Chapter Fourteen: Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible

   Gaspard pressed himself up against the wall of the crypt entrance, trying to conceal himself as a flash of blue lightning illuminated the damp on the wall like a green window opening into the depths of the sea. 

   He stood there, frozen, hoping the apparition he had just seen, the other Francesca, had not seen him. He blinked as he felt a cold drop of water splash and roll over his scalp. The humidity down here is incredible, he thought, as another droplet hit his head from above. He squinted, straining his eyes, as he looked down into the murk. He then strained his ears trying to discern in which direction Francesca and her uncles had fled. The darkness in this space only betrayed the sounds of age, of the storm outside and the scurryings of rats, irritated at his intrusion.

   He carefully continued down the stone steps, taking care not to slip as he went. His shoulders scraped against the stone walls as the narrow staircase wound down, round and round. Gaspard stretched out his toes, searching for purchase upon each of the steps as his eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness around him. He let out a little sigh, as he finally found himself on the moist, clay floor of the crypt. Looking up he noticed a brief, but sudden flicker of phosphorous light flaring up beyond some short, fat columns in the distance. The columns, vaguely luminescent among the shadows, stretched along the length and breadth of the room like petrified soldiers, though, over-weight soldiers, to be sure, each of them, row upon row, holding the weight of St-Etienne-du-Mont up above them.

   As he negotiated the crumbling grave markers and coffins, he could just make out the silhouettes of the two brothers, Antonio and Rudolpho, frantically whispering in the distance. Francesca’s tiny form was seated atop a stone sarcophagus, her feet nervously swinging back and forth. She looked up at his approach and, with a little wave of her fingers, smiled a quick ‘hello’.  

  Though not exactly intimate with the two brothers, it really shouldn’t have come as a surprise to Gaspard that the plan of action least likely to succeed was the one being discussed by Antonio and Rudolpho. Gaspard thought it best if he interrupted the two to inform them of the fierce little spectre upstairs, when the siblings’ discussion heated up to the level of ... let us say an argument. 

   Gaspard groaned. Was there ever an end to the antics of these two? He was quite at a loss by now. That he should find himself in the company of Francesca beneath St-Etienne-du-Mont, along with ... (he adroitly ducked, as Rudolpho leapt through the air, wildly executing a thrust with his blade) ... these fools, and a God knows what else above them? It was a little more than he could support! How nice it would be just to pick a pocket or two, he thought.

   ‘You think, you can better me?! I no think so!’ 

   Gaspard dodged again as the sharp point of a Antonio’s rapier whistled just over his right ear, scraping along the edge of Rudolpho’s denser blade. 

   ‘Rudolpho, you twit, there is nothing un-Christian about the plan ... stop this!’ 

   The heavy-set Antonio, defying his corpulent figure, stepped lightly away, forcing his advantage upon his more aggressive sibling. His toes barely found purchase upon the slippery ground as he danced around Rudolpho like a pregnant ballerina.

   Antonio, blinked sweat from his eyes, and glared at Rudolpho. ‘Yield! Will you yield?!’

  Rudolpho, struggling against his brother’s blade, as it crept ever nearer his nose, paused for a moment, and then he looked at Antonio, straight in the eye, nodded, and then surprised his brother as he jumped up in the air with a cry.

   ‘No, I will not! En garde!’ 

  Shocked by this unexpected manoeuvre, Antonio finally lost his advantage, falling backward as Rudolpho crashed into him, sending them both tumbling to the ground. 

   They lay there, panting in a heap that looked a lot like an upturned washer-woman’s basket. Gaspard opened his mouth to speak, and closed it again, as he looked over and saw Francesca frowning at him. She held a petite finger up to her lips and shook her head. 

   The brothers sat in the mildewy silence glowering at one another, until Antonio finally pushed himself upright with a stretch, and then? He started to giggle. 

   ‘Heheeee, my, that was fun wasn’t it?’

   Rudolpho rolled over onto his side, propped his head up on an elbow, and started to smile through his moustaches, looking all the while like he had just woken up from a delightfully refreshing nap. He smacked his rubicund lips and stared around, and above him before he answered.

   ‘I still no see the need for such a ...’ 

   A sudden glimmer of blue light found its way into the basement, silencing them all.

