by Alex Archer
She pictured the charm in her mind again. The hanged wolf stood out against the background of the mountain.
Why a wolf? she wondered. Why was it hanged?
“Miss Creed?” Lesauvage prompted.
“I’ll need my hands,” she said.
Lesauvage hesitated, then nodded at one of his men. Two others kept their weapons leveled at her. The cuff around one wrist was removed only long enough to bring her arms in front of her, then was once more secured.
But during that moment, Annja had reached out and touched the sword. It was there. She just couldn’t take it from that otherwhere with her hands bound.
“I need a flashlight,” Annja said.
Lesauvage handed her a flashlight. Lightning stabbed across the sky. The wind changed directions and rose in intensity. The temperature seemed to be dropping a few degrees.
Good thing you don’t believe in omens, Annja told herself. She switched on the light and walked through the remnants of the checkpoint and into the cave beyond.
BROTHER GASPAR WOKE in the stone niche that served as his bed. He heard his name repeated, then looked over at the doorway where one of the young monks stood holding a single candle.
“What is it?” Gaspar asked, pushing himself into a sitting position.
“Lesauvage and the American woman have returned to the mountains.” The yellow glow of the candle flame played over the young monk’s tense features. “They’re at the Roman checkpoint where Benoit was believed to have hidden the ransom he extorted from our order.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
For a moment, Gaspar sat wreathed in his blankets. The caves were always damp and chill. He had never questioned where God had chosen to assign him, but he sometimes longed for the day when he would know a warm bed at night.
“Get everyone ready,” Gaspar said. “Let’s go see what they found.”
After the young monk left to wake the others, Gaspar wondered if all the secrets they had protected were on the verge of finally coming out. Over the years of its existence, the church had covered up many things. Men served God, and men were always made of flesh and blood. And flesh and blood were doomed to be forever weaker than faith.
28
Annja followed the narrow passage, having to duck twice. Not wide enough for two men to walk abreast, the passageway formed a bottleneck that would have been suicidal for an opposing force to attempt to breach.
Almost twenty feet in, the passageway opened into the first cave chamber.
Playing her flashlight beam around, Annja discovered the cave was a near rectangle thirty feet wide and about fifty feet long. The ceiling averaged about fifteen feet up, but dipped as low as five feet.
Her foot slipped over the edge of a hole and she barely caught herself.
“Careful, Miss Creed,” Lesauvage admonished.
Pointing the flashlight down, Annja discovered she’d almost stepped into a hole nearly five feet in diameter and at least six feet deep.
“It’s a trap,” Lesauvage explained.
“I know.” Annja shone her beam around and discovered that the pits made a checkerboard mosaic across the front of the cave entrance. Some of them were filled in with dirt, debris and rocks.
“Back in the days of the Roman soldiers,” Lesauvage said, “I’m told stakes were placed in the traps to impale the unsuspecting. The stakes are long gone now, of course.”
Annja stepped around the pits; stakes or not, they’d make a nasty fall.
At the back of the cave, she found three passageways. All of them led to smaller caves. She guessed they’d been used as storage areas and barracks.
Puzzled, she played the flashlight beam over the cave walls and ceiling again. Bats clung to stalactites that had been chipped and broken off at uniform height.
“What are you looking for?” Lesauvage asked.
“A way out,” Annja answered. “It doesn’t make sense that Roman soldiers would plan on falling back into a cave they couldn’t escape from. There has to be a way out.” She started testing the walls.
“People have looked for that treasure in the caves for years,” Lesauvage said angrily. “If there had been a secret door in one of the walls or the ceiling, it would have been found.”
Annja ignored the comment. Discoveries had been made in what were believed to be “explored” areas before. She just had to put her mind into finding the solution.
“Perhaps,” Roux suggested, “the monks already reclaimed the treasure all those years ago. It could be they didn’t tell anyone so the search would continue as an exercise in frustration. And to remind everyone that no one could steal from the church. The Vatican liked the idea of divine justice and curses overtaking thieves who robbed them.” He stepped into the last cave with a flashlight and helped her look.
