Lord of the Hollow Dark (39 page)

He was shining his big torch upon the left-hand wall, which appeared to be a mass of coal. The water burst from a large hole here, a fierce flood, completely filling the aperture through which it came, and dashing down to fill the channel beneath. Marina hated to look at it.

The torch beam moved upward. Above the square hole from which the burn emerged, something cast back the light of the torch-something metallic! The Archvicar shifted cautiously along the floor, at the lip of the burn, to peer at this.

“Eureka! Up there is a kind of sluice gate or shutter, which presumably can be released so it covers the hole and shuts off the water, or most of it. Where does the water go then? Why, it’s forced into another channel, perhaps its original channel, and probably pours, lower down, into that dry gulf with the plank across it. The question is how we release that metal plate.”

He crawled daringly to the left, Marina and the others shrinking back to let him pass as they felt his approach, though they could not see him or anyone else. His voice ran on, rather like that of a dentist with an apprehensive patient.

“Aha! There seem to be grooves carved in stone—can you make them out?—and the shutter is poised above them, on some sort of catch: I suppose one has to jar it loose. But how to get close enough? One can’t go into the water. Coriolan, will you catch hold of my ankles, to drag me back if I slip? Thank you. I’m getting rather wet. Cold, too. Good! Why, there’s a narrow ledge just under the water here, and if one were to walk along it—risky, I must say-with some sort of stick in one’s hand, and poke at the sluice gate up there, it should come loose, fall over the hole, and then this channel drains in an instant. That’s what Balgrummo must have done; indeed, I suppose that metal plate or shutter is his contraption, the old one having rusted out or been washed away over the centuries. A moment, my friends. Sweeney, will you hand me a pick-no, that would be awkward, that long iron rod in the pack of masons’ tools-oh, you have them, Phlebas? Now bear with me, and hold the torch, Grizel, if you please: I’ll stand up and creep along that ledge...”

“You sha’n’t, Manfredo!” Melchiora’s voice was imperative. “You’re too old to try such adventures.”

“What an unkind observation, Pomegranate! At least you might have spoken in Italian. But I come of uxorious stock, and since you’d never get out of the Weem without me, perhaps I’ll allow another to undertake this. I don’t hear you volunteering, Sweeney. Phlebas it must be: he’s agile as a monkey, and swims like a fish, and we borrowed the name of Eliot’s ‘drowned sailor’ for his part at the Lodging. We’ll put that coil of rope around his waist, and the lot of us will cling tight to the rope, so that we can haul him back if he tumbles into Styx. Do pass over the rope, Grizel.”

Marina heard the Archvicar—but she could think of him as Manfred Arcane now, couldn’t she?—giving the little black man instructions in some strange tongue. Phlebas-but now Marina could call him Brasidas, his real name-was answering confidently, if she could judge from his tone.

There was scrambling about. Arcane focused his torch upon the wall of coal, and by that light Marina caught glimpses of Brasidas edging his way, his feet in water, along some invisible flooded ledge. If he should fall... Oh, it was like one of those nightmares about being at the top of a building a hundred floors high, and slipping...

Brasidas was jabbing hard, and they could hear the clash of that iron rod against other iron. Then bang! Something gave, and by the electric beam they saw the water choked off, most of it, though some continued to spurt about the edges of the gate or shutter. Brasidas crept back to safety.

Manfred Arcane shifted the torch beam to the bed of the channel. Diverted, the burn had swept into some hidden alternative bed. Only a few inches of water, escaping round the edges of that metal shutter, now rippled along the narrow canyon before them. They must go down into this.

“Merely a descent of seven or eight feet,” Arcane was telling them. “Still, we want no broken ankles. Look here! There are handholds and footholds carved in the rock, hidden by the stream until now! Oh, this will be the Templars’ work, no doubt of it, and this baptismal stream their ingenious frightening device. They could fight, they could build, and I wish we knew more about their mysteries. Forgive my antiquarianism, Sweeney.”

