Camulod Chronicles Book 8 - Clothar the Frank (57 page)

I went directly to find Clodio, never doubting that I could enlist his help.

Later that night, after a long and sometimes impassioned discussion in which he and I came to know each other far better than we had before, Clodio took me into the caverns for the first time and showed me the route to the red-walled caves. I had not seen what he did to cause the door to open, but when it did, it opened silently, swinging backwards away from us and up with only the barest whisper of stone caressing stone as it rose. As soon as we stepped through into the space beyond, he grasped me by the arm and pulled me to one side, out of the way of the door, and told me to stand absolutely still. I stood motionless in the dark, listening to the silence and hearing the faint sound of the door closing again, and only then did I begin, very gradually, to grow aware that it was nowhere near as silent down there as I had first thought. I could hear water dripping, from many places, and the sounds the drops made as they landed varied from flat, dead-sounding slaps to musical, echoing and rotund plops where the drops were obviously falling into pools of standing water.

There were other sounds, too, that I could hear but not identify, mainly because they were obscured by the noises my companion was making. Listening, I could tell that he was moving about, and it sounded as though he was rearranging his clothing. But then there came a glow, the merest hint of light that spread quickly, and then I saw the shape of Clodio's face as he bent low towards a clay fire box enclosed in a small cage of wood that he must have carried beneath his robe. He was kneeling on the ground close by my right side, and the glow had been revealed when he removed the lid of the box. He began to blow gently on the glowing embers and to feed them with small, teased bunches of line, dried grass. Within moments a small flame sprang into being and he fed it more fuel. In the growing light I saw a store of twigs and small kindling set against the wall, and beside them an iron brazier and what looked like a small barrel filled with heavy sticks.

Clodio eventually lit the fire in the brazier with a twig from his fire box, and as he waited for the flames to catch and take hold he moved to the barrel, selected a stick and pulled it out, then thrust it under my nose for me to smell it. It stank—a rank, sulphurous stench that made me catch my breath. It was a kind of pitch, he told me, but thinner than the kind the shipwrights used to seal the seams of their vessels. This substance was called naphtha, he said. He thrust the end I had sniffed into the flames of the brazier and the thing exploded with a roar and instantly became a brightly flaming torch, burning hard and fiercely enough to sustain the roar of sound that had accompanied its birth. It was brighter than any other torch I had ever seen, illuminating the entire space within which we stood.

Now I could easily see that this cavern, at least, had a roof, uneven and stained with moisture, arching over my head at about twice my own height. And against the wall, securely fastened into the rock, was a pair of angled brackets clearly designed to hold torches. There was one torch in place, and I looked at it curiously. The top end of it was encased in a cage of rusted wire, inside of which there appeared to be tightly wrapped rags of cloth, stiff and dry and brittle looking. Clodio reached up to it with the torch in his hand and it ignited with another ferocious whoosh of leaping flames.

"The brackets were built possibly hundreds of years ago and probably at the same time as the doors. They're all made of lead, not iron, so they don't rust—it's very wet down here. There's a line of them all along the path to the other side. Most are on the walls, but there are a few in places where there are no walls. Those ones are mounted on poles. Two brackets to a station, post or wall, makes no difference. Look how far apart the holders are. That's so you can be sure that either one will burn without igniting the other. Going across, you light the one that's waiting for you and put a fresh one in the empty holder. See?" He kicked at the ground, where I saw the charred remnants of several old torches, burned right down to the butts.

"Once these things are lit, you can't put them out, so you simply leave them to burn themselves out. But that's why you bring a bucket of ten or twelve fresh ones with you each time you cross. Burn the dry one, leave a wet one. The pitch comes from two places—two pools of the stuff that never dry up. You simply throw in a bucket and bring it out full, then lug it back here and pour it into the barrel there. No trouble finding the pools, even in the dark. You can smell them from half a mile away. Fall into one, though, you'll never come out again. Stuff kills you. King Ban knew someone who fell in, when he was a boy. They pulled him out, but he had already breathed in some of the stuff and he died right there.

