by Tom Harper
Ellie had read the book like an eight year old, hiding under the duvet with a torch long after she should have been asleep. It taught her a new language, a new grammar – escutcheons and lozenges, charges and tinctures. She learned the difference between engrailed and enfossed, between metals and furs. She marvelled at the precision of it, even as she despaired of its intricacy. But she learned it.
Gules a chevron Argent, overall an eagle displayed Sable, armed and holding a spear both Or.
She consulted the paper from the file and found the numbers that corresponded to the colours. Each had four digits, sixteen in total. She entered them on the keypad, praying she’d remembered the medieval terminology correctly.
For a moment nothing happened. Then, with a creak that sounded as old as the stones themselves, the doors swung in.
XXX
Troyes, County of Champagne, November 1141
THE TOWN IS packed: All Souls was two weeks ago, and the Cold Fair is in full swing. Merchants have come from all the corners of Christendom to trade their wares. The Count of Champagne has built vast warehouses on the edge of the town to accommodate the trade; his guards are everywhere in their blue and white livery, shepherding the money as it changes hands. You can buy furs, wool and linen cloth, pepper and spices, leather and silk – anything you can imagine.
It’s also a good place to buy men.
The square in the centre of the town has become a cockpit. Four rings have been roped off, where squires and serjeants take turns testing their strength in combat. I manoeuvre my way to the front. A fat man in a leather cap and armour is taking on a young squire, whose face is a mask of concentration. The boy dances and skips, jabbing and parrying. The fat man barely moves, content to swat and bat the boy back. On the far side of the ring, I can see a one-eyed, grey-haired man in a black coat trimmed with gold. He’s watching the fight, but he looks bored.
With a sudden movement that belies his size, the fat man darts forward. Two strokes and the boy’s clutching his hand in agony, his sword on the ground. He reels away, towards a girl who looks as if she’s having second thoughts.
The crowd applaud; money changes hands. While they’re talking, I duck under the rope and pick up the fallen sword. The weight feels good.
The fat man looks at me. ‘Did you lose your armour?’
I shrug. If I were more extravagant, I’d make some bragging retort.
The crowd are getting interested. There’s nothing they like more than an entertaining mismatch. A proven champion in leather armour, against – what?
They’re waiting to see if I’m just a fool who’s drunk too much, or if I can surprise them.
I stand as stiff as I can and take a couple of awkward, artless strokes. The fat man relaxes. Another novice, he thinks. I retreat from his attacks, skittering around the ring like a frightened fawn. The fat man follows, taking his time. The crowd bay encouragement. From the corner of my eye, I see the man in the black coat watching intently. He’s not deceived.
I start to slow down. The fat man sees his moment and comes in for the kill. He’s agile, but he’s got a lot of weight to carry – and I’ve watched how he does it. I see him coming and drift back. He lands heavily and staggers forward, off balance. I get inside the reach of his blade and grab his arm. I twist it until it’s about to snap, then chop down the hilt of my sword against his wrist. He drops his sword: he’s trying to pull away, but I won’t let go. I knee him in the gut, and for good measure, slam the pommel of my sword into his nose. I don’t think I’ve broken it, but I’ve made it bleed. The crowd like to see blood.
Another man gets in the ring. He’s taller and leaner, full of confidence. I don’t waste time with this one. Inside a minute, he’s lying on his back with my sword at his throat.
I’ve made my point. I clamber out of the ring and wipe the blood off my hands.
‘If anyone wants my services, I’ll be in the Black Bull,’ I announce.
There’s a tournament at Ressons in a week, and somebody will be looking for a lance. I’ll fight under a borrowed standard, take my winnings, then disappear again.
This has been my life for five years.
I feel a hand on my sleeve and spin about. It’s the one-eyed man who was watching the fight, a grey face in black and gold livery. He doesn’t ask my name. Perhaps he knows I wouldn’t give it to him.
‘You fought well.’
I nod, accept the compliment.
‘I work for a man who rewards good fighters.’
