She pushed her features into a scowl. “Go ahead, genius.” She shoved her hair out of the way and angled her ear toward me. “Make my day.”
I shifted my gaze from her earphones to her ear. Oops. I cupped my hands around my mouth and called out to Rob, “Is there a way to insert earbuds around hearing aids?”
“Uhhhh …”
“Do these things carry the ESPN sports channel?” asked a man standing by Woody. “I want to find out how the Cubbies did against the Brewers.”
“Your receivers aren’t broadband radios,” barked Rob. “They can’t open garage doors. They won’t take pictures. They will allow you to hear what our local guide is saying, and that’s all they’ll do. If you’re unable to insert your earphones comfortably into your ears”—he bobbed his head as if considering the options—“then stand close enough to our guide so you’ll be able to hear her without them. Any questions?”
“What’ll I do if my receiver short circuits my pacemaker?”
Oh, God.
I heard a splat, splat, splat of footsteps rushing in our direction and turned to see a woman with a canary-yellow umbrella scurry past me toward Rob.
“And here she is now,” Rob announced in a voice that was thick with relief. “Our local guide. Come on up here so people can have a look at you.”
She hopped onto the bench beside Rob and tilted her umbrella back, favoring us with a wave and a bright smile.
Oh my God! Madeleine Saint-Sauveur!
eleven
“In 1348, the city of Rouen suffered the worst outbreak of bubonic plague in its history.”
Madeleine’s voice crackled in my ears as we gathered around her in a courtyard surrounded by ancient two- and three-story buildings.
“History has given the catastrophe many names: the Great Plague, the Great Pestilence, the Black Death. By the time it had run its course in Rouen, three-quarters of the city’s population lay dead, which presented a gruesome problem for the living: With parish cemeteries having run out of burial space, where could so many bodies be interred?”
A large rectangle of grass occupied the center of the square, and in the middle of this, nearly camouflaged within the leafy canopy of a dozen hardwoods, rose a crucifix that was both tall and painfully slender.
“The task of burying the victims fell upon parish priests who understood they needed to dispose of the bodies quickly to prevent more disease from spreading. So they decided to do so in a most unfortunate manner.” Madeleine made a sweeping gesture that included the entire courtyard. “They buried them in a mass grave. Here. At Aitre de St. Maclou.”
Gasps, followed by uneasy silence. Eyes slowly drifted to the pavers beneath our feet. “You mean, we’re standing on them?” asked Woody.
Madeleine nodded. “Oui, monsieur.”
Woody shook his head. “Damn. That’s just wrong.”
“By the time another plague struck two hundred years later, the cemetery could no longer provide in-ground burial, so facilities were expanded above ground to the buildings around us. Three of the galleries were completed in 1533, and for nearly two centuries, they were used to store the bones of Rouen’s dead, stacking them from floor to ceiling on every floor and in the attic space. To this day, few people walking along Rue de Martainville, with its upscale artisan shops and sidewalk cafés, realize that the antiquated wooden doors at number 186 are the unlikely entrance to the site of an ancient charnel house.”