‘I already told you who I am. You may call me Uncle, though…’
‘He is Mama’s uncle,’ Pierre interjected. ‘We went to see him sometimes at the Chateau du Bois.’ He did not, however, say it with much fondness, nor did he seem as pleased to see a relative from his native land as I would have expected.
‘So it was you who told Louis where to find Pierre,’ I said.
‘Exactly. I assumed Lisette was with him, but…’ He spread his hands, bony and beringed. The nails had grown unpleasantly long, and there was grime beneath them.
‘How long have you been here?’ I asked.
‘Oh, a week, two weeks – I’ve lost count,’ he said, confirming my earlier thought that Louis must have brought him on his last trip from France. ‘It’s a miserable existence, I assure you. Apart from Louis and some ruffian who comes to bring me food and water, I have seen no one.’
Instantly I was alert. ‘Someone brings you food and water?’ I repeated, anxious suddenly that Tucker’s Grave was not quite the safe hiding place I had believed it would be.
‘Well of course they do!’ the old Frenchman said irritably. ‘How else could I survive? It’s bad enough being cold and in the dark most of the time without starving or dying of thirst as well. Why, I’ve already been chastised for lighting a lamp that showed at the window, and I only dare light a fire when darkness falls for fear the smoke will be seen by someone passing by on the road.’
So – here was the explanation for the light Ralph had seen. But I was puzzled as to the reason Armand was prepared to remain here in such conditions.
‘I’m surprised you haven’t left by now,’ I said.
‘And where would I go? Oh, I suppose I could try to seek out one of my compatriots who has escaped to England, and throw myself on their mercy. But I have nothing – nothing! The Revolutionaries were on my heels when Louis found me, and I fled with nothing but the clothes on my back.’
If he had been a more likeable man, I might have felt sympathy for him then. As it was, I felt nothing.
‘You cannot stay here for ever,’ I said bluntly.
‘Mon dieu! I hope not!’ he replied. ‘No, Louis has promised to make me an allowance and find a home for me when he returns. Until then he wants me here in case he is in need of information as to other connections for Lisette, though it seems what I was able to tell him already was sufficient.’
‘But why here?’ I asked. ‘Why did he not bring you to Belvedere, where you could at least have lived in some comfort?’
‘For one thing, he wanted me where no one but his own trusted companions could ask me questions. For another…’ He sniffed, a haughty expression of distaste which in a less cultured man would likely have been a snort. ‘Louis would not have me under his roof. He blames me for all manner of things. And he would not have me near Antoinette.’ A thin smile twisted his lips as he looked at her again with those same narrowed eyes. ‘I can understand him there. She is a very pretty girl, and so like her mother at that age. I may be an old man, but…’
Though at the time I knew nothing of Lisette’s story, yet I recoiled in disgust at the lechery I read all too plainly in his face.
‘I think it is high time these two young people tried to sleep,’ I said stiffly. ‘And since this is the warmest room in the house, I shall settle them here, in the kitchen.’
‘I have had a fire in the bedroom I am using too,’ he said. And with the first hint of humanity he had shown since I had laid eyes on him, he went on: ‘The children may use my bed. I can sleep on the sofa here.’
On the point of refusing, I relented. Both Antoinette and Pierre looked quite exhausted. They would come to no harm from this unpleasant old man so long as I was with them.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘And I shall sleep with them.’
‘As you like. It would be good to have company, though, after my solitary confinement.’ His eyes moved over me, but there was none of the lechery in them that I had glimpsed when he had looked at Antoinette. I was, I suspected, already too old for his debauched tastes. ‘You, I presume, are Louis’ paramour.’
‘No,’ I lied, more for the benefit of Antoinette and Pierre than for my own. ‘I am a friend. And this inn, as a matter of fact, was my home.’
Then, with as much dignity as I could muster under the circumstances, I ushered Antoinette and Pierre towards the stairs.
* * *
The Marquis du Bois had taken over the room that had been my father’s, and the bed, though not as clean as I would have liked, was at least aired from his sleeping in it. We lay down, all three of us, fully dressed, and before long the children’s exhaustion overcame them and they were dead to the world. Sleep did not come so easily to me; I lay, tossed about on a sea of emotions, tormented by anxiety and the racing of my thoughts. At last, however, I too fell into an uneasy slumber.
