Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

I hope to God I’m right about this, Casey thought as the iron sailor’s latch ratcheted shut.  The darkness was nearly complete, though a sliver or two of light remained, slipping through where there were tiny gaps between the hammered iron plates.   Then she stamped down hard on the rough bump she had spotted moments earlier on the floor of the inner chamber, just where a prisoner’s left foot would be once she’d been secured.

At first, there was no response.  She stomped again, and the bump sank suddenly into the floor.  Then several things happened almost at once.  There was a quick, quiet shnick! as the shackles slid abruptly forward a couple of inches, allowing her to wriggle free of their grip.  There was a soft clank as the wall of spikes shuddered and slid backward by a similar amount.  And there was a much louder groan of gears as the entire inside of the sailor began to revolve.

A-freaking-mazing.  Casey held back a whistle of astonishment as the mechanism turned – then jumped, as she realized that while the wall was shifting, the floor beneath her feet was not.  Quickly, she pressed herself against a smooth section of wall and began moving step by careful step around the shell’s edge, matching her pace as best she could to the wall’s own motion.

It seemed to take an eternity before the assembly completed a full half-circle and ground to a halt.  By the time it did, Casey’s eyes had adjusted as best they could to the near-darkness.  Taking a silent breath, she looked down at the floor.  And below the space formerly occupied by the great mass of spikes was a patch of even deeper black.  Carefully, she dropped to her knees and probed the edges of the space with a foot.  There were no steps – the hole wasn’t big enough – but she located first one metal bar and then another set into its side, forming the beginnings of a ladder leading downward.  Right, then – going down.  And so she did, clambering one cautious step at a time into the pit.

It was a climb of no little distance.  Candleshoe had at least three separate cellars that Casey knew of, but wherever she was going was deeper underground than any of them.  The pit widened somewhat after the first few feet, and it seemed relatively dry – though she discovered by touch that it was in fact walled in stone, resembling the inside of a chimney or a well more than a natural cave or burrow.  It remained inconveniently dark for most of the descent – until eventually, one of the rungs gave a click as she set her foot against it, and a moment later, flickering light flared a little way below, and in a few more feet she was at the bottom.

She found herself in a modest rectangular chamber, perhaps fifteen feet by ten.  Rows of old-fashioned glass-topped lamps sat in niches high on all four walls, burning what Casey assumed was some sort of oil.[1]  The shaft through which Casey had arrived emerged at one of the narrow ends, and along both longer walls a series of objects were arranged.  These included: an enormous snow-white bearskin, complete with head, draped like a cloak over a wooden rack; an equally monstrous mechanical crocodile, fully twelve feet long with skin intricately fashioned from thousands of interlocking metal plates; a longbow nearly as tall as Casey herself, with a green leather quiver of arrows leaning against the wall beside it; an old-fashioned silver hunting horn, engraved with a knotwork design and the thrown-back heads of several fierce-looking dogs; a coal-black iron pot about the size of a Halloween pumpkin, sitting atop a thick sheaf of manuscript bound in black leather and fastened shut with a matching strap; and farthest along on the right-hand side, a heavy carved walking stick topped with a baseball-sized silver knob.

“Great,” Casey said, eyeing the collection.  “Now all I need is a catalog.  Or at least some instructions.”  She took a step forward...and the stone under her foot went click.  A section of the wall to her right slid aside, revealing a small gray book.

Casey glanced toward the ceiling, as if looking around for an invisible narrator.  “Cute.”    Then she stepped sideways, plucked the book from its niche, and flipped it open.  The handwriting was – surprise – Captain Joshua’s.

Beware, you who Tread this path.  Before you are wondrous treasures, aye.  But no treasure comes without cost, and the Greatest gift often comes at the highest price.  Think well before using these things, and shrink not from Paying such debts as you May incur.  What I know of each Object, I have recorded in these Pages, but again, beware, for my knowledge is often Scant.

When you are ready, Take what you will and go – upward or Down, as you choose.  The former Path is the more direct; the latter requires Patience to persevere.

-- Joshua St. Edmund, Marquis of Candleshoe

“Great,” Casey said again.  “More clues to solve.”

