by Ruth Eastham
‘So the concerned school teacher and anti-fracking protests were all just a big act,’ Emmi said bitterly.
Aidan stood there, stunned. Everything suddenly made appalling sense. Miss Carter’s cottage was right next to the fracking zone. It was such a small house that he’d never have imagined all that surrounding land also belonged to her.
The landowner of the adjacent land, the person set to gain huge sums from Enershale’s expansion plans … it wasn’t Berryman.
It was Alice Carter!
Miss Carter gave him a pitying look.
‘I’m sorry about the black eye, Aidan,’ she said. ‘If only you hadn’t come back home when you did. But I couldn’t let you work out it was my car on the lane that day.’
‘You?’ Emmi could hardly get the word out.
Miss Carter ignored her. ‘I like you kids,’ she said. ‘You’re clever. You deserved to know the truth before …’ Her voice trailed off.
‘Before what?’ said Aidan. But she didn’t answer.
He swallowed. All he could think of was what Miss Carter had done to Robbie; the gun in her hand; the robotic look in the woman’s eyes …
‘You still haven’t told us how you knew we were here,’ he said, trying to buy time.
‘I needed to know what you were up to,’ she answered. ‘Keep track of where you were going.’ A small smile played on her lips. ‘Can’t you guess how?’
Emmi gasped suddenly, rifling through her pocket. She brought out the carved hare Miss Carter had given her at the cottage, and with a cry threw it down on the ground.
It fell with such force that the wood split open.
Jon bent to pick something up that had shot from the broken carving. He examined the small object then held it up between shaky fingers. ‘GPS device,’ he said in a small voice.
Aidan stared at the smashed hare. She’d been tracking them all along!
‘And it was me, wasn’t it, who told you about the drone,’ added Jon sheepishly, ‘while we were at your house?’
‘Don’t blame yourself, Jon,’ Miss Carter soothed. ‘But it was pointless for you to come down here, children. I removed all the bones and relocated them, along with the bracelet.’
Aidan swapped quick glances with Emmi and Jon. She doesn’t know!
Miss Carter didn’t know about the clue in the riddle. About Boudicca’s tomb being next to this one. Course she doesn’t know! How could she?
‘The new Iceni-Roman battle site has been established,’ Miss Carter continued. She shifted the gun a little, flicking a strand of red hair from her eyes with her free hand. ‘You’ve done nothing but put yourselves in awful danger, children.’
Emmi’s eyes were fixed on the barrel. ‘If you kill us, they’ll find out you did it,’ she spat.
Miss Carter drew away from them with a look of dismay, the gun lowered again. She put a hand to her mouth and shook her head. ‘I’m not going to kill you. What are you thinking? Why would you say that; I could never do that!’
Aidan’s spine prickled as she spoke. There was something so unnatural about it, as if she was reciting words she’d rehearsed for one of her plays.
‘We all have to get out,’ Miss Carter said urgently, looking around wildly as if this idea had only just occurred to her. ‘As soon as we can.’
Aidan realised what the woman was doing: convincing herself that this tomb would be to blame for what happened to them; nothing to do with her.
‘I came looking for you,’ Miss Carter repeated, backing towards the tomb exit. ‘I tried to help you, but Jon hurt himself, and then the shockwave from the fracking blast came and … I tried to help you, I really did!’
He imagined the woman clutching a hot cup of tea and sobbing convincingly as she had to recount the story to the emergency services. Would that be the tale she told the police, Aidan wondered, as a team tried to dig out their dead bodies?
More likely, she’d just say nothing. Three missing kids, disappeared without a trace.
Jon’s warning alarm blared. Blast five.
‘The hospital have told me I can visit Robbie,’ Miss Carter said quietly, and there was something about the way she said it that made Aidan feel sick.
‘You stay away from my cousin!’ shouted Emmi furiously. ‘If you do anything to Robbie again, I’ll …’ She took a step towards Miss Carter and Aidan saw the woman’s hand grip the gun.
‘Seven … six … five …’ recited Jon under his breath in a panic.
‘Robbie didn’t suffer,’ Miss Carter soothed. ‘He was knocked out, darling, as soon as he hit my windscreen.’
