The shirt waved. I thought I heard somebody shouting, but the noise of the lava drowned it and I couldn’t be sure. Hilda tightened her grip on my arm, tugging at me. ‘Quick! We must find a way to reach them.’ I loosened her grip on my arm. ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Max will try to get a message down to us.’
I was staring up towards the slit. There was a great, rumbling crash and I heard Hilda say, ‘Oh, my God!’ I glanced down at her and saw she was gazing towards the outhouses — or rather where the outhouses had been, for they were gone completely. A rising cloud of dust marked the spot where they had stood and in their place was the shifting, red-shot face of the lava.
Something struck my arm and fluttered to the ground. It was part of the silk lining of a coat, one corner of it weighted. I picked it up and untied the corner. The weight was a silver cigarette case and inside the case was a note. We’re all here. To reach tower enter by arch in courtyard, turn right in refectory room and follow passage to chapel. There is a flagstone with a ring bolt in robing room to right of altar. This leads to passage connecting Chapel to tower. We are in the top cell. Door is wood and can be burned down. Spare can of petrol in my car. Bless you, Max.
I glanced up. The shirt was no longer hanging from the slit. But there was something there that shone dully and I realised that it was a mirror being held out on the end of a piece of wood. They couldn’t look down at us from the slit, but they were watching us through a primitive periscope. I waved my hand in acknowledgment and then turned back along the path. ‘Run and get the can of petrol,’ I told Hilda. ‘I’ll go straight to the chapel.’
She nodded and with one terrified glance at the lava front ran back into the monastery. There wasn’t even a dust haze now to mark where the outhouses had been and the frightful slag heap had slithered half across the flower garden where we’d stood, blistering the trees with its heat and withering the flowers. The first section of the main monastery building was crumbling as I dived into the coolness of the interior.
I found the passage leading off the refectory room and reached the chapel. There was no difficulty in finding the robing room or the flagstone with the ring bolt. I had lifted it up and thrown it back by the time Hilda arrived with the jerrican. Stone steps led down into a dank, cold passage. I switched on my torch. The walls were solid lava rock, black and metallic-looking. We passed right through the foundations of the Chapel and then we were climbing stone steps worn by the tread of men who’d come this way centuries past.
The tower was clearly a ruin. The wood of the big iron-studded doors was powdery with worm. One we passed had almost no wood at all and was just a lacing of wrought-iron and studs. I shone my torch in as I passed and caught a glimpse of mouldering floorboards and rusty iron chains secured to the wall and what looked like a rack standing beside some rotted iron implements of torture. The tower had evidently been a religious prison.
At last we reached the top of the spiral staircase and my torch showed a new door of plain oak. Beyond it a builder’s ladder led to a square of dim light that was the roof. Here the smell of sulphur was strong again and ash had sifted down on to the stone platform outside the door. I pounded on the wood. ‘Are you there, Max?’
‘Yes.’ His voice was muffled by the door, but quite audible. ‘We’re all here.’
‘My father?’ Hilda murmured. She couldn’t nerve herself to voice the question aloud. I think she feared the answer might be No.