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ACCORDING TO WHAT THE rest of her family thought, Marcie explained, the tunnel could only be reached by a trapdoor beneath the entrance carpet. But she’d discovered a book about it in the library and there was a much earlier entrance off a blocked-up staircase in the east wing. She handed Orlov a torch, took one for herself and grabbed a key from her wardrobe. They crossed the gallery in their socks. Thirty seconds later they emerged into another passageway and took a left-hand door to an oaken staircase.
He could see she was excited. Equally obviously, she didn’t want him to notice. What was she up to? Could she be leading him into a trap? That wouldn’t make sense. They’d already agreed their besiegers, whoever they were, didn’t require it.
Then he knew. She’d never been through the priest-hole before. She’d commandeered his predicament to fulfil what was probably a childhood ambition. She’d actually read a book about it, for God’s sake. He couldn’t help a smile. Then it occurred to him it was probably unsafe.
Too late now. The way she was acting, she’d probably never come this close before. Worse, she’d reached the point where she didn’t even need his company.
After climbing the staircase halfway, she lifted up four steps on hinges to reveal a dark cavity. A waft of icy, dank air greeted them. She flicked her torch on and off. “Ready?”
“Are you sure it’s safe?”
“Perfectly. I’ll go in front, since I know the way and there are quite a few false turns.”
“Why would there be false turns?”
“To confuse the King’s men. And because it was made from a pre-existing pothole. You don’t think the family had enough money to build a tunnel a mile long, do you? The Anglicans kept them in penury.”
“I know very little English history. When was the last time you went through here?”
“All the way to the end? About a week ago. I use it to sneak out. I just leave the Nintendo playing and Mummy and Daddy think I’m in my room. So long as things keep exploding, they’re happy.”
“What sort of condition’s it in?”
“We had it renovated by Sarah Beeny last week,” she replied tetchily. “Now are you coming or not?”
“Just one thing. When we get to the end, we say goodbye, agreed?”
She snorted. “You rejected my offer of marriage. What sort of a crazy desperado do you take me for?”
She switched on her torch and stepped inside the aperture. Orlov followed suit. Within a couple of seconds they alighted on a damp slate floor.
“Right,” she said, “there’s a hole in the ground in a second. We go down a ladder and then it’s a fairly straight track. What are you thinking of doing, by the way, when I get you out of here? I mean, where will you go?”
“If you’d asked me that earlier today, I’d have said, to the airport. I need to get back inside Russia, but I’ve decided I don’t need to be suicidal. No, I’m going to walk across Europe.”
They were descending the ladder now.
“How long do you think that will take?” she asked.
“A couple of months. I can reach Vera Gruchov’s people when I get there, I might be able to lie low for a while.”
“Who’s Vera Gruchov?”
“A liberal politician. One of the few powerful ones. She wrote to me in prison.”
“Is she in love with you?”
He laughed. “She’s your age.”
They reached the bottom of the ladder and they shone their torches about. They were in a cave big enough to stand up in. Stalactites as long as a man’s arm hung from the ceiling. Below them, Orlov could hear a stream rushing. In about five hundred yards, the path descended into muddy water.
“It’s not very deep,” she said. “Listen, what do you think of my brother?” she went on, in an obvious attempt to change the subject. “Do you like him?”
“We were only introduced yesterday. Since then, however, he’s saved my life and resigned in defence of my honour. The more interesting question is probably, what does he think of me? I shouldn’t imagine it’s anything good.”
“Yes, but he’s not here to ask.”
“I admire him.”
“Even though he’s a bit of a softie?”
“You mean, not macho? I’m afraid that particular characteristic plays no part whatsoever in my evaluation of men. I’ve seen how it can ruin things.”
“What a pity you couldn’t have worked with him a bit longer. He can really handle himself in a fight, you know. Even before he joined the police force. We were at school together. We had to go to a comprehensive because Mummy’s a bit of a lush old communist, although I was two years below him. I mean, can you imagine being called Jonathan Hartley-Brown in a rough comp? But no one ever made fun of him. Or if they did, they’d stopped doing it by the time I arrived. Me, I became plain ‘Marcie Brown’ within a week of joining. I once saw him whip this kid in the year above him, a great big kid he was. I can’t remember why. Squashing a bluebottle, probably.”
They were up to their knees in water now. Orlov decided it was time to interrupt.
“I seem to remember you saying we’d barely get our feet wet.”
“I meant it was nothing worth worrying about.”
Suddenly, the ledge beneath their feet dropped six inches and they were up to their waists.
