“I only wish it were so easy,” said Brother Peter. “But it’s too risky. The door is visible from the road and from the presbytery. Someone might see you going in.”
I nodded thoughtfully.
“Although you can’t use it to get in, there’s another good reason why you should try to get out that way,” Andrew said. “I don’t want John to risk coming face-toface with the Bane again. You see, deep down I think he’s afraid—so afraid that he couldn’t possibly win—”
“Afraid?” I asked indignantly. “Mr. Gregory’s not afraid of anything that belongs to the dark.”
“Not so as he’d admit it,” continued Andrew. “I’ll give you that, all right. He probably wouldn’t even admit it to himself. But he was cursed long ago and—”
“Mr. Gregory doesn’t believe in curses,” I interrupted again. “He told you that.”
“If you’ll let me get a word in edgeways, I’ll explain,” insisted Andrew. “This was a dangerous and powerful curse. As big as they ever get. Three whole covens of Pendle witches came together to do it. John had been interfering too much in their business, so they put aside their own quarrels and grievances and cursed him. It was a blood sacrifice, and innocents were slaughtered. It happened on Walpurgis Night, the eve of the first of May, twenty years ago, and afterward they sent it to him on a piece of parchment splattered with blood. He once told me what was written there: You will die in a dark place, far underground, with no friend at your side!”
“The catacombs . . .” I said, my voice hardly more than a whisper. If he faced the Bane alone down in the catacombs, then the conditions of the curse would be fulfilled.
“Aye, the catacombs,” Andrew said. “As I said, get him away through the hatch. Anyway, Brother Peter, sorry to have interrupted. . . .”
Peter gave a bleak smile and continued. “Once you’ve unlocked the hatch, go through the door into a corridor. This is the risky part. There’s a cell at the far end that they use to hold prisoners. That’s where you should find your master. But to get to it, you’ll have to pass the guardroom. It’s a dangerous business, but it’s damp and chilly down there. They’ll have a big fire blazing away in the grate and, if God’s willing, the door will be closed against the cold. So there you have it! Release Mr. Gregory and get him out through the trapdoor and away from this town. He’ll have to come back and deal with that foul creature another time, when the Quisitor’s gone.”
“Nay!” said Andrew. “After all this I wouldn’t have him coming back here.”
“But if he doesn’t fight the Bane, then who can?” asked Brother Peter. “I don’t believe in curses either. With God’s help, John can defeat that evil spirit. You know it’s getting worse. No doubt I’ll be next.”
“Not you, Brother Peter,” Andrew said. “I’ve met few men as strong-minded as you.”
“I do my best,” he said, shuddering. “When I hear it whispering inside my head, I just pray harder. God gives us the strength we need—that’s if we’ve the sense to ask for it. But something has to be done. I don’t know how it’s all going to end.”
“It’ll end when the townsfolk have had enough,” said Andrew. “You can only push people so far. I’m surprised they’ve stood the Quisitor’s wickedness for so long. Some of those for burning have relatives and friends here.”
“Maybe and maybe not,” said Brother Peter. “There are lots of people love a burning. We can only pray.”
CHAPTER IX
The Catacombs
BROTHER Peter went back to his duties at the cathedral while we waited for the sun to go down. Andrew told me that the best way into the catacombs was through the cellar of an abandoned house close to the cathedral; we were less likely to be noticed after dark.
As the hours passed, I began to grow more and more nervous. When talking to Andrew and Brother Peter, I’d tried to sound confident, but the Bane really scared me. I kept rummaging through the Spook’s bag, looking for anything that might be of some help.
Of course, I took the long silver chain that he used to bind witches and tied it around my waist, hidden under my shirt. But I knew it was one thing to be able to cast it over a wooden post and quite another to do it to the Bane. Next were salt and iron. After transferring my tinderbox to my jacket pocket, I filled my breeches pockets—the right pocket with salt, the left with iron. The combination worked against most things that haunted the dark. That was how I’d finally dealt with the old witch Mother Malkin.
