Alchemy, Book Two of the Mercian Trilogy

by K. J. Wignall

  When they reached the library, he opened the wooden panel in the wall that led to the first secret passage, and once they were inside he put on his dark glasses and turned on the light. Eloise blinked against the brightness at first, but adjusted quickly and looked around the small narrow room in which they found themselves; it was bare-walled, with a metal spiral staircase leading up to the next floor.

  Will saw her confusion and said, “The trustees know about this secret passage. During my hours of confinement in the cellar I’ve read all the literature offered in the shop.” Even as he said it, he found it extraordinary that his family’s great house had been reduced to having a gift shop for souvenir-hungry tourists. “It’s mentioned that Thomas Heston-Dangrave built a secret passage – fashionable at the time – to link the library with the master bedroom. It says nothing else.”

  Eloise looked at the walls and said, “There is nothing else.”

  Will nodded. “So it appears, but I was standing with my hands resting on this wall, thinking, wondering what it was that I was looking for, when this happened.”

  He reached up and put his palms flat on the wall and almost immediately felt the mechanism that lay deep within the stones grinding into life. With surprising speed, the wall trundled sideways, exposing a set of stone steps that disappeared into the darkness below.

  He’d been no further than this himself yet, but he could tell from the air that these steps led to something extensive. He stepped back for Eloise to see, but she was still staring at the space into which the wall had slid.

  “How did you do that?”

  “I don’t know. I can only presume it’s the same power I have over locks and other such things – after all, the wall must contain a mechanism and I assume somewhere there’s a device for opening it, though I don’t know where.”

  “At least there’s a light switch,” said Eloise, pointing to the wall at the top of the steps. She turned it on and lights appeared at regular intervals, illuminating the descent in front of them.

  Will hadn’t noticed the switch earlier and was a little disappointed because it meant someone in modern times had at least partially explored whatever network lay below. Somehow, it made it less likely that Lorcan Labraid would be found there – Will doubted that the evil of the world would have permitted workmen to install electric cables.

  He looked at the switch and said, “From the 1920s, I would say.” The disappointment receded, replaced by another thought. “Thomas Heston-Dangrave knew about these tunnels – he incorporated them into the design of the house he built. If my guess is right about the age of this switch, his great-great-grandson George also knew about them because he must have installed the lights. Perhaps his own daughters knew too, but those two spinsters must have taken the secret to the grave with them.”

  “Of course. Otherwise the National Trust would have made something of it. And if the family kept it to themselves, we have to assume there was some reason for doing so.”

  Had they kept it hidden, wondered Will, because these tunnels spoke of secrets, of a secret shared history between his family and this place. If so, he was certain it predated the family’s acquisition of these lands during the dissolution of the monasteries.

  He wished he could recall more than the fragments of memories he had of Marland. Even in those weeks before his sickness, he’d been aware of Marland’s importance to his father and perhaps, if he’d lived longer, that bond would have been explained to him. Perhaps it had been explained to his brother Edward once he was grown and yet it was to Will that it truly mattered.

  Will looked at Eloise and said, “Shall we?”

  He took the steps first and she followed close behind. But as he neared the bottom and the sense of space and air stretching away from them became greater, he regretted that he’d come here without any form of weapon. For all he knew there could be another like Asmund down here, or demons the like of which he hadn’t yet encountered.

  As he’d expected, at the bottom the passageway turned to the left and went on in a straight line for some way. By the time they reached the first junction with a choice of turning left or right, Will reckoned they were under the ruins of the abbey itself.

  But they immediately noticed a change here. The first tunnel they’d walked along was perhaps a newer construction, built specifically by Thomas Heston-Dangrave to connect the house with this subterranean complex, for they were on the threshold now of something much older, and much more disturbing.

  The walls here were covered with runic writing and other symbols, and a strange menagerie of monsters and demons, all engraved into the stone and painted in garish colours which had hardly faded over the centuries.

  Eloise said, “Oh my God, this is incredible.” She stepped forward, poring over the images and scripts on the wall in front of her, looking away only to check what Will had already spotted, that every part of the walls in every direction was similarly decorated. “This must’ve taken years.” She continued to stare intently at the paintings in front of her.

  Will couldn’t quite share in her excitement. The lights also extended in both directions, so these tunnels had been navigated by workmen in the last hundred years, presumably in safety. But there was no disguising the fact that this was a strange and sinister place. Even if nothing had happened to them, he had little doubt that those workmen would have been keen to leave at the end of each day.

  There was something untamed and primal here. The very stones seemed to breathe and murmur as if possessed of some form of life, and though there was nothing living close by, Will had an acute sense that they were not entirely alone either.

  He saw Eloise shudder and she turned and gave him a relieved smile, as if she’d feared for a moment that he’d left her there.

  He smiled back and said, “Do you sense anything strange in the atmosphere down here?”

  She still found it hard to take her eyes off the sinister richness of the walls but said, “Do you mean like, is my spine ice-cold, or are the hairs on the back of my neck standing up, or do I have a constant sense that someone’s standing behind me? Because the answer is yes to all of the above.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. I mean, this is amazing, but there’s something unbelievably creepy about the place.”

