'Well then, let us take advantage of our good fortune,' Mehmed said. 'There are other tunnels here, and we are going to find them. You will have as many men as you need, Zaganos. I want you to dig side passages off this tunnel, stretching the length of the walls if need be, until you find something.'
'I understand, Sultan.'
'Good. Start digging.' Sofia held an old, tattered book in one hand and a candle in the other as she descended the steps from the palace kitchen to the storerooms below. She had come straight from the library after she had come across a book, written hundreds of years ago by a Russian named Alexandre. He wrote of tunnels beneath the walls, built when the new wall surrounding the Blachernae quarter had been put up in the seventh century. Even more intriguing, the Russian insisted that he himself had passed through one. He said that during the Latin conquest, the emperor had used a tunnel to escape from the city. For a small price, a cook who had served in the Imperial Palace during the conquest had shown the Russian the tunnel. The entrance, Alexandre wrote, was beneath the imperial palace itself.
At the rear of the storerooms she found a stairway leading down into the palace dungeons. She descended the steps, her candle shedding a feeble light in the subterranean gloom. The staircase opened into a large underground room. The floor glistened with what looked like guano. Sofia thought that she could hear the titter of bats overhead, but the light of her candle did not reach to the ceiling. Other than the bats, the dungeon was silent. No prisoners had been kept here for centuries.
Three passages led from the room, and after consulting the book, she took the one on the furthest right. It led through a series of low rooms, and then to a staircase, which led down to a lower level of the dungeon. At the bottom, the stairs opened on to a long hallway. The air was colder here and the walls glistened with moisture. A large rat, startled by the sudden light, scurried away from beneath Sofia's feet, and she inhaled sharply. As she exhaled, she could see her breath in the cold, heavy air.
She pulled her robe more closely around her and walked down the hallway. To her left and right were a series of old prison cells, their doors open. Sofia peered into them as she passed. Manacles hung from the walls, and in one cell she saw an old skeleton. Other than that, the rooms were empty. At the end of the hallway, past the cells, was a large door.
Sofia consulted the book again and then pushed the door open. It swung slowly inward, groaning on rusty hinges, and she stepped into a room cluttered with various instruments of torture, all covered with a thick layer of dust and cobwebs. Set in the wall to her right was a fire pit, and next to it hung branding irons and pincers. On her left was a rack, a device for slowly pulling victims apart until they would confess to anything. Other implements were scattered about: restraints, spikes and wicked-looking knives. She shuddered.
A large tapestry depicting the fall of Constantinople to the Latins in 1203 hung on the far wall. Various scenes from the siege ran around the edges of the tapestry, framing a larger image that depicted the Latin knights breaking through the sea walls and overrunning the city, looting churches and burning homes. There was no door leading from the room. She had reached a dead end.
Sofia moved closer to the tapestry. At the bottom was a series of scenes depicting the emperor's escape. There was the emperor, walking through the palace dungeon, then passing through a long tunnel and finally emerging on a hillside, with Constantinople burning in the distance. Sofia stepped back and paused to consider. Who would hang a tapestry in a torture chamber? She grabbed it and pulled the rotting cloth aside. Behind it was a door. Sofia pulled hard, but it did not budge. She set the book and her candle down and tried again. Nothing. She took one of the branding irons from the wall and wedged its head into the tiny space between the door and the jamb. With all her weight, she pushed on the handle of the iron, using it as a lever, and with a loud crack the door swung open. A cold draught of fresh air rushed from the dark tunnel beyond. The candle guttered and then grew steady again, burning brighter in the fresh air. Sofia picked it up and stepped into the dark passage.
The floor and walls were of rough-hewn stone, damp with moisture. Ahead of Sofia, the tunnel sloped gently downward, stretching away into blackness. She moved slowly forward, and as she walked the draught grew stronger. She had been walking for a few minutes when a particularly strong gust of air blew the candle out. Sofia passed her hand in front of her face and saw nothing; the darkness was absolute.
Panic rose up inside her and she had to force herself to breathe. The passage was straight; she could not get lost. All she had to do was turn and follow the wall, and it would lead her back to the dungeon. But first, she needed to find out where this tunnel led. For if it did indeed lead out of the city, then the Turks could just as easily use it to enter. Sofia took a deep breath and reached out to touch the wall. The stones were cold and slimy. She stepped forward, running her hand along the wall as she continued down the passage.
Eventually, the passage stopped descending and levelled out. Shortly after that, the wall she had been following disappeared from under her hand. She reached in front of her but felt nothing, only empty space. She moved back and found the corner where the wall turned sharply to the right. She turned and followed the wall, running her hand along the cold stones. The wall had begun to curve away from her to the right, and after only a few more steps, it again vanished. She stepped forward a few feet and the wall resumed. She had discovered a side passage. A few feet later, she found another, and then another after that. With excitement, she realized that she knew where she was. The Russian had written about this place: a sort of hub, a round room with passages leading in all directions. According to him, the hub lay halfway between the palace and the exit on the far side of the wall. One of these passages, then, should lead beyond the walls. But which one?
Sofia turned around and counted until she was back to the passage that she had come down. It would be easy to get lost: she imagined herself stumbling about from passage to passage in this darkness, alone, until she died. She wanted to press on, but first she needed to think. She closed her eyes, trying to clear her mind, when she heard a sound: a distant clank, as of metal banging against metal. Then nothing, only her breathing and the loud beating of her heart. Her every instinct told her to turn and run back to the palace, but she would be a fool, she told herself, to run because of a mere sound. Besides, if the Turks were there somewhere in the darkness, they would no doubt have torches, and their eyes would not be adjusted to the darkness. She would see them long before they saw her.
She bent down and placed the book at the mouth of the passage, with her candle on top of it. Then she turned and again followed the curving wall. She paused at every side passage she came to, listening hard for any sound, but heard nothing. The room was immense, and she quickly lost count of the number of side passages. She had begun to fear that she was moving in circles, when finally, she stopped before the mouth of a passage and felt a warm wind ruffle her hair. The draught of fresh air was steady. Somewhere ahead, this passage led to the outside world.
She had only gone a few feet down the tunnel when she heard the clanking again, louder and closer this time. She froze as the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Sofia listened, holding her breath to hear better. The noise did not repeat itself, and she continued on her way.
The passage began to slope upward. She picked her way forward, pausing frequently to listen, but the clanking noise did not repeat itself. At every step she half-expected a band of Turks to spring forth, but there was nothing, only the continuing darkness. She estimated that she had walked some one hundred feet when she ran into something solid. The sudden impact surprised her, and she jumped backwards, dropping into a defensive crouch. The clanging noise was back, loud and right in front of her. She waited, not daring to breathe, as the clanging slowly faded. When it was gone, she crept forward, her hand stretched out before her. She felt something: a metal bar, stretching from the floor towards the ceiling. Next to it was another, and then another. She grabbed the bars with both of her hands and shook. The clanking returned. She knew now what had caused it: a locked gate, rattling in the wind.