He shook his head. “I’ve got too much work right now but I can show you where to find them.”
“That’d be fine,” she told him.
“Then follow me,” he said, rising from behind his worktable and leading the way to the wooden stairway that descended to the library floor. He moved quickly, and she had to hurry to keep up with him. He preceded her to the eastern corner and stopped, indicating a section of shelves packed with rolled scrolls and large, leather-bound volumes.
“They’re all there,” he said. “I’m sorry I can’t let you take them out of the library. But there’s a table and chair here you can use to study them. Oh, and a pen, ink and paper if you want to make notes.”
She walked to the shelves and studied the array of scrolls, hesitating as she sought a place to start.
“They’re labeled,” Uldred told her, seeing her uncertainty. “I’d start with the lower levels. Doubt you’ll find a tunnel at the top of a tower, after all.”
She grunted a reply and peered more closely, seeing the labels on the shelves under the scrolls. She reached out for one.
“‘Cellar Level One,’” she read aloud. “That’s as good a place as any.”
“I’d say so,” Uldred told her. Then he turned away. “I’ll be back at my desk if you need anything.” He paused. “Oh, and put everything back where it came from, won’t you?”
Maddie nodded, taking the heavy, rolled scroll from the shelf and blowing a little dust from it. Obviously, nobody had looked at it for some time. She moved to the table he’d indicated, untied the ribbon securing the scroll and rolled it open. There were half a dozen lead weights on the table, and she used four of them to hold the scroll open, then bent over it to study it.
Engrossed in her task, she didn’t hear Uldred as he walked quickly back through the shelves toward his lofty perch.
She pored over the chart, initially not fully understanding what she was seeing. She lowered herself into the chair and thought for several minutes.
“I guess the best way is to get accustomed to all these drawings and measurements,” she said quietly to herself. “After all, it’s not likely that there’d be a label saying ‘Tunnel here.’ I’ll need to suss it out.”
She spent the next hour and a half going over the charts and plans until she was familiar with the style of them. By the end of that time, her eyes were watering with the effort of concentration. The lines, measurements and notes were beginning to swim before her eyes. Reluctantly, she rolled up the parchment scroll she had been studying and retied the ribbon around it. She replaced it in the shelves and picked up her sheets of notes, then retraced her way through the shelves to the ladder stairs that led to Uldred’s office. Mounting them quickly, she coughed to gain his attention and he looked up, smiling.
“Finished?”
She shook her head. “Just starting. I’ll be back tomorrow. Thanks for your help.”
She turned and left the room, and he watched her as she walked briskly through the rows of shelves to the entrance.
“Well, good for you,” he said softly.
13
The following morning, after breakfast, she was back at the library, waiting for Uldred to open up. He arrived after a few minutes and smiled to see her there.
“Getting an early start?” He unlocked the big double doors and let her in.
Maddie went immediately to the shelves where the plans were kept and took out the scrolls for Cellar Level One and Cellar Level Two—the upper and lower cellars beneath the keep. She had thought about her task as she lay in bed the previous evening, and today she had a plan of action.
She set out her pen, ink and sheets of notepaper. Then she laid a graduated scale beside them—one she had taken from her father’s desk. It was a flat rule, marked in centimeters, and about thirty centimeters long. He used it to measure distances on his scale maps when he was planning a journey or a campaign.
She studied the plan of the upper cellar. It was a rectangular room thirty meters long and ten wide. At one end were racks for wine barrels and storage bins for dried fruit and vegetables. Along each of the two longer walls, half a dozen indentations were marked—small rectangular rooms that she knew were used as cells for prisoners. In some castles, they would be called dungeons and they’d be poorly lit and ventilated, with water dripping down the walls. Here, she knew, they were at least clean and dry. At the moment, none of them was occupied.
She placed her scale rule along the long side of the cellar and measured it. The thirty-meter length corresponded to fifteen centimeters on the scale. She made a note of the fact, then rolled the scroll up, refastened it, and reached for the plans of Cellar Level Two, the rooms directly below.
At first glance, it appeared identical to the room above. But then her eyes narrowed and she frowned thoughtfully as she noticed an anomaly.
Ranged along the two long walls of the cellar were the same rectangular indentations denoting cells. But whereas the upper cellar had six on each side, Cellar Level Two had only five. Quickly, she placed her rule against the longest side and measured it. Twelve and a half centimeters. That indicated that the lower wall was twenty-five meters long—five meters shorter than the room above it.
“How come nobody’s noticed that before?” she mused aloud. Then she realized that the two plans were on separate sheets. Chances were, nobody had ever placed them side by side to compare them, or measured the length of the walls for comparison. Or maybe they had and had simply accepted the fact that the lower cellar was shorter. It was significant to her only because she was looking for a concealed passage.
But now that she had noticed it, the question was, why was Cellar Two five meters shorter than Cellar One?