He opens his hands, making me an offer.
‘I don’t have a horse. Or arms.’ I lost them in Hainault, fighting a brutal little border war for a count who never paid me.
‘The man I work for can provide them.’
‘For a tournament.’
‘For …’ He weighs his words like a spice merchant counting peppercorns. ‘He can tell you himself.’
He brings me to a goldsmith’s shop. At least, I think, he’ll be able to pay me. A black eagle hangs on the sign above the door, its greedy claws outstretched. While I wait, I eye up the cups and plates that line the room, dull gold behind iron bars. I wonder if I could steal one.
I remember the story my mother told about the man who stole a cup from an enchanted land. His punishment was that he could never leave. When I was young, I thought it was a cruel ending, but at least I thought it was an ending. Now I understand that the story continued. I think of that knight, trapped in the underground kingdom. Every day, he must have woken thinking, Perhaps this will be the day. Devising ever more elaborate plans, straining for the roof of his world, piling frustration on misery. Always out of reach.
Death is the only ending, and I crave it. Sometimes, especially in darkness, I run my finger down the blade of my sword and think how easily I could do it. It would be a sin, but no worse than others I’ve committed. I think how sweet the release would be.
But I’m not ready to die. Every morning, I wake and think, Perhaps this will be the day.
At the front of the shop, three clerks sit behind a table facing the square. I watch the coins move across the chequered tablecloth, like pieces on a chessboard. Men bring them, rearrange them on the table, take some back. Gradually, I begin to see the patterns. Many of the customers are merchants from the fair who want to change their own coins for the livres of Troyes. A group of Italians bring him twenty of their silver coins, and receive a gold livre in exchange. But when an Italian who’s going home brings him his own gold livre, he gets only eighteen silver coins.
Do they know they’re being cheated?
I lean forward on the edge of my seat, fingering the hilt of my knife. Surely a fight’s going to break out when one of the merchants notices. But there’s no complaint, no argument.
The steward comes out of a door at the back of the shop and beckons me in. I expect him to take me upstairs: instead, we descend. At the bottom of a tight stair, he lets me in to a low crypt. The stones are cold, the room lit only by candles. Ironbound boxes line the walls. At the far end, a hunched figure sits at a table, though I sense him more than I see him. He’s robed in darkness. A silvered mirror hangs on the wall behind him, reflecting back the candlelight like a moon.
A pale hand seems to beckon me forward. Closer as I come, I can still barely see him. He’s wrapped in a black cloak, black wool with a sable fur collar. The skin’s been taken off the animal in one piece, so that the toothy snout and tiny claws clasp around his throat. All I can see of the man is his face: a high forehead, a hooked nose and stringy white hair poking from under a black cap. His skin is pale as scraped parchment, and shrunk in on itself like a plum left to dry in the sun. The only colour comes from his eyes, which are blue as a May sky. They stare at me so hard I wonder if he’s blind.
For the first time in five years, I feel afraid.
‘You are a fighter?’ His voice is strong, granite hard.
I nod, but I can’t meet those eyes. My gaze drifts downward to the table, a beautiful thing.
It’s the chequered tablecloth from upstairs made solid, ebony and ivory inlay.
‘I’m assembling a group of fighting men.’ He twitches his hand. It makes an unnatural, rasping sound as it moves across the table. I look, and see that it isn’t skin: it’s silver, metal wrought in the shape of a hand blistered with black gemstones. It looks like a reliquary.
‘This is a private matter. Not a tournament – a real fight. I need men who aren’t too proud to fight on foot, nor too noble to bury a knife in someone’s back if need be.’
I don’t blink. It’s nothing I haven’t done already.
‘It will take six weeks, maybe two months. For this, I will pay you a hundred livres.’
It’s been a long time since I smiled, but now I do. I glimpse myself in the silvered mirror on the wall and realise what a terrifying sight it is. A hundred livres.
For that, I could hire enough men to overrun Hautfort and burn it to the ground, Jocelin inside. I can almost hear his screams.
