The Born Queen - J. Gregory Keyes [81]
“I would at that,” one of the women replied. Her face was a little wrinkled, but in the right places.
“Shut that, you,” another of the guards said.
“Why?” the woman asked. “What will you do?”
“You’d best not find out.”
“Threatening women,” Cazio said. “Very, very brave.”
“Listen, you Vito scum—”
“Don’t be stupid,” a third guard said. “He’s just trying to goad you. Just keep your head and mind your orders. This is a simple job. Do it.”
“Right,” the fellow just behind Cazio said, and gave him another push.
“Sorry, ladies, another time,” Cazio said.
“Promises, always promises,” one of the women shot back as he was forced out of the kitchen and into a cellar, where once more his mouth watered as they moved among amphorae of olive oil, kegs of grain and rock sugar, sausages and hams hanging from the rafters.
“All right,” Cazio said. “Lock me in here, then.”
“Not quite,” the big fellow behind him said. “Dunmrogh doesn’t have a proper dungeon, but this will do. Stop.”
They were standing in front of a large circular iron plate set in the floor. It had a handhold cut in it, which one of the guards used to lift it up, revealing a dark hole a little less then a pareci wide. Another of the guards then uncoiled a rope and tossed one end into the pit.
“Now be good and climb on down,” the fellow said.
“Just let me take a few sausages with me.”
“I don’t think so. And don’t imagine the women from the kitchen will help you. We’ll be chaining the lid down. I don’t reckon any of them are lock picks.”
Cazio already had noticed the six heavy iron eyes protruding from the stone around the trapdoor.
Not seeing any alternative, Cazio took the rope and let himself down into the darkness.
He went slowly, trying to use the light while he had it to see what he was being held in. That didn’t take long. The shaft was narrow enough that he could touch opposite walls by stretching out his arms—if he could do that without falling. More interesting were the hundreds of stoneware niches set into the sides of the shaft.
“I hope you left me some wine,” he called up.
“Weren’t any when we got here,” the guard called down. “Worse the luck.”
The rope suddenly went slack, and Cazio was falling. He yelped, but before he could do much else, his boots struck stone. His feet stung and his knees buckled a bit, but otherwise he was fine.
The shaft opened into a dome-shaped chamber about ten paces wide, the entire surface of which was riddled with the bottle-sized niches. He turned, trying to scan every inch of it before they took his light, but he didn’t see any way out or any wine.
Why would someone have such a nice cellar and no wine?
The iron lid slammed down, clanging so loudly in the small space that it hurt his ears, and he was in utter darkness. After a moment he heard chains dragging and settling and then nothing.
He stood there for a moment, then sighed and dropped down to sit cross-legged, trying to sort out his options.
The shaft was too high for him to reach, but with some effort he probably could use the wine niches to climb up the dome and get purchase enough to scale it and reach the trapdoor. But what then? He could wait there, hoping to surprise whoever came next, but how long would he have to wait? And would they really be surprised? Only if they were idiots.
Still, he marked that down as a possibility and moved on.
But there wasn’t much to move on to. He felt his way around the chamber in the vague hope of finding some hidden exit and rapped on the floor searching for evidence of a hollow but found no sign of either. He hadn’t really thought he would.
He searched the niches again, one at a time, on the chance that something useful had been left in one: a bottle of wine, a knife, anything to use as a weapon. Again he found nothing, and an attempt to break one of the ceramic niches to get an edge only hurt first his hand and then his foot.
His stomach was starting to complain, and he hurt all over. With an acquiescent sigh he made himself as comfortable as he could on the floor. Maybe something