by David Taylor
“Then why not look on the floor?”
“That’s too obvious. I’m convinced the lifting mechanism is somewhere in the carved wood.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Those who harboured priests in Queen Elizabeth’s day tended to be pretty important Roman Catholic landowners. Consequently, operating systems, latches, pulleys and miniature cranes, were deliberately hidden in costly objects that priest hunters would think twice about destroying.”
Freddie ran his hand over the trailing roses on the mantelpiece. The carvings were sufficiently raised to get his fingertips beneath them. Taking hold of a rose, he tried to turn it in a clockwise direction. It didn’t budge. He twisted it the other way but nothing happened.
“Use logic,” he scolded himself. “One of these roses must be more prominent than the others.”
Groping his way along the mantelpiece his fingers closed on the penultimate carving. It was sufficiently embossed for him to get his whole hand behind it.
He turned the rose clockwise and heard a catch release. With a grating noise, the panel nearest the fireplace swung away from the wall creating a wide enough gap for a slender person to wriggle through. The static electricity caused the hairs on his arm to rise up.
Freddie didn’t stop to think. Switching on his torch he edged his way into the narrow opening. His overriding impression was one of smell: the nauseatingly sweet odour of advanced putrefaction.
“There’s no one here,” he let her know.
“Well, that’s a relief” Cheryl’s muffled voice came out of the darkness as she squeezed her way through the narrow portal.
“Try not to stand on the dead rats.”
Shining his torch over the rough-hewn stones he showed her what was left of the rodents before moving the beam across the sloping brick walls of an eight foot by six hiding place. One of the bricks was smaller than the others. She touched it with her hand and the man sized aperture disappeared.
“Oops,” she said. “Hope we can find that again.”
“Look over there,” he shuffled to one side to let her see. The flickering light revealed they were actually standing at the open end of what seemed like a human sized tunnel.
“The way ahead,” he said drily. “People must have been a lot smaller when this was built. Want to go back?” He hoped she would say yes but Cheryl wasn’t the sort of girl to give up easily. Not when Prior William’s unexplored tunnel beckoned. “Where do you think this leads?”
“I’ve no idea but it was built for a purpose.”
He had no plan, no clear idea of what they might find. Taking a deep breath, he stuck the torch between his teeth and crawled into the tunnel’s inky black interior. The darkness sharpened his remaining senses. He could feel the slime encrusted stones beneath his hands and hear the rats scurrying around. There was a yelp behind him. One of the rats had nipped Cheryl’s jeans. The stench was overwhelming.
Hearing Cheryl retch, Freddie stopped. “There’s a handkerchief in my right trouser pocket. Tie it over your mouth and nostrils.”
Moving forward again, their hands and knees rubbed against the sweating slime of the tunnel walls. Even the rats deserted them, disappearing into the filthiness ahead. The tunnel became more constricted. They seemed to have crawled into some kind of spiral hole.
Leading the way, Freddie had a terrible thought. Perhaps they were in a waste disposal chute and about to fall into the bowels of a medieval cesspit. The presence of what appeared to be fossilised shit strengthened this theory. He was beginning to panic when the torchlight picked out a blue hole ahead.
“Good news,” he said. “We’re reaching the end of the tunnel.”
Their subterranean passage brought them out into a vast cavern bathed in an eerie blue light that seemed to emanate from a thin vertical shaft high above their heads before being refracted by the glowing green lichen that covered the surrounding walls. Craning his neck, he caught sight of a giant stalactite, formed by centuries of water percolating through the limestone, and could hear a steady dripping sound behind his own laboured breathing. The grotto was damp and cold. His first thought was that he had stepped into an ancient catacomb.