  He nodded, looking along the tunnel in both directions, then turned to her again and said, “You know I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  She looked bemused and said, “Put it this way, I wouldn’t be here without you.”

  “Good. Then let’s explore.”

  He gestured to the right and they walked along the tunnel for some way before turning left, through a short connecting passage to a parallel tunnel. It became clear soon enough that even though it doubled back on itself in places and led to dead ends, it was a massive circular network, drawing them slowly towards the centre.

  And the closer they got to that centre, the feeling of some malevolent presence became all the more intense. Even the air was oppressive, the walls themselves possessed, as if a constant murmuring of ancient incantations was emerging from them just below the level of their hearing.

  They walked passage after passage, turning corners, working inwards, and each time they turned, Will expected to be met by some creature or apparition. Yet there was only the empty tunnel with its subdued lights, receding into the gloom. But that didn’t stop him expecting to meet something, didn’t stop his increasing concern that he shouldn’t have brought Eloise here until he’d explored these tunnels himself.

  Despite her unease, Eloise seemed less concerned than Will, and rather than look ahead, she was transfixed by the walls, so vivid that they looked in places as if the artists had only recently left off their work. Her faith in Will was total, so much so that it didn’t seem to occur to her that he might be out of his depth too.

  Eventually they turned into a passage that curved and then delivered them into a small pentagonal chamber. The chamber had four other passages le
ading off it, but for some reason, one of those four exits led into darkness. Will’s eyes were drawn automatically to that dark tunnel, but his attention was pulled away by Eloise.

  “There are no decorations in here.” It was true; the walls of this chamber were bare. “Oh, except for this.”

  Will followed her to the centre of the chamber. Embedded flat into the floor were four swords, their hilts outermost, their points meeting in the middle around a large medallion. All five pieces appeared to be cast in bronze. They looked down at the plate-sized medallion, the relief on its surface as clearly visible as if it had been cast that morning.

  “Oh my God,” said Eloise. She dropped to her knees to look closer and said, “What do you think it means?”

  “I don’t know,” said Will and looked round the chamber. He saw now that the walls were not completely bare, that in four places, following the line of the swords out past their hilts to the walls, were brief inscriptions in the same runic writing that was to be found everywhere else. “There are four inscriptions on the walls, perhaps names, perhaps each relating to one of the swords. The swords could represent people.”

  Eloise looked up at him, slightly exasperated as she said, “But what about this, Will?”

  He looked again at the circular bronze relief, the four sword tips almost appearing to hold it in place. It was the boar’s head, his family’s crest, and a larger but identical version of the broken medallion they wore between them.

  “I don’t know. Except that in some way it confirms we’re looking in the right place.”

  As he spoke, he felt a slight breeze brush across his face and turned to look at the darkened tunnel. It had come from there, he was certain of it. Eloise had felt it too and stood again.

  “A breeze – that means it leads to the open air, doesn’t it?”

  “Not necessarily.” Will took a couple of steps forward, into the mouth of the passageway, and once away from the lights of the chamber, he could see some way along it. There was nothing different about it, the same abundance of decoration. And in fact, he could see light fittings dotted along it in much the same way.

  “There are light fittings here too. I think they’ve fused, no more than that.” Yet now, for the first time since they’d entered the tunnels, Will actually felt the hairs rise on his neck, a shiver running through him. There was something there, beyond the edge of even his night vision, and it was something he did not want to face, not now, not without weapons, not with Eloise.

  He stepped backwards into the chamber and tried to look casual while keeping an eye on the darkened tunnel. Eloise didn’t seem suspicious and was staring at the pattern of bronzes in the floor.

  “I’ve seen this before somewhere. I wish I could remember where, but I know I’ve seen it.”

  “You don’t just mean the medallion?”

  “No, I mean the pattern, the circle in the middle, the four swords surrounding it, forming a sort of cross.”

  “Of course, now that you mention it, it is a cross – perhaps that’s why it’s familiar.” Once again Will felt his eyes drawn to the darkness of the tunnel. There seemed no immediate threat, nothing he could hear or smell, and yet something about it was disturbing him.

  “No, it’s not the cross.” She looked up and smiled. “Don’t worry, it’ll come to me.”

  Will nodded, but said, “I think we should stop for this evening.”

  “But it’s still early.” Eloise looked at her watch. “Oh. I can’t believe we’ve been down here an hour. And we have to get back.”

  “It won’t take us an hour to get back, but we should go. And you still haven’t told me your discovery.” As he spoke, he gestured for her to lead the way out, not wanting to leave her behind in the chamber, with that darkness and whatever it concealed. And he looked back a couple of times as they walked away, still expecting to see someone, or something, appearing out of the shadows.