“One way to find out,” she said to herself. She rolled up the second set of plans, refastened them and placed both scrolls back on the shelves. She planned to come back to the library, so she stacked her notes, pen and rule neatly on the table and hurried to the door. She debated saying good-bye to Uldred, then decided against it. He’d only ask her if she’d found something, and she didn’t want to appear foolish if her idea turned out to be a wild-goose chase.
She made her way down to the cellars underneath the keep.
Since there were no prisoners in the cells, there was no call for anyone to be stationed down here. But the area was well lit with torches in brackets on the wall and three lanterns hanging from the low stone ceiling. Obviously, members of the castle staff came in each morning and lit them all. As she’d noted earlier, the cellar was well ventilated and dry. A slight breeze blew through it, coming from a ventilation shaft somewhere, installed to stop the air from going stale and musty. She walked to one end of the room, placed her back against the wall and paced carefully to the far end.
One of the skills she had learned with Will was how to pace out distance, taking long steps that were consistent in length. She knew from her practice and training that twelve of these elongated paces were equivalent to ten meters. She counted aloud now as she measured the length of the room.
“. . . thirty-four, thirty-five . . . and a half,” she said as her right foot butted against the base of the far wall. That was close enough to thirty-six, which would coincide with the thirty meters marked on the plan in the library. She examined the wall. It was made of large blocks of sandstone fitted together and cemented in place. She rapped on several of them with the hilt of her saxe. They sounded solid enough.
“Hmm,” she muttered, casting her glance around the long, low-ceilinged room. There was nothing remarkable about it. The walls were bare. The room was unfurnished, aside from the racks of wine barrels and the wooden bins of vegetables at the far end.
“Let’s see downstairs,” she said, and headed for the staircase that sloped down to the next level.
Cellar Two was not as well lit as the upper level, and there were no wine barrels stored here. But
it was still relatively dry, although there was a faint hint of mustiness in the air. The ventilating breeze upstairs was not evident here. Maddie took a few minutes to study the long, shadowy room. It appeared to be identical to its upper neighbor.
Once again, she moved to the far wall, placed her back against it, and began to pace, counting aloud as she did. Her voice echoed off the stone walls on either side. The open doors of the cells were dark holes, like eyes watching her.
“. . . twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one . . . and that’s it,” she said as she fetched up against the wall once more. She rubbed her chin.
“Near enough to twenty-five meters,” she said reflectively. “Definitely shorter than the room upstairs.”
She turned and paced once more, measuring the length of the room in the other direction. Again, she managed thirty-one paces before her toe stubbed against the base of the wall. There was no doubt about it. This room was five meters shorter than the one above. But why should it be?
She took down one of the hanging lanterns and moved to the far wall again, studying it in fine detail. Like the wall upstairs, it was made from large sandstone blocks. The mortar between them was old but firm. It hadn’t begun to deteriorate with age.
She inched her way along the wall, peering closely at it, holding the lantern high to shed its light on the stone, then holding it at an angle so that any anomalies might be highlighted. Nothing.
Then she noticed something on the end block, at the base. She bent for a closer look. Three words were written there—or rather, the same word was written there three times.
Sinister. Sinister. Sinister.
The lettering was small. It had been carved into the stone, presumably with a sharp-pointed tool, and if she hadn’t been looking so closely, with the light angled to throw the words into relief, she might well have missed them.
“Sinister,” she said to herself, then shrugged. “Not a bad description for a dungeon.”
Although, as she’d noticed earlier, it wasn’t a particularly appropriate description of this dungeon. It was dimly lit and low ceilinged, yes. But it was dry and free of vermin or the sort of tools of torture that were features of many dungeons.
No rack. No chains or fetters in sight.
She pushed open the door to the last cell in line and went inside, holding the lantern high to throw its light into the farthest corner. The walls were rough but dry. A battered, old wooden bed frame stood along the longer wall, and the door, made of ironbound wood, had a small barred window in its upper half, allowing light and air into the cell.
A small wooden table and stool completed the furnishings. There was even a stub of a candle, old and yellowed with age, on the table.
It certainly wasn’t luxurious, she thought. But it could have been a whole lot worse. The worst you could say about it was that the hard wooden cot might be somewhat uncomfortable.
But sinister? Not really.
She exited the cell and looked around, wondering why someone had carved those words into the stone. Wondering who had carved them.
“A prisoner?” she said, then discarded that idea. A prisoner would have been in the cell itself. If he wanted to carve a message, he would have done it in there. She couldn’t see any jailer allowing a prisoner out to vent his feelings on the wall itself.
It was a puzzle, and she sighed as she contemplated it.
“Put it out of your mind,” she told herself. She knew that was the best way to find an answer to puzzles like this. But, of course, as soon as she tried to push the thought aside, it crowded back into her consciousness.
Why was it written there?
And why was this room five meters shorter than the one above it?
Was there another room behind that stone wall? And if so, how did one gain access to it? She studied the wall again. She could see no sign of a door in the wall, or any kind of opening. The mortar was all solid, with no cracks visible.
Her stomach rumbled loudly, reminding her that it was getting close to the time for the midday meal.