I couldn’t see it being enough to finish off something as powerful as the Bane; if it had been, the Spook would have dealt with it last time, once and for all. However, I was desperate enough to try anything, and just having that and the silver chain made me feel better. After all, I wasn’t planning to destroy the Bane this time, but to fend it off long enough to rescue my master. At last, with the Spook’s staff in my left hand and his bag with our cloaks in my right, I was following Andrew through the darkening streets in the direction of the cathedral. Above, the sky was heavy with clouds and it smelled as if rain wasn’t very far away. I was learning to hate Priestown, with its narrow cobbled streets and walled backyards. I missed the fells and the wide open spaces. If only I were in Chipenden, back in the routine of my lessons with the Spook! It was hard to accept that my life there might be over.
As we approached the cathedral, Andrew led us into one of the narrow passages that ran between the backs of the terraced houses. He halted at a door, slowly lifted the latch, and nodded me through into the small yard. After closing the yard door carefully, he went up to the back door of the house, which was all in darkness.
A moment later he turned a key in the lock and we were inside. Locking the door behind us, he lit two candles and handed one to me.
“This house has been deserted for well over twenty years,” he said, “and it’ll stay like this, too, for as you’ve realized, those like my brother aren’t welcome in this town. It’s haunted by something pretty nasty, so most people keep well away, and even dogs avoid it.”
He was right about there being something nasty in the house. The Spook had carved a sign on the inside of the back door.
It was the Greek letter gamma, which was used for either a ghast or a ghost. The number to the right was a one, meaning it was a ghost of the first rank, dangerous enough to push some people to the edge of insanity.
“His name was Matty Barnes,” Andrew said, “and he murdered seven people in this town, maybe more. He had big hands and he used them to choke the life from his victims. They were mainly young women. They say he brought them back here and squeezed the life from them in this very room. Eventually one of the women fought back and stabbed him through the eye with a hat pin. He died slowly of blood poisoning. John was going to talk his ghost into moving on but thought better of it. He always intended to come back here one day and deal with the Bane and wanted to make sure this way down into the catacombs would still be available. Nobody wants to buy a haunted house.”
Suddenly I felt the air grow colder, and our candle flames began to flicker. Something was close by and getting nearer by the second. Before I could take another breath, it arrived. I couldn’t actually see it, but I sensed something lurking in the shadows in the far corner of the kitchen—something staring at me hard.
That I couldn’t actually see it made things worse. The most powerful of ghosts can choose whether or not to make themselves visible. The ghost of Matty Barnes was showing me just how strong it was by keeping hidden, yet letting me know that it was watching me. What’s more, I could sense its malevolence. It wished us ill, and the sooner we were out of there the better.
“Am I imagining it, or has it suddenly gotten very chilly in here?” asked Andrew.
“It’s cold, all right,” I said, not mentioning the presence of the ghost. There was no need to make him more nervous than he already was.
“Then let’s move on,” Andrew said, leading the way toward the cellar steps.
The house was typical of many te
rraced houses in the County’s towns: a simple two rooms upstairs and two rooms down, with an attic under the eaves. And the cellar door in the kitchen was in exactly the same position as the one in Horshaw, where the Spook had taken me on the first night after I’d become his apprentice. That house had been haunted by a ghast, and to see if I was up to doing the job the Spook had ordered me to go down to the cellar at midnight. It wasn’t a night I’d forget; thinking about it now still made me shiver.
Andrew and I followed the steps down into the cellar. The flagged floor was empty but for a pile of old rugs and carpets. It seemed dry enough, but there was a musty smell. Andrew handed me his candle, then quickly dragged the rugs away to reveal a wooden trapdoor.
“There’s more than one way into the catacombs,” he said, “but this is the easiest and the least risky. You’re not likely to get many folk nosing about down here.”
He lifted the trapdoor, and I could see stone steps descending into the darkness. There was a smell of damp earth and rot. Andrew took the candle from me and went down first, telling me to wait for a moment. Then he called up, “Down you come, but leave the trap open. We might have to get out of here in a hurry!”
