Down: Trilogy Box Set (152 page)

“Unbelievable,” John said. “Okay, everyone, get your shoes on. We’re getting you out of here.”

“Is it just you two?” Chris Cowles asked.

“Just us here,” Trevor said. “But the SAS is waiting for us in Dartford.”

“Did you say the SAS?” Binford asked, sounding animated for the first time in weeks.

“Yeah,” Trevor said. “The heavy mob.”

Matthew had been keeping watch by the door.

He slid into the room and whispered, “Someone’s coming.”

John and Trevor dragged the guards’ bodies behind the privy screen and hid there with them. They heard the forge brigade entering and greeting their companions then heard one of the guards who escorted them ask what happened to the men guarding the door.

“Why are you asking us?” Chris answered defiantly. “We’re the prisoners, you’re our bloody keepers. I am so bloody tired of the incompetence of you lot …”

She continued haranguing them while Binford made his way behind the privy screen and flashed three fingers.

The three guards, distracted and bemused by Chris’s tirade, didn’t see John and Trevor coming. A frenzied attack left the men groaning on the floor. The youngest guard escaped serious injury and when he saw the broken bodies of his two mates beside him, he begged for mercy.

“Please don’t crash me worse,” he moaned.

John stood over him and told him not to move. “If you don’t want your neck broken help us find two of our women.”

“One’s in the dungeons,” the man croaked.

“Which one?” Chris said.

“The old bag.”

“Can you take us there?” John asked.

“If you promise not to hurt me worse.”

“It’s a deal.”

“Where’s the younger one?” Chris demanded. “Her name’s Kelly.”

The guard winced and pushed his hand against his broken ribs. “I don’t know nothing ’bout a young one.”

John helped the guard to his feet. “Is there a way out of the palace from the dungeons?” he asked.

“Yeah, goes straight to the river.”

Without warning, Trotter opened the unguarded door and took a step into the dormitory where he froze.

“If it isn’t the chancellor,” Lawrence said contemptuously.

Trotter’s eyes darted around the room and he seemed to be struggling to come to grips with the situation. It reminded John of the old flashing tube computers that needed a good while to spit out the answer to a complex calculation.

“Are you alone?” John asked.

“Yes.”

“Then close the fucking door.”

Trotter shut the door behind him and licked his lips. “I heard that you lot came back from the forge. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Disappointed?” John asked.

“Hardly,” Trotter said. “Can you get us back to Earth?”

“That’s the plan,” Trevor said.

Campbell Bates stepped forward. “We’re not sure if you’re one of us or one of them.”

Lawrence started to say something but was racked with a paroxysm of coughing. When he recovered he said, “Ask me what I think.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Trotter said. “I’m one of you. I’ve been working tirelessly behind the scenes to improve everyone’s circumstances. I’ve been your channel to Cromwell. I know there’s been some misunderstanding of my role but no one wants to get out of here more than I do.”

Chris came right up to Trotter and stuck a finger in his chest. “Where is Kelly Jenkins?” she asked.

“I have absolutely no idea. I’ve made multiple inquiries and can only assume that Cromwell had something to do with her disappearance. He’s a man of appetites.”

“How did you know she was missing?” Binford asked. “You haven’t even been around here lately.”

Trotter didn’t miss a beat. “Karen Smithwick told me. Where is Karen?”

“You don’t know?” Lawrence said.

“I don’t,” Trotter insisted. “She came to see me a few days ago asking for help in finding Kelly. I told her I’d do my best and she left in the presence of a guard. Last I saw of her. She didn’t return?”

“We know where she is,” John said, “and we’re going to get her on our way out of here.”

“Where is she?” Trotter asked.

The young guard winced again as he talked. “In the dungeons.”

John lifted his cloak and unslung his rifle.

“An AK-47,” Trotter said. “Brilliant move. Bravo, Camp.”

“Thanks for your endorsement,” John deadpanned. “All right everyone, stick together like glue.” Then he said to the young guard, “You’re going to take us to the dungeons in a way that avoids your friends. If not, the first bullet that comes out of this big, black gun is going in your brain.” Finally he whispered to Trevor, “Keep tabs on Trotter. I don’t trust him.”

