Marek was carefully expressionless. That was, of course, exactly what they intended, if Kate ever found the entrance to the passage.
“Aha!” Oliver said, pointing at Marek. “You see? His jaw clenches. He knows what I say is true.”
Marek started to speak, but Johnston put a restraining hand on his arm. The Professor said nothing himself, just shook his head.
“What? Will you stop his confession?”
“No, my Lord, for your surmises are not true.”
Oliver glowered, paced. “Then bring me the weapons I bade you make earlier.”
“My Lord, they are not ready.”
“Ha!” Another nod to de Kere.
“My Lord, the grinding of the powder takes many hours.”
“In many hours, it will be too late.”
“My Lord, it will be in good time.”
“You lie, you lie, you lie!” Oliver spun, stamped his foot, stared off at the siege engines. “Look to the plain. See how they make ready. Now answer me, Magister. Where is he?”
There was a pause. “Where is who, my Lord?”
“Arnaut! Where is Arnaut? His troops mass for attack. He always leads them. But now he is not there. Where is he?”
“My Lord, I cannot say. . ..”
“The witch of Eltham is there—see her, standing by the engines? You see? She watches us. The damnable woman.”
Marek turned quickly to look. Claire was indeed down among the soldiers, walking with Sir Daniel at her side. Marek felt his heart beat faster, just to see her, though he was not sure why she would walk so near the siege lines. She was looking up at the walls. And suddenly she stopped abruptly. And he thought, with a kind of certainty, that she had seen him. He had an almost irresistible impulse to wave, but of course he did not. Not with Oliver snorting and puffing beside him. But he thought, I’m going to miss her when I go back.
“The Lady Claire,” Oliver growled, “is a spy of Arnaut and was so from the beginning. She let his men into Castelgard. All arranged, no doubt, with that scheming Abbot. But where is the villain himself? Where is the pig Arnaut? Nowhere to be seen.”
There was an awkward silence. Oliver smiled grimly.
“My Lord,” Johnston began, “I understand your concer—”
“You do not!” He stamped his foot and glared at them. Then, “Both of you. Come with me.”
:
The surface of the water was black and oily, and even looking down from thirty feet above, it stank. They were standing beside a circular pit, located deep in the bowels of the castle. All around them, the walls were dark and damp, barely illuminated by flickering torches.
At Oliver’s signal, a soldier beside the pit started to crank an iron winch. Clattering, a thick chain began to rise from the depths of the water.
“They call this Milady’s Bath,” Oliver said. “It was made by François le Gros, who had a taste for these things. They say Henri de Renaud was kept here for ten years before he died. They threw live rats down to him, which he killed and ate raw. For ten years.”
The water rippled, and a heavy metal cage broke the surface and began to rise, dripping, into the air. The bars were black and filthy. The stench was overpowering.
Watching it rise, Oliver said, “In Castelgard I promised you, Magister, that if you deceived me, I would kill you. You shall bathe in Milady’s Bath.”
He looked at them intently, his eyes wild.
“Confess now.”
“My Lord, there is nothing to confess.”
“Then you have nothing to fear. But hear this, Magister. If I discover that you, or your assistants, know the entrance to this castle, I shall lock you away in this place, from which you will never escape, never in your life, and I will leave you here, in darkness, to starve and rot forever.”
Holding a torch in the corner, Robert de Kere allowed himself a smile.
02:22:13
The steps led steeply downward, into darkness. Kate went first, holding the torch. Chris followed. They went through a narrow passage, almost a tunnel, that seemed to be manmade, and then came out into a much larger chamber. This was a natural cave. Somewhere high up and off to the left, they saw the pale glimmer of natural light; there had to be a cave entrance up there.
The ground before them still sloped down. Ahead, she saw a large pool of black water and heard the rush of a river. The interior smelled strongly of a sweet-sour odor, like urine. She scrambled over the boulders until she reached the black pool. There was a little sandy margin around the edge of the water.
And in the sand, she saw a footprint.
Several footprints.
“Not recent,” Chris said.
“Where’s the path?” she said. Her voice echoed. Then she saw it, off to the left, a protruding section of rock wall that had been artificially cut back, making an indentation that allowed you to skirt around the pool and to pass by.
She started forward.
Caves didn’t bother her. She’d been in several in Colorado and New Mexico with her rock-climbing friends. Kate followed the path, seeing footprints here and there, and pale streaks in the rock that might have been scratches from weapons.
“You know,” she said, “this cave can’t be all that long if people used it to carry water to the castle during a siege.”
“But they didn’t,” Chris said. “The castle has another supply of water. They would have been bringing food, or other supplies.”
“Even so. How far could they go?”
“In the fourteenth century,” Chris said, “peasants didn’t think anything about walking twenty miles a day, and sometimes more. Even pilgrims walked twelve or fifteen miles in a day, and those groups included women and old people.”
“Oh,” she said.
“This passage could be ten miles,” he said. And then he added, “But I hope it’s not.”
