Cake right outside the cathedral doors.

Hannah hadn’t come to research Marie Antoinette or Louis XVI, however. She was much more interested in Catherine de’Medici, who had been ignored by her husband during his reign as
king, but then gone on to hold the reins of power for three decades after his death. She’d seen her three sons each become king in succession, but all the while she had been in control.
Catherine had a reputation for brutality, but other than that, she was Hannah’s sort of woman. As she tipped back her coffee and drained the last bitter dregs, she gazed up at the cathedral.
It was both beautiful and formidable, but what really struck her was how much money must have been involved in its upkeep.

‘Who pays for all of this?’ she asked.

Charlie gave her a sidelong glance. ‘So now you’re interested?’

For a moment she wasn’t sure what he meant, and then realized he thought she was asking about his own research paper.

‘Not in what you’re working on. I’m just wondering. There’s no way Rome has the budget for it.’

Charlie nodded. ‘You wouldn’t think so, but you’d be wrong. When the Vatican fell apart after the revelation, the church treasury was frozen. Payments weren’t being made
because they were trying to protect church wealth from lawsuits. Yeah, the Papal hierarchy completely collapsed, but not for long. It was only, like, two years before the College of Cardinals were
able to agree on a new Pope.’

The revelation. The day, many years ago, now, when the world first learned of the existence of the Shadows, and of the clandestine arm of the Vatican that had consisted of sorcerers and killers.
Faced with incontrovertible evidence that the church had been involved with black magic, people had turned their backs on Rome. Had the revelation not coincided horribly with the murder of the
then-current Pope, someone might have been able to get the disaster under control. But after decades of conspiracies and scandals that had eroded the public’s trust in the church, the
revelation had been the last straw. The power of the Vatican had been largely dismantled. Or so she’d thought.

Hannah frowned, glancing around for a trash can where she could dispose of her coffee cup.

‘That makes no sense,’ she said. ‘The Third Ecumenical Council was only four or five years ago. And the American clergy didn’t even attend that one. No way was there a
new Pope that soon after the shit hit the fan.’

Charlie rolled his eyes. ‘How do you not know any of this? No wonder you’re only interested in dead queens. Look, I’m talking about the internal restructuring that happened
long before Vatican III. The church was embarrassed, yeah, and a huge percentage of money just stopped coming in. The American Catholic Church broke off from Rome and a lot of people in other parts
of the world either didn’t want to fund the Vatican after the secrets that had come out, or they didn’t think there was anything left to fund.

‘But there was. A skeleton crew, yes. But a Pope, absolutely – Pope Paul the Seventh – and a new College of Cardinals. They started quietly rebuilding the Roman church only a
couple of years after the revelation, putting the pieces together, getting control back of their most valuable properties. A lot of European governments, including the French, financed the
maintenance and security of the church’s landmarks for a lot of years. Now the church is starting to take over managing the properties for themselves again, and those governments want to
collect. The French government and the Vatican are in the middle of a huge legal battle to decide who actually now owns the Basilica of Saint-Denis.’

Hannah hung her head a little, smiling at her own self-absorption.

‘Y’know,’ she said, ‘I’m going to do something I almost never do.’ She looked up at him, searching the blue eyes behind those hipster glasses, and tried to
forget all the times he had kissed her. ‘I’m going to apologize.’

Charlie clapped a hand over his chest and dropped his coffee cup, its remnants spilling onto the broad sidewalk in front of the basilica. He staggered and grunted as if rocked by a heart
attack.

Hannah punched him in the shoulder. He let out a girly sort of ‘ow’, but his grin remained.

‘I’m serious,’ she said. ‘That’s almost verging on interesting.’

Charlie linked arms with her. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment before you ruin it. Now, come on. I want to interview a few visitors, some staff, and at least one clergy member if I
can find one, and I don’t want to be here all damn day.’