The guard led them down a back staircase to the ground level and past some storerooms to a flight of winding stone stairs that were almost too dark to navigate. The air in the lowest level of the palace was fetid and damp. The stone walls of the corridor were cold and slimy.

“Just around the corner,” the guard whispered to John.

“How many guards will we find?” John asked.

A shrug brought on a gasp of pain from his cracked ribs. “Not sure.”

“You go first,” John said. “I’ll be right behind you. The rest of you, stay back.”

Trevor made sure Trotter saw his blackpowder pistol. “Behave yourself,” Trevor said.

“Don’t worry, we’re on the same team,” Trotter replied.

Halfway down the next corridor, four burly soldiers were hunched over playing dice. At first they waved at the young guard and called for him to come but as soon as they saw John they reached for their swords and charged.

John berated himself for needing six rounds to put the four of them down. He reached for a ring of keys on the belt of a stricken man. The young guard pulled his fingers out of his ears. When John asked him which was the cell, he led him there. The rest of the group followed.

Each cell was crammed with pathetic, starving men, too weak to even grasp the bars or call for help. But one cell had a single occupant, a woman curled in a fetal position on a bed of dirty straw.

“That’s her,” the guard said.

John began trying keys. While he worked he told the others to check the other cells for Kelly. When the lock turned he motioned for Chris to help him.

John gave Trevor the rifle and he went inside with Chris.

The woman knelt beside Smithwick and said, “Karen, it’s Chris. We’ve come to get you out of here. We’re going home. We’re going back to Earth.”

Smithwick turned her head toward them and Chris fell backwards at the sight. Her lower face and neck were swollen beyond recognition and covered in dried blood.

John dropped to his knees to have a closer look. “Karen, it's John Camp. What did they do to you?”

Smithwick tried to speak but she could only make guttural sounds. He told Chris to bring a candle burning on a table by the guard station and by its light he gently opened Smithwick’s mouth.

“My God,” he said.

“What is it?” Chris asked.

“They’ve cut out her tongue.”

Chris choked back tears while John told Smithwick he was going to help her up. It was clear she was too weak to walk so he gently lifted her over his shoulder.

In the hall the others looked on in shock as Chris passed the word what had happened to her.

“Trevor, take the point,” John said. “There’re eleven rounds left in the mag.”

“What about me?” the young guard asked.

“Which way out?” John asked.

“Just down there.”

“I can lock you in,” John said.

“I’ll be tortured when I’m found. I hate to say it but I’d be grateful if you’d shoot me in the arm and leave me lying with those lads. By the look of them they’ll be telling no tales.”

Trevor laid the guard down on the pile of writhing bodies and put a round through his triceps muscle. The young man yelped in pain and then gave him a grateful nod.

“Let’s go,” John said.

Chris piped up, “We didn’t find Kelly.”

“I’m sorry,” John said. “She could be dead. She could be anywhere. It’s a big palace. She could have even been sold off to someone on the outside. We’ve got to get out of here. Then we’ll need to find a boat big enough for all of us.”

Trotter said, “Cromwell keeps his barge on the docks.”

At the sound of Trotter’s voice, John felt Smithwick squirming on his shoulder. He made sure he had a good purchase on her and began walking. No one but Trotter saw the bug-eyed way she stared at him and no one could understand the stream of guttural sounds that began to spill from her swollen mouth.

Trevor tiptoed along the dock. What he saw sent him hurrying back to the shadows of the warehouse building where the others were waiting.

“The barge is crawling with soldiers,” he told John.

“What are they doing?”

“Drinking by the sound of it.”

“Can we take them?”

“Not without casualties, guv. Too many of them.”

There were shouts coming from near the palace.

“Search the area!”

“Find them!”

As calmly as possible John told the frightened Earthers that they’d have to find a place to hide. He had put Karen Smithwick on the ground where she had curled into a fetal tuck, and now he lifted her to his shoulder again.

“You should leave her,” Trotter hissed.

“Not going to happen,” John said.

