Dradles grunted again but seemed neither surprised nor injured.

Dickens and I turned in time to see a young boy, no more than seven or eight and all unkempt hair, ragged clothes, and untied bootlaces, hide behind a headstone near the wall that separated this graveyard from the road.

“It ain’t time! It ain’t time!” shouted Dradles.

“Yer lie!” shouted the ragged youth and pitched another stone at the mason. Dickens and I took a step away from the boy’s sturdy target.

“D— n your blasted eyes!” shouted Dradles. “If Dradles says it ain’t time, it ain’t time. No tea today! Get yourself off to the Thatched and Twopenny and leave off on the pitching or there’ll be no ’apenny from Dradles to you today!”

“Yer lie!” returned the Young Devil and pitched another rock, a larger one this time, which caught the stonemason just above the knee. Dirt, tiny chips of stone, clumps of old mortar, and lime dust flew from the man’s trousers as his tormentor screamed, “Widdy widdy wee! I—ket—ches—’im—out—ar—ter—tea!”

Dradles sighed and said, “Dradles sometimes pays the lad a ’apenny to pelt him homewards should Dradles forget to head home for tea or t’ the house after ten. This is my usual tea time and I forgot to turn the reminding apparatus off, as it were.”

Dickens howled and slapped his thigh with delight at this information. Another small stone flew by us and just missed the stonemason’s cheek.

“Hold your hand!” bellowed Dradles to the tiny loose-laced phantom flitting from headstone to headstone. “Or there’ll be no ’apenny for you this fortnight and more! Dradles has business with these here gentlemen and they don’t ’preciate the pelting.”

“Yer lie!” shouted the boy from the gloom behind some shrubbery between ancient headstones.

“He’ll not bother us more ’til our business is done,” said Dradles. He squinted at me and then squinted less malevolently at Dickens. “What is it you wanted Dradles to show you this evening, Mr D.?”

“Mr Wilkie Collins and I would like to see if there’s anything new down in your place of business,” said Dickens.

Dradles grunted rum fumes at us. “Anything old is more what you mean,” he growled. “The crypts ain’t much for novelty. Not in these days, at least.”

“We shall be delighted to see what is old, then,” said Dickens. “Lead the way, sir. Mr Collins and I shall offer our willing, if not broad, backs as a shield between you and your quick-armed tormentor.”

“Bother the Deputy,” Dradles grunted cryptically. “Stones is Dradles’s work and life and only love, other ’n drink, and a few more pebbles won’t bother him none.”

And thus, with Dradles striding ahead and Dickens and me muddling along shoulder to shoulder behind him, we proceeded towards the great cathedral whose cold shadow had now enveloped the entire graveyard.

BEYOND THE EDGE of the graveyard there was a high-mounded pit with fumes rising from it. Dradles, clutching his heavy bundle to his chest, walked past it without comment, but Dickens paused and said, “This is lime, is it not?”

“Aye,” said Dradles.

“What you call quick-lime?” I asked.

The old man squinted over his shoulder at me. “Aye, quick enough to eat your suit and buttons and boots without any help, Mr Billy Wilkie Collins. And with a little stirrin’, quick enough to eat most of your spectacles, watch, teeth, an’ bones as well.”

Dickens pointed to the fuming pit and smiled enigmatically. I removed my spectacles, rubbed my watering eyes, and followed them.

I had assumed we were going up into the tower. Dickens often brought guests to Rochester—it was a short enough ride from Gad’s Hill—and he almost always arranged to have them go up into the tower to take in the view of the old city, all grey blocks and shadowed streets, and of the sea beyond to one side and the forests and roads stretching back to Gad’s Hill and beyond to the other horizon.

Not this day.

After much clanking of key rings (the old man seemed to have keys in every oversized pocket of his flannel trousers, jacket, and waistcoat), Dradles opened a heavy side door and we followed him down narrow stone stairs into the crypt.

I do not mind telling you, Dear Reader, that I was terribly weary of crypts. I do not blame you if you are as well. I had spent the previous night in an opium-scented space that resembled nothing so much as a crypt, and too much of my following Charles Dickens the past year and more had led into dank places like this.

Dradles had brought no lantern and we did not need one: the dying November light came down from above in dim shafts through groined windows that had long been devoid of glass. We walked between massive pillars that rose above us up into the cathedral proper like great roots or tree trunks of stone, and in their shadows the darkness was almost absolute, but we kept to the narrow lanes of fading light.

Dradles set his lumpy bundle on a stone ledge, untied laces at the top, and fumbled in the bag. I expected him to disinter a bottle—I could hear it sloshing—but instead he came out with a small hammer.

“Watch this, Wilkie!” whispered Dickens. “And listen! And learn.”

I thought I had learned quite enough for one day, but I followed as Dradles re-lashed his bundle and led the way down an even narrower corridor between even thicker columns and darker pools of shadow. Suddenly he began tapping the inner walls.

“Hear that?” the old mason asked—absurdly, I thought, since the taps echoed and rebounded everywhere in the crypt. “Tap and solid,” he whispered. “Now I go on tapping… solid still. And more. Solid still. And more… halloa! Hollow! We keep going around the corner here—mind your step; there’s some stairs there in the dark—we keep going and keep tapping and Dradles’s ear keeps hearing what your ear and others’ don’t and can’t hear and… ahah! Solid in hollow there! And inside solid, hollow again!”

We all stopped. It was very dark here around the corner, where more steps presumably led down to deeper vaults.

“What does it mean?” I asked. “Inside solid, hollow again?”

“Why, it means that there’s an old ’un tumbled and crumbled in there, Mr Billy Wilkie Collins!” growled Dradles. “An old ’un in a stone coffin, and the stone coffin in a vault!”

I could feel Dickens’s gaze upon me as if this Dradles-person’s deduction were a significant feat, but I reserved the right to remain something less than overwhelmed. This was not a case of that French phenomenon in which I had some interest—clairvoyance, or “bright seeing.” I mean, it was, after all, a church crypt. It did not take a rude, drunken man playing with a mason’s hammer to tell us that there were bones behind the walls.

Dradles led us deeper into the crypt vault. We needed a lantern now and we did not have one. I used my walking stick to sound out the irregular stone stairs beneath my feet as they spiralled down around one of the great stone trusses that housed the crypts and held up the cathedral. I had dressed for the unusually warm and sunny afternoon, and this subterranean cold made me shiver and wish for home and a fire.

“Aye,” said Dradles as if I had spoken aloud, “the cold here is worse ’n cold. It’s the damp. The rising damp. It’s the cold breath of the dead old ’uns on either side of us and beneath us and, in a minute, above us. The dead ’uns’ breath reaches to the cathedral up ’bove and stains the stone and discolours them pretty frescoes and rots the wood and causes the choir to shiver in their robes. Dradles can hear the rising damp seeping out of the chinks and crevices of these older coffins as surely as Dradles can hear the dead old ’uns echo back their answer to his taps.”

I started to give a sarcastic retort, but before I could speak there came the startling TAP, TAP, TAP of his hammer again. This time I imagined that I could hear something of the complex echoes myself. Dradles’s voice seemed extraordinarily loud in the winding stone chamber.