Kingsholt (13 page)

Aidan smiled. ‘Those feelings will help you, they’ll drive you on.’ He swung the haversack onto the ground. ‘A change of plan. We’ll have to divide up to find Chloe. Leela is staying in the cottage to guard it. One of us will have to explore the valley—’

‘I’ll go underground,’ said Sam without hesitating.

‘Me and Judy’ll go with you,’ said Tyler loyally.

Aidan gave Sam the haversack. ‘I know you both hate the dark,’ he said appreciatively.

Together they studied the map and when Sam began to shiver Aidan listed the types of stone that made up the valley, as if it would calm him down. ‘First there’s chalk, then flint, then limestone – hard and yellowish. Then nodular chalk, with little shell fragments, a cockly bed— ‘He looked up at Sam. ‘It’s important to be strong, especially as I can’t go down with you.’

‘Message received.’ Sam packed away the map and Aidan put
his hands on Sam’s thin shoulders. ‘It’s an important mission,’ he said slowly.

When they reached the pit they silently parted company.

‘Two’s better than one,’ said Tyler comfortingly.

Sam put his hand up to his nose. ‘You’re dead right. Especially as this pit stinks worse than ever.’

‘Tie something round your face,’ said Tyler.

Sam wished he had thought of that before leaving Kingsholt, but he was wearing nothing that would do and had to bear the stench of decay as he slid down the pit behind Tyler. He watched as Tyler struggled with the door, straining at it. But the iron door refused to budge. ‘You have a go,” said Tyler stepping back. ‘I can’t open it.’

Sam slid down to the ledge of stones where he had stood before with Chloe, and pulled on it with all his might. As he let go he almost toppled over into the pit below. Tyler tried again but the iron door was still wedged tight.

‘It’s Nimbus, he’s closed it up.’

Sam didn’t dare to think what he might find on the other side. ‘Let’s try it together.’ They both heaved at the solid iron. door. Recklessly, Sam threw every ounce of strength into it and suddenly, his feet slipped. Instinctively he clutched at a tree root, halting his plunge downward towards the bones and the stench of evil. Above him Tyler lay stretched out, head down, reaching for him.

‘I’ve got strong arms,’ he whispered, ‘you can trust me.’

Slowly, inch by inch, he dragged Sam up and up, until they were side by side on the precarious ledge. ‘We’re never going to open that door,’ Sam said bitterly. Together they climbed out of the pit. Sam took the map out of the haversack and studied it. ‘Here’s the other anchor cross,’ he said, showing Tyler. ‘It’s where your cottage stands. There might be another entrance.’

‘The cellar,’ said Tyler. ‘Mum always said there were rumours.’

‘We have to try everything,’ Sam urged. ‘Come on, Tyler, back to yours. There might be another way!’

As they ran through the wood, sunlight dropped down on them like a white bird.

Sam and Tyler tore at the wallpaper that covered the door leading down to the cellar. Leela helped them and soon they were standing in a pile of ragged strips.

They heaved against the cellar door but it wouldn’t budge. Sam looked at Leela. ‘Is there anywhere you might have put the key?’

‘I told you, I threw it away. I didn’t want Tyler to get lost. It was very difficult to keep an eye on him when he was smaller.’

‘Is there
anything
we can use?’ Sam emptied out his jeans’ pocket. ‘All useless.’ He handed Leela the quill, the old ink bottle, the piece of chalk and the scraper.’

‘Keep them,’ said Leela. ‘You may need them, you never know. And put on the anchor cross. It’s my belief you should wear it. And take these.’ She took a pair of white cotton gloves out of her pocket.

‘You must be joking,’ said Sam, but he took them and stuffed them into the haversack. She’s more persuasive than my mum, he thought, as he also allowed Leela to pull the cross over his head and stuff the rubbish back into his pocket.

‘You must have
something
to open the door,’ he said in desperation.

After a frantic search, Tyler found an old iron hook and wedged it into the large keyhole. It seemed forever before the lock eased back and he and Sam pitched themselves at the door.

At last it groaned open. They flashed their torches down a narrow stone stairway that led to the cellar. It was empty and dank, with the smell of rust and mildew. Sam and Tyler went down the steps into another world.

‘Good luck!’ Leela’s voice echoed from above.

Sam felt in his jacket pocket and gave Tyler the piece of chalk. ‘If you make arrow marks en route, we’ll be able to find our way back.’