When I awoke it was morning. Soon, I thought, Gavin would be up and about and realize that we were missing. What would he do? He would be furious, that much was certain, but would he be able to hazard a guess as to where to look for us? I prayed he would not. He believed, as far as I was aware, that Tucker’s Grave was locked and barred, and he did not know that I knew where the key was hidden. But supposing he knew where it was – and found it missing?
Well, it was no use fretting about that now. We were here, and here we must stay, for the present at least, as much prisoners as Lisette’s detestable old uncle.
When I rose from the bed, I disturbed the children; they were stiff, bleary and bad-tempered, tired, already, of their adventure.
‘How long do we have to stay here?’ Antoinette complained as she tried to tug the tangles out of her hair with her fingers.
‘I don’t know…’ I began, and Pierre interrupted me.
‘Until Papa comes home, bringing Mama with him…’ He turned to me, his eyes suddenly dark with anxiety. ‘He will find her, won’t he? He will bring her to England?’
My heart missed a beat. ‘God willing.’ It was all I could think of to say.
* * *
We spent a miserable morning, chilled to the marrow because I refused to allow a fire, afraid the smoking chimney would give away our presence, and hungry, for not knowing how long it would be before we got fresh provisions, I rationed out the bread, cheese and meat that Alice had given us quite stringently. No wonder the Marquis was so ill-tempered if he had endured these conditions for more than a week! Even being under my father’s roof was no comfort to me now; somehow Tucker’s Grave no longer felt like my home.
It was approaching noon when I heard a horse’s hooves outside. I ran to the window, but could see nothing through the tight slats of the shutters.
‘That will be the man with my supplies,’ Armand said as a knock came at the door.
I frowned. ‘He comes to the front of the inn? Within sight of the road – and in daylight too?’
‘Generally he comes to the back door, but who else could it be?’ Armand was already shooting back the bolts, his thin hands fumbling with the heavy metal.
‘Wait! I must know who is there!’ I cried desperately, but Armand ignored me, reaching for the upper bolt.
Hoping against hope that I was allowing my imagination to run away with me, I retreated to the kitchen just as the door swung open and I heard Armand’s surprised tones.
‘Oh – it’s someone new today. Are you…?’
‘Out of my way, you buffoon!’ It was unmistakably Gavin’s voice.
My heart came thudding into my mouth. Somehow he had found us and we were caught like rats in a trap! The rear door was as securely locked and bolted as the front door should have been, I did not know what had become of the key in the weeks since Louis had taken me away so unceremoniously, and the windows were shuttered. There was no escape. Except…
‘Quickly! It’s Gavin! He’s here!’ Even as I spoke, my voice no more than an urgent whisper, I was pulling aside the rug, uncovering the trapdoor that led down into the secret passages.
As I lifted it, the smell of damp earth and stale air rushed up to meet me, and the access yawned below, much deeper than I remembered it. There had been, at one time, some kind of ladder to assist descent, but it had long since gone, rotted away by time and the elements.
‘In you go!’ I instructed Pierre and Antoinette. ‘Just drop! Quickly now!’
Antoinette’s eyes were bright once more with excited anticipation; had she not begged to be allowed to explore the secret passage? She wriggled into the aperture, holding steady for just a moment by her fingertips, then letting go and disappearing with a soft thud into the blackness below. Pierre, however, hung back, white with fear.
‘No! I cannot! J’ai peur…!’
‘You must!’ I ordered. Gavin was in the inn now; I could hear him blundering about in the bar. ‘Your life depends upon it!’
‘I cannot!’
I caught him by the shoulders and, finding a strength I did not know I possessed, lifted him bodily, squirming and struggling, and deposited him into the abyss. As he landed I heard his muffled cry of pain and winced, but more from fear that Gavin should hear than for any injury I might inadvertently have caused him.
On the point of following, another thought struck me. I ran to the wall cabinet, grabbed my father’s gun, and slammed the door shut once more. With a warning shout to Pierre and Antoinette, I tossed the gun into the access hole. Then I grabbed the silk rope from the window drapes, twisted it through the eyelet catch on the trapdoor, and launched myself into the passage, jerking the trapdoor shut after me. The rug, of course, would no longer be covering the entrance, but there was nothing I could do about that. At least we were out of sight – and not a moment too soon!
