Timeline - Michael Crichton [118]
Sir Robert barked more orders to the soldiers as he came around the corner after her—and then he stopped abruptly. The soldiers halted at his side, and everyone murmured in confusion.
They stared down a passage four feet wide between the castle and the chapel. The passage was empty. At the far end of the passage, other soldiers appeared, facing them.
The woman had disappeared.
:
Kate was clinging ten feet up the chapel wall, the outline of her body concealed by the decorative border of the chapel window and thick vines of ivy. Even so, she was easily visible if anyone looked up. But the passage was dark, and no one did. She heard de Kere shout angrily, “Go to the other assistants, and dispatch them now!”
The soldiers hesitated. “But Sir Robert, they assist the Magister of Lord Oliver—”
“And Lord Oliver himself commands it. Kill them all!”
The soldiers ran off, into the castle.
De Kere swore. He was talking to a remaining soldier, but they were whispering, and her ear translator crackled and she couldn’t make it out. In truth, she was surprised she had been able to hear as much as she had.
How had she been able to hear them? It seemed as if they were too far away to hear de Kere so clearly. And yet his voice was clear, almost amplified. Maybe the acoustics of the passage . . .
Glancing down, she saw that some soldiers hadn’t left. They were just milling about. So she couldn’t go back down. She decided to climb up onto the roof and wait until things were quieter. The roof of the chapel was still in sunlight: a plain peaked roof of tile, with small gaps where repairs were being made. The pitch was steep; she crouched at the gutter and said, “André.”
A crackle. She thought she heard Marek’s voice, but the static was bad.
“André, they’re coming to kill you.”
There was no answer, just more static.
“André?”
No answer.
Perhaps the walls around her were interfering with transmission; she might do better from the top of the roof. She began to climb the steep slope, easing around the tile repair sites. At each site, the mason had set up a small platform, with his mortar basin and stack of tiles. The chirp of birds made her pause. She saw there was actually a hole in the roof at these tiling sites, and—
A scraping sound made her look up. She saw a soldier come over the top of the roof. He paused, peering down at her.
Then a second soldier.
So that was why de Kere had been whispering: he’d seen her after all, on the wall, and had sent soldiers up the ladder on the opposite side.
She looked down and saw soldiers in the passage below. They were now staring up at her.
Now the first soldier swung his leg over the ridge of the roof and was starting to come down toward her.
There was only one thing she could do. The mason’s hole was about two feet square. Through it she could see the bracing beneath the roof and, about ten feet below that, the stone arches of the chapel ceiling. There was a sort of wooden catwalk running over the arches.
Kate crawled through the hole, and dropped down to the ceiling below. She smelled the sour odor of dust and bird droppings. There were nests everywhere, along the flat walkways, in the corners and joists. She ducked as a few sparrows flew past her head, chittering. And suddenly, she was engulfed in a swirling tornado of shrieking birds and flying feathers. There were hundreds in here, she realized, and she had disturbed them. For a moment she could do nothing except put her arms over her face and stand quietly. The sounds lessened.
When she looked again, there were only a few flying birds. And the two soldiers were climbing down through