Chapter 16 #4
“You can drive on a bit, Coachman, and leave us while we talk. Go inspect the Lodge. Circle back in a quarter hour, and we will be ready.”
Cerys was normally not a fool. In fact she tended to be the suspicious sort. She prided herself on her wits, on her canniness. But her curiosity had always been her curse, and her mother would say her vanity, too.
She wanted to know if she could best Bathsheba. And she wanted, more than anything, to be the one who bore in triumph the news that Lord Baeccon’s stinginess had been vanquished and the company could get their theater at last.
She paused while the coach creaked into motion behind her, and then she walked inside the building.
The door slammed shut between them.
For a moment, Cerys held perfectly still, breath stuck in her chest. The interior of the pump room was large but without light. Shutters sealed the windows, and the air smelled of must and damp earth and the sweet smell of molding plaster.
“Lady Baeccon!” Cerys called sharply. “Open that door.”
Bathsheba screamed.
Cerys ran to the door and pounded on the wooden panel. “Bathsheba! Let me out!”
She could make no sense of the sounds that followed. A muffled pounding. The scuff of gravel. A growl in a low voice, then another scream. “Help me! Thieves! Villains!”
Cerys caught her panic as if it were a flame leaping from branch to branch. She pulled at the door handle. It was locked.
“I’m in here!” she screamed. “Let me free!”
Silence.
Nothing. Not the beat of hooves, not the creak of a carriage wheel. Only muffled silence, and the thrum of blood in her head as her heart pounded.
Cerys pressed an ear to the door, chill and damp. She thought she heard footsteps receding in the distance, a crunch of gravel fading away. She tried holding her breath to make the pounding grow quiet, but that only increased her fear.
“The door is locked,” she called. She would remain calm. Calm. Whoever had accosted Bathsheba, the woman would not let them leave Cerys trapped inside. The coachman knew where she was. They would come back.
“Are you going to find help because the door is locked, and you cannot open it?” Her voice was shrill and echoed in the silent room. No, not silent; the squeak and scamper of mice in a far wall told her she had company. Calm, Cerys. Calm.
“Very well, then.” Somehow the sound of her own voice made her feel less afraid.
She could pretend she was not completely alone, trapped in this dark place.
“That is a good idea. Find help. Come back and force the lock. I will simply…” She looked about her, straining her eyes to see in the dark. “Wait.”
For a while, that was exactly what she did.
She stood in one place and waited. After a time her heart slowed and she could hear again.
Small squeaks and scampers moved along the walls as the residents of the pump room communicated about their evening meal and entertainments.
A thud on the roof startled her, followed by a scraping noise. Some bird must have a nest there.
She was not afraid of abandoned buildings. She’d grown up in one. She was not afraid of dark, or musty smells, or mice.
But she’d never in her life been alone.
She’d been trapped before. Once, without knowing he’d done it, Tomos had let the latch fall on the door to the brewhouse at St. Sefin’s, locking Cerys in.
To this day the smell of malt turned her stomach.
She’d taken one of the poles used for mashing and rammed it against the door, bellowing, until Ifor came to investigate and figured out how to free her.
They’d laughed about it later, all of them around the solid oak tables of the refectory as they ate their dinner and Cerys told and retold her story in great and exaggerated detail.
How they’d laughed, all of them together.
Gnarled Mother Morris spitting Welsh curses under her breath.
Widow Jones, determined to be cheerful. Ifor, the blind goat boy, who grinned and chided Tomos good-naturedly every time Tomos, clumsy and as simple as a small child, stole a scoop from his wooden bowl.
Gwen’s voice singing, clear as a ringing bell, as she bundled into her woolen shawl and went about the business of keeping the roof over their heads. The clump of Evans’s wooden crutch as he followed after the women, offering his one good arm.
And her mother, her face still unlined despite all her cares, her eyes large and dark, her mouth curved in a loving smile even as she scolded Cerys for her hoydenish ways.
Cerys sank to the floor and wrapped her arms around her legs, pressed her forehead to her knees.
Her family. She missed them with a physical ache, as if a cupboard door had been opened in her chest and all the valuables taken away.
