Leaving the library, the volume of Vitruvius was still clasped in Hermitage’s hand. Given the significance of sundials to the demise of Ignatius he thought it sensible to keep it to hand, in case someone tried to remove it. When asked who was likely to remove it, as no one else could read to see what it was, Hermitage explained that it was just a precaution. He hated to admit that having a book from this great library in his possession was a huge pleasure. Just feeling the weight of the thing reassured him somehow that the world still had value and could create great works. It was not full of killers.
Having decided that the tunnels under the monastery were where they needed to go next, Hermitage had assumed that was what would happen. Egbert though, had other ideas; or rather he changed his ideas quite frequently.
To begin with he had just been nervous about the ghosts but had reluctantly agreed to take them to the right spot. Then, as the right spot came into sight he changed his mind and concluded that he was going nowhere near the place as the ghosts and spirits of the dead would rise up from the ground and eat his soul. Despite reassurances that this was extremely unlikely, Egbert promised that they would be able to see the ghosts for themselves when they got close enough, and he would keep his distance.
Dismissing this nonsense, Hermitage led in the direction indicated until they drew near to the far corner of the monastery compound where the walls to the east and the south drew together. Into this space a shelter had been built using the main walls of the place to support a simple roof of wooden tiles. The whole space was about thirty feet square and under the shelter of its roof it did look pretty dark and uninviting.
Doubtless it was the log store or something similar and so Hermitage put his concerns behind him and strode confidently ahead.
His concerns jumped out in front of him again as he thought he saw a white shape in the back of the enclosure. A rather human one, standing tall and still.
‘The ghosts,’ Egbert wailed.
‘There are no ghosts,’ said Hermitage, although just at the moment he was having his doubts. ‘It’s simply a trick of the light.’
‘What light?’ Egbert asked, disarmingly. It was true there was no light in the store, or whatever this building was. And it was getting quite dark now. A good moon was rising in the sky which did nothing for mysterious figures hidden in dark corners.
Hermitage found that his feet wouldn’t move. Egbert’s were taking him slowly backwards and Wat was squatting down to try and see what was there before going further.
‘Oh, for goodness sake,’ said Cwen, snorting at the lot of them as she strode forward and passed under the roof.
‘Eek,’ said Egbert, perhaps expecting her to disappear completely.
After a moment she re-appeared and beckoned them to join her. ‘It’s alright,’ she said, in a mocking tone. ‘I’ve told the ghosts they’ve got to behave.’
No one moved.
‘There are no ghosts,’ Cwen shouted. ’You idiots,’ she added, for good measure.
Egbert seemed happy to remain an idiot and stayed where he was. Hermitage and Wat stepped cautiously forward, Hermitage bending as he approached to try and see what was there before he went too far.
‘Ah,’ he said, when the contents of the covered area were revealed but turning his nose up at the smell that went with them. ‘More statues.’
‘Lots of them,’ said Cwen and she walked among the figures, most of them slightly smaller than life-size but very well made of some bright stone. There were figures of men and women, many draped with clothing carved so well that it looked ready to flow in the breeze. Unfortunately, many of them weren’t draped with anything at all and the sight of so many naked people gathered together, albeit stone people standing on plinths, was enough to bring a flush to Hermitage’s cheeks. Whoever had made these figures had clearly prized accuracy in their art; an accuracy which was revealing things Hermitage had last seen in one of Wat’s tapestries.
‘Well, well,’ said Wat, strolling amongst the works. ‘This gives me a few ideas.’ He pointed out one statue which Hermitage hadn’t noticed, or perhaps of their own accord his eyes had told him not to look.
This one was of a man and woman. Neither of them were clothed and they had their hands upon one another. ‘What manner of people would allow something like this to be even thought of, let alone realised in stone?’ Hermitage gasped.
‘Romans,’ said Wat, with a grin. ‘Magnificent people.’
‘Ahem,’ Hermitage coughed, anxious to move on. ‘These must have been cast aside when the place became a monastery.’
