servants, I thought.”
“Did he have light blond hair?”
“Now that you mention it, he did.”
“Then he thought you were following him for a reason. That’s why you landed up here.”
“Who is he, miss? A criminal?”
“He’s the young man you saw in your room that night, and he may well be a murderer,” I said. “When we get out of this place, we’ll have to go carefully.”
“How are we going to get out?” she asked. “There’s not even a door.”
“Well, we got in,” I said, trying to sound more cheerful than I felt. “So we can try getting out the same way. If you’re strong enough to hold me on your shoulders, I can reach the ceiling. Perhaps I can push one of those slabs open.”
She crouched down and let me climb onto her back, then we inched our way around until I was directly under the high point of the arched ceiling. I found the slab that had opened to admit me all right but it was positioned so exactly that there wasn’t enough room to get a grip on it. I broke my fingernails trying to drag it down, but it was no use.
“That’s not going to work,” I said. “You’d better let me down.”
I clambered off her back and we sat panting while I examined the room.
“There’s that little grille in the wall down there,” I said. “I’m quite skinny, maybe I would fit through it.”
“Don’t try it, miss. It’s bound to be dangerous,” she said.
“We’re not just going to sit here and hope that someone finds us,” I said. “I’ve already had people searching for you all over the castle. If they couldn’t find you I don’t think there is much hope that we’ll be discovered.” I lay on the floor and peered out. It wasn’t encouraging. All I could see was another stone wall, about ten feet away. I tugged at the grille, I pushed it, but it wouldn’t budge. Truthfully I didn’t think it was likely to, having been in place for several hundred years, but I had to try.
“Help me pull this thing, Queenie,” I said.
We pulled together but it was hard to get our fingers through the small holes of the grille. We turned around and tried kicking it. No use.
“We need some leverage,” I said. “My petticoat is silk. Are you wearing a cotton one?”
“A cotton petticoat? Yes, miss.”
“Then take it off.”
She obeyed, eyeing me strangely as I attempted to tear it into strips. Eventually, using teeth and nails, Queenie’s hairpins and my brooch, we did manage to rip it and ended up with a couple of long strips. We tied these to the grille.
“When I say pull, you brace your feet against the wall and pull with all your might,” I said.
We pulled. Suddenly there was a cracking, crumbling sound as the grille came flying out. We looked at each other and nodded with satisfaction.
“But I don’t see how you’re going to get out of there, miss,” Queenie said. “You’ll get stuck, likely as not.”
I had to say that I agreed with her. The opening couldn’t have been much more than about fifteen inches high and two feet wide.
“Luckily I’m skinny and I have been told by milliners that I have a small head,” I said.
“I’d go out for you if I could, miss,” Queenie said, “but I don’t think my big toe would fit through there, to say nothing of the rest of me.”
I looked at her and smiled with real fondness. She might be the worst servant in the world, but she was trapped in a hopeless situation and she wasn’t making a fuss.
“Well, here goes,” I said and stuck my head out of the hole. What I saw wasn’t encouraging. I was near the bottom of a long shaft of some sort. It might be a well, because there was ice below me, and there was another grille over the top, far above me. I couldn’t even see any other openings in the side.
“Maybe if we shouted, someone would hear us,” I said. “Try shouting ‘help’ with me, Queenie.”
We shouted. I tried it in French. Nothing happened.
“There seem to be the remains of iron rungs on the far side,” I said. “If the ice holds me, I could lower myself down and get across.”
“What if it don’t hold you, miss?”
“The worst that can happen is that I’ll get really wet and cold,” I said. “It’s worth a try. I’m going out backward.”
I lay on the floor and stuck my