Something powerful is drawing Ward back to Devil's Island. Something he thought he had forgotten. He must evade vicious lighthouse keeper George Jaggles in order to rescue it, but Jaggles will soon be the least of his worries. Because an assassin is...
There were at least two voices. The speakers may still have been far above, or only just out of sight – it was hard to tell. Ward wasn't going to wait to find out. He scooped Fidelma up in one hand, dropped her into his pocket, and retreated.
Now he could hear footsteps on the stairs.
There was only one hiding place. He got down on the floor and slid feet-first back into the tunnel from which he had come. He pushed himself along using the ceiling, his hands throbbing with pain now. He stopped when he was a safe distance from the tunnel mouth. Waited.
For a while nothing entered his upside-down field of vision. He could see only a small part of the chamber through the aperture. With a sinking feeling he realised he had left the two skull candles burning on top of the sarcophagus. He had forgotten all about them. But there was nothing for it now.
A man appeared in his field of vision. It was a Brother.
Ward instinctively shivered, but this was followed by a ripple of relief: he was back in his own world at least. He even thought he recognised the Brother from the execution at the Derricks on his first day in Bareheep.
A second Brother appeared. They each carried a lanthorn, but only one was lit – Brothers were resourceful like that. Their hoods were down, revealing their pale, egg-like shaven heads. Their cassocks swished across the floor as they moved, and Ward realised now what had made the strange tracks he had seen in the dust. They walked slowly around the sarcophagus, muttering in urgent tones. Something was wrong. Someone had been here.
The Brother with the unlit lanthorn went to the shelf from which Ward had taken the skulls and pointed at it. Neither Brother touched anything.
Ward hoped he was deep enough inside the tunnel. He had no fear of the Brothers following him in here, for they propbably would not fit, but they would no doubt look inside. Sure enough, one of the Brothers stepped in front of the tunnel mouth, blocking his vision. A lanthorn swung down. Its light flashed over the tunnel walls but fell short of where Ward lay. There was almost no dust on the tunnel floor, so no evidence of Ward's passage along it; nevertheless he felt a sudden urge to cough. He put his hand over his mouth until the feeling subsided. Finally the lanthorn and the Brother went away.
The Brothers continued muttering. Ward could not make out any words. Finally, he heard them move off. Was that the sound of their footsteps retreating back up the stairs? He wasn't sure. He waited until he could hear nothing, then waited some more. After what seemed an endless time had passed he pulled himself back down the tunnel again and peered out into the chamber.
The only movement was the flickering light of the two skull candles he had lit. All the others had gone out. He heard nothing. Satisfied that he was alone, he got out and up onto his feet again.
He was certain the Brothers knew he was down here. So why had they left?
To get the Reds.
Yes, that's what they would do. In the same way that they never acted as executioners, Brothers never arrested anyone themselves. It was important that the State, and not the Brotherhood, was seen to be enforcing the law. Non-violence was, after all, one of the pillars of Hattoism. It was rumoured the Brothers themselves carried out interrogations, but the public never witnessed these.
He realised he had only two options. The first was to retreat back into the tunnel and stay there until they gave up looking for him. But he could be down here for days. He had no water, no food. They could starve him out.
The second was to get out before they came back. To slip out like a shadow.
He wasted no time making his decision. He set off up the stairs.
He climbed as quickly and as quietly as he could. Wary of unexpectedly catching up to the Brothers, he stopped from time to time to listen, but they either moved in complete silence, or maintained a steady lead on him. The stairs curved gently to the left as he progressed, corkscrewing up through the earth. More shelves lined the stairwell, upon which rested hundreds more skulls. At intervals oil torches burned in the wall. The staircase grew dark in the spaces between the torches, but never so dark that he couldn't see the stairs. The staircase seemed endless.
He had lapsed into a dreamlike rhythm as he climbed, keeping his eyes down so he wouldn't stumble, so the top of the stairs came as a surprise. He suddenly found himself on a landing. A heavy wooden door stood before him, banded with iron and dark with years. He put his ear to it and listened. Nothing. He pushed it gently, expecting it to be locked, but it swung smoothly open at his touch. He peered out.
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Any guesses as to whose skellington was in the sarcophagus?
