CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The cellar was icy and dark, but when Vita shivered it was not with cold. She reached into her bag and pulled out the torch – the battery was very low now, and so it cast only a faint glow, but it was better than nothing – and the two half-burned candles she had stowed there. She flicked a match with her thumbnail – a trick her grandfather had taught her – and, for once, it lit. She looked at the faces in front of her.

‘Why didn’t you tell me you weren’t going to run?’ she said.

‘Would you have brought us with you, if we told you?’ said Samuel.

‘No,’ said Vita. ‘Of course not.’

‘Well then,’ said Silk.

‘We’re a troupe now,’ said Arkady. ‘We fought together; we ate together. We’re a crew.’

Vita felt the warmth of it spread up her stomach to her face. But before she could speak, the lock on the door crunched, and the door opened a crack. ‘Don’t be doing anything stupid. Sorrotore said to say he’s in the motorboat. He’ll be here soon enough.’

Vita’s heart jolted. ‘What motorboat?’ she whispered.

But the door slammed shut. Four faces stared at each other.

‘Sorrotore can’t come here!’ said Vita. ‘That’s not the plan! He was just supposed to tell the men where to dig! So they’d be distracted, and I could search the house. And that’s why we came by the last train – so he can’t follow! It would take hours and hours longer to drive.’ Her voice was very small. ‘I didn’t think of a motorboat.’

The dark house, in the middle of the dark lake, she could face. The shotgun, she could face. But Sorrotore – his smile, and his eyes, and the power that he wore like cloth laid across his shoulders – she had not counted on that. All the remaining strength in her leg gave way, and she sat down on the floor.

‘There’s nothing we can do about it now,’ said Silk. She reached inside her white swan-feather cloak and drew out a small cloth bag. She dumped it open, and a flash of bright cloth, silk and wool, came tumbling out.

‘Here. If we’re going to do this – and, Vita, we are, and you can’t stop us – I thought we should be dressed in the way that makes sense to us. I packed your clothes while you were washing this morning.’

‘My sweater!’ said Arkady.

There was scuffling in the dark.

Arkady’s sweater glowed deep scarlet in the candlelight. Samuel flexed his arms in his black singlet, his black cotton trousers skimming the ground. Both boys were barefoot despite the cold. Silk wore a green dress that came down to her knees, fraying at the hem. The sleeves ended above her wrist, leaving her hands clear and free.

Vita felt by candlelight for her clothes. She pulled on her grandma’s liquid-soft silk shirt, and her bright red skirt, falling full to the knee, perfect for running. She retied the laces on her boots. From her own bag she took a square of oil cloth and shoved it in her back pocket, added a stub of candle, then double-checked her penknife. She flicked it open and tested the edge of the blade with her thumb. It was sharp.

Her hands were shaking. ‘Ready?’ She turned her collar up, and smelt the dry sweetness of her grandmother’s perfume.

‘Let’s go treasure-hunting,’ said Arkady.

They waited while Silk knelt at the door, her lock-pick in hand.

‘What were you going to do if we had run off? How were you going to get out?’ she asked Vita.

‘I’ve been learning,’ said Vita. She pulled out a length of wire from her pocket and showed Silk. ‘I reckoned it might take me an hour or two, but I’d get there in the end.’

A smile twitched – unwillingly, fleetingly – at Silk’s lip. ‘Well,’ she said, and the lock clicked under her hand, ‘that didn’t take an hour.’

Vita peered under the door, looking for feet, or any trace of a guard. ‘They should both be outside. I think they’ll be digging.’ Adrenaline was starting to fizz through her blood, and she felt her whole body quickening.

She pushed open the door. The corridor was lit by a single gas lamp on the wall.

‘Nobody,’ she said, and the four children edged into the hall.

‘Which way?’ whispered Samuel.

‘Grandpa said it’s in the old hiding place. That almost certainly means the safe. The safe is in the drawing room,’ said Vita. ‘This way.’

‘But if it’s there, in the safe, won’t Sorrotore have already found it?’ asked Silk.

Vita shook her head. ‘It’s not an obvious safe. It’s not behind one of the paintings, or anything like that. It’s hidden.’

They tiptoed down the passageway, and came out in the kitchen, then passed through a swinging door into the entrance hall.

The hall was as huge as it was dirty, but the moonlight cast the blue walls into navy. The flagstoned floor was cold even through her shoes, and the vast crystal chandelier still hung from a rope of chains above, dusty and candle-less.

She leaned against the old grandfather clock, closed her eyes, and summoned up the blueprint in her mind. She could see it clearly – every room, labelled in neat block capitals.

‘The drawing room is through here,’ she said. A marble-paved corridor led off the hall. ‘Second door to the left.’ They darted in, and Vita closed the door soundlessly behind them.

Four pent-up breaths were released, and then, as Vita’s torchlight cast across the room, Arkady gasped. Most of the furniture had been sold by Grandpa and Grandma, but the few sofas and armchairs which remained had been torn open in the back and seat, and the stuffing lay in piles on the floor of the room. The stuffed polar bear head lay cut open on the floor.

‘He’s been searching,’ said Arkady.

‘Someone should guard the door,’ said Vita.

Silk nodded. ‘I’ll watch through the keyhole.’

‘Where’s the safe?’ asked Samuel.

Vita gestured at the vast fireplace. ‘In there.’

‘Under the floor?’

‘No. It’s inside the chimney. Grandpa said it meant you got covered in soot every time you opened it, but it’d never be found.’

Vita crossed to the fireplace. It was as large as a wardrobe, and the chimney was vast, wide enough to fit a filing cabinet inside. ‘I can’t see … Wait, no, I can! I see it – but it’s at least halfway up the chimney!’