‘But not destroyed, eh?’ said Wat, winking for some reason. ‘I expect the monks popped back now and again to make sure they were alright.’
Egbert had cautiously joined them and was peering at the statues. ‘I was told they were ghosts,’ he complained.
‘I bet you were,’ said Wat.
‘If we could concentrate on the matter in hand,’ Hermitage tried to get them back on the subject of drains.
‘This one’s got quite a lot in hand,’ said Wat, pointing at another statue that was even worse than the first one.
Despite himself, Hermitage looked over, and gasped. He knew men and women were built like that but surely they should be minding their own business a lot more than these two were doing. ‘Let us look for an entrance to the tunnels,’ he insisted.
‘This one’s got an inscription,’ Cwen called out from the back of the statues.
Hermitage made his way towards her, hoping that this would take their attention away from the representations staring them in the face. As he approached he worried that the inscription might be just as bad.
Thankfully, he found quite a modest statue. It was still a female figure but at least the drapes and coverings had been put in the right places. There was still a bit too much bare flesh for Hermitage but at least none of it was actually improper. He peered at the Latin inscription adorning the base of the statue.
‘Adeorna,’ he translated. ‘Goddess of the journey, guard our steps.’ He turned to the others. ‘How ridiculous,’ he said. ‘A goddess for a journeys. What sort of people were these that thought there was a God just for journeys? They probably even prayed to her. No wonder they have vanished in the dust of history with pagan, sinful behaviour like that.’
Wat nodded at Hermitage’s statement. ‘Not all like Saint Botwulf then.’
Hermitage couldn’t see what that had to do with anything.
‘A patron Saint of travellers who probably gets prayed to before a journey.’
No, Hermitage couldn’t get what Wat was on about.
‘And Christopher,’ Wat added. ‘That’s two saints for travellers.’
‘Yes,’ said Hermitage. ‘What’s your point?’
‘Oh nothing, really,’ Wat shrugged with a smile for some reason or other.
‘This one’s Cloacina,’ Cwen called again, beckoning them over. ‘Isn’t she the one in charge of the drains?’
They all gathered at the statue which looked pretty similar to the Goddess of journeys. The name of the God was clearly spelled out on the plinth.
‘How did they tell them apart?’ Hermitage asked, shaking his head. ‘They all look alike.’
Wat was still smiling. ‘Good job we’ve got you to tell us which saint is which. After all, they don’t all look alike at all.’
Again, Wat was going on about saints. Perhaps Hermitage’s constant nagging was having an effect at last.
Cwen was strolling around the statue which was placed almost against the wall. She disappeared from sight around the back of the statue. ‘And here’s her drain,’ she called.
Hermitage dearly hoped that wasn’t a rude term for something.
In fact, at the back of the statue there was a hole in the ground. It was a very neat hole, about four feet across with stone edging and it clearly served some purpose. The purpose at the moment seemed to be to let the most appalling smell come up from below.
‘Definitely the drain then,’ Wat observed with a wrinkle of his nose.
‘And it is more like a tunnel,’ Hermitage observed, noting that the size of the hole would make it very easy for someone to climb down.
‘A big, dark tunnel,’ said Cwen, sticking her head down into the opening, which seemed a remarkably brave thing to do.
‘And Ignatius sent us here?’ Egbert asked, with a look of disgusted disappointment on his face.
‘He did,’ Hermitage confirmed. ‘So we must go down and see what he has sent us to find. Perhaps the secrets of his life and death are hidden below. It would be a good place. No one is likely to stroll down there by mistake.’
Wat appraised the entrance to the drain. ‘Some secrets are perhaps best left secret.’
‘Having come this far, we must go on,’ said Hermitage, disappointed that Wat had seemed terribly keen when it was all about treasure. ‘We can’t back out now.’
‘We could,’ Wat suggested.
‘Yes, we could,’ said Cwen, her hands on her hips and that look on her face that usually got Wat to do what she wanted. ‘And we could leave the treasure for the next person to find.’
‘Pretty smelly treasure,’ said Wat.
