CHAPTER VII

THE PASSAGE

Margaret gazed into the darkened space, and listened, with increasing wonder.

"That was Master Tyndale's voice," she whispered, half frightened, while she gripped Herman's hand tightly.

"It was. I put him down here because I chanced to hear that Cochlaeus had been suggesting that he was lodging with us. I told the good man what I had heard, and proposed that he should go into hiding, and he did not hesitate, for he guessed how big and terrible was the net which had been cast for him. When he had gathered in his arms all that was most precious to him, his Bible and his papers, he followed me to this dark place without any demur."

Herman drew the girl aside a little, and pointed into the darkness. From where she then stood she saw a light some distance away. Then she saw a man moving towards her, and carrying a lamp in his hand. When he drew nearer she saw a face; and the nearer it came, the more plainly did she see it. It was so close at last that she recognised the man to whom she was desirous of giving her father's letter.

"Master Tyndale!" she exclaimed, with bated breath, going forward to meet him with outstretched hands.

But something like revulsion came. Her heart had been crowded out with anxiety all that day, and during the night which preceded it she had slept but little, because of the many hours in which she and her father had been packing those incriminating sheets which meant so much. Then had come the journey through the rain-driven streets, and the anxious waiting in the archway, watching the passing of the City Guard. Her hopes had scarcely any being. Her fears were dominant. It was a wear on the mind, and to crown it all was the tension while the house was being searched.

It was more than she could bear. The man who approached her seemed to sway. She felt that the place where they were standing was closing in on her. The floor appeared to ascend, and the roof to sink upon her. Then all was blank.

Herman saw her swaying and caught her in his arms before she fell.

"My darling!" he whispered, kissing her white face and her lips and her closed eyes. "What is wrong?" he asked, holding her to him, and full of fear when he found that she took no notice of him.

"I will carry her to my mother," he exclaimed, taking her bodily into his arms, and turning back to the spiral staircase.

"Nay, bring her to my chamber, my son," said Tyndale, who took both lamps and led the way, while Herman followed with Margaret.

How long she lay on the rude bed she did not know, but when she opened her eyes, Herman's mother was kneeling by her side, doing what she could for her restoration.

"Now, dear heart, take it quietly," the motherly woman said tenderly. "We are safe here. Give your message, and Herman shall presently take you home."

The words were reassuring, and presently she sat on the edge of the bed.

"Master Tyndale," she said, one hand holding the woman's, and drawing the crumpled papers from her bosom with the other, "I found these in your room when Captain Berndorf was searching the house for you."

She held the sheets towards Tyndale, but a cry of dismay escaped not him alone, but the others. Their faces paled, and Tyndale, calm though he was, with deadly danger circumscribing him, trembled. For a few moments he was dumb, but at last he spoke tremulously.

"Ah! If these had fallen into the Captain's hands, of what avail my hiding in this dark place? And what of the danger to my friends?"

His hand shook while it rested on Herman's shoulder.

"I should never have forgiven myself," he muttered. "Never! To have brought sorrow to a home where I have received such unstinted kindness! But there," he added solemnly, "so much the greater reason for thanking God!"

Margaret drew the soddened letter from her bosom.

"My father sent me with this, Master Tyndale."

Tyndale took it from her, and sitting at the table, he broke the covering and smoothed out the damp sheet, laying it flat on the table. The others watched him while he read, and saw how, when he came to the "end, his fingers closed over the written sheet convulsively.

"God's will be done," he exclaimed, with his head bowed low. The anguish of the tone betrayed the intensity of his suffering. He looked up presently, and saw the faces of his companions, and read in them how they anticipated the worst, if deliverance did not come soon.

"It will all come right in time, my friends," he said quietly, and his eyes and face glowed with confidence. "Are we not in the hands of God? We are always safe under His guidance. I wronged the Heavenly Father when I said that all things were against me. There is surely some blessing in our reverses."

He read the letter through again with greater deliberation; then, laying it on the table, he sat back in his chair, with his head bowed down and his thin hands folded.

"Your father bids me leave the city to-night," he exclaimed presently, looking at Margaret.

