Chapter 4: The Raid
The prostitute Margot had told the
heroes that Durgo’s gang had their lair in an old apartment house located close
to The Temple. Presumably the location allowed the gang to quickly flee to the
Temple for sanctuary to avoid arrest. The heroes planned to attack the gang’s
hideout. Gaston led a force of Cardinal’s Guards including Norbert, Cobweb, and
Jacques. While some of the Guards surrounded the building, the heroes led the
assault. Norbert smashed down the front door and the others followed. They
killed or captured most of the gang except for Durgo and his lieutenant, the
pistol packing Bart Two-Gun.
Durgo ran up a narrow stair that led to
a trap door to the apartment house’s attic. He was pursued by Cobweb, Gaston,
and several of the others. When the Guards reached the attic they saw it was
empty and unused except by the flock of pigeons that roosted there. Someone or
something had startled the birds, but through the storm of wings Cobweb managed
to notice a half-opened, dirt encrusted window that provided access to the
apartment house’s steeply sloped roof. He and Gaston climbed out the window and
began to traverse the roof, but the nimble Cobweb had years of practice
climbing on roofs and in and out of windows from before he had entered the
Cardinal’s Guard and he soon outdistanced Gaston. Ahead he could see Durgo
slide down a drain pipe and run atop a garden wall that led to a neighboring
courtyard. Durgo jumped down into the courtyard.
When Cobweb reached the courtyard the
only thing in sight was an old well. He ran towards it and listened. Faintly he
could hear the sound of footsteps fading away below. A closer look revealed a
dry well shaft with hand rungs leading down to a narrow, low-ceilinged tunnel. Without
a light source, Cobweb could not continue. Reluctantly he climbed back up the
shaft where he found Gaston who ordered two of his Guards to check the gang’s
hideout for lamps, candles, or torches that they could use to search the well
tunnel.
Meanwhile a passerby told them that she
had seen a man fitting Durgo’s description climb over the cemetery wall and run
down the street towards Saint Martin’s. From that direction they heard cries of
“Stop in the name of the law!” They set out in pursuit.
Gaston soon began to outdistance Cobweb.
The Captain’s long legs ate up the distance and the ferocious expression on his
face caused others to leap out of his way. Ahead, Durgo tried to run towards
the Temple, but a patrol of Cardinal’s Guards cut him off and he had to turn
northwest.
Instead of trying to outrun his Captain,
Cobweb hitched a ride on a coach that was racing down the street at breakneck
speed. He barely managed to keep hold and he heard his pistol clatter to the
street. It’s loaded and wound. I hope the
damn thing doesn’t go off and kill someone. He climbed on top of the coach
and the height allowed him to see Durgo who was running about a block ahead of
him. He seemed to be heading for the church of Saint Martins. Probably looking for sanctuary. And in
one hand he clutched a large butcher knife that he used to frighten or slash
his way past the other pedestrians. Cobweb commandeered the coach at swordpoint
and ordered the driver. “In the name of the Cardinal, follow that man!”
The coach was already traveling at
breakneck speed, but the driver applied his whip to the horses and made it go even
faster. The coach caught up with Durgo at the next corner, which it took on
just two wheels. Cobweb was afraid it would tip over so he leapt from the roof and
flipped to the ground between Durgo and the sanctuary of St. Martins. He ordered
Durgo to surrender, but Durgo attacked him. They fought. Durgo tried to draw
his hatchet, but it was knocked aside in the battle. Still his frenzied offense
drove Cobweb back long enough for the athletic Durgo to climb the side of a
building and swing up onto the balcony. Cobweb tossed Durgo’s hatchet after
him, but it harmlessly stuck in the balcony railing. Cobweb climbed after
Durgo.
The climb continued up the facade of St.
Martin’s Bell Tower. Cobweb followed the gang leader as he climbed through an
open archway into the bell tower of the church. The two fought up and down the bell
tower stairs, Cobweb’s rapier against Durgo’s knife and axe. The gang leader
was bleeding in two places before the superior swordsmanship of the Cardinal’s
Guard forced him to concede defeat. He surrendered and Cobweb made Durgo climb
back down to the building where they were both soon spotted by Gaston and the
other Cardinal’s Guards. Durgo climbed the rest of the way under the guns of
the Guards. He and the rest of the prisoners were sent to the Little Chateau
with an escort of Paris Archers and Red Guards led by Jacques and Norbert. One of
the gang was unaccounted for. While most of the Guards had followed the gang
leader, Durgo’s lieutenant, Bart Two-Gun had somehow escaped.
