It might be perhaps that they were going to a doom more terrible, since the unknown is ever more sinister than the known. For aught they knew the stone steps might carry them through that appalling darkness to the verge of a deep well or some abyss that would shatter them in pieces as surely as a fall from the rock itself.
Sheer desperation urging, however, they prepared to descend step by step into the noisome earth. Gripping each other’s hand tightly, they started very slowly to go down the steps. And now it was that they had cause to regret bitterly that the lantern which had guided Anne to the prison had been left under the Castle wall as being a thing that had already served its turn. At this moment its help would have been beyond price.
Holding each other by the hand, their hearts violently beating, they yielded themselves to the care of Providence. The descent was sheer, slow and terrifying. Bats, undisturbed for many a long year, began to hover round them. They could not see anything; a foul miasma hardly allowed them to breathe; each step they took was likely to be their last, but not for a moment did they pause in their descent.
They were like a pair of twin souls in the avernus. The sense of nameless fear enfolding them was awful, overmastering.
“Whither does it lead?” said Gervase at last, his whole being now in revolt.
“I know not,” said his companion. “But so long as we are like this, hand in hand together, there is surely no need to care what lies ahead.”
Such an answer, spoken with the clear force of a noble resolution, thrilled in his heart. The courage that was his by nature, which the bitterness of his recent pass had overthrown, came back to him. If death must come, let it come to them now as each held the hand of the other. They began to move more quickly, and now with a sort of recklessness, far down into the chasm that yawned darker and darker below them. Minutes passed; step succeeded step, yet still they had not come to the final one.
Would this descent never end? Would they never again see the light? The desire to know what lay ahead grew so intense as to be almost unendurable. This dreadful suspense through which they were passing was neither more nor less than torture.
It began to seem certain that they would find themselves in some pit or oubliette or forgotten dungeon underground. In that case there was some hope of concealment, in which they might lie through the day. And if their pursuers had not the wit to find them, when the darkness came they might again ascend to the courtyard, and carry out their first design of escaping through the Castle gate.
At last, after at least a full hour of this torture by hope, the steep, narrow, winding stone stairs came suddenly to an end. It was impossible to go farther ... a wall confronted them. It would appear that the descent ended in a cul-de-sac. Before accepting this as a fact, however, Gervase gave the wall a kick in order to attest its nature. To his surprise he found it to be made of wood.