The Alchemist's Daughter (15 page)

Her father's words came back to Sidonie:
A stone, yet not
a stone
.
A thing worthless, yet valuable beyond price; a thing
unknown, yet known to everyone.
And she thought of the beggar who had attacked her on the road. When he looked into her purse, hoping to find the holiest of relics, and saw nothing but red mud, surely he must have thrown it away in disgust.

“And how can you be sure the Grail is at Glastonbury?”

“Because when Joseph of Arimathea, who was the first Keeper of the Grail, came to England, he planted his staff at Glastonbury; and the Angel Gabriel appeared to him, and commanded him to build a church. It is here, where England's first church stood, that the Grail is hidden.”

“All this is the stuff of legend,” Sidonie said.

“A legend that has endured because it is the truth.”

Sidonie knew then that it was not for his own advantage, nor for the Spanish king's, that he risked a conspirator's death. What drove this man was religious zeal, blind dedication to an uncompromising belief. The Grail was the cup of the First Mass, that contained the life-blood of God. Its possession meant the power to unseat the Protestant Queen and restore England to the Old Faith.

He held her by her upper arms, fingers digging into the tender flesh. “The stone is here. In one guise or another, it is hidden at Glastonbury.”

“I have it not,” Sidonie said. “It is true, I wished to deceive you. I had the elixir once — the Grail, if that is what you wish to call it. But I have hidden it once again, where it will not easily be discovered.”

“But you will tell me where it is.”

“I could if I wished, but how would you know when you had it? One stone, amid these ruins, this waste of broken stone?”

“Because you will find it for me.”

“Yes,” Sidonie told him. “Show me the way out of this place, and I will find the stone. It is your only hope of possessing it.”

He made no answer, but turned and walked toward the tunnel entrance. She heard him grunt with effort as he lifted the bar, and then hinges creaked as the door swung open. Grey light seeped in through a low archway. Her captor picked up the rope that had bound Sidonie's hands. He stared at her in a considering way, then tossed it aside.

As she emerged through the opening, Sidonie glanced round, and after a moment of disorientation, recognized the tiled floor of the crypt beneath the Lady Chapel. She and Kit had explored this place on their earlier visit — how had the tunnel entrance escaped their notice? Then she saw the reason. The archway had been doubly concealed by a rampant growth of ivy pushing through breaks in the wall, and by a shoulder-high pile of rubble and broken stones. Had her captor stumbled upon the tunnel by accident, she wondered, or had the secret been handed down to those who still held to the old faith?

The man bent down and drew the tangle of greenery like a curtain over the doorway. Then, straightening, he gave Sidonie a questioning look.

“I'll lead the way,” she said; and he shrugged his assent.

As they left by the south door of the Lady Chapel, the last light was fading. Sidonie wondered, with rising panic, what Kit had thought when he returned to the fishpond and discovered her gone. If only he were waiting near the Abbey with the horses. He might hear if she cried out, and so would come to her aid. But she could catch no glimpse of him among the ruined archways, nor hear any sound of horses.

They moved in silence along the wooded pathway to the Tor. All the while Sidonie's thoughts were circling and darting, seeking some way to escape. She knew that this man would not willingly set her free; now that she understood so much, he could not let her live.

This was a problem to be solved like any other problem, she told herself; though a small insistent voice reminded her,
not quite like any other problem, when the wrong answer
means your death.

They had reached the bottom of the Pilgrim's Path that climbed the Tor to St. Michael's tower. Mist was rising from the cold, damp ground, swirling and billowing around them. In fog and darkness, Sidonie decided, lay her one chance of escape. She pointed upward through the gathering dusk.

“There,” she said. “If the legends be true, then the Grail belongs both to our world, and to the Otherworld. What better hiding place, than where the two worlds meet?”

She turned away, and started purposefully up the path.

In ancient times, before St. Michael built his Christian church, the Tor was thought to be inhabited by older gods. There, so said the romances, lay the entrance to Annwyn, the Underworld; and there at the top of the haunted mountain Gwynn ap Nudd, Lord of the Underworld, had built his palace. Indeed, thought Sidonie, as the chill grey mist enfolded her, it was as though with every step they were ascending farther away from the mortal world, and closer to the world of faerie. She wondered, when St. Michael's church was rent asunder, had the pagan gods returned? Did Gwynn ap Nudd and his red-eyed hounds once again ride out in the Wild Hunt, summoning the souls of the dead?

Her
soul, if she could not outwit this grim-faced man who walked behind her. She shivered, and drew her cloak close round her.

They came to the top of the Tor, and the broken tower. The mist roiled round them, hiding the woods and fields below them, obscuring the path they had followed. Her captor's face was a featureless blur in the grey gloom. “Hurry,” he said. “Night is almost upon us. Give me the stone.”

“Do you be patient,” said Sidonie. “I will fetch it. Have you a candle with you, and the means to light it?”

She saw him fumbling in his pouch, heard him curse as he dropped his flint and bent to retrieve it. And then she was running, blindly, recklessly, faster than she had ever run before, faster than she had imagined possible; holding her skirts high as she raced for her life down the shrouded slopes of the Tor.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN

Sable night, mother of dread and fear.

— William Shakespeare,
The Rape of Lucrece.

More than once in that headlong flight she stumbled, grazing her hands and knees as she fell, each time picking herself up with desperate haste. Then abruptly she was on level, wooded ground. Through fog-shrouded trees she could see the dim outlines of the Abbey buildings.

