Read Chapter 7: The Unseen Enemy

The cell stank of damp straw and his own fear. Thomas had stopped struggling against the ropes hours ago; they had been tied by someone who knew their work, biting into his wrists and ankles with a patience that suggested practice. The darkness was complete, and the silence of the stone pressed against his ears.

Then came the scrape of a bolt.

Thomas tensed, straining to hear. Footsteps—light, careful, not the heavy tread of the brute who had clubbed him. A key turned in the lock with a groan, and a sliver of lantern light crept through the crack of the opening door.

Agnes’s weathered face appeared, her grey hair loose around her shoulders, a shawl clutched tight at her throat. She held the lantern low, shielding its glow with her hand, her eyes darting past him to the corridor beyond.

“You talk soft,” she said, her voice a dry whisper. “Or not at all.”

She knelt beside him, setting the lantern down, and produced a small knife from her sleeve—not silver, but worn and dark with use. She began sawing at the ropes at his wrists.

Thomas exhaled, relief mixing with suspicion. “Why?”

“Because Aldous is a fool,” she said, not looking up. “And Sir Richard is worse. And because you made a promise to a dying child, and I’ve buried enough children to know a man who keeps his word.”

The ropes fell away. Blood rushed back into his hands in a storm of needles. He flexed his fingers, working the stiffness from his joints while she moved to his ankles.

“They took my boots,” he said.

“I know. I brought you something.” She nodded toward a bundle on the floor—a pair of worn leather shoes, not his own, and a rough wool cloak. “Mending’s poor, but they’ll keep the cold off.”

He sat up, rubbing his wrists. “How long have I been here?”

“A day. Maybe two. I don’t mark time the way I used to.” She finished cutting the ropes at his ankles and sat back on her heels, studying him. “Sir Richard sent men to the infirmary this morning. Asking for you. I told them you’d fled in the night, that the girl had taken a turn and you’d gone for herbs you couldn’t find in Blencarn.”

Thomas’s jaw tightened. “The girl. She’s still alive?”

“For now. The marks have spread to her chest, but her fever’s not broken. She’s strong, that one.” Agnes paused. “She’s not the only one.”

He looked at her. The lantern light carved deep lines into her face, turning her eyes into hollows. She seemed older than he’d first thought, and harder, as if the softness of her manner had been a sheath for something steel beneath.

“What do you mean?”

Agnes glanced toward the door, then back. “You asked me before about the dead. I told you what the register said—natural deaths, the pox, old age. All accounted for. But the register only lists the ones the village admits to.”

Thomas leaned forward. “And the others?”

“They go missing.” Her voice had dropped so low he had to strain to hear. “People fall ill. Not with the weeping sores, not the black swellings—but with fever, and cough, and a greyness to their skin. They’re taken to the infirmary, and then they’re not. The council says they were sent to the monastery at Kendal for care. No one ever comes back.”

“How many?”

“Since the quarantine began? Twenty-three. That I know of.”

The number sat in the silence between them. Thomas thought of the crypt beneath the chapel, the stacked bodies preserved in their shrouds, the lime-filled graves the sexton had shown him as a cover. Twenty-three more, vanished—not dead in the official record, not buried, not burned. Gone.

“The apothecary,” he said. “The one who was here before me. What was his name?”

Agnes’s hands stilled in her lap. “Elias Thorne. He came to Blencarn two years ago, looking for work. Knew his remedies well enough, though he drank more than was good for him. He lodged above the chandler’s shop.”

“What happened to him?”

“His daughter fell ill.” Agnes’s voice was flat, but her eyes had gone distant. “A girl of twelve, sweet-natured, with hair like copper. She’d been helping him in his shop, grinding powders, boiling syrups. Three days after she sickened, the council came for her. Elias refused to let them take her. Made a scene in the street—shouting, cursing Sir Richard to his face.”

“And?”

“They took her anyway.” Agnes picked up the lantern, the light trembling in her grip. “Elias broke into the chapel that night. I don’t know what he found there, but he came out screaming. He ran through the streets crying that the dead were not dead, that the village was a lie. The sexton caught him before dawn. He was put on a cart at first light, bound and gagged, and taken away.”

“Where?”

“No one knows. Sir Richard said he was taken to the Bishop’s prison in Carlisle for his blasphemy. But the cart that took him…” She hesitated.

“What?”

“It came back empty.”

The words hung in the air. Thomas felt the cold of the cell seep into his bones, deeper than the damp stone. The crypt. The preserved corpses. The silver scalpel that had appeared in his bag as if from nowhere. He thought of Elias Thorne, a man who had broken into the chapel looking for his daughter, and what he must have seen there.

“His daughter,” Thomas said slowly. “Is she in the crypt?”

Agnes shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve never been allowed into the chapel after dark. Father Aldous keeps the keys, but they say Sir Richard has his own. And the brute who guards the place—the one who caught you—he answers to no one but the knight himself.”

Thomas worked his jaw, feeling the ache where the club had struck him. “What is Sir Richard doing with the bodies?”

“I don’t know,” Agnes said. “But I know this: Blencarn was dying before the quarantine. The harvest failed two years running. The wool trade collapsed. Sir Richard owed the Bishop a fortune in tithes and taxes. The village was on the verge of being dissolved, its people scattered to other manors.”

“And then the plague came.”

“Aye. And then the plague came.” She met his eyes. “And suddenly Blencarn was a place of miracles. A village that defied the pestilence. Pilgrims began to come, paying for prayers, leaving offerings at the chapel. The Bishop sent word that Sir Richard’s debts would be forgiven if the miracle held.”

Thomas understood it then, the shape of the thing, ugly and simple. “He’s not hiding the dead to protect the living. He’s hiding them to protect the lie.”

Agnes nodded slowly. “The dead aren’t the problem, physician. They’re the evidence.”

A shout echoed somewhere above them, muffled by stone. Agnes stiffened, her hand going to the knife at her belt. They both listened, hearts beating in the silence. Footsteps crossed the floor above—heavy, purposeful. A door slammed.

“They’re checking the cells,” Agnes whispered. “Sir Richard’s men. They come at odd hours, to make sure you’re still where you were put.”

Thomas looked at the door, then at the walls of the cell—rough-hewn stone, older than the chapel above. The mortar between the blocks was crumbling, powdery with age. He reached out and scraped a finger along the seam, watching dust fall to the floor.

“Is this the undercroft of an older building?”

“The manor’s old foundation,” Agnes said. “They built the church over it a hundred years ago. The cellars run deeper than anyone remembers. Some say they connect to the crypt.”

Thomas looked at her. “The crypt where they keep the bodies.”

“So the stories say.” She paused. “But no one’s ever found a way in from this side. The passages were sealed when they built the chapel.”

The footsteps above grew louder, closer. Agnes rose, gathering her shawl. “I have to go. They’ll be here soon.” She moved to the door, then paused, looking back. “You’ll need more than a way out, physician. You’ll need a place to hide.”

“I promised the girl.”

“I know.” Her face was unreadable in the dim light. “That’s why I’m helping you.”

She slipped through the door, and the lock clicked shut behind her. Thomas sat in the dark, flexing his aching hands, listening to her footsteps fade. Above him, the heavy tread of Sir Richard’s men grew louder, closer.

He turned his attention to the wall, to the crumbling mortar between the old stones, and began to dig.