He was speaking loudly, almost shouting, for the invisible Sweeney must be at the tail of their little stygian procession in the hollow dark. “If they hadn’t been suppressed, we’d make a Templar of you, Sweeney: quite what you need to channel those aggressive impulses. But perhaps my own militant Interracial Peace Volunteers, in Hamnegri, will improve you. I can offer you a lieutenant’s commission, and Colonel Fuentes will teach you the mercenary’s trade. But more of that when we’re out of all this. You down first, Melchiora? Now pass Michael to me, Marina-I must accustom myself to your real name, but I do like Marina-and I’ll pass him on to Melchiora, carefully, carefully, good little boy... There, done! Coriolan, shine one torch into the channel below, while Grizel keeps hers focused on those handholds. That’s two of the picks passed down, with the other things. You’re the next down, Marina. Ah, you’ve leaped, Coriolan: good man! Here I come. Don’t forget the third pick, Sweeney, wherever you are up there. Well, on to the center of the labyrinth: it shouldn’t be far.”

The cheerfulness of His Excellency Manfred Arcane must be somewhat forced, Marina thought, but she didn’t know how she could have kept on without it. She must be walking on sheer nerve, driven by fear; she was so tired.

Arcane’s torch-he was again at the head of their file-showed ahead that they could walk right under the mass of coal, where the fierce burn had run! The opening was nearly square: if this had been a natural channel, the Templars or whoever contrived all this must have enlarged it. The water was still up to her ankles, so it was as well she went barefoot, Marina thought.

“Here’s the place!” Arcane called back. “A short flight of steps, I take it, on the left. Come along!”

Groping for whatever exit had been found, Marina nearly slipped and fell, but Coriolan or Sweeney or Brasidas or someone else against whom she fell caught her and steadied her. She shouldn’t call him Coriolan now: he was Captain Bain, Ralph Bain, and he had saved her. What ever could she do to repay him?

Indeed there were steps. Grizel Fergusson, no longer a cartomancer, was telling her to mind them. She went up to her left, Lady Fergusson shining her torch back downward to help her, others following. They made their way up into something like a room; behind them that watercourse, rushing its secret way through the depths, could be heard only faintly.

“We’re at the center of the labyrinth, if Balgrummo’s notes can be trusted, and so far they’ve served us,” Arcane was telling them.

His torch beam swept upward, up and up and up! This room, or cave, or whatever it was, seemed to have no roof. No, there was the rough top of it, with some stalactites hanging; it must be more than forty feet high. And also the torch showed more of those handholds and footholds, cut in the rock. Were they going to have to ascend all that distance?

Someone had stumbled against a thing that clanged in the darkness. “Whatever can that be?” Grizel Fergusson’s voice was inquiring. A torch was turned toward the floor.

It was a helmet, a rusted helmet. Also there were bones. Marina screamed, and Melchiora drew in her breath.

Every torch now was directed downward. They saw more bones, and another helmet, and a rusted matchlock or some such gun, and a sword; then one torch revealed some picks, and another sword, and another, and pikes.

And there were more bones, lying stretched out as if arranged: skeletons. Marina reeled, and someone supported her, and Coriolan’s voice murmured, “They’ll not hurt you, Marina. They’ve been here four hundred years.”

Arcane said softly, “The Third Laird, and the girl from Bohemia, and the rest, got no farther than this. They must have been too much weakened to climb, though they may have sent up a scout or two. And if there were scouts, all they could have found was that they could not break out of the labyrinth. They ended in the Purgatory.”

“But Balgrummo went beyond this?” It was Melchiora asking.

“Oh, yes, Pomegranate, up those handholds and footholds in the wall, many times, and far beyond this. That’s clear in his notes, my darling.”

“Yet not to the open air?”

“No: that is up to us. I say, hadn’t we best open that hamper and eat the food Phlebas packed for us, and drink some of that venerable rum? I confess that it’s not cheerful picnicking among dry bones that shan’t rise again-particularly one’s own ancestor’s bones-but we’ve little choice.” Arcane’s humor definitely was forced now, and Marina thought she caught a quaver in his voice.

“We must have strength for the rest of this expedition of ours, and we’ve fasted for some sixteen hours now,” Arcane went on. “Who has the... Ah, I banged into something biggish-wood, I think. What’s this?”

Someone’s torch showed two objects on the floor, both wooden. The larger was rather like an oldfangled traveling desk. Arcane bent to examine it. “Do you know, this is a medieval portable altar!” he exclaimed. “The Third Laird, or his Bohemian wife, meant to keep that out of Morton’s clutches. I wonder why Balgrummo never took it out of this darkness, for it’s a rare thing, rather a treasure, and in tolerable condition ; but of course he was no Papist, and perhaps he thought it well to leave it with the dead-quite right, I suppose. Now this other wooden object, some sort of case—lend me the knife, Melchiora, for prying-ugh!”