  Eloise walked on, sensing none of his greater unease as she said, “Of course, I’d completely forgotten.” She waited until he was alongside her and said, “I found out who’s paying Marcus Jenkins’ fees.” She responded to Will’s look of surprise by saying, “Don’t worry, I haven’t been playing the detective – I just overheard him mentioning it to the boy he plays chess with, then researched it online. His fees are being paid by something called The Breakstorm Trust, and guess who one of the trustees is? Someone called Phillip Wyndham! OK, it’s possible it’s not our Wyndham, but …”

  The news hit Will hard, not because it confirmed that Marcus Jenkins had come here as Wyndham’s spy – that much he had never doubted – but because it spoke of another betrayal he’d suspected almost from the start.

  “Oh, I have a feeling it’s the same Wyndham. What time is it?”

  “Nearly nine.”

  “Good, there’s still time. I need to go back into the city tonight.”

  “Then I’ll come with you. We can call Rachel and Chris and ask them …”

  “No. It’s a risk, but we’ll call a taxi and ask it to collect us from here. There’s a telephone here and I have money.”

  “But it’ll take the taxi as long to get here as Rachel and …” Eloise stopped herself and said, “How do you have money?”

  Will was bemused by the odd things she found exceptional about his life when she so readily accepted all the true strangeness that surrounded him.

  “Money comes to me here and there, and what belongs to the cathedral belongs to me – I give back whatever I have to the church each time I return to the earth.”

  “OK. But why do you want to take a taxi?”

  “I want to surprise them. There might be a rational explanation, but I want to surprise them nevertheless. I saw brochures and leaflets from The Breakstorm Trust at Chris and Rachel’s house, addressed to Chris. It was one of the occasions when I saw the spirits of the witches, and one of the leaflets blew to the floor – I should have known it was significant.”

  “Oh God, this isn’t good. You felt weird about them the first time we went to The Whole Earth – I should have listened!” Eloise sounded distraught, fearing the same as Will, that Chris and Rachel had betrayed them, clearly upset too at the thought that she had been their defender against Will’s suspicions. “But look, they’re rich, and it’s an educational charity, so they’re absolutely the kind of people who’d be approached to donate.”

  “True. And they did have good reason to act oddly around me.”

  She looked confused for a moment, then the penny dropped and she said, “You mean filming you all those years ago?”

  He thought of the middle-aged Arabella, collapsing at the sight of him, and set against that memory, Chris and Rachel’s behaviour had been much more reasonable.

  But he smiled, saying, “Yes, that’s what I mean. It also has to be said that I couldn’t have reached Asmund without them.”

  “And they’ve helped us so much these last couple of months. I mean, it would have been difficult getting you out here without them.”

  “Also true,” said Will again, while equally aware that it possibly suited Wyndham to have Will come here, that perhaps his intention was not only to destroy Will, but also Lorcan Labraid, to unravel everything that had been woven together here over a thousand years and more.

  They walked in silence for a short while and finally Eloise said, “What will you do if he has betrayed us?”

  It was an interesting choice of words, he thought. As much as she didn’t want to believe, she was already subconsciously deciding who the guilty party must be, suggesting it would be Chris rather than he and Rachel together who’d been treacherous. Yet on the other hand, Eloise didn’t believe it was just Will who might have been betrayed, but both of them, both of their destinies, and in that perhaps she was right.

  “What am I to do? In my own time the answer would have been obvious, but now? Perhaps, as you suggest, we should hope for a credible explanation.”

  And Will hoped against hope that the
re would be one, because if there wasn’t, he couldn’t see how he could allow them to live, posing an ever greater danger to him. A spy was one thing, but if Chris and Rachel had betrayed him, he would have no choice but to kill them, and in so doing, he feared he’d also kill everything that existed between him and Eloise.

  4

  Eloise had doubted the taxi would come – she’d assumed the cab company, getting a call from a teenager asking for a car to come twenty minutes out of the city, would mark it down as a hoax. Maybe it was something in Will’s tone of voice, some remnant of his former life, but Eloise’s doubts proved unfounded, the booking was accepted and the taxi came. When asked to give a surname, he hadn’t hesitated in saying “Wyndham” though he wasn’t sure why.

  As the car left Marland, the driver said, “What on earth were you doing out here at this time of night? It’s closed in the winter.”

  Eloise looked alarmed, but Will said simply, “We’d prefer not to talk, if you don’t mind.”

  “Fair enough,” said the driver and turned the radio a little louder.

  Eloise looked both shocked and amused that Will had spoken to him like that. But of course, the way she saw it, he was a young person speaking to an adult. As far as Will was concerned, he was a noble speaking to an inferior, someone being paid to carry out a simple service.

  They travelled in silence. Will was thinking of the situation that lay ahead of them, and after ten minutes, Eloise gave away the fact that she was thinking about the same thing.

  Unprompted, she said, “There has to be an explanation.”

  He nodded and no more was said, and then, as they travelled on into the suburban edges of the city, he found himself dreaming. He was walking as he had been several times before, among ruins on a sunny day. Someone called his name, but in an odd form, “William Dangrave?”, a surname that he predated by more than a century, and he turned and saw Eloise, beautiful, luminous.