The Castle (15 page)

THIRTY-THREE

I
f something seems too good to be true, it's because it is. The idea of three of us leaving the castle at night and travelling through a
ready-made escape tunnel
? Of course it was never going to be that simple. Now, we would somehow have to take the wild man with us. Who was tall, starving, constantly guarded and chained to the wall.

‘And Prisoners One and Two,' I said to Karim. ‘What are their names again?'

‘Sammy and Parissa.' He nodded and looked, for a moment, desperate. They were ‘enemies of the state' and we could hardly leave them behind. But how could we bring them too?

Karim meditated for ages, working through all the options, trying to hit on the least suicidal scheme.

‘It is good,' he said eventually. ‘Marco is the most stupid guard and will be on duty again tomorrow. After midnight, one guard works alone. I will go up behind him and hit him with something. Then—'

‘No! You can't!'

‘I can,' he said grimly.

‘I mean, what if it goes wrong? Dad says . . . my dad used to say that you shouldn't try fighting people who've had better training. Marco could kill you.'

‘We do not have a choice.'

‘I'm sure we do. Let me think of something.'

‘We do not. I will hit Marco, then we will release the prisoners.'

Much as I would have loved Karim to hit the guard, it was too dangerous. We needed to knock him out some other way.

Knock out . . . Why had I been worried about that recently? Then I remembered: Mum's pills.

‘I think I have a better idea,' I said.

When night came I couldn't sleep. Back in the tunnels, curled up under my threadbare blanket, I could almost feel the Jongleur travelling towards us, over the waves. At some point I must have drifted off, though, because I dreamt of Winchelsea churchyard again. Dad's ashes were there, lying in a puddle. They made the shape of a skull. Inside the church, I wandered around looking at the stained-glass windows: death and resurrection, a knight going up to heaven.

Suddenly I woke up in a sweat.

There was a tomb of a medieval knight inside the church, near where Mum and Rupert had signed the register. Dad
and I often used to admire it. The name ALARD was carved into the stone beside it. The name was real, I was sure of it.

I felt haunted. Dad was visiting me from beyond the grave.

In the morning, my first job was to crush Mum's strongest pills into a fine powder. I crushed four and hoped it would be enough, then another one for luck. I found an old leather satchel in one of the storerooms and packed it with the clothes from Yasmin's room, and everything Karim had saved from my backpack. Watching me, Amina was equal parts scared and excited about what we were planning to do.

Over hot breakfast rolls, Karim made me memorise the plan. We had to time things carefully to avoid the guard who patrolled the perimeter every hour with his dog: it was vital to be nowhere near the entrance to the tunnel when he passed. Once we were through, Karim would guide us to the jetty, where we would hide on a boat the staff used to get supplies.

‘Will six of us really be able to hide?' I asked.
Especially
, although I didn't say this,
as one is very sick, and one is mad?

‘Yes.'

His eyes said
trust me
but the jut of his chin said he was more hopeful than certain. Nor did we discuss how six of us were going to sneak off the boat on the mainland without being spotted. Some things you couldn't plan for. We would just have to take our chances and find a way.

The rest of the day dragged badly. I finished packing my satchel with some bread scrounged from the kitchens, a large empty water bottle for peeing in, and a funnel. My brain didn't really want to go there, but I knew what it was like to need the loo desperately while you were hiding, and even
peeing through a funnel wasn't worse.

Karim disabled the cable that linked the CCTV cameras round the castle to the guardroom. The man who could fix it wouldn't be here until morning. The guards checked for suspicious activity, of course, but all they could find was a slave boy, innocently sweeping.

Late in the evening, he took Marco a ‘special hot chocolate from the kitchens', laced with Mum's powdered pills. Amina and I sat huddled in the cellar room, hugging each other for warmth, while Karim checked on the guard. The pills took a while to work, but by two-thirty he was out cold.

We left Amina in the cellar. Karim and I didn't want her risking her life during the next, tricky part. She would join us in twenty minutes, just inside the perimeter wall, when the patrol guard and his dog would be as far away as possible.

‘It will be OK,' I said, hugging her. ‘There's nothing to be scared of. We'll look after you, I promise.'

Her eyes looked deep into mine and she nodded slowly. She was doing to me what I'd done to Karim: believing me because she had to. I tried to make myself believe it too.

In the corridors and the kitchens, everything was dark. Karim made his way light-footed, by feel, and I followed, holding his hand. He looked like a ninja – or at least, the almost-invisible outline of one, which is how a ninja ought to look. I looked like a ninja carrying a satchel. A really nervous ninja, who kept bumping into things.

The stairs down to the dungeons felt familiar by now. With no moonlight outside, they were pitch-black, but the smell was still the same. The stench of rot and sewage grew stronger the lower we descended.

When we reached the lower corridor, Karim went first,
padding silently along, motioning for me to wait. Above his head, the dim bulb flickered. Even so, I could see from the stairs that Marco was out of it. He lay slumped with his head on the table. Karim was already reaching for the bunch of keys and signalling for me to join him.

