Amanda Scott (39 page)

Finding the latch, she lifted it and eased the door open, rejoicing when it moved as silently as the other had. Again the glow of receding torchlight revealed the route before her, this time down another, narrower, winding stone stairway.

Moving as quickly as she dared on the wedge-shaped wheel steps, fearing she would be left in total blackness any moment, she tiptoed down until the flickering light ahead grew too bright to dare going farther. She heard him moving, then an odd sort of thud. A moment later, the light steadied.

Hoping he was not looking right at the stairway, she peeked around its curve. The stairs straightened from there to the bottom, where Hugo stood with his back to her looking at a solid stone wall. He had set his torch in a wall holder to his right.

Even as she tensed to run back upstairs, fearing he had made a mistake or had set a trap for her, he reached forward with both hands and pulled. Not until he turned toward the wall where he had set the torch did she see that he held a rectangular piece of stone facing about a foot long. As he bent to set it on the floor nearby, she saw that its removal had revealed a similarly shaped opening in the end wall.

Straightening, Hugo reached into the opening, then pushed against that wall. A narrow doorway opened away from him, and he stepped through it. After a pause, he stepped back, carrying a second torch that he lit from the first.

He hesitated then, glanced at the slab of stone facing on the floor, then shrugged slightly before passing through the opening again. The odd stone door shut behind him as silently as it had opened.

Fairly flying down the stairs, Sorcha put her hand into the opening and felt for the latch. Her fingers encountered a rounded iron bar about the thickness of her thumb and a bit longer than her palm’s width. First she tried to lift it as one would a door latch. When that failed, she pressed down. The door began at once to move away from her, much lighter to the touch than she had expected it to be.

Then, abruptly, she stopped its movement, recalling the torch behind her.

With no notion of where she was going, the idea of
extinguishing that torch was disquieting to say the least, but she dared not take it with her. Nor did she dare leave it burning while she opened the door lest Hugo see its light. Hurrying, growing frantic with impatience when the torch resisted her efforts to put it out, she finally had the satisfaction of being plunged into demonic blackness.

Hoping she was not walking toward yet another pitfall, she discovered that the door had shut. Finding the opening again, she pressed the bar, and pushed.

More blackness greeted her when the door opened. As she stepped through, she recalled that the wine chamber was on the kitchen level and that the stairway from it had been no longer than any other from landing to landing. Since even the dungeon level of the castle was well above the river, she moved forward with the greatest care, feeling in all directions, trying to suppress the awful dread that one hand or the other would strike Hugo, lurking in the darkness to catch her.

Instead, her seeking right hand touched hard, dry stone, and her silk-slippered right foot told her it had reached the edge of a step. As she eased her way down, she noticed that she could make out a very faint glow ahead.

The steps proved both dry and surprisingly level, and her right hand found a taut, oiled-rope railing on the outer wall of the stair that made the going easier. Holding her skirts up with her left hand, she moved with greater assurance until the light ahead began to increase, telling her that she was catching up with Hugo.

Relief nearly made her dizzy, but she drew a steadying breath, exhaled completely, and went on. The stairway seemed to go on forever, and she began to fear that it was
taking her all the way down to hell, when suddenly it ended.

Far ahead, she saw the outline of Hugo’s now-wildly-flickering torch. He was moving faster than before, and she hoped she could keep him in sight without having to go so fast that she tripped on what was bound to be uneven ground.

To her surprise, the pathway they followed proved surprisingly even, too. She could feel the occasional rock through the thin evening slippers, but their silence on the hard surface made up for the lack of more protective soles.

Hugo wished the nagging sense of pursuit would ease. As certain as he was that it stemmed from nothing more than having left the latch covering on the floor, he still could not seem to shake it off.

He had glanced back more than once but had seen and heard nothing. His hearing was excellent, as was his instinct for danger, so he was as sure as a man could be that none lurked behind other than a small chance that a Sinclair servant might enter the wine chamber, notice the tapestry covering for the stair door thrust back, and have the temerity to investigate. Since that likelihood was so remote as to near the impossible, he decided he was simply on edge because of the full moon and the eerie, unending darkness of the new tunnel.

He would have liked to have had someone with him to replace the facing on the latch opening, but only Henry, Michael, and he knew of that tunnel entrance. And to ask
someone to watch the cask room would only draw attention to it.

He realized then that Isobel might know of the tunnel. She knew a great deal, but even if she did know about it, he would not have asked her to leave her bairn and her bed so soon after giving birth, just to stand guard for him.

He could have snuffed the torch, of course, but it would snuff itself long before he returned and might well have done so before he reached his destination had he brought it along. It had, after all, been burning in its sconce for half an hour or so already. That was why they had put extra, well-oiled torches inside the tunnel entrance and at the cavern end, as well. In any event, having left the stone facing in plain sight of anyone coming down the stairs, who doubtless would have a torch of his own, he had seen no reason to take the time required to extinguish it properly.

One change he could and would make would be to set a bucket of water at the foot of the cask-room stair, so one could quickly put out a torch if necessary.

