were deceptive, and it was from another tunnel mouth that Darcy at last emerged.
He was looking dishevelled. His hair was rumpled, his coat was covered in a fine sandy powder, and his coat was ripped across the shoulder. His cravat was torn and hung from his neck in a tangle of linen. There was a hole in his breeches at the knee, and his boots were caked with mud. Georgio was hard on his heels, his face ashen.
‘What happened?’ asked Elizabeth, running over to him and lifting her hand to his cheek.
He took it and kissed it, but all he would say is, ‘That is not the way. We will have to try another passage.’
Georgio visibly blanched.
‘I cannot…’ he said in fear and trembling.
Darcy looked at him with sympathy. ‘I do not expect it. You have faced a challenge that few would have faced and acquitted yourself with great bravery, but the horrors of the passages are not for your kind. It is for me to face them alone.’
‘No!’ said Elizabeth.
‘My love, it is the only way. I have to do this. For you. For me. For us.’
‘And yet,’ said Nicolei speaking slowly, ‘it may not be necessary for anyone to go there. I think there is another way.’
Darcy looked at him enquiringly and Elizabeth followed his gaze. Nicolei was standing next to the wall at the eastern side of the temple, by one of the basins.
‘I have found… I think I have found…’ Nicolei said, ‘…writing.’
He rubbed the surface dirt away with his finger, and Elizabeth could see a fine flowing script underneath.
‘What does it say?’ she asked.
‘It is very old, a dialect. Few speak it now. It says… it says the way will be eased by a… by something close to the… I cannot read this word… something close to the hide… no, the skin… I think this word means father… no, not father, the one who makes. I think it means sire.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Elizabeth.
‘It means that if I have something worn by my sire, the vampyre who made me, it will smooth my way,’ said Darcy.
‘There is more,’ Nicolei went on, rubbing again with his finger. ‘It says rest in… no, lay in… lay in the hollow. It means, I think, put it in the hollow of the bowl.’
‘If only I had something,’ said Darcy regretfully, ‘but I have nothing. I will have to continue without it.’
‘Perhaps not,’ said Elizabeth, struggling to recall a slight memory. She turned to Darcy as it came back to her. ‘When you came to my rescue on the beach, when you thought Lady Catherine was attacking me and knocked her back, she left an indentation in the cliff, and caught in the indentation was her veil. It must have been embedded in the rock when she pulled herself free. I saw it blowing in the breeze.’
Darcy’s face brightened.
‘Then I will fetch it,’ he said energetically. ‘It will not take me long.’
‘It took us hours to get here,’ Elizabeth pointed out.
Darcy smiled, his eyes bright in the torchlight. ‘But I am a vampyre,’ he said.
There was a sudden brief stirring of wind and then, quicker than she would have thought possible, he was gone, a black and fluid form disappearing rapidly from view.
She could hardly take in what had happened and she sat down, her legs feeling suddenly weak. It was a day of marvels, fearful and terrible, yet wonderful and strange.
Nicolei resumed his seat next to her on one of the fallen columns, and Georgio sat on the other one, looking down at the floor silently. As Elizabeth recovered her composure, she found herself wanting to ask him what had happened, but she could not bring herself to speak of it. His colour had returned but when one of the torches sputtered and he lit a new torch from the old, his hands were still shaking.
Nicolei too had fallen silent and appeared to be lost in thought.
Elizabeth prepared herself for a long wait, but before she thought there was any hope of Darcy returning, there was a beating of wings and a rushing of air and he stood once more before them. She saw that he was holding, in his left hand, Lady Catherine’s black veil.
‘You found it!’ she said. ‘I was afraid it might have blown away.’
‘No, it was just where you said it would be,’ he said with a warm smile. Then his face became serious. ‘And now we must see what it will do.’