She heard a rattle of loose stones behind her, and a muffled curse. She ran faster, thorn branches clutching at her garments. There was a stitch in her side, and her chest hurt. She knew that her pursuer was gaining ground; but where could she find a hiding place in these ruins, with all their roofs and windows open to the night?

And then she remembered the tunnel beneath the Lady Chapel, with its heavy oaken door. There was refuge there, if only she could reach it.

Her breath came in painful gasps as she raced along the path and down the stairs to the crypt beneath the Lady Chapel. She tore aside the curtain of ivy, pushed open the tunnel door and ducked under the lintel. Then she closed the door behind her and dropped the bar.

Almost at once she heard the clatter of the outer latch. Panicked, she fled along the passageway, feeling her way in the darkness with one hand against the tunnel wall. In her haste she stumbled, almost losing her balance, as her foot skidded in a patch of something slick and wet.

Tunnels were meant to lead somewhere. Over the centuries many feet must have trod these flagstones, on who knew what secret assignations. But the monks had been gone for fifty years. By now the passage could be blocked with rubble, or the exit walled up with bricks. She could be trapped here for hours, or days, until her pursuer gave up the chase.

Now she could hear something heavy thudding against the door. She reminded herself that the boards were thick, the hinges sturdy. One man, working alone, would be hard put to batter it down.

As a child, walking abroad with her father, she had loved the dark, had been excited by it; but then there had been stars and moon overhead, a lamp in her father's hand, glints of candlelight through shuttered windows. This was the darkness of the tomb, stifling and oppressive; the formless, featureless dark of the alchemist's
nigredo
. It had weight and substance as it pressed against her eyes, her mouth; she drew it into her lungs with every breath.

The thudding had stopped. All she could hear now were her own footsteps on the paving stones, and somewhere ahead, a slow tap, tap of water dripping. Step by step she moved forward, one hand tracing the tunnel wall. The passage, which at first had been wide enough for two to walk abreast, grew narrower, so that she could touch the two sides with her outstretched hands. And then, with dismay, she found her shoulders brushing against the stones on either side. What if the walls met, and there was no way through? She sensed as well that the roof was pressing down on her, and she tried not think of the massive weight of earth and stone overhead.

She dared not go back; there was no choice but to push forward. The roof, now, was so low that she could no longer walk erect, but must drop to her hands and knees.

She bundled up her skirts as best she could and tucked them into her girdle. For what seemed like hours she inched her way along the rough flagstones. Her stockings were shredded, her knees scraped raw. Her face was covered with cold sweat.

And then she could go no farther. Her mouth went dry, her throat constricted as she realized she had come to a solid brick wall.

A part of Sidonie, at that moment, wanted to give way to despair, to throw herself down and weep with anger and sheer frustration. But she had to reckon with that other part of herself, that would not give up on a problem until she had exhausted every means to solve it. And so she ran her hands slowly along the top of the wall, and down the sides, and across the middle, in the hope of finding crumbled mortar, a brick she could work loose, some means of opening a way through. Then, as she crouched on her heels, her hand encountered a wedge-shaped brick. She felt to one side and then the other, and realised that it was the keystone of an arch.

The opening, set low down in the wall, was not large, but there was room enough for her to squeeze through. She gathered her skirts around her, and crept through to the other side.

A smell of dust and mildew prickled her nostrils. Close by, something scratched and scrabbled — rats, she thought with a shudder. Faintly, from above, came the sound of music. Groping in the dark, she discovered a row of casks, an overturned bench or table — and then a stair-rail. Holding tight to the rail she climbed a narrow flight of stairs towards a sliver of yellow light. At the top she found hinges, a latch.

Pray God
, she thought,
that there is no one on the other side
who means me harm
. She tried the latch, but the door would not open. She shouted, and hammered her fists on the wood. She heard someone call out in a startled voice. More voices joined in. There were hurried footsteps, and then the door swung open.

She wavered for a moment on the sill, squinting into a long, low-ceilinged, smoky room, filled with the flickering glow of rushlights. And then her strength failed her. She swayed, tottered, and collapsed into the bewildered grasp of a large, red-bearded man.

“God's mercy, what have we here?” the man said. He held Sidonie at arms length, examining her with curiosity and mild alarm.

All at once there were a dozen people jostling for a better view. Someone offered helpfully, “Methinks 'tis a wench.”

“I can see that, plain enough,” said red-beard. “But how came she into my cellar?”

“Through the tunnel from the Abbey, like as not.” An old man's voice, raspy and querulous. “Had a sheep do that once. No young maids, though, nor any monks since King Henry's time.”

Dazedly, Sidonie looked round — it seemed she was at an inn, or an ale-house. There was a babble of voices, faces crowding close.

Just then a sturdy young woman in a homespun gown pushed through the crowd. Her broad, fair face was flushed with indignation. “Fie, for shame,” she scolded. “Away with your questions, leave the poor maid be, can't you see what a state she is in, all smutched and draggled?”

Sidonie could only imagine what a tatterdemallion she must look. She had long since lost her cap and there was a rip in her cloak where it had caught on a thorn bush. Her shoes and the hem of her skirt were caked with mud. Distractedly she raised one hand to smooth down the wild tangle of her hair. “Prithee,” she said, “what place is this?”

“Why, 'tis the Pilgrims' Inn. My father is the innkeeper. And you'll be the lass that's gone missing, I'll warrant. Your lad was here earlier, all in a fret and asking after you. How you came to be in that cellar, I cannot fathom.”

“Nor I,” said Sidonie. She might have invented a story, but she was too weary to try.

“Come sit by the hearth,” said the woman. “There's a kettle of pottage on the fire. Are you hungry?”