“This way.”
She pointed to a doorway that led out to the detached kitchens and they emerged into the greedy summer heat. Sun burned hot on Gwyn’s head, as if she’d stuck it into the fire grate. She was soaked in sweat within two steps. She could feel it trickling down the back of her neck and sliding between her breasts. It was hard to breathe.
They moved doggedly through the wall of heat to the base of the keep, where stood a pair of horses, their back hooves cocked sleepily, and a wiry man with bristly hair stood glaring suspiciously about him.
“William, ’tis my lady Guinevere,” Adam announced quietly.
The wiry man with a thatch of grimy, curling grey-brown hair bowed his head briefly. “We’ve ridden hard to reach you, my lady.” He glanced at his captain. “Does she know?”
Adam nodded, ignoring the man’s rudeness. Gwyn did too; her eyes kept slipping to the shape bundled at the back of the saddle on one of the horses.
“Well, he’s fading fast in this heat,” Adam’s attendant said bluntly. “He needs someplace cool, and a lot o’ tending, my lady.”
She wrenched her gaze back to them.
“And privacy. Above all,” Adam finished, watching her intently.
“I could put him in my chambers, but…” she began.
“But?”
All she could muster was a weak grin, and the labour it took to recognise the pale shadow of humour was not worth the effort in this heat. Neither man responded to it. “People are in and out of there like ’tis the hall itself, and ordering it off-limits will raise a few eyebrows.”
“And mayhap loose a few tongues. Where else?” prompted the knight.
“The storage rooms?” his attendant suggested.
Gwyn started. “My lord prince, in the cellars?”
“’Tis as safe a place as any, I’ll warrant. Unless you’ve got a few of Henri’s men already stowed down there in chains and whatnot?” He ran his tongue along his chipped teeth and stared at her. She turned helplessly to Adam.
“The cellars,” he said firmly.
She looked at the grey-shrouded lump hanging off the horse. “The cellars, then. And may my lord king have mercy on me.”
“He’ll have mercy well enough if the prince lives, my lady,” quipped the attendant. “If he dies, well…” He cocked a brow as they led the horses away from the main entrance to the keep. “You could have set him about anywheres and ’twouldn’t be enough to still the king’s fury.”
She guided them to a little-used entrance on the northern, least-used side of the castle. There were no outbuildings, no gardens or exercise yards, and little reason for anyone to wander back here. There were only the cool shadows that edged out from the base of the buttressed tower they now stood beneath, and Gwyn hoped to God anyone seeking shade would be more inclined to the great hall than this barely-used bit of turf.
A thick wall of ivy hung down over the castle walls. She wrestled a swath of it aside to reveal a short, hidden series of steps leading down to a small covered entryway and a huge oak door at the bottom, strapped with iron hinges. Fumbling with the ring of keys tied to the girdle around her waist, she took up a mottled iron one and thrust it into the lock.
The door pulled open noiselessly, emitting a billowing cloud of darkness and a faint stench. She pinched her nose while Adam propped open the door with three rocks. She stood aside as the two men hauled their princely cargo from the horse and struggled him inside.
Once they disappeared into the darkness, she heaved the rocks away, ripped one of her nails to the quick in the process, cursed to rival a seaman, and let the door slam shut behind her.
It was dark. A full, eye-taunting darkness that brought another curse, this one fainter, to her lips. Echoes bounced down the corridor in mocking whispers.
“Do you know where we are?” Adam enquired, his voice drifting from out of the darkness to her left.
She nibbled on the edge of her finger, gathering her bearings. They must be at the far end of a disused passageway that snaked past cells and small chambers, room
s once used for storing siege supplies, wine and foods and an arsenal of weapons. Now the entire place was empty, save for small animal scuttlings and a slow drip that could be heard in the distance.
“Come.”
She tiptoed sightless down the rank, damp corridor, heart in her throat. She kept her hand on the tunnel wall, trailing her fingertips across foul pockets of slime and sludge, but if she removed her hand from the wall, she’d walk smack into it. She could see nothing; the pitch of the darkness was so black it practically oozed.
Every so often the stone dropped away and her fingers would suddenly trail over empty space, an opening of some sort. A cold draft would sweep by her face, coming from some dark, untold depths deep in the castle bowels. Gwyn hurried past the openings, hastening the men with raspy whispers and a beckoning hand that they couldn’t possibly see.