This was indeed a monk's cell, very small, and strikingly bare: just a narrow cot, a basin of water and a chamber pot. By the bed stood a tiny table with a candle. That was all. Two of Marcel's white robes hung on a peg inside the door.
Nothing else.
It was clear from a glance that there were no keys in this room. And even if there had been, the soldiers would already have found them.
Nevertheless, to Kate's surprise, Marek got down on his hands and knees and began to search methodically under the bed.
Marek was remembering what the Abbot had said just before he was killed.
The Abbot didn't know the location of the passage, and he desperately wanted to find out, so he could provide it to Arnaut. The Abbot had encouraged the Professor to search through old documents - which made sense, if Marcel was so demented that he could no longer tell anybody what he had done.
The Professor had found a document that mentioned a key, and he seemed to think this was a discovery of importance. But the Abbot had been impatient: 'Of course there is a key. Marcel has many keys…'
So the Abbot already knew about the existence of a key. He knew where the key was. But he still couldn't use it.
Why not?
Kate tapped Marek on the shoulder. He looked over, to see she had pushed aside the white robes. On the back of the door he saw three carved designs, in some Roman pattern. The designs had a formal, even decorative quality that seemed distinctly unmedieval.
And then he realized that these weren't designs at all. They were explanatory diagrams.
They were keys.
The diagram that held his attention was the third one, on the far right side. It looked like this:
The diagram had been carved in the wood of the door many years before. Undoubtedly, the soldiers had already seen it. But if they were still searching, then they hadn't understood what it meant.
But Marek understood.
Kate was staring at him, and she mouthed, Staircase?
Marek pointed to the image. He mouthed, Map.
Because now at last it was all clear to him.
VIVIX wasn't found in the dictionary, because it wasn't a word. It was a series of numerals: V, IV and IX. And these numerals had specific directions attached to them, as indicated by the text in the parchment: DESIDE. Which was also not a word, but rather stood for DExtra, SInistra, DExtra. Or in Latin: 'right, left, right.'
Therefore, the key was this: once inside the green chapel, you walked five paces to the right, four paces to the left and nine paces to the right.
And that would bring you to the secret passage.
He grinned at Kate.
What everybody was looking for, they had at last found. They had found the key to La Roque.
09:10:23
Now all they had to do was get out of the mill alive, Kate thought. Marek went to the door, peered cautiously out at the soldiers in the main room. She came up alongside him.
She counted nine soldiers. Plus de Kere. That made ten altogether.
Ten against two.
The soldiers seemed less preoccupied with their search than before. Many of them were looking at one another over the pounding trip-hammers, and shrugging, as if to say, Aren't we finished? What's the point?
Clearly, it would be impossible for Kate and Marek to leave without detection.
Marek pointed at the stairs to the upper ramp. 'You go straight to the stairs and out of here,' he said. 'I'll cover you. Later, we'll regroup downstream on the north bank. Okay?'
Kate looked at the soldiers. 'It's ten against one. I'll stay,' she said.
'No. One of us has to make it out of here. I can handle this. You go.' He reached in his pocket. 'And take this with you.' He held out the ceramic to her.
She felt a chill. 'Why, Andrй?'
'Take it.'
And they moved out into the room. Kate headed toward the stairs, returning as she had come. Marek moved across the room, toward the far windows, overlooking the river.
Kate was halfway up the stairs when she heard a shout. All around the room, soldiers were running toward Marek, who had thrown back his monk's cowl and was already battling one.
Kate didn't hesitate. Taking her quiver from beneath her robes, she notched the first arrow, and drew her bow. She remembered Marek's words: If you want to kill a man… She had thought it was laughable at the time.
A soldier was shouting, pointing at her. She shot him; the arrow struck his neck at the shoulder. The man staggered back into a brazier, screaming as he fell into glowing coals. A second soldier near him was backing away, looking for cover, when Kate shot him full in the chest. He sagged to the ground, dead.
Eight left.
Marek was battling three at one time, including de Kere. Swords clanged as the men dodged among the pounding trip-hammers and leapt over spinning cams. Marek had already killed one soldier, who lay behind him.
Seven left.
But then she saw the soldier get to his feet; his death had been a pretense, and now he moved forward cautiously, intending to attack Marek from behind. Kate notched another arrow, shot him. The man tumbled down, clutching his thigh; he was only wounded; Kate shot him in the head as he lay on the wood.
She was reaching for another arrow when she saw that de Kere had broken away from the fight with Marek and was now running up the stairs toward her with surprising speed.
Kate fumbled for another arrow, notched it, and shot at de Kere. But she was hasty and missed. Now de Kere was coming fast.
Kate dropped her bow and arrow and ran outside.
She ran along the ramp to the mill, looking down at the water. Everywhere, she could see river stones beneath the hissing white water: it was too shallow for her to jump. She'd have to go back down the way she had come up. Behind her, de Kere was shouting something. On the guard tower ahead, a group of archers drew their bows.
By the time the first arrows were flying, she had reached the door to the flour mill. De Kere was by then running backward, screaming at the archers, shaking his fist in the air. Arrows thunked down all around him.
In the upper mill room, troops were crashing against the door, which was blocked by the ladder. She knew the ladder wouldn't hold for long. She went to the hole in the floor and swung down into the room beneath. With all the commotion, the drunken soldiers were waking up, staggering bleary-eyed to their feet. But with so much yellow dust in the air, it was hard to see them very well.
That was what gave her the idea: all the dust in the air.
She reached into her pouch and brought out one of the red cubes. It said '60' on it. She pulled the tab, and tossed it in a corner of the room.
She started counting silently backward in her mind.
Fifty-nine. Fifty-eight.
De Kere was now on the floor directly above her, but he hesitated to come down, unsure if she was armed. She heard many voices and footsteps up above; the soldiers from the guardhouse had broken through. There must be a dozen men up there. Maybe more.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw one of the drunken soldiers by the sacks lunge forward and grab at her. She kicked hard between his legs and he fell whimpering, curling on the ground.
