The Seventh Trumpet (28 page)

She whispered: ‘We are looking for a prisoner, so we are looking for a door that is bolted.’

Almost immediately, Gormán pointed to a door set back in the wall and indicated the bolt, which was firmly secure. He tiptoed towards it and listened carefully. Then he turned and shrugged, mouthing, ‘I hear nothing.’

Fidelma frowned slightly. There was no grille or any other aperture in the door and it seemed constructed of extremely strong wood. Bending, she carefully eased the bolt back, then gently pulled the door towards her. It seemed that the hinges were well greased, for thankfully it moved without a sound. She peered cautiously into the darkness beyond. She was aware from the dim lights in the passage that she was facing a curved wall. Then she realised that there was a flight of stone steps winding downwards, as if inside a circular tower. Had she taken a step forward, she would have tumbled down them and broken her neck.

‘Take the nearest lamp,’ she whispered to Eadulf, who was closest to one of the sputtering lights. He carefully lifted it down from its holder.

‘I’ll go first, lady,’ Gormán said, taking the lamp from Eadulf and pushing gently by her on to the stairs.

There was only room to descend in single file. The stone steps were steep and wound down quite a way.

After half-a-dozen steps Fidelma called up to Enda, who was the last to enter the stairwell: ‘Draw the door to, so that it does not attract attention.’

At the bottom of the stairwell they found themselves in an area from which passages led in three directions. The passageways were stone-built. While they were not ancient, the fact that this area had been excavated below ground-level and in a boggy area criss-crossed by streams was obvious. Water seeped through the walls and mosses already covered many of them. It was not the cold that sent uncomfortable shivers through them but the dampness. They could feel it permeating their lungs. It was, Eadulf thought, the unhealthiest place that he had ever been in. Already he felt an urge to cough as the malodorous fumes caught at his chest.

‘Where now?’ muttered Gormán. ‘There seem to be no lights along these passageways.’

‘Then we shall have to explore them one by one,’ decided Fidelma. ‘We’ll start down this one.’

‘Just a moment, lady,’ Gormán said. ‘Let us wait and listen a while.’

They were speaking in whispers and it was obvious that, had they spoken louder, their voices would have echoed through the curious underground labyrinth. They paused a while but all seemed silent and they were able to relax a little.

‘What could this place have been built for?’ asked Enda, breaking the silence. ‘I have never seen the like before …’

‘Certainly not for storage,’ Eadulf pointed out. ‘You could not store anything down here unless it was fish.’

With only the one light between them, they let Gormán lead the way along the first passage to their left. Two chambers led off on either side and both of these had doors that stood wide open and were devoid of any object to fill them. The passage ended in a blank wall. They turned back and immediately entered the second tunnel. This led into a narrow vaulted path, along which drifted an odour of decomposing vegetation, of swampy marsh and animal excreta. The tunnel vanished in darkness in either direction.

At the side, before they entered this tunnel with its nauseous stench, there was a small passage and Fidelma indicated that they should investigate it. This one seemed to turn and twist, and they quickly learned that if they were not careful, they could lose themselves. Enda took out his dagger and began to make marks on the wall at the end of each section with an arrow-shaped sign to indicate the direction in which they were proceeding.

They noticed that the passage they had come to was slightly drier and the rooms off it were not as wet and mildewed as others. Then Fidelma gasped and pointed. They had come across a door to which the two bolts had been rammed shut. This time there was a small grille at the bottom of the door. The idea occurred to Fidelma, who had seen such prison doors before, that it was large enough to pass a plate or a jug through. A feeling of excitement gripped them, but Fidelma placed her forefinger against her lips, before motioning Gormán to draw the bolts. He bent and eased them both back. Then he opened the door and stepped inside, holding the lamp high.

A figure was lying on a stone ledge which seemed to serve as a bed. A thin blanket was covering the huddled form. This was clearly the prison cell they had been looking for. The figure was apparently deeply asleep, for it did not move as Fidelma joined Gormán in the cell.