Footsteps sounded loud on the boards above our heads, and Gavin’s voice filtered through the cracks in the trapdoor, no longer the pleasant tones he generally affected, but a low, unpleasant snarl.
‘Where are they? They came here, I’m certain of it!’
‘Why should you think they are here?’ Armand asked, and I was only grateful he had chosen not to betray us immediately.
‘The ground is soft at this time of year – it was child’s play to follow the horses’ tracks through the woods!’ Gavin replied scornfully. ‘Once they reached the road, granted I could follow them no more. But where else would Flora go but home?’
‘I’m alone, you can see,’ Armand said.
‘You’re hiding them, you old fool. I know it!’
The footsteps started towards the door and I almost dared breathe again. Then I heard Gavin’s exclamation, and the steps changed direction.
‘They are here – and there’s proof of it! That’s Antoinette’s cloak!’
I almost gasped aloud in horror. Antoinette’s cloak had been lying on a chair, and in my haste, I had not thought to remove it!
‘Are they hiding in the bedrooms? I’ll find them, have no fear!’ Another exclamation. ‘Faith, I know where they’ll be! The underground passages! And that’s the entrance to them, if I’m not mistaken!’
He must have seen the misplaced rug, I realized.
‘Get back!’ I hissed to Antoinette and Pierre. Antoinette did so, and as I followed her, a long feathery cobweb brushed my cheek and I had to bite back a scream. But Pierre remained where he was, crouched at my feet.
‘I can’t!’ he sobbed. ‘My ankle…’
Gavin’s fingers were scrabbling at the trapdoor; light flooded in and I saw his head and shoulders silhouetted against it as he knelt on the floor, peering down.
‘Ah!’ He grunted with satisfaction. ‘I was right! So – you thought to hide from me, did you? Well, since you like it so much, you can stay there whilst I deal with our friend the Marquis. In fact he laughed softly – ‘leaving you there is an easy answer to my problems, is it not? Did you not tell me, Flora, the passage is blocked up and has been for years? That this is now the only way in – or out? Did you not tell me how the monks died there, like rats in a trap? Well, you can do the same, my friends, and there’ll be no evidence to lay at my door. What if there are three more skeletons in the depths? It could well be another hundred years before they are discovered, and by then Belvedere will have been mine and my heirs’ for generations!’
‘Uncle Gavin – it’s me!’ Antoinette cried, appalled. ‘You can’t do this! I thought you were my friend!’
‘No daughter of Louis’ can be a friend of mine!’ Gavin snarled. He was mad, I thought, quite mad!
‘You won’t get away with this!’ Antoinette persisted. ‘When Papa gets back from France he’ll come looking for us!’
Gavin laughed, the same mad laugh. ‘Your Papa will not be coming back, chérie. Pierre kindly informed me of his mother’s whereabouts and I have been able to alert the Revolutionaries. They’ll set a trap and take him. Oh, no one will come looking for you, Antoinette!’
‘Pierre! How could you!’ Antoinette cried.
‘I didn’t!’ Pierre protested. ‘Papa had told me it was a secret – so when he asked, I lied!’
‘What?’ Gavin roared, and in spite of our plight and the terrible danger we were in, joy and relief burst in my veins. There was hope for Louis yet, then! Then my alarm returned in a rush when he grated: ‘Little bastard! I’ll beat it out of you, and then toss you back to starve or die of suffocation!’
‘Would it not be easier,’ the dry tones of the Marquis interjected, ‘if you and I were to have a little chat? Pierre’s knowledge of his mother’s friends is limited – you know Lisette never likes her children around when she is on her assignations. But I know all her friends and acquaintances, anyone she is likely to have taken refuge with. I could, I am sure, be of considerable help to you.’
‘And why should you tell me the truth any more than the boy?’ Gavin demanded. ‘She’s your niece, after all.’
The old man cackled thinly. ‘I have no doubt you can be very persuasive, Gavin, in your own way – and I am averse to pain. I am safe now – why should I risk that for such an ungrateful wench? Leave the boy where he is and talk to me. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know and not cause you the trouble you’d have eliciting it from Pierre, who seems, for all her neglect, to remain touchingly loyal to his mother.’
