The Wild Baron (Baron 1)

The passageway was no more than six feet wide, and eight feet high. It became wider in some spots, then narrowed again. The walls were smooth. There were as yet no turns. The ground remained sandy. They were walking away from the river. The air was heavy with age, with dust that hadn’t stirred for many hundreds of years. Each breath was difficult.

“Now we’re looking for the wall that screams,” Phillip said.

A spiderweb looked like a delicate spray in the candlelight. Rohan ducked away from it, Susannah following him.

Suddenly the passageway twisted sharply to the right and came to a dead end. In front of them was a wall. It was filled with skulls, dozens and dozens of skulls.

Susannah sucked in her breath, r

efusing to scream. Rohan raised the candle branch high. “This is either a catacomb or was used as one during one of this town’s eternal devastations. I wonder if the bodies are piled behind the skulls.”

“The wall that screams,” Phillip said, taking a step closer. “Impossible to tell how old these things are. They might even be before the devastations.”

“The clue said to reach inside the wall that screams,” Susannah said. “Oh, dear.”

“Well, hell,” Rohan said. He handed Susannah the candle branch and began to roll up his sleeve. Phillip followed suit. “I will do this as well,” Susannah said firmly and set the candle branch on the ground.

“There isn’t enough room,” Rohan said. “Stay back, Susannah, and hold the candles high. That’s it. Don’t complain. You don’t have to do every dirty thing to be part of the adventure. Allow the men to wallow in some of the filth.”

The feel of crumbling skulls was probably the most repulsive sensation either Rohan or Phillip had ever experienced. “Oh my God, there are so many teeth, Rohan. I keep shoving them out of the mouths.”

There was no hope for it. Skull fragments fell to the sandy floor. “It goes way back,” Rohan said, trying not to think so much about what he was doing. “My arm’s all the way in now, at least as far as I can reach. The rest of the bodies are here. Doubtless the designer of this place believed that having all the skulls face outward would protect it from violation.”

Susannah said from just behind Rohan, “Remember the last line of the clue says, ‘the Devil’s Vessel lies in-between.” ’

“In between what, I wonder?” Phillip said, reaching so far in with his arm that a skull was not an inch from his face.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Rohan said, still digging as gently as he could, but it didn’t matter, bones crumbled or fell forward and onto the floor. “This in-between business, it’s got to mean in between the bones and the back wall, doesn’t it? Could it possibly mean something else?”

“Well, well, I think I’ve found something that isn’t a bone or a skull.” Slowly, Phillip drew out a cask—a reliquary. It was identical to the drawing in the cloth book.

It was so very old, Phillip was afraid it would crumble in his hands. Very gingerly he set it on the ground.

Rohan and Susannah were on their knees beside Phillip, staring at the beautiful, impossibly ancient wooden cask with its inlays of gold and silver along its sides.

Rohan was gently pulling at the thick bar that held the cask together at the top. “It won’t come free,” he said. “Damn, it would be immoral to break into it. I wish we had the bloody key.”

“Wish no longer, Rohan. I’ve got the key. Here it is.”

It was Tibolt Carrington. Susannah was so surprised that she whirled around and fell onto her bottom. She felt a skull crush beneath her. She stared incredulously at Tibolt, who was standing not four feet away from them, a very large and ugly gun in his hand. In his other hand he was waving the tiny gold key on a golden watch chain and holding a single candle. Only one candle. That was why they hadn’t noticed any light other than their own branch of candles.

Rohan rose very slowly. “Tibolt. We didn’t believe you were following us. We looked.”

“Hello, brother. And I suppose this is the equally infamous Phillip Mercerault?”

Phillip also rose, moving slowly a bit further away from Rohan. “Yes. You, I imagine, are the faithful, devout clergyman who is so beloved by his flock?”

“More devout than either of you philandering bastards. Rohan, has Mercerault slept yet with our mother? No, I doubt it. He must be all of twenty-six or twenty-seven—too old for dear Charlotte.”

“You will have to ask her,” Rohan said.

“Perhaps I will. I knew you would realize it was more than likely that I would follow you here. Both Teddy and I were very careful. We knew you were coming to Scotland. It was just specifically where in Scotland that we didn’t know. We kept well back.

“Now, I would like for Susannah to hand me the cask. I have many times wondered if it really existed, if such a miracle could have survived, buried away, rotting. It’s so very old. And now it is mine.”

“And the Devil’s Vessel is inside,” Rohan said, his eyes on his brother’s gun.

“I pray that it is. I saw the three of you pay a visit to old Mr. Budsman. I suppose he told you all he knew about the Bishops’ Society, all about Bishop Jackspar. What you can’t know is that Jackspar evidently eased the last days of an old Knight Templar. The man told him of the vessel and gave him the ancient writings, the key, and a crumbling map, begging him to keep it safe, saying that the future of humanity would now lie in his hands. He said that the Templars had guarded the secret for many centuries, but there were none left to trust. Then he died—that or Jackspar murdered him. Who knows? It was Jackspar who made up the cloth book and wrote into it all that had been in the crumbling original parchment. You found the book, didn’t you?”