The near-silence down here was eerie. The only noise came from the buzzing light and the tinny earphones in Marco's ears, still playing Europop from the phone beside him. His head was resting on the football results from today's paper. I put my hand on his neck to check for a pulse and felt him breathing, just.

Karim caught my eye: if the guard woke up, we were dead. If someone came, we were dead. If we made a mistake, we were dead. The only thing to do was to get moving, focus on the plan and try not to think about the other stuff. Using the keys from the wall, he opened the door to the end cell and nodded to me. He handed me a smaller bunch of keys as I went inside. Parissa, the girl, woke instantly from sleep. She saw me and went rigid.

‘I've come to get you out of here,' I whispered, indicating the sleeping guard behind me.

Her eyes widened with shock and she nodded slowly. I looked at her shackles and she pointed to the keys I was holding. One of them was small and silver, with a pentagon-shaped head and a couple of small teeth at the bottom. She picked it out with her fingertips and stared at me intently. This must be the one.

Meanwhile, I could hear Karim going into Prisoner Three's cell. In the corridor, the light buzzed and flickered. And all the time, the sound of the guard's tinny music leaked through his headphones.

The small key fitted tightly into the slot on Parissa's
shackles where her wrists were joined. I turned it, and soon her hands were free. She squeezed my fingers, thanking me wordlessly. I freed her ankles too. Then we turned to the young man, Sammy, who was still sleeping fitfully beside her. I fiddled the key into the lock on his wrists. It wouldn't budge.

‘Is this the right one?' I whispered.

‘Yes,' she whispered back. ‘The same key for him as for me.'

I tried again. Sammy woke up, but his breathing was shallow and he hardly seemed to see me as I worked. We had to get him out of here quickly. I fiddled some more, but the lock wouldn't move. Time was ticking by.

‘Karim!' I called under my breath.

He appeared at the doorway. ‘Is there a problem?'

‘Yes. This lock is stuck.'

‘Let me try,' he said. He worked on the bracelet, but had no more luck than me.

‘This happens sometimes,' Parissa said. ‘The guards use oil from a can.'

Suddenly, there was a shadow in the doorway. Prisoner Three loomed over us, wild and threatening. I smelled his stench as he pushed me roughly aside and crouched over the trapped young man. To my surprise, his bruised, hard hands seemed steady as he worked with the key. By now the girl was shaking with fear and I tried to calm her, but I was almost as scared as she was. We'd been here too long already. The guard with the dog would be leaving the guardhouse soon to start his next patrol. Amina would be waiting for us near the tunnel. We couldn't let her stay there: it was dangerous. Everything was dangerous.

The prisoner shook his head in frustration and the key
clattered to the ground.

‘Where's the oil?' I asked. ‘The can the guards use?'

Nobody knew. Feverishly, we searched high and low, but there wasn't much high or low to search – just the guards' table and the bag Marco used to carry his paper, his bottle and his big, heavy torch. No can. Everybody tried the key again. The lock wouldn't budge.

From his jacket pocket, Marco's two-way radio crackled into life.

‘Ci sei? Castello due? Marco? Dove sei? Mannaggia.'

We all froze.

‘Go!' the prisoner grunted. His voice was harsh and low. It was strange to hear him talk, but what he said was true: if the other guards were worried about Marco, they would come and check on him. Fast.

With glassy eyes, Sammy stared up at Parissa and croaked something. I think he was telling her to go too. She shook her head. The wild man grabbed her arm to pull her away, but she ignored him. She was soaked in sweat from the fear, but she would not leave her friend. The wild man turned to Karim and me, hovering in the doorway.

‘Run!' he rasped.

We had no choice. I glanced back at them as I headed down the corridor, just in time to see the wild man grab Marco's large torch from his bag and hit the sleeping guard hard over the head with it. The movement came out of nowhere and shocked me so much I shrieked. Then he came after us, leaving the others where they were and looming down the corridor like a zombie.

I ran as fast as I could, as much to get away from the prisoner as anything. It was all going so wrong. Karim led the way as we panted up the stairs, through the kitchens and out
on to a gravel path, with the wild man hard on our heels. We raced around the side of the castle, past the cameras that didn't work, across well-kept terraces that descended towards the outer wall, where Amina would be waiting.

Two of them, trapped in that cell. My brain repeated the thought with every breath, but I kept running.

THIRTY-FOUR

B
y the time we got to the bottom terrace, I was gasping for air. The wild man dragged me along, running faster than I was. How he had the strength to do this, I didn't know. I'd assumed he was near dead in that cell, but I was wrong. In fact, his strength was frightening.

Far above us came the sudden sound of shouting.

Karim ducked down and we all stayed low as we headed for the meeting point. The leather satchel bounced on my back, bashing me with every step. It didn't matter. I listened for the sound of the guard dog – my biggest fear – and on we ran.