Chapter 5: The Tunnels
Cover of Discours des Sorceirs (1602) by Henry Boguet
Other events intervened before Gaston
could return to explore the escape tunnel from the dry well. While researching
the Loup Garou, Father Signoret had met a fellow scholar of the occult named
Jean-Yves Barreau. Barreau had pointed Signoret towards a book called Discours des Sorceirs (English: Hateful
Speech from Wizards) which was first published in Lyon in 1602 by the
Magistrate, Henry Boguet. Boguet, who had died in 1619, was a well known jurist
and judge in the County of Burgundy. His renown was to a large degree based on
his fame as a demonologist and for his book, which had been reprinted twelve
times in the years since it was first published. The Discours had a lengthy chapter on werewolves.
The chapter included pictures
(unexplained) of what the author called a “Piège à Loup” (English: Wolf Cage or
Wolf Trap). The object depicted appeared to be a lantern of an unusual design,
but a design that was familiar to the Jesuit for it was identical to an odd
lantern that Signoret had seen in the museum-like Wunderkammer room in
Amsterdam during a trip to Holland. And it also looked identical to the lantern
shown hanging from the scaffold in an illustration entitled the Death of Le
Courtaud that he had seen in Bernard Guenée’s Les Chroniques de Paris. Guenée’s book described the attacks by an
enormous pack of wolves on the city of Paris itself during the middle of the 15th
century. The pack’s leader was Le Courtaud.
Barreau was able to confirm two things
about the mysterious lantern or lanterns. First that a Piège à Loup lantern was said to somehow act as a sort of trap to catch
or hold a Loup Garou and second that the lantern from the scaffold was rumored
to still be in Paris, kept in the basement vaults of the Cathedral of Notre Dame
de Paris. Father Signoret thanked the Lord that his research had uncovered an
object that would help in the struggle against the cursed Loup Garou.
Unfortunately there was a complication.
During a previous mission for the
Society of Jesus, Father Signoret had lost a holy relic, the Thigh Bone of St.
Anthony, and had made an enemy of Friar Fitellus, an Inquisitor of the Roman
Inquisition who had been seeking the same relic. The last time Fitellus had been
in Paris he had filed several severe accusations against Father Signoret with
the ecclesiastical authorities. Now Fitellus had reappeared in Paris along with
a group of Inquisition familiars some of whom the Friar had assigned to
constantly and openly follow the Jesuit.
Father Signoret was worried for his own
safety, but in he was even more worried about being followed for other reasons.
Through his research regarding legends of shape changers, he had discovered the
existence of an artifact known as the Wolf Trap Lantern that could prove useful
in combating werewolves. The artifact was located in the vaults beneath the
Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris and while Signoret did not have permission to
take the Lantern, he nevertheless intended to borrow it without permission for
the greater good and the glory of God. But he could not afford to be spotted
doing that by his shadows. Therefore he asked Gaston to help safeguard his
person while he tried to temporarily lose his pursuers. They were successful
and the Jesuit managed to obtain the Lantern and to smuggle it out of the
Cathedral vaults.
At last Gaston was able to return and
resume his exploration. He was accompanied by Cobweb and several of the Cardinal’s
Guards who had taken part in the hunt for the Wolf of Soissons and this time
they were prepared with an ample supply of lanterns and torches. By the light
of their lanterns they could see that the tunnel at the bottom of the dry well
was low, narrow, and dirt-lined. To proceed they had to shuffle along hunched
over and with heads bent.
The tunnel smelled of earth and mold
with a whiff of putrescence like a long dead corpse. In places old tree roots reached
out from the walls like bony fingers. Occasionally the support beams creaked
and a trickle of dirt sifted slowly down from the ceiling. At first the tunnel
was shored up by charred pieces of scrap wood scavenged from burned-out buildings,
but as they continued to follow the tunnel this changed and they saw that now the
walls were held up by macabre support beams fashioned from the decayed wood of
old coffin lids. Beneath their feet was a litter of human and animal bones
which they vainly tried not to tread upon.