‘Torna,’ she whispered, and reached out to touch the shoulder. But her fingers did not make contact. There was something about the stillness of the form that made her step back hurriedly.

Gormán stepped forward and drew the blanket aside.

Cold, dead eyes stared up at them. The movement in them, which caused them to start for a moment, was only caused by the reflected lamplight shining on them.

Fidelma drew her breath in sharply. ‘It is Biasta!’

Eadulf pushed by her and bent over the corpse, at the same time asking Gormán to bring the lamp closer.

It did not take long before Eadulf discovered the cause of Biasta’s death. He said, ‘He has been stabbed twice with a fairly crude knife. It has more or less ripped the flesh to the heart rather than being a clean stab.’

Gormán bent down and picked something up. It was a metal platter with bits of food still adhering to it. There was no need to explain that this was where the prisoner had acquired his knife.

Now they could see the cadaver without the blanket drawn over it, they realised that Biasta was without his outer garments.

‘What do you think?’ Eadulf asked, drawing himself up.

‘I think Torna may have made his own bid to escape,’ she replied grimly.

‘So Biasta came down here to question him, in spite of Anfudán’s instructions. Torna still had the knife from his evening meal and so he used it to stab the man twice, then stole his outer clothing as a disguise before escaping.’

‘But how was he able to pass himself out of the abbey?’ asked Gormán. ‘You’ve seen the gates and the guards there.’

‘Doubtless he escaped in the manner that Ségnat has planned for us,’ replied Fidelma. ‘And now that we know he has escaped, we’d better get back to our chambers and hope Ségnat will be able to help us.’

‘But perhaps Torna has been caught,’ Enda suggested.

‘If he has been recaptured, surely his captors would have come down here to find out how he escaped, and then they would have discovered Biasta. We are lucky. He has clearly not been missed,’ Eadulf replied.

‘Then we should get after him right away for, as you say, he holds the key to this conundrum,’ said Gormán.

‘Wait,’ Fidelma called, as the warrior turned to the door of the cell. ‘If we go charging off, we will alert the whole abbey. Leave things as we have found them and we’ll try to get back to our chambers without being seen. Let’s hope the body of Biasta is not found until after we have left the abbey.’

‘If Torna is as clever as I suspect, then he will leave no trail that can be followed,’ Eadulf said.

Gormán replaced the blanket over the body of the man who had called himself Brother Biasta, then they left the cell, with Gormán almost reverently sliding the bolts home. Thanks to the marks that Enda had made with his knife, they had little difficulty retracing their steps to the main chamber at the foot of the circular stairwell. They paused there for a moment, as if by mutual consent to recover themselves. Then Enda climbed the stairway first and checked the passageway at the top. It was still deserted.

‘All clear,’ came his whisper. Fidelma, Eadulf and finally Gormán, still carrying the lamp, followed him into the passage. Once there, Gormán replaced the lamp in its holder and Enda pushed back the bolt on the door.

Without a word, Fidelma led the way back to the upper floor and to their chambers. There was a movement in the shadows near the door of the
fothrucad
, the bathing room, and the slight figure of Ségnat emerged. She looked agitated.

‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ she hissed. ‘I thought they must have taken you away already.’

Fidelma smiled reassuringly. ‘We went to track down the prisoner,’ she whispered back. ‘We found where he had been kept – somewhere in the vaults. But he has escaped already. In doing so, he killed one of Cronán’s men called Biasta.’

The girl shivered slightly. ‘Biasta? He was a beast, as his name implies. No one will raise a tear for that pig.’ And then: ‘Are you sure that the prisoner has escaped?’

‘Unless he is wandering in the vaults.’ Fidelma felt it unwise to mention that she suspected that Torna was Tormeid.

‘We will check, just in case. First we must get you away. There is even more urgency for you to leave here now. Do you have all your belongings?’

It was the work of a moment, to fetch their saddle-bags and rejoin her. In silence, she led them down another spiral stair and through a door behind the bathing chamber. A short time later, they had once again descended into the bowels of the fortress. It seemed amazing to Eadulf that no one heard them as they hurried after the nimble young girl. The builders of this fortress had certainly believed in dark vaulted structures. Pausing only to take a lantern, the girl hastened them through a series of dank passageways until they halted before a bolted wooden door.

