P. Chisholm - A Famine of Horses

He brought up a stool, climbed on it, poked his shoulders through again and felt for the rungs of the ladder. The first one he found and tested for its strength, promptly came out of the wall at one side.

“The mortar’s rotten,” he said, thinking maybe he could survive Janet’s fury.

“Get on with it,” hissed Lady Widdrington, “someone’s coming.”

It was all very well for her, she wasn’t risking her neck in some horrible deep well…The second rung seemed firm enough to take his weight. He swallowed hard, got a grip on it with both hands and heaved himself through the little hole, the sword on his belt catching and scraping.

Almost at once, Lady Widdrington put the lantern on the ledge and fitted the shutter back in the hole. He heard the bolts going home as he hung by his hands from the top rung. That was when he thought of taking off his jack, sword and helmet and lowering them down on the rope, but it was too late to do it. Scrabbling desperately with his toes for one below him, he thought that all except the top rungs had fallen out, but at last he found a foothold and could distribute his weight.

He passed the end of the rope round the top rung and felt down gingerly for the next rung. That one held, he went down a little further, gasping a bit with fear. The rung after that was rotten but the three below it were firm enough.

It might have taken him two minutes or half an hour to climb down to the little ledge he could dimly see in the light of the lantern above. He couldn’t bring it with him, he didn’t have the hands. Once on the ledge he got his breath back and looked about. There were some rotten wooden boards propped up against the wall, and then he saw the opening of the tunnel on the other side, just as Lady Widdrington had said.

It wasn’t badly planned, he thought to distract himself as he inched round the ledge towards it. Any besiegers who found the passage would have to reverse what he was doing to get in and it would be a simple matter for the defenders to drop things down on them from above and knock them off. And the ledge was deliberately made too narrow to stand and use a bow. God, it was narrow, and the well was still too deep to see the water. And then, if the garrison wanted to use the passage to make a foray, or get food, they would have control of the well shaft and they could put down planks across the yawning hold so it wasn’t so dangerous.

Dodd crouched down by the opening, put his head into it and banged his nose on something metal. Cursing and feeling with his hand, he discovered an iron grill, firmly set in the rock.

“Oh Christ, it’s been blocked up…”

Sense told him otherwise. If the passage was to be blocked up, they would have done it properly with bricks and mortar, this was a defence. Which meant it could be lifted, perhaps like a portcullis. The light from the lantern high above him was guttering, but he couldn’t bring himself to climb and fetch it and trim the wick. Somewhere by the opening there had to be a…His hand fell onto a lever, and he pulled it down. It was stuck.

“Come on,” he muttered, wrenching at it. At last it creaked and groaned and the iron grill lifted a little. Just like a portcullis. Sweating freely and feeling sick from the smell of mould, Dodd pulled at the lever again, heard a crunching of gears as the ratchet within the mechanism caught its teeth, and the iron grill lifted up a little higher, and then suddenly something worked and it pulled right out of the way. There were long sharp spikes along the bottom.

Terrified of being spitted like an animal in a trap, Dodd looked around for something to wedge it with, pulled one of the rotten planks towards him and jammed it in the groove.

The passage was tiny and slimy and horrible. He didn’t want to go in. On the other hand, he couldn’t climb back up either.

“Carey, you bastard,” he moaned, pushed his sword in its scabbard in front, put his head in and scraped his shoulders through. There was an ominous creak and whine from the iron gate. Dodd whimpered and crawled forwards on his elbows as fast as he could, heard the rattle and cracking as the rusty chain broke and the wood splintered, and brought his feet up under him just in time, scraping a long hole in his hose and grazing his knees. The iron grill slammed into the holes behind him, and he wanted to be sick.

He didn’t, it was too unpleasant a thought, having to crawl through it. The passage was bad enough as it was, slimy and stinking of rats and excrement, with little spines of limestone sticking up and hurting his hands and spines of limestone hanging down to bang his head. Why the hell was he doing this for Carey, he didn’t even like the man, what the devil did he care…

The passage opened out a bit after a few yards of eeling along on his belly, so he could crawl on hands and knees, feeling ahead of himself with his sword, in terror that the roof might have fallen in. There was one place where some stones had fallen down, but he managed to slither through there as well, to find a puddle on the other side.

He splashed through that, crawled for another age, cursing Carey, Lowther and both Scropes comprehensively, and then the point of his sword rammed into solid stone blocking the way. Not knowing whether his eyes were open or shut, except by the way his sweat was stinging them, he felt the stones. Masonry, tightly packed. He must be at the Tile Tower by now, surely. And surely to God, there was a way out. He felt around, found a small slimy drain that was producing a stink to fell an ox. He thought he must suffocate from it and his head was starting to spin.

The wall in front of him stayed obstinately immovable. Dodd pushed and heaved with his neck muscles cramping and his knees giving him hell, almost weeping with frustration. He finally lay down flat to rest, and happened to look upwards.

Either something was wrong with his eyes or there was a tiny squeeze of daylight up there. Above him was no tunnel roof, only a shaft and beside him, now he had calmed down, he could feel some more metal rungs. He sniffed. He thought at last that he knew where he was: this was the garderobe shaft for the Tile Tower, which was one of the lookout towers on the north wall of Carlisle. It was still in use, clearly, by sentries. God, no wonder the tunnel stank and what exactly was it he’d crawled through…

“Bastard, bastard, bastard,” he muttered in a litany of ill-usage, as he strapped his sword on again and set himself to climb. The rungs were slippery but they seemed firmer than the ones in the well. At last he found the light coming from a little window above a small stone platform. At that point, he could get his bearings. He was in the outer wall where it was at its thickest, seven or eight yards thick, he thought and couldn’t remember. There must be a way to the outside, or why bother with a passage?

There was. Part of the wall swivelled and he passed through it. The passage was as narrow as the one from the well, but this one was at least dry. At the end it dipped down where it joined a gutter and when Dodd lowered himself experimentally, he found himself sitting on a ledge about ten feet off the ground to the north of Carlisle, looking out on the Sauceries and the racetrack and the Eden bridge.

Now afraid of twisting his ankle when he had ten miles to run, Dodd lowered himself down on his arms and fingers, dropped into the soft earth and brambles of the ditch and then sat there for five minutes, gasping and shuddering and swearing all sorts of desperate reformations if God would never make him do that again. At last, with his knees killing him and his legs still rubbery, he scrambled up the other side of the ditch and walked across the rough grass to the river.

Once he got to the Eden he mopped off some of the green streaks and filth that covered him from head to foot. There were a few curious stares from some of the women washing linen at the rapids, but none of them saw fit to comment. Then he set off along the old Roman road at a fast jog trot, past the banks and ditch of the old Pict’s Wall, heading for Brampton nine miles away where Janet’s father lived with his kin, the first of the men on Carey’s list of those who disliked Lowther. Nobody enjoyed paying blackrent for protection against raiders Lowther brought in himself, but some resented it more than others. Will the Tod Armstrong, Janet’s father, had bent his ear often enough on the subject, God knew.