Raven nodded. “Wait here. I’ll get her.”
The first few meters of the cave were sunlit, but after that it tapered into darkness. Names had been scratched into the stone:Aberdeen 1803andH. P. Pope 1799.Raven understood the need to make a mark for future generations to see. Something permanent, indelible, that would echo through the ages long after you were gone. The Ancient Greeks believed you never truly died if people still remembered you and spoke your name. If that was right, then Hector and Achilles had surely gained their longed-for immortality.
As he ventured deeper, the sunless chill wrapped around him and his chest tightened with a pervasive sense of dread. The dark, dank cave reminded him of the bone-deep cold of his cell and he closed his eyes, unwillingly transported back to his own imprisonment. His palms went clammy and his heart started to thump against his ribs.
There had been writing on his cell walls, too; short parallel lines he’d initially mistaken for the claw marks of an animal, until he noticed they were in orderly batches of five. A previous inmate had been counting the days he’d been held. So many lines. The walls had been covered in them. Had the poor bastard been trying to impose some sort of order on the madness? Or maybe he’d been praying for madness to take him.
Raven had sometimes wished he could go mad. That would be a freedom of sorts, wouldn’t it?
At least his mind had been free to wander, to go wherever he willed. It had gone to her, Heloise. His candle in the darkness, a symbol of everything that was worth fighting for. If he was the shadow, then she was the light.
He’d pried a nail free from his water bucket and used it to scratch her name into the stone. Heloise Caroline Hampden. As if doing so could somehow summon her presence. It seemed to work. He hadn’t felt so alone.
Raven clenched his fists as the memories kept coming, unbidden. He hadn’t just written her name. He’d written the name he wanted her to have:Heloise de l’Isle. Lady Ravenwood.Like some damned giddy, lovesick sixteen-year-old girl practicing her signature.
He’d drawn the Hampden coat of arms and the Ravenwood crest, too, side by side, and then he’d combined them into a new imaginary crest, an amalgamation of their sigils.
Raven shook himself out of his reverie. He’d killed his guard with the same nail he’d used to write her name. Stabbed him in the neck with it to escape.
He’d been nineteen, so young to be a killer, but he hardened his heart. He felt no guilt. It had been kill or be killed. Except he had no excuse for all the killings that had come after that one. It had been the start of a downward spiral. His thirst for revenge was never slaked, because every death diminished him, stained his soul a little blacker, instead of bringing him peace. And he’d embraced it, sinking deeper every day.
He could see no sign of her light up ahead.Bloody woman.
He edged forward carefully, hands out in front to shield his face, feet feeling their way along the uneven dirt floor. Then his eyes got used to the dark and he became aware of a faint glow around a bend in the tunnel. He followed it through a series of small chambers until he finally found her, lantern propped on a rock, inspecting the walls.
He experienced a queer light-headedness at seeing her alive and well. In the flickering light of the lantern she looked like a Renaissance goddess, some Old Testament heroine picked out in chiaroscuro by a master. The glow caressed the straight line of her nose and laved her cheeks, lush lips, and stubborn chin.
She traced her fingers over the curves of rock and he imagined her shaping his body in the same reverent way.
Anger rose up again. As usual the fool woman was completely heedless of potential danger. What if there had been a wild animal hiding in here? Or a rock fall? She didn’t even have a weapon. Had she learnednothing?
“For a woman who speaks five languages, you seem to have a remarkably difficult time understanding basic commands. I thought I made myself perfectly clear.”
She jumped at the sound of his voice and spun round with a gasp, but recovered her composure quickly enough. “Someone once told me it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.”
He ground his teeth until his jaw hurt. Impertinent little baggage, quoting his own words back at him.
“And as you can see, I’ve come to no harm,” she said.
He forced himself to stay across the cave from her, when what he really wanted to do was go over there and shake some sense into her. “This is all one big adventure to you, isn’t it? But there’s dangereverywhere,Heloise. We might as well still be at war, for all the safety there is in this country right now.”
She gave an infuriating, dismissive shrug. “I feel perfectly safe now that the invincible Lord Ravenwood is here.”
He clenched his fists and released them. “You shouldn’t have come. No one is invincible. Not even me.”
“Goodness, are you admitting to limitations?” she mocked. “I think I need to sit down.”
Infernal woman. Raven scowled at her but she’d already turned away to study the walls again. She placed her hand over a painted handprint and matched up her fingers and thumb over the top. Whoever had made it had small hands, almost the same size as hers. He wondered ifthey’dever been tempted to strangle somebody for disobedience.
She glanced at him over her shoulder. “Just think, someone did exactly this, possibly thousands of years ago. They put their hand here and blew pigment over it to leave a negative image.” She craned her head back and studied the ceiling. “Isn’t this incredible? I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Raven looked upward. A huge herd of bull-like animals stampeded across the curved expanse, each drawn in earth tones of black charcoal, iron red mud, and yellow ochre. The side walls, too, teemed with animals; horses and goats, a large doe, and something that looked like a wild boar.
The natural contours of the cave walls had been used to give the animals a three-dimensional effect, enhanced by the flickering light of the lantern. The unsteady light made them look as if they were moving.
“This is a sort of code, too,” Heloise said. “A story without words.” She pointed. “The artists had a lot of respect for these animals. Look, they’re all different. Each has its own personality.”
Raven settled back on a rock and folded his arms across his chest. “They drew what was important to them. What they loved.”