I left the Spook’s bag, with the cloaks, in the cellar and followed him, still clutching my master’s staff. When I got down, to my surprise I found myself standing on cobbles rather than the mud I’d expected. The catacombs were as well paved as the streets above. Had these been made by the people who’d lived here before the town was built, those who’d worshipped the Bane? If so, the cobbled streets of Priestown had been copied from those of the catacombs.
Andrew set off without another word, and I had a feeling he wanted to get the whole thing over with. I know I did.
At first the tunnel was wide enough for two people to walk side by side, but the cobbled roof was low and Andrew was forced to walk with his head bowed forward. No wonder the Spook had called them the Little People. The builders had certainly been a lot smaller than folk were now.
We’d not gone very far before the tunnel began to narrow; in places it was distorted, as if the weight of the cathedral and the buildings far above were squashing it out of shape. There the cobbles that also lined the roof and walls had fallen away, allowing mud and slime to seep through and ooze down the walls. There was a sound of dripping water in the distance and the echo of our boots on the cobbles.
Soon the passage narrowed even further. I was forced to walk behind Andrew, and our path forked into two even smaller tunnels. After we’d taken the left-hand one, we came to a recess in the wall on our left. Andrew paused and held his candle up so that it lit part of the interior. I stared in horror at what I saw. There were rows of shelves, and they were filled with bones: skulls with eyeless sockets, leg bones, arm bones, finger bones, and bones I didn’t recognize, all different sizes, all mixed up. And all human!
“The catacombs are full of crypts like this,” Andrew said. “Wouldn’t do to get lost down here in the dark.”
The bones were small, too, like those of children. They were the remains of the Little People, all right.
We moved on, and soon I could hear fast-flowing water ahead. We turned a corner and there it was, more a small river than a stream.
“This flows under the main street in front of the cathedral,” Andrew said, pointing toward the dark water, “and we cross there. . . .”
Stepping-stones, nine in all, broad, smooth, and flat, but each of them only just above the surface of the water.
Once again Andrew led the way, striding effortlessly from stone to stone. At the other side he paused and turned back to watch me complete my crossing.
“It’s easy tonight,” he said, “but after heavy rain the water level can be well above the stones. Then there’s a real danger of being swept away.”
We walked on, and the sound of rushing water began to recede into the distance.
Andrew halted suddenly, and I could see over his shoulder that we’d come to a gate. But what a gate! I’d never seen one like it. From floor to ceiling, wall to wall, a grille of metal blocked the tunnel completely, metal that gleamed in the light of Andrew’s candle. It seemed to be an alloy that contained a lot of silver, and it had been fashioned by a blacksmith of great skill. Each bar was made up not of solid cylindrical metal, but of several much thinner bars, twisted around to form a spiral. The design was very complex: Patterns and shapes were suggested, but the more I looked the more they seemed to change.
Andrew turned and put his hand on my shoulder. “This is it, the Silver Gate. So listen,” he said, “this is important. Is there anything near? Anything from the dark?”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“That’s not good enough,” Andrew snapped, his voice harsh. “You’ve got to be sure! If we let this creature escape, it’ll terrorize the whole County, not just the priests.”
Well, I didn’t feel the cold, the usual warning that something from the dark was near. So that was one sign that everything was safe. But the Spook had always told me to trust my instincts, so to make doubly sure I took a deep breath and concentrated hard.
Nothing. I sensed nothing at all.
“It’s all clear,” I told Andrew.
“You sure? You’re really sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Andrew suddenly dropped to his knees and reached into the pocket of his breeches. There was a small, curved door in the grille, but its tiny lock was very close to the ground, and that was why Andrew was bent so low. Very carefully he was easing the tiniest of keys into the lock. I remembered the huge key displayed on the wall of his workshop. You would have thought that the bigger the key, the more important it was, but here the opposite was true. What could be more important than the minute key that Andrew now held in his hand? This one had kept the whole County safe from the Bane.
He seemed to struggle and kept positioning and repositioning the key. At last it turned, and Andrew opened the gate and stood up.
“Still want to do this?” he asked.
I nodded, then knelt down, pushed the staff through the open gate, and followed it, crawling on all fours. Immediately Andrew locked the gate behind me and poked the key through the grille. I put it inside my left breeches pocket, pushing it down into the iron filings.
