Page 104 of Exile's Return

The security the weapons gave him was illusory. The fact remained he would still be only one man against a troop of soldiers.

Sarah led them around the rear of the castle, where the last of the old castle walls met the ground. They had left Jonathan in a ruined building about 500 yards from the castle, with the agreement they would rendezvous thereafter Daniel had freed Kit and Agnes.

Daniel needed his knife to cut through the tangled brambles that grew in what would have once been the moat. Sarah chafedin impatience behind him. The rasping of the knife sounded like a saw through wood in the silent night, but no movement came from the walls above. Pushing the sharp, straggling fronds aside, they reached the wall.

Even in the gloom, Sarah led him straight to a small wooden door set low in the wall. It gave with only the slightest push from Daniel’s shoulder, the rotten wood making barely a noise. Daniel had to almost bend double to duck under the door and into a low-ceilinged passage.

The dark of the old, noisome space closed in on him and he had to stop for a moment, fighting the constricting band that closed around his chest.

‘Are you all right?’ Sarah whispered in the dark.

She had collected candles and a tinderbox from the cottage before she had left, and he heard the soft scrape of tinder being struck. Focusing on the tiny light of the candle, the band slowly released its grip and he could breathe again.

Sarah glanced at him and pointed into the velvet darkness beyond.

‘This way,’ she said.

He grunted an assent, and feeling their way along the slimy walls with their fingers, they edged upwards into the bowels of the old castle.

The corridor brought them out into a large space, crowded with broken furniture and old boxes.

‘The cellars,’ Sarah whispered. ‘My brothers and I used to play down here as children — that’s how I know about the old entrance. I’m going to have to snuff the light or they’ll see it. Give me your hand.’

Daniel had no choice but to do as she said, and her work-hardened fingers closed around his, leading him on through the maze.

‘You’re cold as ice,’ she said in the dark.

She couldn’t see the sweat that gathered on his brow and ran down his face as once again the vice closed on his chest.

When she stopped he almost ran into her. She placed a finger on his mouth.

‘Shh … they’re just beyond there.’

A faint light illuminated a dogleg in the corridor and Daniel inched forward, peering around the corner. He could see a wide corridor lit by a solitary lantern twenty yards or so ahead of him. One of several doors stood ajar, a soldier standing beside it, his back to Daniel.

Daniel pulled back into the shadows and gripped the girl’s arm.

‘Wait for me,’ he whispered. ‘If this goes wrong, get back to Thornton and tell him.’

Pulling the pistol from his belt, he checked the priming.

The guard would have known nothing. The years on the French privateer had taught Daniel some useful skills, including the ability to immobilise a man quickly and silently with the right pressure on a certain point in the neck.

As he lowered the unconscious man to the floor, the unease that had dogged him since entering the castle doubled.

Ashby may as well have left the front door open.

I am walking into a trap, he thought.

Trap or not, what choice did he have?

He flattened himself against the wall beside the door, peering through the gap into the room beyond. A lantern on the floor beside Kit did little to dispel the gloom, and it took a moment or two before he could make out the shadowy forms of two women crouched down beside a crumpled form that could only be Peg Truscott.

He swore under his breath as he recognized Leah Turner, but there was nothing for it. He gently pushed the door open wide enough to admit him.

The squeal of unoiled hinges betrayed him and the two women spun around, rising swiftly to their feet.

‘Daniel!’