Having passed beyond the strongest portion of the tunnel, he knew he was now south of the river. The tunnel began to slope upward, and not long afterward he discerned the entrance to the cavern ahead.

Sorcha’s feet hurt. Silent or not, ladies’ silk slippers were not intended for walking any distance, and she thought she must have walked for miles. Clearly the tunnel did not lie under the castle or even close by, and since she had not the least idea what direction she had been
walking after going down and down the winding stairway, she could not even guess with any accuracy where she was now.

As the thought crossed her mind, Hugo disappeared and blackness engulfed her so dense that she could not see her hand before her face. She stopped, telling herself that her eyes would adjust as they had before, that she would soon discern light ahead to guide her. Instead, as she strained to see, tiny white stars danced in the air ahead of her.

Hugo is there somewhere, mayhap just around a curve.

She nearly spoke the words aloud, but knowing he might hear her in the confines of the wretched tunnel, she held her tongue and ruthlessly stifled her fear.

But try as she would, knowing the tunnel was straight as far as the last place she had seen him, she could not walk straight without touching the wall on one side or the other. So although the thought of touching a spider or other insect—or worse—made her skin crawl, she let the fingers of her right hand skim the wall of the tunnel and held her left hand out in front of her as she had in the wine chamber. Then, taking care to keep silent, she moved forward as fast as she dared.

She slowed some distance before her outstretched left hand touched stone. But at nearly the same time, her right hand lost touch with the wall beside her. Feeling carefully, she found that the tunnel jogged briefly to the right before it ended. Since the walls felt as smooth as the one at the foot of the wine room stairs, she felt for a similar opening and latch, and was relieved to find one.

She had to pull the door toward her, but it came easily and silently, and to her enormous relief, torchlight
gleamed ahead of her in an immense cavern. The area just beyond the doorway provided reassuringly deep shadows, however, cast by what appeared to be oddly shaped rock formations and immense boulders.

She could not see Hugo but believed she could enter the cavern undetected. Putting a hand to the other side of the door to hold it, she slipped through the opening, noting that the door wanted to follow her. But so intent was she on moving quietly that she was all the way through before it registered that the near side of it felt like rough, damp rock rather than the finished stonework on the tunnel side.

The light ahead flared brighter as if someone were lighting more torches.

Fearing that the increased light would reveal her to a watcher, she swiftly stepped into deeper shadow, and as she did, the door shut with a dull, barely audible sound. Immediately afterward, the reverberating sound of a trumpet startled her nearly out of her skin.

Under cover of its multiple reverberations, she moved to one of the tallest rock formations, peered around it, saw torchlight reflected on water, and realized that the cavern contained a large pond or lake. As the trumpet’s last echoes faded, sounds of tramping feet replaced them.

She crouched low. Other odd, shadowy formations blocked portions of her view, but she saw a line of a dozen men or more dressed all in black entering a flat space on the far shore of the lake. They divided into a triangular formation of three lines, facing the mirrorlike water and the front edge of what looked like a dais.

Through the cavern then echoed an unfamiliar voice raised in stentorian tones: “Sir Knight Warder, have you
informed the captain of the guards that we are about to open a council for the dispatch of business, and directed him to station his sentinels at their posts to guard this council?”

“Aye, sure, I have, sir,” a voice that sounded like Einar Logan responded. “The guards do be at their posts.”

Wanting a wider view, Sorcha had decided to shift position when movement to her right drew her attention, and she froze at the sight of a male figure coming toward her from that end of the lake. To her relief, he stopped yards away and turned in a sharp, military way to face the men across the water, clearly on guard.

The first voice said, “Are all present true Knights Templar?”

The second replied, “All present be true Knights Templar, sir.”

“Most eminent grand commander,” declared the first, “the council awaits your pleasure.”

The nearby guard stood stiffly still, his gaze fixed on the activity across the lake, giving Sorcha confidence enough to shift position so she could see the dais.

A chair sat upon it, and a fair-haired man with a gold circlet on his head sat in it with his back to her. Two other men flanked him, also with their backs to Sorcha, but she easily recognized Hugo as the nearer of the two. He wore black clothing like all the others, clothing that he had not been wearing when she followed him to the cave. Two banners flanked the dais.

The man in the chair stood, revealing himself to be as tall as Hugo before he stepped to the ground and moved to face the assembled knights. He, too, wore black with lace trimming, and he had a medallion around his neck
that she saw when he turned to walk in front of the assembly. The circlet on his head, his shoulder-length hair, and the medallion with its chain all glinted golden in the torchlight. He looked enough like Michael and Hugo to make her suspect he was Prince Henry of Orkney.

The third man on the dais turned, and she recognized Sir Edward.

Having walked two sides of the triangle, the fair-haired commander turned back to stand at the triangle’s center point, facing the men who formed it. Although he did not speak loudly, his voice carried easily to Sorcha’s ears.

“Sir Knights, you will now give the signs.”

So fascinated had she been by the ceremonial gathering, the dais, its occupant, and Hugo that she had paid scant heed to the other men except as a group. But the first one to step forward in obedience to the command was Ranald of the Isles.