Dan Simmons - Drood

Subtly distinguished, was confusèd here.

Their wherry had no sail, too; ours had none;

And in it two more horrid knaves than Charon.

Arses were heard to croak instead of frogs,

And for one Cerberus, the whole coast was dogs.

Furies there wanted not; each scold was ten;

And for the cries of ghosts, women, and men

Laden with plague-sores and their sins were heard,

Lashed by their consciences; to die, afeard.”

I tried to catch Dickens’s eye then, to tell him through sheer glare and intensity that it was time to leave, past time to leave, that our opium-lord host was insane, as were we for coming down here in the first place, but the Inimitable—d— n his eyes! — was nodding again as if all this made sense and saying, “Very good, very good. Is there anything else we need to know to get us to Drood?”

“Only to remember to pay the horrid knaves,” whispered King Lazaree.

“Of course, of course,” said Dickens, sounding absolutely delighted with himself and the Chinaman. “We shall be going, then. Ah… I presume that the corrider we entered through and your… ah… establishment here are, in terms of, well, wells, part of the eternal disordered order?”

Lazaree actually smiled. I saw the gleam of very small, very sharp teeth. They looked to have been filed to points. “Of course,” he said softly. “Consider the former the south aisle of the nave and the latter the Cloister Garth.”

“Thank you very much indeed,” said Dickens. “Come, Wilkie,” he said to me as he led us back out of the opium den of mummies.

“One last thing,” said King Lazaree as we were ready to go out through the doorway into the main hall of the mummies.

Dickens paused and leaned on his stick.

“Watch out for the boys,” said the Chinaman. “Some are cannibals.”

WE HEADED BACK into and down the outer corridor the way we had come. The bullseye lantern seemed dimmer than before.

“Are we leaving?” I asked hopefully.

“Leaving? Of course not. You heard what King Lazaree said. We’re close to the entrance of the actual Undertown. With any luck at all, we shall meet with Drood and be back to take Detective Hatchery out to breakfast before the sun rises over Sain’t Ghastly Grim’s.”

“I heard that obscene Chinaman say that our bodies—and Hatchery’s—would be found floating in the Thames if we continued with this insane quest,” I said. My voice echoed from stone. It was not a completely steady sound.

Dickens laughed softly. I believe I began hating him at that moment.

“Nonsense, Wilkie, nonsense. You understand his point of view. Should something happen to us down here—and we are, after all, men of some public notice, my dear Wilkie—then the ensuing attention on their little sanctuary here would be devastating.”

“So they will dump us in the Thames together,” I muttered. “What was all that French about?”

“You did not understand?” asked Dickens as he led us back towards the first corridor. “I thought you spoke some French.”

“I was distracted,” I said sulkily. I was tempted to add, And I have not been crossing the Channel to the little village of Condette to visit an actress in secret for the past five years, so I have had less opportunity to practise my French, but I restrained myself.

“It was some small poem,” said the author. He paused in the darkness, cleared his throat, and recited…

“I am a great partisan of order,

But I do not like the one here.

It depicts an eternal disorder,

And, when he consigns you here,

God never revokes the order.”

I looked left and right at the walled-up entrances to the ancient loculi . The poem almost—not quite—made sense.

“That and his mention of Wells made it all clear,” continued Dickens.

“Mention of wells?” I said stupidly.

“Wells Cathedral, certainly,” said Dickens, lifting the lamp and leading us on again. “You’ve been there, I assume.”

“Well, yes, but…”

“This lower level of the catacombs obviously is laid out in the design of a great cathedral… Wells, to be precise. What seems random is quite determined. Nave, chapter house, north and south transepts, altar, and apse. King Lazaree’s opium den, for instance, as he was kind enough to explain, would be where the Cloister Garth is in Wells Cathedral. Our entrance point from above would be at the western towers. We have just returned to the south aisle of the nave, you see, and have turned right towards the south transept. Notice how this corridor is wider than the one to the cloister?”

I nodded but Dickens did not look back to see the motion as we pressed on. “I heard some mention of an altar and a rude curtain,” I said.

“Ah, yes. But perhaps you did not follow that the word is ‘rood’— r-o-o-d—my dear Wilkie. As you must know, and certainly I must, since I grew up quite literally in the shadow of the great cathedral at Rochester, about which I hope to write someday, the apse is the semicircular recess at the altar end of the chancel. On one side of the high altar, to hide the work of the priests from the common eyes, is the altar screen. On the other side, the transept side, the opposing screen is called the rood screen. Fascinating, is it not, how that word… ‘rood’… rhymes so charmingly with ‘Drood.’ ”

“Fascinating,” I said drily. “And what was all that rot about Styx, of Acheron, more horrid knaves than Charon, and arses croaking instead of frogs?”

“You did not recognise that?” cried Dickens. He actually stopped in his surprise and swung the lamp in my direction. “That was our own dear Ben Jonson and his ‘On the Famous Voyage,’ written somewhere around the Year of Our Lord 1610, if I am not mistaken.”

“You rarely are,” I muttered.

“Thank you,” said Dickens, completely missing my sarcasm.

“But what did all that verse about Cocytus, Phlegethon, filth, stench, noise, and Charon and Cerebus have to do with Mr Drood?”

“It tells me that a river voyage lies before one or both of us, my dear Wilkie.” The lantern showed the corridor—the “nave” as it were—narrowing ahead towards multiple openings. Transept and apse? Altar screen and rood screen? Shelves of opium-smoking Asian mummies? Or just more foul, bone-filled crypts?

“A river voyage?” I repeated stupidly. I wanted very much to have my laudanum then. And I wished very much that I were at home to have it.

THE “APSE” WAS a circular area of the catacomb set under a dome of stone rising about fifteen feet above the floor. We came to it from the side, as if stepping in from the choir aisle, should this be the layout of an actual cathedral. The “altar” was a massive stone bier much like the one that Hatchery had shifted so far above us now.

“If we are meant to move that,” I said, pointing to the bier, “then our voyage ends here.”

Dickens nodded. “We’re not” was all he said. There was a rotted curtain to the left—perhaps once a tapestry, although all patterns had faded to black and brown in the subterranean darkness over the centuries—partially shielding the bier-altar from the apse-area under the dome. Another, plainer, even more rotted curtain hung against the stone wall to the right of this rude presbytery.

“The rood screen,” said Dickens, pointing with his stick at this second curtain. Still using his cane, he moved the rotted fabric aside to reveal a narrow gap in the wall.

The descent here was much steeper and narrower than anything we had yet seen. The steps were of wood; the tunnel appeared to have been gouged out of soil and stone; there were crude wooden pilings shoring up the sides and ceiling.