Timeline. Part 47

In the corner of the room, she saw Marek, crouched over the body of a soldier lying on the ground. He held his finger to his lips and pointed to a door on the right. Kate heard voices: the soldiers in the gatehouse. Quietly, Marek raised the ladder and slid it over to block the door shut.

Together, they removed the soldier's broadsword, his bow, and his quiver of arrows. The dead body was heavy; it was surprisingly difficult to strip the weapons. It seemed to take a long time. She looked at the man's face-he had a two-day growth of beard, and a canker sore on his lip. His eyes were brown, staring.

She jumped back with fright when the man suddenly raised his hand toward her. Then she realized she'd caught her damp sleeve on his bracelet. She pulled it free. The hand dropped back with a thunk.

Marek took the man's broadsword. He gave the bow and arrows to her.

Several white monk's habits hung in a row on pegs on the wall. Marek slipped one on, gave a second one to her.

Now he pointed to the left, toward the ramp leading to the second building. Two soldiers in maroon and gray stood on the ramp, blocking their way.

Marek looked around, found a heavy stick used for stirring grain, and handed it to her. He saw more bottles of wine in the corner. He took two, opened the door, and said something in Occitan, waving the bottles at the soldiers. They hurried over. Marek pushed Kate to the side of the door and said one word: "Hard." "Hard."

The first soldier came in, followed immediately by the second. She swung the stick at his head and hit him so hard she was sure she had broken his skull. But she hadn't; the man fell, but immediately started to get up again. She hit him two more times, and then he fell flat on his face and didn't move. Meanwhile, Marek had broken the wine bottle over the other soldier's head, and he was now kicking him repeatedly in the stomach. The man struggled, raising his arms to protect himself, until she brought the stick down on his head. Then he stopped moving.

Marek nodded, slipped the broadsword under his robes, and started across the ramp, head slightly bowed, like a monk. Kate followed behind.

She did not dare to look at the soldiers on the guard towers. She had concealed the quiver under her robes, but she had to carry the bow outside, in plain view. She didn't know if anybody had noticed her or not. They came to the next building, and Marek paused at the door. They listened, but heard nothing except a loud repet.i.tive banging and the rush of the river below.

Marek opened the door.

Chris coughed and sputtered, bobbing in the river. The current was slower now, but he was already a hundred yards downstream from the mill. On both sides of the river, Arnaut's men were standing around, obviously waiting for the order to attack the bridge. A large number of horses stood nearby, held by pages.

The sun reflected brightly off the surface of the water into the faces of Arnaut's men. He saw them squinting, and turning their backs to the river. The glare was probably why they hadn't seen him, Chris realized.

Without splashing or raising his arms, he made his way to the north bank of the Dordogne and slipped among overhanging rushes at the water's edge. Here no one would see him. He could catch his breath for a moment. And he had to be on this side of the river-the French side-if he hoped to rejoin Andre and Kate.

That is, a.s.suming they made it out of the mill alive. Chris didn't know what the chances of that were. The mill was crawling with soldiers.

And then he remembered that Marek still had the ceramic. If Marek died, or disappeared, they'd never get back home. But they'd probably never get back anyway, he thought.

Something thumped the back of his head. He turned to see a dead rat, bloated with gas, floating in the water. The moment of revulsion spurred him to get out of the river. There were no soldiers right where he was now; they were standing in the shade of an oak grove, a dozen yards downstream. He climbed out of the water and sank down in the undergrowth. He felt the sun on his body, warming him. He heard the soldiers laughing and joking. He knew he should move to a more secluded place. Where he was now, lying among low bushes on the sh.o.r.e, anyone walking along the riverside trail would easily see him. But as he felt warmer, he also felt overcome with exhaustion. His eyes were heavy, his limbs weary, and despite his sense of danger, he told himself, he would close his eyes just for a few moments.

Just for a few moments.

Inside the mill, the noise was deafening. Kate winced as she stepped onto the second-floor landing and looked down on the room below. Running the length of the building, twin rows of trip-hammers clanged down on blacksmith's anvils, making a continuous banging that reverberated off the stone walls.

Beside each anvil was a tub of water and a brazier with glowing coals. This was clearly a forge, where steel was annealed by alternately heating, pounding and cooling in water; the wheels provided the pounding force.

