Alchemy, Book Two of the Mercian Trilogy Read Free

the house, Will took Eloise by the hand and led her through the unlit rooms to the library – there was unlikely to be anyone for miles around who might see lights on in the house, but it was still safer to leave it in darkness. Eloise couldn’t see a thing, but walked confidently, trusting him entirely.
    When they reached the library, he opened the wooden panel in the wall that led to the first secret passage, and once they were inside he put on his dark glasses and turned on the light. Eloise blinked against the brightness at first, but adjusted quickly and looked around the small narrow room in which they found themselves; it was bare-walled, with a metal spiral staircase leading up to the next floor.
    Will saw her confusion and said, “The trustees know about this secret passage. During my hours of confinement in the cellar I’ve read all the literature offered in the shop.” Even as he said it, he found it extraordinary that his family’s great house had been reduced to having agift shop for souvenir-hungry tourists. “It’s mentioned that Thomas Heston-Dangrave built a secret passage – fashionable at the time – to link the library with the master bedroom. It says nothing else.”
    Eloise looked at the walls and said, “There is nothing else.”
    Will nodded. “So it appears, but I was standing with my hands resting on this wall, thinking, wondering what it was that I was looking for, when this happened.”
    He reached up and put his palms flat on the wall and almost immediately felt the mechanism that lay deep within the stones grinding into life. With surprising speed, the wall trundled sideways, exposing a set of stone steps that disappeared into the darkness below.
    He’d been no further than this himself yet, but he could tell from the air that these steps led to something extensive. He stepped back for Eloise to see, but she was still staring at the space into which the wall had slid.
    “How did you do that?”
    “I don’t know. I can only presume it’s the same power I have over locks and other such things – after all, the wall must contain a mechanism and I assume somewhere there’s a device for opening it, though I don’t know where.”
    “At least there’s a light switch,” said Eloise, pointing to the wall at the top of the steps. She turned it on andlights appeared at regular intervals, illuminating the descent in front of them.
    Will hadn’t noticed the switch earlier and was a little disappointed because it meant someone in modern times had at least partially explored whatever network lay below. Somehow, it made it less likely that Lorcan Labraid would be found there – Will doubted that the evil of the world would have permitted workmen to install electric cables.
    He looked at the switch and said, “From the 1920s, I would say.” The disappointment receded, replaced by another thought. “Thomas Heston-Dangrave knew about these tunnels – he incorporated them into the design of the house he built. If my guess is right about the age of this switch, his great-great-grandson George also knew about them because he must have installed the lights. Perhaps his own daughters knew too, but those two spinsters must have taken the secret to the grave with them.”
    “Of course. Otherwise the National Trust would have made something of it. And if the family kept it to themselves, we have to assume there was some reason for doing so.”
    Had they kept it hidden, wondered Will, because these tunnels spoke of secrets, of a secret shared history between his family and this place. If so, he was certainit predated the family’s acquisition of these lands during the dissolution of the monasteries.
    He wished he could recall more than the fragments of memories he had of Marland. Even in those weeks before his sickness, he’d been aware of Marland’s importance to his father and perhaps, if he’d lived longer, that bond would have been explained to him. Perhaps it had been explained to his