My heart was in my mouth. I could only hope that the Marquis intended to mislead Gavin further. Or that Louis was already on his way back to England and any betrayal would come too late. For the moment, however, he had saved Pierre from the cruel beating Gavin would have undoubtedly inflicted in an effort to gain the information he so desperately wanted.
‘Very well,’ Gavin said, ‘we’ll talk first.’ His silhouette appeared once more in the aperture above our heads. ‘As for the three of you, you can stay where you are until I need you. I must say I hope I will not. Armand will be co-operative, I think, and I shall leave immediately to pass on details of Louis’ whereabouts to the French. So…’ He laughed unpleasantly. ‘I think I should say goodbye to you all. We shall not meet again in this life.’
The trapdoor slammed so that once more we were in total blackness, and a scraping sound on the floorboards indicated that Gavin was dragging some heavy piece of furniture – the old sea chest, perhaps, to cover it. There was no way, I knew, that we could open the hatch with that weighting it down, even if we could climb up to it. Undoubtedly we were trapped, all three of us, just as Gavin had said. For had not the passage been blocked off at its other end?
‘Oh Flora!’ Antoinette sounded terrified now. ‘We’re going to die, aren’t we? He’s going to leave us here to die, just as the monks did, in this horrible place!’
Somehow I controlled my rising panic. ‘It may be possible to get out at the other end of the tunnel,’ I said.
‘But… you told me that was blocked by all the stones from the ruined abbey…’
‘And so it’s supposed to have been. But local children have always been fascinated with the place. They may have gone there even if they were forbidden and dug a way through…’
Even as I
said it, I knew it was a slim chance, but it was our only hope. ‘Come on, it’s only half a mile or so. We’ll make our way there and see.’
I had, of course, forgotten the injury Pierre had sustained when I threw him into the passage.
‘I can’t!’ he whimpered. ‘My leg – it hurts! I can’t move it!’
‘Try!’ I urged him.
‘I can’t! I can’t!’
‘Then you must remain here,’ I said, ‘and Antoinette, you stay with him. I will go alone and if I can find a way of escape I’ll run for help.’
As I took my first uncertain step, my toe stubbed into something, and I suddenly remembered the blunderbuss I had thrown into the tunnel. Oh, how could I have forgotten it! I could so easily have discharged it into Gavin’s face when he had leaned over to taunt us! And I’d have done it, too! I cursed myself for having been panicked into not thinking clearly, picked up the gun, and turned to Antoinette.
‘Take this. If Gavin opens the hatch again, point it at him and pull the trigger.’
She shrank back. ‘I couldn’t! I’ve never fired a gun in my life!’
‘Nor have I,’ I told her, ‘but it’s easy enough, I am sure. Our lives may depend on it.’
‘Oh very well, I’ll try.’ She took the gun from me and I started to inch my way along the narrow tunnel into the pitch darkness. The rough walls scraped my fingernails as I felt my way, the earth through the thin soles of my slippers was damp and cold as the grave. An image rose, unbidden, in my mind, of my father’s coffin being lowered into that same clammy earth and I sobbed in fear and despair. But somehow the thought of my father gave me courage. It was as if in that moment he was with me, his presence urging me on. Spiders’ webs flapped at my face, and soon my hands were sticky with them, but I pressed on, inching my way through the blackness, the fetid smell of damp entering me with each shaking breath and gathering like a sickness in my stomach.
On and on I went; never had a mere half-mile seemed so far. Once I ran into a fall of stone covered with earth and thought I could go no further. But I scrambled on to it, wriggling on my belly until the tunnel opened out once more. After a while it seemed to climb a little, a steady, gradual incline. Hope flared briefly within me, and then, to my utter despair, I reached a barrier comprised of larger stones and rubble, and knew this was different to the other one I had manoeuvred around. This, I could tell from the texture of it, was not rocks that had fallen from the walls of the tunnel, but huge chunks of masonry. I was under the ruined abbey, and it had indeed collapsed into my only way of escape. Tiny chinks of light shone through, confirming that I had indeed reached the end of the tunnel.
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