 ‘Ah yes.’ Gaspard glanced over his shoulder, stepped over the two men, and hopped atop the sarcophagus beside Francesca. He surprised her with a kiss on the cheek, and before her lips could splutter a protest, he raised a hand in front of her face and shushed her.

   ‘Gentlemen,’ he whispered. ‘I believe we have a rather urgent problem just now ...’

   Antonio, not a little flustered at witnessing the kiss stolen from his niece, opened and closed his mouth twice before narrowing his eyes at the young thief. ‘What sort of problem have you deduced, young man? Because, Rudolpho and I were in the middle of something that we agree ...’ He glanced at his brother. ‘ ... is probably more important than you.’ 

   Another flash of crystalline, blue phosphorescence shot through the cracks and bones of the ancient ceiling, raining sapphire dew-drops around them. 

   Gaspard took advantage of the interruption. ‘That may be, dear Antonio, but whatever your problem ... may be, I think I can trump it in the guise of a rather sinister little doppelgänger ...’ He pointed at the grey stones above them, ‘upstairs.’ Francesca’s eyes shone white from the shock, just as Antonio’s narrowed into thin, invisible slits. 

   He hissed. 

  ‘What’s this?’ His voice dropped to a whisper, and then rose to nervous yell. ‘A doppelgänger? Who is this doppelgänger?!’ Antonio turned to Rudolpho. ‘Can you believe this?! A doppelgänger!!’ Rudolpho shifted his bulk up into an impressive cross-legged position, and grunted in his best German accent. ‘Haff you any doubt mein Bruder?’ And then, on one of those rarest of occasions, the answer registered on Antonio’s frontal lobe after his younger sibling.

   ‘Francesca?’ His eyes narrowed even further, in fact, Francesca thought he might have closed them entirely. ‘Francesca have you the Specchio on your person?’ She reached behind her, and produced an over-large carpet bag (slightly faded, but with a lovely lavender print) and placed it upon her lap. Her hair fell forward, the curls masking her alarmed expression as she started rummaging in the darkness. To her credit, and the impressive patience of the men around her, the hand-mirror was found in record time and passed to Gaspard, who, in turn deposited it into Antonio’s rather pudgy palm.

   ‘Specchio?’ He whispered into the empty glass. ‘Specchio?’ He whispered a little louder. ‘Perhaps she is taking a bath, no?’ Offered Rudolpho, as he bent over to look into the mirror. Antonio, a little irritated now, shook it, tapped it and pressed his eye-ball up against it. ‘SPECCHIO!’ Francesca squirmed a little. ‘Ah, uncle? She can be .. particular about who she speaks to ...’ She paused. ‘And how she is spoken to.’ 

   Antonio glowered at her, and then at the mirror. His breathing made ineffectual attempts at fogging its liquid surface, further darkening his mood. Rudolpho carefully tugged the dormant Specchio free from his irritated brother’s hands, and, with an unexpected flourish, he began caressing it. 

   He caressed it, and whispered to it. His low, rumbling baritone barely audible in the silence of the crypt. He winked at it, and he tickled it with his generous moustaches, and then ... he ever so gently kissed it.

  Now, at first, this display of affection had only one effect, and that was to make everyone feel very uncomfortable. Francesca blushed, Gaspard coughed, and Antonio? He just stared, his spectacles slightly fogged in the darkness.

   And as they all blinked, coughed and shuffled, nothing seemed to happen at all, but suddenly, slowly, and unexpectedly, the handle began to sparkle and phosphor. Tiny rose-coloured scintillae bubbled around the delicate inlay on the handle, tracing and winding their way up, up and around, and across the surface of the glass, the tiny gems winked to life, and sparked brightly before showering the startled Rudolpho in an explosion of petite pink stars.

   ‘Darling, you do know how to get a girl’s attention!’ The Specchio verily gushed back to life.

   ‘Hello my dear,’ smiled Rudolpho.

                                                           ***

   Antonio, grabbed at the mirror, and flipped it around so that he might see into it, and then had a little coughing fit as his eyes focussed upon its rippling surface. For the mirror, being a mirror, was able to take on the appearance of he, or she that awoke it, should she feel so inclined, and to find his brother’s porous nose and bristling moustaches staring back at him with an undisguised wink made him retch just a little.

   ‘Really? Antonio? Must I look at you?’ Said the Specchio. ‘You’d think after the last time we spoke, you would leave well enough alone ...’