"So, those are the rules. The brackets are about sixty paces apart, and there's a fresh barrel of soaking torches every tenth station. There's three ten-station stretches from here to the other end, so it's just slightly under two miles."

"Is it all flat?"

"None of it's flat, lad. You'll see that as soon as we start to move. From here, it's all slightly downhill for about a mile, then it levels out for a very short distance and begins to climb again. Course, it's all irregular, and the path we'll be following isn't very wide in places, and there are some very nasty drops on either side from time to time. But that shouldn't bother you as long as you don't look down into any of them. Just keep your eyes fixed on the ground you can see ahead of you by the light of your torch.

"There's a couple of tiny passages, too—wrigglers, I call them. Those are the places I warned Samson and Brach about. Narrow spots—tight places where you have to squeeze through, and it's best not to think too hard about where you are, but just remember to breathe out and keep moving until you're through and out on the other side. There's seventeen caverns down here. Some of them are tiny, others are enormous. This one here is smaller than some of the rooms in the castle upstairs, but it opens out into another that's ten times as big. Some of them are beautiful, too, even at night. There is daylight down here, in places—holes in the roof, high above your head, and the light falls down from them like beams of solid gold. Then there are places even more strange and filled with wonders that you'll have to see for yourself . . . you wouldn't believe me if I simply told you about them. Now, fill up that bucket over there with twelve of those torches and let's get started." He set out immediately, leaving me to scramble to obey him and then catch up, my hands and arms filled with the means of bringing light to the darkness.

"How do you make the torches?"

Clodio was lowering himself carefully down a sloping rock face and he took the time to regain a solid footing before he answered me.

"I cut handles, good solid ones that offer a fair, firm grip. Willow and hazel sticks are best, I've found, because they grow more or less straight. I cut them to length and then jam the narrower end into the space made for them in the metal cages I have made specially for them. The cages are made from heavy iron wire and the same smith has been making them for me now for fifteen years, so he makes me a batch of them in a single day. Then I stuff the cages with old rags, anything I can scrounge. Old army blankets are best, though, if you roll them tightly enough they burn for hours and hours. Then all that's left to do is leave them to soak in the barrel of naphtha until you're ready to take them out and mount them in the brackets. Given enough time up there without being used, they'll dry out completely and you'd never know they'd ever been wet. But one spark's enough to set them off, even when they're bone dry." He made a choking sound, and it took me a moment to realize that he was laughing to himself.

"What?" I asked.

"Oh, I was just thinking. I make a batch of new torches two times each year, usually around the solstice because that's a good, solid time to remember to do certain things, and each year I might have to change three, perhaps more, of the wire cages." He giggled again. "Old Marcy the smith's been making them for me, as I said, for fifteen years and he still doesn't know what they're for. He's tried following me, asking people about them, he's tried everything to find out, but I never say a word. It's driving him mad. Come on now, we'd best be moving."

It took us nigh on an hour to traverse the caverns, lighting beacons as we went to guide us back, and only in two places did I have difficulty squeezing through the narrow wrigglers he had warned me about. The second time, I came so close to being unable to get through that I found myself on the verge of absolute panic at one point, beginning to believe that I would die there, wedged in an impossibly tiny hole in the center of the earth. When I regained sufficient presence of mind to remember what Clodio had said about breathing out, however, I forced myself to exhale each breath all the way and relax my body, and I was able to win through, but I had to stop and catch my breath then and there, to collect myself and master the fear that still leapt in my chest like a flickering fire.

"If that's the only way through there," I said, struggling to keep my voice level, "then you were right. Brach will never see this place. He's far too big even to fit into the entrance there, let alone crawl through the wrigglers. We would lose him, and Samson, too, because neither of them would ever give in and they'd never back away. Brach would keep trying to squeeze through until it killed him."

"Aye, and it would, without mercy. Almost got you, there, didn't it, until you remembered what I said about breathing out. Are you ready now to move on?"

