The Grotto's Secret: A Historical Conspiracy Mystery Thriller (34 page)

159

Kelby took one last look at Jon and tiptoed along the hallway. She peered back down the steps. Remembering Jon’s words about Roy rotting away downstairs, she stood where she had bumped into Jon. This was probably a basement level in the former mansion and not used much in the clinic.

She had two choices. Barge upstairs, demanding to see Willow and accuse him of kidnapping Annie. The staff would probably gang up on her and lock her up. Or she could sneak into the tunnels looking for something that resembled a dungeon to find Roy. With him it would be easier to find Annie and a better chance of getting Annie out of
there alive.

Even though Kelby didn’t want to go near the place ever again, she opted for the second choice. Creeping back into the tunnel, she bit her lip, hoping Punch-bag didn’t suddenly appear. Or Willow. Or anyone else involved in the rizado conspiracy.

A haze of suspended pain hung over her. Her burnt hand still screamed with agony and heat. The other trembled. She couldn’t get the feeling of shunting the blade into Jon out of her mind.

Her footsteps echoed on the wooden stairway going back into the clinic’s bowels. As she slipped down the dark tunnel, her eyes strained against the gloom and her nose twitched against the tunnel’s dank smell. Somewhere in the dark, gurgling water choked through pipes, then it exited above her with a plink-plink-plink.

Kelby shivered with cold and unease. As she descended deeper into the gloomy passageway, she had the sensation of stepping into a horror film. The acidic odour of urine and musk made her nauseous.

Although Kelby was heading back towards the horrific lab, Jon’s words about Roy rotting away in a dungeon kept her going. A cobweb, dangling from the arched brick ceiling, floated over her cheek. Kelby squealed and bolted forward.

The tunnel suddenly split into two.

160

Kelby peered into each split in the tunnel in confusion. When she had charged through here a while ago to get away from the lab, she hadn’t noticed another passageway.

A thought struck her. Kelby delved into her pocket for her phone and checked. One battery bar left. She rang Roy’s number.

A phone rang at the far end of the right corridor. She immediately cut the call and hit redial. Again a phone echoed in the distance. Cutting the call, she raced down the darkened hallway.

Her trembling hand scraped along the rough walls, scratching bits of skin off them. The tunnel suddenly stopped with only a steep set of iron stairs spiralling downwards. Kelby gingerly stepped onto the first step and listened. Only the empty sound of silence.

Using her good hand on the cracked and cold stone wall, Kelby guided herself down the spiral steps. She had to take each rusting stair at a time, planting her foot onto the inner, wider part before taking the next spiral. At the bottom, a door hung off its hinges. The door’s lock had long ago perished. It creaked and swung out at her when she prised the door open. As she crept inside, she accidentally kicked a paving stone that had derailed out of the floor pattern.

Kelby held her phone high above her head to light the room. Another old-fashioned light switch dangling on a long cord swung back and forth, in front of her face. Kelby yanked on it and the room lit up. A sad and decayed dentist
chair stood abandoned in the flaked and paint-chipped corner. Kelby’s gaze fell on something familiar.

A body.

161

Overhead a crack of thunder erupted. Within seconds the darkening clouds opened, mourning with María. Huge raindrops deadened the last of the flames eating away at her home. As the thunder rolled across the sky, it revealed the truth María couldn’t face. Madre had died of her wounds. Probably soon after María left for the grotto.

Allowing the rain to wash away her grief, María lay beside the cellar. Overcome with guilt and despair, she wanted to close her eyes and never open them again. Her stories, and determination to show off that a woman could be a writer had killed Madre.

How could she be so foolish?

The lump in her throat ballooned, making it hard to swallow.
Oh Mama, I am so sorry!

María still lay beside the stable ruin. Finally, bitterness and disappointment forced her to her feet. She paced around the farmyard, a penned panther looking for escape. After staring at her shattered and ruined home, María stopped to tug on the dead little goat’s beard. Then she stroked the slaughtered goose’s bloody feathers. ‘Thank you for those quills.’

Padre’s workshop had been saved, but had been ransacked. She stepped over the broken door and perched on the tree stump where Madre had often sat to talk to Padre.

‘Padre, what do I do? I have to leave, but where do I go?’

Tears welled in her eyes again. She was alone in the world. Maybe she could find Tío. His
mishpacha
would give her refuge. Maybe they would find a place for her on the sea voyage they were backing for Cristoforo Colombo.

