CHAPTER SIXTY SEVEN

  Inside the machine room under Winter Clove Hill, Jane and Tom looked up to the wall where the red warning light flashed, while the old priest made a strange noise of distress in his throat.

  ‘What is it?’ Jane asked.

  The priest answered, ‘The warning light is triggered by three secretly placed driver-over areas off the side of the road to Grimes Cull. Sister Agnus and her driver must have become aware of danger.’

  Suddenly the alarm stopped.

  ‘Why did it stop?’ asked Tom.

  The priest stared at the dead light with wrinkled eyes. He cleared his throat, and made a confused grunt.

  After a moment he said, ‘Maybe the crisis is over.’

  ‘Because the light stopped flashing you think the crisis is over?’ said Jane. ‘What exactly was this crisis?’

  The priest looked at her and his nose wrinkled up toward his eyebrows.

  ‘Don’t you know how dangerous you are with that book?’

  Jane felt the weight of the book dragging at her shoulder, making the muscles in her neck ache.

  The priest swung an arm around, and his vestment flapped up against the dome.

  He said, ‘I think the driver triggered the alarm for a reason, so you must be careful, even though the alarm has been disabled. You must hurry, but you also must be on your guard.’

  ‘Where is Sister Agnus?’

  The priest gestured at the door.

  ‘You must get to the Potter’s field, where, God willing, the nun and her driver will meet you.’

  Jane crossed her arms.

  She didn’t want to meet the nun, and she wasn’t sure why she had to. She wanted a warm bed. She wanted to sleep for three weeks. And if this doesn’t sound too silly, she wanted a yorkshire pudding, and a glass of eggnog.

  The weariness had bitten through her skin and muscles, and chomped all the way into the marrow of her bones. She trembled. She felt sick.

  ‘I would prefer to go home to rest.’

  ‘Not possible.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because your name has been identified as a possible threat to national security.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘The British Government, and more specifically MI5 have identified you as a possible threat to National Security.’

  Jane shook her head, and her eyes squinted. She wasn’t afraid so much as irritated. She had gone on an adventure to find a book, and now she had become some sort of fugitive!

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  ‘What possible threat could she be?’ said Tom.

  The priest kept looking at Jane while he answered Tom. The look in his eyes was as serious as a cemetery.

  ‘With the Wyld Book of Secrets, Jane is probably the most significant threat to the British power structure that has ever existed.’

  There was a few seconds of silence while this bubble of information forced its way in between the brain cells of the listening children. Then the priest straightened with a sudden movement, and once again he flung his arm toward the door.

  There was a secret exit from Miller’s Crypt straight to the Potter’s field, which was a field on the northern side of Greymill, where Craven Road ran from Greymill all the way up to the border of Scotland.

  ‘But you must hurry,’ the priest urged. ‘The nun and her driver will not be able to wait for you.’

  Leaving the machine room behind, the children followed a tunnel that sloped up. Soon the sound of the humming machine faded into nothing. Now there was only the sound of dripping water and the shuggle of feet. Tom pressed right up on Jane’s back, and although Jane would normally find this irritating, she didn’t mind it here in the dark of the tunnel. It was kind of comforting. However, she did get annoyed when he stepped on the back of her shoe.

  Soon they were in pitch darkness.

  The priest had instructed Jane to trail her fingers along the wall to guide herself once it got too dark to see. ‘You might touch a worm or pick up some spiderweb, but you won’t be harmed,’ he had said.

  The cave walls were dry and powdery, and although Jane felt little insects scurrying around her trailing fingers, there was no web and no worms.

  After several moments she stopped in front of a wooden door that was jammed into a rectangle of stone.

  ‘Is there a handle,’ whispered Tom.

  Jane nearly asked him why he was whispering, only she also had an impulse to whisper.

  Jane moved her hands over the door until she found a long metal handle. She pulled down. The door opened.

  She found herself in what appeared to be the inside of a barn that had been built up against the mountain. The barn stunk of grease and hay and animal droppings.

  A small amount of moonlight came in through gaps in the barn's roof.

  Jane paused to let her eyes adjust to the dim light, and Tom leaned against her, trying to draw comfort from her touch.

  ‘This has been something, hasn’t it,’ he said.

  For some reason Jane felt like crying. The weight of the strange adventure pressed against her. How many times had she nearly been killed? With the exhaustion pulling at her eyelids, and with Tom leaning his shoulder against her arm, she began to tremble. Pressure built in her throat and behind her eyes.

  But she didn’t cry.

  She wasn’t a crier.

  Through the gloom, Jane could see the barn door on the other side of the barn. Moonlight came through the splits between boards.

  ‘I’ve been in this barn before,’ said Tom.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I am always exploring, by myself. I always thought that this barn was strange. It gave me a queer feeling when I explored it.’

  ‘It does feel strange. It feels like something terrible is about to happen and that we have to get out of here immediately.’

  ‘That’s what I felt.’

  ‘I guess that feeling would stop people searching for the door into the caves.’

  After a moment Jane made her way toward the barn door, through piles of old farmyard junk and hay and leather harnesses. Small animals, probably rats, rustled out of sight beneath the bits and pieces. The wind whistled around the corner of the barn. An owl hooted from the rafters.

  Jane tried to push at the large double wooden doors of the barn, but they didn’t budge. She looked up and down the doors, looking for a latch. A metal track ran along the floor. Jane realised that the barn door worked on a sliding mechanism. She leaned against the door and pushed sideways, and the door grabbed and made the gritty sound of dirt in ball bearings. Tom helped. With grunts and straining, the door opened enough for moonlight to stream in.

  Slipping outside, Tom and Jane stood side by side. The barn was on the edge of a field. In the distance, cows stood in a silent herd beneath a grove of trees. A blanket of fresh snow covered all but the longest grass, and there was a crisp smell of snow on pine.

  ‘Potter’s field,’ said Tom.

  A rat scurried along the side of the barn.

  Just then Tom grabbed Jane’s arm, and he pointed across the field to where a road disappeared into the trees.

  The headlights of a car had appeared, bumping along the rutted road that ran from the north.