by Laura London
He walked back to the grill and put his finger through to stroke Lynden’s nose. She jerked her head away. “Better that you tell me what I want to know, my precious creature. I could let you go if I had the documents in my hand.”
“Fiddle!” said Lynden rudely.
“But I would,” said Crant. “Because without written evidence, Kyler is what I say he is—my illegitimate son. Anything you say to the contrary, my child, I could swiftly discredit. At seventeen one has so little credibility. Think on it.”
Crant set the lantern at the top of the stairs; the faintest of gray glows lit the cell. The sisters were silent for a long time before Lynden spoke.
“I’ve just had a funny thought.”
If Lorraine felt this to be a strange moment for funny thoughts, she didn’t say so but only asked in a tired voice, “What?”
“Even if we wanted to tell him where the papers were, we couldn’t, because we don’t know where they are ourselves.”
“Why not tell him a convincing lie so he would let us go?”
“We could stall him with that, but it won’t get us out of here because he can check and find out that we were lying before he lets us go.”
“What about calling for help?” said Lorraine. “Everyone in the castle can’t know he’s imprisoned us. He couldn’t let a secret like that become general knowledge.”
“No, but you can be sure he’s arranged things so no one will be within hearing distance while we’re here. We’d exhaust ourselves by yelling. Instead, we’ll put our energy into escape.”
Lorraine gave a wan smile, barely visible in the dim light. “Not another heart spasm, Lynnie.”
“No, but I shall have a real one if he tosses me down that well. Let’s not talk. We must concentrate.”
The twins sat down on the hard brick, backs to the wall, and thought. Their concentration was long and not immediately fruitful. Lynden, feeling the dampness uncomfortably on her hair, took off her bonnet and, holding its strings, swung it forlornly between her knees. Lorraine removed hers as well but placed it sedately upon her lap. The stony silence was relieved only by the plink of dripping water and a quick scuffling in a far-off corner.
“They need a cat down here,” said Lorraine nervously.
Time elapsed; seemed to fade into… an hour? Three hours? At last Lynden spoke.
“It’ll be too difficult to trick Crant. The best thing to do is to escape before he returns.”
“That’s sterling, Lyn. But the question of the moment is: how?”
“I don’t know yet. We must explore the possibilities. You examine the room in detail and I’ll take the door.”
“Fine. I’ll examine the room.” Lorraine stood in the center of the room. “There are no windows. The walls are solid brick, as is the floor.”
“Then the only way out is the way we came in—through the door,” stated Lynden. She stared at the door, then rattled it; it gave only slightly. The bars of the grill were immovable and placed too closely to allow her hand to pass through. She stood on tiptoe and looked out to where the lantern flickered in the stairway. At the foot of the stairs to the right, a broad puddle, fed by the drip from above, broke into circles with clock-like regularity, causing the light caught from the lantern to dance and shiver. Lynden stared at it, hypnotized. There seemed to be something tangible reflected in the pool—something in the well room that she could not see from her narrow vantage point, its reflection nearly steadying and then breaking again with the next drop. As she stared, her vision blurred to a point which compensated for the unsteadiness of the reflection until suddenly she realized what she was seeing in the watery mirror: a portion of the door that imprisoned them! She could make out the broad plank stretched across the door between the brackets on either side.
“He has underestimated us indeed,” she said aloud. “If only there was some way…” Lynden thoughtfully bounced her bonnet up and down on its long strings, and then turned to Lorraine.
“Mmm?” said Lorraine, who was opening a hairpin with her teeth prior to placing it back in her hair.
Lynden dimpled in a broad smile and snatched the hairpin from her sister’s hand, holding it up with her bonnet. “Rainey, we’re going fishing after all!”
Lorraine watched, fascinated, as Lynden yanked the long velvet strings from her bonnet and tied them together, pulled apart the heavy brass prongs of Lorraine’s hairpin, and tied the string to one end, speaking as she bore down on the knot.
“Kyler said you can open almost any door!”
“Yes, but with a skeleton key, which we don’t have.”
“And we don’t need, not for this door. What we need is something to lift a plank, and I have it right here.” She held up her jerry-built but serviceable looking fishing line.
