Fidelma placed a finger against her lips.
‘Follow me and be quiet!’ she hissed.
Eadulf followed Fidelma as she led the way beyond the tower doorway before quietly entering the stone store house. Here she paused and fumbled in the darkness. Eadulf heard the flint strike and the next moment, Fidelma had lit and trimmed a lantern to illuminate the room.
‘What are we going to do?’ inquired Eadulf softly.
‘We are going to explore a cave,’ replied Fidelma in a whisper.
She started down the rough-cut stone steps into the cave store room below with Eadulf following warily.
‘Nothing much can be hidden in here,’ he observed, peering over her shoulder. ‘Where do those other steps lead to?’
‘Those? Up into the watch tower. But come across here. This is where I need your help.’
She led the way to the boxes which had defied her attempts to move them on the previous day. She carefully set down her lamp.
‘As quietly as you can,’ she instructed as she motioned him to help her move the boxes. To her surprise, only the top two boxes were heavy. These, in fact, were very heavy and, inquisitively, Eadulf carefully wrenched one of the rotting pieces of wood aside to examine its contents. He stared at them in disgust.
‘Earth? Nothing but earth and bits of rock. Who would want to store earth in a box?’
Fidelma was satisfied that she was on the right track but did not enlighten him, gesturing for him to help her lift the other boxes. They were empty and were easily shifted. AsEadulf pushed one of the lower boxes out of the way, Fidelma smiled in grim gratification.
Behind the box was a hole in the cave wall, a dark aperture some two feet in width and three feet in height. She bent down and examined it. It was a tiny passage which, after only a few feet, seemed to open up a little. The condition of the entrance showed that it had only recently been excavated. Logic indicated that the material from the passage was the excavated earth and stones now stored in the boxes. However, it was also clear that only the immediate entrance to the passage had been filled in with the rubble and that the passage itself was older than the rubble filling. So, at some previous period, someone had filled in part of the passage and, more recently, someone had excavated it.
Fidelma stretched out the lantern as far as she could into the passage. The light did not extend far for the narrow access appeared to bend into darkness. However, she could see that after a few feet the passageway rose in height to some five feet though it did not widen to any greater breadth. She considered the matter cautiously. The air was chill and somewhat fetid. There was a smell like that of stagnant water. But the passage must lead somewhere and someone had been anxious to excavate it.
‘I will have to squeeze through,’ she decided.
Eadulf looked dubious.
‘I doubt there is room. What if you get stuck?’
Fidelma gave him a scornful glance.
‘You can wait for me here, if you will.’
It was cold, icy cold as she squeezed forward. The rocky surface was damp and sharp in places, scratching at her and tearing at her clothes. It was hardly any easier after she had progressed through the first few feet. The passage suddenly turned and then turned again and, with abruptness that was confusing, she found herself in a smaller cave, its ceiling was low, no more than six feet in height. It was also dark andalmost freezing and the air was putrid, it reeked of some foul decay.
She reached forward to raise her lantern, stretching out a hand to steady herself.
The surface that she touched was curious, cold and soft. There was also a sensation of what seemed like wet fur.
She withdrew her hand immediately and held the lantern close to the spot.
She felt the nausea well inside her and struggled to prevent herself from crying out in disgust.
She had put her hand on a head. A severed head placed on a rocky shelf on the cave wall. It was a female head, the long dark hair was plastered about it in dampness. Alongside it was a second female head. One of them had reached the stage where it had begun to decay, the flesh white and rotting. The stench was intolerable.
Fidelma did not need to be a seer to know that these were the missing heads of Sister Almu and Sister Síomha. Sister Síomha’s features were easily recognisable.
Fidelma felt a hand descend on her shoulder and this time the fear escaped as a terrified groan. The lantern nearly dropped from her hand. She swung round to find the puzzled features of Eadulf staring at her.
‘A fox on your fishing hook!’ she snapped vehemently, before giving a breath of relief.
Eadulf blinked, unused to an Irish curse on the lips of the young religieuse.
‘Sorry, I thought you knew that I was following.’
He broke off as his eyes fell on the grisly discovery in the flickering light of her lantern. He swallowed hard.
‘Are those …?’
Fidelma was still trying to regulate her pounding heart.
‘Yes. One is certainly Sister Síomha. The other I presume to be Sister Almu.’
‘I don’t understand. Why would their heads be placed here?’
‘There is much that is confusing at this time,’ responded Fidelma. ‘Let’s explore further.’
Fidelma, with head bent, moved forward a pace into the low-ceilinged cave, holding the lantern before her.
Eadulf’s hand suddenly closed round her wrist and yanked her to a halt, making her gasp for breath.
‘Another step and you would have fallen in!’ he explained as she cast him a startled glance.
She looked down at her feet.
Before her was a large dark area. The lamp reflected mirror-like against it. She realised that it was water. Most of the cave was an underground pool. And floating on the water were a couple of apparently empty casks. Now and again there was a ripple and the casks passed perilously close to one another. If they touched, mused Fidelma, then they would produce the hollow, knocking sound. This would undoubtedly resonate with the cave acting like a sounding chamber.
But apart from the pool and the casks there seemed nothing else in the cave. The pool seemed to be fed by some sort of underground conduit from the inlet which accounted for the ripples which appeared every now and then on its surface. But mainly the water appeared stagnant so she presumed the pool was not completely tidal. She was, however, disappointed in the barrenness of the cave for she had been expecting to find more, much more, than simply the desolate pool and empty casks. She saw that amidst the rocks and slabs which made up the floor of the cave, the earth was churned into a brown red mud.
She carried the lantern to the rocky walls and observed traces of a greenish surface film here and there marking indications of a metallic element veined into the rock.
It was Eadulf who asked: ‘What’s that? Shine the light this way.’
He was pointing to something just on the edge of the circle of light from the lantern, something on the cave wall at eye level. Fidelma drew closer.
The scratch marks on the wall resembled those at the foot of the steps on the arch into the storage cave behind them.
‘The hound of Dedel,’ Fidelma said quietly.
Eadulf was critical.
‘A hound? It looks more like a cow to me,’ he objected.
‘Dedelchu,’ Fidelma said, almost to herself. ‘The sign of the hound of Dedel. A pagan priest who …’
Eadulf suddenly grunted, as if in pain.
Fidelma had barely time to turn before the Saxon monk collapsed in a heap, falling against her and sending her staggering back into the wall. For a moment she thought she would loose her grip on the precious lantern but she managed to recover her balance. She did not know what had happened to Eadulf and her first thought was to bend down to see what had made him fall. For a moment, she was bewildered to see blood on his head. Then something made her look up.
A few feet away, just inside the pale rays of the lantern, stood a figure. The light glinted wickedly on the