Annja wondered why Roux was helping, then decided maybe his own curiosity had prompted him to action.
“They could have,” Annja agreed. “This wasn’t the best hiding place for Benoit to attempt to stash the ransom.”
“There was no other place for him to hide it in the time that he had,” Lesauvage said. “It was this place—or no place.”
“Perhaps he never got a treasure at all,” Roux suggested. “The tale about the treasure could have been merely a way for him to get his vengeance.”
“The knights all resented the Brotherhood of the Silent Rain,” Lesauvage said. “They needed only the smallest excuse to tear down that monastery.”
Annja went back to the second cave, ignoring the fact that Lesauvage’s men held guns on her. Her mind worked to solve the problem she’d been presented. She was drawn more into that effort than in being afraid. Something chewed at the back of her mind and restlessly called attention to itself.
“Benoit swore that the charm held the answer to the hiding place,” Lesauvage said.
Annja stumbled over a depression in the ground. Aiming the flashlight down, she saw a round hollow.
“Perhaps we should look outside,” Roux said.
Lightning flashed, invading the caves for a moment. Almost immediately, thunder shook the earth. Loose rock tumbled from the ceiling and skidded down the walls.
“This isn’t gonna cave in, is it?” Avery asked nervously.
Lesauvage sneered at the young man. “You wanted revenge for your father. Don’t you realize you need a spine for that?” He cursed. “Instead, you came to me, imploring me to unleash my Wild Huntsmen on Inspector Richelieu.”
Annja looked at the young man.
Tears ran down Avery’s face and dripped from his scruffy chin. He spoke in French. “He killed my father! I saw him do it! It’s not fair that everyone thinks he’s a hero! My father wasn’t even armed. He was just a thief, not a murderer.” He wiped at his face with his bandaged hand. The handcuffs gleamed in the flashlight’s beam.
Annja felt a surge of compassion for the young man. She’d never known her parents. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to watch a parent’s murder.
“Stop your damned sniveling, child,” Lesauvage commanded. “Otherwise I’ll have you taken out and shot.”
“No,” Annja said.
Lesauvage turned on her. “I’m getting tired of your continued insistence on giving the orders around here, Miss Creed. You’ve not done as I’ve asked and brought the charm, and now you’re wasting my time.”
“I don’t have the charm,” Annja said. “I told you that. You choose not to believe me. I can’t help that. I’ve offered you the best help that I can.”
Smiling, Lesauvage pointed his pistol directly between Annja’s eyes. “I won’t kill you, Miss Creed. Not yet. But I am going to kill one of these two men if you don’t have some degree of success.” He paused. “Soon.”
Unflinching, Annja stared across the barrel of the pistol. Lesauvage’s men shifted uneasily behind him.
“Choose one of them,” Lesauvage ordered. “Save one. I will kill the other.”
“I
need a shovel,” Annja said.
Lesauvage blinked at her. “What?”
“I think I know what the charm referred to,” she said.
“Tell me.”
Annja pointed to the depressions in front of the smaller caves. “These were traps at one time.”
Surveying the ground, Lesauvage nodded. “So?”
“I think at least one of them is more than that.” Excitement filled Annja as she thought about the clue her subconscious mind had given her. “You and I have been speaking English. Avery spoke in French.”
“How has that any bearing?”
“Because it made me think of what these traps were originally called. Have you heard of the word loophole?”
“As in a legal maneuver?” Lesauvage sounded impatient.
“As in the origin of the word,” Annja said.
Lesauvage glared at her. “I don’t care for a lesson in wordplay.”
“You should. Two hundred and forty years ago, wordplay was everything in entertainment. Puzzles, limericks, jokes and brainteasers took the place of television and video games. When I work a dig site, I have to keep that in mind. Words can have several meanings, not just the superficial ones. The hanged wolf on the charm was a clue, and it was an icon. A picture of the word Benoit perhaps didn’t know how to write.”
