When Aziza had taken the candle and gone down the stairs, the old man whispered, “It was near here where she disappeared, and they have begun a search of the entire quarter. You must remain until the search is completed.
“But”—he had started to walk away—”if anything happens to me there is a passage behind the wall. It opens in the same way and leads beyond the walls. When you leave the passage ride to the Castle of Othman. It is a ruin inhabited only by owls. You may hide there until you can escape.”
“How can we ride?”
“The passage is for horses. It was made for sorties by cavalry. There is an entrance from within our stable, and your horses have already been taken below. There is food for them and for you, and a spring flows through a channel there. If necessary, you could remain hidden for weeks, but I would not advise it.”
He paused, then his eyes hardened. “You are not a Moslem, but you have a lady in your care, a very important lady. If it should chance that she is harmed in any way, it would mean both your lives.”
“Hers too?”
“Hers most of all. She would be killed, without question. Guard yourself, and her as well.”
He hesitated again. “If circumstances permit you to return, my house is yours, always.”
“At the Castle of Othman? There is a place to hide?”
His detail of the ruin was quick, explicit, and with military efficiency. “Quickly now! You must go!”
The door closed behind me, and I descended the steep stairs in darkness. Aziza had removed her veil and was placing food and wine upon the low table.
Above us there was a dull sound like the slam of a heavy door, only louder. I drew my sword and turned to face the stair. Nothing.
Had I brought trouble to ibn-Tuwais? What had happened?
Aziza pointed to the table. “Eat,” she said. “We must be ready when night comes.”
We ate in silence. Of what she thought I know not, but I was brooding about the old man up there. Had I brought torture and death to one I so admired and loved? Yet I could not return to help. To reveal myself now would prove what might be only suspected.
Packs lay upon the floor, for it seemed ibn-Tuwais had considered everything. He knew what I was about, and where his sympathies lay. After all, he too was an enemy of Yusuf.
Upon a low table were piles of books. Ibn-Tuwais had expected trouble and had moved his precious library here. In Paris such books might buy a province, or a bishopric. The packs themselves contained food and four books. Obviously, he wished me to have them.
“Sleep,” I told Aziza, “for with night we must go.” When she lay down I covered her with a robe. It had been early afternoon when we reached the house of ibn-Tuwais. Say four hours of waiting, another hour to travel the passage to a place beyond the wall, and we could emerge in darkness.
From the stack of books I chose one, a translation from far-off Cathay, Essays of the Dream Pool by Shen Kua.
A long time later when the candle’s length indicated the time had passed, I replaced the book among the others. Someday, perhaps, I would complete it.
Aziza awakened at my touch and, rising, took up a fresh candle and lighted it. Shouldering the packs, I followed her along the passage. The horses stood waiting, saddled and ready in their underground stable. Mounting, we rode through the passage toward the outer walls of the city.
The top cleared my head by only a few inches, some of it carved from solid rock. Several times we rode through small pools of water, and once for several hundred yards we rode along a stream of clear, cold water.
The passage ended abruptly. We faced a slab of rock; beside it was a lever of bronze. The work here looked like no work of Moor, Goth, or Phoenician, nor had I seen its like before. I thought of the Idol of Cadiz … by the same hands, perhaps?
Dismounting, I lay hold of the lever. An instant I paused, and then I pulled down. Nothing happened.
Our eyes met in the candlelight. Suppose it would not open? Were we trapped, then?
Waiting an instant, I mustered all my strength, swinging my weight on the lever. Slowly, sluggishly, it yielded. The great slab of rock swung slowly inward, stiff with age and untold years of disuse.
There was a rush of cool night air, of damp vegetation, a sound of trickling water.
Stepping outside, sword in hand, I found myself in a narrow gorge, above me the stars. Only a few feet further along, our trickle of water flowed into a larger stream.
Searching, I found the other lever, artfully concealed in a crack of the rock. Aziza emerged, and I swung the lever down and the door closed, more easily this time, merging perfectly with natural cracks in the rock. Marking the place in my mind, I concealed the lever and all signs of the movement of the door.
Mounting, we walked our horses down the rocky bed of the stream, and after riding for some distance we left the water for an ancient trail, then rode along a lane used by workers going to and from the fields. Far off, we believed we could already see the tower of the Castle of Othman.
Built long ago, already a relic when the first Visigoths came to Spain, it may have dated from the Romans or even the ancient Iberians. Destroyed and rebuilt several times, it had become a place of ill omen, and few cared to risk the dangers that seemed a part of it.
We rode in silence, depressed by our fears for ibn-Tuwais. He might be put to torture or slain. To have returned would only prove that he had aided us, leading to his certain death, and what he had done for us would be wasted.
How long could we maintain ourselves at the Castle of Othman? How long before some passerby stumbled upon us or glimpsed some movement among the ruins?
Yet when we fled the castle, where could we go? For me alone it would be simple enough, yet one did not wander the countryside with a beautiful girl without causing talk, and in no case without a guard of horsemen.
Dawn still lingered beyond the horizon when we rode up the slope to the tower, and a huge old tower it was. There was little else, a ragged battlement, moonlight falling over the broken walls. A lonely, haunted place it was, forgotten upon its hill, a place with the smell of death upon it.
We walked our horses into the open gate and drew rein in the courtyard. It was dark and still when our echoing hoofbeats ceased. A bat fluttered by my head, and an owl spoke inquiringly into the shadows.
We had come to our hiding place, two ghosts to join our companion ghosts, yet my fears were for discovery, not things of the night. We who lived upon the lonely Armorican moors were accustomed to werewolves, vampires, and tursts.
“Mathurin, Aziza whispered, “I am afraid!”
Stepping down from the saddle. I lifted my hands to her. “The darkness is a friend to the pursued, Aziza, and where we are, love can be. Here we shall stay.”
13
At dawn, in the Castle of Othman, the sun was bright. The ghosts, if such there were, had fled with the shadows. Water bubbled in the ancient fountain, but where gardens had been, lay a tangle of rank grass, unpruned shrubbery, and trees. Bark fallen from the trees lay on the grass, and over all was a carpet of leaves.
The wall had been breached in some forgotten battle, and the stones lay awry, often covered with vines. Situated on a hill, the castle dominated the countryside, as much a part of the landscape as an outcropping of rock or an old tree.
At one time the hill must have been more abrupt than now, but debris from the castle itself had made the approach more gradual. On the north were three round towers, all partly in ruin, and on the south three towers, one of these square. This and the tower at the opposite end of the south wall were relatively intact.
The court or bailey was enclosed almost completely but the great hall was in ruins, its roof fallen in. My first action was to make a thorough search of the ruin. The curtains around the inner bailey provided a carefully contrived series of stairs and passages that communicated with every part of the castle so reinforcements might be rushed to any point from the keep.
The keep itself was of three stories, vaulted and pierced by arrow loops at each story. At each level, doorways offered access to all parts of the fortification. From the keep there was an excellent view of the surrounding country, and all approaches could be observed from concealed positions. Yet what I sought was a way of escape. As Plautus has said, not even a mouse trusts himself to one hole only.