“But sir—”
Sir Edward held up his finger to cut Hammersmith off. “But just in case,” he said, “I have sent a constable to guard your home.”
“Only one man?”
“He is all I can spare. But Constable Winthrop is a good lad. I chose him personally. A very large fellow, and very bright. Claire will be safe, I promise.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, you three get to the prison and find some answers for me. I’m certain we’re being manipulated and I don’t like it.”
Day rose without a word and went to the door. He held it open for Hammersmith and nodded to Sir Edward before leaving. Adrian March lingered a moment, as if he wanted to say something privately to the commissioner, then he, too, rose and left the office. Day closed the door after them. The sudden silence was almost startling.
It was going to be a long day. Sir Edward hoped that every escaped prisoner would be back in a cell by nightfall. He only wished he knew how many they were supposed to be looking for. And why they had been set free in the first place.
6
Griffin had carried his keys right past the guards without being searched. A simple matter of money exchanging hands. One of the keys, a master for every cell in Bridewell, had been put to use in the escape. Another skeleton key had been used to open the cabby stand. Now he used the third key to unlock the back door of St John of God Church. He stopped inside the doorway and listened. All was quiet. He crept forward through what seemed to be a storage room full of shadows. Shapes that might have been piles of old curtains, extra pews, spools of braided cord, crates of books. Remembering his instructions, he stopped in the center of the room and knelt beside a threadbare rug. He pulled it aside and ran his fingertips over the floor. A seam ran perpendicular to the grooves in the smooth wood. He got his fingernails into the seam and pulled until one of his nails bent back. There was a flash of pain and he felt sudden moisture. He was bleeding. He wiped his fingers on the leg of his trousers and felt around his neck for the chain, raised it over his head and felt for the flat teeth of the largest key. He jammed them sideways into the seam and pried at the floor until he heard a soft pop and a square chunk of wood, roughly two by two feet, came loose. He smiled and lifted the wood up and out, set it next to him.
There were other ways to access the tunnels beneath the prison, but this was the fastest.
He put the chain, with its keys, back around his neck, tucked it under the front of the stolen warder’s jacket, and sat on the edge of the opening in the floor. He could feel cold air wafting up at him, curling around his ankles and up under his trousers. He kicked his feet out and found a ledge three feet down in the dark. He tested it, then put his weight on the ledge and scooted forward. Held on to the lip of the opening and felt forward with one foot until he found another narrow ledge farther down. A staircase. He kept one hand on the cold wall and the other gripping the edge of the hole in the floor above him and moved cautiously down. The air grew colder and then warmer; the square of slightly brighter darkness above him shrank, then disappeared as he went around a shallow curve in the tunnel wall. He stumbled and nearly fell when he reached the bottom, expecting another stair and stepping down too hard on a stone floor.
He took a moment to catch his breath and remember the instructions he’d been given. There was, he’d been told, a lantern hanging from a hook on the right-hand side of the wall three or four feet from the bottom of the stairs. He ran his hand along the stones until his fingers encountered a hook, but there was nothing hanging from it. They had forgotten. Or they had left the lantern in the wrong place.
There had been far too many mistakes made tonight.
But of course, that was why there was a backup plan. That was why they needed Griffin.
There was no time to waste. He oriented himself and began walking, slowly, shuffling along so as not to trip over anything in his path, one hand always on the gritty wall beside him, until he saw a light far ahead.
Griffin slowed down and edged sideways along the tunnel, trying to be invisible. The silhouette of a man cast a blunt-edged shadow up and along the curved wall. Griffin’s foot scuffed up against an old timber, and a pile of bricks tumbled down from the other end of it, scattering in the dirt. The man turned and held the lantern high. He was bald, and the harsh paraffin light made his skin look yellow. Cinderhouse. The escapee swung his head back and forth like a snake and squinted at Griffin.
“Your name is Griffin,” he said.
Griffin sniffed and stepped out into the fuzzy pool of light. “It is,” he said.
“You’re following me?”
“No.”
“Then you got the message, too,” the bald man said. “Just like me. Telling us to hide down here.”
“Yes.” It wasn’t entirely a lie. He had sent the message to the other prisoners, but had included himself.
The bald man nodded. “You came by the well?”
“The well?”
“You came down here through the old well?”
“I came down a staircase.”
“A staircase?”
“Hidden beneath a church.”
“Look!” The bald man held out his free hand. It was bleeding and covered with fresh blisters. “I hurt myself climbing down that well.”
“There must be more than one way to get down here,” Griffin said.
“Where are we?”
“I was going to ask you that.”
“There are buildings down here. Have you seen?”
“No. It’s dark.”
The bald man nodded again. “This was hanging from a post.” He held up the lantern so that its light spread out across the wall beside him. “I think we’re in the old city.”
Griffin looked up at the high-timbered ceiling, arched and weathered by long-ago rain. They were in a courtyard that had once been aboveground. Tunnels branched away from them in several directions, and Griffin almost smiled to think that those dark ominous mouths had once been sunny footpaths. London had sunk into the mud and had been rebuilt on top of itself. Thousands of people had once walked down the road they now stood on, but it had been covered over and forgotten. The yellow lantern light revealed blank brick walls, yawning glassless windows, doors sagging on ancient wooden hinges.
“Yes,” Griffin said, “I think we are.”
They both jumped as a fox ran across the courtyard and disappeared down a dark tunnel, its orange tail a blur.
“Do you think people live down here?”
“I suppose it’s possible.”
“Listen,” the bald man said. “Listen, we could stay down here. They’d never catch us.”
“We?” Even in the dim glow of the lantern’s light, Griffin could see the need in the bald man’s eyes. This was not a person who did well on his own.
“Well, yes. We’re right under their feet.” The bald man chuckled, a rasping, uncertain sound. “They’re right up there, looking for us. And they’ll never find us. Not in a lifetime of searching.”
“You think not?”
“No. I mean, what if they came down here? What then? Why, we’d simply move to a different spot and they’d pass right by us because we’d know the area down here and they wouldn’t. It’s a perfect maze. We’d be safe forever.”
“I see,” Griffin said. “And we could simply fetch ourselves down to the market on the corner for a loaf of bread and a fish pie, could we?”
“Well…” The bald man shook his head. “I didn’t say it would be easy, did I?” He pouted. “We’d have to go above sometimes. Of course we would. Only once in a while, and only to get food and other necessities.” He sniffed and looked around at the abandoned façades. “I’ll bet if we were to clean one of those storefronts out, we’d find it a perfectly suitable place to live. After a time, we could even bring others. Have a little community of our own. Even a child or two running about in this courtyard. There’s all the room in the world down here. And wouldn’t a child just brighten the place right up?”