The Mosque of Notre Dame

^{CHAPTER 12} THE PATH OF THE SKELETONS

As it zoomed through the catacombs under Paris, the lights of the Harley seemed to pull a trail of human bones entwined in whitish spider webs out of the darkness.

Six million skeletons, as if someone had counted them all, sniffed at Jeanne angrily.

It felt impolite to speed by on a motorcycle through such a large cemetery. You, ancestors, should not be angry. If I were in your place I’d be happy to see as good a bike as this. And generally speaking, I’m not a foreigner to you.

Through such a gigantic ossuary as this one, one could only drive at low speeds. When Jeanne was a little girl, tourists were brought down here. There were better roads then. But in those tourist times, many branches of the catacombs had not been discovered. The archeologists of Maquis made an effort to find them later, for obvious reasons. The earlier maps of the catacombs had been sold in every kiosk, published in hundreds of albums and guidebooks—so today, the Saracens had all that information, and sooner or later, they would address the catacombs seriously. They didn’t dare flood them; the surface was quite large, and they might end up sinking the streets with their own houses.

But they could begin gradually filling them with cement, introducing patrols. They might even pump in poison gas. That was why it was important that Maquis use tunnels discovered after the tourist epoch. Passages were dug in recent years leading from the ossuary to the sewage collectors, and from the collectors to the abandoned subway lines. And there were completely unknown places such as the one where she was headed now.

For the tenth time in forty minutes Jeanne had to speed up to pull the motorcycle up onto a narrow path. Even though it had been lightened up, the Harley was quite heavy for her. Suddenly, it became very light indeed as someone hoisted the back wheel into the air.

“I could hear from a distance that a little, arrogant pig named Saintville was riding up here! Let’s get to a clearing and then I’ll whoop your ass!”

“And why?”

Henri Larochejaquelein frequently spoke with Jeanne as if she were his little brother. At one time she liked that, but recently it got on her nerves, even though she wasn’t sure why.

“As if you didn’t know.”

“I don’t.”

Placing the rear wheel back on the ground, Larochejaquelein caught Jeanne by the collar and, too seriously for it to be considered a joke, smacked her on the backside with the palm of his hand.

“Maman once hurt her fingers like that,” Jeanne said, breaking free. (The other hand wasn’t holding her collar firmly enough.) “Two of her fingers were blue and swollen for a week. Are you in any pain?”

In the darkness, Larochejaquelein could be heard trying to stifle his laughter. It was obvious he was still angry, or he would have laughed out loud.

“I hope, you unbearable creature, that my hands are a little stronger than your Maman’s.”

“I’m very glad you didn’t hurt yourself, Larochejaquelein.”

Now he turned on his flashlight—which he had kept off to stay hidden from whoever was approaching. His camouflage clothing couldn’t be seen in the dark, only his face and the flaxen curls that fell on his all-too-regular forehead.

“That’s enough joking for now. What do you think you’re doing? Who killed the imam, are you going to try to tell me it wasn’t you?”

“So, we’re allowed to kill qadis but not imams? ” Ever since she could remember, Jeanne believed offense to be the best form of defense.

“The qadi was killed because of a decision made by smart people who knew how to assess the consequences—and when they said the time was right. I believe I don’t need to explain further. Listen, Jeanne Saintville, I’m warning you as your commander: One more stunt like that and I’ll deploy you to pick flowers in the forest near Fougères. What happened? Are you tired of being a soldier? The worst thing is that I don’t even need to explain to you how stupid what you did is. You know that very well yourself, you just don’t want to admit it.”

“Yes, it was stupid, Larochejaquelein, truly stupid. He was too much of a monster.”

“No one is denying that. The old man was a rare monstrosity. In addition to a sea of innocent blood, he is responsible for the destruction of the entire line of Amati violins. He organized a youth unit for such things from families on assistance called the Young Murids or something like that. He had so much energy for doing evil that you would swear the devil himself was spurring him on. But that doesn’t justify you at all.”

