The Cabinet of Curiosities (Pendergast #3)(134)
The hallway ended in a grand, sweeping staircase leading down to a great hall. A heavy cut-glass chandelier hovered over the marble floor, mounting on a gilt chain to a domed trompe l’oeil ceiling. Pendergast descended the stairs, deep in thought. To one side, a set of tall doors opened into a two-story library; to the other, a long hall retreated back into shadow. Pendergast entered this hall first. Originally, this room had been the monastery’s refectory. In his mind, he had furnished it with a variety of family heirlooms: heavy rosewood chiffoniers, oversized landscapes by Bierstadt and Cole. There were other, more unusual heirlooms here, as well: sets of Tarot cards, crystal balls, a spirit-medium apparatus, chains and cuffs, stage props for illusionists and magicians. Other objects lay in the corners, shrouded, their outlines sunken too deeply into shadow to discern.
As he looked around, his mind once again felt the ripples of a disturbance, of a connection not yet made. It was here, it was all around him; it only awaited his recognition. And yet it hovered tantalizingly out of grasp.
This room could tell him no more. Exiting, he re-crossed the echoing hall and entered the library. He looked around a moment, savoring the books, real and imaginary, row upon comforting row, that rose to the molded ceiling far above. Then he stepped toward one of the shelves on the nearest wall. He glanced along the rows, found the book he wanted, pulled it from the shelf. With a low, almost noiseless click, the shelf swung away from the wall.
… And then, abruptly, Pendergast found himself back in Leng’s house on Riverside Drive, standing in the grand foyer, surrounded by Leng’s astonishing collections.
He hesitated, momentarily stilled by surprise. Such a shift, such a morphing of location, had never happened in a memory crossing before.
But as he waited, looking around at the shrouded skeletons and shelves covered with treasures, the reason became clear. When he and Nora first passed through the rooms of Leng’s house—the grand foyer; the long, low-ceilinged exhibit hall; the two-storied library—Pendergast had found himself experiencing an unexpected, uncomfortable feeling of familiarity. Now he knew why: in his house on Riverside Drive, Leng had recreated, in his own dark and twisted way, the old Pendergast mansion on Dauphine Street.
He had finally made the crucial connection. Or had he?
Great-Uncle Antoine? Aunt Cornelia had said. He went north, to New York City. Became a Yankee. And so he had. But, like all members of the Pendergast family, he had been unable to escape his legacy. And here in New York, he had recreated his own Maison de la Rochenoire—an idealized mansion, where he could amass his collections and carry on his experiments, undisturbed by prying relations. It was not unlike, Pendergast realized, the way he himself had recreated the Maison de la Rochenoire in his own mind, as a memory palace.
This much, at least, was now clear. But his mind remained troubled. Something else was eluding him: a realization hovering at the very edge of awareness. Leng had a lifetime, several lifetimes, in which to complete his own cabinet of curiosities. Here it was, all around him, possibly the finest natural history collection ever assembled. And yet, as Pendergast looked around, he realized that the collection was incomplete. One section was missing. Not just any section, in fact, but the central collection: the one thing that had fascinated the young Antoine Leng Pendergast most. Pendergast felt a growing astonishment. Antoine—as Leng—had had a century and a half to complete this ultimate cabinet of curiosities. Why was it not here?
Pendergast knew it existed. It must exist. Here, in this house. It was just a question of where…
A sound from the outside world—a strangely muffled scream—suddenly intruded into Pendergast’s memory crossing. Quickly, he withdrew again, plunging as deeply as he could into the protective darkness and fog of his own mental construct, trying to recover the necessary purity of concentration.
Time passed. And then, in his mind, he found himself once again back in the old house on Dauphine Street, standing in the library.
He waited a moment, re-acclimating himself to the surroundings, giving his new suspicions and questions time to mature. In his mind’s eye he recorded them on parchment and bound them between gilt covers, placing the book on one of the shelves beside a long row of similar books—all books of questions. Then he turned his attention to the bookcase that had swung open. It revealed an elevator.
He stepped into the elevator at the same, thoughtful pace, and descended.
The cellar of the former monastery on Dauphine Street was damp, the walls thick with efflorescence. The mansion’s cellars consisted of vast stone passageways crusted with lime, verdigris, and the soot from tallow candles. Pendergast threaded his way through the maze, arriving at last at a cul-de-sac formed by a small, vaulted room. It was empty, devoid of ornament, save for a single carving that hung over a bricked-up arch in one of the walls. The carving was of a shield, containing a lidless eye over two moons: one crescent, the other full. Below was a lion, couchant. It was the Pendergast family crest: the same crest that Leng had perverted into his own escutcheon, carved onto the facade of the mansion on Riverside Drive.
Pendergast approached this wall, stood beneath the crest for a moment, gazing at it. Then, placing both hands upon the cold stone, he applied a sharp forward pressure. The wall instantly swung away, revealing a circular staircase, sloping down and away at a sharp angle into the subbasement.
Pendergast stood at the top of the stairs, feeling the steady stream of chill air that wafted like a ghostly exhalation from the depths below. He remembered the day, many years ago, when he had first been inducted into the family secrets: the hidden panel in the library, the stone chambers beneath, the room with the crest. And finally this, the greatest secret of all.