"To-night?" she cried. Her eyes were fixed on him as on one who was set an impossible task. "Where would you go?"

She came to his side, and her hand rested on his shoulder.

"I will go to the city where Martin Luther is, and where he played his part so nobly four years ago."

He stood up and began to pack his papers, the precious sheets on which he had spent his fine scholarship with such unremitting patience and splendid zeal. Apparently he did not realise the futility of it, as the others round him did. How could he think to get away from the city now that Cochlaeus had set the hunters on the move? It seemed to Margaret and the others, while they watched in silence, that William Tyndale was like a rat in a trap; not safe behind the iron bars, but certain to be routed out and snapped at by the sharp teeth of the dog the moment he left the cage.

Their minds were active as to the possibilities. Suppose Tyndale ventured into the streets and made his way towards the quay, would he not meet someone who would challenge him, since it was posted up all through Cologne that a heavy price was on his head? Heavy if he were brought in dead; heavier still if alive, so that he should be dealt with by the tormentors. If he got as far as the ramparts would he be likely to find the sentry asleep? The shuffling gait of the scholar, so Margaret thought, would betray him. While he moved he would run the gauntlet of a dozen who would know him for a stranger, dark though it would be in the stormy night. Even on the quay, were he to get so far, who could suppose that he could slip on board any of the river-craft unseen? Captain Berndorf and his men had marched away from the house in that direction, and were possibly searching the ships.

"You cannot go to-night, Master Tyndale," said Herman presently. "Lie here in peace, and be content where you are safe, where no one could suspect your presence; and I will watch for an opportunity."

The younger man spoke with an assurance he did not feel. Already he looked on his prot�g� as a man within the toils--himself scarcely less so. But why display any doubt when a way, in God's mercy, might open?

Tyndale realised the reasonableness of Herman's words, and, desisting from his eager task, he sat at the table, drawing away from the others the printed sheets which Margaret had saved from the eyes of the soldiers. He read some portion of them aloud while the others sat and listened. Then came the kneeling moments, when he committed himself and his companions to the Almighty hands. Still more urgent was his entreaty that he might be spared to complete his task of making God's Word ready for the multitude to read.

When the prayer was ended and the little company stood again, Margaret wondered at Herman's face. His eyes were bright. His face expectant. Going to the table, he took the lamp, and was about to walk away; but he paused.

"Master Tyndale, while you were praying," he exclaimed, "something came to my mind, and now I feel sure that God will answer that petition of yours."

They looked at him in wonder.

"What do you mean, my son?" asked Tyndale.

"That God may show us a way out of the city, which will spell safety for you. Margaret, come with me. Mother, stay with Master Tyndale."

Margaret went after Herman, who scarcely waited for her, for he was on the move by the time her hand touched his arm.

"What is in your mind, my dear?" she asked, while they moved on into the forbidding blackness beyond the room where they had been praying.

Herman put down his hand for hers, and clasped it tightly to give her confidence. Their eyes met, and she saw how his sparkled with what seemed to her to be hope.

"I'm going to explore, little one. It came to my mind while we were on our knees that I had heard my father say that once the city nearly fell into the hands of an enemy because of a secret entrance into it from the meadows. May not this be it?"

Margaret's eyes grew round with astonishment, and instantly she was alive to the possibilities. If it were as Herman's father said, and this proved to be the passage which was in reality the city's vulnerable point, William Tyndale could get away without having to run the gauntlet, as it were, in the streets and on the quay. He would escape Cochlaeus, and possibly some of those black-robed Familiars of the Inquisition who infested the city. What fear and grief and humiliation it would save if such a way could be found! No danger would threaten her beloved. There would be a safe retreat for Tyndale, or at least the opportunity for finding securer quarters elsewhere; and Cochlaeus would waste some valuable time prosecuting his search.

They came to a door which opened when Herman pressed against it. It moved silently and heavily, and when they had passed through the opening, and turned to look at it from the outer side, they saw that it bore the same appearance as the rock in which it was set. When they closed it, it was impossible, in the dim light of the lamp, to detect any difference between it and the rock itself.

