Timeline - Michael Crichton [175]
“What? Will you stop his confession?”
“No, my Lord, for your surmises are not true.”
Oliver glowered, paced. “Then bring me the weapons I bade you make earlier.”
“My Lord, they are not ready.”
“Ha!” Another nod to de Kere.
“My Lord, the grinding of the powder takes many hours.”
“In many hours, it will be too late.”
“My Lord, it will be in good time.”
“You lie, you lie, you lie!” Oliver spun, stamped his foot, stared off at the siege engines. “Look to the plain. See how they make ready. Now answer me, Magister. Where is he?”
There was a pause. “Where is who, my Lord?”
“Arnaut! Where is Arnaut? His troops mass for attack. He always leads them. But now he is not there. Where is he?”
“My Lord, I cannot say. . ..”
“The witch of Eltham is there—see her, standing by the engines? You see? She watches us. The damnable woman.”
Marek turned quickly to look. Claire was indeed down among the soldiers, walking with Sir Daniel at her side. Marek felt his heart beat faster, just to see her, though he was not sure why she would walk so near the siege lines. She was looking up at the walls. And suddenly she stopped abruptly. And he thought, with a kind of certainty, that she had seen him. He had an almost irresistible impulse to wave, but of course he did not. Not with Oliver snorting and puffing beside him. But he thought, I’m going to miss her when I go back.
“The Lady Claire,” Oliver growled, “is a spy of Arnaut and was so from the beginning. She let his men into Castelgard. All arranged, no doubt, with that scheming Abbot. But where is the villain himself? Where is the pig Arnaut? Nowhere to be seen.”
There was an awkward silence. Oliver smiled grimly.
“My Lord,” Johnston began, “I understand your concer—”
“You do not!” He stamped his foot and glared at them. Then, “Both of you. Come with me.”
:
The surface of the water was black and oily, and even looking down from thirty feet above, it stank. They were standing beside a circular pit, located deep in the bowels of the castle. All around them, the walls were dark and damp, barely illuminated by flickering torches.
At Oliver’s signal, a soldier beside the pit started to crank an iron winch. Clattering, a thick chain began to rise from the depths of the water.
“They call this Milady’s Bath,” Oliver said. “It was made by François le Gros, who had a taste for these things. They say Henri de Renaud was kept here for ten years before he died. They threw live rats down to him, which he killed and ate raw. For ten years.”
The water rippled, and a heavy metal cage broke the surface and began to rise, dripping, into the air. The bars were black and filthy. The stench was overpowering.
Watching it rise, Oliver said, “In Castelgard I promised you, Magister, that if you deceived me, I would kill you. You shall bathe in Milady’s Bath.”
He looked at them intently, his eyes wild.
“Confess now.”
“My Lord, there is nothing to confess.”
“Then you have nothing to fear. But hear this, Magister. If I discover that you, or your assistants, know the entrance to this castle, I shall lock you away in this place, from which you will never escape, never in your life, and I will leave you here, in darkness, to starve and rot forever.”
Holding a torch in the corner, Robert de Kere allowed himself a smile.
02:22:13
The steps led steeply downward, into darkness. Kate went first, holding the torch. Chris followed. They went through a narrow passage, almost a tunnel, that seemed to be manmade, and then came out into a much larger chamber. This was a natural cave. Somewhere high up and off to the left, they saw the pale glimmer of natural light; there had to be a cave entrance up there.
The ground before them still sloped down. Ahead, she saw a large pool of black water and heard the rush of a river. The interior smelled strongly of a sweet-sour odor, like urine. She scrambled over the boulders until she reached the black pool. There was a little sandy margin around the edge of the water.
And in the sand, she saw a footprint.