A short time after that he held up his hand and stopped. "Here we are. This is the end of the road, and I think it's also the place you were asking me about. Low ceiling, close to the outside, easy to supply and big enough to feed and shelter fifty horses. Mind you, it's going to be the end of the secret entrance as a secret."

I nodded. "That is true—but if the secrecy was intended in the beginning as a means of saving the castle and its occupants from disaster and defeat someday in the distant future, then it has already served its purpose, for it can't ever be used and then continue to be a secret, can it? Now we will use it to excellent purpose, and we will maintain at least a semblance of secrecy for as long as we can. If we continue to enjoy good fortune, Gunthar and his people may never find out about it. I'll grant you, that may be wishful thinking, but any period of time we can grasp and maintain in this matter will serve us in good stead. Let me have a look at the place."

We were in the first chamber into which the secret doorway opened from the back of the red-walled caves—and in the light of my flickering torch, held at arm's length above my head, I could see that it was perfect for our needs. Foremost, it was spacious, and the ground was solid stone, dry and almost perfectly flat, save for a few bumps and extrusions that would bother no one—and no horse. The smoke from our two torches was whipped away to some vent high above our heads, and a cool current of air blew gently and steadily around us. I could see where and how we could halter horses in lines of six or eight on both sides of a small central ridge of stone that bisected the floor, and there was plenty of dry, open space in which to pile and store bales of hay and other fodder.

The best feature of all, however, was a spring of pure water that welled from a hole in the stone wall at approximately the height of a tall man and flowed down into a large natural basin before spilling over again to form a narrow stream that ran along the cave wall until it was lost in darkness and distance. Not even in Tiberias Cato's stables in Auxerre had there been such a wonderful source of fresh water.

I told Clodio the place was perfect, and thanked him for his trust, and he grimaced and stepped away from me, towards the wall of the cave. I watched him go, wondering how I had offended him, but he stopped short of the wall beside a spine of rock that thrust up from the floor and beckoned to me. I stepped to his side and looked where he was pointing, but I could see nothing except the rock spine surmounted by a projecting knob of stone. When I turned back to him, my eyebrows raised, he closed his hand over the stone knob, pulling it back towards him. It swung open, hinged in some way, and beneath it was a hollow space. Clodio reached into the space and I saw him twist something to his left. Immediately, a wide section of the solid stone wall at least six paces to the right of where we were standing began to swing silently in towards us and tilt upwards from the base of the wall. It looked wide enough to permit entry to two horses side by side, and, holding my torch high above my head, I stepped forward to look at what was happening and saw the system of levers that were operating the mechanism.

"That is impressive," I said.

Clodio came up beside me, his strange gait appearing sinuous and natural in the flickering torchlight. "Aye, it is, I know, but the opening device is mummery. There's no need for secrecy on this side of the door. Anyone in here already knows why he's here and what's going on. It's only the other side of the wall that needs masking, and
that
works perfectly. Mind you, the door is a long way from the controlling device over there, and if I hadn't shown you that, you'd have thought this thing opened by magic, would you not?" I nodded, and he led me through the door and showed me the corresponding trigger on the other side.

The next day I made the final arrangements for what would become the biggest thorn in Gunthar's side in the time to come, and I began by convening a meeting of my elders and superiors and telling them what I envisioned. They listened closely and, to their credit, made no demur. I did not flatter myself, however, that they had all suddenly become impressed by my bravery and my impressive cavalry skills; to them I was a mere boy, untested and untried, who had taken part in one skirmish without being blooded and before that had been absent in foreign parts for many years, and the truth was that they had nothing at all to lose by humouring me and acceding to my wishes. The horses we currently had inside the castle were useless there, and the cumbersome preparations to raising and lowering the drawbridge ensured that there was no possibility of employing surprise in bringing them out from the castle. The enemy bowmen waiting beyond the walls would have ample time to aim and shoot them down before the animals could even clear the end of the bridge. It was the single biggest flaw in the design of the drawbridge, and there was nothing we could do to change it now, in the middle of hostilities.