Time Trap

by Deborah Chester

  “Well, Elena?”

  “My brothers will never support Lord Theodore. They want Greeks to rule the Peloponnese. Sir Magnin is half Greek, and that is better than nothing.”

  “Better perhaps to have Byzantine rule than Turkish,” said Leon with a low laugh.

  “The Turks will not dare come this far—”

  “I think they will. Perhaps there is a way to make Sir Magnin happy with you again.”

  “How?”

  “Help us catch Noel.”

  He loosened his arm, and at once she sprang away from him. He caught her wrist, however, and swung her around. Moonlight glimmered upon the blade of his dagger. He sheathed it, but he did not release her wrist.

  “If you should find him,” said Leon, feeling his desire burn like fire within his veins. He put his hand upon the girl’s face, driving in with his mind and his will until he felt her facial muscles go slack against his palm. “If you should find him, steal the bracelet from his wrist and bring it to me. That is all you have to do.”

  He took his hand away and Elena’s face remained slack. Her dark eyes were glazed, shimmering reflections of the distant moonlight. Her mouth trembled. Leon touched those voluptuous lips with a tender finger.

  “Do it for me,” he whispered.

  In silence Elena nodded. She looked drugged. Slowly she lifted her gaze to Leon’s, and her eyes were docile, submissive eyes. Satisfied, Leon kissed her, but there was nothing in rubbing his mouth against hers that affected him. Nothing at all. If he wanted to feel the heat of passion, he had only to think of his hatred for his twin.

  Angrily he shoved the girl away. “Go,” he said and watched her run from the shed with her long hair streaming out behind her.

  He paced there, shivering in the cold, rubbing his hands together, and felt hollow as though he were only a shell pretending to be a man. Was he doomed forever to be only half alive? Would eliminating Noel really make him whole?

  No answers came to him, no assurance, no peace. He shivered in the night, and felt afraid.

  Chapter 10

  Noel’s hand closed over Sophia’s face. “Don’t be afraid,” he whispered.

  She awakened with a muffled gasp and thrashed against him until he pressed her hard into her pillows.

  “Hush,” he said. “It’s Noel. Don’t be afraid.”

  She went stiff and silent for a moment, then struggled harder, trying to throw herself off the bed, trying to kick him, trying to wrench her mouth free to scream.

  Exasperated, Noel wrestled with her despite the fact that he was hampered by his desire not to hurt her. She drove her fist hard into his stomach, and while he doubled, choking, she reached beneath her pillow and drew forth a tiny dagger that she slashed across his arm.

  The pain was swift, like a razor cut, and the blood came welling up hot and vital upon his skin.

  “Damn you,” he said in a choked voice.

  She struggled free of his grasp and opened her mouth.

  “If you scream,” he said desperately, ripping the knife from her hand, “I swear I’ll kill you.”

  Kneeling upon the bed, she faced him with her hair streaming like silver in the moonlight. “Get away from me, villain,” she said in a low voice choked with loathing and fear.

  “We made a bargain, my lady. I gave you my word I would not betray you. And you promised to show me how to escape the castle.”

  She made a sound of denial, and he yanked her close against him. “I am not Leon,” he said. “You know that.”

  “You look alike,” she retorted, her breath warm upon his face. “I think it likely you act alike. How dare you come into my chamber—”

  “Shut up, and consider,” he said sharply. “I can help you and Theodore. But only if you help me. I have to get away. Will you keep your end of our bargain?”

  The pain in his arm intensified as he flexed the limb and more air rushed into the wound, but it was a minor cut. Already it had stopped bleeding.

  He tossed the dagger on the bed between them. Sophia watched him, saying nothing, doing nothing. He couldn’t tell if she was thinking it over or awaiting her chance to yell.

  “My lady?” came a soft, sleepy voice from the outer chamber. “Is all well?”

  Noel’s heart leapt into his throat. For a moment he thought he would choke. He froze, his gaze on the flimsy door between him and discovery.

  “Yes, Cleope,” said Sophia. “A bad dream, that’s all.”

