Ross King - Ex Libris

I felt my body tense, bracing itself to lunge. I might still reach the pistol. But there were at least two intruders, while even if I reached the weapon first I had only one shot. So I remained in a crouch on the landing, too frightened even to breathe.

A few horrible seconds passed before I heard the sharp gasp of a taper. Then a light welled upwards and shadows pivoted across the wall. I sprang into motion, lurching crabwise along the narrow landing, fumbling for the steps above me. But it was too late. Already a pair of boots was squeaking on the treads, only a few feet below now. I heard the soft whoosh of the burning torch, then a loud scrape as the pistol was recovered. Another few seconds and they would reach me.

I spun round and groped blindly at the steps. But no sooner had I found purchase than a cold hand seized the back of my neck.

Nonsuch House was over eighty years old in those days. It had been built in Holland in the year 1577 and then shipped in sections to London, where its carved gables and onion-shaped cupolas were fitted together without the use of nails, piece by piece, like the segments of a giant jigsaw puzzle. It stood halfway along the carriageway, on the north side of a small drawbridge whose wooden-cogged wheels creaked and ground together six times a day. And so six times a day all traffic on the carriageway was forced to halt for twenty minutes while that beneath floated through on the tide: hoys and shallops headed upstream with loads of malt and dried haddock, bumboats and pinnaces going downstream with hogsheads of ale and sugar for the merchantmen at Tower Dock, sometimes even the yacht of the King himself on its way to the races at Greenwich, masts swaying and sails crackling. A hush would descend on the bridge at these moments as the pack-horses and pushing foot-passengers all paused in their tracks before the dreamlike parade of twenty or thirty boats. As an apprentice, I, too, used to stop and watch in wonder as the carriageway rose steeply skyward and the sails sidled past the windows, their bunts filled with wind and bulging like the waistcoats of giants. But then Mr. Smallpace would shout at me from across the shop and I would dutifully return my attentions to the piles of books.

The ritual was impressive and inspiring, but it also wreaked violence on Nonsuch House, especially my corner, which directly abutted the drawbridge and, six times a day, shuddered and groaned under the exertions. As the wheels spun and the girders lifted I could feel timbers quaking under my feet and hear the window-panes thrumming inside their fittings. Books had been known to topple from their shelves, cups and plates from their cupboards, copper pots and joints of meat from their hooks in the pantry. Even worse, soon after Mr. Smallpace's death I discovered how one of the upright beams in the study had shifted so far from the ceiling that one wall now bowed ominously outwards.

Something had to be done. I hired a blacksmith's apprentice to arrest the drift of the rogue upright, but in the midst of the renovations a hole was knocked through the rotting wattle-and-daub, exposing a small cavity. The hole was soon enlarged to reveal a chamber, seven feet high by three feet wide, into which I could squeeze with a little room to spare. Experimental tapping with an iron poker revealed that entry to the chamber had been through a hatch concealed in its ceiling, the boards of which now formed the floor of a tiny boot-cupboard one storey above.

Who had built the secret little compartment I could only guess. I found nothing inside except a wooden platter, a spoon, the tattered remains of what looked like a leather jerkin, and a battered silver candlestick. I had been expecting to find, if anything, a few ancient altar vessels or the scraps of priestly vestments, for I knew that priest-holes had been common features of houses built in the reign of Queen Elizabeth-little hiding-places under staircases or hearthstones to shelter priests of Rome and other victims of our religious persecutions.

That night I had sat inside the chamber with my knees drawn up under my chin and a candle burning in the old candlestick, trying to imagine whoever had hidden here: a Franciscan friar in a hair shirt, possibly even a Jesuit? For a moment I could see him very clearly, a little man kneeling on a rush mat, whispering a miserere, breathing carefully in the cramped darkness as, inches away, the magistrate's searchers called out passwords to one another and sounded the floors and wainscots with the hilts of their swords. I was no papist, but I hoped he had managed to escape, whoever he was, and preserve his secretive life-a hushed, ascetic and almost hermetically sealed existence of the sort for which I suppose I had always longed. So perhaps that was why when I hired a carpenter to fill in the chamber I changed my mind at the last minute, on a sudden impulse, and instructed him to leave the little cavity as it was, but to conceal it behind another wall. This wall was then whitewashed and panelled, and the panelling covered with bookshelves. Once again the chamber was invisible.

I had no expectations of ever using my secret chamber God forbid! I wished to preserve it as a memorial, that was all. Over the following few years I thought very little about it, though after the searchers began paying their little visits I used it to hide a few tracts and pamphlets that would otherwise have been confiscated and burned. No one else knew of its existence but Monk, to whom it had become a place of endless wonder. Often I could hear him thumping about inside, playing what I thought were mysterious little games. But then one day I raised the hatch in the boot-cupboard and peered inside to discover that he had furnished it with odds and ends such as a three-legged stool, candles, a blanket, reading material, even an old chamber-pot scavenged from somewhere. I suspected him of harbouring plans to take up residence. It was, after all, roughly the size of his own little bedchamber and probably no more uncomfortable.

But one evening as I sat in my armchair I heard a fierce banging from behind the wall and rushed upstairs to catch him in the act of driving nails through the soles of three pairs of old boots and into the top of the wooden hatch. Under interrogation he explained he was devising things so that when he opened the trapdoor and slipped inside the chamber-like so-the pairs of boots would remain in place after the lid was closed. The entrance was thereby disguised. Clever, was it not? He had popped out of the hole and was panting heavily. I agreed that it certainly was. There was no need to ask what had prompted his inspiration. Only three nights earlier the searchers had burst through his door and thrust the burning lantern into his face.

'Well done,' I repeated. I had decided to forgive him the boots, which I hardly ever wore. 'Yes, quite ingenious.' But as I peered into the tiny chamber I was reminded of the priest crouching in the darkness, praying for the preservation of his clandestine life and quiet mission. 'But let us hope we never have occasion to test it.'

We closed the door and crawled out of the cupboard. Then for months on end-sometimes much longer-I would think no more about the little cell concealed behind my study wall.

'Mr. Inchbold.' A whisper. The grip on my neck had tightened. 'This way, sir. Up. Follow me…'

We ascended quickly, our shadows vaulting up the steps before us. Past the study and the bedchamber, round another landing, then up another curling flight. From below came flashes of torchlight and a rapid thunder of feet. All stealth had now been abandoned. I heard a voice shouting after us, then a thud and a curse as our pursuers were tripped by the fifth stair from the landing. They picked themselves up, cursed again, renewed their pursuit. I heard a voice shouting my name.