As his eyes became accustomed to the light and the strange shadows it cast on the shimmering walls, Freddie noticed something very odd. The grotto was heptagonal. Stonemasons with hammers and chisels had taken over where nature left off and what they had fashioned was a seven-sided vault. He remembered the first Rosicrucian manifesto, the Fama Fraternitatis Rosae Crucis, and the story it told of the life and death of the mythical founder of the movement Christian Rosenkreuz who had been buried in a hidden tomb with seven sides and seven corners. Although the sun could not penetrate his sepulchre it was illuminated by a mysterious light in the ceiling and a circular altar had been placed above his perfectly preserved body.
Sure enough, as Freddie explored a dimly lit recess in the cavern, he came across a crude circular table hacked out of the rock. It was covered with a fading purple altar cloth on which stood two silver candlesticks and a brass plate engraved with strange characters and the letter T.
He stopped in his tracks, filled with a sense of awe. They were actually standing in a Rosicrucian temple. Francis Bacon and his fellow Christian scientists had met here, deep in the bowels of Canonbury Tower, to recite their psalms and prayers and share their ecumenical beliefs. He could not bring himself to touch the altar candle or the plate. It would have been like stealing a piece of history.
But were they alone? The thought flashed through his head as he heard a pebble crunched underfoot. It was only a small sound but it made his skin prickle. He felt they were being watched. Somewhere behind him in the darkest corner of the vault, a man was breathing when he breathed. Was this his mysterious attacker, the burglar who had entered his flat twice without taking anything? Fear rooted him to the spot. He didn’t know what to do.
Too late, he recalled the casual way his friend Seymour Guest had introduced the idea of a Bacon testimony and how that had led them into this labyrinth. Anything could happen here and no one would know the difference. This man-made chamber was a perfect killing ground.
Terror is contagious. Cheryl picked up on it. “Is somebody here, Freddie?” she whispered urgently.
With a wavering hand he swung his torch across the cavern walls but barely penetrated the gloom. The beam was weak, suggesting the battery was low. “You must be imagining it,” he muttered. His words echoed around the cavern mocking his deceit. “But the sooner we’re out of here the better.”
To his utter relief, the flickering torch located an exit. Dropping below the floor of the vault was a spiralling flight of narrow stone steps, worn away at the centre, that were little more than footholds in a precipitous declivity.
“Now what do we do?” Cheryl asked in a quaking voice.
He weighed up their options. Going back would be a nightmare. Going forward might be worse but at least it was progress.
“Follow the yellow brick road,” he said grimly, pointing to the steps.
“You’ve got to be joking. I’m not going down there. It’s a gaping void.”
“Do you want to turn back then? It’ll be hard crawling through that tunnel again.”
She thought about being cooped up with the rats again and shook her head.
“This is what I want you to do. Take off your heels and move to the top of the steps. We’ll go down feet first. I’ll lead so I can catch you if you slip.”
A thoroughly frightened Cheryl needed no second bidding. She threw her shoes away and heard them ricochet off the wall. In bare feet, she followed him into the abyss. The light from his torch did little more than texture the surrounding darkness as they began their perilous descent.
Feeling for every step was a physically draining, nerve-sapping experience. Muscles began to ache and minds unravel as they scrambled downwards. Freddie found himself wondering whether the fear he’d felt in the vault had been unjustified. If a
man had been lurking in the shadows why hadn’t he made his presence felt. Why had he let them escape and why wasn’t he following them now?
A high-pitched whining noise made his heart leap in his chest. It took a while for him to register that his phone was ringing. Whoever it was would have to wait. As he clawed his way down the winding stairway, Freddie tried to stay positive; to ride the pain in his body. Every time he bent or twisted it felt as though he was being torn apart. He had to stop. In doing so he lost his footing, sliding down the worn stone steps, lacerating his knees, until with a resounding thump he landed at the bottom. He lay where he had fallen, winded but thankful to be in one piece.
“Are you all right?” Her trembling voice came out of the darkness above.
“You’re almost there,” he said encouragingly. “A dozen more steps to go! That’s all. ”
At which point the battery in his torch expired leaving them in total darkness and the pain returned, slicing through his body like red hot daggers. “Fuck,” he said loudly and felt better for it.