  “Do you want some heated malmsey?”

  “No, thank you. Go back to sleep.”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  Noel shut his eyes a moment. The relief was almost too much. He was so tired he could barely think. He knew he was bound to make a fatal mistake soon, if he didn’t find refuge.

  “Please,” he whispered. “Please.”

  “If Theodore is still a prisoner in the mountains,” she whispered, “will you help free him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you swear?”

  He wanted to shake her. “Yes, yes. Hurry. Get dressed in something simple. They’re going to know soon that I’ve escaped.”

  “How did you—”

  “Just hurry.”

  She nodded and swung aside a tapestry to reveal a narrow servant’s door. “Go through,” she whispered. “Wait. I shan’t be long.”

  He hesitated, wondering if he dared trust her. But he had little choice at this point. He went through the door, which she closed after him, and found himself in a musty space too tiny for comfort with shreds of old cobwebs that floated against his face like gossamer. The seconds ground by, each one an eternity. He leaned against the wall, feeling the coldness of it through his tunic.

  The door snicked open and Sophia joined him in a faint rustling of cloth. Her hand groped across his sleeve to his wrist. “There can be no light. We must stick close to the wall and not turn loose of each other. Come,” she said. “Make no sound, for some of the walls are thin.”

  The darkness was total most of the way. Now and then their passageway had small open chinks in the wall mortar that let torchlight from some other area of the palace shine through. Sometimes Noel’s feet crunched over what sounded like small, brittle bones. They snapped like twigs.

  He did not like the darkness, the dank, tomblike smell, the dusty cobwebs that touched his face and hands like insects, the tiny rat skeletons on the floor. Yet at the same time he kept telling himself that it could not be this easy. The secret way to the concealed treasury, the secret way of escape from the palace could not simply lead from this girl’s bedchamber.

  The floor angled down after a while. He remembered the dungeons, and had to fight his reluctance to go near them.

  Finally, after his legs were dragging with weariness and he felt they had gone at least a mile, Sophia stopped. “The end,” she said softly.

  She pushed his hand out through the air, and his knuckles rapped against the wooden rungs of a ladder.

  “We must climb,” she said. “Take care how you lift the trapdoor.”

  He struggled up the ladder until his head bumped the trapdoor.

  It was lightweight, requiring little effort to shift. Easing it open cautiously, he heard a rhythmic crunching sound, heard rustles, stamps, and snorts, inhaled the aroma of horse droppings and straw.

  They were in the stables. Specifically they were in one stall, and its occupant, looming large in the dapple of moonlight shining in through the windows, stood near the manger as though quite used to strange people appearing in his stall in the dead of night.

  Sophia climbed out with more agility than Noel expected and helped him lower the trapdoor into place. She pushed straw across it and went to pet the animal while Noel peered out at the courtyard. A man carrying a torch went running across it, calling out to the sentries patrolling the wall.

  “Damn,” said Noel. “We’re in for it now.”

  “Find a torch,” she said, and drew the hood of her cloak over her shining hair. “We must
get to the mews. This way.”

  He grabbed an unlit brand soaked in pitch and followed her as she walked purposefully through the stables and out through a side door. A man ran past them in the darkness and gave Noel a shove.

  “No time for dallying in the hay, man! There’s a villain escaped from the dungeons. A sorcerer, they say. Report to Sir Geoffrey at once and join the search.”

  “Aye,” said Noel, and the man ran on, leaving him to follow Sophia with his tunic soaked in cold sweat and his nerves raw with strain.

  They made their way to the wall’s southeast corner and entered a squat turret. The stairs spiraling up were made of wood and they swayed beneath Noel’s weight. The place smelled of vermin and bird droppings.

  At the top of the stairs, Noel discovered why. Large windows all around filled the space with moonlight. Row after row of small perches held an array of falcons, hawks, eagles, and owls. Leather jesses adorned with bells hung from their legs, keeping them bound to their perches. The floor was littered with bits of fur, feather, and broken bones from hundreds of meals served here.

