Cast Love Aside (27 page)

When a loud rumbling sound indicated that the
rest of the barrels were rolling down the main tunnel to the cave
at its end, Lilianne extinguished her torch against the damp wall,
plunging them into near darkness. Only a faint, wavering light
shone through the narrow aperture they had just used.

“Norbard's men have brought their own
torches,” Braedon murmured.

“To find us, they'll have to know exactly
where to look,” Lilianne whispered back. “If we stay quiet, they
won't guess we are here.”

Gilbert chose that moment to begin moaning
rather loudly.

“Silence that brat,” William muttered,
“before he gives our location away.”

“Gilbert?” Lilianne felt her way past Braedon
to reach her brother. When she touched him, Gilbert moaned again.
She caught his head against her bosom to soothe him. “Hush, my
dear. Please, be quiet. We don't want anyone to find us.”

They all froze as footsteps pounded past the
opening to their hiding place. Mercifully, Gilbert made no more
noise.

“I think they've gone,” William said after a
few moments of silence.

“We should move along before they return,”
Magnus said. “Lilianne, lead the way. I'll take care of Gilbert.”
He lifted the half-conscious boy from her arms.

Placing one hand on the tunnel wall, Lilianne
began to walk. Magnus wound his fingers into her belt and followed
her. Years had passed since the last time she was in these smaller
tunnels, which were intended for escape in time of war. She wasn't
surprised that Norbard knew about the main tunnel leading out of
the manor. He and Erland probably used it during their spying
activities, since the cave provided a convenient meeting place that
was secure from suspicious eyes. But she could think of no reason
why Norbard should have been told about the secret route she was
presently taking. She wasn't even sure if Erland knew about it.
Thus, she felt reasonably safe so long as no one made a noise loud
enough for Norbard to hear, and the farther away from the main
tunnel they were, the less likely it was that any sound would carry
back to it.

Lilianne's confidence grew with every step
she took. They would leave the manor, escaping Norbard, and Gilbert
would be safe. It was far more than she had dared to envision when
she returned to her old home to bury her brother. Her heart swelled
with joy.

Their way led downward and the stone walls
and floor were slippery with seeping moisture. Caution was required
if they were to avoid slipping and falling. Lilianne could hear
nothing but the soft footsteps and quiet breathing of her friends.
In the darkness her senses were so heightened that she felt
Magnus’s sudden shudder as if it were her own body’s movement.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, stopping so
abruptly that he bumped against her.

“Nothing,” he said, “just the dampness. Keep
going.”

“Where is Gilbert?” she asked.

“I'm here.” Gilbert sounded remarkably
natural. “Magnus is holding on to me. Will we reach the light room
soon?”

“I think so,” she said. “You have a good
memory. You were just a little boy when last we came this way.”

“What light room?” Magnus asked.

“There’s an opening in the rock, just big
enough to let a little daylight in,” Lilianne explained. “If you
like, we can stop there to rest and discuss what to do next.”

“Why did you bring Gilbert down here when he
was small?” Magnus asked.

“She didn't,” Gilbert said. “Our father
brought us. As the next lord of Sainte Inge, I had to learn the
escape route. Father wanted Lilianne to know it, too.”

Lilianne stayed silent, recalling the day
when their father had shown them through the tunnel. He had used a
torch, but she had kept her eyes closed as he instructed, so she
would know how to find her way if ever she needed to use the tunnel
in darkness.

They came to a curve in the tunnel and a few
moments later they entered a wide, low-roofed chamber. A narrow
shaft of daylight shone through a hole in one wall, down close to
the floor. The light revealed moisture on the rocks and a bit of
seaweed near the opening.

Magnus halted, shuddering, and wrapped his
arms around himself. Lilianne watched him with growing concern.

“Interesting,” Braedon said, looking around.
“Lilianne, am I correct that this room was once open to the sea,
until a rock fall blocked the opening, except for this one
hole?”

“I think so,” she answered. “We are down at
the very base of the promontory, with the manor house directly
above us, on top of the cliff.”

“I gather from the seaweed that the hole is
low enough for the sea to enter during a storm or a very high
tide,” Braedon said. As if to emphasize his words, a gush of water
burst through the hole. “A storm such as the one we’re having
today,” Braedon added.

