Fulviac took the lantern, made a sign to Jean, and passed down the stairway with Yeoland at his heels. The tavern-keeper remained above in the cellar, and closed the stone when the last gleam of the light had died down the stair. He rolled the cask back into its place, and felt his way back by cellar and stairway to the benignant glow of his own tavern room.
Fulviac and the girl had descended the black well of the stair. Tunnels of gloom ran labyrinthine on every hand; a musty scent burdened the air, and fine sand covered the floor. Fulviac held the lantern shoulder-high, took Yeoland’s wrist, and moved forward into a great gallery that sloped downwards into the depths of the rock. The place was silent as the death-chamber of a pyramid. The lantern fashioned fantastic shadows from the gloom.
Yeoland held close to the man with an instinct towards trust that made her smile at her own thoughts. Fulviac had been in her life little more than a week; yet his unequivocating strength had won largely upon her liking--in no sentimental sense indeed, but rather with the calm command of power. Possibly she feared him a very little. Yet with the despair of a wrecked mariner she clung to him, in spirit, as she would have clung to a rock.
As they passed down the gallery with the lantern swinging in Fulviac’s hand, she began to question him with a quiet persistence.
For retort, Fulviac pointed her to the wall, and held the lantern to aid her scrutiny. The girl saw numberless recesses excavated in the rock; some had been bricked up and bore tablets; others were packed with grinning skulls. There were scattered paintings on the walls, symbolic daubs, or scenes from scriptural history. The place was meaningless to the girl, save that the dead seemed ever with them.
"The catacombs of the city of Gilderoy," he said; "yonder are the niches of the dead. These paintings were made by early folk, centuries ago. A veritable maze this, a gallery of skulls, a warren for ghosts to squeak in."
Yeoland had turned to scan a tablet on the wall.
"We go to some secret gathering?" she asked.
Fulviac laughed; the sound echoed through the passages with reverberating scorn.
"The same dark fable," he said, "telling of vaults and secret stairs, passwords and poniards, masks and murder. Remember, little sister, you are to be black and subtle to the heart’s chords. This is life, not a romance or an Italian fable. We are men here. There is to be no strutting on the stage."