Chapter Thirteen
Athos did not consider himself religious by any measure, but thanks to a tutor who had had little imagination, he was well acquainted with scripture. He had never given much credence to the story of Jonah and the whale, though down here in an impenetrable pre-creation darkness, sloshing through the underbelly of the city, he had a moment of commiseration for the reluctant saint.
Unlike his brothers-in-arms, the comte no longer had an impulsive bone in his body. His undertakings were always well-considered and planned to the smallest detail. At any other time, he would have ascertained the schedule of the fountain maintenance, known the exact hour the sluice mechanism that supplied the aqueduct was opened and closed, whether or not the tunnels filled completely, not to mention their exact layout. He would have made a list of things to aid in circumnavigating beneath the city. Like raingear and waterproof boots and multiple torches.
Ill-prepared did not begin to cover it.
But then, this was the first time said brothers had disappeared on him; the circumstances were not such that he had a great deal of time to invest in exacting details. Thus was he slogging through water that had begun around his ankles and was now slapping sinuously around his calves.
He could not divine whether this meant he had been down here a long time or the water was rising rapidly. Time was a vacuous unit without meaning when one could discern only vertical placement. But that was not quite true, his gloved fingers had never lost contact with the wall on his left; he was spatially oriented horizontally as well. Though he did not feel solidly oriented in any direction whatsoever. It felt as though the world might turn upside down at any moment. At least in this empty void that was his reality just now, with only a slimy wall and skimming fingertips tethering his sanity.
While all Musketeers were inured to less than optimal working conditions, that usually meant long hours standing at attention, sitting in the saddle, guarding entrances, exits and people, or tuning out the cardinal as he wore out his heart in the service of France. Not wading through freezing water from a snow-melt river that fed underground, pitch-dark aqueducts where you could not even see a hand in front your face.
He was feeling no pain whatsoever, mostly because he could no longer feel, period. The freezing water had numbed every extremity, chilling him to the bone. As it rose, the current was growing stronger as well, making it harder to keep his water-logged boots slogging forward along the slippery bottom.
His hand on the wall met empty air, suggesting a recess. Athos backed up a step, pressing questing fingers harder to the wall so he felt the corner and turned his steps accordingly. The soggy bottom began to incline and ten steps in, his left toe nudged something solid. He bent to shape it with his hands and found a stair, followed by several further risers, according to his frozen fingers. He could not reach far enough to determine more, though mounting the bottom stair, he could reach both hands to the walls.
Frozen muscles protested every step, the burn of the climb an odd counterpoint to the numbing cold. The staircase was similar to the one in the bear pit, turning tightly at the bottom, widening as it rose so it was not long before he had one hand on the wall and had to stoop to verify there remained stairs above him. Logic said he would not step out into empty air; prudent fear urged caution no matter what logic said. He was warm by the time he reached the wood door at the top. It was not locked and a rush of moist air cooled the sweat the climb had raised as he opened it and stepped through, banging his head on something solidly hard. His hat tumbled backwards, saved from bouncing back down by the stairs only because he'd kept hold of the door latch behind him.
The door snicked as he yanked it closed and slumped over, hands on his knees. He drew in a deep breath to steady himself and reached one hand up to explore the knot already forming on his forehead. One more ache to add to the lot hardly mattered, though for a moment stars had populated his darkness. It was not the blow that sent him to his knees, rather he knelt to locate his hat. Dirt, his nose told him. A sweep of his hand behind him and he had his hat again, though settling it on his head was not particularly comfortable. He tilted it back, and still on his knees, shuffled sideways until he met solid wall again. Also earth, shored up with half round timbers.
A mechanical room, he observed silently, rising carefully to his feet again, holding his hands above his head. A wise choice as it turned out, as they shaped the solidity of what he guessed were hollowed out logs spaced a meter or so apart. He counted six across the space of about ten meters. Back bowed to accommodate the height, Athos returned to the wall, feeling his way around the round room as it turned out. It took two times to find the door, since his hands did not at first recognize the difference in the hewn wood of the door and the timbers shoring up the walls. There was no lock, but it was barred from the outside and he had nothing with which to even attempt to lift it from the interior.
It did not matter, neither of his missing Musketeers were here. But here was his first bit of luck; he had been right about the mechanical rooms.
He slid down the door to the ground, removed his hat, propped his arms on his drawn up knees and leaned his head back against the door. The maps would not coalesce in his head, they shimmered just beyond reach, his brain too weary to hold them, but if he was remembering right, this was likely the Storchenbrunnen, the bagpiper fountain in front of the hotel catering to traveling minstrels. He could not recall any visible barred door in the buildings close by, which was nothing to the point. He could have missed it in the dark, or as suspected, the city entrances were inside buildings.
