“It’s something to do with the abbey skeletons. If they’re disproved as Arthur’s and Guinevere’s, the economy of the abbey will suffer. So will the Pilgrim’s.”
“So three people had their throats cut? You’re fantasizing, my girl. Godwyn’s a common landlord, for God’s sake. A weedy little man. Innkeepers don’t go round murdering their guests. Not deliberately, anyway, though I’ve eaten some meals…”
Adelia gritted her teeth. “A weedy little man who fainted when Mansur, Allie, and I arrived at his inn; he knew he’d killed the wrong people.” She leaned forward. “Rowley, I know he did. What’s Emma’s mule doing up in the abbey pasture? Hilda, Godwyn, they sold her goods once she was dead-horses, cart, clothes, jewels. That’s what I was about when you arrived, searching for something, anything, that still belongs to her.”
He teetered his chair back. The lantern on the table between the two of them threw an upward light on his face, emphasizing its bones, leaving the sockets of his eyes dark. He’d always been a big, well-fleshed man-his first years as bishop had rendered him almost plump; too many clerical feasts and dinners-but he was thinner now than she’d ever seen him. It suited him. But, blast him, he was complacent, a know-it-all. Power did that, she supposed. Too much “Yes, my lord bishop,” “No, my lord bishop.”
“And have you found it?” he asked, sure of the answer.
“No.”
“There you are, then.”
Adelia stood up. They could sit here all night while she kept advancing her theory and he kept refuting it. Well, she at least wasn’t going to. “Come on, you can help me look.” She took up the lantern.
Sighing heavily, he followed her.
It was only as they went up the stairs that she remembered the door to Mansur and Gyltha’s room. “Somebody might be in there,” she said, pointing. She could be brave now.
“A murderous landlord?” Dramatically, he drew his sword. “Let me at him. I’ll run the varlet through.”
She held the lantern so that they could both see as she went in behind him. An almost simultaneous crack of lightning and thunder made them crouch-and sent a figure scuttling under the bed. They heard it moan.
Adelia drooped with relief. “Millie, it’s me. Don’t be frightened, it’s me. This gentleman’s a friend.” Then she remembered. What use of verbal reassurance to a girl who couldn’t hear it?
Signing to Rowley to sheathe his sword, she went forward, letting the lantern shine on Millie’s terrified face.
They took the girl downstairs to the parlor. Rowley administered brandy. “She can’t hear the thunder, you say?”
“I don’t think so. But she’s frightened of something, poor child. She knows…” Gently, Adelia cupped the girl’s face in her hands, mouthing words. “Millie, what… happened… to the lady… who came here… with her little boy? Oh, this is hopeless.” She turned to the table and drew three figures in its light layer of dust with her finger-a large one with a sword in its hand, that of a woman, and, finally, that of a child.
“These three, Millie,” she begged, pointing. “They came here. What happened to them?”
“She won’t tell you even if she could,” Rowley said. “She’ll protect her employers.”
“I don’t think so, they beat her. Oh, look…”
For comprehension had come into Millie’s eyes. She was nodding, her finger tracing a line under Adelia’s drawing, standing up, beckoning. They followed her to the back door, where she drew the bolts, cowered for a moment at the swamping rain, and ran for the stables. Adelia and Rowley ran after her.
The storm had covered the sound of Rowley’s arrival. Before he’d done anything, he’d stabled and attended to his horse, now kicking in its stall, scared by the thunder.
Rowley went to its head and soothed it. “All right, old boy, all right, it’s only noise,” but his eyes were on Millie, who had gone to a woodpile by the door and was throwing logs aside to reach something underneath.
Nodding emphatically, she dragged a curved, broken section of wood from others that were similar and watched Adelia as she handed it to her.
“What is it?” Rowley asked.
It was an elaborately fretted piece of oak. “A bit of the hoop from Emma’s cart,” Adelia said. “It held up the canvas. It’s all here. They smashed it up for firewood.”
Dont weep, she told herself. You knew.
But despite everything, she had hoped to be wrong.
“For Jesus’ sake, why?” Rowley was becoming convinced. “Why would they kill them?”
“For gain. Dear Heaven, Rowley, that little boy. Emma loved him so much.”
Millie was still looking up, curving her right hand over three extended fingers of the other to make sure she understood. Three people in a covered cart.
Adelia nodded and shaped the question “Where are they?”
There was ferocity in Millie’s face. What had been done was wrong, wrong; now she could expose it. She got up, dragging Adelia back to the inn. Rowley followed, splashing through ankle-high water. If anything, the rain was intensifying; the courtyard’s drain couldn’t cope with it.
Millie made for the kitchen. She pointed to a large vat in one corner and then began tugging at it. It was too heavy for her.
Rowley put down the lantern and went to help. The vat moved, but its bottom hoop caught on something and they had to tip and roll it before it was free of the obstruction.
Underneath was a handle set into one of the kitchen’s flagstones.
“Shit,” Rowley said.
Millie held up three fingers again, her teeth bared as if in despair, then pointed. “God help them,” Adelia said, quietly. “They’re down there.” As lightning flashed again, so did hope. “Lift it, quick, quick. They might still be alive, prisoners.”
It was a heavy slab. With effort, Rowley hoisted it up and slid it to one side. A dank smell mixed with that of liquor came rushing out of the hole-but not the stink of corruption Adelia had been dreading.
