“Like rats up a drainpipe,” said Ernest, cheerfully.
With the aid of a single lantern, carefully shuttered to throw a single pool of light ahead of the group, they hurried in single file along the tunnels. If Ernest thought these were like pipes, he would have to think again when he saw where they were going. Allan had described it to her last night—a long round hole, verymuch like a pipe, connected the tunnels under the tower with the cellars of the house.
The luck was running their way, or the diversion had worked. They saw no one in the tunnels, and when they reached the landing on the stairs where the hidden door into the lower tower was, there were no signs of disturbance. Allan moved the stone that hid the lock and used his key.
No ambush awaited them. The room felt as if it had been empty for days. Once everyone was inside, Allan locked the door again and worked the mechanism that replaced the stone.
“Downstairs,” he said, and led the way. Mel passed the door of the room where she and Allan had first come together in bed. At the time, she had wondered whether it was her seduction or his. She had never expected that he was serious about her—that he would want a future!
This was not the time to think about it, however. They were in the windowless ground-level part of the tower, and Allan and three more men were moving a heavy old desk and the mat it stood on to reveal a trap door in the floor.
Opened, the trap door revealed a ladder and below that a steep staircase. “Light the lanterns,” Allan said, and Baldwin lit a spill from the lantern he carried and passed it to be used to light another lantern. The spill made the rounds until all the lanterns were alight.
Down into the tower cellar they all went, Baldwin coming last to close the trap door behind them. It was a big open space with a reservoir in the center, fed from an undergrown stream that flowed in through a pipe in the wall with the overflow running out through another pipe.
Surely the system dated back to when this tower was a defensive keep—a refuge in times of trouble for the people who lived nearby. Safe behind thick stone walls, with fresh waterbeneath their floor, they would have been able to outlast warring bands who attacked from the land or the river.
Allan led the group to a third hole in the wall. Round like the two pipes, it was much larger—big enough for even the largest of the men to crawl through, but not big enough to stand up or even kneel in.
They all stared at it. “This is the way?” Somerville said, after the silence had stretched for what felt like minutes.
“This is the way,” Allan confirmed. “This pipe leads to the townhouse’s cellars.”
He sent Mel a quick smile. “I’ll lead the way,” he said. “The pipe is perhaps fifty meters long. Be careful with the lanterns when we get close to the cellars. I think the place we come out is deserted, but I don’t want light to betray us.”
“Lead on,” said Ernest.
“Piping,” said one of Dellborough’s lords sourly. “Oh joy.”
Mel had abandoned her gaudy skirts and petticoats in the tower, and just as well. Crawling through the pipe was much easier in the trousers she’d worn under her petticoats. She was near the middle of the group, with booted feet ahead of her, and Cornelius close on her heels.
She tried not to think about the weight of earth above her. Earth, and by now, surely, the townhouse itself? According to Allan, the cellars that were their destination were younger than the tower but older than the house, which had been rebuilt on the original site after the Great Fire.
The two were not quite contiguous, the cellars being bigger than the current house and at a different angle, so that parts of the cellars were not under the house, and in one or two places, parts of the house were not above the cellars.
Such ruminations distracted her from the sensation of being buried in a round hole in the ground. Distracted her long enoughthat she was surprised when the man in front of her suddenly disappeared and there was the outlet from the pipe to the cellar.
Her turn. She poked her head out into the cellar and two men stood, one on either side, ready to take her arms and swing her down to the ground.
She looked around as those behind her were being assisted in their turn. She was in a large cellar room with a low ceiling and a clay floor. There was no door—just a rectangular space in the walls with darkness beyond it.
“The place is still deserted,” Allan said, keeping his voice low, his lips close to her ear. “We are under the old wing. The cells where I suspect they are keeping the women are under the main part of the house, near the exit from the cellar to the street that Cook says the warders use.”
Baldwin whispered. “Let’s go. But quietly. My part of the plan might not have worked.”
It had, though, and better than they had expected.
When Baldwin had suggested giving laudanum to the marquess’s cook to put in the warder’s beer, they’d hoped to even the odds against them, at least ensuring that those not on duty would sleep through the noise of the invasion.
Instead, the cook had performed beyond all expectations. Men had dropped where they were, some still holding empty mugs. Had Cook added laudanum to the stew as well? “Lock them in one of the cells,” Somerville ordered. “Choose two to take with us as witnesses.”
“We brothers shall deal with the warders,” Allan said. “Somerville, you and your friends go from cell to cell, and inspect the place for anything that might support the case against Teign. Mel, I’ll leave you and the other women to follow Somerville and release the prisoners. Let us know if you find other warders. We’ll collect them.”
Moriarty’s three women fell into step behind Mel as she followed Somerville. The place was a warren of tunnels with dozens of cells, some big enough for up to ten beds, some with as few as one or two.
They found eight women, locked in the dark in three of the rooms. The two women in the first room shrank away from the light, whimpering, but when they realized that Mel and the Moriarty guards were women, they ceased their noise and just waited, suspicious and frightened.
“My friends and I have come to save you,” said Mel. “We shall take you out of here, away from Teign and his men.”
