The great hall was quiet.
She couldn’t bear just remaining in her room any longer. And Alistair had heard something from the chapel. And now, she was certain, she heard noises coming from the crypts as well. Moaning sounds, as if the ancient Douglases cried out in protest of the events occurring now.
The chapel led to the crypts.
She shivered.
Well, she wasn’t going to be afraid of the dead. Not when they might hold some secret to aid the living.
She hurried down the steps to the chapel, pausing within. The light from her candle was dim, but it slightly illuminated the windows, casting off soft, ethereal colors within the chapel. She circled around, looking for anyone who might sit quietly in the chapel.
Or for anyone who might stand behind the columns in the nave, watching. Waiting.
No one was in the chapel. Of that she was certain.
She found herself walking to the iron gate to the crypts below. It was closed.
But it opened easily.
She hesitated. There was a heavy brass candle snuffer, at least six feet long, for use on the towering altar candles, lying against the far wall. She grabbed it with her left hand andopened the iron gate with the same hand while balancing the candle in her right.
Slowly, she started down the stairs. She was certain that her footfalls were silent as she went down, step by step by step.
She had been in the Douglas crypts dozens of times. She had come often to bring flowers to set upon David’s coffin.
But she had come by day.
She had never seen such Stygian darkness as she walked deeper and deeper into the bowels of…
Death.
She should turn she told herself. Turn and flee back up the steps.
The dead would not hurt her, she reminded herself.
Step by step…
She reached the landing. Iron gates walled in the ancient dead, sleeping with hands folded in prayer throughout the centuries. She tried not to look. She couldn’t help but let her imagination fly, for the candlelight was so very tricky. She could swear that she saw movement, a soft fluttering of shrouds.
She could imagine a corpse sitting up, staring at her, accusing her of complicity in murder…
Shawna…
Then, she suddenly heard the sound. An awful groaning. As if a dead man had been struck anew, as if he screamed with pain from the agony of hell.
She nearly screamed herself.
She forced herself to breathe. To look straight ahead. Determined not to see the corpses in their shrouds through the iron gates of the various crypts.
She held her brass snuffer tightly in her hand, moving very slowly, using her free hand to keep herself flat against the wall. Her candle didn’t shed much light. The corridor seemed filled with shapes and shadows.
She knew where David’s supposed tomb lay within the crypts.
Ten more steps perhaps.
One at a time. She reached the tomb.
Just outside of it, she stood very, very still.