Tyler sniffed, peering uneasily into the dark hole at the far end of the cellar. ‘I don’t like it. There’s nothing to hold on to.’ He gave Sam a worried look.

‘That’s why we need the arrow marks.’

At that moment Judy came bounding down the steps.

‘I’m not going without her,’ said Tyler.

‘Then put her on a lead.’

Tyler shook his head. ‘She’s never been on a lead.’

Sam nodded and they set out with Judy. Quite quickly, the cellar gave way to a man-made tunnel, propped up by ancient timbers. Sam flashed his torch at the walls and highlighted scratched graffiti on the overhead beams. Despite the damp and dark they walked fairly quickly.

‘We’re going up,’ said Tyler edgily. He stopped to make an arrow mark on the wall. Judy turned and waited. Tyler’s breath was coming in short, uneven, spasms. ‘I don’t like it down here, I feel closed in. I don’t know the way.’

Sam ignored the panic in Tyler’s voice. He had no wish to travel on his own.

A little further on, a corridor branched off to the right. ‘Which way do we go?’ he asked, hoping, as much as anything, to distract Tyler.

Tyler pointed to the right hand turn. ‘I think that leads back to Kingsholt. Straight ahead’s the wood. I’m not sure Sam, I just think that’s how it is.’

Another intelligence, a different sort.
Sam was remembering what Leela had told him. ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ he said.

The sides of the tunnel became rough, pitted with stones and shells and brown stains. They must be going through a different layer of rock, thought Sam – moving up through a million years. They rounded a corner and there it was, the passage where Chloe
had been tied up. ‘There’s the door in the pit,’ he said. ‘At least Nimbus won’t expect us to be down here.’

They squatted against the wall and as Sam took the map out of the haversack, he noticed Tyler’s hand was shaking.

‘Hey, keep the torch steady,’ he said, adding after a few moments, ‘There! That’s where they built the chapel in the stone mines. On the other side of a great wall.’ He carefully put away the map.

‘It’ll be all right,’ he said to Tyler as they set off again.

A little further on the corridor widened abruptly, giving way to a huge, hewn room, an underground hall. As Sam flashed his torch round the six passages that led off from it. Judy disappeared down one of them.

Panic stricken, Tyler watched her go. ‘I can’t go on without Judy. I’ve got to get out, Sam!’ His shaking torch rippled light on the walls. His breath was coming in short, sharp gasps.

Sam looked into his eyes and saw the panic. ‘Can you get back on your own, Tyler?’

‘I’ve got the arrow marks,’ said Tyler, ‘but I can’t leave you and Judy.’

‘Don’t worry about us. She’ll smell her way back to me and I’ll be all right with her.’ Sam did not know where his courage came from.

‘I’ll try and track you from above,’ Tyler said breathily. ‘There’s another entrance, isn’t there, near the lost chapel, by Blackburr Fort. I found it ages ago. It’s by a tree, I think. I’ll go up there.’

He turned back gasping for air, even though the temperature was cold and even.

‘Look out for the arrow marks,’ Sam shouted after him. Then he realised Tyler had the chalk and he wouldn’t be able to mark his own way back.

The temptation to run after him was great but somehow he resisted. ‘I’ll photograph the way in my head,’ he decided as he
looked at the map, studied it carefully then put it back into the haversack. He had found courage from somewhere but he still needed to hold on to something, so he clutched the scraper in his pocket.

A drifting fell on him, a falling through time. When the dog raced up to him and licked his face it seemed to him that it was not Judy but the saluki dog from Kingsholt. She was alive and sleek, her eyes glistening with warmth, her feathery tail waving.

‘The ancient hunter dog,’ whispered a voice inside his head. ‘She runs across hot sands and holds the gazelle in her soft mouth.’

Sam watched the dog move towards the first tunnel on his left. She looked back at him, eyes shining, then disappeared into the dark. Sam followed. He was no longer afraid. He recalled the workmen who had hacked into the walls from Roman times and he thought he recognised them in the shadow behind the torchlight, chipping and shaping the stone so it fell in oblongs. He saw the half blind horses pulling the heavy trucks full to the brim and the graves of men and boys buried under the fall of stones. He lowered the beam of the torch down onto the damp ground where the dog’s light paw marks showed him the way. Suddenly a noise grew out of the darkness, thin, malignant, ricocheting off the rough surfaces, The dog was at his side again, sleek, long-legged, eyes gleaming like glass. She trotted a little in front of him and somehow Sam found the courage to follow as he listened to the groans, high pitched screeches, sobs that fell like black water.