But now, the trip-hammers were banging down unattended as seven or eight uniformed soldiers in maroon and gray methodically searched every corner of the room, looking beneath the rotating cylinders and under the banging hammers, feeling the walls for secret compartments in the stone, and rummaging through the chests of tools.

She had no doubt what they were looking for: Brother Marcel's key.

Marek turned to her and signaled that they should go down the stairs and toward a side door, now standing ajar. This was the only door in the side wall; it had no lock, and it was almost certainly Marcel's room.

And clearly, it had already been searched.

For some reason, this didn't bother Marek, who went down intently. At the foot of the stairs, they made their way past the banging trip-hammers and slipped inside Marcel's room.

Marek shook his head.

This was indeed a monk's cell, very small, and strikingly bare: just a narrow cot, a basin of water and a chamber pot. By the bed stood a tiny table with a candle. That was all. Two of Marcel's white robes hung on a peg inside the door.

Nothing else.

It was clear from a glance that there were no keys in this room. And even if there had been, the soldiers would already have found them.

Nevertheless, to Kate's surprise, Marek got down on his hands and knees and began to search methodically under the bed.

Marek was remembering what the Abbot had said just before he was killed.

The Abbot didn't know the location of the pa.s.sage, and he desperately wanted to find out, so he could provide it to Arnaut. The Abbot had encouraged the Professor to search through old doc.u.ments-which made sense, if Marcel was so demented that he could no longer tell anybody what he had done.

The Professor had found a doc.u.ment that mentioned a key, and he seemed to think this was a discovery of importance. But the Abbot had been impatient: "Of course there is a key. Marcel has many keys...."

So the Abbot already knew about the existence of a key. He knew where the key was. But he still couldn't use it.

Why not?

Kate tapped Marek on the shoulder. He looked over, to see she had pushed aside the white robes. On the back of the door he saw three carved designs, in some Roman pattern. The designs had a formal, even decorative quality that seemed distinctly unmedieval.

And then he realized that these weren't designs at all. They were explanatory diagrams. They were keys.

The diagram that held his attention was the third one, on the far right side. It looked like this: [image]

The diagram had been carved in the wood of the door many years before. Undoubtedly, the soldiers had already seen it. But if they were still searching, then they hadn't understood what it meant.

But Marek understood.

Kate was staring at him, and she mouthed, Staircase? Staircase?

Marek pointed to the image. He mouthed, Map. Map.

Because now at last it was all clear to him.

VIVIX wasn't found in the dictionary, because it wasn't a word. It was a series of numerals: V, IV and IX. And these numerals had specific directions attached to them, as indicated by the text in the parchment: DESIDE. Which was also not a word, but rather stood for DExtra, SInistra, DExtra. Or in Latin: "right, left, right."

Therefore, the key was this: once inside the green chapel, you walked five paces to the right, four paces to the left and nine paces to the right.

And that would bring you to the secret pa.s.sage.

He grinned at Kate.

What everybody was looking for, they had at last found. They had found the key to La Roque.

09:10:23.

Now all they had to do was get out of the mill alive, Kate thought. Marek went to the door, peered cautiously out at the soldiers in the main room. She came up alongside him.

She counted nine soldiers. Plus de Kere. That made ten altogether.

Ten against two.

The soldiers seemed less preoccupied with their search than before. Many of them were looking at one another over the pounding trip-hammers, and shrugging, as if to say, Aren't we finished? What's the point?

Clearly, it would be impossible for Kate and Marek to leave without detection.

Marek pointed at the stairs to the upper ramp. "You go straight to the stairs and out of here," he said. "I'll cover you. Later, we'll regroup downstream on the north bank. Okay?"

Kate looked at the soldiers. "It's ten against one. I'll stay," she said.

"No. One of us has to make it out of here. I can handle this. You go." He reached in his pocket. "And take this with you." He held out the ceramic to her.

She felt a chill. "Why, Andre?"

" Take it."

And they moved out into the room. Kate headed toward the stairs, returning as she had come. Marek moved across the room, toward the far windows, overlooking the river.

Kate was halfway up the stairs when she heard a shout. All around the room, soldiers were running toward Marek, who had thrown back his monk's cowl and was already battling one.

Kate didn't hesitate. Taking her quiver from beneath her robes, she notched the first arrow, and drew her bow. She remembered Marek's words: If you want to kill a man ... If you want to kill a man ... She had thought it was laughable at the time. She had thought it was laughable at the time.