“Dear heaven, it’s cold in here,” Magnus
complained. He shivered and rubbed his arms.

“It’s not cold enough to make you quake like
that,” William said. “I hope you haven’t contracted an ague.”

“How do we get out?” Magnus asked Lilianne,
while ignoring William’s remarks. “Where is the exit tunnel?”

“I remember,” Gilbert exclaimed. He started
for the far side of the rock chamber.

“Magnus, are you sure you aren’t ill?” In the
dim light, Braedon’s handsome face was worried. “Can you walk, or
do you need help?”

“I can walk.” Still rubbing his arms for
warmth, Magnus hurried after Gilbert. “Nothing is wrong with
me.”

“Anyone can see you aren’t well,” Lilianne
objected, rushing to catch up with him.

“Just show me the way out of here,” he
ordered. “Let me smell fresh air again and I’ll stop
shivering.”

“Lilianne,” Gilbert said, pausing at an
opening in the chamber wall, “aren’t the dungeon stairs just inside
this tunnel?”

“Why, yes,” she said, surprised again by her
brother’s remarkable memory.

“I thought we were trying to leave,” William
grumbled, “not visit the dungeon.”

“The stairs that Gilbert remembers will take
us down to the lowest tunnel of all, the one that opens out of the
cliff,” Lilianne explained. “To visit the old dungeon, we would
have to climb up the stairs.”

“That's an odd arrangement,” William
remarked.

“If you consider the original purpose of the
stairs, it's not odd at all,” Lilianne said. “When the manor was
built several hundred years ago, prisoners who died in confinement
were carried down to the tunnel and the beach beyond. According to
my father, the bodies were put into boats and rowed out to sea for
burial.”

“How pleasant,” Magnus said with heavy
sarcasm.

“My father was a most lenient lord, and so
was his father before him,” Lilianne responded hotly. She was
speaking to Magnus’s back, for he was pacing around the rock
chamber and stamping his feet as if they were freezing.
Nevertheless, she continued her protest of his disparaging remark.
“No prisoner as been cast into our dungeon for half a century or
more.”

“That's not true,” Gilbert interrupted her
heated defense of their forebears.

“Of course, it is,” Lilianne told him. “I
have Father's word on it.”

“A prisoner is in the dungeon right now,”
Gilbert informed her with smug assurance.

“No, that cannot be,” she began. Her
objection to Gilbert's claim ceased when he folded his arms across
his narrow chest and shook his head at her. For a moment he looked
so much like their father that she couldn't speak.

“I wish we could sneak into the dungeon and
free him,” Gilbert said.

“Free whom?” Magnus demanded. He continued to
rub his arms as if he would never be warm again, but now he began
to pay more attention to what Gilbert was saying.

“When you found me in the tower room, I told
you about him, but you didn’t listen,” Gilbert said with
exaggerated patience.

“
What man?”
Lilianne asked, trying
hard not to give in to her urge to shake the boy. Impatience never
worked with Gilbert. She would just have to hold her tongue and
listen while he explained in his own way.

“The man who fed me,” Gilbert said.
Abandoning his pretense of lofty self-assurance, he added in a
doubtful tone, “At least, I think it’s a man. I suppose it could be
a woman. I’m not sure because I don’t know his name, but I just
assumed a prisoner would be a man.”

“That’s not always the case,” Braedon
said.

“Gilbert, I think you should tell us the
entire story now, so we can decide what we ought to do about this
prisoner,” Magnus said. Slowly he unwrapped his arms, moving as if
he was forcing his hands downward unwillingly, until one rested on
the hilt of his sword and the other hung stiffly at his side.

Lilianne watched him with deep concern,
afraid that William was right and Magnus had contracted an illness.
Certainly, his face was oddly pale, but perhaps it was only the
effect of the muted light. She hoped so. Then Gilbert began to
speak and she gave her full attention to her brother.

“After Uncle Erland left me in the tower
room,” Gilbert explained, “he didn't provide much food, and I never
saw anyone except him. But I was sure that sooner or later Lilianne
would start looking for me, so I vowed to stay alive until she
found me.”

“Oh, Gilbert,” Lilianne whispered as she
thought of Gilbert's delicate health and their uncle's cruelty.

