Isabella's Heiress (34 page)

Emma wanted to turn away as the monks face came closer to the grate but she forced herself to watch. They were face to face now and the monk was sniffing as if it knew something wasn't right but the smell of Emma's fear was disguised by its own odour. Emma had to stop herself from gagging as the habits sleeves fell free of the extended arms, which were thin and covered in lesions and welts. The flesh was torn in places but there was no bleeding, just offensive smells that only increased Emma's overwhelming urge to retch. The monk face came closer to the grate; until its nose was nearly touching it. Emma could make out the spittle on its chin and the fetid breath burning a path to her as rakish fingers made their way through the bars. The monk's movements were slow now,
curious at the new discovery. It inched towards her face, its cracked, uneven fingernails feeling the air in front of her. Just as she thought it would discover her, the fingers curled around the bars and the monk started to pull violently, grunting and squealing with exertion. When it was convinced that the bars were solidly in place, it started to push. Emma saw this coming and braced herself; she looked down and clenched her teeth but not before she risked sliding her hands onto two of the bars. The monk pushed but was at a disadvantage. It was crouched and couldn't get any leverage, so changed its grip but Emma was able to deny it each time it pushed, until it finally gave up, its interest and energy spent. The black monk straightened up, shuffled back over to the table, picked up its tools and left the alcove.

For the first time since the mortar had fallen, Emma allowed herself to breathe properly. Her chest burned from the shallow breaths she had been taking in and gratefully accepted the lungful of warm air.

Emma waited to ensure the monk was gone before daring to move. Her legs had seized up and she had to force her heals backward to stretch out her calf's before she could get them to respond. Slowly she managed to get into a fully standing position but not before her knees and elbows had cracked in protest.

Through all of this, her weight had stayed behind the bars and her hands were suffering but she couldn't move them just yet lest the grate fall and all her good work be undone. Eventually she found herself in the position she had been in when she was scraping away the mortar. The grate was now completely loose and ready to come out. Knowing that she couldn't stay like this forever, she pushed her body against the wall and placed her right hand in the centre of the grate, freeing up the left to flex.
The relief was matched only by the encroaching stiffness in her legs, which she wouldn't be able to shake until she was walking again. Emma repeated the process with her right hand and then steeled herself for taking the weight. Slowly she pulled at the bars and was surprised at how easily they came free from the wall, the monk's assault having cleared any vestiges of resistance.

The grate was wide but it only consisted of four vertical bars if you didn't include the ones that made up the sides and, as Emma now realised, they were hollow, meaning that they were lighter than she had thought. As she pulled, mortar fell away, bouncing off the wall like charcoal brickets poured onto a barbecue. Every one that hit the ground was like a clap of thunder going off in Emma's head but no one was rushing to see what was creating all this noise.

Finally the grate came free and Emma braced her arms before pulling it clear. It dropped to her chest as it left the wall and Emma winced but where she was flush to the brickwork, it only fell a matter of inches. By slowly stepping back, Emma was able to control its descent until it was on the ground resting lengthways against the wall.

Emma looked at what was now a gaping hole. Fitting through it wouldn't be a problem but it was too high to just reach up and pull herself through. She gingerly picked up the grate and wedged it into the wall so that it sat directly below the hole, then used it as a ladder to climb into the alcove beyond. Emma's knees buckled under a wave of heat. The tunnel, whilst getting uncomfortably warm, had shielded her from the worst of it. Now she could feel her lungs searing with every intake of breath.

She ducked under the staircase and took in her surroundings. Just past the bench used by the monk was a large stone archway. On the left hand side, an anchor chain hung limply off an eye, coiling up in a rusty pile
on the floor. Emma moved to the wall opposite the chain taking comfort in the shadows. The fear she had felt when confronted with the monk was now gone, replaced with a knawing anxiety as a little voice in her head kept telling her to be careful, lest she be seen.

Emma looked around the corner and stifled a gasp. Where before she thought that the ceiling was out of view, it was in fact so high up it just wasn't there. Instead she was faced with arches, stairways, bridges and columns, all arranged in a vast, disparate vista. This was a labyrinth of biblical scale, covered in chains, and spikes and lit by braziers and torches. It looked like Emma was in the heart of a mountainside. Her fear faded away to be replaced by a sense of awe at what confronted her. The only thing it was missing was people. The silence was broken only by the sound of Emma's breathing. She stepped away from the wall for a second forgetting herself.