“You’ll slow us down.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

With Trevor on point the group of men and women began running along a dark alley into the rabbit warren of London streets. It was late and the streets were deserted. Trevor searched for somewhere to shelter and led them away from the river, further into the medieval city. George Lawrence was frail and having trouble keeping pace but Matthew Coppens and David Laurent helped him along. The voices of soldiers looking for them were not fading. Their pursuers were keeping pace.

They ran past a long, low building. Trevor paused to try a large double door. It creaked open. Inside, a man began screaming, “Get out! Get out! I have a pistol!”

He quickly shut the door and kept going.

He made a random turn down a very narrow alleyway and checked the others. The group snaked single-file behind him. A foul, pungent odor began to fill their nostrils. From the way she was squirming on his shoulder, John could tell it was bothering Smithwick and it bothered him too. He wondered if there was a rotting room nearby, but as the odor got stronger it seemed to be different from the stench of decaying flesh. In some ways it was worse, more acrid and burning.

Midway along the alley a small door was wide open. The building was a ramshackle, timber-framed structure. It seemed the door had been left open for ventilation because the stench was pouring from it like gas from a swamp.

Trevor stopped and holding his breath, peered in.

“We’re not going in there!” Stuart Binford gagged.

They heard one soldier shouting to another, too close-by for comfort.

“Yeah, ’fraid so,” Trevor said. “Tell the others to cover their faces best they can.”

“I don’t think I’ll need to tell them that,” Binford said.

As they shuffled into the dark building, Leroy Bitterman retched and asked, “What is this place?”

John answered, “It’s not a rotting room.”

“Thank God for that,” Bitterman said.

“It’s worse, I reckon,” Trevor said, pointing his rifle into a space that was all blackness except for a faint glow coming from across a seemingly large expanse.

“Surely we can’t stay here,” Campbell Bates said.

John put Smithwick down gently and propped her against a wall. She gagged and sputtered. “Does someone have a cloth to put around her face?” he asked.

Chris had a washcloth she carried with her and tied it into a mask.

John did some shrugs to ease his cramped shoulder. “I think it’s a good place to hide because of the smell. If I were one of Cromwell’s soldiers making slave wages I wouldn’t stick my face in here.”

“Being chased by the king’s men, are you?”

The voice came from the darkness.

“Who’s there?” Trevor challenged.

“Shouldn’t I be asking you lot that question?”

“Show yourself,” Trevor said. “We’re armed and I will shoot.”

“Calm yourself, matey. If you’re not rovers nor militiamen then I’m not your enemy and you’re not mine.”

The faint glow got closer until they saw it was a candle held by a small man with a leather apron hanging over a bare, muscular chest. When he was some thirty feet away Trevor told him to stop. That’s when they realized there were half a dozen more men behind him.

“We’ve no weapons,” the man said. “This is my place. These are my men. We work here. We live here. Are you recents?”

John answered. “You might say that.”

“Might I?” the man asked. “What else might I say?”

“You can’t smell us?” John asked.

“That’s a laugh. We can’t smell nothing no more which is much to our advantage.”

“We’re not dead,” John said.

The men whispered to each other and their boss said, “There’s been all sorts of rumors flying ’bout some door to the other side’s that opened allowing Earth dwellers to come to our blighted land.”

“The rumors are true,” John said. “We’re trying to get home.”

“And the king’s men don’t wish for you to do so,” the man said.

“Something like that,” John said. “What is this place?”

“It’s a tannery.”

“That explains it,” Lawrence gasped. “I thought I recognized the stench. It’s like the tanneries I visited in Morocco. Rotting flesh, ammonia, pigeon shit.”

They heard the soldiers coming down the alley.

“Best come to the rear,” the tanner said. “Christopher, take the candle and lead them. Is she sick?” he asked pointing at Smithwick.

“They cut out her tongue,” Chris said.

“Sounds like their methods,” the tanner said.

John picked up Smithwick and followed the candle around the mosaic of tanning vats dug into the floor. The tanner stood by the open door and waited.

“Think he’s going to shaft us?” Trevor whispered to John from the back of the tannery behind a bunch of barrels.

“We’ll find out soon.”

A party of soldiers pulled up panting beside the open door of the tannery.