Nearly two hours later, Hannah had filled many pages in her notebook with observations about the life and death of Catherine de’Medici and the resting place of her
remains. Most of what she needed to include in her paper she had already known before visiting the basilica, but the on-site research had been required and, truth be told, she hadn’t minded
at all. Every inch of the place was beautiful, its history fascinated her, and as she explored its naves and tombs, she felt as if she were breathing ancient air. Now, though, with her stomach
grumbling she had tracked Charlie down and had been attempting to hurry him toward the completion of his own research.

They were at the bottom of a curved stone stairwell that had been accessed by a small, carved wooden door at the rear of the abbey, away from most of the tombs. A narrow corridor ran off to the
left, beneath the abbey church, lit only by an occasional dimly burning bulb. In front of them was a black, wrought-iron gate, beyond which she could only see more stone.

‘Please, Charlie, I’m hungry,’ Hannah said. ‘What the hell are we doing here?’

‘Waiting for the priest,’ he said, as if she might be too simple to understand.

Hannah sighed. She knew very well they were waiting for the priest to come back with a key. During the French Revolution, a lot of the tombs of the royals up in the abbey had been opened and the
remains of monarchs had been dumped into a pit and dissolved with quicklime. She had sort of assumed that anything that might have been left of Saint Denis would have been destroyed, but according
to Father Laurent, the grimly handsome abbot of the basilica, that was not true.

According to legend, upon his execution by beheading, Saint Denis had picked up his own severed head and walked the six miles from the site of his execution to the place where he would
eventually be buried. These days nothing remained of his body, but Father Laurent insisted that the head of Saint Denis remained entombed in the crypt beneath the abbey church.

‘So, what’s the tomb upstairs for?’ Hannah demanded.

‘That’s where he was buried until the revolution. It’s mainly for tourists.’

‘And, what, Father Laurent’s going to show you the real tomb because you’re doing a research paper?’ she scoffed.

Charlie smiled. ‘He’s going to show
us
because I asked. It’s not a big secret or anything.’

Her stomach rumbled hungrily. ‘Come on, Charlie. What does this have to do with your research? Remember you were all obnoxious about how easy your paper was going to be because it was all
going to be theories about the future of the church instead of its past?’

‘Well, yeah,’ Charlie said. ‘But it’s the severed head of a saint. It’s cool, right?’

She threw up her hands. ‘It’s not like we’re going to be able to
see
it!’

He shushed her, glancing down the corridor, and when she turned she saw Father Laurent making his way toward them, passing from pools of dim light into shadow and then back into the light again.
For a priest, he wasn’t bad looking. It had occurred to Hannah that if the new Vatican could draw young, intelligent yet formidable looking guys like Laurent into the priesthood, maybe they
would someday re-establish their former power and influence.

The priest carried an ornate key on an iron ring.

‘The church is more concerned with tradition than security,’ he said in fluent but accented English, shaking his head as he slipped the big key into the lock. ‘I am constantly
amazed by how much we rely upon our assumptions of what will never happen . . . until it does.’

‘Is this really it?’ Hannah asked. ‘What about the doors upstairs? They must be alarmed.’

Father Laurent nodded. ‘Yes, and there are cameras, of course. But a single, determined individual could get in and out easily enough, if they had a plan.’

The hinges squealed as he swung the gate inward. He turned to glance at them. ‘Neither of you is planning a heist, I hope?’

‘Well, actually . . .’ Charlie replied.

Hannah laughed. ‘You’ve seen too many movies, Father.’

The priest smiled and then stepped through the gate, gesturing for them to follow. With his graying hair and square jaw, he had a hard look about him, but the smile gave him a warmth that made
Hannah feel safe in his presence. She found herself wondering how his life had led him here, and thought she might ask him a few questions for her own research when Charlie had finished.

‘It’s incredibly nice of you to do this,’ Charlie said as he and Hannah followed the priest into the narrow corridor beyond the gate.

‘It is my pleasure,’ Father Laurent said. ‘It is a nice break from performing services for a tiny congregation while noisy, rude tourists wander around the abbey as if they are
children at the zoo.’