“And you do this journey often, do you? Take my hand. Can you swim?”
“Yes, thank you, I can. About ... once a week. And it wasn’t quite this deep last time.”
There was a huge waterfall in front of them. They were going to have to pass through it to progress.
He laughed. “And when you get back, your parents never notice that you’re a bit wet?”
“I don’t necessarily report to them first thing,” she replied.
They passed through the waterfall and found themselves confronted by a forty-five degree slope ascending ten or twelve feet to a narrow horizontal cleft in the rock. It looked slimy.
“How do you normally negotiate this?” Orlov asked.
“Fingernails. It’s not as hard as it looks.”
“And when you’ve squeezed through that cleft, what’s on the other side?”
“Oh, just a straight track.”
“Up or down?”
“A bit of both. Okay, look, I admit it, I’ve never been in here before! Happy? Look,” she went on emotionally, “I’m always trying to get Jonathan to come in with me, but he won’t, and Daddy says it’s strictly out of bounds – he was going to have it closed up about a year ago. Satisfied? Shall we go back now?”
He sighed and shone his torch into the gap. “You go first so I can catch you if you slide back. Take your belt off and tie it round your torch and fix the other end back in your belt-buckle. I’ll shine your way from here.”
“You - you mean you’re not going to make us turn round?”
“Tell me, is it really an old priest-hole?”
“That bit was true, promise. Like I said, we’ve got a copy of the last time a survey was done on it, in the library. In nineteen-seventy. It’s a bit wet and treacherous in places, but it’s still negotiable: that’s what it says.”
“In nineteen-seventy. Forty years ago.”
She was already undoing her belt. “Yes ... Or I don’t know, it may have been eighteen-seventy. I can’t remember offhand.”
He ground his teeth. “Don’t go through that cleft until you’re absolutely sure there’s no danger. My guess is there’s another cave with a gentle incline. No priest would ever come this way if it didn’t start to get a little easier somewhere along the line.”
She climbed up and slipped back four times. Orlov took her ankles and hoisted her up till she was able to clutch the lip of the cleft. She raised herself till her head was poking over and switched on the torch.
“It is! It’s a gentle incline! Grab onto me and pull yourself up. We’ll go in together.”
There wasn’t room, but he reached her level quickly and she pulled herself through. He followed.
The floor was sand, and there was no longer space to stand up. The tunnel disappeared into the darkness even with both torches full on it, and there was no indication that it narrowed.
“We’ll have to crawl,” she said. “Do you want to go in front or shall I?”
“Let me,” he said. “We don’t know what’s up there.”
“Well, you can’t. I’m going in front.”
Once she set off, it was impossible to change positions. The cave contracted to the point where overtaking or even turning round was impossible. It became increasingly hot.
“I hope you’re not claustrophobic,” she said.
“How’s the air quality?”
“Good. I think we’re about to descend.”
“At what angle?”
“Down,” she said. “Into water.”
“We’re going to have to go back then.”
“Can’t you swim underwater?”
“I don’t want to.”
“It’s probably clear as crystal. You could open your eyes. And the torches are waterproof to a depth of ten metres. I bought them specially.”
He was gasping. She was wrong about the air: it was getting thinner. “We’ve come probably half a mile,” he said. “That means there’s another half mile to go. Can you swim underwater for half a mile? Can anyone?”
“Someone must be able to.”
“That doesn’t necessarily follow.”
“As for whether I can, I don’t know. I won’t know until I try. Neither of us will. You can swim, can’t you?”
“I’m more than capable. That’s not the issue. With the walls this tight, if you start drowning, you can’t turn round. Have you any idea how painful it is to drown?”
She shook her head and laughed. “Have you?”
“I was interrogated for six weeks in a maximum security prison. I’ve an idea how painful most things are.”
“As Elvis Presley once said: ‘A little less conversation, a little more action’.”
Before he knew what had happened, she slithered forward and disappeared underwater with barely a splash. He swore.
He inserted himself into the water. After the heat of the tunnel, the cold was like being electrocuted. He opened his eyes underwater and shone his torch in a circle. She was nowhere to be seen, but he’d soon catch her up.
He swam forward six or seven metres. But then just as his lungs were beginning to press, he reached a wall of solid rock, forcing him up. Two seconds later, he broke the surface again. This time, he was in a wide pool.
She sat on the edge, laughing. “You’re supposed to say, ‘You crazy fool, you could have got us both killed’. But think: how many priests do you know who can swim a full half mile with a monstrance full of communion wafers? It had to be only a short way.”