“I won’t do it again.”

“Do you promise?”

“Do you have to push me right up against the wall!”

“Up against this wall. Turn around.”

Larochejaquelein shined his light on a cross, engraved into black stone—a Celtic cross. The little window beneath it was smaller than a man’s head.

“This is the cell of a prisoner,” said Jeanne, suddenly whispering. “Through this window they gave him only bread and water. Fifteen hundred years ago. I wonder who he was and why he was imprisoned here…”

Larochejaquelein also began to speak softly. “At that time we were ruled by the Merovingian dynasty—hairy kings with magic blood. Do you remember why they never cut their hair?”

“Of course. Their hair was supposed to give them magical powers,” Jeanne said, still staring at the window. Do you know how Chlothar treated the grandchildren of Chlodomer?”

“Remind me.” Larochejaquelein wondered why he was letting her chatter about ancient times when there was so much to do right now.

“A servant brought Chrothild two items—a sword and a pair of scissors. And a message from her son: ‘Dear Maman, what shall I do with my cousins—cut off their hair or their heads?’”

“Ah, yes!” said Larochejaquelein. “And Chrothild said, ‘Tell my son that I would rather see my grandchildren dead than with their hair cut!’”

“What good was a Merovingian without his magical powers? Chlothar went for the heads. There are a lot of stories about hair from that time. Ildico strangled Attila with her hair so he would stop pestering her. They wouldn’t let her into his sleeping chamber with a knife, so she strangled him with her hair. The hands of maidens were very strong then.”

The light from Larochejaquelein’s flashlight slid over Jeanne’s head and her hair shone like a nimbus. “My favorite is St. Radegund.”

“Amazing! You know that by heart!”

Jeanne, made the sign of the cross over the black cross engraved in the wall. What if the person who prayed here saw her now?

“Let’s go on. You want me to give you a ride? It’ll take you a whole hour to walk.”

“The last thing I need is girls taking me for a ride,” Larochejaquelein shook his head as if shaking away the lure of the past.

“All right, then you drive.”

The proposal was made in a nonchalant tone, but she rarely allowed anyone to drive her bike.

Larochejaquelein paused. “You made a promise, right?”

“I made a promise,” Jeanne said, making a face.

Again the fragile bones and the walls behind them wove into a lacy arch. In places where one could see parts of tombstones, Roman letters could be read here and there. Larochejaquelein drove far more slowly than Jeanne. She breathed on his neck, dissatisfied.

A well-preserved plate with one broken corner came into view. It had a bas-relief showing a dove flying over a chalice.

“This marks the road to another depot,” said Larochejaquelein.

The journey took less than five minutes.

In front of a movable metallic door painted blue, Larochejaquelein turned on a floodlight that was obviously battery powered. The old depot was overflowing with stacked crates.

“I’ll never understand why the military needed to make underground depots in peacetime,” Larochejaquelein shrugged. “Now there’s no one to ask. Hey, Jeanne. In five hours, you’re not supposed to be here, but in the Rome station.”

“I’d like to stop in the Défense ghetto on the way. Monsieur Lescure promised me a good book by William of Tyre. Do you know Monsieur Lescure?”

“Somewhat. I knew his son, Étienne. I wasn’t even seventeen when they killed him. His two older brothers were killed during the overthrow. There’s no reason for you to go to the ghetto now and run the risk of being captured. It’s good that you’re here. You can help me.”

“Of course I’ll help. But why am I not allowed to go to the ghetto? Don’t tell me they’re looking for me!”

“No, not you. You’ll know soon enough. Let’s take a look and see what we have here.”

They passed slowly next to the crates. Larochejaquelein carefully studied their little labels and their markings.

“What’s this? A mine-detector! Two… four… eight of them! Jars of strawberry jam would have been better. Remember, Saintville, this is how ammunition is labeled. Let’s go on. Automatic rifles! Okay, we have ten times more of them than we could possibly need! That goes first. Now what else? This!”

