Timeline

30:40:39

Kate Erickson flattened herself against the wall, feeling damp stone on her back. She had ducked inside one of the cells in the corridor, and now she waited, holding her breath, while the guards who had locked up Marek and Chris walked back past her. The guards were laughing, and they seemed in good humor. She heard one of them say, "Sir Oliver was sore displeased with that Hainauter, to make a fool of his lieutenant."

"And the other one was worse! He rides like a flopping rag, and yet he breaks two lances with Tête Noire!" General laughter.

"Sooth, he made a fool of Tête Noire. For that, Lord Oliver will take their heads before nightfall.

"Else I miss my guess, he will chop their heads before supper."

"No, after. The crowd will be larger." More laughter.

They moved down the corridor, their voices fading. Soon she could hardly hear them. Now there was a short silence - had they started back up the stairs? No, not yet. She heard them laughing once again. And the laughter continued. It had an odd, forced quality.

Something was wrong.

She listened intently. They were saying something about Sir Guy and Lady Claire. She couldn't really make it out. She heard "… much vexed by our Lady…" and more laughter.

Kate frowned.

Their voices were no longer quite so faint.

Not good. They were coming back.

Why? she thought. What happened?

She glanced toward the door. And there, on the stone floor, she saw her own wet footprints, going into the cell.

Her shoes had been soaked from the grass near the stream. So had the shoes of everyone else, and the center of the stone corridor was a wet, muddy track of many footprints. But one set of footprints veered off, toward her cell.

And somehow they had noticed.

Damn.

A voice: "When does the tourney draw closed?"

"By high nones."

"Faith, then it is nigh finished."

"Lord Oliver will haste to sup, and prepare for the Archpriest."

She listened, trying to count the different voices. How many guards had there been? She tried to remember. At least three. Maybe five. She hadn't paid attention at the time.

Damn.

"They say the Archpriest brings a thousand men-at-arms…"

A shadow crossed the floor, outside her door. That meant they were now on both sides of the cell door.

What could she do? All she knew was that she couldn't let herself be captured. She was a woman; she had no business here; they would rape her and kill her.

But, she reflected, they didn't know she was a woman. Not yet. There was silence outside the door, then a scuffling of feet. What would they do next?

Probably send one man into the cell while the others waited outside. And meanwhile the others would get set, draw their swords, and raise them high-

She couldn't wait. Crouching low, she bolted.

She banged into a guard as he came through the door, hitting him at knee level from the side, and with a howl of pain and surprise, he fell backward. There were shouts from the other guards, but then she was through the door, a sword clanged down against stone behind her, spitting sparks, and she was running up the corridor.

"A woman! A woman!"

They ran after her.

She was in the spiral staircase now, going up fast. From somewhere below, she heard the clank of their armor as they started up after her. But then she had reached the ground floor, and without thinking, she did the immediate thing: she ran straight into the great hall.

It was deserted, the tables set for a feast, the food not yet laid out. She ran past the tables, looking for a place to hide. Behind the tapestries? No, they were flat to the wall. Under the tablecloths? No, they would look there and find her. Where? Where? She saw the huge fireplace, the fire still burning high. Wasn't there a secret passage out of the dining room? Was that passage here in Castelgard, or was it in La Roque? She couldn't remember. She should have paid more attention.

In her mind's eye she saw herself, wearing khaki shorts and a Polo T-shirt and Nike sneakers, moving lazily through the ruins, taking notes on her pad. Her concerns - to the extent she'd had any at all - had been to satisfy her scholarly peers.

She should have paid more attention!

She heard the men approaching. There was no more time. She ran toward the nine-foot-high fireplace and stepped behind the huge gilded circular screen. The fire was blazing hot, waves of heat radiating against her body. She heard the men coming into the room, shouting, running, looking. She crouched behind the screen, held her breath and waited.

She heard kicking and banging, the clatter of dishes on tables as they searched. She could not make out their voices clearly; they merged with the roar of the flames behind her. There was a metal clang as something fell over; it sounded like a torch stand, something big.

She waited.

One man barked a question, and she heard no reply. Another shouted a question, and this time she heard a soft answer. It didn't sound like a man. Who were they talking to? It sounded like a woman. Kate listened: Yes, it was a woman's voice. She was sure of it.

Another exchange, and then the sound of clanking armor as the men ran from the room. Peering around the edge of the gilded screen, she saw them vanish through the doorway.

She waited a moment, then stepped from behind the screen.

She saw a young girl of ten or eleven. She wore a white cloth that wrapped over her head, so only her face showed. She had a loose sort of dress, rose-colored, that came almost to the floor. She carried a gold pitcher, and was pouring water into goblets at the tables.

The girl met her eyes and just stared.

Kate waited for her to cry out, but she did not. She just stared curiously at Kate for a moment and then said, "They went upstairs."

Kate turned and ran.

Inside the cell, Marek heard the blare of trumpets, and the distant roar of the tournament crowds, drifting in from one of the high windows. The guard looked up unhappily, swore at Marek and the Professor, and then walked back to his stool.

The Professor said quietly, "Do you still have a marker?"

"Yes," Marek said. "I do. Do you have yours?"

"No, I lost it. About three minutes after I got here."

The Professor had landed, he said, in the forested flatlands near the monastery and the river. ITC had assured him this would be a deserted spot, but ideally situated. Without going far from the machine, he could see all the principal sites of his dig.

What happened was pure bad luck: the Professor landed just as a party of woodcutters was heading into the forest to work for the day, their axes over their shoulders.

