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I recalled my own first reaction to the place, and felt an even closer kinship with this quiet young man I’d only met three days ago.
The iron gates swung open, and we stepped into the cloistered aisle with its peeling frescoes and fragile-looking pillars. “Sacred,” Paul informed me, as he shuffled the ring of keys, “is just through here.”
“Just through here” lay beyond the altar, beyond the second iron gate—the gate that Christian hadn’t had the key to yesterday. The tunneled passage in behind looked every bit as uninviting as I remembered, and even when Paul had successfully sprung the l
ock I hung back, hesitating, peering with a coward’s eyes into the darkness. “I haven’t brought a torch.”
“A flashlight, you mean? That’s OK, I’ve got one.” It was a pocket torch, a small one, hardly any help at all, but he snapped it on and stepped into the passageway ahead of me. “I think the main switch is around here somewhere. Yeah, here we go.” A flood of brilliant yellow light dissolved the lurking shadows.
I blinked, surprised. “Electric light?”
“Sure. This place is kind of a museum, you know. They do take tourists through, during the summer, and I guess they don’t want people stumbling around. Here, watch your step.” He guided me over the uneven threshold. The passageway was filled on either side with artifacts and curious equipment, neatly laid out on display. Ancient tools for farming and for wine-making shared equal space with emblems of religion and broken statuary, the whole effect being one of wondrous variety. “This is where the hermit lived, originally,” said Paul. A few steps on, the passage turned and widened briefly in an arched and empty room of sorts, where more pale statues stared benignly down on us.
My claustrophobia eased a little and I paused to draw a deep and steady breath. “Is this the sacred part?”
“No. Behind you.”
I turned, and saw what looked like another tunnel running down into the rock, its entrance barred by an ornate black metal barrier, waist-high, anchored in the scarred and worn limestone. Curious, I went as close as the barrier allowed, and peered over it at the flight of crudely chiseled stairs that steeply dropped toward a glowing light. It made me dizzy, looking down. “Like Jacob’s ladder in reverse,” I said to Paul, as he joined me at the railing.
“It’s a well,” he said. “A holy well.”
“But where’s the water?”
He smiled. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
I had no great desire to go still deeper underground, but neither did I want to seem a coward. And at least I trusted Paul to bring me safely out again.
Climbing the barrier proved simple enough, no different than climbing a stile back home, but the stairs were a different matter. They were irregular in shape, some only several inches high while others fell two feet or more, and my fingers scrabbled in the dust and chips of rock to find a firmer handhold as I made my slow descent. Paul, who had clearly done this before, went down like a mountain goat, his steps sure and even. I was more ungainly, and brought the dust with me, a great whoofing cloud of it that swirled on even after I had stopped to join Paul on the narrow ledge at the bottom of the stairs.
“This,” he said, “is the sacred part.” His hushed voice sounded hollow, like the echo round an indoor swimming pool. Intrigued, I braced one hand against the paper-cool stone and leaned forward for a proper look.
The water was there, as he had promised. Clear, holy water, pale turquoise in the glare of an electric light that hung from the stone arch overhead. It was, Paul told me, a Merovingian well, meaning it dated back to the time of the Franks—older, he thought, than Sainte Radegonde herself. The shaft sank deep and straight and true; several meters deep, I would have said, and yet the water was so amazingly clear that I could see the scattering of pebbles at the bottom.
“You can even see the footholds,” Paul said, pointing, “that the well-diggers used to climb out again, after they’d struck water.” The footholds ran like a makeshift ladder, straight to the bottom of the well—small, even squares the width of one man’s boot, gouged in the yielding yellow stone.
I sighed, and the surface of the water shivered. “Well,” I said, “at least we know that Harry isn’t anywhere down here.”
“A cheerful thought,” Paul smiled. “But you’re right, it’d be pretty hard to hide something in that water. Even a King John coin.” He flipped a tiny half-franc piece into the well to demonstrate, and we watched until it came to rest upon the bottom, clearly visible. “Here, make a wish,” Paul told me, handing me another coin.
He sounded just like my father, when he said that. For a moment I was five years old again and standing at the rim of the fountain in the courtyard of our house in Italy. But then I caught my own reflection in the water of the well, and the child vanished. I shook my head. “I don’t have anything to wish for.”
“Everyone has something to wish for. Besides, how often do you get a chance to make a wish in holy water?”
“No, honestly, you needn’t waste your money…”
“Has anyone ever told you you’re a terrible cynic?” He grinned and closed his eyes. “OK, never mind. I’ll make a wish for you. There,” he said, and tossed the second coin into the waiting well. It hit the water with a satisfying plunk. End over end my unknown wish tumbled, glittering, and landed close to Paul’s one on the smooth and level bottom.
“So what did I wish for?” I asked, curious.
“Bad luck to tell,” he reminded me. Turning, he offered me his hand to help me up the stairs again. “Right,” he said, “let’s give this place a proper search, and see what we can find.”
We found a treasure trove of slightly dusty artifacts displayed in every crevice of the caves. We found a smaller chamber at the tunnel’s end, where someone evidently lived from time to time. “There’s a caretaker in the summer,” Paul informed me, “on and off. I think she stays up here.” But no one had been staying here recently. The bed was stripped, the cupboards empty, and dust lay thickly settled on the floor, marked by no sign of footprints save our own. We found a working wine press tucked in one high corner of the largest cave.
What we didn’t find, of course, was anything that Harry might have left. There wasn’t so much as a chewing-gum wrapper or a shred of tissue dropped in that bright, winding underground maze. I was, by turns, relieved and disappointed. Relieved because I hadn’t turned up any evidence that Harry was in trouble, disappointed because I hadn’t turned up any evidence that Harry was here at all. There was only that blasted coin.
Paul poked at the donation saucer as we paused before the simple altar on our way back out. “Is this where you found the King John coin?”
My face flamed with embarrassment, but I didn’t bother to deny it. The problem with Paul, I thought, was that he was too damn clever. He had a quiet but persistent way of finding out the truth. “Yes. I… I put in a donation of my own,” I added, as if that made my theft acceptable, but Paul didn’t seem to be listening.
