Timeline - Michael Crichton [141]
“Yes, my Lord?”
“. . . room . . .”
Marek waited. “What room, my Lord? What room?”
“Arnaut . . .,” the Abbot said, shaking his head as if to clear it. “Arnaut will be angry . . . room . . .” And he released his grip. Marek pulled the arrow from his back and helped him to lie on the floor. “Every time, he would . . . make . . . told no one . . . so . . . Arnaut . . .” He closed his eyes.
The monk pushed between them, speaking quickly in Latin, removing the Abbot’s slippers, placing a bottle of oil on the ground. He began to administer the last rites.
:
Leaning against one of the cloister pillars, Marek pulled the arrow out of his thigh. It had struck him glancingly, and was not as deep as he had thought; there was only an inch of blood on the shaft. He dropped the arrow to the ground just as Chris and Kate came up.
They looked at his leg, and at the arrow. He was bleeding. Kate pulled up her doublet and tore a strip from the bottom of her linen undershirt with her dagger. She tied it around Marek’s thigh as an impromptu bandage.
Marek said, “It’s not that bad.”
“Then it won’t hurt you to have it,” she said. “Can you walk?”
“Of course I can walk,” Marek said.
“You’re pale.”
“I’m fine,” he said, and moved away from the pillar, looking into the courtyard.
Four soldiers lay on the ground, which was pincushioned with arrows. The other soldiers had departed; no one was shooting at the bell tower any longer: smoke billowed from the high windows. On the opposite side of the courtyard, they saw more smoke, thick and dark, coming from the area of the refectory. The whole monastery was starting to burn.
“We need to find that key,” Marek said.
“But it’s in his room.”
“I’m not sure about that.” Marek had remembered that one of the last things Elsie, the graphologist, had said to him back at the project site had to do with a key. And some word that she was puzzled by. He couldn’t remember the details—he had been worried about the Professor at the time—but he remembered clearly enough that Elsie had been looking at one of the parchment sheets from the pile that had been found in the monastery. The same pile that had contained the Professor’s note.
And Marek knew where to find those parchments.
:
They hurried down the corridor toward the church. Some of the stained-glass windows had been broken, and smoke issued out. From the interior, they heard men shouting, and a moment later a party of soldiers burst through the doors. Marek turned on his heel, leading them back the way they had come.
“What are we doing?” Chris said.
“Looking for the door.”
“What door?”
Marek darted left, along a cloistered corridor, and then left again, through a very narrow opening that brought them into a tight space, a kind of storeroom area. It was lit by a torch. There was a wooden trapdoor in the floor; he flung it open, and they saw steps going down into darkness. He grabbed a torch, and they all went down the steps. Chris was last, closing the trapdoor behind him. He descended the stairs into a dank, dark chamber.
:
The torch sputtered in the cool air. By its flickering light, they saw huge casks, six feet in diameter, running along the wall. They were in a wine cellar.
“You know the soldiers will find this place soon enough,” Marek said. He led them through several rooms of casks, moving without hesitation.
Following him, Kate said, “Do you know where you’re going?”
“Don’t you?” he said.
But she didn’t; she and Chris stayed close behind Marek, wanting to be in the comforting circle of light from the torch. Now they were passing tombs, small indentations in the wall where bodies rested, their shrouds rotting away. Sometimes they saw the tops of skulls, with bits of hair still clinging; sometimes they saw feet, the bones partially exposed. They heard the faint squeak of rats in the darkness.
Kate shivered.
Marek continued on, until at last he stopped abruptly in a chamber that was nearly empty.
“Why are we