Chapter 8
By the following afternoon, Elizabeth had decided that cellars were proof mankind was not nearly so civilized as it pretended.
As she and Mrs. Thompson worked, their conversation from the previous day was nearly forgotten beneath the more pressing realities of dust, damp, broken crates, and a shelf so large and ugly that Elizabeth suspected it had been placed in the cellar by some malicious giant and left there to torment future generations.
John appeared in the doorway, cap in hand, looking relieved to have been summoned before he was asked to make any decisions on his own. “You wanted me, Mrs. Thompson ?”
“Yes, John. Down in the cellar, there is a heavy shelf that we need moved away from the wall. Miss Bennet believes it was there when the Gardiners purchased the house, so goodness knows the last time it was ever cleaned behind.”
They all went down to the cellar beneath the below-stairs offices, Susie leading with a candle while John followed with another and Elizabeth gathered her skirts in one hand to keep them from brushing the damp stone steps.
The air grew colder as they descended, heavy with the scents of old wood, coal dust, stored wine, and the lingering damp left behind by the recent flooding.
Though the worst of the water had been swept and mopped away days before, the cellar walls still bore a faint dark mark where the flood had reached, and several crates had been set upon bricks in hopes of salvaging whatever had not already spoiled.
The shelf in question stood against the far wall, broad and ugly and burdened with old jars, empty bottles, and several cracked pans that looked as though no one had wanted to decide whether they were worth keeping.
It was less a shelf than a great wooden frame, built heavily enough to store barrels if anyone had wished to put them there, and darkened with age until it nearly disappeared into the cellar shadows.
Elizabeth could well believe it had not moved since before her uncle purchased the house.
John looked at it doubtfully. “That is a heavy one.”
“I did not call you because it was light,” Susie replied.
Elizabeth pressed her lips together to hide a smile, then set to work helping Susie remove everything from the shelves.
Most of the bottles were empty, though a few held vinegar, old preserves, or something so doubtful that Susie ordered John to carry them away without asking further questions.
By the time the last cracked pot and dusty jar had been set aside, all three were streaked with grime, and Elizabeth had acquired a cobweb across one sleeve that made her look as though she had been wrestling with a ghost.
John braced both hands upon one side of the great shelf and pushed.
Susie took hold near the middle, while Elizabeth placed her hands lower and added what strength she could.
For a moment nothing happened. Then the wood gave a low complaint against the stones, shifting perhaps an inch before stopping so suddenly that John nearly lost his balance.
“That ain’t right,” he muttered, straightening and peering behind it.
Susie wiped her hands upon her apron, though the action did little good. “What do you mean?”
“It moved, then held fast. That is not weight alone.” John crouched down and angled his candle toward the narrow gap between the shelf and the wall. “Begging your pardon, Mrs. Thompson , but bring your light closer. There is something fixed back here.”
Elizabeth bent beside him, though at first she could see little beyond dust and the rough edge of old timber.
John reached into the gap and scraped at something with his fingernail, then shifted the candle lower.
“Well, I never,” he said softly. “It is fastened. Not with the sort of screws you would expect neither. Iron straps, and old ones at that. Pins too, driven right through into the wall.”
“Fastened to the wall?” Elizabeth asked, glancing at the shelf with new interest. “Why would anyone fasten a cellar shelf to the wall?”
John sat back on his heels, his expression sharpening with the unexpected importance of being consulted on something he understood.
“My grandfather was a joiner before he lost his hand. He used to show me old bits of work when I was a boy. Said you could tell a great deal about a house by how things were fastened together. This here is old—older than my grandfather’s time, I would wager.
The iron is hand-forged, and the pins are set in like the sort of work done after the Great Fire, when half the city was being rebuilt and men were fixing wood to brick and stone however they could make it hold. ”
Susie stared at him, the candlelight throwing long shadows across her tired face. “Are you saying this shelf has been fastened here since the sixteen hundreds?”
“I am saying someone did not mean for it to be shifted in a hurry.”
That silenced them all. Until that moment, the shelf had been merely another inconvenience in a house full of sad and necessary work—too large, too dirty, and too awkward to move without help.