Perhaps this is the day.
There’s a noise behind me. A man’s come through the door, though if he wasn’t standing by a candle I wouldn’t see him at all. Everything about him is black: his hair, his eyes, his tunic and his boots. He stands so tall his head’s almost hidden behind the roof-vault.
‘Malegant de Mortain will be your captain,’ the old man says. ‘You will do whatever he tells you.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘West.’
Île de Pêche, Brittany. Six weeks later.
The raindrops make rings on the flat sea, a labyrinth of interlocking circles. Our shallow boats glide across the surface and disturb the pattern. The hulls are so thin I can feel the water beneath, like horseflesh through the saddle.
It’s been a hard ride from Troyes. It’s winter: even the main roads can be impassable, and most of the time Malegant kept us on shepherds’ paths and animal tracks. He wouldn’t tell us where we were going, though every day the sun set ahead of us. The landscape changed as we headed west. Open farmland gave way to dripping forests and dark mountains, deep gorges and wild rivers. Sometimes it took a whole day just to cross one valley. It reminded me of my childhood, a magical place where the edges of the world grow permeable.
A shadow appears in the mist ahead. I can hear the lap of water on land. We scramble off the boats on a ramp by the water gate. I take out my sword and unwrap it from its parchment binding. I drop the pages in the water and watch them float away.
These are the pages of my past. Once I thought I could write them myself, fill them with romance and happy endings. Now I know better. I watch the rain try to drown the pages, and wish I could do the same for myself.
‘Guard the gate,’ Malegant says. ‘When the fighting starts, no one escapes.’
XXXI
London
THE VAULT WAS a pit, five feet deep and three feet square. All she could see at the bottom were shadows.
There shouldn’t be much in there, Harry had told her. Get everything.
It was too deep to reach: she’d have to get in. She sat on the edge of the hole and prepared to lower herself down.
But something about the edges of the open doors had caught her eye. They were serrated, sharp triangular teeth that fitted together seamlessly when closed. She touched one of the points, and grabbed it away as a thin bead of blood welled on her fingertip.
Perhaps there’s a reason they’re called trap doors.
Painfully conscious of time, she got up. She’d seen two tall iron candlesticks lurking in the corners of the vault: she fetched one, dragging it over the stone floor, and wedged it across the mouth of the hole. She remembered the head-torch and turned it on. The white beam searched the pit.
Was it all for this?
In spite of her terror, she found herself strangely disappointed. There was nothing that she had imagined: no treasures like the ones in the antechamber; no ancient books of magic or wisdom; no hoard of gold. It looked more like what you’d leave behind after cleaning out an attic. A battered leather tube that might have held a telescope, and a square cardboard box sitting on a low plinth.
She dropped down to the pit floor. The tube was lighter than she’d expected. She shook it gently, but nothing moved inside. Was it empty? She put it in her backpack.
She put her hands on the box. It was cold to the touch, even through the cardboard. She could tell it would be heavy. She edged her fingertips underneath it and lifted it off its pedestal.
She’d never know what she’d done wrong – only that, for all her precautions and preparations, somewhere, somehow, she’d missed something. The trap doors sprang together: if not for the candlestick wedging them apart, their sharp teeth would have bitten Ellie in two. The iron shivered; for a terrifying moment she thought the candlestick might snap. A second later the lights went out.
Barely aware of what she was doing, Ellie shoved the box into her backpack and threw it out of the pit. She hauled herself out, slung the backpack over her shoulder and ran for the door. Behind her, the chamber echoed with a noise like a gunshot as the candlestick holding the trap doors fell loose.
She reached the end of the aisle and stopped dead. The torch played over the door, casting a ghostly orb on the ironbound wood. It must have closed automatically.
She was trapped.
‘Knock the fucking door down if you have to.’
Destrier gunned the car down Cable Street. Ahead, he could see the crenellated outlines of the Tower of London – and the real towers of London, the towers of banking and finance, rising beyond.
