LordoftheHunt by Anonymous Author Read Free Book Online Page B

remained behind, but only for a few moments. He left
the stone church, dwarfed by Ravenswood’s towers, and walked around the east
side. There, he approached the entrance to the crypt. The door was not visible
to any other building, nor to the towers themselves. A pavilion concealed its
view from the bailey as well. His pavilion.
    Adam entered the rib-vaulted crypt. He felt along the top of
the door, but encountered only dust. He searched farther back where mortar had
begun to crumble and smiled when his fingers encountered a key. The last time
he’d held this key, he’d been at Ravenswood to see his mother laid to rest.
    He groped about on a stone ledge and found a stub of candle
and a flint. He lighted the candle, closed the crypt door, and took the five
steps down to where his mother lay at rest.
    After a brief prayer for her soul, he passed a hand over the
chiseled letters of her name. He had never believed the essence of a person
remained behind to watch over, or torment, the living.
    Just past the rows of burial niches, he set his candle down.
It flickered in the draft caused by a slit between the fitted stones of the
crypt wall and the painted wooden floor. He inserted the key in what looked
like a knothole in the wood. A section of the floor lifted away.
    Before him lay a rough-hewn staircase. He retrieved his
candle, pulled the section of floor back over his head, plugged the keyhole
with a scrap of linen he’d brought along for the purpose, and hurried down the
steps.
    With each step, the air grew cooler. At the bottom a
corridor veered right. He examined the stone floor. A fine dusting of dirt
covered the square-cut blocks. He made the only impressions as he walked
quickly down the corridor which followed the outer wall of the castle until it
reached the river.
    Cobwebs, another indication that no one had discovered the
passage in the many years of his absence, draped the ceiling. As children he
and his brother, Robert, had delighted in their secret knowledge of this place.
    A series of arches decorated in colored tiles marked other
corridors and empty chambers off the main path. They, too, remained unchanged.
Robert and he had hidden their boyhood treasures down here and practiced
combat, playing at Roman gladiators, shouting and racing about, sure no one
could hear them and order them back to their lessons.
    Finally, Adam reached his destination. He passed through an
arch and entered a round, domed chamber. He lifted his candle and surveyed the
space, turning in a circle.
    The chamber was as it always had been.
    It was covered in a delicate mosaic tile. The dome was blue
as if ‘twere the sky. The walls depicted the forest rendered in a fine detail.
The floor was likewise tiled, but with flowers and butterflies on a field of
green broken by a path in mottled brown. The design led the person who entered
the room to walk to the opposite wall.
    Adam followed the path and set his candle on a marble slab
that might have served as an altar in ancient days. Idly, he drew his
fingertips through the thick dust collected there and looked up. The altar
served an ancient goddess.
    Diana the Huntress .
    She was a beauty, standing with her bow in one hand, the
other on the head of a stag who bowed his great antlered head in homage.
Diana’s hair tumbled about her shoulders and breasts. She was naked. The
artist, who’d rendered her in tiny tiles of multicolored stone, had been a man
of great talent.
    She looked as if she might step down from the wall and put
out her hand to him. Adam remembered offering a prayer that such a thing might
happen when he and his brother were boys. As a child, he’d place a hand on the
smooth, cold tile of her breast and wish to know the soft flesh of the real
woman. He stood back this time and simply looked. He was no longer a boy to
make such a wish.
    The flickering light of the candle flames ran over the
mosaic. Suddenly, his Diana looked like the woman Hugh styled the huntress. Joan .
    A