The Watchers (65 page)

‘I’m very sure evil has returned to Lausanne, monsieur.’

‘I’m very sure you’re right.’ Carefully, Harper took the lantern from Rochat. ‘Take Miss Taylor, get in the alcove over there.’

Rochat gathered Katherine in his arms and shuffled quickly to the Virgin’s chapel near the south transept. Harper grabbed the wool blankets from the bench, ran after him, tossing one of the blankets to Rochat.

‘Cover her with the blanket, cover yourself with your overcoat.’

Rochat tucked himself in the small alcove. He pulled Katherine close to him and wrapped her in the blanket. He saw Harper dropping to his knees between two tightly fitted pillars, wrapping a blanket around his shoulders.

‘Monsieur, the fire in the lantern, it’s dying!’

Harper saw the choking flame.

‘Just get down!’

Rochat pulled the collar of his overcoat over his head, peeked through the buttons and saw Harper lean over the lantern and breathe into the flame before disappearing under his blanket. The cathedral dissolved into blackest dark. The growling wind beyond the doors wound to an ear-splitting pitch … then silence.

Rochat pulled Katherine closer.

‘Be not afraid, be not afraid.’

The wind howled again and the cathedral doors broke open with a terrifying crash. The barricades of wood chairs flew through the nave, smashed into the pillars and arches and shattered apart. All the doors tore from their hinges, skidded over the flagstones and slammed into the stone walls. The leaded-glass windows in the high balconies exploded into dust. Then all the windows of the nave and along the chancel. The great rose window in the south transept wall crackled and cracked and distended inward till it burst apart with a horrible crash and the sum of man’s knowledge when the world was flat fell through the nave like flecks of coloured snow.

It was silent again.

Rochat saw Harper looking towards him from under his blanket, his finger at his lips –
Don’t move, don’t make a sound
– pointing to the broken doorways. Black mist crept over the threshold and moved over the flagstones as if hunting prey. Sniffing, searching. It gathered on the crossing square and formed into a cyclone. Swelling and spinning and rising. Sucking in the broken remains of the nave. It stretched high into the lantern tower, pulsed with black light and roared before it crashed down on to the centre of the crossing square and smashed through the flagstones and drilled deep into the earth. A cloud of ancient dust filled the nave before being sucked into the cyclone. Skeletons ascended from the crypt and were drawn into the spinning blackness like frightened things.

‘Watch out! They’re coming for her!’

Rochat saw Harper’s hand, pointing towards the altar.

Shadows emerging from the cyclone, slithering over flagstones towards the Virgin’s chapel. They formed into tentacles and wrapped themselves around Katherine’s body and pulled. Rochat felt her slipping from his arms.

‘
Non
!’

He jumped after her and caught her wrists. He twisted around and pounded down on the shadows with his crooked foot.

‘You can’t take her, you bad shadows, this is my cathedral!
C’est le guet! C’est le guet
!’

The shadows squealed, released their grip, fled into the cyclone.

Rochat pulled Katherine back to him and held her tight as Harper threw off his blanket, grabbed a pillar and rose to his feet. Steadying himself in the raging winds and holding up the lantern.

‘That’s it! Say the words, you need to say the words!’

Rochat took a deep breath and shouted as if shouting from the belfry.

‘
C’est le guet! Il a sonné l’heure! Il a sonné l’heure! C’est le guet! Il a sonné l’heure! Il a sonné l’heure
!’

A flash of fire exploded in the lantern and slashes of light, brilliant and sharp as lightning, shot from the lantern straight for the heart of the cyclone. The spinning black thing howled and disintegrated into a thousand shadows that shrivelled and faded away, leaving the ancient bones and shattered remnants of Lausanne Cathedral hanging in the air like specks of dust.

Rochat looked at the lantern.

The brilliant light was only a fragile flame on a wick.

Daylight washed through the shattered doors and blown-apart windows.

Rochat tucked the blanket under Katherine’s head. He got to his crooked legs, shuffled towards Harper.

‘I saw you breathe into the fire. You inspired it to do things and chase away the bad shadows.’

‘Me? I was just trying to keep it alive. Wasn’t until you started shouting that it came to life. All I did was get out of the way.’