‘It’ll wash,’ Cwen replied. ‘Like your clothes,’ perhaps neatly hitting the reason for Wat’s reluctance to think about climbing into Cloacina’s drain.
Hermitage appraised the opening and the darkness coming out of it. ‘We’ll need a light of some sort,’ he said.
‘There were oil lamps in Ignatius’s chamber,’ said Egbert.
‘Good,’ Hermitage nodded. ‘Although we’ll have to be careful. I know that putting a lighted flame into an enclosed space such as this can give rise to a great conflagration.’
Egbert looked impressed, ‘Knowledgeable, isn’t he?’ he said to Wat.
Wat smiled, knowingly, ‘He had a bad experience with a lighted flame and a privy once.’
Egbert frowned and looked a lot less impressed as he went to fetch the lamps.
Hermitage used the time to prowl around the covered space, ignoring the most explicit statues and trying to focus on the opportunity for learning about the ways of the Romans. After three new statues he had learned far more about their ways than ever wanted to. He returned to the drain opening. ‘Where do you think it goes?’
Wat joined him, a piece of cloth delicately held against his nose. ‘I think we can tell which way one end goes,’ he observed.
‘Presumably the other must go out to sea,’ Hermitage looked in that direction, beyond the wall of the monastery.
‘Best place for it,’ said Cwen.
Hermitage looked at the ground around him and at the wall of the monastery, and frowned. ‘But how? As far as I can tell the sea is already higher than the ground here anyway. Why isn’t the drain full of sea water?’
‘Wat shrugged, ‘Maybe Cloacina’s down there holding it back. Or the God of keeping the sea out of your pipes.’
Hermitage coughed, ‘Be serious. Look.’ He waved his arm in the general direction of where they knew the sea was. ‘We all saw the water. Why isn’t it in here?’
‘Clever people,’ Wat nodded to the statues.
There was no time for further debate as Egbert returned carrying four simple oil lamps. They were plain clay, about the size of your hand and were a simple flat container with a spout at one end holding the wick.
‘Roman as well,’ Hermitage observed.
Egbert took one of the lamps into the shelter of the building and produced a bundle containing flint from his habit. A couple of simple strikes and the oil lit to a gentle flickering flame. Applying this to the other lamps they were soon prepared for their journey into the drain. Well, as far as light was concerned anyway.
Hermitage took his lamp to the edge of the hole and, leaning back as far as he could, he lowered his arm into the hole, turning his face away as he did so. When nothing happened he took a cautious look into the drain. ‘It seems fine,’ he reported.
The others came and looked over his shoulder down into the space. The light from the lamp was virtually no help whatsoever so Hermitage lowered it as far as he could reach.
They saw that in the bottom of the space was a trickle of water that didn’t bear close examination. What it was running in was a remarkable sight. An almost perfectly circular tunnel ran to left and right, every inch of it lined with equally spaced and identical bricks. Hermitage couldn’t immediately imagine how anything like this could be built at all, let alone why anyone would go to all this trouble for a drain. A drain was a simple trench dug where you needed it. When it collapsed, or got blocked, you just dug it out again. This thing looked like was built to last a hundred years. What a waste of effort. These Romans clearly had too much time on their hands.
The drop to the bottom of the tunnel was at least five feet and to walk along inside would be easy. Never mind the thing being built of brick, why was it so big? Hermitage imagined that a fort full of Roman soldiers might well be able to fill a thing this size. A handful of monks would barely trouble it.
It still worried him why the tunnel wasn’t sloshing with sea water, being five feet below ground which was itself lower than the water.
‘In we get then,’ Wat said with strained enthusiasm. ‘Though goodness knows what we’re going to find in here.’
‘We’ll know it when we see it,’ Hermitage assured him. ‘Just as the altar led us to the library, so the book leads us here.’
‘Persuaded into a drain by a book,’ Wat huffed as he sat on the edge of the entrance. ‘Are you sure this is…’ He never got to finish the sentence as Cwen pushed him in the back.