“Bloody hell, what do I do now?”
“I can see your feet, love. Let go and I’ll catch you.”
She fell into his arms, covering his face with kisses to celebrate their escape.
“It’s a bit soon for that,” he said, breaking off the embrace to explore their new surroundings. He stumbled over something. It felt like a heavy sack of cement. A pile of these sacks blocked his path. Moving around them he barked his shin on what he took to be a paint pot and cursed himself for a clumsy idiot. Then he saw a streak of light ahead. It was coming from under a door.
“I think we’re in a storage cellar,” he told her, “and I’ve found the way out.”
He had spoken too soon. The door was locked on the outside and no amount of yelling brought anyone to open it. Eventually they stopped shouting and faced up to the new terror of being locked in an underground utility room that might not be visited in months.
“OK, temporary setback,” said Freddie, on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
Sticking his back against the door, he shuffled along the wall in search of a second exit. All he could see was his breath condensing in the cold air.
“Ouch.” He had collided with some kind of iron protrusion. The offending object turned out to be a heavy bolt. There was a loud scraping noise as he drew back the rusting lock. The door creaked open. Cheryl stifled her cry of joy when she saw what awaited them outside.
Rising above their heads was the roof of an egg-shaped brickwork tunnel illuminated only by flickering strip lighting that receded into an infinite darkness. They had found their way into a Victorian sewer and were standing ankle deep in a scummy brown liquid. It was like a Gothic horror story. They were entombed in a tainted watercourse, a cathedral of human waste.
“I know shit happens but this is ridiculous,” she wailed, inspecting her soiled feet.
“Don’t worry,” he said taking her hand, “we’ll be out of here soon. I think this is a floodwater relief sewer so if we start walking we should find a manhole cover.”
Cheryl wrinkled her nose. The place positively reeked.
“Hold your nose and breathe through your mouth. You’ll get used to the smell. Watch out for rat urine though. You don’t want Weil’s disease.”
On that cautionary note Freddie set out, splashing his way through the free flowing murky water.
“Why is it running so fast?” she asked.
“It’s the best way of breaking down solid material. No, not what you think, mostly fat from local restaurants and kebab shops.”
Disgusted and frightened, she tried to keep her spirits up. “Victor Hugo said sewers were very democratic. They were places without secrets, where class distinctions dissolved.”
“I’d say they had an immersive history …” A roaring sound drowned out the rest of the joke.
Freddie knew immediately what had happened. Someone had opened the diffuser pipes in the outfall tunnel and they were about to be engulfed by a tidal wave of fetid water. Could this really have happened by accident? Reason told him it was because of London’s torrential rainfall. His morbid imagination suggested otherwise.
“Run,” Cheryl yelled frantically, her eyes wild with fear. “You said there’d be an exit near here.”
For a split second he hesitated. He suffered from aquaphobia and his mind was overwhelmed with terrifying thoughts of drowning. Then he burst into action, pushing her ahead of him, but it was already too late. The force of the current swept him off his feet, tossing him around like a rag doll, dragging him under, filling his mouth with a vile, evil-smelling brown liquid from which he now and then escaped, coughing and spluttering, to yell for help, knowing none would come from the uncaring city overhead. What a filthy, abject way to die.
Through the sulphuric haze an abandoned escalator shaft came into sight. Gratefully he grabbed hold of it. There was still hope. But where was she? He had lost sight of her during his slalom ride through the sewer. He shouted her name and choked on the diluted sewage.
Dizzy and lightheaded, Millais’ portrait of the drowning Ophelia swam into his brain. But there was nothing serene or pre-Raphaelite about Cheryl when he finally saw her, arms and legs flailing in the churning water. Clutching the escalator shaft with one hand he lunged for her but missed by inches and had to watch helplessly as she swept past him.