Athos rose carefully, minding his bruised noggin and made his way back down the stairs, shivering as he slipped into the water that in the time he had been out, had risen to just below his knees. It would not be long before it was pouring into his boots, not that it would make much difference, since they were already soaked and seeping water.
He explored two more empty circular rooms, the third one informing him the sluice gate in the mountain reservoir must have been opened, for the gentle swishing of the water through the hollow logs was now a muted roar. The previous staircase had twined upwards as the first one had, but this was a series of right angle cuts stacked like children's blocks.
Here his questing hands found a lantern. Flint and steel sparked in the darkness, light sliding up and down the wick briefly before hissing out. Patiently, Athos tried again, and then again - with no luck. Investigation suggested the damp wick did not want to host a flame. Returning flint and steel to his pocket, he very carefully tilted the lantern in an attempt to recoat the wick with oil, retrieved the sparking agents and applied it once more. Still no luck. It took two further tries before the wick was soaked enough to accept the spark. Fortune, or grace - he did not particularly care which - yielded at last and the wick snatched the spark, flaring greedily to life. With a whoosh it caught, parting the blackness rather like Moses' rod parting the Red Sea.
"Let there be light." The sound of his voice bounced around as he lifted the lantern, the darkness rolling back like a receding wave, though it piled up in the corners of the large, square room with taunting verisimilitude. One small puff of air and the piled up waves would come roaring back to engulf the puny human attempting to check its reign. And even that small light, too bright after so long in the atramentous dark, had Athos blinking back involuntary tears.
His vision cleared and he had his first view of the mechanical genius only his hands had mapped thus far. For a moment he was totally distracted by the feat of engineering as he beheld the maze of piping. The comte had been an avid student of anything suggesting mechanical workings, though having left that life behind, he had forgone pursuit of the pleasure. It snuck up on him now, with all the wonder he had once experienced in the presence of mechanical brilliance.
When he shook himself free of the momentary bedazzlement, he tried the stout door, found it locked, and again, though the lock yielded quickly, barred. He thought this might be the room beneath the Anna-Seiler-Brunnen, but could not be sure. Alas, so far he had encountered no cold, shivering Musketeers inhabiting the darkness.
Shivering with more than cold this time, he waded back into the snow-fed Aare swirling lazy around his knees now. Logic told him to turn back, but he was in this far, he could not go back without completing the circuit, no matter how long it took. A half done job could well be a job that would have to be done again.
Having light helped, but he went more carefully lest he drop the lantern or his footing prove false and both he and his light be doused. It was not long, however, before he came to a split in the channel. A sharp prow, seriously undercut and shored up with more timber and stone, divided the flow.
A lengthy hesitation and a further battle with his weary mind sent him right toward what he hoped would take him to the Berner Münsterplatz. To the left should be the Rathuasplatz and the Vennerbrunnen, if he was not totally disoriented.
The water was mid-thigh by the time the seventh opening presented itself. Without hesitation, Athos followed the curve of the wall inward, shedding water as the incline steepened to the foot of another set of steps his frozen booted toes registered too late. He was going slow enough that he was able to stop himself with his equally frozen free hand before his face slammed into the stairs, but only just. He twisted and sat his exhausted self down on the fifth riser, uncaring that he sat in the water still.
He would move in a minute; for now, he had strength only to rest his head against the wall and try not to let the cold lethargy lull him into a false sense of security. The allure of repose, though, proved too great. Athos jerked awake and shoved himself up from the step, afraid he would give in to the siren song. He swiped uselessly at the water pouring from his britches, turned and started the journey upward.
A plebian sneeze caught him off guard. The second, then a third he muffled in the crook of his elbow, waited a moment to be sure his shiver wracked body was done trying to betray him, not that there had been any sign of habitation thus far, and continued on to the top of the steeply winding stairs.
The door latch gave easily, no picks required, no bars on the other side. Athos found himself staring into the darkness of a long passage stretching beyond the range of the raised lantern. Nothing for it but to start down it one trudging foot step at time.
With the return of light, his internal time keeper had been jogging to catch up. Here it was only a minute or two before he reached the next door, this one made of the same timbers as the hollow pipes, bound together by iron strips. Here too, no lock; the door swing open on well-oiled hinges, not even a squeak to mark his entrée.
Athos slumped back against the door he'd closed behind himself. More stairs. He did not know if his trembling legs would make it up this series of switch backs. Regardless, he lifted a foot, though in the act of lifting the lantern, a very faint sound caught his ear. His feet grew wings. He counted twenty steps to a landing beyond which he could not see, but the sound drew him onwards with renewed energy.
These stairs were a series of switch backs also, twenty steps to a landing and the stairs veered left, thirty steps more to another landing and the staircase veered right again. Athos' knees buckled; he had the sense to turn so his backside abruptly met a step as the faint sound became a recognizable voice lifted in song.
TBC 13/19