CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

They ran, looking back over their shoulders every step. As they limped through the kitchen they heard, very faintly, the sounds of the guard and his companion, the clang of metal spades. They reached the cellar to find it empty. Vita cast her fading torch around the room. The stuffy smell of dust had gone, and the cold night wind blew in through an open hole cut straight into the wall, perhaps a foot across. They peered out. On the other side there was no bank, no earth: just a direct short drop into the lake.

Vita dropped Sorrotore’s gun out of the hole, then looked at the width of Samuel’s shoulders, and felt a sudden terror. ‘Will you fit?’

‘Only one way to find out,’ he said. ‘You go first.’

‘No!’ said Vita, ‘You’re bigger, so you first. If I fit and you don’t, you’ll be stuck here alone.’

He looked as if he were about to argue, but she pushed him towards the hole.

‘Don’t be so noble! It’s just logic!’

‘Fine,’ he said. He went feet first, arms over his head to make his shoulders as narrow as he could. His skin, already raw from his landing, scraped against the stone. He said nothing, only pushed himself backwards, his eyes screwed up with pain.

‘I’m stuck!’ he gasped.

As he spoke, the door above them began to open.

Vita dropped the torch, put both her hands on his arms and gave him a great shove. There was a gasp as he fell, and then a splash, and she darted away from the dying torch, into the darkness, down one of the rows of shelves, and ducked low behind some bottles of red wine.

Sorrotore’s polished black shoes came through the door, down the stairs, and paused, his eyes taking in the open grate and the spinning torch. It flickered and went out.

‘I know you’re still here,’ he called, and his voice echoed through the darkness. ‘I can hear you breathing.’

His footsteps rang down the corridors of wine bottles. He carried a small oil lamp; the light was two rows away from her. Vita tried to shuffle backwards and found she could not move.

‘Enough, child,’ came the voice. It was cold as the stone floor. ‘I’ve had enough.’

In the blackness, Vita crouched. Her fear welled up in her, and for once she could not beat it down. It threatened to cover her head. It rose, and as it rose her body became frozen, animal, something foreign clothed in her own skin.

And she thought: I can’t.

And she thought, unbidden, of the elephant, chained on the stage. Its hopelessness was her hopelessness.

And the fear rose over her head, and she was covered in it.

And her beating heart summoned up the elephant again, chained, and with it came the memory it had first conjured, of Jack Welles, her grandpa: her grandpa as he had been, drawing bullseyes on hospital walls, so unruly and so talented, and so alive.

And the fear crossed paths with the love, and the two merged.

And the love became her weapon.

And she rose with a shout of the kind of fury that Sorrotore had never dreamed, and flew at him.

This was nothing like the fight in the alley with a gang of pickpockets. This was rage, on both parts; his rage at this sudden prospect of failure, at this staring, ugly, maimed child; her rage at the stupidity of a world that admired men who took so much and broke so much.

He was larger but she was angrier, and she, despite her age and size, was the more ruthless of the two, and the more accustomed to pain. His hand grasped her round the middle, and she twisted and bit down on skin, she was not sure what or where, but hard enough to draw blood. He shook her like an animal; like an animal fighting an animal.

Her hand swept backwards, found the neck of a bottle, gripped it, and swung it at his head. And he was down, for a second, slipping in the spilt alcohol and glass, and she ran for the open grate.

He was up again, wet, gasping, and he made a start towards her.

Vita flicked open the blade of her penknife, breathed a single breath in which she took aim, and threw. It went straight and true through the heart of the glass whisky bottle behind his head. The bottle exploded, coating Sorrotore’s hair with whisky and knocking the other dozen bottles to the floor. Glass flew everywhere, rebounding off the walls. With a roar, Sorrotore ducked, putting up his hand to protect his eyes.

Vita darted to the hole in the wall. She laid a hand on the brick, steadied herself, turned.

‘Your man, Dillinger,’ said Vita. ‘He said I was playing with fire.’

And she focused all of her anger and fear down into her hand. She snatched up her torch, spun it in her fingertips, and threw it, not at the bottles, but at the oil lamp Sorrotore had placed on the floor. It exploded; the flames caught at the whisky, snaking across the ground towards Sorrotore.

She gasped, and took in a mouthful of smoke, as the flames reached Sorrotore’s oiled, profoundly flammable hair. He screamed, trying to smother them with his jacket.

She pushed herself through the thick wall, and fell head first through the air. The water was hard as earth as she hit it, but it opened to receive her, and she was tumbling, over and over, through the dark water.

It was pitch black. No way was up. She forced herself not to panic. She opened her eyes and spun, disorientated. Then she remembered: you breathe out bubbles – they rise to the surface. She blurted out half the air in her chest, inhaling some water in return, trying not to choke – and the bubbles rose, sideways it seemed to her, but she swam after them, one hand clutched to the box under her shirt, one straining at the water.

Her head broke free and she gasped, spitting and choking, for mouthful after mouthful of air. Ahead of her in the moonlight, a figure was just emerging from the lake at the shore: Samuel. Hands reached out to pull him into the bushes.

She struck out wildly, thrashing in the water, then remembered the watching eyes. ‘Careful!’ she whispered to herself, and tried to swim under the surface, her chest red hot with water and smoke, her arms and legs forcing the water behind her with a strength that was more desperation than muscle. Every second she expected to hear the motorboat coming after her. She risked a glance. Smoke was snaking from the gap in the castle wall.

She kicked again and felt her feet hit earth. She stood up in the mud, fell to her knees, stood again, and stumbled into the hands of Silk, who had waded waist-deep to grab her wrist, and now pulled her into the bushes.

Arkady and Samuel were waiting, soaking wet. With them were the dogs, Viking and Hunter, also soaking wet.

‘I think they escaped down the jetty when all the men were coming in to dig,’ said Arkady. ‘I’m taking them with us.’

Without another word they stumbled together, Vita’s leg shrieking in pain, mud-covered and soaking, through the night to reach the horses. They whinnied in recognition at Arkady’s face and he climbed on to one, and hauled Vita, who was fighting to stay vertical, up in front.

Silk held out her hand, cupped, and Samuel stepped into it. Blood dripped from a deep graze on his shoulder on to the bay mare, but he reached out with his good hand and helped Silk swing up behind him. They went at a gallop, through the wood, Viking and Hunter loping on either side of Arkady’s horse, out on to the country roads, clinging on to each other, riding straight into the sunrise.

As they went, it began to snow.

Back at the castle, the guard looked up from the eight-foot-deep hole in which he stood, and sniffed, then went running. He discovered a half-doused fire, a barely conscious Sorrotore lying on the stairs, and a great deal of broken glass. He roared for buckets, for water, for help.

And in a corner, where the fire had not yet reached, was a pile of clothes, belonging to the kind of children who had never had a dangerous thought in their lives.