It was the only loculus not bricked up. A dark and ragged curtain covered most of the arched opening, but not so completely as to hide the glow from within. I touched the pistol in my pocket as Dickens walked brazenly through the rotted gauze.
This loculus was long and narrow and opened into other niches and vaults and loculi. And the corpses here were not in coffins.
The bodies lay along wooden benches that ran from floor to ceiling for the entire length of the narrow passage. They were all corpses of men—and not Englishmen or Christians or Romans from the looks of them. They were skeletal, but not mere skeletons; the tanned skin and stringy flesh and glass marble—looking eyes appeared to have been mummified. Indeed, these might be Egyptian mummies we were walking past, lying there in their rotted robes and tatters, except for the Oriental cast to the mummified features and unblinking eyes. When Dickens paused for a moment, I leaned closer to inspect one of the mummies’ faces.
It blinked.
I let out a cry and leaped back, dropping the candle. Dickens picked it up and came closer, holding the bullseye high to illuminate the shelf and the corpse on it.
“Did you think them dead, Wilkie?” the author whispered.
“Are they not?”
“Did you not see the opium pipes?” he asked softly.
I had not. I did now. These pipes—largely lost to sight where they were clutched against the mummies’ bodies, the bowls and mouthpieces in the mummies’ hands—were much more elaborately carved than the cheap pipes in Sal’s emporium in Shadwell above.
“Did you not smell the opium?” whispered Dickens.
I had not but I did now. It was a softer, sweeter, infinitely more subtle smell than the drug stench in Sal’s. I looked back the way we had come and realised that the dozens of dead men on these rotted shelves in this crypt were all ancient but still-breathing Asiatics lying there with their pipes.
“Come,” said Dickens and led me into a side room from whence came the glow.
There were more shelves and bunks there, some with cushions visible, and a heavier cloud of opium, but in the middle—sitting cross-legged in a Buddha posture atop a backless wooden couch set on a stone bier so that his Oriental eyes were at the same height as ours—was a Chinaman who looked as ancient and mummified as those forms on the shelves behind us and ahead of us. But his gown or robe or whatever it should be called, as well as his headpiece, were made of bright, clean silk, all reds and greens with gold and blue patterns sewn throughout, and his white moustache drooped down ten inches beneath his chin. Behind this figure were two huge men, also Chinamen but much younger, shirtless, standing against the empty stone wall with their hands folded over their crotches. Their muscles gleamed in the light from the two red candles that rose on either side of the thin Buddha-figure.
“Mr Lazaree?” said Dickens, stepping closer to the cross-legged man. “Or should I say King Lazaree?”
“Welcome, Mr Dickens,” said the figure. “And welcome to Mr Collins as well.”
I took a step back at hearing my name spoken in such perfect and unaccented English from this pure stereotype of Yellow Peril. In truth, I realised later, his English had been lightly accented… but it was a Cambridge accent.
Dickens laughed softly. “You knew we were coming.”
“Of course,” said King Lazaree the Chinee. “Very little occurs in Bluegate Fields or Shadwell or Whitechapel or London itself, for that matter, that I do not hear about. News of a visit from someone of your fame and eminence… and I include both of you literary gentlemen, of course, in that phrase… is conveyed to me almost instantly.”
Dickens made a slight but graceful bow. I could only stare. I realised that I was still holding the unlighted candle in my left hand.
“Then you know why we have come down here,” said Dickens.
King Lazaree nodded.
“Will you help us find him?” continued Dickens. “Drood, I mean.”
Lazaree held up one open hand. I was shocked to see that the fingernails on that hand must have been six inches long. And curved. The nail on the little finger of that hand was at least twice that long.
“The benefit of Undertown,” said King Lazaree, “is that those who wish not to be disturbed here are not disturbed. It is the one understanding that we share with the dead who surround us here.”
Dickens nodded as if this made eminent sense. “Is this Undertown?” he asked.
It was King Lazaree’s turn to laugh. Unlike Opium Sal’s dry rattle, the Chinaman’s laughter was easy and liquid and rich. “Mr Dickens, this is a simple opium den in a simple catacomb. Our customers once came from—and returned to—the world above, but now most prefer to stay here through the years and decades. But Undertown? No, this is not Undertown. One might say that this is the foyer to the antechamber of the porch of the vestibule of Undertown.”
“Will you help us find it… and him?” asked Dickens. “I know you do not wish to disturb the other… ah… inhabitants of this world, but Drood let me know that he wanted me to find him.”
“And how did he do that?” asked King Lazaree. I admit to being curious on that point myself.
“By going out of his way to introduce himself to me,” said Dickens. “By telling me where in London he was going. By creating such a mystery around himself that he knew I would try to find him.”
The Chinaman on the wooden couch did not nod or blink. I realised then that I could not remember seeing him blink during this entire interview. His dark eyes seemed as glassy and lifeless as those belonging to the mummified figures on the benches all around us. When Lazaree did finally speak, it was in a lower tone, as if he were debating with himself.
“It would be very unfortunate if either of you gentlemen were to write and publish anything about our subterranean world here. You see how fragile it is… and how easily accessible.”
I thought of Hatchery’s having to put his heavy shoulder so energetically to the crypt bier that hid the upper doorway, about the barely visible path in the red dust to the invisible door in the iron grate, about the narrowness and eeriness of the stairway descending to this level, and the labyrinth we had traversed just to find this second opium den.… All in all, I was not so sure I agreed with the Chinaman king about the accessibility of this place.
Dickens appeared to, however. He nodded and said, “My interest is in finding Drood. Not in writing about this place.” He turned to me. “You feel the same, do you not, Mr Collins?”
I was able to grunt and let the King of the Opium Living Dead take that as he wished. I was a novelist. Everything and everyone in my life was material. Certainly this writer whom I stood next to in the candlelight here had already proven that maxim more than had any other writer of our or any other age. How could he speak for me and say that I would never write about such an extraordinary place? How could he speak honestly for himself and say such a thing… this man who had turned his father, mother, sad figure of a wife, former friends, and former lovers into mere grist for his fictional-character wheel?
King Lazaree lowered his head and silken cap ever so slowly. “It would be very unfortunate if some harm were to come to you, Mr Dickens, or you, Mr Collins, while you were our guests here or explorers of Undertown beyond here.”
“We feel precisely the same way!” said Dickens. He sounded almost merry.
“Yet no guarantees for your safety can be made beyond this point,” continued the Chinaman. “You will understand when… if… you proceed.”
“We ask for no guarantees,” said Dickens. “Only for advice on how and where to proceed.”
“You do not fully understand,” said King Lazaree, his voice sounding harsh and Asiatic for the first time. “If something were to happen to one of you gentlemen, the other would not be allowed to return to the world above to write, tell, and testify about it.”