3. Secret Tunnels

“For goodness sake, don’t take any risks, Johnson,” Colonel Jamieson spoke briskly as the first of the two soldiers who’d volunteered to suss out the earthquake damage, dangled his legs over the wide split that had opened in the floor of one of the castle’s dungeons. “And that goes for you, too, Mason,” he added, turning to the other man who was still being roped up.

It was the deepest of all the dungeons and, until then, everyone had assumed that the bedrock of the castle lay underneath it. The opening in the rock, however, had caused more than a few raised eyebrows among the team of engineers, for the strong current of fresh air that blew from it, indicated that there was a lot more than rock under their feet.

Ian Johnson looked into the hole in the ground, assessing the possibilities. The opening, fortunately, was wide enough to give him plenty of room to manoeuvre but sloped steeply sideways into the depths.

“We’ll watch out, Sir. Don’t worry!” Stuart Mason grinned confidently, as he made a final adjustment to his harness.

Ian lowered himself carefully into the hole and, hanging on to the rope with one hand, shone his torch downwards, hoping to see how deep the shaft actually was. The incline made it impossible to judge, however, and as the voices from above grew fainter, he was grateful for the comforting sense of security the rope provided. Eventually, he came to the bottom of the shaft and, feet now planted firmly on solid ground, he relaxed and took stock of his surroundings. Shining the beam of the torch this way and that, he was surprised to discover that this was no crack caused by the earthquake; he was in a tunnel … a tunnel that had been cut out of solid rock.

Ian frowned. Like every other soldier in the regiment, he knew about the underground tunnels that ran from the castle to the High Street and beyond. They were well documented, appearing on many of the old maps in the archives. He’d peered into a few of them himself but hadn’t fancied exploring them, knowing that over the years they’d become unstable; rockfalls making many of them actively dangerous. However, none of them, to his knowledge, had been cut out of solid rock — nor were they anywhere near as deep as this.

The silence around him was deathly and his torch, although powerful, only lit up part of the tunnel before the beam petered out into the darkness. The air, however, was fresh and turning the beam up the shaft, he pulled three times on the rope; the signal for Stuart to join him.

Stuart arrived several minutes later in a scatter of small stones, and was equally impressed. He looked at Ian and whistled in amazement. “Well, well,” he said, his eyebrows raised, “somebody’s taken a lot of trouble to carve out this tunnel — a whole lot of trouble!”

“That’s what I thought,” Ian nodded, unhooking his rope from his harness. “Let’s see where it leads! There’s plenty of fresh air coming through.”

Pulses racing, they shone the torch round the walls and set off, moving along swiftly and easily. They hadn’t, however, gone all that far when the tunnel stopped abruptly, blocked by a mass of earth and shards of rock. Not only that, a wide crack split the wall of the tunnel on one side.

“The wall seems to have opened up here,” Ian breathed, shining his torch into the wide cleft that stretched from floor to ceiling. Cautiously, he stuck his head inside. “Hey, hang on a minute,” he whispered, “this is where the fresh air’s coming from. It’s blowing through here!” He edged further in. “And I can see daylight!” he added. “Come on,” he gestured, “there’s plenty of room. It gets wide enough to walk through. Might as well have a look!”

Stuart switched off his torch as daylight streamed in and then cannoned into Ian who’d come to an abrupt halt in front of him. “What’s up?” he muttered, before falling silent as they both took in the fantastic sight that lay before them. The cleft opened out into a small room that, like the tunnel, seemed to have been carved out of the rock itself. Lit by the stream of sunlight that poured through a gash in its outer wall, they saw a scene that took them straight back in time. Dimly remembered childhood stories of knights in armour and romantic castles flew through their minds as they gaped in wonder at the huge black flag with the golden sword in its centre that hung, lopsidedly, above a coffin; a stone coffin. Its lid had obviously come off during the earthquake as its shattered remains were scattered across the floor, but that wasn’t what held their attention for, from where they were standing, they could see that the coffin contained a body.

“Wow!” Ian breathed, excitement flowing through him like a river. “What’s this, then?”

“A knight by the look of things,” Stuart answered as they picked their way over the rock-strewn floor to peer inside, for the coffin contained the skeleton of a man in armour.

Ian frowned and looked round. It seemed a strange sort of burial.

“Whoever put him here, laid his sword and his horn beside him,” Stuart muttered, moving closer, his eyes taking in the grinning skull that looked pathetically small inside the crumbling helmet. He took a step backwards. “That must be his standard!” he muttered, looking up at the black flag that hung on the wall above the alcove. “The sword on it looks like the one he was buried with. Look at the detail on the hilt. There’s a dragon curving round it. And see here, the same design’s on the mouthpiece of the horn.”

Ian nodded. “What a find!” he whispered, turning to examine the rest of the stone chamber. “We’re going to hit the headlines with this! Can you imagine the excitement it’s going to cause! Archaeologists are going to have a field day!”