Increasingly anxious, I went upstairs. The bedroom in front also was vacant, but I heard a faint shuffling noise from the stillroom across the landing.
Pushing open the door, I saw Geilie, sitting in a comfortable chair, feet propped on the counter. She had been drinking; there was a glass and decanter on the counter, and the room smelled strongly of brandy.
She was startled to see me, but struggled to her feet, smiling. Her eyes were slightly out of focus, I thought, but she certainly seemed well enough.
"What's the matter?" I asked. "Aren't you ill?"
She goggled at me in amazement. "Ill? Me? No. The servants have all left, and there's no food in the house, but there's plenty of brandy. Will ye have a drop?" She turned back toward the decanter. I grabbed her sleeve.
"You didn't send for me?"
"No." She stared at me, wide-eyed.
"Then why—" My question was interrupted by a noise from outside. A far-off, rumbling, muttering sort of noise. I had heard it before, from this room, and my palms had grown sweaty then at the thought of confronting the mob that made it.
I wiped my hands on the skirts of my dress. The rumbling was nearer, and there was neither need nor time for questions.
* * *
25
Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Witch to Live
The drab-clad shoulders ahead of me parted on darkness. My elbow struck wood with a bone-numbing thump as I was shoved roughly over a threshold of some sort, and I fell headlong into a black stench, alive and wriggling with unseen forms. I shrieked and thrashed, trying to free myself from entanglement with innumerable scrabbling tiny feet and an attack by something larger, that squealed and struck me a hard blow on the thigh.
I succeeded in rolling away, though only a foot or two before I hit an earthen wall that sent a shower of dirt cascading down on my head. I huddled as close to it as I could get, trying to suppress my own gasping breath so that I could hear whatever was trapped in this reeking pit with me. Whatever it was, was large, and breathing hoarsely, but not growling. A pig, perhaps?
"Who's there?" came a voice from the Stygian black, sounding scared but defiantly loud. "Claire, is it you?"
"Geilie!" I gasped and groped toward her, meeting her hands likewise searching. We clasped each other tightly, rocking slightly back and forth in the gloom.
"Is there anything else in here besides us?" I asked, glancing cautiously around. Even with my eyes now accustomed to the dark, there was precious little to be seen. There were faint streaks of light coming from somewhere above, but the tenebrous shadows were shoulder-high here below; I could barely make out Geilie's face, level with my own and only a few inches away.
She laughed, a little shakily. "Several mice, I think, and other vermin. And a smell that would knock a ferret over."
"I noticed the smell. Where in God's name are we?"
"The thieves' hole. Stand back!"
There was a grating sound from overhead and a sudden shaft of light. I pressed myself against the wall, barely in time to avoid a shower of mud and filth that cascaded through a small opening in the roof of our prison. A single soft plop followed the deluge. Geilie bent and picked up something from the floor. The opening above remained, and I could see that what she held was a small loaf, stale and smeared with assorted muck. She dusted it gingerly with a fold of her skirt.
"Dinner," she said. "Hungry, are you?"
The hole above remained open, and empty, save for the occasional missile flung by a passerby. The drizzle came in, and a searching wind. It was cold, damp, and thoroughly miserable. Suitable, I supposed, for the malefactors it was meant to house. Thieves, vagrants, blasphemers, adulterers… and suspected witches.
Geilie and I huddled together for warmth against one wall, not speaking much. There was little to say, and precious little either of us could do for ourselves, beyond possess our souls in patience.
The hole above grew gradually darker as the night came on, until it faded into the black all around.
"How long do you think they mean to keep us here?"
Geilie shifted, stretching her legs so that the small oblong of morning light from above shone on the striped linen of her skirt. Originally a fresh pink and white, it was now considerably the worse for wear.
"Not too long," she said. "They'll be waiting for the ecclesiastical examiners. Arthur had letters last month, arranging for it. The second week of October, it was. They should be here any time."
She rubbed her hands together to warm them, then put them on her knees, in the little square of sunlight.