Under normal circumstances, I'd defer to Vidocq, but he's already separated himself from us. And at this remove, he looks exactly the German banker he's pretending to be. Strawberry blond hair, a boxwood shrub of a mustache . . . he's even given himself a new walk. The only sign that it's Vidocq under that cambric shirt and white pique vest is the right foot, dragging slightly after the left.

"She promised to come at the dot of eleven," I say. "That's just ten minutes away."

To make the time pass, I tell him of the great men who were once buried here. I speak of Charles Martel and Hugh Capet . . . Henri the Second and Louis the Fourteenth. They might as well be census figures.

"Is it eleven yet?" he asks.

"Soon."

"But when?"

I can hear the testiness in my voice now. "Did you behave like this with Monsieur Tepac? I'm sure he took you places."

"Not cathedrals," answers Charles, sulkily. "We went fishing once, but that was nearly as dull. I believe the fish were bored, too. I think they swallowed the hooks just to-hold on! Is that her?"

W hat will amaze me afterward is how he knew it was a woman. The five personages processing down the side aisle are notable for their plain and shapeless dress, and the small bent figure in the center is virtually hidden under a black mantilla. Vidocq was right on this point, anyway: She travels light.

"Yes," I say. "That's her."

"Well, then, what are we waiting for?"

He's all set to race after them, but I catch him by the arm. "Not just yet. She has to pay respects to her parents first." "And where are they?"

"Down below."

He stares at me, uncomprehending.

"They're buried there," I explain.

"And how long does it take to pay respects?"

"Depends," I say. "On how respectful you're feeling." As the mourning party files into the Lady Chapel, the rear guard

glances back, and I switch my eyes toward the immense rose windows overlooking the transept. I make a show of studying them, but really, I'm just ticking off the seconds: one . . . two . . . three. . . .

I don't even reach ten, because it suddenly occurs to me I've forgotten something.

Charles.

I take a step toward the west door. He's not there. Another step toward the triforium. Not there.

I scan the pews and aisles, I peer down the apse . . . and then I turn to the one place I've been avoiding. Which is exactly where I find him: scurrying into the Lady Chapel.

It won't do to sprint. Long strides are the most I can allow myself, and as I move toward the high altar, I'm waving my arms at Vidocq, but he's contemplating the clerestory, and I see Charles draw open the iron gate and disappear into the darkness, and I nearly cry out, but all I can do is keep moving.

The gate is still ajar when I get there. Breathing out mold and damp -and the same suggestion of rot that washed over me in my f irst carriage ride with Vidocq. I take a single step forward. The darkness surges round me.

"Charles," I whisper.

How I wish I'd stopped for a candle! There's not a single torch in the place. I move one step at a time, and even so, I nearly come to a bad end when, out of nowhere, a descending staircase appears. Grabbing for the wall, I haul myself erect. A pool of cold, piquant air billows up from below, seals me on that top step, as if it were marbling me round.

"Charles . . ."

Out of the murk, ghostly shapes bleed free, and it is with a deeper chill that I realize what they are. Sepulchers. Bearing France's illustrious dead.

It was here the revolutionaries came, fifteen years ago, tearing open tombs, hammering effigies into crumbs, emptying royal hearts and entrails from lead buckets, throwing bone after bone into great open pits. Erasing more than a thousand years of history in thirteen days.

Why, then, do I feel like the one being erased? I could hammer this darkness, and it would simply absorb me, cell by cell.

"Hector?"

He speaks only once, but I fasten onto that sound and haul myself toward it, stone by stone. The scrape of my boots has a liquid resonance, so that, as I descend, I have the sense of being a cataract, spilling ever downward, waiting for a receptacle.

Which is nothing more than a trembling hand. And a trembling voice.

"It's so dark here. I hate it."

"I know. Let me see if . . ."