Rowley knelt. “Halloo, there. Emma? Halloo.” He turned his head sideways, but there was only the beat of rain and a crack of thunder that shook the kitchen walls. “There are steps here,” he said.
“Well, there would be, it’s a cellar,” Adelia said. “Give me the lantern.”
“Reinforcement is required first, I think.” Still kneeling, Rowley produced his flask, offering it to Millie, who drank and handed it on to Adelia, who, shaking her head in impatience, gave it back to him.
He took a hefty swig. He was reluctant to go into the hole, she realized-he’d never liked enclosed spaces.
She took up the lantern, ready to shove him aside, but he grabbed it off her-“I’m going, I’m going”-and began to descend the steps.
“Be careful, Rowley,” she called to him, frightened, “Godwyn might be hiding down there.” She turned to Millie, shaking her head and putting up a hand to keep her back in case there was violence. “Stay here.”
Rowley’s voice came up to her with an echo. “Nobody here, but it’s not just a cellar, there’s a tunnel leading out of it. Watch your step, woman, it’s slimy.” Carefully, she followed him down. He was right; the steps were slippery, and very steep.
She was in a cellar, a big one, part of it a storeroom for extra tables and benches, some awaiting repair. Most of it housed ale barrels, and she wondered how they’d been carried up and down the steps before she saw a chute leading to a hatch in, presumably, the edge of the courtyard for ease of delivery by a brewer’s dray.
At the far end, Rowley stood, sword in one hand, lantern in the other, peering at an opening in the wall. He came back to her, pausing to examine a rack at the foot of the steps that was filled with different sizes of wine bottles. “Glass bottles,” he said, marveling and extracting one of them. “The Pilgrim does its guests well.”
When it wasn’t killing them. But, so far at least, there was no sign that murder had been done.
Adelia turned to look up at Millie peering anxiously down at her. She indicated to the girl that she and Rowley were going to proceed farther.
There was a crack, this time not of lightning, less loud but still vicious. Millie’s eyes went blank, and her body fell over the hole. Adelia started up the steps to go to her. She saw an arm drag Millie away by her hair before the flagstone at the stairhead’s entrance was slammed into place.
“Rowley. Oh, God, Rowley, they’ve killed Millie. They’re blocking us in.”
There was a smash as a bottle he’d been holding hit the floor. He pushed Adelia out of the way, gave her the lantern, and clambered up the steps to try to heave the slab up.
They both heard the scrape of the barrel being put back over it.
He heaved again. “Fuck it, I can’t shift the thing.” He came back down. “That way. We’ll get out by the chute.” He began clawing his way up the slide to dislodge the courtyard hatch at its top.
Again, they heard the scrape of something heavy being pulled across. Cursing, yelling, Rowley pushed at the hatch, pushed again and again. It didn’t budge.
After a while, he allowed himself to slide back. For a moment, he lay, face downward, on the chute. Then, picking himself up, he smiled at her. “Well, my love, we’re going to have to investigate the tunnel-and quick, before the bastards block the other exit.”
Taking the lantern, he ushered her toward the hole in the cellar’s wall, talking all the time. “That’s the nice thing about tunnels-they’ve got two ends. Not surprised to find one here. Sure as Adam and Eve it’ll come out somewhere in the abbey grounds. Abbots have always liked an escape route from invaders, or their own damned monks. And I’ll wager Brother Titus has nipped along this one a fair few times to sample some ale…”
“It was Hilda who hit Millie,” Adelia said. “I saw her sleeve.”
“Nothing we can do about that yet.” Pulling her behind him, he entered the tunnel.
It was a large entrance, but if Brother Titus had used its passage to go to and fro, his bulk must have been mightily squeezed, for almost immediately the walls narrowed and lowered, enclosing them in a space little more than four feet square that, as far as they could see, went on and on. They were forced to bend double-Rowley was almost crawling, and Adelia had to take the lantern, maneuvering past him into the lead. Every thirty yards or so the tunnel widened into niches, vital for allowing a strained back to gain respite. Rowley ignored them. “Get on, get on, woman. Go faster.” He was panting. So was she.
Whoever had built the tunnel had been a craftsman; arched stones enclosed them on either side. Head bent, Adelia saw little except the mud of the floor as her boots squelched through it.
How far? Jesus, how far now? She’d lost all sense of direction and time. She was choking on her own breath. She gasped for the fresh air that was somewhere above her, the heavens impervious to the poor mice scuttling along their underground tube.
At one point, she thought she heard footsteps and imagined they were Godwyn’s or Hilda’s, running to block the other end of the tunnel against them. It was the thud of her own heart in her ears. We’re too far down to hear anything else, she thought, and began to choke again. She slowed, and Rowley’s head butted into her, the jolt nearly sending the lantern out of her hand so that she had to clasp it with the other to stop it from falling, burning her fingers on it. Oh, God, to be down here without light…
At the next niche she stopped and sat down to gain some breath, straightening her back and sucking her scorched fingers. Rowley peered at her. “Move, woman, move.”
“You go on,” she said. “I’ve got to rest.”
He collapsed beside her-the tunnel’s lack of height had made it harder going for him even than for her. He was looking at the lantern’s candle that had burned hideously low, then shifted with discomfort. “Hello, what’s this?”
He produced what he’d sat on-a plain deal box secured by a prong through a hasp. “I think we’ve discovered where our innkeeper and wife keep their treasures.”
She took the box. It rattled. Something of Emma’s might be hidden inside. But prong and hasp were so rusted together that she couldn’t open it.