Once past the protruding rock, they saw a cut passage leading away from the dark lake. The passage was about five feet high and three feet wide. But at the edge of the dark pool, a wooden boat was tied up. A small boat, like a rowboat. It thunked softly against the rocks.
Kate turned. “What do you think? Walk, or take the boat?”
“Take the boat,” Chris said.
They climbed in. There were oars. She held the torch and he rowed, and they moved surprisingly fast, because there was a current. They were on the underground river.
:
Kate was worried about the time. She guessed they might have only two hours left. That meant they had to get to the castle, reunite with the Professor and Marek, and get themselves into an open space so they could call the machine—all within two hours.
She was glad for the current, for the speed with which they glided deeper into the cavern. The torch in her hand hissed and crackled. Then they heard a rustling sound, like papers ruffled in the wind. The sound grew louder. They heard a squeaking, like mice.
It was coming from somewhere deeper in the cave.
She looked at Chris questioningly.
“It’s evening,” Chris said, and then she began to see them—just a few at first, and then a hazy cloud, then a torrent of bats flying out of the cave, a brown river in the air above their boat. She felt a breeze from hundreds of flapping wings.
The bats continued for several minutes, and then it was silent again, except for the crackle of the torch.
They glided onward, down the dark river.
:
Her torch sputtered, and began to go out. She quickly lit one of the others that Chris had carried from the chapel. He had brought four torches, and now they had three left. Would three more torches see them to the surface again? What would they do if the final torch went out and they still had farther—perhaps miles—to go? Would they crawl forward in darkness, feeling their way along, perhaps for days? Would they ever make it, or would they die here, in darkness?
“Stop it,” Chris said.
“Stop what?”
“Thinking about it.”
“Thinking about what?”
Chris smiled at her. “We’re doing okay. We’ll make it.”
She didn’t ask him how he knew. But she was comforted by what he said, even though it was just bluster.
They had been passing through a twisting passageway, very low, but now the cave opened out into a huge chamber, a full-blown cave, with stalactites hanging down from the roof, in some places reaching to the ground, and even into the water. Everywhere the flickering light of the torch faded into blackness. She did, however, see a footpath along one dark shore. Apparently there was a path running the entire length of the cave.
The river was narrower, and moved faster, threading its way among the stalactites. It reminded her of a Louisiana swamp, except it was all underground. Anyway, they were making good time; she began to feel more confident. At this rate, they would cover even ten miles in a few minutes. They might make the two-hour deadline after all. In fact, they might make it easily.
The accident happened so fast, she hardly realized what had occurred. Chris said, “Kate!” and she turned in time to see a stalactite just by her ear, and her head struck the stone hard, and her torch hit it as well—and the burning cloth tip shook free from the stick it was tied to, and in a kind of ghastly slow motion, she watched it fall from her torch onto the surface of the water, joining its reflection. It sputtered, hissed and went out.
They were in total blackness.
She gasped.
She had never been in such darkness before. There was absolutely no light at all. She heard the dripping of the water, felt the slight cold breeze, the hugeness of the space around her. The boat was still moving; they were banging against stalactites, seemingly at random. She heard a grunt, the boat rocked wildly, and she heard a loud splash from the stern.
“Chris?”
She fought panic.
“Chris?” she said. “Chris, what do we do now?” Her voice echoed.
01:33:00
It was now early night, the sky deepening from blue to black, the stars appearing in greater numbers. Lord Oliver, his threats and boasts finished for the moment, had gone with de Kere into the great hall to dine. From the hall, they heard shouts and carousing; Oliver’s knights were drinking before the battle.
Marek walked with Johnston back to the arsenal. He glanced at his counter. It said 01:32:14. The Professor didn’t ask him how much time was left, and Marek didn’t volunteer. That was when he heard a whooshing sound. Men on the ramparts yelled as a huge fiery mass arced over the walls, tumbling in the air, and descended toward them in the inner courtyard.
“It’s starting,” the Professor said calmly.
Twenty yards away from them, the fire smashed onto the ground. Marek saw that it was a dead horse, the legs protruding stiffly from the flames. He smelled burning hair and flesh. The fat popped and sputtered.
“Jesus,” Marek said.
“Dead for a long time,” Johnston said, pointing to the stiff legs. “They like to fling old carcasses over the walls. We’ll see worse than that before the night is over.”
Soldiers ran with water to put the fire out. Johnston went back into the powder room. The fifty men were still there, grinding the powder. One of them was mixing a large, wide basin of resin and quicklime, producing a quantity of the brown goo.
Marek watched them work, and he heard another whoosh from outside. Something heavy thunked on the roof; all the candles in the windows shook. He heard men shouting, running onto the roof.
The Professor sighed. “They hit it on the second try,” he said. “This is just what I was afraid of.”
“What?”
“Arnaut knows there is an armory, and he knows roughly where it is—you can see it if you climb the hill. Arnaut knows this room will be full of powder. If he can hit it with an incendiary, he knows he’ll cause great damage.”
“It’ll explode,” Marek said, looking around at the stacked bags of powder. Although most medieval powder wouldn’t explode, they had already demonstrated that Oliver’s would detonate a cannon.