The language which emerged from the drain put the smell firmly in its place as Wat went into some detail about what he would do to Cwen when he got hold of her.
Cwen simply grinned at the onslaught and went over to lower herself as well.
‘Have you seen the state of my shoes?’ Wat could be heard remonstrating with Cwen as she joined him.
Egbert followed and dropped into the hole with agility. Hermitage sat on the edge and looked down into the blackness below. Rather like a dog trying to find the right place to sleep he twisted and turned looking for the best grip to lower himself without injury. Eventually he found himself laying on the floor with his legs over the edge, unable to go backwards or forwards. ‘Erm,’ he said. This was followed by ‘Eek,’ as someone pulled him from below.
. . .
In the shadows of the statue of Salacia, goddess of seawater, adorned with the inscription “please don’t drown us”, something stirred as the last head dropped down into the drain. A figure, most certainly not stone, detached itself from the darkness and moved over to Cloacina’s drain. Satisfied with something or other, it moved over to the back of the shelter, where it started to shift a large stone tablet which was propped against the wall. The tablet was a fascinating record of the life of Marcus Vertigius Rex, last commander of the fort and it explained an awful lot - if anyone had been able to read it.
Behind the tablet, emerging from a slot in the wall specifically made for the purpose, was a large lever. Another inscription, carved with great skill and artistry, explained the purpose of this device. The figure had not a clue what the markings meant, but he knew what happened when you pushed down on the sticky-out bit; which he now did with a rather worrying smile on his face.
. . .
Wat had led the group away from the sea and in towards the monastery buildings. Hermitage argued that surely this was the most unpleasant direction of travel, but Wat suggested that if anything was hidden, it was the most likely to be closer to the monastery than out near the sea where anyone might find it. Hermitage wondered who would be wandering in from the sea to find anything and which point Wat offered to split the group in two. The monks could head for the sea, on their own, while he and Cwen explored inland. Hermitage decided that he’d rather be in company.
As they walked along, the tunnel became no less impressive. The standard of construction was maintained and the lamps revealed markers in the wall, indicating the distance travelled.
Hermitage’s amazement was undiminished as well. ‘What people would go to all this trouble for a drain?’
Wat was hobbling along with one foot either side of the stream to try and keep his feet out of the worst of it. ‘Probably people who had five hundred Roman soldiers up above doing their best to fill the thing on a regular basis. Don’t know about you, but I’d rather spend a bit of time and effort up front than have to go into the drains every night to try and clear them.’
Hermitage could see the sense of that but he was still puzzled. ‘What I still don’t understand is how they work at all. The water you’re standing in doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.’
Wat looked down and tutted that he was, indeed, standing in the water again. ‘How did that happen?’ he lifted his foot and shook a soggy shoe.
Hermitage examined the floor of the tunnel. ‘The water does seem to be deeper here,’ he observed.
‘How can it be deeper?’ said Cwen. ‘The tunnel isn’t going downhill.’
Hermitage was impressed with her reasoning. In his library browsing he had come across a book by one Boethius which concerned something called geometry. That seemed to be all about lines and slopes and things. Perhaps there was something in the volume of Pollo that might help. By the time he had thought about this the water appeared to have got deeper still. ‘Do you think people are, you know, using the drains?’ he asked with some distaste.
They all looked at the floor. Wat sniffed the air. ‘Do you detect a certain salty tang to it now?’
They all sniffed and looked none the wiser.
Cwen nodded back the way they had come. ‘It seems to be moving in from that way.’
Hermitage looked back down the tunnel, and then ahead of them. There was definitely something odd going on. He pondered the problem for a moment. ‘I say,’ he said, ‘I’ve just had the most marvellous idea.’
‘Do tell,’ said Wat with a hint of impatience that the water was now approaching his ankles.
‘Well,’ Hermitage explained his idea. ‘If you had a drain like this, down below the sea, as it were, what you could do is put a gate on the end where it comes out in the water.’
‘A gate?’