It was the smell that Eadulf recognised first before the girl unbolted and opened it.

‘This is a special tunnel that leads to a spot under the north walls of the fortress into the bog land. You must follow me closely and in single file.’

After a while they heard the muffled whinny of a horse.

‘Do not worry,’ came Ségnat’s voice ahead of them. ‘My comrades have saddled your horses and brought them to the entrance just behind here.’

She moved on a short distance, holding the lantern high, and paused before a small aperture in the wall. It was just big enough for one person to squeeze through at a time. She bent and called through: ‘It is I. Is all clear?’ There came a faint sound of something being removed beyond and then a soft male voice answered, ‘All clear.’ She motioned them through, one at a time, and then followed.

They emerged under the dark shadows of the fortress walls into the blackness of the night beyond. Ségnat had left the lantern in the tunnel and there were no lights here so as not to attract the attention of any watchful eye. It took a short while to adjust their eyes to the darkness. Two men were standing holding their horses, which were already saddled.

Ségnat said: ‘Remember, this is the north side of the fortress. The land is boggy so make sure that you keep to the well-used tracks. My advice would be that you walk the horses along to that far clump of shrubs and trees. The ground is fairly solid to that point. Then you can mount and ride. Keep carefully to the track there too, and go as quickly as you can. We rely on you to persuade your brother, the King, to return with his warriors and destroy this place.’

‘Are you sure that you can’t come with us?’ demanded Fidelma.

‘There are about a hundred of us imprisoned here,’ replied the girl. ‘The elderly and infirm are now locked in and used as hostages for our good behaviour. So we stay to protect their lives. If we could get them all released, then it might be a different story.’

Fidelma felt reluctant to leave the brave girl and her companions. ‘Surely Cronán will know that you have helped us?’

‘Your horses were taken to the paddock outside the fortress. We were supposed to be retired for the night. We know nothing of who you were or where you were sent. He can say we are lying, but executing us will achieve nothing. Cronán is an evil and vicious man but he does nothing without a purpose. Remember that.’

The night sky seemed a lighter blue with its myriad twinkling silvery stars. No word was exchanged as they fastened their saddle-bags. Their horses stood patiently as their minders handed the reins to each of them.

Fidelma held out her hand to the girl. ‘I shan’t forget this, Ségnat,’ she said. ‘You have my promise that my brother will come and this evil place will be destroyed. You will soon see King Colgú’s warriors marching through the gates to demand an account from this man Cronán.’

‘We will place our trust in you, Fidelma,’ she replied. ‘Remember, when you leave here, head northwards for a while. Try to keep away from the obvious tracks towards the west because Cronán may well send his warriors after you, and they know this country. And try not to make any noise until you are well away from these walls. The sentinels are usually alert on the south side where the causeway is built, but on this side, because of the impassable marsh, they tend to be lazy – but they are not stupid. It is best not to chance matters. Go swiftly now.’

‘Keep safe, Ségnat.’

‘God be on every road that you travel,’ replied the girl solemnly.

Leading their horses in single file, with Gormán at the head, they moved out away from the dark shadows of the imposing walls of the fortress and up a steep embankment which brought them on to ground level. Although there were some clouds scudding across the star-filled sky, the moon was up and bright. Fidelma hoped there were no sharp-eyed warriors patrolling the walls, for they would surely see the shadowy forms of four horses and riders moving swiftly away from the abbey. She felt an urge to mount up and set her horse into a canter and get away, far away.

It seemed an age until they reached the blackness of the trees and shrubs and Gormán signalled that they could mount up. Then, with him leading the way, bent over his horse’s neck so that he could follow the firm ground of the track, they set off. There was a chill on Fidelma’s spine as she imagined hostile eyes observing them. It was only after an interminable time, when Gormán increased their pace, that she began to feel a little more relaxed. But she was acutely aware that it would soon be dawn. Cronán was sure to send his warriors after them.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN