Read Chapter 31: The Escape from Poitiers

The dungeon of Poitiers stank of rot and old blood. Roland had grown used to the smell over the past three days, which troubled him more than the chains. He sat against the damp stone wall, wrists raw from the manacles, and watched Isabelle sleep in the corner. She had not complained once since they were thrown in, which made him trust her less than if she had screamed.

She was too calm, too watchful. Like a blade waiting for a hand to grip it.

The sound of footsteps echoed down the corridor. Roland tensed, counting the rhythm. Heavy boots. One man. The jailer's tread, not the captain's.

The door grated open. The jailer—a hunchbacked brute named Gaston who spoke in grunts and smelled of cheap wine—carried the morning's offering: a stale loaf of bread and a bucket of cloudy water. He set them down without looking at either prisoner and turned to leave.

"Heartier fare than yesterday," Roland said, keeping his voice flat.

Gaston paused. "Count's table is lean."

"Then why does your belt strain at the buckle?"

The jailer grunted and slammed the door. The key turned in the lock. Roland waited until the footsteps faded before he moved.

He crawled to the bread and turned it in his hands. Yesterday's loaf had been crusty, hard as stone. This one was different—the crust cracked under his fingers, and something gave way inside. His fingers found a thin piece of iron wrapped in greased cloth.

A key.

Isabelle stirred behind him. Her eyes opened, dark and sharp in the dim light. "Aelis?"

"Who else?" Roland palmed the key and worked it into the lock at his wrists. The mechanism was old, worn. The key turned with a click. "She must have gotten it to the kitchen before they took her."

"God in heaven," Isabelle whispered. "She read the ledger wrong. She thought we were going to Paris."

"Or she never trusted the route we took." Roland freed his hands and rubbed his raw wrists. He crossed to Isabelle and unlocked her manacles. "Either way, we owe her."

Isabelle flexed her fingers, testing the circulation. "There are others here. I heard them crying through the walls last night. A woman. A boy, I think."

"A noise would draw the garrison."

"The guards are half-drunk by midnight. The Count of Poitou keeps his garrison fat and lazy—they think the war is elsewhere." She looked at him with that unsettling calm. "You've been in this castle before."

"I've studied it. Fortresses have patterns. This one drinks too much on feast days." He did not add that he had helped besiege Poitiers twelve years ago, on a different side entirely. The walls had held then. The sewers had not.

They waited.

The hours crawled past. The light through the high window moved from grey to amber to grey again. Roland heard the bells of the castle chapel ring for compline. The garrison would eat soon, drink more, and sleep.

At midnight, he rose.

The key worked on the cell door as well. The lock clicked open, and the iron door swung inward on oiled hinges. Roland pressed himself against the corridor wall, listening. No footsteps. No voices. The stone corridor stretched into darkness, lit by a single guttering torch at the far end.

Isabelle moved past him with the silence of a shadow. She had taken the bucket of water and left the bread. He had not eaten either. Hunger was another weapon, kept sharp.

The other cells lined the corridor. Roland tested each lock with the key as they passed. The first three did not yield—different mechanisms, different keys. The fourth did.

A terrified face peered out of the darkness: a woman, grey-haired, hollow-eyed. She stared at them as if they were ghosts.

"Who are you?" she whispered.

"A friend of the door," Roland said. "Do you want to be free?"

She nodded, then turned and called softly into the darkness behind her. A boy emerged, perhaps eleven years old, with dirt-caked cheeks and eyes too old for his face. The woman took his hand and stepped into the corridor.

"Go to the chapel," Isabelle told her. "Wait behind the altar. At dawn, when the doors open for the first mass, walk out with the congregation. Do not run. Do not look back."

The woman's eyes widened. She pressed her hand to Isabelle's cheek—a gesture of blessing that made Roland's throat tighten—then took the boy and shuffled toward the chapel.

The next cell held a man of fighting age, broad-shouldered and bearded, wearing the remnants of a soldier's tunic. He rose when the door opened, fists clenched.

"Free you," Roland said, "and you'll cause noise when we move."

"Free me," the man said, "and I'll follow you into hell itself."

"I might ask that of you yet."

The man's chains came off with the key—the same lock pattern, thank God. He introduced himself as Marc, a serjeant in the service of the Count of Champagne, taken prisoner when his patrol strayed too close to Poitou's lands. "I know the sewers under this castle," he said. "I helped lay pipes during the peace, before the count turned on us."

Roland stared at him. "You know the way out?"

"I know it better than the rats." Marc grinned through a cracked tooth. "Though they might dispute that."

They freed two more prisoners—a frightened priest accused of heresy, and a stable hand who claimed he had only stolen a horse that was already stolen. The priest stammered his thanks and fled toward the chapel. The stable hand joined their group with the eager readiness of a dog who had been kicked once too often to trust kindness.

It was enough. Roland did not have time to free every soul in the dungeon, and the noise would grow with each door opened. They moved toward the stairs.

The jailer's post sat at the corridor's end, a small alcove with a table, a stool, and a body asleep in it.

Gaston's head lolled against the wall, mouth open, snoring loud enough to wake the dead. His keys hung on a hook beside the door—a door that led up to the guardroom, where the night watch would be playing dice or drinking.

