Free [Roger the Chapman 06] - The Wicked Winter by Kate Sedley Page B

breath.' I closed the lantern and raised it above my head. 'Let me go first. These steps are narrow and badly worn.' We proceeded cautiously, with the friar hanging on to my cloak, while I directed him, as far as I was able, where to place his feet. A flight of some two dozen stairs brought us to the second storey and another circular room almost as empty and as cold as the one immediately below it. The lantern's pale rays showed us a stool, a slightly larger table than the one downstairs, on which were scattered two or three well-thumbed folios, and a bench alongside it. That was all. There was nothing here, not a single wall hanging nor even any rushes on the floor, to relieve the general austerity.
    'Lady Cederwell!' Simeon shouted yet again. And again there was no answer.
    'She's either praying or has fallen asleep at her devotions,' I suggested. 'If, as the housekeeper told us, she has been here since daybreak, I should fancy the latter.'
    Simeon made no response and, without this time waiting for me to lead the way, started up the stairs to the final storey.
    I hurried after him, once more holding the lantern high, afraid that he might lose his footing.
    Lady Cederwell was not to be found there, either.
    This third room was slightly less bleak than the others, largely because of a pair of ornate silver candlesticks which stood one at each end of a makeshift altar, the metal gleaming richly in the light from the lantern. Two scented wax candles had burned down almost to nothing, the flame of one still guttering feebly in the draught, while a faint spiral of black smoke rising from the stump of the second showed that it had not long gone out. A prie-dieu, made of rosewood, was placed against another part of the circular wall, and above it hung one of the ugliest crucifixes I have ever seen. Made of ebony and ivory, the black cross, at least three feet in height, supported the pale, contorted body of the crucified Christ writhing in all the agony of a Roman execution. I could almost feel the excruciating pain of dislocating joints as the body began to sag, and the swelling of the tongue in the Palestinian heat. The crown of thorns, too, was like a row of jagged spikes across the forehead, piercing the tender flesh, but there was no wound in the side of this figure. The victim was not yet dead: he still suffered. Again, there was nothing here of serenity or comfort.
    Friar Simeon gave the crucifix no more than a passing glance and a brief genuflection before continuing to look around him.
    'Well, my lady's not here,' he said. 'We must go back to the house and hope to find that she has returned there before us.'
    'Wait!' I exclaimed. 'There are more stairs. They must lead up to the look-out platform.'
    'Lady Cederwell won't be out of doors in such weather as this,' my companion protested. 'You'll be wasting your time, Chapman, if you go up there. Come, let's be off.'  
    'It won't take long,' I encouraged him, 'and we shall have the satisfaction of knowing that we have searched everywhere possible.'
    Grumbling under his breath, the friar followed me up the steps, pointing out sourly, when we discovered that there was no one on the roof of the tower, that he had been right.
    Ignoring his sudden bad temper, I ventured warily over to the parapet which surrounded the platform and, raising my lantern, leaned between the battlements, looking out towards the estuary. The snow flumes had eased, and a fleeting break in the clouds enabled me, just for a moment, to see something, or someone, lying sprawled below me on the frozen earth. I called Brother Simeon over.
    'What do you make of that?' I asked in a voice which was not quite steady. 'Down there! Surely it's a body.' But that pallid shaft of light, a last echo of the short winter's day, had disappeared beneath the darkening pall of sky, and it was difficult now to make out any part of that storm-tossed landscape.
    'You're talking nonsense,' the friar said sharply. 'We should have