‘Do you know the code?’ asked Samuel.

Vita nodded. ‘It’s my birthday.’

Samuel came to join her, and looked up the chimney. ‘Do you want me to go?’ he said quietly.

Her foot was screaming yes, but Vita shook her head. This was the final stage: it had to be her. ‘I’ve got to do it.’

She rubbed at her left leg, to put the life back into it, and ducked into the chimney. She lifted her left shoe and set it against the opposite wall. She braced herself, then lifted the other leg, pressing her back against the wall. Slowly, painfully, she began to wriggle upwards, her knees shaking with the effort.

‘Good!’ Arkady whispered.

Her head was inside the chimney; then her torso and shoulders. She breathed in, and soot pressed against the back of her throat.

Then a sound, so quiet it could be the breath of the house, made Vita freeze.

It was Silk’s voice. ‘Someone’s coming!’

Frantically Vita clicked off her torch and edged herself higher, dragging the skin of her back against the wall, until the whole of her body was wedged inside the chimney. She could see nothing except blackness. There was a barely audible scuffling as the others dived for hiding places.

And then the door opened.

Vita, peering down past her own body at the floor, saw the room illuminate with torchlight, followed by slow footsteps.

She squeezed her eyes shut. It was like an agonising, hideous game of hide-and-seek.

The footsteps came further into the room. Vita’s spine was aching, and the dust in her throat was starting to sting. She fought back the urge to cough.

The feet sounded as though they were retreating. The light moved towards the door; then it hesitated, and flicked once more around the room. There was a thud; it sounded as though the guard had kicked a sofa. Dust billowed suddenly up the chimney, and Vita’s body convulsed as she let out the smallest sound – a strangulated, muted cough.

The feet paused. Then another man’s voice came down the corridor, too faint to hear, but the impatience in it was clear. The man in the room grunted. Feet strode out, closing the door behind them.

There was silence. Then, in the quietest of whispers, Samuel spoke. His voice was near the chimney.

‘Are you all right in there?’

‘Yes,’ said Vita. ‘Who was it?’

‘The guard,’ said Silk.

‘You said they’d be digging,’ said Arkady.

‘I thought they would be,’ said Vita.

She tensed every muscle, and gritted every single tooth, and pushed herself the last six inches higher into the chimney. It was narrower now. In the wall to the left of her, at the height of her shoulder, she felt the sudden chill of iron.

She switched on the torch.

She could see her knuckles, skinned and stained with something dark and wet. She could also see, set into the door of the safe, a dial. Slowly, her arms cramped and hands fumbling inside the chimney, she turned it.

The door clicked. It was almost impossible to open, in the small space, with her own head and shoulders in the way. She peered in.

There was nothing. No box, no green gleam of an emerald.

Cold misery swooped over her. She edged a hand in, keeping the other braced against the wall.

Her hand met a handful of papers – some full sheets, some scraps. She dragged them out, and stuffed them, for want of a better place, down her front. Then she wriggled downwards, until the dark ground was close enough to drop. She landed, painfully, on top of her own leg, and stood. It was a struggle not to cry: not from the pain, but from the doubt that had swept over her.

The other three stood clustered around the mantelpiece in complete darkness.

‘Anything?’ whispered Silk.

Vita gave a tiny shake of her head. ‘This is all there was,’ she said. She fished out the papers from her top, folded them tightly into a block of paper the size of her palm, and stuffed them into the waistband of her skirt.

There was a pause, in which Vita tried to haul her heart up from the floor.

‘Don’t look like that,’ said Samuel. ‘Is there anywhere else it could be?’

‘Presumably,’ said Silk, ‘it could be anywhere in the entire house.’ Her voice was tight with nerves. ‘Which – I don’t know if you noticed – is a large one.’

‘Did your grandpa ever talk about other hiding places?’ said Arkady. ‘Do you have a Plan B?’

Slowly Vita nodded. She had hoped so hard that she wouldn’t have to use it.

Arkady brightened. ‘I knew you would! Where? Tell!’

‘There’s a place my grandpa discovered when he was just a kid – but I was so sure it would be in the safe!’

‘Where is it? Tell!’

Vita swallowed. ‘In the turret.’

‘The same turret that you said is about to collapse?’ said Silk.

‘That one,’ said Vita. ‘Let’s go.’

They went single file down the corridor, glancing over their shoulders, until they reached the end of the hallway. It widened to another sweeping staircase, broad enough for them to run up four abreast. It had once been polished, and it still gleamed a glorious rich oak, but it was pockmarked with woodworm and damp. One side was lit by the moon.

Vita led the way, keeping to the shadowy side, where the stars could not reach them. Her muscles were so tense she could feel them contracting under her skin.

At the top of the stairs, there was a hallway, exactly as she had known it would be, waiting for her as if she had been there a dozen times before. She remembered everything she had taught herself, and the relief of it was like a gasp of oxygen in the night.

Vita turned left. As they crept along the corridor, a wooden plank creaked under Arkady’s foot, as loud, it seemed to Vita, as a scream, and they all froze.

The house fell silent. It settled back into its dust and majesty.

‘It’s OK,’ said Vita.

Suddenly a noise like a cannon shot rang out. Silk, Samuel and Arkady flattened themselves against the wall, but Vita ran to the window. Only one thing could be that loud, here, in the middle of nowhere: the sound of a huge chunk of wood slamming into place. Outside the front door was the jetty, and moored at the jetty was a small boat, its chrome edging glinting in the moonlight.

‘The front door,’ Vita breathed. Her hand went to her penknife. ‘He’s here.’