The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton (29 page)

He stood up, switched on the torch and examined the dial. It pointed north.

‘There,’ he said, ‘if we take the left-hand exit and each time that we’re forced to deviate we return north as soon as we can, we should make progress.’

They got up slowly, Laurence leading the way as they entered the passage. It turned increasingly to the west but at the next fork they were able to go almost due north. He began to relax. The next crossing was an angled T-junction, where they were forced to choose between south-west and north-east. The passage curved round and widened out before arriving in an almost circular chamber, its ceiling shaped like a beehive. There were three exits. The compass reading indicated that one led due north, but even as he consulted it for guidance, the needle spun abruptly, almost to the south. He tapped the compass but the needle seemed to take on a life of its own, trembling between east and west. He turned the case to line the needle up with magnetic north, but the needle veered away. He frowned and tapped it again, even as despair hit him, more coldly than before because of his brief flicker of hope.

‘What’s the matter?’ Patrick said.

‘We must be further underground than I thought. It’s not working.’

‘Ferrous oxide in the soil,’ Patrick said. ‘That can pull it away from north.’ He stopped. ‘But it’s all limestone in these parts.’ He sounded more attentive but puzzled. ‘Let’s see.’

Laurence handed the compass over. Patrick too tapped it, then exhaled.

‘Damn odd. It’s hovering around east,’ he said, turning it in his hands.

‘All we can do is follow it,’ Laurence said. ‘Maybe we’re deep enough to distort the reading but the needle may actually be pointing north.’

Laurence switched off the torch again. He hated walking in the semi-darkness but the idea of being trapped down here with no light at all if the lantern burned out was enough of a horror to persuade him to keep the torch in reserve.

They walked on, no longer speaking. When the inevitable next fork loomed, Patrick followed the compass needle.

Laurence tried not to look behind him, where fat Pollock had been following him for some time, lurching in the rear. Always last, Private Pollock. He remembered seeing an NCO push Pollock up the ladder with a hand on his huge bottom. ‘Pollock, yer arse is in the way of the whole British Expeditionary Force,’ he’d said. Carrying so much weight made Pollock seem old. But when he’d held the man’s head in his lap, he’d noticed how smooth and young his skin was, and he could see that this soft hulk of a man had once been some woman’s child. Pollock’s bloody teeth were straight and even. He wiped mud away from Pollock’s half-closed eyes. His feet were sinking. The ground was sucking at his boots.

Suddenly he was more alert. He was walking through mud. That must mean they were moving towards a river, presumably a tributary of the Kennet. Briefly the idea that they might be close to a location connected with a world he knew lifted his spirits. At a pinch they could suck a little moisture from the mud.

But then Patrick said, ‘Good God,’ and turned round to hand the compass back to Laurence. ‘Set your torch on this.’

Laurence took the compass, switched on the torch and saw the needle quivering minutely.

‘It has to be iron,’ Patrick said. ‘Could there be a cache of iron-age weapons down here? Funerary goods?’

‘It wouldn’t be big enough to affect it,’ Laurence said. ‘I’m afraid we’re simply too far below the ground for it to work properly.’ But then, slowly, he said, ‘This mud. Either we’re somewhere near the river or rainwater’s getting through.’

He walked forward a few paces. It was definitely wet now, not just muddy. He put his fingers to the ceiling. Water dripped on to his hand and he sucked his fingers gratefully. He switched off his torch again, even though Patrick’s lantern now cast a very small circle of light.

And then he realised.

‘It’s the generator,’ he said, trying not to let any note of hope enter his voice. ‘It must be the generator.’

‘But it’s off until tomorrow,’ Patrick said.

‘Yes. And if it wasn’t off, my guess is we would have heard it working. It’s been off because of the drought, because they closed the sluices. But what the generator has is magnets. Lots of them. I think the compass is reacting to the magnets.’

‘Of course. Of course.’ Patrick looked around him as if he might see wires hanging from the ceiling.

‘It doesn’t mean there’s any way out.’

‘But it might,’ Patrick said. ‘The generator was installed at the same time that the church was restored. They might have found two entrances.’

