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“Kate will be frozen…and terrified.”
Monk tightened his grip on Exeter’s arm. “If we rush, we may make a mistake.”
Exeter looked down at the lamps, although he could barely have seen them. “I’m sorry. I…this is hard. I…”
“I know,” Monk said quietly. “Not much longer now. Help me light these. We won’t see a damn thing without them.”
“I imagine you don’t see much in a place like this, even in daylight,” Exeter observed bitterly.
They were entering the waterways around Jacob’s Island, and the other boat had gone out of sight, upriver. The houses reared up out of the water on either side of what was a short canal. They balanced on rotted stilts, leaning this direction and that, according to what had given way first. The river water barely covered the thick, viscous mud that sucked anything of weight into itself, like quicksand.
Monk had seen men fall into it. Their bodies were never found. God alone knew what lay beneath its stinking surface. It barely moved. There were no eddies or swirls here, nothing to cleanse either at low tide or high.
“This place is like death,” Exeter said hoarsely. “Perhaps hell is like this. Worse than burning!”
Monk looked at him. His face was starkly shown in the lights of the bull’s-eye lanterns. The yellow glow caught and magnified every line, deepening the shadows. Monk thought he must look nearly as haggard as that himself. But the tension in Monk was far less. This was only his job, his professional success or failure. For Exeter, it was everything that mattered in his life.
“You have the money,” Monk said. “All they asked? They must expect you to bring someone with you. You can only get to the site by water. You’re going to give them the money when you’ve seen your wife and she’s well.”
“But if—” Exeter began.
Monk looked at him. “You want to change your mind?”
“No! No. Of course I don’t. It’s just…get this over with. It is the only thing I can do, and…second-guessing myself…there’s no point. How much further until there’s something we can land on? All I can see is mud and water and rotting wood that wouldn’t take the weight of a seagull, never mind a man!”
“Not much further,” Monk assured him. “There’s a stone wall a dozen yards over there, but watch your feet. You don’t want to step on a rat.”
“Wouldn’t the damn things get out of the way?”
“Not if they’re dead.”
Exeter swore under his breath.
Three minutes later, they arrived at an old mooring post by a flight of steps. The wood was rotten, but the iron core of it still held firm.
“Where are we going?” Exeter said, the note of panic rising high in his voice again. “There’s nothing here!”
“Over there.” Monk pointed. “There’s a loading bay there, and beyond it the entrance to a cellar, and a tunnel.”
“It’s under the water!”
“Not now. It’s low tide.”
“The tide will turn any moment, and we’ll be drowned!” There was an edge to Exeter’s voice: Fear, a nerve struck? Memory of some other time?
“Then we’d better be quick!” Monk passed one of the bull’s-eye lanterns to Exeter. “Come on.” He stood up carefully, keeping his balance, and stepped up onto the shallow stone slab. He turned to offer his hand to Exeter.
Exeter rose also, but his balance seemed uneasy. He hesitated a moment, then took Monk’s hand and leaned on it with more weight than expected. There was an instant adjustment, then Exeter moved and put his feet on the stone. Laker was a yard behind him; Bathurst was to stay and keep the boat ready for their return.
Monk waited only an instant, then faced forward, holding the light ahead of him, and very carefully moved along the stone slip and into the darkness of the tunnel mouth. It looked like an ordinary loading bay, except that the wood was wet up to head height. This would be an underground river at high tide. Even in a couple of hours it would be an ever-deepening morass.
When they had gone twenty feet from the entrance, the last of the daylight was swallowed up. Monk refused to look backward. He had memorized the passages and now concentrated on finding his way: how many steps, how many walls, broken or whole. He could hear the rats skittering along the wooden beams that still survived.
Was the water at his feet rising, or was it only his imagination?
Ahead of him, the way divided. A flight of stairs went upward and disappeared. Monk went straight past it. He knew that it led nowhere. The next floor had been carried away when the rafters fell in. The way from here, against all instinct, was down. Now the ground was open, but they must come back in less than an hour, or the current filling it with the weight of the incoming tide would carry them off their feet.
Exeter stopped.
