The pretence of obedience was wearing on her. She detested the odious man and his bestial morality, and it was now almost impossible to hold her tongue in his presence. Burleigh himself sensed that all was not as it seemed with her; soon, if not already, he would decide to sever their partnership, and she would become another victim sacrificed to his insatiable ambition.
Aside from simple survival, she had hoped to learn from him-at the very least learn his methods, plans, his ultimate aims. But beyond Burleigh’s obsession with the Skin Map, she had learned very little. What he wanted, why he drove himself, what he hoped to gain from his ruthless exploitation of everyone who crossed his path she still did not know. But she sensed she had learned all he was willing to teach her. Now, as she stood in the darkened corridor staring at the door to her room of this fetid, bug-infested inn, she knew she had reached the end of her endurance.
The inn, the grandest Prague had to offer, was insufferable; the stink, the noise, the squalid surroundings did not befit a lady of her station. She refused to spend one more night listening to cats rummaging through garbage in the street beneath her window, listening to the drunk and snoring sleepers in the rooms on either side of hers, smelling the slops as they were sluiced into the gutters.
The moment she closed the door behind her, she changed into her travelling clothes and, taking only her coat, crept from her room. Once in the corridor, she slipped like a sprite down the stairs and tiptoed across the inn’s hall, risking a glance into the common room to see that Burleigh was still sitting where she had left him, brooding, a drink at his elbow. She moved to the entrance and, with a last look around to see that she was unobserved, departed.
She moved through the streets of Prague, descending the palace hill towards the old town and the city walls rising beyond the square. The sun was already down, but the sky held a glimmer of light. She hoped there would be no difficulty in departing the city; she did not care to leave behind any witnesses who might be interrogated later. This, as much as the fact that her German was nowhere good enough to concoct a plausible story for inquisitive guards, determined another, slightly less desirable course of action. Quite simply, she would linger in the shadow of the gates until a departing wagon or coach rumbled through. Using the vehicle to shield her from view, she would slip through and then disappear into the countryside.
Upon approaching the gatehouse, she slowed her pace, keeping to the far side of the street, watching the activity and trying to determine the whereabouts of the guards. She found a narrow alleyway within sight of the gate, crept in, and, perching herself on an upturned crate beside a rain barrel, settled back to wait for her chance. A short time later she heard the clip-clop of horses’ hooves on the cobbles. She eased herself off her perch and moved to the mouth of the alley. The torches had been lit on either side of the big timber doors, and one of them was open. A wagon loaded with barrels was just then negotiating with the guards to open the other half to let the wagon through. Plucking up her courage, Haven darted from her hiding place, moving alongside the boxy vehicle just as the driver flicked the reins and called to the horses to walk on.
Both Haven and the wagon passed through the portal out onto the road at the same time. To the best of her knowledge, the gatekeepers had not seen her, nor had anyone else. Casting one last glance over her shoulder, she satisfied herself that she was indeed free, then turned and hurried to the jumping-off place-the site Burleigh used to reach Prague. She had memorised the location and had no difficulty finding it again.
A brisk walk through the chilly grey countryside brought her to a secluded spot in the hills north of the city. There, amidst farms of beets and turnips, was a preternaturally straight crease-a shallow ditch marking the boundary between two fields. These were ancient features, she knew; her uncle called them Hollow Ways, and they were older than the farms and fields they marked; as old as the hills themselves, Sir Henry said.
At the fleeting thought of her beloved uncle, Haven felt another stab of guilt for having failed him. “I am so sorry, Uncle,” she murmured, then shoved the feeling aside. Revenge, she decided, would drive her from now on. She would avenge her uncle’s death and punish the Black Earl for his needless cruelty and for the humiliation he had inflicted on her.
The stars were alight in the eastern sky when Haven reached the ley. Without a moment to spare she hurried across the high-furrowed field to the Hollow Way, stepped down into the ditch, and aligned herself with one of the stones that served for field corners. Then, putting her feet in the centre of the path, she started down the narrow trail. Within four determined paces, she felt the familiar tingle on her skin. A breeze gusted over the crest of the bank and swirled around her long skirt. Three more steps carried her to the next stone marker. The banks of the Hollow Way grew hazy. The twilight dimmed, and she felt the path fall away beneath her feet. For an instant her ears were filled with the howling screech of the void, and misty rain spattered her face and neck. By now a more experienced ley-leaper, she was ready for the awkward lurch as the trail came up beneath her once more, the ground level slightly higher this time. Taking the jolt in her knees, she managed to remain upright, took two more steps, and stopped to look around.
The world around her had changed. The gentle hills and ploughed fields of Bohemia were gone, and in their place was a chilly, mistcovered wilderness of wide valleys and treeless heights-somewhat like Yorkshire, she thought. But it was not Yorkshire-as least not the one she knew. Burleigh maintained that it was, like so many other worlds, only a connecting place, a waypoint between one dimension of the multidimensional universe and another. Two more leaps would bring her back to England.
Haven had no doubt she could reach London, but there was some uncertainty in judging the leap just right in order to achieve the desired time. Without the benefit of the Black Earl’s little device to aid her, she would have to rely on her native wits. Nevertheless, she was happy to have successfully made her escape and to be on her own at last.
The next ley line was some distance away-a peaty upland nearly half a day distant on foot, and, as this was a remote and deserted landscape, there was nothing for it but to walk. She started off at once, making what time she could. Likely she would have to wait for sundown once she got there, but she would rather wait than miss it and have to spend the night out on the desolate moor.
As she walked along she rehearsed in her mind what she would do when she got to London, and how she might proceed to further the quest. Clearly she could not conduct the search for the Skin Map alone. No doubt she should have made plans to meet Wilhelmina in London. Thinking of it now, that would have been the perfect solution-they could have evaded Burleigh and furthered their alliance. But in the urgency to get out of Prague, neither of them had thought of that.
It was late in the day by the time she reached the ley-a nameless trackway high on the crest of a broad headland where two valleys met above a grey river. She found a stone beside the trail and sat down to watch the low-riding sun sink farther below the line of barren hills to the west, shivering in the chilly, damp air as night came on. She comforted herself with the thought that she would soon be home again, dry and warm.
Then, as the evening shadows darkened the valleys, and wraith-like vapours snaked along the river below, she stood and, carefully pacing off the distance from the beginning of the ley, once again composed herself for the jump. This one, like the first, was accomplished without undue discomfort-which Haven took as a sign that she was perfecting her abilities. The thought pleased her and filled her with confidence as the battering rain shower announced her arrival in England on a lonely hilltop somewhere on the southern downs.