‘The Queen will not notice a few scuffs,’ retorted Bartholomew, and squinted up at the sky, trying to gauge the time. ‘I suppose she will arrive at any moment now …’
‘She is not coming,’ said Marishal sourly. ‘A messenger arrived an hour ago, to say that she has been delayed by floods. Tonight’s ceremony will have to proceed without her.’
‘Then the squires have not yet heard the news,’ remarked Bartholomew, glancing to where Nuport and his friends had finished lugging blankets, and were trailing to the outer bailey with shovels; they dragged their feet, clearly hating the humiliation.
A vengeful expression flitted across Marishal’s face. ‘I must have forgotten to mention it to them.’ He inserted the key and made a moue of annoyance. ‘It is not locked. Whose idea was it to haul me from more important duties on a fool’s errand? Yours, or my idiot son’s?’
‘If it is not locked, then open it,’ ordered Bartholomew curtly.
Marishal obliged, and Bartholomew saw that the door had been fitted with a mechanism that allowed it to be firmly secured from the outside – a tiny lever that slotted discreetly into a groove in the wall, which could be released by a quick twist of the handle.
‘There,’ said Marishal. ‘Although I do not know why you could not have done it yourself.’
‘Because I did not know how,’ retorted Bartholomew, feeling he could come to dislike the steward. ‘And why would you install such a thing anyway? It is simply begging for someone to be shut inside – especially with pranksters like your twins around.’
‘Lichet put it in, after a leak saw us ankle-deep in mud for months,’ explained Marishal. ‘It prevents the door from bursting open when the water in the cistern reaches bailey height. The ground here is boggy now, so you can imagine what it is like when the cistern overflows.’
Bartholomew was growing angrier with every word the steward spoke. ‘Then why did no one tell us about this sooner?’ he cried. ‘It is possible that the killer trapped your wife and Roos inside by deploying the thing. And now Lichet – a suspect for the murders – is down there with Michael.’
Marishal’s eyes narrowed. ‘Then I suggest we go and make sure all is well. And if the Red Devil does transpire to be the beast who stabbed Margery …’
With mounting trepidation, Bartholomew began to follow him down the steps, but they had not gone far when he heard the door slam shut. He scrambled back up again, only to discover that Lichet’s device had slipped into place. The door was closed, and no amount of shoving and kicking would make it budge. They were trapped.
‘Damn!’ muttered Marishal. ‘The wind must have caught it. Thank God the Queen is not coming today. It would have been very inconvenient – not to mention embarrassing – to be stuck down here when she arrived.’
‘Did the wind catch it?’ asked Bartholomew uneasily. ‘Or did someone shut it on purpose?’
‘Well, it was not Lichet – not if he is already down here. But I suspect it was the wind. If the door slams hard enough, the mechanism does drop into place of its own volition. I have seen it happen before. I told Lichet to fix it, but it seems he forgot.’
‘Hey!’ bellowed Bartholomew, thumping the door with both fists for good measure. ‘Help!’
‘Save your breath. The only folk working in the inner bailey today are the cooks, and they are too far away to hear you.’
Bartholomew knew, from the experiments he had conducted with Richard the previous afternoon, that this was true. The door was unusually thick – understandably so, given that it was intended to keep the bailey from flooding – and he had not heard the watchman yell from inside, even when he had pressed his ear to the wood.
‘But there must be a way of opening it from within,’ he said agitatedly. ‘Otherwise, the system would be fundamentally flawed – not to mention dangerous.’
‘Well, it was Lichet’s design, so what do you expect?’ shrugged Marishal. ‘I did suggest he include a way for someone to escape, should they inadvertently be locked in, but he said no one would be that stupid. Shall we see what he has to say about it now?’
It was not an easy descent for two reasons. First, because Marishal held the only lamp, and he was not very good at shining it in such a way that both of them could see. And second, because Bartholomew felt his apprehension grow with every step he took. On the upside, they did not have far to go, as the water had risen so much that it had reached the uppermost of the eight doors.
‘Michael?’ he shouted, taking the lantern and ducking through it. ‘Where are you?’
‘Matt!’ came the monk’s voice warningly. ‘Go back! Lichet is here.’
Lichet was indeed there, standing a few feet away holding a crossbow. The sight was too much for Marishal, who surged forward with a howl of rage, clearly of the opinion that Lichet with a weapon proved that he was Margery’s killer. He barrelled past Bartholomew, and had almost reached his target when he skidded in the wet. He fell, and his momentum carried him clean across the slick pavement and into the water beyond. He disappeared with a splash and was gone.
There was a shocked silence. Then Bartholomew ran to look for him, almost losing his own footing in the process, but the water was black and empty. A sinister ripple on the surface showed that a strong current was running, and he could only suppose it had dragged the hapless steward away.
‘Forget him and stand with your friend,’ ordered Lichet, brandishing the crossbow.
It was then that Bartholomew saw Michael. The monk had been forced to walk further around the inside of the cistern, to the point where the pavement tapered abruptly from a wide viewing platform to a narrow service ledge. It was too thin for his princely bulk, so he held himself rigid, terrified that he would slip and share the steward’s fate.
‘Do it, Bartholomew,’ hissed Lichet, taking aim. ‘I will not tell you again.’
But the physician baulked, knowing that once he was there, he and Michael would be doomed for certain – Lichet would shoot one of them, and have plenty of time to reload before the other could counter-attack. Their only hope was to remain apart, forcing Lichet to divide his attention. He stood carefully, but made no attempt to do as he was told.
‘So you are the culprit,’ he said heavily, talking in the hope of gaining a few moments to devise a way out of their predicament. ‘You stabbed Margery and Roos.’
‘No!’ shouted Lichet agitatedly. ‘As I have been explaining to this stupid monk, I have killed no one. Charer the coachman was an accident – he was drunk when he came down here, and he fell. You saw for yourselves how easily it can happen when Marishal did it. It was over in a flash.’
‘So you carried his body to the river,’ surmised Michael. His voice was unsteady. Of all the ways there were to die, drowning was the one that held the greatest fear for him. ‘Why?’
‘Why do you think?’ snapped Lichet. ‘Because I live upstairs, and I did not want to be accused of his murder. Too many people resent the favour the Lady shows me, and they would have used Charer’s death to do me harm. So I took him to a place where he would be found quickly, and then decently laid to rest. It did no harm.’
‘On the contrary – it did a very great deal of harm,’ argued Bartholomew, assessing the distance between him and Lichet with a view to launching an assault. He might have managed on a dry floor, but not on one that was so treacherous. ‘It led castle folk to assume that Charer was murdered by townsmen.’
‘I know,’ acknowledged Lichet sullenly. ‘But it is not my fault that they are ignoramuses. Now stop blathering and walk towards Michael. At once!’