She spent several minutes studying Captain Joshua’s notes.  Some of the stories were difficult to believe.  According to Joshua, the bearskin – properly, the Sark of Ulfgar – gave its wearer the strength and ferocity of ten...or just possibly turned you into an actual bear.  The longbow had supposedly belonged to Robin Hood.  The horn was said to call up a troop of spectral hunting hounds – and their master, who might just set them on the summoner rather than the summoner’s chosen prey.  The clockwork crocodile’s purpose was similar but slower, and one needed something of the victim’s in order to put it on the scent.  And of course there was the Cauldron of Fog, which together with the Ffogg family grimoire enabled the user to create powerful alchemical formulas – and perhaps to control the weather itself.

The walking stick, it turned out, was the very one with which Lord Bartholomew St. Edmund had dispatched the (alleged) werewolf.  Its magical properties, if any, were unclear, but it had evidently been blessed by two different Archbishops of Canterbury, contained a hidden dagger whose blade was also edged in silver, and brought good luck to whoever carried it.  “That, I can use,” said Casey.  She eyed the rest of the hoard with varying degrees of interest, reaching down to stroke the clockwork crocodile.  “I really, really want to take you upstairs,” she told it.  But she left the creature behind, heading for the far end of the room with only the walking stick and a pack of playing cards that had been left on one of the shelves.

There were more rungs set into the far wall, leading down into another chimney-like hole.  The downward climb, though, was much shorter, and at the bottom a narrow tunnel led forward, then angled sharply left.  Casey followed the passage – lit by a series of lamps that flickered on and then off again as she passed – until it ended in a solid-looking wall.

“Oh, come on,” Casey said, then began examining the corridor’s end more carefully.   A brief search revealed a square recess in one of the side walls, scarcely wider than her hand and just a few inches deep.  Above the opening, carved into the stone, was a neat letter A.

“Gotcha.”  She felt inside the recess for a moment, then pulled the deck of cards from her pocket, carefully inserted it into the niche and onto the rectangular plate she’d felt there, and pressed downward.  The cards sank into the stone with a snik, and a section of the end wall slid aside to reveal a snug chimney-sized space.

“Good thing I used to play a lot of solitaire,” she muttered as she stepped into the hidden chamber, then sucked in a breath as the entrance abruptly closed behind her.  She had had just time to note that there were no ladder-rungs in her present quarters when a quiet grinding noise rose around her...

...and the floor began to rise with it.  “Sheesh,” said Casey.  “No wonder we practically went bankrupt.  Joshua must have blown a mint building that vault.”

The upward journey was surprisingly quick, and when she stepped out at the top of the shaft, Casey found herself in a hidden passage just outside the second-floor study.  She peered quickly through a spy hole into the room, noting that (a) it was empty, and (b), according to the grandfather clock on the opposite wall, her entire trip had taken barely three-quarters of an hour.

#

 “Step One,” Casey told herself, “call police.”  Fortunately, this was easier than it had been during Harry Bundage’s invasion – at both Priory’s and Grandmother’s insistence, the very first step in Candleshoe’s renovation had been to install modern telephone wiring.  So Casey needed merely to slip into her own bedroom and dial out, and the village constabulary promised immediate action.  But it would take time for them to arrive (and to notify Scotland Yard for backup), and Casey had no intention of waiting idly in the interval.

“Step Two, choose weapons.”  Working quickly, Casey made a rapid circuit of all the occupied bedrooms, coming away with an assortment of supplies.  It took only a few minutes to create what she wanted, at which point she slipped downstairs, keeping to the secret passages and moving as quietly as she could with a pillowcase full of gear slung over her shoulder and Lord Bartholomew’s stick in one hand.

Step Three, locate the enemy.  Her first destination was the Great Hall, or rather the passage that ran alongside it.  A glance through the first spyhole found Priory still frozen in place, with the Ffoggs nowhere to be seen – and the iron sailor still closed.  Part of her wanted desperately to show herself so as to reassure him, but she resisted the impulse.  First things first.  If we don’t catch those two before Grandmother gets home....

Casey shivered, preferring not to finish the thought, and moved on.  She was fairly sure after her second-floor activities that Lord Ffogg and his sister weren’t anywhere upstairs, and a further few minutes trolling on the ground floor likewise failed to locate them.  Luckily, they had evidently bypassed the kitchen (the hidden entry might be blocked, but the spy hole wasn’t), and the genuine cleaning crews were packing up and preparing to depart.

That – rather as Casey had expected – left the cellars.  There were three: one below the kitchen, serving as auxiliary pantry and cold storage; one under the west wing, which had been servants’ quarters and below-stairs living space; and the third beneath the library.  It was this last, oldest cellar where the original armory and dungeon had been, but the hidden passage that ran behind and between them was in relatively poor repair, and the panel giving access to it made a disturbingly loud creaaakk as Casey reached the bottom of the secret stairway and pushed it open.