Emmi threw herself at Miss Carter with a cry. There was a blur of movement. Aidan was momentarily too stunned to react.
The gun went off with a deafening crack. Something glanced Aidan’s arm, stinging the skin. He heard Jon cry out. Emmi screamed. He saw Miss Carter escaping down the passageway …
And a fraction of a second later …
… the blast hit.
– CHAPTER 25 –
TRAPPED
The shockwave rippled up through the depths. Aidan’s teeth rattled. Emmi was clutching his arm so tight it hurt.
There was a wrenching crack. A scream he couldn’t place. Aidan crouched; his hands curled instinctively up round his head. He heard Jon give a small, scared cry. Stones pelted from overhead. A rock glanced his side.
Slowly, after what felt like forever, the trembling subsided.
Aidan coughed. There was the taste of grit in his mouth. He blinked; the feeble beam of his torch picking out the swirling motes of dust in the chamber. Soil showered down in a thin stream like sand from an hourglass.
There was a sharp pain in his arm when he moved it, and he saw a sliver of stone jutting from his sleeve, embedded in his skin. A bit of rock shattered by the ricocheting bullet, he guessed. Flinching, he eased it out.
Aidan heard a weak voice, Jon’s: ‘Man down.’ And he went over to where his friend was lying.
‘Jon!’ Emmi cried, rushing to his side.
‘It’s just a graze,’ gasped Jon, clutching his ankle, his face screwed up. ‘Flesh wound.’
Aidan exchanged anxious glances with Emmi. There was a tear at the bottom of Jon’s jeans, and blood round the hole where Miss Carter’s bullet had hit.
Emmi’s eyes were round with shock. She took off her hoodie and got busy wrapping the fabric round the wound.
Aidan helped her wind the material tight, then stared round the chamber.
The plinth of the doorway had collapsed, strewing the gap with a barrier of rubble and earth, blocking their escape.
But it was the buckled ceiling that worried him most. Stone slabs were wedged precariously against each other like tumbled, giant grey dominoes.
He saw Jon shiver as Emmi finished tying his makeshift, bulky bandage. ‘My ankle hurts.’
‘Stay still, Jon,’ said Aidan quickly, putting the holdall under his head as a pillow.
‘Miss Carter got away!’ said Emmi, twisting her hands together. ‘She said she was going to see Robbie. I’ve got to warn Mum and Dad! Tell the police!’
She tugged out her mobile, but Aidan held her arm. ‘There’s no signal down here, Em,’ he said gently. ‘Remember?’
Emmi clambered towards the entranceway, waggling at pieces of stone and earth that blocked it.
Aidan joined in, lifting chunks out and lugging them to one side.
They heaved and scraped at the rubble.
‘Sorry I can’t help, guys,’ Jon croaked. His face was pale. He winced as he eased his mobile out of his pocket and checked the timer.
‘One blast left,’ he mumbled, his eyes huge and staring at the ceiling. ‘Thirteen minutes and thirteen seconds.’
Aidan worked faster. He fumbled with a loose rock, a fingernail tearing painfully against the abrasive surface. The cloying taste of damp earth coated the back of his throat.
He clamped his hands round a jutting stone and, gritting his teeth, eased it towards him. As
he pulled it free it triggered a small landslide and he and Emmi drew back quickly, watching the flurry tensely, waiting for it to settle. They stood there in an uneasy silence.
Experimentally, Aidan reached a hand into one of the fist-sized spaces.
Another small landslide made them freeze.
Aidan stumbled back and shook his head. ‘We have to stop. The whole lot could go. There’s no getting out that way.’
He and Emmi sat on the ground, panting. Aidan struggled to control the fear rising through his chest; the crawling claustrophobia in the dying torch light.
Shadows seemed to circle him, their darkness deepening the fissures; the spider-thread crack right up the far wall.
Gnawing rat voices scurried through his head. You’re trapped. There’s no way out. You’re all going to die down here.
He chewed the inside of his cheek and tried to focus on a plan, any plan.
But none came.
Emmi was standing in the middle of the chamber, a dazed expression on her face.
