Menagerie - Martin Day [41]
'Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years ago.' The Doctor smiled at the puzzled Grand Knight. 'It is as I suspected.
Your city — perhaps symbolically speaking the cultures of your entire world — is built on the graveyard of a much older civilization.'
Jamie and Cosmae had managed to follow Zaitabor and the jailor for some time without being discovered. On occasions they had been forced to hide from lone knights walking the corridors, but it was clear that they were preoccupied and certainly not expecting infiltrators within the castle.
Despite these interruptions, and Cosmae's anguished expressions of concern that Jamie had quietened, they had not lost track of the two knights. Jamie, used to tracking Redcoats through the heather, had pursued them through the corridors with some skill. It had very quickly dawned on him, however, that the two knights were adopting similarly stealthy tactics. Cosmae had said that Zaitabor was second in command, and presumably the jailor was a knight of some esteem, but both moved like furtive predators. On most occasions they had received the salutes from the other knights that they encountered with dignity, but very occasionally they too had ducked into shadowy alcoves to avoid detection. Jamie was no genius, but he found this very odd.
Jamie and Cosmae turned another corner. The corridor was long and narrow. Jamie estimated that Zaitabor and the jailor should have been no more than halfway down it, but they were nowhere to be seen. There was only one door, at the far end of the corridor.
I suppose that this is one of the corridors within the walls that link the towers,' whispered Cosmae.
'Aye,' nodded Jamie. 'But where can those two knights have gone?' Jamie tried to think the situation through. Either they had disappeared — which would have surprised him only in as much as his travels with the Doctor tended to indicate that such technology was well in advance of what he had so far seen — or they had used a secret door.
'A what?' asked Cosmae when Jamie explained it to him.
'A secret door, a priest hole, a concealed hiding place or maybe a tunnel that connects two rooms.' Jamie smiled.
'The Doctor is very fond of a game called Cluedo. That has two secret passages, leading from the lounge to the conservatory and . . .'
Cosmae looked at Jamie blankly.
'Och, just help me look, will you?'
The walls were made of cold grey stone, covered by a number of floor-length tapestries on both walls. Jamie's eyes twinkled. Surely it couldn't be this simple? Surely real life didn't work like children's fiction?
'Jamie!' Cosmae was standing by a huge tapestry, depicting a forest glade and a virginal woman in long white robes with a sleeping dragon at her feet. Jamie saw the folds of material move as if in a draught.
'What did I tell you?' exclaimed the young Scot in delight.
He pulled the tapestry back to reveal a small doorway. The door itself had not been closed properly, and a cold wind ran over Jamie's hand as he opened it further. Narrow stairs went down into the darkness.
Jamie began to descend the steep stairway, anxious not to lose too much time in their pursuit of the two knights. The stairs twisted tightly like a corkscrew. Jamie could see the effects of a flickering light of some sort below him, but of Zaitabor and the jailor there was no trace.
The air became colder as they descended, the stairs leading down from the castle and into the rock on which it sat. The stairs eventually led to a small vestibule of naturally sculpted rock. An iron torch-holder had been unceremoniously forced into position just above the doorway. Just inside the room Jamie could see the stairway continuing downwards.
Jamie stepped into the room, Cosmae following close behind. The chamber contained a large number of wooden racks, pushed roughly against one wall, and a small
'window' where the rock had thinned and then collapsed.
The racks contained a large amount of Kuabris armour and a few robes of red cloth, but Jamie and Cosmae were drawn immediately to the window by a noise from beyond.
The