“What was that?”  The voice belonged to Lady Penelope, and came almost directly into Casey’s ear.  This passage was old enough that, instead of sliding spy panels, there were iron gratings high on the walls of each adjacent room, which an observer would take for ordinary ventilation grates.  Casey froze.

“Nothing, my dear,” replied Lord Ffogg, though his snappish tone belied the endearment.  “The place is merely showing its age.”

“If you say so.  Blast it, where can that treasure room be?”

The next response was even more irritated.  “Nearby, I’m sure.  Possibly one of the cells.”

“But we’ve already checked every one of them!”

Casey grinned, reached for the first of her improvised gimmicks, and removed the sock she’d used to cover it.  Then she held it up near the grating...where the old-fashioned alarm clock’s distinctive tick tick tick began making its way into the room on the other side of the wall.

Lady Penelope reacted with a yelp.  “That’s not an old-building noise!”

“What isn’t?”  Ffogg was farther away from the wall.

“There’s ticking!”  Casey took a few steps away from the grating, then used the sock to muffle the noise.

“I don’t hear a deuced thing.”

Penelope’s voice sounded worried.  “It couldn’t be – could it?”

“Couldn’t be what?”

“You said one of Joshua’s prizes was – that crocodile.”

Ffogg laughed.  “Von Hook’s clockwork monster?  Free?  Not likely.”

Behind the wall, Casey grinned and pulled the clock free, then walked it carefully past the grating, muting it again once she’d gone a few feet past the opening.

Penelope squeaked.  “See?  There it went again!”

“Curious,”  Ffogg said.  “Most curious.”

“You don’t think it’s...hunting us?”

“What, set on our track by Joshua’s ghost?  Don’t be absurd.”  But Ffogg’s foot tapped thoughtfully for a moment.  “Still.  If it is the crocodile, perhaps it will lead us to what we seek.”

“Maybe.”  Penelope sounded doubtful.  “And maybe it’ll eat us alive.”

“Hah,” Ffogg said, then paused.  “You may have a point, my dear.  Facing down von Hook’s creature might well count as mortal peril.  So let’s go hunting.”

Gotcha.  Casey gave herself a mental high-five.

“Which way?” Lady Penelope asked.

“Further on, I think,” said Ffogg.  Their footsteps pattered toward the armory door.  Casey, who was wearing sneakers to avoid being heard, quickly moved down the hidden corridor to a point near another grating.  Once there, she set her clock to ticking again, holding it as close to the grate as she dared till she heard the intruders coming near.

“It’s in there!”  That was Penelope.  As two sets of footfalls approached, Casey tiptoed several yards farther down the passage before once again muffling the clock.

Ffogg made an annoyed noise.  “No, but it’s nearby.  Quick, now!”

They maintained the chase for another three rooms – guardpost, smith’s workroom, storage chamber – before reaching Casey’s goal.  “That way!” Ffogg called, his voice and the duo’s booted feet audible just outside the first of several cells where the early lords of Candleshoe had kept prisoners.  The passage Casey was using ran along the rear of the row of cells; here, the gratings set as listening posts were at floor level, set beneath the stone benches on which captives might lie while confined.  She set her ticking clock down just out of sight of the first cell’s grate, and waited.

“Is it – in there?”  Penelope’s voice was querulous.

Ffogg’s was brusque.  “See for yourself!”

His sister didn’t reply, but Casey heard her – one cautious step at a time – walk through the open doorway.  “I hear it, but I don’t—”

CLLAANNNGGG!!

A heavy iron portcullis dropped across the cell entrance, courtesy of a release Casey had just tripped from her station in the hidden passage.  No one was quite certain what the setup had been used for under the first few masters of Candleshoe, but when Priory had recruited the other orphans to assist with the public tours, they had made a point of sprucing up the mechanism and using it to dramatic effect.  Just now, it had accomplished an even more useful goal: the invading forces had been cut in half.

The noise drowned out Lord Ffogg’s next words, but not Lady Penelope’s shriek.  “Get me out!”

There was a brief, taut silence.  Then: “For the moment – I cannot.”

“What?  Use your dissolving fog!”

“I haven’t enough.  A pellet would do for the lock on a door or a safe, but not these bars, and I’ve but two in the tube.  Besides,” Ffogg added, “don’t you see, this proves we’re on the right track.”