Aidan saw her run her fingers over the inscription in the rock Robbie had made.
BP.
The next second she had snatched up a pointed stone and was bent to the rock surface, scratching energetically.
‘Em,’ said Aidan, ‘what are you doing?’
‘If we don’t get out of here …’ Emmi sniffed and pushed the hair from her face. Her voice was thick. ‘If they dig us out and find this place, I want them to know the truth – my mum and dad – about everything that’s happened.’ Her voice wobbled. ‘So one day, somehow, they’ll know the truth about us and Robbie and everything, and Miss Carter won’t get away with what she’s done.’
She continued to scrape unhappily at the surface, grazing her knuckles with the effort. She gave a small sob, and began to hack at the stone more aggressively, driving the rock point forward, stabbing letters one by one into the wall.
ALICE CARTER MURD …
Aidan watched her, a chaotic mix of emotions shunting painfully through him.
He saw Jon silently staring at Emmi too, his eyes glistening.
Aidan thought about his dad; losing Mum had nearly killed him, and now …
Aidan thought about his two friends who’d stuck by him, no matter what.
I’ll get them out, he told himself fiercely. I’ll get Emmi and Jon out.
Jon gave a yelp as Aidan grabbed his top and slid him along the floor, away from the worst of the warped ceiling and into a small alcove at the chamber edge, where a lip of harder rock might give some protection.
Emmi finished her message, and she and Aidan huddled over Jon, shielding him.
I’ll get them out … Aidan repeated the words like a mantra. But each time he said them, his voice came out a little weaker, as if the hope was draining out of him.
He was to blame for Jon and Emmi being here. It was he – Aidan – that Boudicca and her daughters had sought out. Had this been their plan all along? To lure him here, get them all killed? Some kind of warped human sacrifice for a reason he couldn’t even begin to guess at.
Aidan was filled with crushing doubt. Boudicca had probably murdered her share of people when she was alive, after all. Defending her land, maybe, but she had been a killer just the same.
And if the ghosts weren’t against them, where were they now, when he most needed them?
‘Valour! Truth!’
Aidan called the words out loud and heard them echo round the purple darkness of the chamber.
The three of them gripped each other.
The torch sent out a dim blueish beam that settled in a thin pool against the far wall, catching the message Emmi had scraped on to the stone.
ALICE CARTER MURDERED US
HER CAR HIT ROBBIE PICKERSGILL
FOUR MILLION FRACKING MONEY
Her work had widened the crack running up the rock. Now it was the width of a fist.
Aidan stared. Blinked. He must be hallucinating. There was light showing through the long crack. A light that couldn’t be from the torch. Shakily, he got to his feet.
He moved nearer. But he still couldn’t work out what it was.
‘Aidan?’ Emmi whispered.
The light was coming from the other side. Sunlight? But how could it be? Some kind of light, reflected at strange angles.
Aidan put his hands to the wall and pressed his eye to the gap …
‘How much time do we have left?’ He could hardly speak the words. His heart thumped against the rock surface.
‘Nine, ten minutes,’ wheezed Jon. ‘But …’
Aidan grabbed the claw hammer, and swung it hard at the fissure, one smack followed immediately by another.
‘What are you doing, Aidan!’ Emmi cried in alarm. ‘What is it? It’s not safe to …’
The edges of the crack began to fall away like flaking plaster. Slate-like strata fragmented under the blows, as one edge was cleaved off, the next coming away … until the gap was wide enough; just wide enough to squeeze through.
Aidan looked at his friends. Emmi’s mouth was gaping. Jon had lifted his head slightly. None of them said a word. They didn’t need to.
Aidan and Emmi quickly helped Jon up. His bandaged foot scraped the ground as he limped to the opening, an arm round each of their shoulders.
Then one by one, with much twisting and pushing and gasps of pain, the three of them went through into the chamber beyond.
– CHAPTER 26 –
LAY HER TO REST
The first thing Aidan made out was the curving metal of some kind of wheel. The rim of a chariot wheel, he realised, its wood long since perished.
