“Do you like it?”
They were on a ledge looking down. The chandelier hung from high up on a chain, lighting up the stone surfaces of a series of grottoes, carved into the rock. Millie could see the folding of the earth. The veins of crystal, the ripples of pinks, silvers, and reds. She let her eyes drop carefully, foot by foot. There were caves, columns, and bowls. Water must have carved most of it, but there were great shelves and cracks, as if massive heat had split and melted the world. It was a natural palace, with uncountable chambers interlinking. A potholer would explore such caverns for years.
The central chamber was the biggest and someone had laid carpets on its floor. She could see pale statues around it—fifty or sixty of them—and she thought of an underground church.
“What do you think?” asked Tomaz.
There were tapestries on the walls. Millie could make out hunting scenes: deer were leaping, dogs were chasing, trees were bending with berries and fruit. She could see birds breaking from their branches.
“Come down,” said Tomaz. “You won’t believe it.”
He helped her to her feet and guided her. There were steps carved into the rock. They went together and she stepped onto a rug.
“Take off your socks, please,” said Tomaz. He was unlacing his own boots. “I think some of the carpets are about a thousand years old. More, I don’t know. Some are from Arabia, India . . .” He started to light candles—there were silver candelabra on chests and in alcoves; there were night-lights at the feet and in the hands of the statues. Soon they were all glimmering and the place seemed a shrine.
Millie went slowly and carefully. There were three vast armchairs and two leather sofas. There was a table laid up in white with a silver dinner service for a solitary diner. There was a fatbellied stove, with a roaring fire inside; it had a long chimney that elbowed its way up, zigzagging through the rock. There were stuffed animals in cases. There were vases, each holding carefully cut greenery, with sprays of red and white berries. On a pedestal stood a golden suit of armor, gauntlets resting on a glittering sword. It stared forward, like a guardian. There was a white rabbit on one of the sofas and it looked at Millie. There were bowls of fruit. There was another white rabbit on one of the rugs, a huge tiger skin. There was a bookcase full of leather-bound books and it led the eye to a farther chamber with hundreds more, towering upward—a complete library.
“Beautiful, uh?” said Tomaz, softly.
The room smelled of good food and woodsmoke. “You should eat,” he said. “I didn’t know you would be coming, so . . . it’s not special. Come and see my kitchen, you’ll love the kitchen.”
Yes, there were passages off; Millie could see more of them now, half concealed by the overlap of tapestries and the slabs of interlocking rock. Tomaz clicked on more lights. She could see his wiring too, pinned to the rock, hitched over a picture and the antlers of a stag. It came from a wall of car batteries.
In the kitchen there was a fireplace, and the fire was small and compact. The pot that hung over it had been winched low: it was almost sitting in the ashes. Handmade bread sat on a stone nearby. There were baskets of vegetables, jars, and bunches of leaves. Knives and other utensils hung from a bar. Farther down, the room narrowed into a corridor: the light didn’t get there, so Millie could only just make out shelves disappearing. She thought she saw a rabbit hanging and a bird perhaps . . .
“It’s just a stew,” said Tomaz, stirring the pot. “It’s winter food now, I’m using up apples. Everything I cook now has to have apples in. I am lucky: I learned to cook in Uzbek, I was a kitchen boy. Now I improvise with what I have. Do you want to wash your hands?”
There was a toilet with a bath, a basin, and a jug. He had soap. He had a fresh, clean towel. “The water’s cold,” he said from outside. “I can heat it on the fire, or you can wash with what’s there.”
“I’ll use what’s here,” whispered Millie.
She peeled off her soaking, bloody clothing. The water was in fact ice cold, but she doused herself as best she could, head to toe. The stink of fire was all over her and her flesh was terribly scratched. She got up a good lather of soap and massaged herself. She needed to wake up, tempting as it was to give in to the dream. She poured a cup full of water over her head and gasped. More, down her back: she was dancing with cold. She wanted to be alert. If she was to leave—and she had to go, she knew that—if she was to escape, she needed to be wide-awake. She wrapped herself in Tomaz’s towel and stepped back into the kitchen.
“Tomaz—”
“Oh!” he cried. “Sorry!” He turned away, instantly blushing. “I’m sorry, I brought you some clean clothes.” Comically, he would not look at her. He held out a shirt and a pair of shorts, masking his eyes.
*
He had served the soup and there was a hunk of bread. He’d lit more candles and opened the door of the stove so the room was hot. He sat opposite Millie, but he wasn’t eating. He put both elbows on the table and cradled a glass of wine.
“You like wine?” he said.
Millie nodded.
“It’s one of the things I’ve tried to like since I came here. I have about six thousand bottles, but I have to add sugar. These are Winston Churchill’s cigars, I think. I like to think so—he was friends with Lord Vyner, after all.”
Millie looked at the dusty label on the wine bottle. She recognized it from her experience all those weeks ago, when she’d sat cross-legged in a tunnel. It was another Clos de Bouchard 1923. “This is one of my father’s favorite wines,” she said.
“It’s my currency. I use it to buy what I need. There’s a man in town who does business with me. That’s another reason I’m careful, you see. One day he’s going to think, ‘Let’s follow him home.’ Every time I come home I try to come a different way. I tell you, Millie, being on the run is scary: I don’t recommend it.”
Millie looked into his eyes and smiled. “I’m on the run myself. Tomaz, how have you done this?”
“It was all here. I just move things about.”
“You’re on your own! Don’t you get scared? Tomaz, you said there was a ghost—what did you mean?”
“There’s a ghost, of course.”
“Lord Vyner. And you’ve seen him?”
“He was sitting there, just before you came. He doesn’t stay, though—he prefers the Churchill Room. It’s a bunker, a bit deeper than this. That’s where the phone is and some of the control systems. He’s very sad, he spends a lot of time down there; he was there when you called.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you? You’re not making this up.”
Tomaz laughed. “Of course I’m serious! He’s totally harmless, don’t worry. I think he used to work down here and it’s where he was murdered. People say he committed suicide, but he didn’t, Millie.”
“You’re living with a ghost—you can’t!”
“I don’t live with him. He comes through; and he’s no problem, he’s just . . . he can’t rest, Millie, I don’t know why. If you come again, you’ll see for yourself. Anyway, he saved my life. He warned me to get away, and I had a friend—”
“The Ouija board?”
“Sanchez told you, yes? About Miles, as well? They were going to kill me, I’m sure of it. So I ran away and . . . found all this. Truthfully, Millie—tell me. Listen! What do you think of my house?”
Millie put down her spoon. The food, the clean clothes, the cold water, the warmth of the stove, the candles—everything was accumulating in a great wave of relief; she was alive, in a magical land! They had tried to kill her four times and failed. Someone had tried to kill Tomaz and failed. Life was so intense it was burning in her veins and she was so strong she was indestructible. She took a mouthful of her father’s favorite wine and savored it.
“Tomaz,” she said. “Your home is the most beautiful place I have ever been. You saved my life—twice. I want to marry you.”
Even in the candlelight she saw the boy blush again, to the roots of his hair. He hid his face. When he looked at her again he was smiling one of the widest smiles Millie had ever seen and he was laughing too.
“Yes,” he said. “Shall we stay here forever?”