“Good luck,” Andrew said. “I’ll go back to the cellar and wait for an hour in case you come back this way for some reason. If you don’t appear, I’ll head home. Wish I could do more to help. You’re a brave lad, Tom. I truly wish I’d the courage to go with you.”
I thanked him, turned, and carrying the staff in my left hand and the candle in my right, set off into the darkness alone. Within moments the full horror of what I was undertaking descended upon me. Was I mad? I was now in the Bane’s lair, and it could appear at any moment. What had I been thinking? It might already know that I was here!
But I took a deep breath and reassured myself with the thought that as it hadn’t rushed to the Silver Gate when Andrew unlocked it, it couldn’t be all-knowing. And if the catacombs were as extensive as people claimed, then at that very moment the Bane might be miles away. Anyway, what else could I do but keep walking forward? The lives of the Spook and Alice both depended on what I did.
I walked for about a minute before I came to two branching tunnels. Remembering what Brother Peter had told me, I chose the left one. The air around me grew colder, and I sensed that I was no longer alone. In the distance, beyond the light of the candle, there were small, faint, luminous shapes flitting like bats, in and out of crypts along the tunnel walls. As I approached them, they disappeared. They didn’t get too near, but I felt certain that they were the ghosts of some of the Little People. The ghosts didn’t bother me much; it was the Bane that I couldn’t get out of my mind.
I came to the corner and, as I turned, following it to the left, I felt something underfoot and almost tripped. I’d stepped on something soft and sticky.
I moved back and lifted my candle to get a better l
ook. What I saw started my knees shaking and the candle dancing in my trembling hand. It was a dead cat. But it wasn’t the fact that it was dead that bothered me; it was the way it had died.
No doubt it had found its way down into the catacombs in search of rats or mice, but it had met with a terrible end. It was lying on its belly, its eyes bulging. The poor animal had been squashed so flat that at no point was its body any thicker than an inch. It had been smeared into the cobbles, but its protruding tongue was still glistening, so it couldn’t have been dead very long. I shuddered with horror. It had been pressed, all right. If the Bane found me, that would surely be my fate, too.
I moved on quickly, glad to leave that terrible sight behind, and at last I came to the foot of a flight of stone steps that led up to a wooden door. If Brother Peter was right, behind that was the wine cellar of the priests’ house.
I climbed to the top of the steps and used the Spook’s key. A moment later I was easing the door open. Once inside the cellar, I closed it behind me but didn’t lock it.
The cellar was very large, with huge barrels of ale and row upon row of dusty wine racks filled with bottles, some of which had clearly been there a long time—they were covered with spiders’ webs. It was deadly silent down here, and unless somebody was hiding and watching me, it seemed completely deserted. Of course, the candle only illuminated the small area around me, and beyond the nearest barrels was a darkness that could have hidden anything.
Before he’d left Andrew’s house, Brother Peter had told me that the priests only came down into the cellar once a week to collect the wine they needed and that most of them wouldn’t dream of going down into the catacombs because of the Bane. But he couldn’t promise the same for the Quisitor’s men: They weren’t local and didn’t know enough to be fearful. Not only that, they’d help themselves to the ale and probably wouldn’t be content with just one barrel.
I crossed the length of the cellar cautiously, pausing every ten strides or so to listen. At last I could see the door that led to the corridor, and there, in the ceiling to the left, right up against the wall, was a large wooden hatch. We had a similar hatch back home. Our farm had once been called Brewer’s Farm because it had supplied ale to neighboring taverns and farms. As Brother Peter had explained, this trapdoor was used to get barrels and crates in and out of the cellar without the bother of going through the presbytery. And he was right in saying that it would be the easiest way of escaping. If I did use it I’d certainly run the risk of being spotted, but going back toward the Silver Gate would mean possibly facing the Bane, and after being locked up the Spook wouldn’t be strong enough to deal with it. Not only that, there was the Spook’s curse to think about. Whether he believed in it or not, it wasn’t worth tempting fate.
The Last Apprentice: Complete Collection Page 26