Eventually their tunnel split into many
side passages. Some seemed to run parallel to each other and many were barely
tall enough to crawl through. All were home to hundreds of sleeping bats which
their lights soon disturbed as the air was filled with the whirring of bat
wings. Cobweb had heard rumors of clouds of bats that were occasionally
glimpsed in the Paris sky at dusk. They found several dead ends where the
branch was too low or narrow to traverse and once the tunnel ended in the broken
open side of an empty coffin. One tunnel was so choked with tree roots that
Gaston had to hack and force his way forward. This tunnel ended with a stone
which, when levered out of the way, revealed the interior of the ancient crypt
of some noble family. They entered, and through the crypt’s wrought iron gate,
they saw the uneven rows of tombstones of one of Paris’s lesser cemeteries.
They found a key hanging from a wall just inside the gate and used it to exit
the crypt. Outside they found the cemetery gate and a sign which identified
this as the Cemetery of Saint Nicolas. Through the cemetery gate they saw the
apartment house hideout of Durgo’s gang. They wondered how many other passages
would lead into an old mausoleum and or someone’s family crypt.
They returned to the crypt. Further
investigation revealed a second concealed entrance that led to a long winding
passage that led back underground. It had several branches most of which they
did not take the time to explore. Ahead Cobweb saw a pair of glowing eyes in
the dark. Thinking that this might be Durgo’s missing lieutenant, they gave
chase, but either the eyes disappeared or the creature fled in the dark. They continued
to follow the passage which eventually opened through a hole in the wall into a
brick-lined cellar or subbasement. The saw a trap door on the ceiling, but it
was either locked or blocked from above. In the wall near the trap door was a
darkened hole with a mound of dirt and broken beneath. They crawled over the
mound into the hole. They crawled along a winding passage that gradually increased
in size until they could again stand and shuffle along with bent heads. The
reached another fork and where they again held to the right hand path.
Here the tunnel’s ceiling was festooned
with numerous small, narrow roots that seemed to dangle and sway with motion in
the flickering light of their lanterns. But soon they realized that the motion
was not an illusion and that what they saw were not small roots but large worms
wriggling in the earth of the tunnel’s ceiling. As Cobweb shuddered in horror,
he and Gaston heard a sound, a sort of low moan. They moved closer and found a
small side tunnel or alcove from which the sound seemed to emanate. Inside they
saw a human figure clad in rags. It recoiled from their light and moaned again,
this time clearly in fear. They spoke calmly to the figure who they soon
realized was a man, his clothing tattered and torn to mere rags encrusted with mud
and filth.
They dimmed their lanterns, the light of
which seemed to pain the poor fugitive and reassured perhaps by their voices or
maybe just their presence he eventually looked towards them. His widely staring
eyes contained fear and possibly madness. He babbled about “Them” and when they
carefully asked who he was and how he came to be there they could get little
sense from him. He kept frantically asking if “They are coming” and for the heroes
to save him “from Them.” He told them that “They” had poked and prodded him in
the dark and had made strange sounds that frightened him, “sometimes it sounded
like a kind of gibbering but as I listened it seemed I could almost make out
some kinds of words.” From what he told them, it seemed the fugitive had been
running from some sort of pursuit and had gotten into the tunnels to hide, but
he had become lost and then “they” had found him and from then on his stay was
darkness and fear.
Cobweb and Gaston assured the man that they
were not lost and that they would protect him from “Them.” Comforted by this,
the madman became friendlier. Cobweb offered to lead him out of the tunnels and
into the light of the world above. He thanked Cobweb and behind his back he
pulled up a handful of earthworms which he offered to Cobweb to eat. Cobweb, who
said he was not feeling especially hungry, declined. But the gesture of
offering seemed oddly familiar and the former thief and present guardsman who realized
that the crazed fugitive was someone he knew from the old days, a pickpocket
and beggar named Romain Light Fingers who had been one of the teachers of his
misspent youth.
The heroes decided that by now, if Bart Two-Gun
ever was here he had long since fled so they returned to the surface world and
brought Romain back into the light of day. Once they were out of the cemetery, Cobweb
took Romain to a tavern and bought him a meal and a drink, questioned him, then
let him go.
EDIT: I found some old notes and used them to revise this.
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