The rising tide was carrying her towards the sewer wall. At any moment, her brains would be dashed out. Then fortune smiled. The current tossed Cheryl into an alcove near a fixed ladder. Snatching a rung, she had the strength and determination to lever herself out of the angry swirling water. Once she had got her breath back she called for him to join her.
There wasn’t time to think. Instinct took over. Saying a silent prayer he let go of the shaft and tumbled into the raging torrent to be rushed forward until he smashed his shoulder on the brick wall. Dazed by the impact, he felt rather than saw the water close over his head. This is it, he thought, but at that moment his searching fingers encountered metal and he clung on for dear life.
Shoppers in Islington High Street stared in open-mouthed amazement as a manhole cover was lifted and two dishevelled figures climbed out and staggered along the pavement. Their clothes were smeared with excrement and they smelt to high heaven. The man’s stammered apologies were lost behind the girl’s belligerent challenge. “What are you looking at?” she shouted at shocked bystanders. “This is your shit we’re covered in and don’t you forget it.”
3 JULY 2014
What she had wanted was the certainty of love, the belief that there was no need to rush through life. Without that assurance, Samantha Jane Dilworth, the overachieving twenty-year-old editor of Mather’s student newspaper, had looked for peer group approval which had arrived in a most unexpected fashion. Her study door flung open by the captain of football shouting the words, ‘Pen and Sword, accept or reject?’ In accepting his offer, she became only the second woman to be initiated into the mysteries of one of the country’s oldest and most prestigious secret societies.
Attending what would otherwise have been an all male reunion in the dimly lit Glowworm Room, Sam had spent the evening thinking what a travesty it was. Because of their exclusivity, the Swords frequently featured in conspiracy stories that linked its members to the CIA, the Illuminati or even the Nazis when, in reality, it was no more than a stupid club that just happened to have former Presidents of the United States and Supreme Court judges among its alumni.
She still shuddered with embarrassment when she remembered her initiation ceremony. Held in the so-called Inner Temple, a small square room locked by an iron door, the rite involved kissing an imaginary pope’s slipper and signing their name in blood. Once these tasks had been performed initiates met ‘within the tomb’ on Pen and Sword time, one minute ahead of the rest of the world, where they could network to their heart’s content.
Tonight’s five course dinner had been a long drawn out affair. Afterward
s, Sam accepted an invitation to join her more boisterous colleagues for a night on the town and had ended up in the sweaty heat of a dance floor where a hip-hop DJ was playing vinyl loudly enough to awaken the dead. Hypnotized by the beat of the music she was slow to realize that ceiling sprinklers were dousing the dancers with a misty spray.
“They’ve got a nitrous cooling system,” her dance partner was telling her. He was a tall, muscular young man with broad shoulders who had once been a champion swimmer. While admiring his outer shape, Sam reckoned he had chlorinated bathwater on the brain.
“Would you like to dry off at the bar,” he yelled above the music.
“No thanks.”
A hand tugged at her elbow. She shrugged it off. But the tug was repeated. Turning to face her molester she stumbled into the small well-dressed man behind her. Under the strobing lights, all she could see was a goatee beard and gold rimmed spectacles.
“Hi,” he said. “What are you doing here?” It was Elliott Manley’s harsh, nasal voice.
“Enjoying getting wet after a Mather meal,” she replied sweetly.
“Don’t tell me you are a Swordsman? I know they were having a dinner tonight.”
“Class of 2004, Elliott.”
“Goodness me, you must be the first women to see the inside of Room 233. I am impressed.”
“The second, actually,” she corrected him.
“Will you join me at the bar? It’s drier there.”
Sam hesitated. She could hardly refuse an invitation from the director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, the man who signed her cheques. “I’d be delighted,” she said.
Manley escorted her across the slippery dance floor to a bar stool where he ordered Manhattan cocktails. As they waited for their drinks to be mixed, he explained what a man of his seniority was doing in a discotheque. He was attending a librarians’ conference in the city and had felt the need for a change of scenery. In other words, he was looking for a bit of action.