“Ooh, what have we here? A visitor no less.”

Emma felt like her heart had exploded. She threw herself back against the wall, desperate at having been spotted.

“It's no good, dear, you've been seen.” A second voice, high pitched like the first taunted her.

“Come out, come out wherever you are!” The voices were in unison and playing with her, daring her to leave the alcove.

“Don't worry dear, there's nobody here but us and we won't tell, will we Remus?”

“Oh no, Romulus, who would we tell? No one comes down here to see us do they? I mean it's not as if we built this place is it?” The voices descended into bickering that seemed to Emma to spread across several different languages. Finally they gave up arguing and everything fell back into silence. Emma sucked in a gulp of air, her lungs
complaining for the umpteenth time that day and peered round the corner. She had long since stopped being surprised by what she saw but the site that met her would have been considered strange in any surroundings. In front of her was a plinth on top of which was a large piece of unworked stone with two recesses cut into the top. In the recesses were two stone heads, which looked like they had been cut off the neck of the statues Emma had seen as a child at the British Museum. At first she couldn't understand where the voices had come from until she realised the two stone carvings were looking at her.

“Ooh, she's pretty” Said the one on the left, “A little on the skinny side but pretty”

Emma was momentarily offended. She'd always prided herself on her figure and, dead or not, wasn't about to have it insulted by a carved head.

“Well say something dearey, it's not as if we've got all day” The one on the right chimed in now. Emma guessed they would have been straining to get a better look at her if they'd had necks.

“What is this place?”

“What is this place? She says. Dont'cha knows?” The one on the left smiled slightly “This is where all dreams end and nightmares begin”

“Oh, don't be so melodramatic, Romulus.” The one on the right's eyes swivelled from the other head to Emma “You know what this place is, child, the question is why you are here? No one comes here out of choice.” The last few words were delivered with a seriousness that had been lacking up to then.

“I'm looking for my friend” Even as she said it, Emma was acutely aware of how feeble she sounded, “She was brought down here and I want to get her out.”

“Looking for her friend she says. Wants to get her out, she says.”

“Oh for heavens sake, Romulus, will you shut up! It's like this dearey, once you're here, you don't leave, at least not back into the world you came from.”

Emma shifted on her feet and looked nervously around

“Oh you needn't worry, dear, nobody comes down here.”

“But I saw a monk and before that…”

“Yes, yes, yes but he only comes down once every few days when his tools blunt. We won't be seeing him for another week.”

Emma looked at the two stone heads and then turned back to the hall. As she looked around at the giant pillars and aqueducts', a blast of superheated air hit her and brought her back to her senses.

“Look, I can't stay here, I need to find her. Will you help me?”

The two heads looked at each other then looked at Emma, a smile spreading across Remus' face.

Father Eamon sat in the main hall. Word had reached him that Emma and Rodolfo had been seen heading down into the Fleet's sewers. That meant only one thing. Had he done the right thing? What if he was putting too much faith in her? What if she was captured? He shuddered at the thought.

All his life, before and after his death, he'd been a maverick. He had driven his tutors to distraction whilst training for the priesthood in France and even when he came back to Ireland, he had drawn the ire of his seniors with his methods, even though they had to admit they had been unusually effective in keeping him hidden from the English. On the occasions when he had come close to being discovered, it had been his guile and cunning that had got him safely away but with that had come an arrogance and disdain for the upper echelons of the church, sitting in their velvet sanctums, largely unmoved by the suffering of the people they claimed to represent. So many times he had had to watch whilst one accommodation was made after another with landowners and foreigners all in the name of the advancement of the church, whilst he and many others like him tried to minister to the people that inevitably suffered as a direct result of these betrayals.

He paced up and down the floor trying to foresee what would happen in the next few hours. The plane was an unpredictable place but he had enough experience here that he had pretty much seen everything there was to see. Right now though all his experience came to nought in the face of what was going on only a mile away. He would have given anything to be able to go in himself but his presence would have been felt the moment he got inside and he knew that this would be a provocation too far from the point of view of both sides.