  Some of the predators were hooded; others were not. The latter watched Noel with large yellow eyes, aware and silent in the darkness.

  Sophia went to one of the birds and pulled off its hood. She stroked its proud head, preening it with her fingertip. “There, my beauty,” she crooned. “There, my love. Have you missed me?”

  “For God’s sake,” said Noel, losing patience. “Are we getting away or visiting all your pets?”

  “We need Sian,” she said, replacing the bird’s hood and untying her jesses. “She belongs to me. If necessary, she will hunt for us in the wild. There are some old weapons stored in that chest, if you want any.”

  He wanted to protest about the bird, but she was right in saying they needed weapons. In silence he made a swift search and found a broadsword for himself. He fitted a dagger and a war axe into his belt also, and found a moth-eaten cloak that smelled as though cats had been born on it years ago.

  “Ready,” he said, returning to Sophia. “Now what?”

  She led him back downstairs. Outside, Noel could hear increased commotion. It sounded like the whole castle had been alerted. The searchers were coming closer all the time.

  “Hurry,” he said.

  Holding the hawk upon her left hand, now swathed in a heavy leather gauntlet, Lady Sophia pointed at the floor.

  “Open the trapdoor. See the ring?”

  He knelt and pulled it open.

  “Light the torch,” she said.

  “With what? My teeth?”

  “Don’t you carry a spark box?” she said.

  “A what—no, I don’t.”

  “We can’t follow this passage if we can’t see. Do something.”

  He peered outside and saw a torch burning at the base of the wall about halfway to the next corner. Noel’s spirits sank. He felt that if he went running out across the open, it would mean his end. Yet there were men running everywhere, most in stages of half dress, torches flaming in their hands. It looked pretty chaotic.

  Not giving himself time to dally longer, he left the turret and ran along the length of the wall, stumbling over holes pitted in the ground. Two knights and a page boy converged on the same torch just before he did. One was there to replace it with a fresh one; the others lit their brands from it.

  “Any luck?” asked one.

  They all, Noel included, shook their heads.

  One of the knights spat. “I’ll tell ye this, sirs. I didn’t change my allegiance to Sir Magnin’s banner just to spend my nights running about in search of some crazy varlet. It’s my bed I want.”

  “It’s your head you’d better care about,” retorted one of the others. “His word is law, and he don’t care how much he puts you out.”

  They scattered, Noel heading back toward the mews.

  A hand grasped his shoulder. “Here, you. Act with some wits. You just came from that way. What’s the point of searching it again?”

  Noel’s mouth was drier than powder. “I just—I heard something up in the turret. I couldn’t see, so I came to light the torch.”

  “Oh?” The knight leaned close, and Noel could smell the wine fumes on his breath. “Then we’d better both check on this noise, eh, lad?”

  “Uh, yes.”

  Noel led the way, hoping Sophia was hiding. He opened the door and stepped into the darkness, the knight following right on his heels. Noel whirled and thunked the man between the eyes with the butt end of his torch. The knight staggered and fell.

  Noel handed the torch to Sophia, who was standing there in plain sight, staring, and dragged the man inside so that he could close the door. Panting, he rested his cheek a moment upon the splintery wood. If he had felt a hundred years old earlier tonight, he was up to three hundred now and counting.

  The temptation to sit down and go to sleep was so strong he could barely fight it off. Rubbing his eyes, he took the torch from Sophia and pointed at the stairwell.

  She hesitated. “What about this man?”

  “Leave him.”

  “But he may—”

  “Just leave him,” said Noel angrily. “We don’t have time.”

  She climbed down the ladder awkwardly, balancing the bird that fluttered and fussed on her arm. Noel followed and shut the trapdoor, closing them in.

  The torchlight filled the small well at the bottom, showing him smooth walls on all sides, but no tunnel.

  “What is this?” he demanded. “A dead end?”

  “Hush,” she said sharply. “I must think.”

  She closed her eyes and held out her right arm. Counting slowly, she swung herself to the right, nearly striking Noel, who dodged.