A soldier was shouting, pointing at her. She shot him; the arrow struck his neck at the shoulder. The man staggered back into a brazier, screaming as he fell into glowing coals. A second soldier near him was backing away, looking for cover, when Kate shot him full in the chest. He sagged to the ground, dead.

Eight left.

Marek was battling three at one time, including de Kere. Swords clanged as the men dodged among the pounding triphammers and leapt over spinning cams. Marek had already killed one soldier, who lay behind him.

Seven left.

But then she saw the soldier get to his feet; his death had been a pretense, and now he moved forward cautiously, intending to attack Marek from behind. Kate notched another arrow, shot him. The man tumbled down, clutching his thigh; he was only wounded; Kate shot him in the head as he lay on the wood.

She was reaching for another arrow when she saw that de Kere had broken away from the fight with Marek and was now running up the stairs toward her with surprising speed.

Kate fumbled for another arrow, notched it, and shot at de Kere. But she was hasty and missed. Now de Kere was coming fast.

Kate dropped her bow and arrow and ran outside.

She ran along the ramp to the mill, looking down at the water. Everywhere, she could see river stones beneath the hissing white water: it was too shallow for her to jump. She'd have to go back down the way she had come up. Behind her, de Kere was shouting something. On the guard tower ahead, a group of archers drew their bows.

By the time the first arrows were flying, she had reached the door to the flour mill. De Kere was by then running backward, screaming at the archers, shaking his fist in the air. Arrows thunked down all around him.

In the upper mill room, troops were crashing against the door, which was blocked by the ladder. She knew the ladder wouldn't hold for long. She went to the hole in the floor and swung down into the room beneath. With all the commotion, the drunken soldiers were waking up, staggering bleary-eyed to their feet. But with so much yellow dust in the air, it was hard to see them very well.

That was what gave her the idea: all the dust in the air.

She reached into her pouch and brought out one of the red cubes. It said "60" on it. She pulled the tab, and tossed it in a corner of the room.

She started counting silently backward in her mind.

Fifty-nine. Fifty-eight.

De Kere was now on the floor directly above her, but he hesitated to come down, unsure if she was armed. She heard many voices and footsteps up above; the soldiers from the guardhouse had broken through. There must be a dozen men up there. Maybe more.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw one of the drunken soldiers by the sacks lunge forward and grab at her. She kicked hard between his legs and he fell whimpering, curling on the ground.

Fifty-two. Fifty-one.

She crouched down, and moved into the small side room where she first arrived. The water wheel was creaking, spraying water. She shut the low door, but it had no latch or lock. Anyone could come in.

Fifty. Forty-nine.

She looked down. The opening in the floor, where the wheel continued its rotation downward, was wide enough to allow her to pa.s.s through. Now all she had to do was grab one of the pa.s.sing paddles and ride the wheel down until she was low enough to drop safely into the shallow water.

But as she faced the water wheel, trying to time her move, she realized it was easier said than done. The wheel seemed to be turning very fast, the paddles blurring past her. She felt the water spatter her face, blurring her vision. How much time was left? Thirty seconds? Twenty? Staring at the wheel, she'd lost track. But she knew she couldn't wait. If Chris was right, the entire mill would explode any second now. Kate reached forward, grabbed a pa.s.sing paddle-started to fall with it-chickened out-released it-reached again-chickened out-and then pulled back, took a breath, steadied herself, got ready again.

She heard the thump of men jumping down from the upper floor, one after another, into the adjacent room. She had no time left.

She had to go.

She took a deep breath, grabbed the next paddle with both hands, pressing her body against the wheel. She slipped through the opening-and emerged into sunlight-she had made it!-until suddenly she was yanked away from the wheel, and found herself hanging in midair.

She looked up.

Robert de Kere held her arm in a steel grip. Reaching down through the opening, he had caught her at the last moment as she descended. And now he was holding her, dangling her in the air. Inches away, the wheel continued to turn. She tried to twist free of de Kere's grip. His face was grim, determined as he watched her.

She struggled.

He held tight.

Then she saw something change in his eyes-some instant of uncertainty-and the soggy wooden floor began to give way beneath him. Their combined weight was too much for the old wood planking, which for years had been soaked by water from the wheel. The planks now bent slowly downward. One plank broke soundlessly, and de Kere's knee went through, but still he held her fast.

How much time? she thought. With her free hand, she pounded on de Kere's wrist, trying to make him release her.