‘Sarah?’ he asked, then again, this time more loudly, ‘Sarah? Are you there? Can you hear me?’
No one answered. He was stabbed by the thought that their assailants had killed Sarah and left him for dead. And that was when it sank in to him that he was lying on a stone floor surrounded by the bones of his family, and that if he didn’t get out of there fast he’d freeze to death and remain there until someone brought a coffin and put him in it. Something unpleasant walked onto his face and began to creep across it, over his chin, then onto his mouth; but he was too far gone to do more than take notice of its presence.
Part of him — and not a small part — wanted to curl up and go back to sleep. He hadn’t noticed the cold or the pain throughout his head and limbs when he’d been asleep, and at the moment sleep felt like the best thing in the world. Just another minute, maybe two, maybe half an hour; an incessant voice soaked through his brain, teasing and enticing him. ‘What’s the point of getting up?’ the voice insinuated. ‘Sarah’s dead, Abi’s dead, Granddad’s dead, you’ll be dead soon, better sleep it out, better give in, better let go, go with the flow, with the slow flow, with the so so slow flow, with…’
He snapped himself awake, sending a bolt of pain through the base of his skull, where it met his spine and travelled on down his body. It was the best thing he could have done. The pain brought him fully awake. He reached up and knocked the huge spider squatting on his mouth flying into the darkness.
It took most of his strength to struggle to his feet, and the moment he did, he pitched forwards onto the floor again. His legs, numb with cold and nerveless from hours of immobility, simply would not support him. Using his arms this time to push himself to a sitting position, he bent forwards to rub his legs in an attempt to force warmth and life back into them. He had come out dressed only in the thick pyjamas he’d been wearing in bed, over which he’d thrown on the tweed jacket he’d left over a chair. Flexing his legs and gritting his teeth against the jagged pains that shot up and down them, he took a deep breath, then thrust up from the floor, staggering for balance.
He thought he’d go down again and feared another fall might break a leg or an arm. But remembering where he was, he managed to lurch to one side, first one step, then a second, until he crashed into an obstruction and grabbed hold of it by both hands. Running his hands over it, he recognised it as the end of a coffin.
That was the moment he realised that he didn’t know which way he was facing. There wasn’t a single chink of light in this place, not so much as a pinprick. It was eternal dark in here, interrupted only by the brief moments of death that brought men in dark suits carrying coffins.
The layout of the mausoleum was straightforward enough: a high-ceilinged space divided on each side into niches, like a wall of pigeonholes. Most of the niches were filled with coffins, leaving only a few to receive the next interments. It should be a simple matter to find the door, open it, and get out into the fresh air. Using the coffins to his left as a guide, he crept forward, aching in every joint as his legs moved across the granite floor.
It took him less than a minute to reach the far end. He ran a hand across it, and encountered nothing but cobwebs and stone. The stone wall ran right across the rear of the building, from one bank of niches to the next. The mausoleum had been well built, to withstand the ravages of rain, damp, and storm.
It took less time to turn and walk to the other end, where his outstretched hand struck the door. Carefully, he ran his hands over the wood until he came to the line that separated the two halves. His fingers moved up and down on either side of the line, but even as they did so, his heart sank and he became absolutely still. He’d been looking for a handle, or two handles, two knobs, two ways of opening the door. But he knew it was a waste of time, that no one puts handles on the inside of a mausoleum.
He pushed hard, now against one side, now against the other. The heavy door remained unmoving. Harder now, he pushed and pushed again. Surely his assailants would have run out, not taking time to lock him inside. Surely they would not have wished such a fate on him. But then he thought of what he had seen in his grandfather’s study, the mutilations on the two bodies, the callous way the man called Lukacs had stripped Sarah and forced her half naked into the coldest night of the year.
As it sank in on him that he was trapped, that he would die here in the cold and dark, absolutely alone but for the uncaring dead, he felt panic rise in him. The door was solid wood built into the masonry on heavyweight brass hinges, and he knew it was utterly beyond his strength to effect the slightest damage on it, or to move it even by a fraction. His legs, weakened by cold and hunger, went from under him, and he fell awkwardly and painfully on his right hip, knocking the breath from his lungs and jarring his elbow. In that moment, he knew himself defeated, and with that ghastly understanding, knew Sarah too would soon be dead, if they had not killed her already.
He dragged himself into a sitting position, with his back to the door, and waited until he had more control over his breathing, and the pains in his hip and elbow subsided to a more bearable level. He had no way of knowing whether or not he had broken anything, but he realised that it scarcely mattered. Where would he walk to, what would he use his arm for?
He had no idea how long it would be before the air became stale, but he was sure it would in time. His eyes had adjusted to the dark, but that meant nothing for there was no light in here at all. The only sense that meant anything in here was touch, and all he touched was the work of spiders, or the rotting masks of death ancient and renewed. Everything in this stone chamber would return to dust, and he would go down to dust with the rest.
It was hard to think, hard to bear the inevitability of what awaited him. He felt a tugging and tearing at his heart to think how, without blame, Sarah had been pulled into whatever plot lay behind this whole business. He thought hard to grasp what it could be about, but nothing fitted, nothing made sense, nothing satisfied his sense of justice and orderliness. Objects that might be relics of the crucifixion and might not, taken from a tomb in the Libyan desert, had ended up in a tomb in the English countryside, and had now been stolen by men whose motive Ethan could barely guess at. Could Christian relics drive men to murder, or to bury a stranger in a mausoleum, or to strip a woman naked and threaten to rape her?
His hip was still painful. Carefully, he transferred his weight to the other side, holding himself upright by his left hand. As he shifted, he felt something dig into his left thigh. He couldn’t think what it was at first, but when he slipped a hand into his trouser pocket, he brought it out holding the box of cook’s matches he’d put there the day before, when lighting the candles for dinner.
He put the matches down on the floor beside him, thinking that they would at least give him a little light before the darkness took him entirely. After a few minutes, however, it occurred to him that he might strike a couple of matches in order to take a closer look at the door, in case there was some mechanism he had missed with his bare hands.
He opened the box gingerly, fearful of spilling the contents across the floor, and took a match from inside. It was a long match designed to burn for some time. He struck it against the side of the container, and a bright light flared up. Holding the match carefully in order to get the maximum time from it, he used the little flame to orient himself.
The door was right in front of him, as he had known it would be, and on either side coffins stretched back into darkness. In some ways, seeing where he was proved more horrifying than imagining it in the dark. The light burnt for its short life, then flickered and went out.