The lid of the box had burst open, and a head had fallen out.

Marina was past screaming: she stared at the head. It seemed to be a very old head, not a skull merely, and mummified, positively glistening, its dried skin glistening in the beam of the torch. It had teeth still, and eyelids. Somehow it was not horrid-nothing like the horrors of the Ceremony of Innocence.

“The Head of the Weem!” Coriolan bent over and picked the thing up gently, perhaps reverently. “So it did exist, no mere legend. Is it Saint Nectan, whoever he was, do you think, Arcane?”

“Almost certainly. If and when we have the opportunity, we’ll put this relic in a better place. It survived all those centuries, and the Third Laird was bent upon saving it from Morton. Well, he succeeded in that, if nothing else. Morton’s men would have tossed it into the Moss, or used it for a football. No, David Inchburn, rest his soul, was no warlock: this relic was for venerating, not conjuring. What’s this that fell out with it? A necklace of jewels, something very early, to judge by the settings. The Queen Street Museum will rejoice.”

“Yes, Your Excellency,” Grizel Fergusson’s high voice commented, “supposing that ever we reach the curator.”

“What a spoilsport you are, Grizel! Let me put Saint Nectan back into his box, and invoke his intercession: you’re quite right, we still require the good will of dead sancts, in our circumstances. And sha’n’t we fortify now the inner man and woman, despite our plight, or perhaps because of it, by opening the hamper?”

They squatted awkwardly. Here they were in the labyrinth’s heart, Marina thought, and still no Minotaur! She found herself ravenous, and thought it strange that she had been able to force her body all the way through this maze. The Archvicar-no, Mr. Arcane-close beside her, passing out food, resumed his forced cheerfulness; without that, Marina would have collapsed, she knew.

“Well, here’s the bottle of rum that Sweeney relishes, and the cup. You’ve been quiet enough all this while, Sweeney, not that I reproach you. Have you been dreading that ‘knock, knock, knock’? Here’s your cup of rum, Sweeney, you first of all. Drink to our progress! Here, Sweeney, take it from me. I say, where are you, Sweeney? This is the cure for old bones, Sweeney: take it.”

There came no response.

Arcane flashed his torch upon the faces of their little party: Lady Fergusson, Melchiora, Coriolan, Brasidas, Marina herself, now holding Michael tightly. Sweeney was not among them. Arcane send the beam of his torch all round the high chamber. Sweeney was nowhere.

“Where has my partner Sweeney got to?” Coriolan looked down the steps up which they had come; his torch showed only stone, with thin coal seams in it. “Who saw him last?”

“Nobody has ‘seen’ anybody else, ever since we ran away,” Lady Fergusson offered. “Of course it has been far too dark for that.”

“But I spoke to him several times,” Arcane said. “Can he have got lost at one of our turnings?”

“He never answered you,” Melchiora’s voice broke in.

They stood aghast for a moment.

“I took it that he was the last in our file,” Coriolan murmured.

“And I took it that he ran after me when we broke clear of Apollinax’s people.” Arcane’s foolery had ceased. “We had drubbed everyone near to us, and most of them seemed to be gathered round Apollinax himself, still on the floor after the knocks I had given him.”

“
Ognisanti!
” Melchiora sighed.

“Saints or not, I’ll try to fetch him,” Ralph Bain declared. Before they could stop him, he had leaped back down the steps and into the watercourse, taking nothing with him but a torch.

“I’ll take that knife again, Melchiora.” Arcane told her.

“No!” She brushed against Marina, rushing past to clutch her husband. She was babbling in Italian.

“God help them if I don’t go,” Arcane was answering, and then lapsed into Italian. She must be restraining him forcibly. Another English sentence emerged: “This comes of giving hostages to Fortune.”

There was a cry from Melchiora: “Manfredo, Manfredo!” And, in English: “Oh, help me with him; there’s something wrong; help me put him down on the floor!”

Marina could see nothing; then Lady Fergusson’s torch showed her that Melchiora and Brasidas had knelt by Manfred Arcane, who was lying on his back. His eyes were open, and he managed to whisper, “I’m so weak, Pomegranate! All the energy...” His eyes closed, and in the darkness Melchiora wailed.

The woman’s unendurable shrieking had ceased now; not even discernible moans reached his ears. Sweeney lay face down, hands and feet tied. At any moment they might turn to him.