Double Cross (12 page)

“The winch!” Athos cried. He snatched his sword off the street and charged. His newfound warriors came with him. Now, as a team, they quickly took out Condé's men. The winch unspooled once again, and the portcullis slammed back to earth.

When all Condé's men lay at his feet, Athos found that even more Parisians had come forward to answer his call. They had stopped their flight and grabbed whatever they could use as weapons: tools, kitchen knives, farming implements. “What do we do now?” one asked.

“First, sever the rope that controls the portcullis,” Athos commanded. “Condé may have more men inside the city, and we don't want anyone lifting that gate.”

Three men dutifully set about cutting the rope.

“Next, we need people to take positions on the wall,” Athos said. “Not on the weakened part, of course, but there are still some sturdy areas around that and south of the gate. Condé's army will surely be planning to attack the weak spot, and we'll need to fight them off with whatever we have.”

“But all the army's weapons were destroyed when the ammunition shed blew,” a blacksmith protested.

“Then we must use whatever we can find,” Athos said. “We'll throw rocks and stones if we have to. Get the flaming debris from the burning homes and rain that down on the enemy. See if we can set their battering rams on fire.”

The Parisians nodded and went to work.

Athos heard a groan from close by. To his surprise, he spotted Henri on the ground. His friend was sitting up, looking dazed, his clothes blackened from the fire.

“Henri!” Athos ran to his side and helped him up. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Henri replied. “I was trying to guard the ammunition shed, but they got the jump on me. I must have been thrown clear by the blast.” He gasped, seeing the aftermath of the explosion. “My men! Where are they?”

“I think they all fled,” Athos replied.

“Cowards!” Henri spat.

“But I have found some reinforcements.” Athos pointed to the civilians who were now climbing onto the sturdy parts of the wall, armed with stones and rubble.

Henri shook his head. “Regular men and women armed with rocks won't be able to hold off that army for long. Our wall is about to come down. It probably won't take Condé more than an hour to breach it.”

“Then we'll hold it as long as we can.” Athos worriedly glanced back toward Notre Dame. Whatever Greg and Aramis hoped to do, they now had less than an hour to do it.

FIFTEEN

T
HE RUINS OF THE UNDERGROUND CITY WERE SURPRISINGLY
large.

Greg, his parents, and Aramis had found a ladder and climbed down through the hole they'd smashed beneath the bust of King Louis. All of them held torches, but the light barely made a dent in the giant cavern where they stood. Greg had expected they would find one building, perhaps two beneath them. But they now stood in the ruins of an entire ancient city.

The streets and buildings of Paris were above their heads now, as though the city was the first floor of a giant house and a whole Roman city lay in the basement. Modern Paris—or at least this section of it—was supported by a vast network of pilings and columns.

The ancient, subterranean Paris was amazingly well preserved. Most of the roofs had collapsed, but almost everything else remained. The walls of homes and stores still stood. There were streets and sidewalks laid out in a neat, simple grid pattern. Gaps in the streets revealed that clay pipes ran under them, the remnants of an ancient sewer system. The ruins stretched away into the shadows, appearing to go on forever.

“How could all this be here?” Greg asked.

“This is the way old civilizations worked,” his father explained. “They just built one city on top of the old one. Paris originally began as a Roman outpost called Lutetia, which was built on this very island because it was easy to defend. However, cities in the middle of rivers tend to flood, and a few hundred years ago, the Parisians realized they needed to shore up their banks. So they raised the city above the ruins here and then built on top of them.”

To his surprise, Greg had never realized how high Paris was built above the Seine. Even in 1615, Notre Dame perched a good two stories above the water. In twenty-first-century Paris, the river was flanked by steep walls for miles, as though in a man-made canyon, while the city sat high above the waterline. It had never occurred to him that there might be something
below
the city before. “Why didn't they just fill all this in with dirt and build the city on that?” Greg asked. “Wouldn't that have been sturdier?”

“Not necessarily,” his father replied. “Plus, it would have required an incredible amount of dirt in a time well before there were dump trucks to move it.”

“In our time, you can actually visit these exact ruins,” his mother added. “There's an underground museum across the street from Notre Dame. We were going to take you there.”

“Looks like we get to visit for free now,” Dad said with a chuckle.

“Can anyone see any place that the other half of the stone might be hidden?” Greg asked.