Laurence didn’t articulate what he thought Patrick might soon remember: that mazes invariably had just one entrance. He took the lead again and they walked on, more briskly. Even Patrick, although he was coughing a lot, seemed to have regained some energy. The sound of water splashing underfoot was quite audible now and Laurence’s feet were cold. He thought he could hear a faint sound, different from the noises that had come to him in the tunnel. Something brushed his face, making him leap back, almost colliding with Patrick.

The lantern flickered on green-streaked rock and cobwebby tree roots that had insinuated themselves through the great pale rock above them. Laurence reached up and touched it, then looked at his white fingertips.

‘Chalk,’ he said.

But roots meant they were nearer the surface again. The passage divided. It seemed a long time since they’d had to choose a direction. He kept his torch on and followed the direction of the trembling compass needle to find himself in a chamber, so much bigger than anything that preceded it that he must have made some expression of astonishment.

‘What? What?’ Patrick said. He sounded alarmed but as he drew level with Laurence he simply stopped and stared.

They were in a vast cavern. It was perhaps forty feet high and too wide for their lantern to illuminate the far side clearly. The floor was wet and dark. When Laurence shone his torch on it, tiny ripples indicated a small current of air. He could hear constant drips and the faint sound of water running more swiftly. Where he stood the ground was firm, probably rock, but he was loath to cross a large space of opaque water. He started to edge round the side very cautiously. After a while they seemed to be walking on to some sort of natural platform. Halfway along the beam of his torch caught a jagged incline. As he followed it with the beam, his heart leaped at what he saw and for a second he felt faint. He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them and focused again. About halfway up the rock face, unbelievably, was a hatch: a square, closed, undoubtedly man-made door about two feet high. Patrick saw it too. His faint ‘Thank God’ was scarcely more than a breath.

They reached the bottom of the incline easily. It was rough enough to permit handholds. Although it left them in danger of falling into the water, it offered hope where there had seemed to be none so little time ago. Above them the small doorway appeared to have no visible handle. It was hard to tell from below, but Laurence already wondered how it might be secured on the far side.

‘You try first,’ he said to Patrick. ‘I know you’re tired, but you’re much more agile than I am.’

Patrick put down the lantern, leaned back against the wall, rested for a minute to collect himself, then wiped his hands down the sides of his trousers. He looked for a foothold, then reached up and pulled himself into a position where his foot could get a purchase. Laurence kept Patrick in the torch beam, moving it to help him find a way up. Patrick again waited for a while and then climbed higher. Finally he dragged himself on to a ledge by the hatch. He lay slumped for a few minutes, then be gan to recover.

Laurence placed the lantern on the rock below. Despite the light from the torch, it was still inadequate to make out the handholds, so he had to feel his way across the rock face, searching. Once his foot slipped and he froze, pressing his head into the stone and stopping himself from looking down, until his arms stopped trembling. At long last he crawled up behind Patrick, heavy with fatigue.

Patrick pushed the wooden door and, as Laurence had expected, it stuck fast. He took the torch and examined the wood.

‘It’s in pretty poor condition,’ Patrick said. ‘I think we can unscrew the hinges and with any luck it will come off completely. Give me your knife.’

Laurence didn’t say that, since they had descended into the crypt, luck had been against them almost all the way. He sat back, his feet dangling over the drop, his eyes closed. The wall behind him was wet. Either Patrick could ease the door open or they had reached the end. That was assuming that there was more than a further cavern beyond, of course. He heard Pollock give his lucky belch out in the blackness. It had always made the men laugh. Patrick cursed, then cried out ‘Yes’ triumphantly.

‘It’s all so rotten,’ he said, ‘almost sodden, that I’m not bothering with the screws. I’m just levering out the whole hinge. This one’s nearly out.’

Laurence could hear him gouging at the door. Suddenly there was a startling crash and the whole hatchment fell away from them with a loud splash. Beyond it, all was in darkness.