“Yes, it will explode,” Johnston said. “And many people inside the castle will die; there will be confusion, and a huge fire left burning in the center courtyard. That means men will have to come off the walls to fight the fire. And if you take men off the walls during a siege . . .”
“Arnaut will scale.”
“Immediately, yes.”
Marek said, “But can Arnaut really get an incendiary into this room? These stone walls must be two feet thick.”
“He won’t go through the walls. The roof.”
“But how . . .”
“He has cannon,” the Professor said. “And iron balls. He will heat his cannonballs red-hot, then fire them over the walls, hoping to hit this arsenal. A fifty-pound ball will tear right through the roof and come down inside. When that happens, we don’t want to be here.” He gave a wry smile. “Where the hell is Kate?”
01:22:12
She was lost in infinite darkness. It was a nightmare, she thought, as she crouched in the boat, feeling it drift in the current and bump from stalactite to stalactite. Despite the cool air, she had begun to sweat. Her heart was pounding. Her breathing was shallow; she felt like she couldn’t get a full breath.
She was terrified. She shifted her weight, and the boat rocked alarmingly. She put both hands out to steady it. She said, “Chris?”
She heard a splashing from far off in the darkness. Like someone swimming.
“Chris?”
From a great distance: “Yeah.”
“Where are you?”
“I fell off.”
He sounded so far away. Wherever Chris was, she was drifting farther and farther from him every minute. She was alone. She had to get light. Somehow, she had to get light. She began to crawl back toward the stern of the boat, groping with her hands, hoping her fingers would close on a wooden pole that meant one of the remaining torches. The boat rocked again.
Shit.
She paused, waiting for it to steady beneath her.
Where were the damn torches? She thought they were in the center of the boat. But she didn’t feel them anywhere. She felt the oars. She felt the planking. But she didn’t feel torches.
Had they fallen off the boat with Chris?
Get light. She had to get light.
She fumbled at her waist for her pouch, managed to get it open by feel, but then could not tell what was in there. There were pills . . . the canister . . . her fingers closed over a cube, like a sugar cube. It was one of the red cubes! She took it out and put it between her teeth.
Then she took her dagger and cut the sleeve of her tunic, tearing off a section about a foot long. She wrapped this cloth around the red cube and pulled the string.
She waited.
Nothing happened.
Maybe the cube had gotten soaked when she went in the river at the mill. The cubes were supposed to be waterproof, but she’d been in the river a long time. Or maybe this one was just defective. She ought to try another one. She had one more. She had started to reach into her pouch again, when the cloth in her hand burst into flame.
“Yow!” she cried. Her hand was burning. She hadn’t thought this through very well. But she refused to drop it; gritting her teeth, she held it high above her head, and immediately she saw the torches to her right, pushed up against the side of the boat. She grabbed one torch, held it against the burning rag, and the torch caught fire. She dropped the rag in the river and plunged her hand under the water.
Her hand really hurt. She looked at it closely; the skin was red, but otherwise did not appear too bad. She ignored the pain. She’d deal with it later.
She swung the torch. She was surrounded by pale white stalactites hanging down into the river. It was like being in the half-open mouth of some gigantic fish, moving between its teeth. The boat banged from one to another.
“Chris?”
Far away: “Yeah.”
“Can you see my light?”
>
“Yeah.”
She grabbed a stalactite with her hand, feeling the slippery, chalky texture. She managed to stop the boat. But she couldn’t row back to Chris, because she had to hold the torch.
“Can you get to where I am?” “Yeah.”
She heard him splashing somewhere in the darkness behind.
:
Once he was back in the boat, soaked but smiling, she let go of the stalactite and they began moving again with the current. They spent several more minutes in the stalactite forest, and then they came out into an open chamber again. The current moved faster. From somewhere ahead, they heard a roaring sound. It sounded like a waterfall.
But then she saw something that made her heart leap. It was a large stone block by the side of the river. The block was worn around the sides from rope chafing. It had clearly been used to tie up boats.
“Chris. . ..”
“I see it.”
She saw what looked like a worn path beyond the block, but she couldn’t be sure. Chris rowed to the side, and they tied up the boat and got out. There was a definite path, leading to a tunnel with smooth, artificially cut walls. They started down the tunnel. She held the torch in front of her.
She caught her breath.
“Chris? There’s a step.”
“What?”
“A step. Cut in the rock. About fifty feet ahead.” She moved faster. They both moved faster. “In fact,” she said, raising the torch higher, “there’s more than a step. There’s a whole staircase.”
By the flickering torchlight, they saw more than a dozen steps, rising at a steep angle upward, without a railing, until they ended in a stone ceiling—a trapdoor fitted with an iron handle.
She handed Chris the torch, then scrambled up the stairs. She pulled at the ring, but nothing happened. She pushed at it, putting her shoulder into it.
She managed to raise the stone an inch.
She saw yellow light, so bright that it made her squint. She heard the roar of a nearby fire, and the laughter of men’s voices. Then she couldn’t hold the weight any longer, and the stone came back down again.