“I can see a
thousand
places where it might be hidden,” Aramis said sourly. “These ruins could cover the entire island.”

“No, it must be close,” Greg said. “Why else would Dinicoeur say it was
under
the king's nose?”

“Because the entrance to the ruins is under the king's nose,” Aramis answered. “That's all he was talking about. As for the stone, it could be
anywhere
down here.”

Greg sighed. As usual, nothing concerning the Devil's Stone was ever easy. “How about a Crown of Minerva?” he asked. “The stone ought to be near that. Does anyone see it? Or know where to start looking for it?”

“I don't see any crown around here,” Dad replied.

“Neither do I,” Aramis said.

“Minerva was the Roman goddess of wisdom, medicine, and commerce,” Mom told them. “I'd guess we'd find statues of her near the market, which would have been at the center of a Roman city.”

“That would probably be a rectangle marked by a series of evenly spaced columns,” Dad put in. “I'm sure some of those must still be standing.”

Greg looked to his parents, impressed. Sometimes he forgot how much they knew.

“Any idea how to find that in all this darkness?” Aramis asked.

“As a matter of fact, I do,” Dad replied. “I'll be right back!” He scrambled back up the ladder through the hole in the ceiling.

Greg heard him clattering around in the atelier above for a bit, and then he was back. “Help me with this!” he called.

He was lowering something through the hole. Greg and Aramis helped ease it down to the ground. It was a large mirror, its surface chipped and pitted, but it still worked. The light from the torches reflected off it and bounced farther into the ruins.

“I know mirrors aren't too common these days,” Dad said, climbing down through the hole again, “but I figured a sculptor would probably have one to help him see his work from all angles.”

“Nice thinking, Dad,” Greg said.

They angled the mirror to reflect the light around the ruins. Sure enough, toward the center of the island, they spotted a rectangle of broken columns.

“That's it!” Aramis cried.

They quickly picked their way through the ruins to the ancient marketplace. The subterranean city was like a ghost town and a dark, spooky cavern combined. Outside the dim reach of the torches everyone carried, there was only darkness. Anything—or anyone—could be out there. Greg realized he wasn't the only one who felt ill at ease. Everyone stayed clustered together, a small outpost of torchlight in a sea of darkness.

The marketplace was only a shadow of what it had once been. None of the stately columns was intact; most lay toppled and shattered in the dust. Many appeared to have been pilfered to form the pilings supporting the city above.

“I think we need to split up,” Dad said. “This place is much bigger than I expected, and we need to work as quickly as possible.”

Everyone reluctantly spread out in the darkness to hunt for the Crown of Minerva. Greg's feeling of unease grew worse the farther away from the others he got. It was easy to imagine his enemies lurking in the darkness close by. Surely there were other entrances to this underground world besides the one he'd come through. Dinicoeur or Richelieu could be only a few feet away and he'd never know until their hands were clenched around his neck. Greg gulped, trying to steady his nerves, and picked carefully through the ruins, keeping one eye out for trouble.

Ahead, he spotted something massive, a sheer wall where the ruins stopped abruptly. He realized it was probably Notre Dame. The cathedral was too massive to simply prop atop pilings like most other buildings. Instead, its foundation had been laid on solid ground, right in the midst of the ancient Roman city.

“Over here!” Mom called.

Greg spun around. His mother was waving her torch excitedly. She was at the far end of the marketplace, and in the gloom, her flame looked as small as a firefly in the distance. The torches of Aramis and Greg's father were already converging on hers.

Greg raced back, relieved to be able to regroup, leaping over toppled columns and crunching through minefields of broken pottery. He found the others gathered in the remains of a large building that had dominated one end of the marketplace. Wide marble steps rose up to it, as though it had been of some importance. The columns that flanked this building—or at least, what remained of them—were far more ornate than those of the rest of the market. The floors were tiled with intricate mosaics, so well preserved that they looked as though they had only been created the day before.

“What was this place?” Greg asked. “A bank?”

“No, someplace far more important to the Romans,” his father replied. “A bathhouse. Most of the rooms around us were used for cleansing.” He pointed to places where the floor had collapsed, revealing stacks of what looked like tiles underneath. “That would have been a caldarium—a hot bath. Hot air would have been pumped under the floor there to heat the room.”

“Did you find—?” Greg began.

“There,” Mom said, pointing with her torch.

