‘Brendan’s car had a nasty scrape too,’ Rory offered. ‘He told Edith he got it in a car park, didn’t see who it was. But why would either of them want to get rid of you, Harriet? I mean the whole village is agog with rumours about prospecting for oil, at least three people told me so before I’d been here half a day. And if someone thought Sam was asking too many questions, why attack you and not Sam? Might as well bump off the whole village while he was at it.’ He sucked in a sharp breath. This was definitely not the moment, he decided, to let Harriet know of Edith’s suspicion that Sam might have been the intended victim in the cathedral.
Harriet sat silent for a moment or two. ‘Right, let’s stop asking questions, we’ve no way of knowing what the truth is,’ she said firmly. ‘I vote we suss out what there is down here.’
The meagre beam from her phone showed that they were in a small, square space that had a shaft let in from above and a culvert leading off at the side. Harriet crawled over to take a look and let out a squeal of fright as she came face to face with a pair of bright golden eyes, reflected in the thin line of light.
‘What—’ She rocked back on her heels, gasping for breath, as a ginger cat prowled up to her and head-butted her with great affection. ‘It’s Toby, he’s Penelope’s cat,’ she called to Rory, who had rolled over onto his hands and knees, preparing to crawl somehow to her rescue. ‘But how on earth did you get in here?’ She stroked the cat with shaking hands and shone the torch into the shadows.
‘Rory, the brickwork is amazing. I’m sure it’s Roman.’ Sidetracked for a moment, she ran her hands over the arched roof of the low tunnel. ‘Oh, my Lord, I wonder if it could be the hypocaust. I can’t imagine what else it could be. Oh.’ She was breathless with excitement. ‘This means there really was a villa and we’re underneath it. And,’ relief suddenly hit her, ‘if the cat can get in, perhaps we can get out the same way.’
She crawled back to sit beside Rory, and the ginger cat immediately scrambled onto her lap, rubbing his cheeks against her chin. She stroked him absently, while shining the torch this way and that.
A few feet to the side of the main shaft, visible through broken brickwork, was a fall of earth that looked to Harriet like the remains of a badger’s sett. She peered at it, shining the light towards the brick arch that might once have been the villa’s heating system.
‘Damn, it’s collapsed, of course it would have. I knew it was too good to be true. Look, there’s no way we can force our way through that rubble and hundreds of years worth of roots.’ She was bitterly disappointed. ‘But how did the cat get through?’
‘I think somebody’s been down here, you know, it’s in pretty good nick for something that hasn’t been seen in sixteen hundred years,’ Rory said slowly, frowning as he shone the torch over the tile and stone piers, obscured in most places by hanging roots, rubble and more earth falls.
‘But it has been seen,’ Harriet protested. ‘Look, someone’s been shoring up some of those pillars and if you look up at the shaft we dropped down, you can see it’s been added at a later date. The brickwork is rough and the opening up from here has been hacked about to make it bigger.’
She racked her brains. ‘It’s a while since I taught any Roman history,’ she confessed, ‘but I think we must be in some kind of cistern. According to that old book about the Attlin family history, the angel stone is supposed to be where the atrium was, you know, the centre courtyard-cum-entrance hall. In a Roman villa the atrium would have had an opening called the compluvium; it wouldn’t have been roofed right over and rain falling through would be collected in a shallow pool underneath, to be drained away into a water tank underneath.’
‘You mean we could be in the water tank?’ Rory’s imagination was fired and he swung the torch up and down the shaft. ‘I think you’re right. Look, it’s definitely made of lead, you can see where it’s drooped down into folds; lead does that when it’s neglected. It’s incredible it wasn’t stolen. Later generations knew about this place, they must have done, and for some reason came down here and made some alterations. I wonder why.’
‘But it’s in that old book.’ Harriet was excited, their danger forgotten. ‘There’s a mention of a priest’s hole at the farm but nobody’s ever been able to find it. Suppose it wasn’t in the house at all, but that the family knew about this space and made it bigger, to use as a hiding place.’