“Going hungry won’t solve the puzzle,” she said, and mounted the stairs, heading for the buttery on the ground floor of the keep. “Maybe a full stomach will help you solve the riddle.”
As it turned out, it didn’t. But it solved the problem of her rumbling stomach.
After a substantial lunch, she decided to leave the puzzle of the cellars for a few hours. She hadn’t seen Bumper in two days. She collected her belongings from the library and thanked Uldred.
“Giving up?” He smiled, although there was a tone of disappointment in his voice.
She shook her head. “Taking a break. I need some fresh air to help my thinking.”
She left the library and headed for the stables to saddle Sundancer, cramming several apples into her jacket pocket as she went.
She rode to the farm, where Lou greeted her warmly. Warwick was working on one of the outlying fields. Leading Sundancer to the barn, she unsaddled him, gave him a brief rubdown and an apple, then tossed the saddle over Bumper’s back.
Wondered where you’d been.
“Sorry, I’ve been busy.”
She was preoccupied as she rode through the fields toward the hill where the old abbey was situated. She inspected the building once more, but it was unchanged. After patrolling the surrounding area for an hour and finding nothing to arouse her interest or suspicion, she returned to the barn, deep in thought, changed her saddle over, and rode back to Castle Araluen, waving a farewell to Lou as she left.
She clattered across the drawbridge, nodding a greeting to the sentries stationed there. At the stable, a stable boy took Sundancer’s reins from her.
“I’ll settle him down, my lady,” he said cheerfully. She was going to demur, then shrugged. One of the perks of being a princess was that people tended to do this sort of menial task for you. She left Sundancer in his care and mounted the stairs to her rooms, where she asked the servants to draw her a bath. Again, it occurred to her that, had she been back at Redmont, she would have had to perform this task for herself.
“I didn’t ask to be summoned here,” she said. “May as well take advantage of it.”
Her shoulder and neck muscles were stiff—a result of sitting hunched over the charts in the library. She lay back in the hot, soothing water for half an hour, feeling the tension in her muscles release and her limbs relax. Then she clambered out of the bath, wrapping herself in a full-length towel and spilling a substantial amount of the now-lukewarm water on the flagstones as she did so.
She contemplated mopping it up and grinned. Normally, she would do that. But here, she was a princess, with servants just waiting to look after her every need. She compromised by apologizing to the maid who hurried in at her call to dry the floor and empty the bath.
“No trouble, my lady,” the girl said cheerfully.
“See?” said Maddie to herself, to assuage the guilt. “She wants to look after you.”
She had an early dinner by herself. Her mother was attending to the details of an upcoming official visit by the newly appointed Iberian ambassador, and Maddie didn’t want to bother her. Dimon was on duty—again—so she was left to her own devices.
Which suited Maddie as she pondered the mystery of that five-meter discrepancy and the apparent lack of any way through the stone wall. Eventually, with no solution coming to her, she decided to go to bed. It had been a long day, poring over charts and measurements, descending into the cellars, then riding to Warwick and Lou’s farm and beyond.
It was warm and cozy under her blankets. Leaving the window open so that the chill night air would cool the room, she pulled the blankets up to her chin, luxuriating in their warmth. She stretched her legs out, yawned twice and let her eyes close. Her breathing became deep and regular.
Then, suddenly, she sat up in bed.
“Sinis
ter means ‘left’!”
14
It was close to midday when the little company rode out of the trees onto grassy flatland. Beyond the knee-high grass that waved gently in the breeze, Horace could see the silver sparkle of water stretching for several hundred meters to the north.
“That’s the Wezel,” he said.
Gilan nodded acknowledgment. “And there are our two scouts,” he replied, indicating the two mounted troopers waiting by the riverbank.
Horace turned in his saddle and beckoned the troop leader forward. The lieutenant trotted his horse up to them. Protocol dictated that while they were marching, he would stay a reasonable distance from the two commanders, allowing them to speak in relative privacy. He saluted as he drew rein alongside them.
“Wait here,” Horace told him, then indicated the two scouts several hundred meters away. “We’ll check with the scouts, and if it’s all clear, we’ll signal you forward.”
“Are you planning to stop here for a while, sir?” the lieutenant asked.
Horace squinted up at the sun, almost directly overhead. “We might as well rest the horses—and the archers,” he added with a grin. The archers, being unmounted, marched in the rear of the cavalry. “But wait till we hear what the scouts have to say.”
“Yes, sir.” The lieutenant touched his hand to the rim of his iron helmet, then turned away and issued commands to his troop. “Stay mounted, but sit at rest,” he told them.
The troopers eased their tired legs, standing in their stirrups and stretching their muscles. The archers who accompanied them simply sat or lay on the grass at the edge of the track, with sighs of relief. Horace and Gilan urged their mounts into a canter and rode toward the two scouts.
“Looks as if everything’s all right,” Gilan observed. Had the scouts intended to warn them of danger, they would have signaled so by now. As it was, they sat at ease and waited for the two commanders to come up with them. It was Horace’s operation, so Gilan left it to him to question the two riders.
The Red Fox Clan Page 10