There were only six steps in all. I counted them as I went down, with a hand braced on the cool stone wall to guide me – six steps and then a level stretch. The wall at my hand fell away, and I moved onward cautiously, only to be brought up short by another wall directly to the front.
Confused, I took a small step backwards, reaching out my hands to feel the inky blackness that surrounded me. Deprived of sight, my other senses rose to fill the void. The lingering smell of the gypsy’s cigarette bit sharply at my nostrils, as did the dank sweet smell of stone that never sees the sun. Above the rasp of my own breathing my straining ears picked out the faintest clicking of the little dog’s toenails on the stone floor, a sound that echoed and receded steadily along the passage to my right.
My groping hands touched chiselled stone above my head, as dry as parchment, brushed with dirt, a ceiling arched and rounded like the one I’d seen in Armand’s cellars. And then I knew, with a strange instinctive certainty, where I was. Not a cellar, I corrected myself. This was no ordinary cliff house. I was in the tunnels.
My first thought was to turn back while the door was still just steps behind me. A labyrinth, that’s what everyone I’d met had called the tunnels of Chinon. A labyrinth of twisting passageways that burrowed through the hills, unsafe, uncharted, half of them forgotten and collapsed through lack of use. You’ll get lost, warned the nagging little voice inside my head. You’ll get lost down here and no one will ever find you. The wave of panic swelled again and I hesitated, heart pounding.
Some distance off, the clicking footsteps of the dog paused in their progress, as if the beast had sensed my indecision. The gypsy whistled softly and that echoed, too, along the stone walls back to me. ‘Allez!’ he ordered. Come along! He was speaking to the dog, I knew, but nonetheless the single command shifted me. I set my face in that direction, squared my shoulders, and plunged on into the darkness.
I didn’t stumble, which surprised me, since the floor was anything but even. I slid one hand along the wall, to keep my bearings as best I could, and strained my ears to hear the gypsy’s steps in front of me. He knew I was following. I fancied that he kept his pace deliberately slow to aid me, and just before I reached a turning in the tunnel where I might have lost my way, the gypsy started whistling in the darkness up ahead, drawing me onward as a beacon draws a ship.
For the most part, though, the tunnel ran straight on with neither bend nor break, and only the straining muscles of my legs to tell me when we sank deeper into the rock or rose again towards the surface.
We were rising now. Ahead of me the little dog’s staccato rhythm altered to a sort of surging scrabble and the gypsy’s boots fell heavily with measured sureness on the stone. My brain, attuned to darkness, told me: Stairs, they’re climbing stairs. I slowed my pace expectantly. My searching hand trailed off the wall and into emptiness, and a sudden spear of light came hurtling down to trap me where I stood.
My ears had not deceived me. I had reached the bottom of a long and narrow flight of stairs, like cellar stairs, that stretched invitingly towards the world above. Someone was standing on the upper landing, poised against the open door – the gypsy, I presumed, although he was at best a silhouette. I couldn’t see his face. He pushed the door wide and left it open, passing through into whatever lay beyond.
It had seemed a good idea at the time, I reminded myself as I climbed the stairs – now, I wasn’t so sure. God knows where I would find myself when I emerged, and what would happen to me there. My feet dragged just a little up the final few steps. And then I thought again of Paul, and why I’d followed in the first place, and squaring my shoulders I stepped across the threshold.
I was completely unprepared, coming from the cold and ancient darkness of the tunnels, to find myself standing in a one-roomed house with fridge and cook-stove and a cheery fire burning in the fireplace. I’d expected a cave, I think, some sort of wild dungeon of a place, with sullen eyes that peered at me from the corners. But this was no cave, and the only eyes I saw belonged to the gypsy, the dog, and the young man lying on a bed in the far corner. A pale and rumpled young man who smiled and sent the gypsy a look of congratulation.
‘Oh, well done, Jean,’ my cousin said. ‘You found her.’
‘Feel better now?’
I pressed my fingers to my forehead and nodded, refusing the gypsy’s offer of a stout brandy and water. Harry settled back against his pillows with the air of a penitent. ‘I didn’t think …’
‘You never do.’
‘Well, how was I to know you’d go all weak-kneed on me? You’re not the swooning type, my love.’
‘Yes, well,’ I pushed my hand through my hair with a tired sigh. No point in telling Harry I’d been fasting, either, I decided. He’d only try to feed me something. Instead I opted for a general explanation. ‘It’s been a devil of a week.’
‘My fault, I expect.’
‘Mostly.’ I looked at him. ‘Harry, what on earth—’
‘I can explain,’ he promised, cutting me off with an upraised hand. ‘I suppose it’s easiest to start at the beginning, when I arrived in Chinon.’
‘Last Wednesday morning, was it?’
He gave me a curious look. ‘Yes. I drove up overnight from Bordeaux, and got here shortly after breakfast. Rather proud of myself, I was, arriving two whole days before you.’
‘But you didn’t go to the hotel.’