Traitor and the Tunnel by Y. S. Lee Page B

starting-point of a long corridor. And so it was. Certain now that she was alone, Mary lit her candle and, blinking against its sudden dazzle, was astonished to find herself in a narrow, low-ceilinged tunnel. The cobwebbed brick wal s curved up to become the ceiling, which was scarcely tal er than Mary herself. She touched the ceiling thoughtful y: a film of greasy dust coated her fingertip. The floorboards were indeed rotting but bore no particular signs of heavy use: the edges were nearly as worn as the centres, so she could at least discount the possibility of tens of thousands of urgent footsteps wearing them down.
    She moved careful y through the tunnel, the yel ow glare of her candle skittering wildly off the wal s, making her dizzy. It was her hand, she realized: it was shaking with excitement and nerves. She relaxed her fingers about the smal grips she used to carry the candle – the only sensible way to avoid being continual y burnt by hot wax – and its light steadied perceptibly. Better.
    Her progress through the tunnel felt timeless. She couldn’t be more than fifty yards from the secret door, yet the stil , stale atmosphere made it seem endlessly distant. It was the tunnel’s shape, too – a series of short, straight lengths with sudden forty-five-degree turns that seemed designed to disorient its occupant. Then, quite suddenly, she came to an end – or, as she quickly realized, a beginning. It was a large hole in the tunnel floor, neatly circled with brick. It was much too large and distinctive to fal into, unless one were tumbling pel -mel through the darkness. On peering inside, Mary saw an ancient, rusting iron ladder set into the bricks that lined its wal s. It was a vertical continuation of the tunnel, nothing more. What troubled her was that with a sole candle, she couldn’t see its end – only the ladder disappearing into blackness. She paused for only a moment. Then, transferring her candle to her left hand and accepting philosophical y the inevitable damage to her dress, she began her descent.
    The rungs weren’t painful y cold: a surprise, until Mary remembered the insulating properties of being underground. They did, however, leave a thin coating of slime against her palms, her sleeves, her cheek when she accidental y brushed too close. She descended twelve rungs before her searching foot encountered only emptiness. Damn. She crouched –
    no mean feat on a ladder, in a crinoline – and shone her inadequate little light downwards. It flickered wildly, and this time it wasn’t due to her shaking hand. Yet it revealed nothing – no visible floor, no detail that gave a clue as to what lay below.
    Mary snuffed out the flame and put away the candle, heedless of the dripping wax that promptly made a smal pool in her pocket. Gripping the lowest rung tightly with both hands, she lowered herself down with a smooth, athletic motion. Felicity and Anne had sometimes remarked on her uncommon strength – her ability to pul herself up by the arms, even when encumbered by a stone’s worth of clothing. But tonight, her arms felt bruised and shaky.
    She was grateful when her toes brushed something solid. Tested the surface and found it wide and even.
    Releasing the rung and resisting the temptation to wipe her hands on her skirts, she listened to the new atmosphere about her. It had a slightly hol ow sound.
    She relit her candle and raised it up, the better to inspect her new discovery. It was a smal room, apparently an antechamber of sorts with a doorway at the other side. Unlike the tunnel she’d just come through, it had a brick floor. In fact, it was a tube of a room, with curved wal s that led up to a low, curved ceiling – another tunnel fashioned in bricks.
    Mary shook her head slowly, a smal smile curving her lips. How utterly unlikely, how preposterous, to think that Honoria Dalrymple was mixed up in al this grime and skulking about. The room was empty, and it was unclear what purpose it served.