‘That’s right. Then, when the tide is high, you open the gate and sea water rushes in and fills the tunnel with nice clean sea water. When the tide goes out again, it takes all the water and the filth with it and you close the gate.’
Egbert was rubbing his chin at the explanation. ‘But if the water is always higher than the end of the tunnel, it will never run away.’
‘Hm,’ said Hermitage. ‘That is true.’ He gave the problem some more thought. ‘Perhaps there was a wheel of buckets…’
Wat held a hand up to stop him. He spoke slowly and there was worry in his voice. ‘Did you say a gate could be opened which let the sea in?’
‘Well, that’s the theory,’ said Hermitage. ‘But, as Brother Egbert, points out, there are several practical problems relating to the height of the water.’
Wat’s voice was now getting positively excited, ‘And what would you say the practical problems would be for anyone who was in the tunnel when the gate was opened.’
‘Oh my,’ said Hermitage, ‘that wouldn’t be very wise at all. Who would get themselves in such a position?’
‘We would,’ Wat shouted as he pointed down the tunnel towards the wall of water that was coming their way. ‘Run,’ he added, unnecessarily.
They did run, and there was only one direction to go, but Hermitage wasn’t sure where it was going to get them. If the tunnel filled up with water, where could they go?
‘Look for a privy,’ Wat shouted, guarding the flame on his lamp very carefully, ‘and climb up it.’
The noise of the rushing water was intense now, blocking out any chance of discussion, or even thought. It wouldn’t be long before it fell upon them and carried them down the tunnel whether they liked it or not.
‘Perhaps there’s another drain hole,’ Hermitage shouted, ‘like the one we came down. At that moment the water did catch up with him, taking his feet, swarming over him and bowling him along like a skittle. The lamps were all extinguished and in the darkness he found himself thinking it was quite good that the water was deep as he wasn’t hitting himself on the walls of the tunnel. Then he concluded that deep was a bad thing as it might stop him breathing.
The drag of his habit increased as it absorbed more than his own weight in water and his swimming ability, which did not exist, did nothing to aid his buoyancy. He managed to get his head above the pounding water to take a breath before he was dragged under again and thrown around like something small and brown in a sewer full of water. At the moment that he started thinking he would quite like to take a breath, he found he was still under the water. It felt that he was being dragged along the bottom of the tunnel and if he could get his feet under him he could push upwards to the air. The water had other plans for his feet though and seemed to be trying to remove them completely by shaking them from side to side.
He knew that he had to take a breath really very soon now and felt compelled to do so, underwater or not. His reasoning was still sufficient to tell him that if he did this, he would drown, but his body wasn’t listening to his reason.
He thought that this was ridiculous. He was in a relatively small tunnel with sea water running through it. Drowning happened in big rivers, or over the side of a boat. It didn’t happen underground. This situation was simply unacceptable.
It was just crossing his mind to try and take his habit off, to prevent the thing dragging him to his death. Naturally this would be enormously embarrassing should Cwen be there when he emerged, but probably not as embarrassing as being dead.
He started to heave at the rope around the waist of his garment, which had unhelpfully swollen with water and he could not untie the knot. Suddenly he felt a pull on his shoulders. Perhaps someone was trying to help. He hoped it wasn’t Cwen.
The pull grew stronger, dragging him upwards until he at last emerged from the surface of the water and could take a gasping, gurgling breath. He coughed and spluttered and managed to get his feet underneath him as the arms from above held him firm. He looked up and saw those strong arms clothed in the simple garb of a habit. Egbert did look like a very capable man, thank the Lord that he had been on hand. This must be another drain outlet which they had luckily come across.
‘Brother Hermitage,’ the voice above called as it hauled him from the deadly stream.
Hermitage looked up and gave a weak smile to his rescuer.
Then he screamed. As he faded into unconsciousness his reason still told him that it must be Brother Egbert. His near drowning had confused him and done the most appalling thing; it had replaced Egbert’s face with that terror from his past, Prior Athan. Still at least when he woke up everything would be back to normal.