Lorraine slowly drew a finger along the vee of the hooked hairpin as if casting a spell of good luck upon it. “Will it work? If the plank is heavy, won’t the knot slip off?”
Lynden turned with a swish of skirts and went back to the grate, where she stood again on tiptoe and dropped the hook and line through the bars.
“Do you remember Robert Style?” she said, letting the line slip through her hand. “The groom at Fern Court who used to be a sailor? He taught me this knot, and everyone knows that the knots of British sailors are the best in the world. Why do you think Sir Francis Drake beat back the Spanish Armada?”
“Not because the Spanish didn’t have their ropes knotted together properly,” said Lorraine firmly.
“All right. So pray.” Lynden bit her lip and looked out through the grate into the puddle. She could see the bright yellow hairpin swinging down past the plank, and felt the tick of the metal against wood vibrating through the string as it gently hit the door. It twisted wildly, wrong side to the plank, and she let it down again. This time it caught, one side of the vee slipping firmly behind the plank.
“Huzzah!” she said softly. Carefully, she inched the string up, letting it dangle down on her side of the door as she pulled. There came a scrape of wood, and, miraculously, the plank fell with a loud clatter, and only Lynden’s small forceful push was required to swing the door open.
The falling of the plank had sounded like a thunderclap to the girls, and they stood frozen, expecting the entire household to arrive on the spot; a minute passed and no such thing occurred. The twins exhaled simultaneously. Lynden took Lorraine’s hand and they ran up the stone steps. At the top was a solid door. Lynden placed her ear to it and listened intently; hearing nothing, she slowly pushed it open and peeked around. Beyond was a brickwork corridor stopped at one end by a narrow spiral staircase and at the other end by a high door, this one with a grillwork opening similar to the one in the door of their cell. Through it could be seen a few circling pigeons, a patch of dark blue sky, and the top of the shadowed Great Tower.
The grill was set too high in the door for Lynden, so Lorraine put her fingers on the bottom edge of the opening and looked out. It seemed they were within the castle wall, because outside lay the inner courtyard, the long shadows of evening spreading a gray shroud over the Great Tower. At its base the wide double doors to the kitchens were open. A fire was burning in a great hearth where a lamb roasted on the spit. A white-capped scullery maid stood nearby, basting it constantly. The stables were to the right; several grooms sat in front sharing ale and gossip with male servants from the household; a stableboy had one of the riding horses tethered nearby and was grooming it carefully. Tomorrow’s bread was baking in the old-fashioned cookshack, and at the threshold Ottmar Wishke stood leaning against the door frame. He was talking to a comely dairymaid with a yoke on her shoulders. A milk pail hung from each side of the yoke, swinging gently back and forth in the cool evening breeze.
“We can’t go out this way. Ottmar’s there.”
Lynden nodded. “Then it will have to be the stairs.”
The girls climbed the spiral staircase to emerge, winded and dusty, into the fresh, strong breeze at the top of th
e wall. They were even with the pigeons now, and could see the setting sun, a deep-red semicircle lying across the darkening hills. Below them lay the busy courtyard. The crenellation rose to one side, and on the other, courtyard side, was a low wall.
“Get down,” said Lynden, falling to her hands and knees. Lorraine did the same. “We don’t want them to see us below. Listen. This walkway must go the full length around to the drawbridge in front. Stay down and follow me. Let’s see if we can find the murder-hole that Kyler said he dropped through to escape.”
They crawled low to the walkway, passing through the alternating square patches of red sunlight and black shadow created by the sun streaming through the crenellation. The walkway at last widened into a large stone balcony which projected over the moat and open drawbridge. The machicolation, stonework slats punctuated by four rectangular murder-holes, took up the front part of the balcony floor. Lynden crawled to the nearest murder-hole and looked down to where the thick, black water of the moat lay forty feet below.
“Rainey, this has to be the last resort,” she said. “I’d almost as soon jump into the dungeon well.”
“We can’t get out through the courtyard; it’s too risky.”