Taking a phosphorus marker from the pocket of his camouflage jacket, Larochejaquelein drew a lily on the crate. Next to it he wrote a Roman “one”—which was banned by the Wahhabis. (For their part, the partisans and those living in the catacombs had stopped using Arabic numbers a long time ago.)

“Today I’m like Cinderella who has to sort the mixed grains,” he laughed. “I’ll be sending our people to bring supplies from here, but darn few of them know anything about labels. If they have to open every crate, it will take them more than a day. By the way, remember that this is how weapons are marked.

“Upper row, general weapons, lower row, sniper rifles. You see that in the upper row you have the same signs as the automatic rifles over there. The only question is whether we’ll need them. I don’t think that we will. But they’re good to have. Fifty of them won’t get in our way.”

Larochejaquelein decorated the crate with the same lily but this time he wrote a Roman IV for “four” and then five Xs (for tens) in parentheses.

“That means take it fourth in order and I’ve indicated how many. What else? Now here is something we do need—shoulder-mounted rocket launchers!”

“Larochejaquelein, my dear, sweet, precious, most precious,” Jeanne clasped her small, hands with dimples instead of knuckles together as if in prayer. “Will you please tell me what’s going on? Why do we need so many weapons at once?”

“I’m not sure myself,” Larochejaquelein couldn’t refrain from grinning. “Whatever it is, it’s going to happen, and in a few hours, both of us will know. Let’s see what else we have… Large-caliber machine guns can only be issued with a doctor’s prescription.”

“What?”

“Oh, nothing. That’s probably what we’ll need most of all. You want a chocolate bar with almonds?”

“Why not? With almonds or with peanuts?”

“I have both. Choose.”

Jeanne took the bar with almonds.

“I’ve wanted to ask you this for some time,” said Jeanne, after swallowing the last piece. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want. Is your name really Larochejaquelein?”

Henri de la Rochejaquelein was a young hero of the War of the Vendée—an uprising of peasants and nobles against the French Republic and its campaign to exterminate the Church in France’s northwest coastal region by the River Vendée.

“My name is really Henri,” laughed Larochejaquelein. “I’m listed in the Europol database as Larochejaquelein. It was my nickname as a boy. There were three of us friends. My hero was Henri de la Rochejaquelein. The others liked Georges Cadoudal and François de Charette. Of the three of us, I’m the only one still alive.”

Larochejaquelein fell silent. He didn’t like to talk about the death of the boy who idolized Cadoudal. The three of them pretended to be the heroes of various cartoons, old ones, from Star Wars—which still existed then. Barbed wire and concrete walls are no obstacle for boys, who have a knack for getting through where adults cannot pass. Armed with precious markers and paints, they crossed by night into the sharia zone to draw on the walls and fences, to draw on the darkened windows.

They drew soldiers with laser swords and princesses in incredible costumes. In defiance of sharia, they drew living beings. The graffiti artists competed among themselves to see who could draw the most, but they could prove nothing. Early in the morning, workmen would destroy all traces of “the devil’s work.” The boys had to take each other’s word. No one lied.

A tally of points was kept and everything honestly evaluated. For instance, for a public square covered in drawings, there was the complexity of the drawing, and also the risk factor. The winner was considered the champion for the month. Then the competition would start again.

Noël, who liked Cadoudal best, was caught drawing a portrait of green-headed Yoda on the door of a police car. Driven to fury by such boldness, they attacked the boy with their nightsticks. They beat him a long time, knowing how to kill slowly. They beat him into a pulp. For some reason, they turned his body over to his parents instead of bringing it directly to the morgue. Henri saw his friend’s body.

Larochejaquelein’s bitterness and sense of guilt remained with him, although he couldn’t explain why he felt guilty. Perhaps because his friend had been caught instead of him. Even the fact that five years later, the policemen who had beat Noel had been hunted down by the partisans did not reduce his bitterness.

“All right,” said Larochejaquelein getting up. “Back to work.”