Without waiting for Gunn or telling him where she was headed, she hurried back down the hallway and activated the secret door.
Once inside, she eyed the floor lever before glancing back at the opening. “Let’s just leave the door ajar, shall we?” After all, with Murdina captured, stealth was no longer a worry. “Bella!” she shouted every few steps while striding through the darkness at a steady pace. It wasn’t nearly as overwhelming, since she had been this way before.
After passing the first pit, she reached for the map in her belt and discovered it was gone. Her mouth grew dry and her heartbeat pounded in her ears until it was almost deafening. “No need to panic.” She leaned back against a wall, pulling in slow, deep breaths while visualizing open fields of heather. They had followed this same stretch, then turned to the right when Murdina laughed. After they passed the pit, not that far up ahead, they found her.
Then she remembered. The current route, the only route she knew, seemed to dead-end against the hearth wall where they had captured Murdina. “Well, bloody hell. Now what without the map?”
But perhaps not all was lost. She thought back over all that had happened, studying it for the slightest clue. This was where Murdina had fled to once wounded. Had it been a mere coincidence, or was this her nest?
With painstaking care, Lorna slowly directed the beam back and forth all around the passage, scanning the floor and walls for anything that might tell her something about Bella’s whereabouts.
Something reflected the light and gave her pause. She moved toward it and discovered her dagger. “Lovely.” She cleaned the blade by wiping it on the sole of her shoe, then tucked it into her belt. “Bella!” she called out again, hoping to hear something. “Yer da dragged Murdina out to the great hall. They shackled her and threw her into the cell. If ye are hiding, my wee one, it is safe to come out. I swear it.”
Nothing but silence answered, and there was no sign of the child. All she heard was her own breathing. Without the map, she had no idea which direction to take.
She directed the light across the floor again, trying to find anything that might tell her what to do. Whitish scrapes across the part of the floor stained dark by dampness caught her attention. Several wide, uniform arcs led her gaze to a partially opened wall. Another passage? But if this was another way out, why had Gunn gone to the trouble of dragging Murdina out the way they had entered?
If only she hadn’t lost the map. Lorna stared at the scrapes, debating whether to retrace her steps and look for the map or abandon her search for the child completely.
“No. I canna give up.”
She eyed the wall that was partially ajar. The opening was almost wide enough to squeeze through—but so narrow, it made her catch her breath at the thought of worming her way through it. But Bella would easily fit. This had to be what threw Murdina into an enraged fit earlier. Perhaps Bella had slipped out this way.
Shining the light on the wall, Lorna searched for a hidden lever to open it wider. If this wasn’t another way out, perhaps it was a hiding place and Bella was somewhere beyond it.
Then she reasoned if the child had made the wall open this much, the switch had to be within a nine-year-old’s reach. She searched lower. Her heart jumped as the beam swept across a small oblong block of stone protruding from the wall. “I am coming, Bella!” She shoved it as hard as she could. It didn’t budge. Perhaps she needed to use both hands. She set the lantern on the floor, gripped the stone, and shoved again. The thing gave just a little, eking out a grinding sound.
“Well, bloody hell.” She glared at the wall, tempted to give it a good, swift kick, but logic won out. Frustrated at the failure, she stuck her face in the opening and called out again, “Bella! Are ye in there? Can ye make some sort of sound?”
The faintest scratching came to her, but she couldn’t decide if it was beyond the wall in front of her or behind her in the passage.
“I canna ignore that and take the chance of leaving Bella in the darkness.” She could just imagine how terrified the little girl had to be, whether she knew the passages by heart or not. They were cold, dark, and filled with insects and rodents that Lorna would rather not think about.
Determined to activate the mechanism and make the wall move, she picked up the lantern, positioned her rump square on the protruding stone, and shoved with all the strength her legs possessed.
The lever stone gave, and the wall shifted, bumping her and knocking her back into the space. Before she could right herself, the wall slammed shut again, catching her skirts and crushing her bag of supplies between the walls. “Damn it! No!” No matter how hard she pulled, the seam between the walls refused to set her free.
Caught in the wall, she sagged back against it. “I canna believe this.”
The lantern revealed she was trapped in an area that was roughly the length of a bed and about three times as wide. A dank, boxy sort of room. “Or a good-sized tomb,” she muttered, then smacked at something tickling across her nape. “Off me, vile beastie!” Whether a spider or her imagination, she wanted no part of it.
Her chest tightened and her heart pounded faster with every passing second. She swallowed hard and tried to regain control. “Ye have air. Mrs. Thistlewick knows ye were coming back in here, and ye left the door open. Once Gunn misses ye, he will be here in no time and activate the lever and open the wall.”
Talking aloud helped. Some.
But heaven help her, she was thirsty, and the walls had crushed her water and spare lamp fuel inside the crack. “Ye will be fine. Calm yerself.” She tried to fully stand, but her snagged garments wouldn’t allow it. “Well, bollocks.”
There had to be another release lever on this side. All she needed to do was find it. As she hitched sideways to shine the beam along the other wall, her left foot hit something sticking up out of the floor.
“There ye are, my precious key to freedom.” Renewed hope chased all her phobias away as she kicked the lever just as Gunn had done at the other doorway.
Nothing happened.
“That’s all right. We’ll just try it again.” Twisting as far as her pinched skirt would allow, she kicked it so hard that pain shot up her leg. The wall didn’t move. Worse yet, the lantern flame flickered with a warning sputter.
She fell back against the wall again and pressed a hand against her chest. If the light went out and left her trapped in darkness…
She stomped on the lever again and again until breathless. “Open, ye bloody thing, open!”