María finally allowed her tears to flow freely. She sat on the wooden stump with her eyes closed. When she opened them, the tears had dried up. She dared not wipe her face while her hands were still healing and so she left the sticky tears on her skin.

For a long time María had longed to wear her father’s loose clothes. Now, she spotted a pile of them hanging where Madre had stored them when she had been unable to part with anything of his. Without thinking, she changed into Padre’s tunic, doublet and woollen breeches.

Glancing around, she spotted a rusting knife amongst her father’s tools. She grabbed a chunk of her hair and with a sawing motion cropped it to her neck.

Outside the burst of rain finally stopped. The sky too had shed its tears. Dried eyed, she started preparing to leave. The soldiers would be back.

162

Roy lay unconscious in the middle of the room on an old-fashioned rusting trolley bed with corroded wheels. An arm and foot hung off the bed. His chin sagged onto his chest while his face was a bloodied pulp.

Kelby ran to him. Under her feet grit and dirt crunched into her heels. She shook him. ‘Roy!’

He didn’t answer. She lifted his chin and grimaced at the blood caking his face. Some had dripped onto his shirt. He muttered through swollen lips, ‘Hey, fancy meeting you here.’ He smiled at her through bloodied teeth.

Kelby threw her arms around him.

‘Watch out!’

Kelby pulled back.

He reached out and stroked the side of her cheek. ‘I’ll take a rain check on the hugs when the ribs stitch back together. Okay?’

She nodded and wiped the blood off his face with her sleeve. ‘God, you look awful.’

‘I was hoping for something like — you’re a sight for sore eyes or better still… God, what a handsome devil you are, even with a bent nose and blood-stained teeth.’

She grinned, feeling a little of the terror leak out of her. ‘Are you okay?’

‘How did you find me? I thought I was a goner.’

As Kelby spotted his eyebrows jiggling up and down, she chuckled.

‘What’s so funny?’

Using her index fingers, she held his eyebrows still.

‘What’re you doing?’

‘Those eyebrows need taming. I’m trying to get them under control. I can’t think when they’re dancing around.’

He grinned sheepishly. ‘A bit of a nervous reaction I have.’

‘You? Nervous?’

He chuckled. ‘Despite my worldly, confident manner, I get nervy around devils.’

Kelby smiled. ‘Listen Rob Roy, I’ve got to get you out of here. Come on.’ She lifted his arms and pulled him up. An intense desire to put her head on his chest overcame her. As if he felt the same he threw his arms around her and hugged her tight. ‘Forget the bruised ribs. You’re a sight for swollen eyes.’

For the briefest moment, her fear seeped away as his warmth crept into her, reviving her battle-torn spirit. Kelby wanted to bury her face in his chest and stay there, but time wasn’t on her side. She had to
find Annie.

Kelby stepped back and helped him swing his legs over the trolley. ‘We’ve got to go. Come on.’ She took his arm and led him to the door.

‘I don’t need anyone to chaperone me. I’m perfectly capable —’

Kelby turned to see him smiling and noted he had mimicked her words in the hospital, ‘If you stop chattering and listen for a moment, I’ll explain.’

He grinned at her. ‘Go ahead, my knight with no armour.’

‘Annie is somewhere here, I don’t know where, but I think she’s been drugged.’

‘That’s what I suspected. The meds she was taking shouldn’t have made her so sleepy. Where’s her mum?’

Kelby grimaced. ‘Stacie’s dead. And Hawk.’

‘Oh my God! Kelby, I’m so sorry. What happened?’

‘It’s a terrible story and a long one. I’ll tell you everything later.’ She helped him to hobble along beside her. ‘How did you get here? I can’t imagine someone as tall and strong as you could be dragged down here.’

‘Another long story. With your long story and mine, we’ll need to get together and chat for a long, long time.’

‘Agreed.’

They reached the top of the spiral staircase and hobbled to the split in the tunnel. In the basement, Roy stretched tentatively to test the severity of his wounds. He raised his arms and wiggled them as though trying to touch the ceiling. Then, he bent over and touched his toes.

Kelby frowned at him. ‘What
are
you doing?’

‘Stretching the bones. And warming up for a fight.’

His body sprang back into shape. ‘Where to?’

Kelby pointed up.

163

Every part of María wanted to bury her animals. But the soldiers knew who she was and had orders from the queen to find her. They would not return to the Monarch in dishonour. If they saw animal graves, and her home cleaned they would know she was alive.

The soldiers would be back.

