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.Adelia covered her ears as clang after clang made her head rock.Between every clash, Rowley shouted halloos and curses until she thought he’d go mad—or she would.Feeling each step with her hands, she climbed up until she touched his leg.“Let me try.”He hauled her up beside him and she realized she was still clutching the box from the niche.She threw it down and raised her arms, encountering metal.She traced it with her fingertips—a shallow, inverted dome of iron.It was completely smooth, no protuberance that suggested a catch on this side of it.“See?” Rowley gave her a push aside and resumed his assault.But that was it; she couldn’t see.Eyes were useless; there was only touch and hearing—and terror.After an age of noise, she couldn’t bear it anymore.She reached out for his arm, found it, and held it.“Let’s go back to the cellar.”The thought of a return battling through darkness.but there’d be space there, and comforting, normal things like barrels … it might be that Millie wasn’t dead and could let them out.something.She said, remembering, “The hatch on the barrel chute was made of wood, perhaps we can hack our way up through it and shift whatever was on it.”“Or at least drink ourselves to death.”That he’d stopped howling and now sounded merely disgruntled was balm to her.She could bear up if he could, but only if he could.On her bottom, investigating with her feet, she managed to hump herself down the steps.When she heard Rowley join her, she spread her arms so that she could feel the rough texture of the tunnel wall on either side and began to wade down the incline they had come up.And she was wading.Water surrounded her knees.She went on.It was up to her waist.Stupidly, she wondered if she’d started down a wrong branch of the tunnel into some massive drain.But there’d been no branching off.Somebody said, “There’s water coming in, Rowley.”Somebody else said, “So there is, my love.We’d better go back.”She felt a hand against her face work its way down to her shoulder, guiding her backward until they reached the steps, then helping her up to the landing at the top.She clung onto him.“Where’s the water coming from? What’s happening?”“I’ll tell you what’s happening.” And from the sound of his voice, Adelia envisaged him spitting the words from between his teeth.“Our noble landlord has opened the chute in the cellar.Taken the fucking hatch off.This is floodwater.”“Floodwater?”“In case you didn’t notice, it was raining outside.Still is, presumably.It’s coming down that bloody chute.It’s filled the cellar and now it’s flooding the sodding tunnel.”“But.that would take hours.”“Sweetheart, we’ve been down here for hours.”In her mind’s eye, Adelia saw the hills around.Glastonbury Sheeting rain, unable to soak into the drought-baked, rock-hard earth, would be funneling down their sides into the High Street like rivers in full spate.The Pilgrim’s courtyard had already been an overflowing sink when she’d last seen it.With the plug hole of the barrel hatch removed, water would be pouring down the chute.“One thing,” Rowley’s voice said.“It’ll ruin the bastard’s ale.”“Will it reach us up here?”Her answer was another ear-wounding clang.He was bashing the sword hilt against the iron hood again.A stupid question; how could he know? It would depend on whether the rain stopped in time.And then, she thought, whether it does or not, we’re dead.They were in a diminishing space formed by brick, iron, and rising water, all of them impermeable.The air would go bad.In Salerno, she’d once worked on a corpse her foster father had bought for her to practice on, that of a man who’d fallen into a large, empty wine vat, his flailing arm catching its lid and bringing it down on top of him.“Asphyxiation,” she’d said, finishing the examination.“Correct,” he’d said.“It is what happens when people are enclosed like that.”“I know,” she’d said, “but why? It was an enormous vat, why couldn’t he go on breathing? What causes people to asphyxiate in confined spaces?”“Air hunger,” he’d said.“Our breathing uses it up or poisons it, I don’t know how.”They would die, like the man in the vat.“Allie.” Again, it was a cry of agony that seemed to come from somebody else.The clanging stopped and was replaced by Rowley’s voice: “She’ll be provided for.I’ve made a will.”“Allie.” A document couldn’t pick a child up or kiss a scratch better or cure the need for a mother who wasn’t there.Another clang, the last, and she was rocked as he miscalculated where she sat and his body thumped against her before it found its place at her side.“Goddamn you, woman.” Hot breath fanned her ear.“This is your fault.Why in hell didn’t you marry me?”She didn’t know anymore.Why hadn’t she?“Nice little castle,” the breath said.“We could have brought her up together.You stitching away at your tapestry in the solar, me on the practice ground teaching her swordplay.”It was meant to make her laugh and, oddly, it almost did, but beneath his courage she heard fury for a life missed.My fault, she thought, my most grievous fault.What price independence when I could have chosen happiness, his, Allie’s, mine? Too high.“I wouldn’t do it again,” she said.“Bit bloody late now.” Again, her skin felt his breath.“You’ve sent me to hell, you realize that? My soul is doomed.I’ve sinned at prime, at matins, at lauds; I’ve lifted the host to the Lord, and what I was lifting was your skinny body.I’d think, What do I see in her? But you were all I saw.” Another sigh.“I have offended against my sweet Lord.Saint Peter’s not likely to give me passage through the gate after that.”“It won’t be hell for me if I’m with you,” she said, feeling for him with her arms [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]