Now it seemed deliberate. Elizabeth looked at the wall behind it, or rather at the small portion of wall visible through the gap, and felt curiosity stirring through her fatigue.
“Can it be loosened?” she asked.
John grimaced. “Aye, I think so. But it will take tools. Pry bar, chisel. Might damage the shelf.”
“I cannot imagine the shelf will be wounded in its feelings,” Elizabeth replied.
Susie gave her a look, then shook her head with the faintest smile. “Fetch what tools we have, John.”
It took nearly half an hour. The first pin came free with a shriek of metal against old wood that made Susie wince and John apologize to the shelf as though it were a person.
The second was more stubborn, and the third had rusted so thoroughly in place that John muttered under his breath until Susie gave him a sharp look and he remembered where he was.
At last, with the iron straps loosened and one side of the shelf freed, the three took their places once more and pushed.
This time, the shelf moved. Slowly, stubbornly, and with a grinding protest against the stone floor, it shifted away from the wall by several inches.
A breath of cold, stale air slipped upward from somewhere behind or beneath it, so unexpected that Elizabeth stepped back before she could stop herself.
Dust billowed out in a thick gray cloud, making Susie sneeze and John cough into his sleeve.
When the air cleared, Elizabeth saw it.
Not a door in the wall, as she might have expected, but an outline in the floor.
The stone beneath where the shelf had stood was not laid like the rest of the cellar. A rectangular seam showed faintly beneath the grime, large enough for a person to descend through if it opened. At one end, half-hidden beneath packed dirt and old straw, lay an iron ring set flush into the stone.
Susie lowered the candle until the light caught the edge of it. “A trap door.”
John crossed himself, then looked embarrassed at having done so.
Elizabeth did not blame him. There was something unnerving about seeing a hidden door in the floor of an already old cellar, especially one that someone had gone to considerable trouble to conceal behind a shelf fastened in place generations before.
Whatever lay beneath had not been forgotten by accident. It had been hidden.
For the first time in days, grief and duty were pushed aside by something sharper.
Curiosity.
Elizabeth crouched and brushed dust from the iron ring with the tips of her fingers. It was cold and rough beneath her hand.
“John,” she said quietly, not taking her eyes from the trap door, “fetch Mr. Philips.”
John began to leave, then paused and waited at the door. He watched with wide eyes as Elizabeth crouched beside the iron ring, studying the trap door with more interest than prudence.
“Miss Lizzy,” Susie said uneasily, “perhaps we ought to wait for Mr. Philips.”
“Perhaps we ought,” Elizabeth agreed, which did not prevent her from reaching for the ring.
It resisted at first, sealed in place by age, dirt, and damp, but after John wedged the pry bar beneath the edge and put his shoulder into it, the stone trap lifted with a groan that seemed to come from the house itself.
A smell rose from below—cold, stale, earthy, and wet.
It was not the smell of rot, precisely, but of a place where no fresh air had entered in many years.
John, who had not left yet to fetch Mr. Philips, leaned over the opening with the candle held low. “There’s steps—or no, a ladder. Wooden one fixed to the side.”
“Does it appear sound?”
He gave her a doubtful look. “Sound enough for me not to like it, miss.”
Elizabeth drew in a breath and held out her hand for the candle. “Then I shall go first.”
Susie’s face went white. “You most certainly shall not.”
“It is my uncle’s house.”
“And if the ladder breaks, it will be your uncle’s house with you lying at the bottom of it.”
Elizabeth could not help but smile, though her own stomach had begun to flutter.
“Then you must remain up here, Susie. If the door closes or something dreadful happens, you will be able to tell Mr. Philips where to find me. Otherwise I shall never be heard from again, and one day in some distant future my bones will give another poor housemaid a terrible fright.”
Susie’s lips pressed together. “That is not a humorous matter.”
“No,” Elizabeth admitted, her fingers tightening around the candle. “But I must laugh to give strength to courage.”
The housekeeper looked at her for a long moment, then turned abruptly and hurried away.
She returned almost at once with a lantern from the passage above, its flame protected behind horn panes.
“At least take this. A candle will go out if there is a draught, and then you shall be trapped in the dark, which I refuse to explain to your uncle.”
Elizabeth accepted the lantern more soberly. “Thank you.”