They would hunt her down. Maybe they would ransack the local village thinking someone was harbouring her. They might search the area and find the grotto.

She wished the sun would appear and lift her spirits. Instead, a peaceful, yet plaintive call wafted towards her. Woo-oo-oo. A strange tranquillity descended and drew her outside. She glanced at Madre’s bakehouse and ambled towards it. Its door had also been broken down. The soldiers had found nothing inside, but baking tools. When Padre had received wild game as payment, Madre had used the bakehouse to hang the flesh to contain the smoke for drying or salting. Testing the use of her fingertips, María lifted a pan and dusted it off.

‘Your favourite pan, Mama.’ She had no idea why she spoke aloud, but hearing the words comforted her, as though Madre was there, listening to her. Placing it in the back of the stone oven, she said, ‘I loved the bread you used to make with the herbs inside.’

María potted around, clearing the bakehouse and wishing she could fix the door. Stepping outside, she shook her head at Madre’s trampled herb garden. She hoped Madre’s herbal secrets were safe in the cellar. She felt a bitter twinge of irony that her mother’s precious herbal
manuscrito
would die with her.

‘Never mind, Mama. I will write another journal about your herbs. You said I had a good memory.’

Talking to Madre eased the emptiness in her heart. At last, she understood why Madre had done that every day, since Padre’s passing. María went back to his workshop intent on cleaning it too, but she had to leave it. Her mother had insisted she escape so she could live. She would do that and make her mother proud of her from the grave.

As she crossed the croft, María glanced at the cottage, the rain soaked beams still hissing and the thatch smouldering with acrid smoke. With the smell of death and destruction wafting around the farm, María’s knew what she would do.

Tío had given her many history lessons. They had fuelled her imagination. His lessons had given her mind many stories to write.

María turned back to the bake house, sat on the doorstep and told Madre her plan. ‘I never told you this, Mama … my biggest dream has been to journey to more places. I used to love to go with Padre to new towns. When Tío taught me about a sailor who was chancing everything to journey to far off lands, it filled me with excitement and dreams.’

Dreams a girl dared not dream.

164

Roy and Kelby leapt up the last step and stood staring at the normality of a bustling ward. A radiant light spilled out of a circular stained glass window in the middle of the reception.

Kelby was instantly reminded of Punch-bag throwing Hawk’s body down the Hall’s rotting staircase, and him landing in the shadows at the bottom. Her lasting image of Hawk would not be with horrible weapons poking out of him; it would be how he ended his life suffused with colour.

Retreating back to the stairwell, Roy pulled out his phone and dialled a number. ‘Joyce. It’s me. Sorry, I’ll explain it later. Get the police to Homerton Clinic. There’s a murderer on the loose.’

He ended the call, turned to Kelby and took a deep breath. ‘You ready?’

‘Yes.’

‘No, you’re not.’

She frowned at him.

‘You need this first.’ He threw his arms around her again and held her tight. Kelby almost caved in at the knees. The fresh tang of an orange shower gel lingered on his body, mingled with the coppery smell of blood on his clothes and the sweaty confines of his prison. As he pulled away, she spotted him flinching. He touched his ribcage.

Kelby stood a moment, still in a daze and enjoying his closeness. ‘Thank you, I needed that.’

He jiggled his eyebrows and said, ‘Let’s go.’

‘How do you know where we’re going?’

‘Instinct. I’ve been around enough hospitals to imagine a rough layout of this place.’

‘Let’s hope your instinct will find Annie.’

Still towering over Kelby, Roy marched to the desk. ‘Hello. We’re here to see Annie Wade.’

The receptionist had just bit into a sandwich and blushed. ‘Oh, um.’ She gulped, trying to swallow her mouthful.

‘Her ward and room number please.’

The receptionist chewed frantically and swallowed what was left. With her hand in front of her mouth, she mumbled, ‘2B.’

Roy marched off, pulling Kelby behind him.

‘Wait!’ the receptionist called out, ‘Is Doctor Willow expecting you?’

‘Yes.’ Roy called over his shoulder, ‘Tell him Doctor Robson is back for our meeting.’

Kelby noticed the blush on the receptionist’s cheeks pale as she immediately picked up the phone.

Roy led the way down the ward. At the door to 2B, he stopped and faced her. ‘Brace yourself, Kel. I’m not sure what we’ll find.’

She nodded and peered over his shoulder, eager to see Annie’s face. At that moment she heard a shuffle behind her and turned to see Doctor Willow marching along the ward’s corridor towards them.