‘I’ve been trying to reach him all night and he’s not answering his phone,’ he told the Claridge’s concierge. ‘I’m worried there might be an emergency.’
There’s an emergency all right, he thought grimly. The latest update had come a minute earlier
01:44 >> FLOOR 6 : VAULT 32 : THEFT ALARM
He still couldn’t believe she’d got that far. With any luck, the trap doors would have ripped her in two by now. If not, he’d do it himself.
The phone rang again. A foreign number, not Claridge’s, and an accented voice.
‘Mr Saint-Lazare wants to know what is happening at the bank.’
This side of the door had neither handle nor keyhole. Ellie scanned the walls for anything that might open it, a monster’s head like the one in the chamber or a thin slit for a card. There was nothing.
Panic rose in her throat. She kicked the door; she hammered her fists against it until her skin was raw. It didn’t move. She cursed herself for being there, for listening to Harry. She cursed Blanchard, her father –
Nye Stanton died trying to break into the vaults. He was hit by a train in an Underground tunnel.
There must be a way out.
Not that it did Dad any good.
She stepped back from the door and took a series of long breaths, forcing herself calm. She didn’t know what commotion the alarm might have unleashed in the rest of the bank, but the underground chamber was silent as the grave. She looked at the row of vaults in the wall, the iron doors where monks’ bones had been dragged from their rest to make way for worldly treasures. She imagined the rattling of the bones as they tumbled out of the alcoves to be hauled away in sacks. The screams of their ghosts. She listened to the darkness.
The grave wasn’t silent. The air throbbed; a low rumble pulsed through the chamber. At first she thought it was only the blood in her ears, but the longer she listened the more distinct it became.
She looked at her watch. The first Tube wouldn’t pass for hours yet. And it didn’t sound like the train that had shaken the vault when she was down with Blanchard. It was less intense, more constant.
As Mr Saint-Lazare likes to say, the present always intrudes on the past. And vice versa.
It was hard to pinpoint the sound: the whole vault was an echo chamber, and that far underground she’d lost all sense of direction. But if the crypt was built to the plan of a church, then the far end, wher
e the Saint-Lazare vault lay, must be east. The door would be west, and the right side of the aisle – looking towards the door – would be north.
Ellie was pretty sure the Central Line ran to the north of the Monsalvat building.
She ran to the crossing where the four arms of the church came together and listened, turning slowly, testing. The noise was definitely loudest from the north transept. She walked along it to the far end. There were three vaults here, each with a coat of arms painted on its door and a steel keypad embedded in the wall beside it.
Choosing at random, she examined the crest on the centre vault. A blue shield divided by a wavy line, with silver crosses above and below.
Azure a fess engrailed Or between four crosslets Argent.
She consulted her paper again, matching the colours with their numbers, then punched them into the keypad. A bolt clicked; the door loosed. Ellie pulled it open and shone the torch inside. She saw a narrow room about six feet deep, ironbound boxes piled on the floor. The throbbing noise was louder in here – but the walls remained strong, unyielding.
She tried the door to the right. Ermine two chevrons Argent. The code didn’t work the first time: you needed to count the two chevrons separately, she realised. She tried again, and this time the door opened to her tug.
She knew at once it was the right room. The noise was louder, carrying through the bricked-up hole in the rear wall. A skein of red light played over it from a sensor screwed to the ceiling. An alarm, she thought. But she wasn’t worried about alarms now. She wondered if her father had got this far, if it was he who’d smashed the original hole.
She found the pair of the candlestick she’d used in the trap doors and used it as a battering ram, swinging it against the wall until her arms ached. The bricks were strong, but not impenetrable – and she was desperate. Whoever had sealed the hole had obviously trusted more to the alarm than the barrier – or perhaps they’d meant it as a trap, another snare to tempt the unwary. The wall cracked; the bricks crumbled. A dark tunnel loomed beyond. She squeezed through, crawling on her stomach and pushing the bag in front of her.