Penelope snorted.  “And how’s that?”

“Remember the letter, my dear: you must sacrifice freedom.  And so you’ve done, just as that fox Joshua promised.  But he won’t have counted on two of us to dodge his so-called mortal peril, and that’s where we’ll beat him.”  Ffogg laughed – and Casey had to resist the impulse to join him.

“Yes, well, don’t think you’re taking my gun,” Penelope told him.  “If that crocodile turns up, I’m blowing its little clockwork brain to smithereens.”

“See that you do.”  As Ffogg spoke, Casey moved, retracing her steps along the secret passage.  And as she reached the next spy-grate along her route, she held the clock beside it, allowing its tick tick tick to echo into the cellar proper.  “Ah, there it goes!” Ffogg cried, and the chase was on again.  Tick by tick, room by room, Casey lured the rogue peer back through the cellar and then up onto the main floor. 

Pursuer and pursued both paused as they reached the library, Ffogg catching his breath and listening intently while Casey knelt near the spy hole and launched her second decoy.  She’d borrowed a pair of roller skates from Bobby’s room and tied the loudest alarm clock she’d found to one of them with shoelaces.  Now she sent the skate rolling along the hidden passage with a brisk push, its ticktickticktick receding as it moved farther from the library’s spyhole.

“Not so fast!”  Ffogg was off again, pulling open the library door as Casey darted ahead to the spyhole opening onto the foyer, scooping up the skate as she went – and gasped at what she saw.

At the same moment Lord Ffogg stepped into the foyer from the library, Priory was emerging from the Great Hall.  His face was streaked with moisture, but his expression was grim, and he was reaching for one of the newly installed telephones when his eyes met Ffogg’s.

“Murderer!”   Priory’s voice was a half-strangled roar.

 “A pleasure, I assure you,” Ffogg replied, smiling toothily.  The scene froze for a moment, as the two men gauged each other’s strength and intent.  And then—

Priory set himself to spring on Lord Ffogg...

...Ffogg twirled his baton upward, one finger spinning its control dial...

...Casey burst through into the foyer, leaving a half-broken secret panel behind her...

...the two men’s gazes flicked sideways, taking in her sudden appearance...

...Priory’s eyes blazed with flabbergasted joy...

...Ffogg’s flashed from shock to rage to arctic hate...

...his baton spun to point at Casey...

...Priory dove toward her, trying to knock her out of its line of fire...

...as he tackled her, Casey flung Lord Bartholomew’s staff at Lord Ffogg...

...the staff hurtled through the air, its motion half spear and half boomerang...

...its silver head scored a direct hit on the center of Ffogg’s baton...

...Lord Ffogg staggered backward at the impact...

...Casey and Priory hit the floor...

...and the baton exploded.

It was a remarkably quiet explosion, but the pyrotechnics were spectacular.  A dozen different colors and textures of fog erupted from the broken baton at once – crimson and azure, fine mist and murky smoke, silver and emerald and gold – blending and swirling into a column of rainbow vapor that surrounded the dazed Lord Ffogg like an intangible cloak.  As Ffogg stood transfixed within the column, the front doors of the house burst open to reveal a half-dozen policemen.  With the sudden infusion of cool outside air, the varicolored fog abruptly collapsed in on itself, fading away into nothingness...

...and as it did, Lord Marmaduke Ffogg blinked, glanced down at himself, and – with an expression of alarmed astonishment on his face – evaporated into mist, leaving only a damp gray puddle on the floor.

The chief constable eyed the puddle nervously as he crossed to where Casey and Priory were scrambling to their feet.  “Ah, will you be needing us any further, miss?”

“We’ve still got one in the dungeon,” Casey told him, grinning, and not resisting at all as Priory folded her into a completely uncharacteristic hug.

“The dungeon?” Lady St. Edmund inquired, coming through the front door.  “What’s been going on here?  The vicar very kindly ran me back from the committee meeting when the constable called, but no one would say why.”  Her eyebrows rose sharply as she took in Casey’s and Priory’s embrace.  “Is everything all right?”

“Mmmmf,” Casey said, catching her breath and untangling herself sufficiently to pull her grandmother into the hug.  “Everything is spectacular, but the story’s complicated.  Hey,” she added, looking up at Priory, “what do you know?  Good old Bart’s cane really is lucky.  But I still kinda want to go back for the crocodile.”

# # #