The House of the Patriarch by Barbara Hambly

Author:Barbara Hambly [Hambly, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448304530
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 2020-06-02T23:00:00+00:00

SIXTEEN

‘This isn’t the place,’ breathed January. The little hay barn stood a dozen yards from the river, whose black water glimmered faintly in the light of the sinking moon.

‘’Tis one of ’em,’ retorted Pearce. ‘And the one I know. There’s a wharf down there where the bank curves and the water’s deep enough to bring a boat to shore. Old Man Teasle had more’n one way into that house of his, and more’n one way out. This tunnel leads to one o’ them cottages in the orchard, and I’d rather come up there than in the middle o’ the house itself where we’d be bound to meet God-knows-who. Them cottages been empty for years.’

January looked towards the house. The moon was a day past full, and its light touched the erratic roof line with threads of silver above the inky cloud of the orchard trees. He and Pearce had left the Celestial Comrade’s farm just before sunset, January concealed beneath a load of hay in the old man’s wagon. It was after midnight, now.

Despite his exhaustion he had slept uneasily last night. He would wake with a jolt, at the skitter of a mouse along the attic beams overhead, or the screech of an owl in the trees beyond the open gable window, and for a moment he would be back in the stuffy darkness of that windowless room in the Residence. Or he would be standing in the earth-smelling black of the tunnel, seeing the lamplight flicker for one terrible second over the jumble of shoes along the wall.

The smell of that hidden room came back to him, the unearthly silence, and the ground-in whiff of incense.

Incense?

And the way the thick layers of carpet sank beneath his foot. A fraudulent pearl, two cheap sequins …

Only when they were inside the barn – redolent with cut hay – did Del Pearce light the candle he carried, in the old-fashioned way, with striker, tinder and flint. By its wavery light the old man advanced three paces from the door, and knelt. ‘Still here,’ he said. ‘Used, too, by the look on it. Reach me that pole there by the door, will you, Ben?’

A couple of hayforks hung near the door, and beside them, two twig brooms and a six-foot stave with a small, blunt metal hook at one end. It looked like some kind of agricultural implement, but January, born on a plantation, had never seen such a tool. He handed it to Pearce, who hooked the metal end into a small hole – like a knothole – in the puncheon floor, twisted it, and pulled.

A whole section of floor came up, three feet by seven, a shallow ramp running down into darkness.

‘Tunnel forks about forty yards along,’ the old man informed him. ‘Left-hand fork’ll take you into the cottage nearest the house. Along to the right’ll take you up into the house itself, where the east wing comes out past the kitchen and into the garden near the orchard. I’ll

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