He swam to the edge and hauled himself out. She was getting cocky, now. He wished he’d never indulged her. Not for the first time in his life, he’d allowed himself to be mesmerised by someone’s yearning for something outlandish.
From what he could tell, they were in a cave as big as a warehouse. In places, the stalagmites met the stalactites, even though the ceiling lay in an obscurity beyond even torchlight. There were mounds of shale where the roof had collapsed and it echoed with a deafening dripping and sloshing and gurgling.
“It can’t be far from here,” she said.
“Next time you try something like that,” he said angrily, “I’m going to grab you and punch you unconscious.”
She laughed. “Don’t be stupid. We’re a team.”
“We need to look for the exit.”
“I know where the exit is. I’ve read the survey, remember.”
“The eighteen-seventy survey? Have you seen how much of the ceiling’s fallen in?”
“This cave’s probably been here millions of years,” she replied. “A hundred and forty years is hardly an eye-blink. Anyway, it could have been nineteen-seventy.”
“Let’s have a little less conversation, shall we?”
“It’s over here. You have to go under water again.”
“How far?”
She shrugged. “Ten yards. Cross my heart.”
“And then?”
“And then that’s it. We’ve done it. The exit’s right above us.”
“How far above?”
“I only looked at the survey, I didn’t memorise it. Here it is.”
He didn’t wait for her. He jumped into the water and felt around himself for a tunnel. There was an opening in front of him. He waited till she appeared beside him and pointed. She nodded. He hoped there wasn’t more than one.
Ten seconds later, they broke the surface again. They climbed out to find themselves in a muddy pit held intact with roots. She wrung her hair and re-tied it. A shaft of light shone from above. When they stood up, they were almost touching it.
“Lift me up,” she whispered. “I’ll go first, check the coast’s clear.”
He took a second to deliberate. If he did as she asked, he could follow her in no time, otherwise he’d have to hoist her up and that would take longer. He lifted her. She pushed on the area around the light source and it gave way. She poked her head through the hole she’d made.
“It’s daytime!”
“Where are we?”
“In some undergrowth. I’m going to pull myself up. How long till you can follow me?”
“I’m coming now.”
“There are two men. I’m going to create a diversion.”
“No, stop!”
Again, he was too late. A moment later, he heard a male yelp. He jumped and caught the lip of the opening and fell back into the pool. He cursed and scrambled out and tried again. He caught the overhang and exerted all his strength to pull himself so he was half-clear. He grabbed a rhododendron stem and yanked himself the rest of the way and stood up.
Marcie was in the middle of a scrap. Two bearded men in suits towered over her without looking particularly threatening. One rubbed his head and looked at his fingertips. “She’s drawn blood,” he said plaintively.
She adopted a martial arts stance, right foot forward, hands at hip height like cleavers. “Come on, then.”
“Just knock her out, John.”
“She’s the owner’s daughter,” John replied, talking about her as if she wasn’t there. “Barry met her earlier. Do you know what she said? She said, ‘Get out of my back garden’.”
“You sit on her. Then I’ll call Phillip.”
She lunged forward with a kick. John grabbed her foot and raised it so she fell on her back. She rolled to the side with a grunt and freed herself. Then she threw a punch. But John was ready. He twisted her elbow and grabbed her under both arms. He lifted her without enthusiasm and threw her on her back again, winding her.
“Careful, John. You could break her spine.”
She wheezed as if she was about to die. The two men looked down at her. Orlov approached them from behind, cleared his throat and they turned. He punched each in the chest simultaneously and cracked their heads together as they lost their balance. They fell in a heap.
The journey had been for nothing. The estate perimeter – a high brick wall fronted by hawthorns - was another two hundred yards west. He guessed the family must have increased its landholdings since the tunnel was built. He knelt down and took Marcie’s hand as she fought for air.
“Give it time,” he said. “It’ll pass. You’ve just had the breath knocked out of you, that’s all.”
“You were - meant – meant – to run the other way.”
He slid his arms under her and picked her up. “I think it’s time we went back to the house, don’t you?”
“Aren’t you going to escape?”
“I don’t think anyone here’s going to harm me. Not any more.”
“You haven’t killed them, have you?”
“They’ll be fine in about thirty minutes. Hardly even a headache.”
Behind the house the sun rose, turning the sky purple and giving the clouds gilt fringes. A blackbird sang. After the tunnel, the air smelt of flowers.
“This has been the best night of my life,” she said.