Slowly he felt himself change; he was no longer good old Simon Penfold from Cheriton Street, Balham. He was clothed in someone else’s mind, someone older, wiser but who was also at the edge of desperation.

He looked down at himself. Over his leather jacket he seemed to see an insubstantial white robe. He realized the noises he was hearing were the cries of the massacre.

He had no need to look at the map or follow the dog. Hadn’t he helped the lay brothers build the chapel and the great arch over the three tunnels?

He whistled for his saluki and together they made their way down the right hand passage.

The path was steep and the roof low. It would not be difficult to block it off from the Viking marauders. He stopped. A tunnel joined the one on which he was travelling, a natural path the river had forged. The Brothers called it Devil’s reach, for its darkness bore the stench of a timeless Hell. He heard the pounding of hooves, rhythmic, ringing, coming up the centuries towards him. Out of that darkness he imagined the wild eyes of the black horse, its foaming mouth, its ears sharp and upward, its black skin sleek and sweaty.

Dark Time’s sword gleamed in his pale hand. There were only a few paces between Sam and its sharp point. I’ve nothing to fight with, he thought, no sword, no shield, only a monk’s robe to protect me and a monk’s dog at my side. Yet I must send him back to the Hell from where he came.

In his new, wise mind, he undid his jacket and lifted up Leela’s anchor cross. The dog loosened a sharp pebble from the ground and Sam picked it up and threw it. A soundless scream came out of Dark Time’s black open mouth. His horse reared in panic then turned and galloped back into the darkness of Devil’s Reach.

Sam stood still, breathing hard, then followed the saluki as she raced ahead and stopped in front of the great wall the lay brothers had made to guard their treasure.

Once again something so strong swept over Sam that he was forced to shut his eyes. It was like a wave of time dragging him back, pulling him down to the floor. After an unknowable length of time it receded, taking with it the sharpness of massacre, the stench of pestilence. He opened his eyes and looked down. He no longer wore the white floating robe, though wisps of the monk’s memory still clung to him. The dog was no longer the sleek, swift,
shiny-eyed saluki. Instead the dumpy, black form of Judy was beside him, nuzzling his hand, looking up with her warm, friendly, commonplace eyes.

And he was Sam Penfold again, from Cheriton Street, Balham, London. A steady attitude and a good memory, his report had said. He took the map out of his haversack and studied it again. On paper, the wall he sat against was nothing but a small dot and there was no indication of how to get through it. Sam put away the map and flashed his torch over the smooth stone. Finding nothing, he held the torch in his mouth and passed his hands slowly and carefully over every slab. His heart beat fast as he put his thumb against a pebble, encased in the lowest and largest slab of all; his last chance! He pushed, hearing it click against something. Slowly, the huge, hewn stone swivelled round.

‘Look at that, Judy.’

With the dog at his heels, Sam crawled through the hole into the darkness beyond. In front of him was a small, simple chapel. He went inside through a rounded, yellow limestone arch and stood in front of a bare altar that was also cut out of the yellowish limestone. Wisps of the monk’s memory made everything familiar – the anchor cross above the altar, chiselled simply from the stone, the stations of the cross round the wall, also carved from stone, the bareness. Sam played the torchlight over the altar but it revealed no secret sign. He flashed the beam onto the anchor cross. Was that a pebble in its centre? He touched it with his forefinger and to his surprise it sprang open, revealing a wide gap at the back of the altar. Holding his breath, he pulled out the box the monk had once put there in a hurry because the Vikings had found the entrance to the mines and were almost upon him.

The box was heavy; Sam heaved it onto the altar. It was made of oak and a piece of vellum had been stuck to the lid bearing the words:
We must hide this great book but hope that one day…

He knew what to do. In the silence he took out his ink and quill and finished the sentence in the same beautiful script.
We
must hide this great book but hope that one day it will be found.

Now he, Sam Penfold of Cheriton Street, Balham, was one of the long line of scribes who had cared for the great volume inside the oak box. He couldn’t resist prising open the gold clasp.

He was not disappointed. Inside was a magnificent book, beautifully bound in tooled leather. He carefully placed it on the altar beside the oak box and took the cotton gloves out of the haversack. Now he understood.