Excerpt of The Whispering Of Bones by Judith Rock

In this excerpt from chapter one, two Jesuits, Charles du Luc and his elderly confessor Père Dainville, go to pray in an ancient crypt outside the Paris city wall, where the Jesuits' founder Ignatius of Loyola had often prayed when he was a student in Paris. Ahead of them, the long gray north wall and crow-studded tower of the Carmelite church came into view. Ready to be out of the wind, Charles and Dainville quickened their steps to the north door, the only one that opened outside the convent walls. After the dazzling autumn light, they stood for a moment, blinking in the dim nave... Then they went up the side aisle and to the left around the altar, where a small door stood open on steps plunging into near darkness. Charles went first, Dainville gripping his shoulder for safety. Even Charles had to keep a hand on each wall for balance, the stairs being worn and polished smooth from centuries of devout climbing up and down... The first flight of stairs was straight, but then they wound like the inside of a shell. As on his one previous visit to the crypt, Charles found himself fighting rising unease as the walls seemed to close behind them and the air grew dead and chill. He was almost glad to hear someone climbing toward them as they reached the stairs' final twist. 'Wait,' he called to the unseen climber. 'There's no room to pass. Can you go back down?' The steps halted abruptly and then retreated. When Charles and Dainville rounded the curve, a man was waiting at the bottom. Blackly silhouetted against the antechamber's only candle, which was mounted on the wall behind him,...he turned sideways, pressing himself against a closed door to the left of the stairs to let them pass...As they turned to the right and ducked under the low archway into the crypt chapel, his steps receded briskly above them. The crypt was a bare and stony place, long and narrow and swathed in shadows under its arched stone ceiling. By the light of the few candles burning in wall niches, Charles helped Dainville to the single prie-dieu snugged against the wall, halfway to the small main altar. When the old man was settled, Charles went farther forward and knelt on the stone floor... He didn't go as far into prayer as he sometimes did, and the deep, luminous Silence that sometimes visited him didn't come. Still, he rose from his knees with satisfaction enough...and turned to the prie-dieu. But Dainville wasn't there. Charles looked blankly around the empty crypt. 'Mon père?' His voice echoed unanswered. Surely the frail old man had not started up the stairs alone. Charles hurried down the crypt, pulled the heavy door open, and stumbled into near blackness instead of flickering candlelight."