  “Here,” she said, and opened her eyes. “Push on the wall where I am pointing. Push as high as you can reach. Yes, isn’t there a depression in the stone?”

  He groped, cursing softly to himself because the stretch awakened the soreness in his ribs. After a few moments he found the depression. He pushed, and it gave slightly as though fitted to a spring.

  “Now straight down near the floor,” she commanded.

  He found that one and pushed.

  There came a sharp click and a narrow section of the wall sprang open. Noel caught the edge of the door with his hand to keep it from closing again.

  “Marvelous stone masonry,” he said. “I couldn’t see the lines at all—”

  “Never mind,” she said now, stepping into the passage ahead of him. “Hold the torch high and let us go through quickly. I hate this part.”

  He soon found out why. The tunnel was apparently hewn directly into the mountain. The ceiling dipped low in places, making him stoop to get through. The floor was rough, and Lady Sophia stumbled more than once. In places water seeped through the walls. The tunnel had the damp, mossy smell of wet rock. He knelt and sampled the water once, letting it trickle into his palm.

  It tasted like cold crystal and numbed his teeth. Sophia drank also and gave some to her bird. It cheeped mournfully beneath its hood.

  “How far?” asked Noel, keeping an eye on how much torch they had left.

  “Far. We must hurry.”

  She led the way. There were branching tunnels, but Sophia never hesitated and Noel trusted her to take them safely through. This time they really did go a mile.

  “Here,” she said at last and ducked beneath a low overhang.

  Following, Noel straightened on the other side and found himself in a small, natural-looking cavern filled with a storehouse of riches.

  Iron-bound chests displayed mounds of gold coins. Small caskets of jewels stood stacked everywhere. Bronze or marble statues from antiquity lined the walls. Cups and plates of gold, jewelry set with precious stones, gold death masks, lifesize hounds carved from silver…Noel stood and stared, unable to believe his eyes. It was a jumble of precious relics spanning several centuries. It was a priceless treasure trove. It was an archaeologist’s dream.

  He p
icked his way over to a marble Kourus statue of a young man, long hair rippling down his back, with an owl carved upon one shoulder and a serpent coiled upon the other. The statue’s vacant eyes stared into eternity. His faint, mysterious smile seemed to say that he knew all the answers man could ever seek. The colors painted upon him looked as fresh as though the sculptor had just finished.

  In wonder Noel ran his fingers over the cold, smooth surface, feeling the depth of the carving, experiencing the skill. He had never seen a statue representing this symbolism. He hoped the recorder on his LOC was getting everything.

  “Sir Magnin would take this wealth and spend it,” said Sophia. She dipped her hand into a chest of coins, each stamped with the head of Caesar, and let them spill from her fingers. “Just spend it. He would never count the beauty. He would never consider the wonder of how such things were made. The little lady would be melted down.”

  Sophia glanced at Noel and smiled for the first time. The expression transfigured her face, made her seem younger and even more beautiful. “Come and see,” she said.

  They made their way to the rear of the cavern. There, resting upon a squared stone about waist-high, stood a small statue of a nymph fashioned of solid gold. Poised on her toes, she stood with her back arched, one hand lifted to the heavens, her head tilted up as though in ecstasy.

  “She is a pagan thing,” said Sophia quietly. “Very improper, but I love her so much. She is dancing, you see? She looks happy as though all the sunshine in the world has poured itself into her heart.”

  Surprised to hear Sophia say such a thing, Noel looked up. “She is exquisite,” he said quietly. “I have never seen her equal.”

  “So many statues of the old times are broken up now,” said Sophia. “The priests say we must destroy all things pagan. I understand why, but still it is sad to ride through the ruins of their temples and their houses, sad to see floor mosaics where perhaps a baby or a little girl played happily long ago. They were just people, as we are people. Surely they were not as evil as we are told.”

  “They weren’t evil at all,” said Noel. “They weren’t any different from you or me. They lived, and loved, and went to war. They got married and had children and lost their teeth in old age. They tried to worship as best they understood. And some of them made art like this.”