‘Where now?’ muttered Gormán. ‘There seem to be no lights along these passageways.’
‘Then we shall have to explore them one by one,’ decided Fidelma. ‘We’ll start down this one.’
‘Just a moment, lady,’ Gormán said. ‘Let us wait and listen a while.’
They were speaking in whispers and it was obvious that, had they spoken louder, their voices would have echoed through the curious underground labyrinth. They paused a while but all seemed silent and they were able to relax a little.
‘What could this place have been built for?’ asked Enda, breaking the silence. ‘I have never seen the like before …’
‘Certainly not for storage,’ Eadulf pointed out. ‘You could not store anything down here unless it was fish.’
With only the one light between them, they let Gormán lead the way along the first passage to their left. Two chambers led off on either side and both of these had doors that stood wide open and were devoid of any object to fill them. The passage ended in a blank wall. They turned back and immediately entered the second tunnel. This led into a narrow vaulted path, along which drifted an odour of decomposing vegetation, of swampy marsh and animal excreta. The tunnel vanished in darkness in either direction.
At the side, before they entered this tunnel with its nauseous stench, there was a small passage and Fidelma indicated that they should investigate it. This one seemed to turn and twist, and they quickly learned that if they were not careful, they could lose themselves. Enda took out his dagger and began to make marks on the wall at the end of each section with an arrow-shaped sign to indicate the direction in which they were proceeding.
They noticed that the passage they had come to was slightly drier and the rooms off it were not as wet and mildewed as others. Then Fidelma gasped and pointed. They had come across a door to which the two bolts had been rammed shut. This time there was a small grille at the bottom of the door. The idea occurred to Fidelma, who had seen such prison doors before, that it was large enough to pass a plate or a jug through. A feeling of excitement gripped them, but Fidelma placed her forefinger against her lips, before motioning Gormán to draw the bolts. He bent and eased them both back. Then he opened the door and stepped inside, holding the lamp high.
A figure was lying on a stone ledge which seemed to serve as a bed. A thin blanket was covering the huddled form. This was clearly the prison cell they had been looking for. The figure was apparently deeply asleep, for it did not move as Fidelma joined Gormán in the cell.
‘Torna,’ she whispered, and reached out to touch the shoulder. But her fingers did not make contact. There was something about the stillness of the form that made her step back hurriedly.
Gormán stepped forward and drew the blanket aside.
Cold, dead eyes stared up at them. The movement in them, which caused them to start for a moment, was only caused by the reflected lamplight shining on them.
Fidelma drew her breath in sharply. ‘It is Biasta!’
Eadulf pushed by her and bent over the corpse, at the same time asking Gormán to bring the lamp closer.
It did not take long before Eadulf discovered the cause of Biasta’s death. He said, ‘He has been stabbed twice with a fairly crude knife. It has more or less ripped the flesh to the heart rather than being a clean stab.’
Gormán bent down and picked something up. It was a metal platter with bits of food still adhering to it. There was no need to explain that this was where the prisoner had acquired his knife.
Now they could see the cadaver without the blanket drawn over it, they realised that Biasta was without his outer garments.
‘What do you think?’ Eadulf asked, drawing himself up.
‘I think Torna may have made his own bid to escape,’ she replied grimly.
‘So Biasta came down here to question him, in spite of Anfudán’s instructions. Torna still had the knife from his evening meal and so he used it to stab the man twice, then stole his outer clothing as a disguise before escaping.’
‘But how was he able to pass himself out of the abbey?’ asked Gormán. ‘You’ve seen the gates and the guards there.’
‘Doubtless he escaped in the manner that Ségnat has planned for us,’ replied Fidelma. ‘And now that we know he has escaped, we’d better get back to our chambers and hope Ségnat will be able to help us.’
‘But perhaps Torna has been caught,’ Enda suggested.
‘If he has been recaptured, surely his captors would have come down here to find out how he escaped, and then they would have discovered Biasta. We are lucky. He has clearly not been missed,’ Eadulf replied.
‘Then we should get after him right away for, as you say, he holds the key to this conundrum,’ said Gormán.
‘Wait,’ Fidelma called, as the warrior turned to the door of the cell. ‘If we go charging off, we will alert the whole abbey. Leave things as we have found them and we’ll try to get back to our chambers without being seen. Let’s hope the body of Biasta is not found until after we have left the abbey.’
‘If Torna is as clever as I suspect, then he will leave no trail that can be followed,’ Eadulf said.
Gormán replaced the blanket over the body of the man who had called himself Brother Biasta, then they left the cell, with Gormán almost reverently sliding the bolts home. Thanks to the marks that Enda had made with his knife, they had little difficulty retracing their steps to the main chamber at the foot of the circular stairwell. They paused there for a moment, as if by mutual consent to recover themselves. Then Enda climbed the stairway first and checked the passageway at the top. It was still deserted.
‘All clear,’ came his whisper. Fidelma, Eadulf and finally Gormán, still carrying the lamp, followed him into the passage. Once there, Gormán replaced the lamp in its holder and Enda pushed back the bolt on the door.
Without a word, Fidelma led the way back to the upper floor and to their chambers. There was a movement in the shadows near the door of the fothrucad, the bathing room, and the slight figure of Ségnat emerged. She looked agitated.
‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ she hissed. ‘I thought they must have taken you away already.’
Fidelma smiled reassuringly. ‘We went to track down the prisoner,’ she whispered back. ‘We found where he had been kept — somewhere in the vaults. But he has escaped already. In doing so, he killed one of Cronán’s men called Biasta.’
The girl shivered slightly. ‘Biasta? He was a beast, as his name implies. No one will raise a tear for that pig.’ And then: ‘Are you sure that the prisoner has escaped?’
‘Unless he is wandering in the vaults.’ Fidelma felt it unwise to mention that she suspected that Torna was Tormeid.
‘We will check, just in case. First we must get you away. There is even more urgency for you to leave here now. Do you have all your belongings?’
It was the work of a moment, to fetch their saddle-bags and rejoin her. In silence, she led them down another spiral stair and through a door behind the bathing chamber. A short time later, they had once again descended into the bowels of the fortress. It seemed amazing to Eadulf that no one heard them as they hurried after the nimble young girl. The builders of this fortress had certainly believed in dark vaulted structures. Pausing only to take a lantern, the girl hastened them through a series of dank passageways until they halted before a bolted wooden door.
It was the smell that Eadulf recognised first before the girl unbolted and opened it.
‘This is a special tunnel that leads to a spot under the north walls of the fortress into the bog land. You must follow me closely and in single file.’