She loved them. They’d been so good about letting her leave.
She’d left her mother and Evans to handle the guesthouse of what had become a thriving attraction.
Seeing St. Sefin’s through Miss Wade’s eyes had put a different cast on the place.
Rather than a poky old priory that they regularly fought to keep from tumbling back into the ground, St. Sefin’s was to the rest of the world a magnificent and inspiring medieval ruin, a place worthy of noting in guidebooks, a monument with ancient and priceless treasures on display.
Her mother had built that, and Cerys had helped her, and then she’d left as if none of it mattered.
Tears dampened the fabric of her gown, and she let them, for they eased the ache in her throat. She’d been so selfish to run away, seeking—oh, what she sought, she couldn’t even say now. Just away. To find the world, and her place in it.
And here she was. Trapped in a dank room with night coming on, and no one who knew where she was.
Bathsheba had disappeared—left her behind?
Been kidnapped? The woman’s screams still echoed in her head, and Cerys’s heart rapped into a new rhythm.
Her friends would return to Suffolk House, and there would be no sign of Cerys.
Would Bathsheba tell them what had happened?
Or had Bathsheba been harmed somehow? If so, Cerys might be left here to starve.
But why would Bathsheba have brought her in the first place to a deserted building?
To break her. If Bathsheba had been the one to shut her in, it was to break her. So Cerys would be so hurt and angry and afraid that she wouldn’t look at Dante ever again.
Dante. She longed for him with every fiber of her being.
Cerys scrambled to her feet and raised her voice. “Anyone out there yet? Have you found me?” She paused. “I’m still in here. Still waiting.”
The wind sighed through the trees in its ancient, soothing shush. A rustle and the scrape of claws followed as the bird nesting on the roof lifted off, perhaps a kite or a kestrel setting out to find its evening meal. How much time had elapsed?
“Don’t take too much longer,” Cerys called. “I really don’t wish to be here all night.”
Iron lay dry and bitter on her tongue. But this was the King’s old spa, wasn’t it? There would be water here. She wouldn’t die if she could find water.
Cerys forced herself to move about, acquainting herself with the space.
She barked her shins on several pieces of furniture that hadn’t been removed, and at one point ran into the counter where the tumblers of water would have been served.
She smelled the damp earth and found the pump that drew the water, but none of the machinery made sense to her hands.
She pinched her finger trying to turn a tap and snatched her hand back.
She went to the windows, determination goading her.
Ifor knew how to find his way about in the dark; she could, too.
The inside shutters creaked open, the stirring of dust coaxing a sneeze.
The windows were sashed and could be opened, but the exterior shutters were locked from the outside.
There would be no crawling out a window, unless she found a way to smash her way through.
She might become desperate to try it. At intervals she called out again, her voice growing hoarse.
She had no sense of passing time, and no way to look at her small watch on its fob.
She detected a chair, dusted it as best she might with her glove, and sat.
When she became too restless to sit, she rose and circled the windows and counter, avoiding the heavy card tables that had already bruised her hips.
Was it only today that Dante had held her in his arms and invited her to share his house and his life?
She wrapped her arms around her as if she could summon that warmth. The room was cool to begin with, and growing cooler as evening set in.
She wanted her friends. She longed desperately to see her family. But above all, she wanted to be in Dante’s arms again.
She tried her old trick of pounding on the walls, but all she did was scare away the mice.
She called as if someone outside might hear her, but her voice was drowned out by the croak of frogs and the drone of insects.
She walked back and forth until she had the room memorized.
She tried kicking the door and only served to give herself a throbbing toe.
When she grew furious and screamed and clawed at the shutters, she accomplished nothing more than tearing her gloves, breaking a nail to the quick, and giving herself splinters.
At last she sat again in one of the chairs, laid her arms on the table and her head on her arms, and sobbed quietly, though no one could hear.
There was nothing like being hopelessly trapped in a dark room without even the remotest possibility that someone would hear and find her to make several things come clear in her head. She wanted to tell all of them to Dante.
She loved the infernal, infuriating man, and now she might die without ever seeing him again.