   Antonio snorted. ‘Never mind about the last time, I need you to answer some questions about this time!’ The Specchio carefully inspected her fingernails and then yawned an enormous yawn from behind sleek, black nose hairs. ‘This time?’ She said. ‘What about this time?’ 

   ‘It would appear we have a doppelgänger in our midst.’

  The Specchio flared incandescent between Antonio’s thick fingers, and the reflection of his brother suddenly looked a little more concerned. ‘What? Are you sure?’ She gnawed at her lip and began tugging at an over-large earlobe. How could that have happened, I wonder?’ 

  She looked left and right conspiratorially, and then whispered. ‘I don’t suppose it is a friendly doppelgänger?’ Antonio glanced at Gaspard, who, in turn looked at Francesca, who sadly shook her head. Antonio grimaced, and the Specchio sharply exhaled from beneath the glass. ‘That is definitely not good news, no, not at all. A malevolent doppelgänger can’t be conjured easily, and apart from your esteemed brother -’ Antonio’s tangled eyebrows shot up over the rims of his spectacles as he looked over at Rudolpho. ‘No,’ continued the Specchio. ‘Your other brother.’ Pausing a moment for that information to sink in, she mutely twirled her moustaches before continuing. ‘Apart from Leo’s experiments, only an unusual occurrence between here,’ she waved her masculine hand over her head.’ And there,’ she said, pointing at Antonio, ‘could cause such a thing. Have you heard anything? Has Leo mentioned anyone, or anything out of the ordinary recently? Because I can’t see this as an intentional ...’

   The little group were so engrossed in the mirror’s explanation that none of them noticed the cool fog that began rising in thin twisting wisps from the wet clay beneath their feet. Nor, at first, did they pay any attention to the vague, faintly turquoise iridescence that frothed and bubbled, creeping across the ceiling like a wave that had lost its way home. No, what got their attention in the end, was the sudden snap of cold that crackled through the underground crypt like a quietly, controlled horse-whip, that, and the alarming giggle. 

    ‘Francesca.’ She uttered the name breathlessly. ‘Francesca won’t you come and play? ... Please?’ 

   Not noticing the stunned group of men surrounding the terrified girl, the doppelgänger alighted from the stairwell at the far end of the crypt and peered in their direction. She took a step and stopped, sniffing at the damp air, absently wrinkling her tiny nostrils at what she found there.

   Antonio searched out his brother’s eyes, who nodded at an unspoken question. He quickly tried to pass the Specchio back to Francesca, but she was too dismayed to notice, so he stuffed it down the back of his trousers (despite the Specchio’s expected horrified protests) and hurriedly grabbed at a small book Rudolpho had concealed in his breast pocket. 

   The book had a plain, ruddy, reddish brown cover, and inside it lay incredibly colourful velum pages that seemed to spill their ink over Antonio’s rough fingers. Antonio raced through the pages, the gold and silver words criss-crossing the pages like vines blowing before a storm. Stopping suddenly, he marked a spot with his large thumb and pushed the open book back into his brother’s waiting hands. Rudolpho’s eyebrows rose and fell as his glance ricocheted from the doppelgänger to Antonio, and then back to Francesca. With a frown, he quickly got up and pushed the seated Gaspard from the stone coffin, and then carefully bundled Francesca up, and placed her protectively behind him. Before either of the two could question him he thrust his nose close to the book with its faintly shining filagree of letters and began to furiously read.

   All the while, Antonio had quickly produced an impressive assortment of brass, silver and wood instruments from his person, that he was just as furiously clicking, twisting, and pushing together like a maddened clock maker ... until, just as quickly as he had started, he stopped. 

   He smiled, suddenly satisfied with what that which he had created ... which, to the untrained, and unknowledgeable such as you or I, resembled a rather shoddy, and crooked looking periscope. He then pulled at his trouser leg, and produced a really, rather lovely piece of pink quartz, that had mysteriously been hiding inside one of his stockings. Ignoring the questioning looks he was getting from Francesca, he carefully placed it onto the very top of his new creation. He looked up then. He knew that all eyes were upon him now, and he coughed into the back of his free hand, and started to explain. ‘Allora,’ he said, rather uncharacteristically, in Italian. He stopped himself and then started again in English. ‘This here is -’ He looked unsure of himself. ‘That is to say, a gentleman never leaves home without his ...’ He gave the baton a little twirl, and nearly dropped it. Looking a little embarrassed, he raised it to his eyes, and said, ‘His .. cane, now does he?’ 