‘It did that because of me?’

‘Seems so.’

Rochat thought about it.

‘I kicked them and they ran away, like in Tom and Jerry cartoons.’

‘And you kicked them where it hurts.’

‘So are they gone, did we win?’

‘Those were devourers looking for dying souls. The real bad guys will come later.’

‘When?’

‘Sundown, they always come at sundown.’

‘Why?’

‘Because even after two and a half million years of free will, they’re still so fucking predict …’

Harper clocked it.

Twenty-five-metre-deep well, two-point-five kilometres deep in the tunnels of Christ the Saviour and Lausanne Cathedral. Two and a half million bloody years ago,
Homo ergaster
line of humanoids suddenly stand up. Learn to fashion tools from stones, control fire. Something kicked it off, something made it happen, something inspired the creatures of this place with a soul. He held up the lantern and looked at the delicate flame.

‘Well, what do you know.’

‘Are we imagining something, monsieur?’

‘We are.’

‘Oh. What?

‘We’re imagining why the earth under Lausanne Cathedral is sacred to our kind.’

‘Because of the fire we found.’

‘Not just any fire. You’re looking at the first light of creation, born of the unremembered beginning.’

Rochat studied it.

For the moment it looked like any flame in his lantern. Then he rewound his way through time to when they found it. Coming out of the tunnel into a small cave and seeing the fire burning alone in a tiny stone lamp, on an island in the middle of the source flowing under Lausanne. And the detectiveman said, ‘Bloody hell.’ And then looked at it some more and said, ‘Give us the lantern, mate,’ and Rochat did. But the candle in the lantern was almost burned away and Rochat said, ‘I don’t have any more.’ The detectiveman said, ‘No worries,’ and he watched the detectiveman take a candle stub from his pocket and transfer the flame from the rock to the candle’s wick and carefully reset the candle in the lantern. Then he handed the lantern back to Rochat and said, ‘Whatever you do, mate, don’t drop this.’ And Rochat said, ‘I won’t drop this.’

Rochat blinked back to nowtimes.

‘But where did the fire come from, monsieur?’

‘It came from … from wherever the hell I came from.’

‘Who put it in my cathedral?’

‘Someone who thought my kind couldn’t be trusted with it, I suppose. Looking at the way things turned out for paradise, someone was right.’

Rochat held up the lantern and looked deep into the fire.

‘It’s like the light Maman gave me, isn’t it?’

Harper looked at Rochat’s eyes, seeing the reflection of light.

‘It is at that. And that means you and me, we’re the same in a way.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. And given that, maybe you should imagine a new place to hide the fire.’

‘Me?’

‘Sure. Your cathedral and all.’

‘I’ll try to think of something.’

The two of them stood side by side. Watching the dust and the dirt, the shattered chairs and the broken doors and shards of glass, the skeletons from the crypt and the stones from the well all suspended and still, high in the hollow space of the lantern tower.

‘I see it, monsieur, but I don’t understand it.’

‘It’s a time wake. Works like a massive stun grenade, establishes the battle perimeter. Wind time back on itself and let it go. Snaps back with considerable force. Good news, the good guys did it. Bad news is they’ve trapped us inside with the enemy.’

‘Why would they trap us with the bad shadows?’

‘All part of the plan, mate. All part of the plan.’

Rochat had no idea what any of that meant.

‘Oh. Is it like this everywhere in Lausanne?’

‘No, just the cathedral. And the locals can’t see it. Not yet anyway.’

Rochat took off his hat and scratched his head. It didn’t help make things any clearer, so he put his hat back on his head and tried to imagine where he was in time instead. He was very sure he could go to beforetimes and come back to nowtimes. But this, this was very new. As if he suddenly found himself stuck in the middle of the two places.

‘So is this betweentimes?’

Harper looked at Rochat. ‘Betweentimes. I like it.’

‘
Merci
. Do the bad shadows know we took the fire from the cave?’

They walked to the edge of the gaping hole in the crossing square. Rochat held his lantern and they looked down. Their eyes searched through shards of coloured glass, broken bits of wood and skeleton bones suspended in an unmoving spiral stretching down into the well and deeper into the shaft carved through solid rock.

‘I’d say so.’