Roland drew the knife he had taken from the bread—no, that was a key, not a blade. He had nothing. He looked at Marc.

The serjeant held up his own chains—the ones they had not unlocked, coiled in his fist. "Quiet enough?"

Roland nodded. He gestured to Isabelle and the others to stay in the shadow.

Marc approached the sleeper. One step, two, three—and the chain came down across Gaston's throat. The jailer woke with a gag, hands clawing at the links, but Marc was heavier and stronger, and the fight lasted less than a breath. The body went limp.

Roland took the keys from the hook and moved to the door. He pressed his ear to the wood and listened.

Voices. Laughter. Dice rattling on a table.

"Four men," he whispered. "Maybe five. The dice game will keep their attention. We go through fast, not quiet. The door opens, we're already moving."

Marc shook his head. "Five against three—" He glanced at the stable hand, who looked ready to bolt. "Two and a half."

"We don't fight the five," Isabelle said. "We go through the guardroom to the outer corridor, then down. Where does the sewer entrance lie?"

"Stables," Marc said. "The grate in the west wall, behind the horse troughs."

"The stables back onto the sewer ditch where they drain the castle's refuse." Roland had read the plans once, in a lifetime ago, when he had thought knowledge of drains beneath French castles might win him a siege. Now it might win him his life.

Isabelle was already at the door. Roland put his hand on the handle.

"Now," he said—and he opened it.

The guardroom was low-ceilinged, thick with pipe smoke. Four men sat at a table, cups and dice scattered before them. A fifth lay sprawled on a bench, eyes closed. The torchlight caught them mid-laugh, and then Roland was across the room with the key chain swinging.

He took the nearest guard in the throat with his elbow—a wet crunch of cartilage, the man gagging on air. Marc went past him for the second, fists and chain, while the stable hand threw himself at the third with a shriek that was half terror and half war cry. The fourth reached for a sword propped against the wall. Roland caught his wrist and twisted, feeling the bones grind, and drove his knee into the man's stomach. The guard folded.

The man on the bench woke, scrambling for a blade. Isabelle was there in a single stride, the water bucket from their cell arcing through the air. It caught him in the temple with a dull crack, and he dropped without a sound.

Silence. The dice still rattled on the table where someone's hand had struck them. Roland stood over the groaning guards, breathing hard.

Isabelle knelt beside the first man—the one Roland had elbowed, the jailer's relief. She drew his knife from his belt and looked up at Roland. "The tunnel?"

"Through there." Marc pointed to a narrow door at the far end of the guardroom. "It spirals down into the cellars. The sewer feeder runs beneath them."

They moved. The stable hand dragged the groaning guards into the corner while the others slipped through the door. The spiral stair was tight, the air growing cooler as they descended. The stone walls wept moisture.

They emerged into a cellar stacked with barrels of wine and salted meat. A drain in the floor—a grate of iron set into the stone—murmured with water within.

Marc dropped to his knees and worked the grate free with his bare hands. He gestured into the dark hole below. "It empties into the river outside the walls. The drop is short, the water moves fast, but it's shallow enough to stand in."

Isabelle looked at the dark water, then back at the stair they had come from. "The garrison will find the knot of men in the guardroom by morning. Maybe sooner."

"Then by morning we need to be so far from here that 'soon' becomes a memory." Roland dropped into the hole. The water hit his waist, cold enough to steal his breath. He reached up and helped Isabelle down. The others followed.

The tunnel ran west, water sluicing around their knees, the smell of rot and old stone filling their lungs. They moved in darkness, Marc counting paces aloud. Torchlight appeared ahead—a grate, open to the night sky, the glimmer of stars beyond.

They climbed out into the soft mud of the riverbank. The walls of Poitiers rose behind them, indifferent and enormous, their towers black against the sky.

"Isabelle." A voice, low and familiar.

Roland turned, one hand going for a weapon he did not have. A figure detached itself from the shadow of the wall. Aelis stepped forward, unbound, unharmed, wearing a hooded cloak and a grim smile.

"You're alive," Isabelle said, relief bleeding into her voice.

"More than you were, a few hours ago." Aelis gestured. At the edge of the riverbank, barely visible in the darkness, a band of mounted men waited—a dozen at least, rough-hewn and armored, their horses stamping at the cold ground. "When Ashcombe got word the Count's men had taken you, he would not leave his investment to rot. He paid handsomely, and we moved faster than the Count's messengers."

Roland looked at the mercenaries. Their blades gleamed in the starlight. "And the Count's men will not find the grate for hours. We have a lead."

"Better than a lead," Aelis said. "Ashcombe's horses are fresh. His men know the roads north." She looked at Roland, then at Isabelle. "The question is not whether we reach Paris. The question is what we do when we arrive."

Isabelle smiled—a slow, dangerous expression that Roland had not seen before. "We expected to walk into a trap. Now we know it is a trap." She looked at Roland. "We plan the trap for someone else."

Roland looked back at the castle walls. Somewhere inside, the Count of Poitou slept, dreaming of the ledger he would never possess.

"We ride for Paris," Roland said. "But not to deliver anything. Not to the King, and not to whoever is pulling the bishop's strings." He turned and led them toward the horses. "We go to make them come to us."