“A loophole was an opening in a defensive wall on a structure or a cave in the forest,” Roux said, smiling as if he knew where Annja was going. “A way a traveler might check for wolves lying in wait outside the wall. Or, as they were known in French, loupes.”
“That’s right,” Annja said. She gestured toward the trap. “Pits like these were used back in the days of Julius Caesar. He wrote about them in his Commentaries on the Gallic Wars. But do you know what they’re called in French?”
Lesauvage shook his head.
“Trou de loup.”
“Wolf trap,” Lesauvage said.
“Yes. The charm had a picture of a hanged wolf on it,” Annja said. “But maybe it wasn’t a hanged wolf. I think it was a trapped wolf.”
Lesauvage looked down at the trou de loup beneath Annja’s feet. “Get her a shovel,” he ordered. “Get them all shovels.”
ANNJA DUG. The effort brought a warm burn to her arm, shoulder and back muscles. The chill of the cave left her.
The work went easily. Someone had filled in the wolf traps a long time ago, but the earth wasn’t solidly packed. The shovel blade bit down deeply each time. Roux and Avery dug out the other two pits.
Annja reached the bottom of her pit first. Stakes had impaled a victim hundreds of years ago. Bones and a few scraps of fabric testified to that. She knew the time frame from the few Roman coins and a copper bracelet she dug up on the way to the bottom. The coins, bracelet and the bones were all that were left. The stakes had splintered long ago. When they had been placed all those centuries ago, the Romans had hammered the stakes into bedrock.
Lifting the shovel in both hands, Annja drove the blade down against the bedrock. Satisfied it was solid, she tossed the shovel out and climbed from the pit.
Lesauvage looked at her.
“It’s solid,” she replied.
“If you’re wrong about all three,” Lesauvage taunted, “at least you’ll have your graves dug.”
Annja ignored the comment. They had freed her from the handcuffs. In her mind she had reached out and touched the sword. It was there, waiting.
“How are you doing?” she asked Roux.
“Almost there.” Grime stained Roux’s face as he worked by lantern light. He turned another shovelful of dirt from the wolf trap. “You do realize that simply losing the treasure wasn’t enough to keep the Brotherhood of the Silent Rain in hiding. They were, and still are, one supposes, being punished.”
“I know. I have a theory about that, as well. They weren’t ostracized by the church for their failure to protect the gold and silver they lost,” Annja said.
“It was because of La Bête.” Roux took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his face.
“Yes.”
“Then they did give the beast shelter.”
Annja nodded. “They did.”
“But whatever on earth for?” Roux asked.
“The clue to that is in the lozenge,” Annja said. “In the heraldry that was almost marked for the shadowy figure on the charm.”
“Do you know who that figure was?”
“I think I do.”
Lesauvage stepped forward and cursed. “Enough talk. More digging.”
Annja tapped on Avery’s shoulder. The young man’s wounded hand had bled through the bandages and formed a crust of dirt.
“What?” Avery asked.
“Let me do it,” Annja said.
He scowled at her. “I can do it.” Stubbornly, he pushed the shovel back into the dirt.
“You’ll be lucky if you don’t bleed to death at the rate you’re going,” she pointed out.
“Go away.”
Stepping forward, Lesauvage said, “Get out of there. You’re digging too slowly.”
Eyes tearing with emotion, looking scared and confused, Avery climbed from the hole. He threw the shovel back into the half-dug pit and started cursing.
Quick as a snake, Lesauvage slammed his pistol into the side of Avery’s head. Dazed and hurting, the young man dropped to the ground. He rocked and mewled in pain, holding his head, bleeding down the side of his face. Crimson drops fell from his jawline to the stone floor of the cave.
Anger surged through Annja, but she knew she had to contain it for the moment. At the bottom of the wolf trap, she paused a moment and reached for the sword. The leather-bound hilt felt rough beneath her fingers.