“I decided to try fishing for food,” Gilbert
said. “I tore my sheet into strips and tied them together to make
the long rope I knew I'd need, because the tower room is so high
above the water. Then I bent a pin into a hook and fastened my last
crust of bread onto the end of the strip for bait, and I hung the
line out the window.”

“Ingenious,” said Braedon, smiling his
approval.

“When something tugged on my line after an
hour or so, I thought I had caught a fish,” Gilbert continued his
story. “I was so hungry that I was prepared to eat it raw, but when
I pulled the line up, I found a little cloth sack tied to the end
of it, and a note tucked inside.”

“Someone sent you a message?” Magnus prompted
when Gilbert paused.

“Written on a folded-up piece of cloth,”
Gilbert said. “I think the prisoner tore off pieces of his shirt
and used them in place of parchment. And I think the message was
written in blood.”

“What did it say?” Lilianne asked.

“'Prisoner. Dungeon. Help,'“ Gilbert recited.
“I can't tell you how excited I was to make contact with another
person, though I was sorry it was another prisoner and not someone
who could help me escape. Anyway, I had a few scraps of parchment
that Uncle Erland had left behind, and a quill and half a bottle of
dried-up ink without a bottle stopper. I spit into the ink bottle
and when the ink was wet enough, I sent a message back, saying that
I was a prisoner, too, and I was starving.”

“So, the other prisoner shared his food with
you,” Lilianne finished the story.

“Yes. He didn't have ink, and I couldn't
think of a way to send my bottle down to him without spilling all
of my ink, so we couldn't say much to each other, though I did
share my bits of parchment with him. I think he wrote with a straw
or a sliver of wood,” Gilbert said. “The few messages I received
from him didn't look as if they were written with a quill.”

“Merciful heaven,” Lilianne murmured in
astonishment at Gilbert's tale.

“I don't know why he was cast into the
dungeon,” Gilbert went on, “though it was almost certainly done on
Uncle Erland’s command. I don't even know my benefactor's name. But
if there's a chance we can release him, I think we ought to
try.”

“Yes,” Lilianne said without any hesitation.
“We will free him and take him away with us. Magnus, I see you are
about to object. I don't care if this prisoner is a murderer, or a
lunatic, or even a heretic. He saved Gilbert's life when our uncle
would have let my brother die. We must help him!”

“Have you forgotten that Norbard is searching
for us?” William asked. “If he mounts a full search of the manor,
the search will include the dungeon. We can be sure the men-at-arms
know where the dungeon is, because according to Gilbert's account
the prisoner is being fed, even during Erland's absence. If we try
to release him, we may all end our lives in the dungeon!”

“What if Erland has cast some innocent soul
into confinement?” Magnus asked. “It's what he did to his own
nephew, so why not to some other blameless person? The prisoner
could even be another child. As eager as I am to depart from this
cursed place, I refuse to desert someone who has helped a boy in
trouble.

“Gilbert, show us the stairs to the dungeon,”
Magnus ordered. “Braedon and I will see about rescuing the
prisoner. William, you will escort Lilianne and Gilbert away from
the manor and try to meet Captain Piers, as we originally intended.
We will catch up with you later.”

“No!” Gilbert cried. “I am the one the
prisoner helped. I must be the person to set him free. As lord of
Sainte Inge, it is my right – and my duty.”

Magnus regarded him in silence for a moment,
his shadowed eyes searching Gilbert's thin, upturned face.

“If all of King Louis's nobles were as honest
and loyal as you,” Magnus said, “you could force your king to cease
his intrigues and there would be no need for spies on either side
of the Narrow Sea.”

“All of King Henry's nobles would have to
become equally honest and loyal,” Gilbert responded.

“True.” Magnus uttered a low laugh, just
before another spasm shook his large frame. He drew a long breath
before speaking again. “We know the prisoner is in a cell located
directly below the tower, with a window slit that opens on the same
side of the tower as Gilbert’s window. There can’t be too many
cells fitting that description.”

“There are only four cells in the entire
dungeon,” Gilbert said. “There's a small anteroom at the top of the
stairs. On the next level down is a large room with a firepit, a
big metal table, and some nasty-looking instruments. I don't like
that room.”