Harper poked the hanging dust and watched more concentric shapes ooze outward. ‘“Una salus victis nullam sperare salutem.”’

‘Those are the funny words the angel said, from the man she saw in her dream.’

‘They’re from Virgil’s
Aeneid
. It means the only hope for the doomed is to have no hope at all. It’s another message from the good guys, it means hold on till the time wake shifts a bit and the cavalry can squeeze through.’

Rochat imagined an army of knights in armour on horseback, racing up Escaliers du marché towards the cathedral. And Otto the Brave Knight was leading them and waving his lance and shouting, ‘Charge!’

‘And will the cavalry save the cathedral and the bells and the fire and the angel?’

‘Sure. All we have to do is stay alive till they get here. Easy, eh?’

‘
Oui
.’

Rochat looked up at the mass of floating things in the lantern tower.

‘Will it ever fall down?’

‘It’s falling. Just looks very, very slow when you’re stuck between-times.’

Rochat thought about it. It made perfect sense. He looked up at the slowly falling things.

‘Look up there, near those two skeletons.’

Harper leaned back and saw two skeletons turning slowly as if dancing. Between them was the maquette of Lausanne Cathedral.

‘Now that’s something you don’t see every day.’

Rochat sighed.

‘I don’t know how I’ll explain this to Monsieur Taroni.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘He’s the caretaker who tells the workermen what to do. He doesn’t like it when things aren’t in their proper place.’

‘We don’t pull this job off, this mess will be the least of Monsieur Taroni’s worries.’

Three bells rolled through the nave and the floating things began to fall, drifting slowly to the ground, touching the flagstones as if being laid by a gentle hand. Harper looked at his watch, the second hand still spinning in a blur, but beginning to slow.

‘We’d best get to the belfry.’

They hurried to the Virgin’s chapel where Katherine was still lying on the stone floor. Rochat looked at her, he turned to Harper.

‘Why didn’t the angel come with us to betweentimes? Why can’t she see things like us? And why did the tramp she saw say those words about her and take her for a walk when she was sleeping?’

‘Why don’t we leave that one for now, mate. I’ll explain everything later.’

Rochat continued to stare at Katherine, his head tipping from side to side, remembering how she had found her way to the cathedral.

‘I imagined she was an angel who was lost and it was my duty to protect her till she could find a way home. Because the bad shadows broke her wings and she couldn’t fly any more.’

‘I know. And you saved her life imagining it.’

‘But sometimes the things I imagine aren’t real. She’s just a girl, isn’t she?’

‘It doesn’t matter what you imagined her to be. All that matters is what she shares with you.’

‘I don’t understand.’

Harper nodded to Katherine.

‘The two of you have souls; part of one soul, actually. It’s all one living thing.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘That’s all right. No one else in this place understands it either, yet.’

‘Do you have a soul, monsieur?’

‘No, souls are the things of men.’

Harper watched Rochat’s eyes lose focus for a long moment before blinking back to nowtimes.

‘Did Maman have a soul?’

‘No.’

‘What did Maman have? What do you have, monsieur?’

‘Nothing.’

Harper stared at Rochat.
No going back, the lad needs to know the truth
. He pointed to the fire in the lantern.

‘Your mother and me, our kind, we’re just reflections of light.’

‘But I could see Maman. I can see you.’

‘Yes, well, that’s where it gets complicated.’

Rochat thought about it.

‘You’re the angel Maman told me about, aren’t you?’

Harper took a slow breath.

‘Yes, mate, I’m what men call an angel. And so was your mother.’

‘Really?’

‘Sure. That’s why she implanted the light in your eyes, so I’d know who you were.’

Rochat thought about it some more.

‘Did Maman have a future-teller diamond? Is that how she knew you’d find me?’

‘She was the future teller, mate. And her job was to pass on that gift to you, same way she gave you the light.’

Harper watched the truth sink in as best it could. The lad sensing, that somehow, his entire life was a thing beyond imagination of men.

‘I’m not sure I understand, monsieur. But thank you for telling me.’

‘When this is over, I’ll explain everything. Just now we need to get Miss Taylor to the belfry and find a place to hide your lantern. Just now they’re the two most precious things in the world.’