Not far away, another intricate mosaic covered an interior wall of the bath. It featured a beautiful woman with long, flowing hair and brilliant blue eyes. She wore a toga and sandals. An owl perched on her shoulder, and a quiver of arrows was slung across her back.

“Minerva,” Greg said.

“Yes,” Aramis said. “Although there's something strange about that portrait, isn't there?”

“You're right,” Greg's father said. “Although I can't put my finger on it, exactly.”

“It's not the portrait that's unusual,” Greg said. “It's the
wall
.”

“What do you mean?” Aramis asked.

“It's
still standing
,” Greg explained. “Every other wall in this entire ruin has crumbled at least a little. This one's been built to last.”

“And look at this,” Greg's mother said. “It's not the only one.”

As everyone came closer, they realized that the portrait of Minerva was actually the front face of a medium-sized room, about twenty feet on each side. Each of the four walls was equally well built and still standing after almost two millennia. All were covered with intricate mosaics depicting Minerva.

“Whoever built this certainly wanted it to stand the test of time,” Dad said. He rapped his knuckles against it. “These walls feel like they're a foot thick.”

“And there's no door,” Aramis said. “It seems to be a crypt of some sort.”

“To hold the Devil's Stone,” Greg said. Even as he spoke the words, he knew they were true. He could feel the stone he wore around his own neck pulsing more now. It actually seemed to be pulling him toward the crypt, as though both halves of the stone were attracted to each other.

“But how are we supposed to get to it if there's no door?” Mom asked.

“That's for us to figure out, I think,” Dad told her. “It wasn't supposed to be easy to get to this half.”

“We need to find the Crown of Minerva,” Greg said. He returned his attention to the first mosaic they'd encountered. The very top of Minerva's head was obscured by a cloud of ancient cobwebs. Greg brushed it away and, to his delight, found a crown hidden behind them—a bejeweled tiara studded with opalescent stones. His joy quickly turned to frustration, however. He'd been hoping the next part would be easy—that there might be an inscription on the crown, telling them what to do next—but now he realized they were stuck again.

“Maybe it's the wrong Minerva,” his mother said.

Greg's father and Aramis quickly circled the crypt to examine the other portraits of Minerva. “No,” Dad reported sadly. “None of the others is wearing a crown.”

“So what do we do now?” Aramis asked Greg. “Can you make the half of the stone you already have do something to make the crypt open?”

“Like what?” Greg asked.

“I don't know,” Aramis said. “If the stone gives you all sorts of power, maybe you can just
wish
the crypt to open or something.”

Greg didn't think that would work, but he tried it anyhow, just to make sure. He focused all his concentration on the crypt, willing the walls to crumble—or slide aside—or do
something
. But they stayed stubbornly upright.

Greg shook his head with a sigh. They couldn't have come all this way, come so close, just to get stymied now. “The stone won't do this for us,” he said. “We have to do it ourselves, to prove our worth. I know there's a solution. I can sense it somehow. It's like all the pieces of the puzzle are there, but I just can't figure out how to put them together. . . .”

He found his eye drawn to the the glittering jewels in Minerva's crown. While most of them were nice, uniform geometric shapes like squares and diamonds, the one in the center was oddly asymmetrical. And yet there was something strangely familiar about it. Greg stared at it a moment, wondering where he'd seen it before, his own words echoing in his head.
All the pieces of the puzzle . . . figure out how to put them together.

He gasped, suddenly realizing where he'd seen the shape before. “It all makes sense.”

“What?” Aramis asked.

“The answer has been right in front of me all along,” Greg said. He lifted the amulet from around his neck and stood on tiptoe before the mosaic. The half of the Devil's Stone in his hand and the jewel in the center of the crown were exactly the same size and shape.

The others gasped in recognition.

Greg popped the stone out of the amulet, then pressed it into the matching spot on the mosaic. The tile retracted into the wall and the stone locked into place with a click.

Nothing else happened.

It simply remained eerily quiet in the ruins.

“What now?” Greg asked.

“You've only put the key in the lock,” Aramis told him. “Maybe you still have to turn it.”

Greg set his hand on the stone. To his surprise, it turned easily. There were more clicks from behind the wall, as if turning the stone had set off a chain of events, each bigger than the last. The clicks grew louder and louder, and the crypt rumbled as though some ancient machinery inside was coming to life.