"They saw the flashes of light, and then they saw me, and they all fell to their knees, praying. They thought they had seen a miracle. Then they decided they hadn't, and the axes came off their shoulders," the Professor said. "I thought they were going to kill me, but fortunately I knew Occitan. I convinced them to take me to the monastery. Let the monks settle it."

The monks took him away from the woodcutters, stripped him, and searched his body for stigmata. "They were looking in rather unusual places," the Professor said. "That's when I demanded to see the Abbot. The Abbot wanted to know the location of the passage in La Roque. I suspect he's promised it to Arnaut. Anyway, I suggested it might be in the monastic documents." The Professor grinned. "I was willing to go through his parchments for him."

"Yes?"

"And I think I have found it."

"The passage?"

"I think so. It follows an underground river, so it is probably quite extensive. It starts in a place called the green chapel. And there is a key to finding the entrance."

"A key?"

The guard snarled something, and Marek broke off speaking for a moment. Chris got up, brushing the damp off his hose. He said, "We have to get out of here. Where is Kate?"

Marek shook his head. Kate was still free, unless the shouts from the guards he'd heard down the hallway meant that she'd been captured. But he didn't think they'd caught her. So if he could make contact with her, she might be able to help get them out.

That meant somehow overpowering the guard. The problem was that there were at least twenty yards from the bend in the corridor to where the guard was sitting on his stool. There was no way to take him by surprise. But if Kate was within range of their earpieces, then he could-

Chris was banging on the bars of the cell and shouting, "Hey! Guard! Hey, you!"

Before Marek could speak, the guard stepped into view, looking curiously at Chris, who had reached one hand through the bars and was beckoning him. "Hey, come here! Hey! Over here!"

The guard walked up to him, swatted Chris's hand, which extended through the bar, and then broke into a sudden fit of coughing as Chris sprayed him with the gas canister. The guard wobbled on his feet. Chris reached through the bars again, grabbed the guard by the collar, and sprayed a second time right in his face.

The guard's eyes rolled up in his head, and he dropped like a rock. Still holding on, Chris's arm banged against the crossbars; he yelled in pain, then released the guard, who fell away from the bars and collapsed in the middle of the floor.

Far out of reach.

"Nice work," Marek said. "What's next?"

"You know, you might help me," Chris said. "You're very negative." He was down on his knees, reaching through the bars to his armpit, his hand grasping outside. His outstretched fingers could almost reach the guard's foot. Almost, but not quite. Six inches from the sole of his foot. Chris stretched, grunting. "If we just had something - a stick, or a hook - something to pull him.. .."

"It won't do any good," the Professor said from the other cell.

"Why not?"

He came forward into the light and looked through the bars. "Because he doesn't have the key."

"Doesn't have the key? Where is it?"

"Hanging on the wall," Johnston said, pointing down the corridor.

"Oh shit," Chris said.

On the floor, the guard's hand twitched. One leg kicked spasmodically. He was waking up.

Panicked, Chris said, "What do we do now?"

Marek said, "Kate, are you there?"

"I'm here."

"Where?"

"Just down the corridor. I came back because I figured they'd never look for me here."

"Kate," Marek said, "come here. Quickly."

Marek heard her footsteps as she ran toward them.

The guard coughed, rolled onto his back, then propped himself up on one elbow. He looked down the corridor and hastily began to get to his feet.

He was on his hands and knees when Kate kicked him, snapping his head back, and he fell onto the floor again. But he wasn't unconscious, only dazed. He started to get up, shaking his head to clear it.

"Kate," Marek said, "the keys…"

"Where?"

"On the wall."

She backed away from the guard, got the keys on a heavy ring, and brought them to Marek's cell. She put one key in the lock and tried to turn it, but it didn't turn.

With a grunt, the guard threw himself at her, knocking her away from the cell, into the center of the room. They grappled, rolling on the floor. She was much smaller than he was. He held her down easily.

Marek was reaching through the bars with both hands, pulling the key out of the lock, trying another. It didn't fit, either.

Now the guard was straddling Kate, both hands around her neck, strangling her.

Marek tried another key. No luck. There were six more keys on the ring.

Kate was turning blue. She made rasping, choking sounds. She pounded her fists on the guard's arms, but her blows were ineffectual. She punched at his groin, but his surcoat protected him.

Marek shouted, "Knife! Knife!" but she didn't seem to understand. Marek tried another key. Still no success. From the opposite cell, Johnston yelled something in French to the guard.

The guard looked up and snarled a reply, and in that moment Kate brought her dagger out and slammed it into the guard's shoulder with all her strength. The blade didn't penetrate the chain mail. She tried again, and again. Furious, the guard began to pound her head against the stone floor to make her drop the knife.

Marek tried another key.

It turned with a loud creak.

The Professor was shouting, Chris was shouting, and Marek flung the door open. The guard turned to face him, getting to his feet, releasing Kate. Coughing, she swung the knife at his unprotected legs, and he yelled in pain. Marek hit him twice in the head, very hard. The guard fell on the floor, not moving.

Chris unlocked the door for the Professor. Kate got to her feet, color slowly returning to her face.

Marek had pulled out the white wafer and had his thumb on the button. "Okay. We're finally all together." He was looking at the space between the cells. "Is this big enough? Can we call the machine right here?"

"No," Chris said. "It has to be six feet on each side, remember?"

"We need a bigger space." The Professor turned to Kate. "You know how to get out of here?"

She nodded. They started down the corridor.