He turned and reached into the shadows for a switch that brought to life a sequence of caged light bulbs along the ceiling of the corridor. The bulbs offered only splashes of light to navigate
the darkness.

‘As you can see, our power is almost as archaic as our security,’ Father Laurent said.

He set off down the corridor, moving from one pool of light to the next, and they followed.

‘If you don’t mind me asking, Father,’ Hannah began, ‘I was wondering how long you’ve been a priest.’

They both knew the unspoken remainder of the question: had it been before or after the revelation?

‘Only three years,’ he said without turning. ‘I found my calling later than most, but the church needed—’

The whole corridor shook around them, the stone floor seeming to rise and shift beneath their feet. Hannah cried out and caught herself against the wall. The caged lights flickered, one of them
popping and going dark. Father Laurent stumbled and fell to his knees as the floor bucked under them. Hannah caught a glimpse of Charlie’s face, saw that his lips were moving, but she
couldn’t hear him over the deep rumble of the world around them and the grinding of stone. Dust sifted down from the ceiling and then two more bulbs popped in quick succession, so that very
little light remained.

Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod
.

A fucking earthquake
.

Only seconds had passed but already it felt like it had been going on forever. With a horrible crack, a fissure appeared in the wall to her left and she knew she had to get the hell out of
there. Back in the archway, at the gate . . . that was what they said about earthquakes, wasn’t it? Get into a doorway. Or was that for hurricanes? She couldn’t remember and suddenly
all she could hear was the thunder of her own heart in her ears. It beat against the inside of her chest so hard that she put one hand over her breastbone and reminded herself that she was too
young for a heart attack, too young to die, too young to be killed in a fucking earthquake.

It kept going.

And then she was screaming for it to stop, fear swallowing her, enveloping her. Charlie grabbed her outstretched hand and tugged her toward him, or drew himself toward her – it was hard to
tell. He pulled her into his arms even as they tried to keep their balance and he kissed the top of her head.

Hannah slapped his hands away, frantic with terror, just wanting to reach the gateway. She saw the hurt in his eyes and wanted to scream at him for being so sensitive when thousands of tons of
stone were about to come down on their heads. Instead she grabbed his wrist and dragged him back the way they’d come. How long had it been going on now? Twenty or thirty seconds. It had to
stop soon, didn’t it?

As if in answer there came a bang and crash behind them, down at the darkened end of the corridor, so loud that for that one moment it muffled the grinding roar of the earth’s distress.
The ground shifted violently and threw them into the wall. Hannah stumbled and fell, then immediately began to regain her feet. She looked up to see Father Laurent coming toward them, a cloud of
dust roiling behind him in the corridor. He looked more anguished than afraid, and she realized that something had just happened to the tomb of Saint Denis. The ceiling must have given way and
caved in on top of it, or the floor beneath it had split.

She wiped dust from her eyes, blinked and looked at her hand to discover that the dust was mixed with blood. She had banged her head.

‘Come on!’ Charlie said, squeezing her hand and getting her to focus.

It took her a moment before she realized that she had heard him, and then to understand why. The quake had quieted to a tremble.

And then it ceased.

Father Laurent caught up to them. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘We must not remain here. It may not be safe.’

Hannah nodded. The priest passed by them, taking the lead again. Hannah held Charlie’s hand, grateful for his touch, her heart still pounding in her chest and thumping in her ears as she
wondered if the stairs would be blocked. She’d had panic attacks before, and suddenly her thoughts raced with claustrophobic terror at the baseless idea that they might be trapped down
there.

‘We’re okay,’ Charlie said, sensing her terror. ‘It’s over. We just have to get outside and we’ll be—’

An electrical crackle filled the air, followed by a loud pop as the rest of the caged bulbs went dark, sparks falling from the shorted fixtures. If not for the light of the stairwell coming
through the open gate up ahead, they would have been in total darkness. Hannah still feared being trapped, but the light acted as a beacon, speeding her forward.