“I agree, but…” Lynden crawled to the end of the balcony, entering a small stone tower. It was a housing for the massive spool pulley which raised and lowered the drawbridge. The pulley had not been used for many years; this was obvious from the corroded state of the iron bar which served as a brake upon the heavy chain—it had nearly rusted into its holding-link. The thick chain wound around the pulley through a large open window and angled to its attachment at the left corner of the drawbridge.
Lynden pulled at the chain with one hand. It was steadfast. “We’ll climb down the chain,” she said with satisfaction.
Lorraine closed her eyes. “This is better than dropping through the murder-hole?”
Lynden smiled and hugged her twin, and then went to the window. Holding on to the chain, she fearlessly swung her feet out over the moat. “At least we won’t get wet. Thank God we’ve got on leather gloves.” Lynden crossed her legs over the chain and moved slowly down, hand-over-hand, while Lorraine watched from the window. “We can do it,” called Lynden to her sister. “It’s like climbing trees.”
“I’ve always hated climbing trees,” answered Lorraine. “I only ever did it because you made me.”
Lynden answered, panting with exertion: “Good thing, too, because now you know how to climb down these chains. Have a care, though, they are slippery.”
Lorraine followed her sister, hands trembling. She inched slowly down the chain. The pink and purple sky floated above her. The chains bit cruelly into her hands, tearing her clothing and covering it with streaks of red rust. She hung on to her sister’s words of encouragement as if to a lifeline, until she felt Lynden’s hands upon her waist.
“Drop your feet down, Lorraine. You’ll be standing on the drawbridge.” Lorraine did as she was told, and stood up, catching her breath, her aching arms folded in front of her. Lynden pulled her forward. Lorraine stumbled blindly after her sister. Her side began to ache.
“Lynnie, not this way… to the road back to Fern Court.”
Lynden grabbed her arm with a new vigor—they were going up the slope of the fellside toward the back of Crant Castle, past the fateful spring flowers. “No, Lorraine; the mountains are our only chance. We’ve got to take the footpath. If we make for the road, Crant can chase us down on horseback before we’re halfway to the first cottage. On the footpath we’ve got an even chance, because they have to go on foot in the mountains, too. Hurry! Someone might already have seen us!”
The soft grass of the slope ended suddenly in the rocks, and they took to the footpath. Behind they heard the unmistakable yammering and yelping of a pack of hounds. Lynden turned to see a pair of lanterns moving across the greening slope, bobbing like fireflies in the dusk.
“They’ve got the dogs after us!” cried Lorraine.
“Then we shall have a taste of what it feels like to be a fox,” answered Lynden. They reached the crest of the hill; Lorraine, gasping, rested for a moment on a large rock while Lynden looked down at their pursuers. The sun left them as the girls stumbled down the other side of the hill. The sky was taking a deep-purple tint in preparation for night, and a pale large moon floated low on the horizon. The thick twilight made it difficult to move with speed.
“It will be better once the moon rises,” said Lynden. They fled on over the next hill which rolled like an ocean wave before them. A low, wide stone wall coursed down the other side of the hill. There was a ripple and bustle in the underbrush to one side, and the flash of a long brush tail. A dark shape fleeted across the path before them, and the animal leaped to the top of the stone wall. They caught a glimpse of a pearly white throat underneath a sinuous, weasel-like face, and a nasty set of bared fangs which glistened in the moonlight.
Lorraine put her hand in front of Lynden. “Stand still. It’s the sweet-mart! The guidebook tells about it. It’s a fierce killer. It jumps on the backs of ewes, digs its claws into the fleece, and begins to bite, half eating the poor ewes before they are dead.”
They stood for a tense moment as the yowling of the pack of hounds behind came closer and the sweet-mart looked them over. Finally it flashed its fangs again and disappeared. The girls hurried on. At the crest of the next hill they could see white, crawling mist forming in the valleys about, creeping as if to entrap them in tendrils of curling dead-white sinews. Fear of capture spurred the twins on; they stumbled often in the dark. Lynden’s hands became a mass of cuts and bruises; Lorraine could feel the blood trickling down her leg from a gash in her knee. A cold chill rose out of the night ground, causing them to shiver. The moon, against a background of silver stars, high and bright now, was no comfort at all, but seemed rather to be leering at them ahead and above, as elusive and tantalizing as safety. They passed a waterfall which roared down the fellside away from them, obliterating the keening of the hounds; when they were far enough beyond it, they stopped to rest and listened again. The yowling of the pack had taken on a deep, self-assured baying quality, and grew in intensity as they listened.