   And then he remembered where he was, and exactly what he was supposed to be doing. 

  He shot a very serious look at Francesca and Gaspard, a look that instantly hushed up any of their questions, and holding up his cane with both hands, he rapped it upon the stone sarcophagus as if he were knocking at the door of his favourite gentlemen’s club. 

   The knocking echoed all around them.

   The doppelgänger, happily assured of her cornered prey, had begun to skip and dance among the smooth, marble and granite grave markers. She pounced lightly from headstone to headstone, prettily pirouetting before her silent audience, her curls, identical to Francesca’s spun darkly around her head. Gaspard shivered as the temperature dropped the closer she came. Francesca too, began to exhale small, grey, clouds of frost as her twin shot her a fierce little smile from across the room.

  ‘Francesca?’ She purred. ‘How long has it been, hmm?’ Her doppelgänger’s eye’s twinkled in the darkness. ‘How ... long?’ She suddenly sighed, hopping down upon a sunken gravestone, and slid across it towards them, her feet leaving a silvery trail upon the ground.

   Antonio stopped his tapping then. He wiped his brow, as a bead of sweat ran down and dripped from the end of his nose. With one eye on the doppelgänger, and the other on his brother, he waited for Rudolpho to look up from the book. Satisfied that Rudolpho was done reading, he nodded. Rudolpho, too, nodded, and startled both Gaspard and Francesca, as he snapped the book shut. He placed the soft, leather volume upon the sarcophagus, and seeing the apparition not twenty metres from where they stood, slowly picked up his sword from the ground at his feet.

   Giggling, the doppelgänger seemed to notice the men for the first time. She stopped, tilted her head to one side, and, unblinking, watched them much like a hawk spying a field mouse from afar. She turned her eye upon each of them, and hesitated a moment, chewing her lip in thought.

   ‘Why Francesca,’ she suddenly said, breaking the silence. The doppelgänger gathered up the fabric of her dress in her tiny hands, and began to twirl her skirts back and forth. ‘Have you brought me friends as well?’

   Antonio cleared his throat. ‘We are none of us your friend, Mademoiselle.’ Her gaze flicked over the round uncle. ‘Oh no?’ She said, taking a step toward him. ‘Why, of course you are ... come,’ she leered. ‘We will become the best of friends. Shall we dance together?’ 

   Francesca squeaked. ‘No uncle, do not let her touch you!’ Antonio stepped backward, shepherding the small group behind him. His eyes never left his niece’s eerie twin. He whispered to them out of the corner of his mouth. ‘I want all of you to find ... someplace safe. Gaspard?’ He glanced at the blonde boy. ‘Take Francesca and find some shelter, will you?’ Gaspard stared at Antonio. ‘Shelter?! Shelter from what exactly? We’re beneath the church!’ Antonio angrily turned, and poked him in the chest with his stubby fingers, and hissed at him. ‘I want you to move yourself, and my niece behind something solid right now!’ 

   Grunting, Gaspard grabbed Francesca and ran behind one of the crypt’s many support columns. ‘You too Rudolpho!’ Shouted Antonio. ‘I’m not exactly sure what’s going to happen now -’ Rudolpho cut him off, ‘Oh?! You are not sure? After I was telling you this is no good idea? Hmmph. I am not moving from here!’ He looked at his glaring brother and thrust his sword into the earth, glaring right back at him. ‘Fine,’ grumbled Antonio. ‘Just ... fine.’ Secretly, he was, of course, happy to have Rudolpho at his side.

   The doppelgänger watched them all keenly, she had lost her patience. Now it was time to play. She stretched her slender arms above her head, affecting a small yawn, and then

                                               she ran at them.

   Antonio swore under his breath, and, with a firm grasp, he brought his newly created cane crashing down onto the sarcophagus before him. ‘TIME! IT IS TIME!’ He yelled, his voice echoed across the crypt. Rudolpho, eyes squeezed shut in concentration, started to quickly repeat the phrases he had just memorised from the book. 

   ‘Expergiscere Expergiscere! Populus sanctus, sanctus Parisiensi excitare!’

                            And, what happened next, stunned them all.