Maureen grabbed the iron bars of her cage, jerking and pulling, pushing and pounding, but they did not budge. She shifted her weight from side to side, throwing her body against one corner and then another to maneuver her cage through the water, toward the door. But it was no use. An inch or three, and the incoming water swept her back, swelling round her neck. She shook with cold so terrible she could no longer feel her feet or legs or torso. The women screamed around her. And the water continued to rise.

Joshua reached the bottom of the tunnel and lowered himself onto a ledge into a foot of water. The women he’d passed nearest the top of the tunnel had told him to turn right and follow tight against the wall to the open door. But it was so dark. Though he’d been told that more women climbed, he’d not passed another in the tunnel for several minutes, if he was able to gauge the time.

He squinted. At last his eyes made out a pale light far ahead.

A motor, that of a boat, gunned and roared to life from somewhere beyond the bend, far to his left.

Dear God, don’t let them have taken Maureen! Help me find her here—before it’s too late!

He repeated the prayer as he groped his way forward, gasping in, gasping out. Twice he slipped into the freezing water, clutched at the cliff again, hoisted himself onto the ledge.

“Maureen! Maureen!” he called until he was hoarse, until he scrambled over sandbags two feet below the water and reached the flooding gateway, the open door the fleeing women had described.

Dozens of cages crowded the cave-like room that was nothing but a cesspool filled with rags and debris sloshing back and forth on the captured tide. He strained to see, to understand the horror before him—some cages with faces upturned in terror, gasping for last breaths before being covered in water. Other faces, bodies, floating dead just beneath the surface, illuminated by wall lanterns that would soon be doused. “Maureen?” he whispered. He couldn’t believe, wouldn’t believe she was there.

He glimpsed stairs at the far end of the room and prayed that she’d gone back through the tunnel, to the house and higher ground, that he could reach her before she let herself into Belgadt’s accursed study. He aimed for the door, praying aloud. “Maureen—please, God. Please!” But hope was failing.

“Joshua?”

He stopped, listened, held his breath.

“Joshua?” the voice, weaker yet, came again.

“Maureen? Maureen, where are you?” He threw iron and rags aside, desperately searching through the morbid sea of cages.

“I’m here! I’m here!” she cried.

He followed her voice until he found her cage, her face upturned, red hair spread in a streaming fan. He grasped the lock, jerked it to no avail, and croaked, “The key!” He grabbed the bars of her cage, shaking it in his impotence.

“Flynn took it. He’s gone!”

“The wall—the wall by the door,” the woman in the nearest cage cried. “There’s another by the door!”

Joshua forced his way back to the door. Lamps extinguished one by one as the water rose to lick their wicks. It was too dim to see, but he ran his hands over the doorposts and lintels, up and down the sides of the door, and then again, a foot from the door. At last he grasped a small brass ring with a single key, but in his hurry it fumbled to the floor.

He drew a breath and plunged into the water. Groping, feeling the edge of the ring, he pulled, but it slipped, catching between the bars at the bottom of an open cage door. He struggled, twisting and turning the key and its ring, found his footing at last, and pulled through the water.

Maureen’s nose was barely above the water level when Joshua ducked beneath it, forcing the key into the lock. It jammed. He pulled it out and tried again, turned the key upside down, and pushed yet again. At last it slid into place, the tumblers fell, and he jerked the lock open.

He dragged a sputtering, coughing Maureen from her cage, determined to get her to higher ground before the water rushing through the doorway filled the space and made their passage across the ledge and up the tunnel impossible.

But she fought him. “Help them! Help them!”

“Make for the door!”

“There are women in those cages! Give me the key!”

“It’s too late!”

“Give me the key!”

“They’re dead, Maureen!”

Maureen pushed against him and stumbled back to the woman’s cage beside hers—the woman who’d told them of the second key. But water had risen over the top of the cage, and no face, no fingers, reached up to plead.

Joshua grabbed Maureen round the waist. “She’s dead—they’re all dead. If we don’t go now, we won’t get out!”

He pulled her toward him, away from the cage, but she turned and lunged again toward the cage, taking hold of the board atop it. “The plate! Give me the plate!”

With no idea what she meant, Joshua ripped the board she clung to from the woman’s cage, pressing it into her hands. He wrapped his arms around her again, pulling her from the flooding, roaring room with barely time or space to pass beneath the lintel, barely time to push her through the surging water to the ledge. Together they slipped, groping their way into and through the steep tunnel, up, into the light.