A deep, resonant bell had sounded the eleventh hour of the day by the time the landlord had moved all of Father Andreas’ boxes from his residence, across the square and over to the Cathedral buildings. He wandered over to Tacit and Isabella, who had sat for the majority of the toil in the heat of approaching midday sunning themselves, dabbing his forehead and mumbling angrily under his breath.
“Well, thank you for all your help,” he said sarcastically, wiping the back of his neck and forehead dry of sweat. “Did I mention that I had a heart condition and my doctor has recommended that I rest?”
“Then get another job,” Tacit retorted, swinging his legs over the edge of the wall of the water fountain along which he had lain, recuperating. He was in no mood to help move boxes. If anything, he would have spent the time peering through their contents, but seeing as there were so many boxes and he didn’t wish to arouse suspicion, he decided that an hour under the restorative sun would do him more good. Also the lead of Father Andreas’ brother was an unexpected turn up. “Come on, let’s go,” Tacit clapped, helping Isabella from the wall with a politely offered hand.
“Go where?” the caretaker retorted. “I’m going for a drink first. You didn’t play fair. If you’d offered to help, maybe I would have taken you there first. But seeing as you decided to lounge around waiting for me to finish my lugging, then you can damn well wait around while I do a bit of glugging.”
Tacit stepped up to the man and, towering over him, shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he grunted. “You’ve kept us waiting long enough. Let’s hop to it,” Tacit barked, tugging at the man’s coat sleeve.
The caretaker grumbled the whole way back to his house and that of Alessandro Dequois next door. When they arrived, at first they said that there must be some mistake. The house was a butcher’s shop.
“He lives above the shop,” the landlord gestured with his thumb. “And thank you again for your help,” he said, gruffly, shuffling off to his own door. “If I die of cardiac arrest, I’ll make sure you’re not asked to give last rites.”
“We should have helped him,” Isabella suggested, watching the man slam the door of his home shut behind him. “If only to get here sooner.”
“He clearly needs the exercise,” Tacit growled back. “And I needed that rest. Come on, let’s see what this brother knows.”
Isabella grabbed the pull handled bell to the side of the wide shop fronted window. Only silence returned the greeting. Tacit pulled the handle again, more forcefully this time.
“It doesn’t matter how hard you pull it,” Isabella chided. “It’s all on the same mechanism.”
Tacit muttered something dark under his breath. He shoved his hands into his pockets and peered into the window of the shop.
“Looks closed,” he mumbled, sniffing at something in his nose.
“Maybe he’s in mourning?” Isabella answered, looking up the street. “Gone away. Wouldn’t be surprised. If you’d lost your brother.”
The Sister stood back from the building and peered up its front towards the large bay window facing down onto the street. The curtains were drawn, the room beyond dark, deserted. She turned away, looking up the street. At that moment, a dark haired woman appeared at the far end of it. She took a few steps in and then, on seeing Isabella and Tacit outside Alessandro’s house, checked her step.
“Tacit!” hissed Isabella, the urgency of her tone spinning the Inquisitor to look.
Immediately, Sandrine took a couple of short steps back to the corner from which she had appeared, turned and vanished around it.
“After her!” cried Tacit, bounding up the street with his long thunderous strides. Isabella was moving with him but was lighter and swifter, running like a gazelle despite her heavy travelling robes. She flew down the street in front of him, skipping into the road down which Sandrine had slunk. At the far end of it, a hundred yards away, Isabella could see Sandrine dart right into a side street. She was quick.
Without pausing to think, pausing to look back for Tacit, Isabella shot after her, her arms pumping like pistons, her Sister’s habit gathered up and drawn tight to her body as she ran. She reached the side street just as Sandrine turned off it, far off in the distance. It was a narrow and cobbled lane. There was a collapsed building halfway along it; rubble spewed out across it. She set off down it, leaping the rubble in a single bound.
She could hear Tacit huffing hard behind her, his heavy footsteps clacking echoes between the houses. Isabella thrust her head down and found another gear in her legs, tearing into the street down which Sandrine had flown. Her heart beat. The wind whistled in her hair and past her ears. She felt alive and charged.
Then, unceremoniously, she thudded head first into a baker coming the other way, loaves and baskets scattering in all directions. They went down in a cursing, tumbling tangle, dashing knees and elbows, as they fell and rolled. Tacit appeared around the corner and recovered the Sister from the man with whom she had collided. He was shouting and cursing, but his words were swallowed up when the immense figure of the Inquisitor loomed over the top of him and swiped the Sister away.
“She turned right at the top,” Isabella cried, trying to find her rhythm again above the ache in her knee. Her lungs burnt, her arms and legs stung from the fall.
“She’s quick,” puffed Tacit, soaked with sweat.
They reached the turning and instantly stopped, hugging the wall for breath, trying to get oxygen into their tightening lungs. Ahead was a dead end. A row of terraced houses on the left and right led to a solid wall, as high as the houses either side of it.
They had her.
Breathing a little more gently, the pair wandered slowly into the cul-de-sac, their eyes wide, darting about them, their senses sharpened, looking to see any movements which might be the woman attempting to climb out of the dead end to freedom.
“You hear a door open?” Tacit demanded to know, looking along the row of terraced houses and their front doors.
Isabella shook her head.
“Me neither.”
He stood in the middle of the dark cobbled street, halfway between the junction and the dead end, and turned slowly around on the spot, peering about himself in every angle. Some trickery was at play. Either that, or Isabella had been wrong and the woman had not turned right at all. For Sandrine had vanished.
Suddenly Isabella called, “Tacit! Here!”
She was looking down at a flagstone near to the far wall. The large grey coloured stone had been moved to one side, revealing a dark hole descending down into the darkness beyond.
Their eyes touched for the briefest of moments and then Tacit was heaving the large flagstone to the side to allow better access inside. They peered down into the gloom.
“Ladder,” said Isabella, indicating the rusted bars sinking down into the blackness.
There was a damp vague smell of mould which rose up from the depths.
“Must be the medieval tunnels Cardinal Poré spoke about,” said Tacit, his breath slowly gathering itself. He looked back up the street to the junction from which they had come. He passed the flat of his hand across his eyes, wiping sweat from them, and looked back into the blackness below.
“After me?” he asked, looking at the Sister and then back to the hole. She nodded and at once he clambered forward, dropping himself down onto the first rungs of the ladder, sinking slowly into the gloom.
Isabella watched him vanish into the yawning mouth. She hesitated for a moment and then lent forward to follow.
“It’s alright,” Tacit called wryly. “I won’t look up.”
It was almost pitch black in the tunnel. The ladder sank twenty feet down onto a hard chalk floor. The air was damp, cool, heavy with a musty smell of lichen and stale vegetables. From the light above they could make out the walls of the cavern, ten feet wide, roughly hewn from the chalk beneath the city. In front of them ran a narrow low tunnel, only darkness within it, only darkness beyond.
Tacit stepped forward and forced his way into it, his body almost too big for the opening to the tunnel. Isabella went after him, her more delicate frame more suited to the confines of the passageway.
Within a few steps, neither of them could see a thing.
“Completely black,” Tacit called back, his hand on the wall beside him, feeling his way. He stopped and hung his head, gathering his breath.
“We can’t go on, Tacit. It’s too dark. She must have left herself a lantern down here.”
Tacit peered on into the gloom. “Damn it!” he roared, and whacked a clenched fist into the smooth chalk of the right hand wall.