Sunlight came from the ceiling, an opening several metres up, from which thick roots dangled. Through the hole Aidan saw the branches of the horse chestnut tree; a ragged leaf canopy and patches of sky. A hole that must have opened up in the tremor. A weak patch of ground collapsed.
As Aidan’s eyes adjusted, other objects materialised from the gloom, reflecting the light.
The three stood speechless.
Shields, intricately carved with swirling, interlocking Celtic patterns.
Ornate, tarnished spear tips. Drinking cups studded with gems. Jewellery stacked in piles.
Everywhere, there was the shimmer of silver, of gold.
And in the chamber’s centre …
‘Target located,’ Jon croaked. ‘Operation Tomb Boudicca is …’ Aidan felt Jon’s legs buckle, and he and Emmi set him on the ground, gazing.
Aidan’s throat tightened.
Undisturbed for 2,000 …
The three shuffled closer …
A raised stone slab.
A human skeleton, laid out in funeral pose.
Aidan saw the skull, with a gold band set round it; the bones of a ribcage, leg bones, arm bones. The skeleton fingers of one hand grasping something.
‘Oh my god,’ Emmi breathed.
Aidan stared too, the metal blade; the swirling hare engraved on its hilt. A sword. A huge red gem glimmering from the hare’s eye.
Boudicca’s sword.
Aidan snapped his mind back to what had to be done.
‘We can get out!’ He tugged hard at one of the dangling roots. It might just take his weight. He pushed the strand into Jon’s hands and wrapped his friend’s fingers hurriedly round it. ‘Get a grip of this root, Jon-Boy. Go on!’
Jon clutched the root, and gave a grunt as he tried to climb. Aidan made a stirrup with his hand and launched him by his good foot, and Jon squirmed in the air trying in vain to get a grip on the pitted stone walls.
‘Try again, Jon!’ Emmi insisted, trying to lift him.
‘Can’t!’ Jon said, flopping to the ground. ‘No good.’
‘You go up first, Aidan,’ Emmi said. ‘Then you can help to pull him up!’
Aidan looked at her a moment, then he grabbed the tree root and was clinging to it, heaving himself upwards, using the hand stirrup Emmi made for him to gain height. Then his feet were on her shoulders an
d he felt Emmi wobble under him, and he was grappling and pulling himself, grunting with the effort, getting another, then another, foothold in the pitted stone wall of the chamber, reaching for the space and clawing his way out … Squeezing, pushing out through the frame of coiling bracken and heather.
He came out on his back, and lay there a short moment, getting his breath back, the ancient branches of the horse chestnut tree arching over him.
Then he rushed to pull out his phone.
Still no signal. How could that be?
Aidan pulled himself on to his front and leant into the hole, stretching down with an arm. ‘Come on, Jon!’
Jon cried out as he tried again to climb. His face was ash grey. He shook his head, crumpling. ‘I’ll never get up there. You go, Em,’ he panted. ‘I’ll wait here.’
‘Jon, there’s no way am I leaving you here alone. Aidan!’ she said in a rush. ‘Get to the fracking platform. Tell them about the tomb; about us being trapped here.’
Jon clutched his mobile phone, as if willing the countdown to stop. The light from the screen illuminated his sweaty forehead. ‘Yeah, Aide,’ he mumbled. ‘You can do it.’
Aidan’s mind spun.
‘Take proof!’ Emmi called up. Her face was fierce with determination.
He saw her reach over the body. Light glanced off the sword as she lifted it, then hurriedly strapped it to the end of a hanging root.
Aidan hoisted up the blade.
He untied the sword and slotted it into the belt of his jeans; the weight of it giving him a strange courage. ‘How long do we have?’ He fumbled for his watch to set the timer.
‘Five minutes,’ Jon called falteringly.
‘You can do this, Aidan!’ Emmi shouted.
But they all knew the truth.
Even at full sprint, it would take a miracle for Aidan to get to the Enershale platform in time.
Aidan crouched by the hole. ‘I’m coming back,’ he shouted to them. ‘His voice echoed round the chamber. I’m coming back for you!’
Emmi nodded hard, tears in her eyes as she looked up at him. ‘Course!’ Her voice broke with emotion. ‘Course you are, Aide!’