Father Eamon looked up at the roof. He knew that he would have to go to Newgate soon. This was the last place he wanted to be but he would only have to wait for a few more minutes before he could leave.

It was late afternoon and the hall was empty but he knew that it would soon fill up and he wanted to be away before that happened. There were plenty of people hidden around the gaol, Father Henry had seen to that, but he wanted to be there. Emma was his initiate and he felt that by staying back he was betraying her in some way. He knew that this was wrong but all the same, he wanted to be away.

His mind wandered through his time with Emma. Could it really be nearly a year since he first met her? It didn't seem that long but then time had long since ceased having any meaning to him.

He was thinking about how he would get Emma away from the gaol if she got out when the door opened in the far wall. He looked over and returned a warm smile.

The sweat was a constant irritant but Emma had given up trying to clear it from her eyes. Her mind was set on getting
in an out as quickly as possible but the further she got in the less chance she had of remembering the way back. As she looked around at the cavernous halls, topped with archways that peaked hundreds of feet over her head, she was grateful for the rock in her right hand. She had picked it up and had been using it to mark every third corner or column she had passed, indicating the way back.

Romulus and Remus had given her directions into the bowels of the prison,
was this prison?
Emma couldn't be sure; it seemed to her that the whole of the twilight plane could have come under that description but for now she was content to think of this place as such. The more they had spoken, the more she had realised that she would need a way to find her way back out. She had hunted around for something that might help her do that until she saw the broken rocks.

Emma had started to lose faith after a while but then she had heard the low whine on the air. At first she thought it was just the whistle of the wind but as she had followed the directions she had been given it had got louder until it had become clear that it was a voice.

Emma had started to hug the walls even more tightly after this and her mood wasn't made any better when she realised that the voice was the same one that had tormented her when she had been up top. Down here it was even more cutting as its raucous tones bounced off every wall and column.

Hallways gave way to each other with increasing frequency. Each one was larger than the last with archways and pillars reaching off into ever higher circles. And all the time there was the voice slowly becoming clearer the further in she got until, eventually, she could make out what it was saying.

“SINNERS! BLASPHEMERS! YOUR PAIN WILL
NEVER
END! FLESH WILL BE CLEAVED FROM BONE AS WE TEAR YOUR SOULS ASUNDER!”

Emma flinched with every screamed threat and started to falter as she found it harder and harder to keep herself hidden. The only saving grace was that the voice hid her own noise and the monks had a nasty habit of heavy breathing so she could hear them before she ended up walking into them

Oh, God, what am I doing here? I'm never going to find her.

Emma was now starting to panic. As she got deeper, she started to pass passages cut into the wall, which exuded lows moans. Her suspicions to there cause but were confirmed when two monks dragged out a tearful woman just as she turned a corner. She followed them as they took her through an annex archway and strapped her to a rack. As the final rope was fastened, it instantly went taught and the woman was elevated three foot off the ground. Emma didn't wait to see what would happen next, the woman's screams that followed her out left her in no doubt how that was going to go.

“YOU SHALL NEVER LEAVE THIS PLACE. THIS TEMPLE TO YOUR TRANSGRESSIONS! EMBRACE YOUR PAIN AND YOUR PENURY!”

Emma tried to put the voice to the back of her mind but its molten scream burnt her ears with every bellowed syllable. She tried everything from concentrating on the uneven stonework in the walls to trying to regulate her breathing but it felt like she would drown in the unceasing flow of hate coming from around her.

It was now about two hours since she had climbed through the grate and for all their talk, the two heads couldn't begin to describe the wave of human misery that Emma had waded through as she got to this level. Huge protruding platforms held men and women, stripped
naked and hanging from large stone posts by rusty brass chains. Giant wheels gently rotated through vast pools of water, slowly immersing then extricating first one person then another. Emma had hidden behind a wall near one of these as a group of monks had moved past. She had been there for what seemed an age and in all that time, the wheel had barely moved. Only one person had come out from the pool and looking at him, coughing and vomiting up fetid, black water, Emma could only guess how long he had been under.

At first she had worried that one of these people would see her and give her away but it had soon become apparent that they were in no condition to raise their heads let alone notice what was going on around them.

