“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 man-made, 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.