They both peered through. As their eyes got used to it, they saw that this time there was a small amount of natural light. Before them lay what seemed to be a small lake, whose surface was a few feet below the sill of the door and into which the door itself had disappeared without trace. Laurence shone his torch onto brickwork and took in its regular sides. In the far corner, under the opening, he saw the bottom of some piece of machinery. Next to it were a projecting piece of concrete and a short metal handrail. He realised immediately that they had reached the generator house. The rail was most likely a fixing for men to descend and repair the sluices, but for now he thought it was their one chance to get out.

Patrick said, ‘Bloody hell, Bartram. You were bang on. It’s the holding tank. Shine left. See, the sluices are closed, thank God.’

Water was trickling through the gates.

‘We’ll have to swim,’ Patrick said. ‘But because the water’s so low it may be a bit of a struggle to get out.’

Laurence looked across to the far side, where the faint light was coming from, and nodded. ‘Let’s rest a few minutes.’

His limbs were juddering with cold and exertion. They sat with their backs to the rock, facing the cavern and the way they’d come.

Laurence felt deathly tired now that safety was so near. Although his jacket and shirt were soaked and he was chilled to the bone, he was close to falling asleep. He bent forward to unlace his wet boots. He wouldn’t be able to swim in them. As he did so, his torch caught the edge of something monstrous out in the dark cavern.

He switched off the torch. In the army he had learned to extinguish lights swiftly in the face of an unknown foe. His heart pounded. Within seconds he turned the torch on again and held it steady with both hands. He moved his beam back and forth, and there, straight ahead of him, was a vast horned beast. After a moment’s puzzlement he realised it was painted on rock. The natural topography had given it the contours which had made it seem so real, looming out of the dark.

He nudged Patrick, pointed and shone the torch on it again. There was the creature—a mammoth, he thought, pawing the earth. Moving the beam from side to side, he found men. There were hundreds of stylised figures: men with spears and rocks, men with shields and a phalanx of galloping horses. Men on heights, hurling missiles at those below; men lying flat, with weapons protruding from their stick-like bodies; dismembered men or bodies tumbled awkwardly into high piles. Clouds of falling arrows and spears.

Patrick took the torch. Although its light was too dim to add any clarity, each time he passed its thin beam from side to side, up and down, wider and wider, it illuminated more animals, more weapons, more men. They were only basic stick figures but seemed alive as they teemed across the rock face. As he moved the light up, the men swarmed out on every side and herds of beasts emerged from crevices in the rock.

Still Patrick hadn’t spoken. Then, to his astonishment, Laurence felt as much as saw him lift his arm and wipe his eyes. The man was weeping.

‘How old is this?’ Laurence whispered, hardly wanting to break the spell. ‘Is this to do with Avebury and Stonehenge? The long barrows?’

‘Much older.’ Patrick sounded bewildered. ‘Twice, three times as old. More, maybe.’

‘What is it? Who did it?’ Laurence felt like a child.

‘There’s nothing like it known in England. In Spain, in France, but never here. And never on this scale. I don’t know what it shows. Hunting perhaps?’

After a very long pause, in which all he could hear were drips of water falling into the blackness below him, Laurence said, hoarsely, ‘No, not hunting. This is war.’

Chapter Sixteen

If at any time in the past someone had asked him to swim across a pool in near darkness, Laurence would have said he would never be able to do it. He was not a strong swimmer and he had always needed to know what was under him and how far below.

Now he struck out, just behind Patrick. Patrick was probably a good swimmer but he was already exhausted and when he reached the tiny jetty he seemed to have trouble pulling himself up. The bar was eighteen inches above his head. Grabbing the bar, he pulled himself up a short way, then fell back in the water. For a while he just held on but made no further attempt to climb out. Laurence was treading water, his legs hanging down into the unknown depths. He tried not think of creatures coiling in the water under him.

Patrick’s hands slipped a little. His face, turned upwards to the light, was waxen. Laurence tried to position himself to help when Patrick suddenly lurched back with the weight of his body against Laurence’s. They both went under. Laurence came up spluttering. Patrick clawed for the bar and closed his eyes as if summoning up all his strength but they did not open again.

Laurence looked up at the bar. It was only a short distance away. If he hauled himself past Patrick, he might be able to drag him up the rest of the way, but he was frightened the weaker man would simply sink, once he wasn’t being supported.