The thick perimeter wall rose up ahead of us. Already the
neat castle terraces were giving way to wild gorse that pricked our clothes. Karim paused for a moment in the darkness, checking the way ahead. Beside me, the wild man waited, breathing hard. I half expected him to attack me, but he was watching Karim, who suddenly moved off again at a run. I followed, pushing through the undergrowth until, just before we reached the wall, the hillside fell away and a hole appeared in the ground, surrounded by thickset thorny bushes.

It was the first of a series of stone steps. They led down steeply under the wall, and I could just about make out the edges of the hidden roof under a canopy of plants. Amina's terrified face was dimly visible in the entrance to the smugglers' tunnel.

In the distance, the guard dog started barking.

‘We are here,' Karim said. ‘Go fast.'

I moved forward, but sensed him hesitate beside me. ‘What about you?'

Just one look at his face told me everything. He wasn't coming after all.

‘What's happened? Why?' I cried, stopping and reaching out to take his hand.

‘The Jongleur,' he said. ‘Parissa and her friend . . .' He pulled away.

‘There's nothing you can do!'

‘I must try. You have my sister. Look after her, Peta Jones.'

‘We can't go without you!' There were tears in my voice, and desperation. ‘You
have
to come. Think what they'll do if they find you.'

‘I will say I heard prisoners escaping. I tried to capture them. Go.'

‘No!
Please!'

The barking grew louder.

‘They will not suspect me,' Karim insisted. ‘They think I am nothing. A boy like me could never plan something so ingenious.'

There was a brief flicker of pride in his eyes, but Amina had realised what was happening and now she threw herself up the steps and into his arms, begging him to come. He hugged her hard and pulled away. ‘Take her!' he said to me.

All the time, the dog was getting closer, and now I heard shouts and running feet.

‘Move!' the prisoner shouted, grabbing the sobbing girl from her brother and pulling her down into the tunnel. Karim nodded. His eyes blazed at me with their maharaja intensity.

‘Go with them!'

I had no choice. I couldn't trust that wild man with Amina, and I'd only make things worse if I stayed behind. This was the worst mess in the world. After one last look into those blazing eyes, I turned and flung myself down the steps as fast as I could.

Somehow, the bony prisoner had squeezed himself through the narrow entrance. Ahead of me, I sensed him moving quickly down the steps. They were wider than the ones in the castle, but broken and uneven, and in the darkness I tripped on every one. The roof was low and I had to bend double to keep moving. How the tall, lanky figure of the wild man could exist in this space, never mind move in it, I couldn't understand – especially with Amina clinging to him, keening with distress. And yet he travelled so fast that I could hardly catch up with him.

All the time, I listened for the sound of the dog. I had seen it on patrol and dreaded being the thing it was hunting for.

On we hurtled, down and down, with the occasional gap in the old tunnel roof revealing stars in the night sky. Then a new noise hit us: something more terrifying than anything we'd heard before. Paws pounding on stone. Claws scrabbling, slipping and sliding. The dog was breathing hard, like us. Not barking now, but panting: coming in for the kill.

The prisoner turned round to face me. ‘Take her,' he hissed. ‘Run.'

He came back and we passed awkwardly in the cramped space. As we did so, his hand seemed to catch on my cheek.

‘Move!'

I did. Fast. Amina was almost paralysed with fear, but with my arm around her and my momentum pushing us on, we continued rushing down. Behind us, the dog's hard panting came closer, closer. There was a yelp and a struggle. And the noise stopped.

Amina stopped too, but I forced her on. ‘It's OK,' I whispered. ‘Close your eyes and hold on to me.'

We moved along together, slipping and stumbling against the rough concrete walls, catching our feet on the broken steps. The tunnels in the castle were paradise compared with this. We slid and fell and crouched and ran. There was the dim sound of shouting far above us, panicked and confused. The men seemed to have found the tunnel entrance, but in their uniforms they would be too bulky to fit inside.

The steep hill began to get shallower and a dim light appeared ahead of us. Then suddenly, the roof was gone. We were out in the open, at the bottom of the hill. The sea breeze hit our faces.

I looked behind me and the castle was way above us. We were near the shore, halfway between the sheer cliff-face under the castle dungeons and the gentle side of the island
where the wild flowers grew. To our left, rough waves pounded the rocks. To our right, the jetty stuck out into calm sea, beyond a little bay. The lights of several boats bobbed and sparkled on the water.

Amina collapsed beside me in a heap. Her face was a mask of horror. She didn't even move when we heard footsteps in the mouth of the tunnel. I turned around slowly. If it was the wild man, we were safe, and if it wasn't, there was nothing we could do. We'd used up all our adrenaline in the final run from the dog, and there was nothing left to run with.

It
was
the wild man. He emerged from the tunnel, scratched and bleeding. The dog must have gone for him and there had been a fight, but the dog had lost. The wild man came straight towards me, looked into my eyes and ran his long, bony fingers through my tangled hair. I shrank away instinctively and a shadow of sadness passed across his face.

‘Peta, I'm so sorry.'

Dad's voice.

‘
Dad?'