Hook went to bed.
Next morning, when a gun fired, the earth trembled.
Hook was in the mine, down at the lowest level where Sir John had led him to listen again, and suddenly the earth shuddered and the rushlights flickered dark.
Everyone crouched in the half dark, listening. A miner began coughing wetly and Hook waited until the echo of the cough had died away. Listening. Listening for death, listening.
A second gun fired and the earth seemed to quiver as the tiny flames spluttered again and dust jarred from the roof and gobbets of earth spattered down to splash in the tunnel’s slurry. The rumble of the gun’s noise seemed to last forever, then there was a moaning sound, a creaking, as though the oaken supports were bending under the weight of the earth they carried.
“Hook?” Sir John asked.
There was a scratching noise, so faint that Hook wondered if he imagined it, but then there was a muffled crack followed by silence. After a while the scratching started again, and this time Hook was sure he heard it. The men in the tunnel watched him anxiously. He crossed to the farther wall and pressed an ear against the chalk.
Scratching. Hook looked at Dafydd ap Traharn. “How are you digging now, sir?” he asked.
“The way we always do,” the Welshman said, puzzled.
“Show me, sir?”
The Welshman took a pick and went to the tunnel’s face where, instead of swinging the pick to bury its blade in the soft rock, he dragged it down a natural cleft. He dragged it again, deepening the cleft, and then pushed the blade into the hole and tried to lever out a chunk of stone, but the hole was not deep enough and so he scratched the steel point down the groove again. He scratched it. He was working quietly, trying not to alert the French as the tunnel went closer to the ravaged walls, and Hook realized that was the sound he was hearing. Both teams of tunnelers were trying to work silently.
“They’re very close,” Hook said.
“Cymorth ni, O Arglwydd,” a miner muttered and crossed himself.
“How close?” Sir John demanded, ignoring the plea for God’s help.
“Can’t tell, Sir John.”
“God damn the goddam bastards,” Sir John spat.
“They may be above us,” Dafydd ap Traharn suggested, “or below.”
“You’ll know when they’re really close,” Hook said, “you’ll hear the scratching loud.”
“Scratching?” the Welshman asked.
“It’s what I hear, sir.”
“They’ll hack their way through the last few feet,” Dafydd ap Traharn said grimly, “and come on us like demons.”
“We have our own demons waiting for them,” Sir John said. “We’re not abandoning this tunnel! We need it! We’ll fight the bastards underground. It will save us digging them graves, won’t it?”
The war bows were too long to use in the tunnel and so at midday Sir John brought a half-dozen crossbows. “If they break in,” he told Hook, “greet them with these. Then use your poleaxes.”
The scratching was louder, so loud that Dafydd ap Traharn decided there was no longer any purpose in trying to be silent and so his men began to swing their pickaxes, filling the tunnel’s end with noise and a fine choking dust. Every now and then a blade struck flint and a spark would fly fierce and bright across the gloomy shaft. The sparks looked like shooting stars and Hook remembered his grandmother crossing herself whenever she saw such a star, then she would say a prayer and she claimed such prayers, carried by the hurrying stars, were more effective. He closed his eyes when the sparks flew and prayed for Melisande and for Father Christopher and for his brother, Michael. Michael, at least, was in England, far from the Perrill brothers and their mad priest father. “Another day’s work,” Dafydd ap Traharn said, interrupting Hook’s thoughts of home, “and we can start making the cavern. Then we’ll bring down their tower like the walls of Jericho!”
The men-at-arms and the archers sat at the tunnel’s edge, drawing in their feet to let the laborers carry out the excavated spoil and bring in the new timbers to support the roof. They listened to the sounds of the French miners. Those noises were louder, inescapable and ominous. They came from the north where the enemy had to be driving a counter-mine to intercept the English work and, in the dust-shrouded light of the small flames, Hook constantly watched the far wall, expecting to see a great hole appear through which an armored enemy would erupt. Sir John spent much of the afternoon in the tunnel, his sword drawn and face shadowed. “We have to fight them back into their hole,” he said, “and then collapse their work. Jesus, it smells like a midden down here!”
“It is a midden,” Dafydd ap Traharn said. Some of the laborers had fallen ill and constantly fouled the wet slurry underfoot.
Sir John left late in the day and, an hour later, sent other men to relieve the mine’s guards. Those new men came stooping down the tunnel, their shadows flickering monstrously in the half darkness. “Christ on his cross,” a voice grumbled, “can’t breathe this air.”
“You have crossbows for us?” another voice demanded.
“We’ve got them,” Hook acknowledged, “and they’re cocked.”
“Leave them for us,” the man said, then peered at the archers he was relieving. “Hook? Is that you?”
“Sir Edward!” Hook said. He laid the crossbow on the floor and stood, smiling.
“It is you!” Sir Edward Derwent, Lord Slayton’s man who, in London, had saved Hook from the manor court and its inevitable punishment, was smiling back in the dirty light. “I heard you were here,” he said, “how are you?”
“Still alive, Sir Edward,” Hook said, grinning.
“God be praised for that, though God knows how anyone survives down here.” Sir Edward, his scar-ravaged face half hidden by his helmet, listened to the ominous noises. “They sound close!”
“We think they are,” Hook said.
“It’s deceptive,” Dafydd ap Traharn put in. “They could be ten paces away still. It’s hard to tell with sounds underground.”
“So they could be a hand’s breadth away?” Sir Edward inquired sourly.
“Oh, they could be!” the Welshman said dourly.
Sir Edward looked at the drawn crossbows. “And the idea is to welcome them with bolts?” he asked, “then kill the bastards?”
“The idea is to keep me alive,” Dafydd ap Traharn said, “and you’re blocking the tunnel, you are! There are too many of you! There’s work to be done.”
Sir John’s men-at-arms had already gone, and now Hook sent his archers after them. He lingered a moment. “I wish you a quiet night,” he said to Sir Edward.
“Dear God, I echo that prayer,” Sir Edward said. He grinned. “It’s good to see you, Hook.”
“A pleasure to see you, sir,” Hook said, “and thank you.”
“Go and rest, man,” Sir Edward said.
Hook nodded. He hefted his poleax and, with a farewell nod to Dafydd ap Traharn, edged past Sir Edward’s men, one of whom tried to trip him and Hook saw the lantern jaw and sunken eyes and, for a moment, in the half darkness, he thought it was Sir Martin, then realized it was the priest’s elder son, Tom Perrill. Both brothers were there, stooping under the beams, but Hook ignored them, knowing that neither would attack him while Sir Edward was present.
He trudged up the tunnel toward the fading daylight far ahead. He was thinking of Melisande, of the stew she would have ready, and of songs around the campfire when the world shattered.
Noise thudded about his ears. It started as a thunderous growl that billowed just behind him, then there was a rending noise as though the earth itself was splitting apart, and he turned to see dust boiling toward him, a dark cloud of dust rolling in the shaft’s dark light, and men like monstrous shadows were lumbering in that darkness. There was shouting, the sound of steel on armor, and a scream. The first scream.