As Emma headed further in, she had to navigate massive stone staircases. These were the worst times for her because she was constantly exposed and she had to choose her moments when she used them carefully, hoping that luck was on her side and that she would be able to find cover before anyone came her way. Up to now she had been lucky as the halls and stairways had been sparsely populated but the further in she got, the more people she was starting to see. For all the staircases she had climbed, it was obvious now that she was heading further and further down. The walls were hot to the touch and waves of heat were rolling over Emma like breakers on the shore. The sweat had gone from a trickle to a torrent in the space of the last five minutes and try as she might it was becoming impossible to function.

“THIS IS YOUR PRESENT AND YOUR FUTURE! YOUR SOULS WILL BE PURGED AND YOUR FLESH CORRUPTED!”

The stairway Emma was on led down to a tall stone archway. She peered round the corner and instantly
dropped back into darkness of the stairs, grateful to have something between her and the voice. She wiped the sleeve of her blouse across her face, whilst trying to blink out the sweat. Sticking her head out of the archway had been like placing it in a furnace. Her eyes had closed almost instantly and now they were streaming scalding tears. She took a deep breath, knowing that it would sear her insides and steadied herself for another look. Her skin was beginning to represent that of the people she had seen being slowly tortured further back. The sweat had started to form black tidemarks across her arms and white salt stains on her clothes but she looked around the corner again, this time squinting in an effort to negate the heat. She could see that she was at the top of a massive hall, looking down on walkways, drawbridges and spiral staircases hewn out of huge stone blocks. Emma knew from the instructions she had been given that she was close. The stone columns that supported the roof ran from the floor up for the better part of five hundred feet before disappearing into the blackness.

As Emma slowly forced herself to acclimatise, she managed to force her eyes open for short periods of time. She could see that the walkways and drawbridges were suspended by blocks and tackle and that there appeared, at first, to be a watchtower about two thirds of the way up one of the massive support columns and at eye level with her hiding place. Her heart sunk until she realised that bars covered the windows and that it was, in fact, another cell.

“ENJOY EVERY MOMENT! SAVIOUR EVERY SECOND! FOR THIS IS JUST THE START OF A LONG JOURNEY. SOON YOU WILL PASS FROM HERE AND DISCOVER THE TRUE MEANING OF PAIN!”

The voice finished with a high pitched laugh which Emma had learned to hate but it had the effect of urging
her forward as she carried on with her search. She knew from what Remus had said that she was nearing the centre of this place and that meant more monks. She had been fortunate up to now but knew that her luck wouldn't last. Another look told her that the only way down was by a stairwell at the far end of the walkway that ran in front of the arch Emma was using to hide herself.

Blinking away more sweat, Emma weighed up her odds. She couldn't see anybody at this level but knew that running may get the attention of anybody that happened to be looking up when she moved. Still, staying here wasn't going to do any good so she resolved to head towards the next archway.

Emma headed onto the walkway with only a flimsy metal railing to stop her falling hundreds of feet to the floor below. She kept as close to the wall as possible, whilst all the time being careful not to touch it as everything from the air to the walls were now blisteringly hot and she knew that one touch from any of the surrounding stonework would cause her to scream in pain.

When she reached the archway, the brief respite of the shade given off by the stairs was a welcome relief and Emma found herself finding reasons not to carry on. Slowly, she worked her way down the spiral staircase until the heat started to rise and she realised that the bottom couldn't be far away. Her clothes were sopping wet and Emma felt a constant stickiness, which caused her blouse and the front of her jeans to cling to her. As she wiped the sweat from her eyes for what felt like the thousandth time that hour, Emma missed her footing on the step in front of her and slipped down the next six, catching her arm on the outer wall as she went. The pain as it jarred against the brickwork caused her to let out a small yell.

Emma sat on the steps and got her wind back before
picking herself up and carrying on. She turned a corner and found herself at the bottom of the staircase. In front of her was the exit to the hall. Emma did her best to creep forward but as she looked round the final corner, she came face to face with a black monk.

He was less than six feet away, just beyond the stairwell and looking straight at her, but he seemed to be more interested in sniffing the air.

Father Eamon was halfway up King William Street before he slowed his pace. Sister Ignacia was keeping up but only just. There had been a glow to her cheeks when she had walked through the door and some of the sparkle had returned to her eyes, although Father Eamon could tell they were still clouded.