The girls were standing on an outcropping shelf of rock overlooking a broad, black valley. Directly below them, some fifty yards straight down, they observed three torches moving in single file. A rough hand was visible on the shaft of each torch, and three capped heads below them. As the sisters watched, the torches were swung and thrown, making three fiery arcs in the inky blackness, and suddenly the darkness was dispelled by an erupting volcano of fire which roared and leaped, sending sparks high into the night sky and illuminating, with daylight clarity, the grizzled faces of three farmers who stood behind a shallow fire trench, about ten yards in front of a tumbled-down shepherd’s shack. A small herd of Herdwick rams huddled at the cliff base away from the fire, which spread quickly to cover half the floor of the valley, creating a swirl of red smoke that blotted out the stars and darkened the moon. The farmers watched for a few moments before going back up the path.
“They’re burning off last year’s heather,” said Lorraine. “Spring will make a tender new growth for the sheep.”
“Whatever they’re doing it for, look what’s it’s doing for us!” Lynden pointed. The bright gleam of the heath fire lit the footpath at the point where it ran down the hillside to the fire trench and then turned, coursing along the edge of a deep gully and disappearing over the ridge of the next hill between two giant boulders. “We can double back down the fellside away from them on this path.” The twins started down the rugged trail, but before they were halfway to the fire trench, Lorraine stumbled and cried out in pain; she fell to her knees and looked up at Lynden with tears in her eyes.
“Do you think your ankle’s broken?” asked Lynden.
“No, it’s only turned, but, oh, Lynnie, what are we to do?”
“Carry on like the allies at the Battle of Waterloo! ‘Stand until the
last man falls.’ ” Lynden bent and helped her sister up. “Lean on me, Raine, as heavily as you need.” She put her arm around her hobbling sister and together they continued down the path, the heat from the monstrous fire warming them as they neared it. The roar and crackle were deafening; smoke filled their lungs, causing them to choke for breath. Lynden pulled her silk neck scarf over her mouth and did the same for Lorraine.
They reached the bottom, where the path was intersected by the shallow fire trench. The smoke puffed over them in thick, black billows as they made their way blindly across the trench. Growing weaker, Lorraine foundered for her footing while Lynden tried desperately to support her. The fire was close, licking around them now in lashing tongues of flame. Lynden lost her direction. The girls were coughing from the fumes, huge spasmodic, lung-wrenching coughs, and tears streamed from their eyes.
“We have to… to turn back, Lorraine. It’s no good… I can’t see…” Lorraine, who had been leaning heavily on Lynden’s shoulder, suddenly cried out; then her weight lessened and was gone.
“Lorraine! Where are you?” Lynden was frantic. A pair of arms grasped her own waist, strong male arms. She struggled and kicked desperately as she was lifted through the air and then set down on a higher level. She drew back her fist, still blinded, trying to strike at the shape before her, when with a mixture of joy and bewilderment she recognized the voice of the Bard of the Lakeland.
“Lynden. Easy, my love. You’re all right now,” said her husband. With a sob of relief, she leaned forward into his arms.
“Melbrooke!” she said in a cracking voice. “Oh, Melbrooke. We’ve gotten into such trouble!”
His reply was indistinct but sympathetic. She looked up as her eyes cleared, and saw that he had placed her on the ground near the shepherd’s shack. Kyler was near, bending over Lorraine, a concerned look on his lean, soot-blackened face. He shouted something to Melbrooke, who shouted back. Their words were lost in the boom of the fire.
Melbrooke wiped his wife’s face with a handkerchief as she coughed weakly. “I must look… like a coal miner,” she said. “Oh, Melbrooke. Crant’s coming with Ottmar and… and his dogs. They’ve been chasing us. But how did you know we were here?”