Then she drew back her hand and started to dig. Now wasn’t the time. But soon.
For a time only the sounds of the storm and the two shovels cleaving the earth existed. Thudding impacts competed with the rumbling that sounded as if it were on top of the mountain.
A moment later, Roux’s shovel struck something hollow.
“Here,” he called.
Annja vaulted out of the pit where she worked and crossed the cave. Roux tapped the shovel several times, causing the hollow thump each time.
Looking at Roux’s pit, Annja immediately noticed the difference between it and the two she’d worked in. The ones she’d dug tapered like inverted cones. As she’d neared the bottom, the excavation had been harder because the earth had been previously unworked.
Roux’s pit had obviously been completely dug out. He kept shoveling, working around a stone oval that fitted onto mortared stoneworks below.
“Is that a tunnel?” Lesauvage asked.
“Maybe,” Annja answered. “It could also be a well. The Roman soldiers would have wanted a water source if they were besieged.”
More of Lesauvage’s men shone their beams into the hole Roux had made.
Within minutes, the old man had completely dug out around the oval. He leaned back against the wall. Perspiration soaked his clothing.
Fear swarmed inside Annja. They were nearing the point of no return. Soon, Lesauvage would no longer need them. If the treasure was revealed beneath, she was certain they’d be shot immediately.
“Get that cover off,” Lesauvage ordered.
“I can’t,” Roux replied. “It’s too heavy.” He levered the shovel under the stone oval and demonstrated the difficulty he had in raising it only a couple inches.
“We need ropes,” Annja said. She directed the flashlight up at the ceiling. There, almost hidden in the shadows, an iron ring was pounded into the ceiling. If it had been found in the past, it might have been mistaken for use with heavy supply loads.
“Get the ropes,” Lesauvage ordered. He grinned at Annja. “Very good, Miss Creed.”
MINUTES LATER, Annja had tied a harness around the stone oval, then connected that to a double-strand line running through the iron hook mounted in the ceiling. Lesauvage put a team of men on the rope. Together, they pulled an
d the stone lid slowly lifted from the hole. The sound of running water echoed inside the cave.
Anticipation fired every nerve of Annja’s body.
When the lid was clear, Lesauvage walked to the edge of the wolf trap and aimed his flashlight beam. The yellow cone of illumination melted the darkness away.
“What’s that sound?” Lesauvage asked.
“Running water,” Annja said. “There’s probably a stream or groundwater running down there. Like I said, the soldiers would have wanted a steady supply of freshwater.”
“How far down?”
Holding her flashlight, Annja climbed down into the wolf pit. She shone the light around and spotted rusty iron handles covered with fungus set into the wall.
“Do you need a rope?” Lesauvage asked.
“No.” Annja threw a leg over the edge of the pit and started down. Her boots rang against the iron handles. Three rungs down, one of them snapped off beneath her weight, nearly rusted through.
She almost fell, only hanging on with her hands.
The tunnel walls showed tool marks. Someone had cut through the solid rock into the shallow stream below. Cold air rushed up around Annja, chilling her.
She thought about the tunnel. The Romans, or whoever had constructed it, had known the stream was there. They hadn’t drilled blindly through the rock in the hopes of hitting water.
They found it sometime before they decided to dig down to it, Annja realized. And if they found it before they dug down to it, there had to be another entrance.
That gave her hope. She finished the climb and dropped into the stream. The water came up to her calves, but her boots were tall enough to keep her feet dry.
She aimed the flashlight up the stream and down. The tunnel was almost eight feet across and barely five feet in height.
Upstream? Or downstream? She wasn’t sure. Her flashlight didn’t penetrate far enough to show her much.
A gleam of white suddenly caught her attention. Mired in the dirt and clay that coated the rock, scattered bones lay in disarray.
Enemies? Annja wondered. Or soldiers no one else cared enough to bury?
