M. Rose - The Secret Language of Stones

He’d been perched on the sculpture gracing the sepulcher, but with him gone I could see it clearly.

Rising as if out of each side of the stone came two sculptured arms from the elbow down, meeting in the middle, holding hands. A man’s arm and a woman’s arm made of bronze, once shining, now a sour verdigris color from years of exposure to the elements.

Extremely realistic, from the veins running up his arm to her manicured nails and lovely bracelet, the lovers’ hands were united forever above their tomb. Eerie, haunting, eternally clasped, the memorial was poignant and utterly magnificent.

None of the others, of so many who journeyed here because of what I wrote, found it. Only you.

“What a romantic you are, Jean Luc,” I whispered. “Sending me on a pilgrimage to an ancient lovers’ tomb to reassure me, to reassure every woman who read that column, about everlasting love. I wonder how it helped you deal with what you faced on the battlefield to remember this tomb. Yes, we live, and yes, we die. But our passions can survive beyond us.”

“Reports are the tsar’s mother is distraught. No one has any information as to the whereabouts of Tsarina Alexandra and the children,” Monsieur Orloff said as I walked into the apartment to find him, Grigori, and two other members of the Two-Headed Eagles discussing the news from Russia.

Monsieur looked up at me and nodded. “Anna will be with you in just a moment.”

“Why would the Bolsheviks harm them?” Grigori asked, his voice strained.

It must be so hard, I thought, for them to be here, so far from home, so worried about the family they knew and loved. Even though many criticized the royals and said they were out of touch and the country desperately needed a cleansing, the Romanovs remained beloved by many. And to hear Monsieur tell it, the way the Bolshevik regime had taken over and grabbed power was so brutal, they actually aroused sympathy for the tsar and his family among some nonsupporters. The last thing they’d intended.

“Because they are brutes, Grigori,” Monsieur said wearily. “Because they are brutes. The Dowager is in exile, she has no money, she’s afraid for the lives of everyone in her family. The time for action might be upon us-”

“Opaline, I’m so sorry to keep you waiting.” Anna came bustling in to greet me. She and I were soon out the door.

Outside, dusk settled over the city as we walked to the metro. After my experience at Père-Lachaise I’d told Anna that I was desperate and determined to find some way to control my powers now. I’d shown her the silver sheets I’d found at my great-grandmother’s house in hopes they might hold a clue, but she couldn’t make sense of them. In order to help, she said, she needed certain tools and potions she didn’t keep in the apartment. Even though Monsieur didn’t visit her secret chamber, he knew of it and tolerated it. But only because she promised him she’d never keep anything suspect there in case the police ever got wind of her abilities and forced an inspection.

So when necessary, she called on her cousin Galina Trevoda, who was, like Anna, a Russian mystic schooled in the occult, and borrowed her workspace.

The metro left us off at rue de Courcelles, and we walked two blocks before turning onto rue Daru. Halfway down the street, I saw the gold onion domes of the Cathédrale Saint-Alexandre-Nevsky afire in the setting sun.

“But this is a church,” I said to Anna. “I came here with my parents a few weeks ago for the wedding of my mother’s friend.”

“Picasso? The painter who married the Russian dancer?” Anna asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, this is where Galina lives and works. She’s the cathedral’s caretaker.”

“Do they know?”

“That she’s a mystic?”

I nodded.

“The bishop is her brother, so no one delves too deeply or looks too closely. Yes, she must be careful, but really no more careful than any of us need to be these days.”

We entered the stone edifice and went into the narthex and past the holy water font.

“At the wedding, I saw people filling up jars from here. What were they doing?” I asked.

“We don’t bless ourselves with the water the way Catholics do; we take it home to drink.”

Our footsteps echoed as we crossed the foyer and stepped into the nave.

A whole golden universe opened up before me, glittering and glowing.

“It’s stunning,” I said, marveling at the opulent interior. “So different when it’s not crowded. I couldn’t see any of it during the wedding.”

“The church was built almost sixty years ago,” Anna said, “long before anyone dreamed so many Russians would emigrate to France. Its congregation far exceeds its space now.”

A mysterious atmosphere, redolent with incense, swirled around us. In the still silence, I heard a bird’s wings flapping and looked up into the golden mosaic of the high vaulted apse. Almost afraid to see if it was a crow, I watched for it to come swooping down, but it stayed invisible.

Like the ceiling, the walls were decorated with ornate gold and jewel tone mosaics. In every corner, golden shrines glittered in gilded niches. Icons graced every table. Not an inch of the interior was unadorned. I looked at Anna’s face, at my hands. The reflection bathed both of us. We too were turned to gold.

“It’s like being inside of a jewel box.”

“You don’t need to whisper,” Anna said as she hooked her arm in mine. “The service has been over for hours. Come, it’s this way.”

She led me behind the sacristy, through an arched gilt door. We entered a hallway. Gone were the mosaics and icons. Here the walls were bare stone. The only adornments, the clergy’s robes hanging on hooks and various religious objects sitting on utilitarian shelves.

We came to a narrow iron staircase. I dreaded taking the first step. Were there burial chambers here too? Would the voices reach out to me?

Anna had already started. “Opaline?”

“I’m coming.”

I followed her down the steps, which emptied into a crypt. Narrow, darkened passageways led to the right and left. The cooler temperature reminded me of our underground at the Palais, though far more damp.

“There’s a world beneath every building and street in Paris, isn’t there?” I asked.

Anna nodded. “When the architects found these particular grottoes, they were going to close them up, but the bishop asked for them to be connected to the church, because every soul requires secret places for contemplation as well as open spaces for celebration.”

“Are people buried down here?” I’d begun to hear far-off murmurs and feared the messaging had started up again in this dark, dank foreign place.

She shook her head. “No, those are flesh-and-blood voices you hear from up above, traveling via air shafts.”

As we continued on, the murmurs lessened and became inaudible and all was silent except for our footsteps. When it seemed we could go no farther, Anna turned right into one of the dark alcoves and stopped in front of a wooden door.

Before she could knock, it creaked open.

I froze. Too unsettling, the ambiance, like being inside of an Edgar Allan Poe poem or Leroux’s underground opera house, made me anxious. Letting out a shout, I jumped back just as a pale, luminous face appeared in the doorway.

“My dear, dear Anna. I’m so glad to see you,” a lyrical female voice with a heavy Russian accent greeted us.

In the darkness, the woman’s head seemed disembodied. Not hidden in the shadows, but part of them. Then she opened the door wider, and I saw how a trick of the light and Galina’s black hooded robe combined to create the frightening effect.