The two went on slowly, Margaret drawing close to her lover's side, and, noticing this, he put his arm about her waist to give her a sense of greater security.

Sometimes the path on which they found themselves descended; but as they went, they saw that it was leading on to some definite spot. Surely it could not be a _cul-de-sac_? They could hardly fail to find an outlet, but the question was, where? Would it be as Herman's father had said--in the meadows? Or would it lead into some house, just as it had begun in one? In that latter case it would mean the realisation of their worst fears, and Tyndale would either be compelled to make his venture through the streets, or if Herman should be taken prisoner by the City Guard on some suspicion, and Margaret as well, and Herman's mother, he would lie in that hidden chamber, in darkness and starvation, dying at last, rotting and forgotten.

Margaret shuddered at the thought.

"Art cold, little one?" Herman asked, feeling the involuntary shiver of the girl at his side.

It was nothing to wonder at that she did so; for here, where they were walking, their feet were in the mire. The dark walls were streaming with water which spread out on the floor, forming pools in places through which they splashed.

"I shivered at my thoughts," said Margaret quietly, gazing into the darkness, wondering whether she would see any sign of an ascending passage, which might mean a rising to some house cellar like Herman's. She felt more hopeful when the floor dipped again, and so suddenly that she slipped on the slimy earth, and would have fallen but for Herman's strong arm which kept her on her feet.

"Your thoughts?" exclaimed Herman questioningly.

"I was thinking of what would happen if this path ended at someone's house," she said, looking carefully to her footing.

An exclamation escaped Herman's lips. He had hoped that a fear like that was only his, and not hers, for the same idea had come to him.

"Who would have thought of such a thing as that?" he said half laughingly, to hide his own anxiety, but the girl at his side was not deceived.

"I thought so, Herman, and so did you," Margaret said half reproachfully, clinging still more tightly to her companion, for the way in front grew blacker and more forbidding. But on they went, determined to know what the end of this underground path would be.

"I believe we are in a great cavern, sweetheart," said Herman presently, when they halted involuntarily. The floor on which they were treading was no longer soft earth, but gravel and hard rock. No walls were visible, nor could they see any roof.

Looking into denser blackness, they heard the splash of water, and the lantern light showed a gleaming drop falling.

Going forward, they came to a spot where the dropping water had made for itself a hollow basin, but, passing round it, they walked on. Before they had gone far they halted suddenly, and with an exclamation of dismay; for, stretched full length against the wall, down which some water trickled freely, percolating through the rock overhead, lay the body of a man whose flesh had gone, and time had left nothing but the clothed skeleton--death in its grimmest and most forbidding form. By his side, and clinging to him, lay a woman to whom time had been just as unkind. The man's hand gripped a small book, and Herman, kneeling on the floor to look, saw that it was opened at a page where he read some words that were in startling contrast with the end which had come to these who lay so still.

"In my Father's house are many mansions."

It was easy to imagine the story of that tragedy. Years before, the Inquisitors had hounded these poor ones, and they had found a hiding-place which became a death-chamber to them. Not daring to venture forth for food or liberty, they had died in this cavern.

Margaret and Herman went on, the horror of this discovery, and the pitifulness of it, thrilling them. They had not gone far, tracing the cavern walls in the hope of finding an exit, before they came to an ascending passage, and they stood still again, wondering to what it would lead. Would it take them to a house, and therefore to almost certain danger? Or would it lead them to the open country outside the city?

The ground was damp and bare, and mildew was on the walls; but as they went forward slowly and cautiously, prepared to hurry back if danger threatened, the lantern showed them moss in little patches; then plants that were content with little light so long as there was air to play about them.

Because of the cool air they felt that they were coming near to some opening, and if they carried a light it might betray them.

"Suppose we leave the lamp here, my dear," Margaret suggested. "We can use it when we return."

Herman nodded and set it down, and again they moved on. Now there were bushes, and presently a sky was overhead, with scudding clouds, whose jagged edges were fringed with silver whiteness by the clear-shining moon. The storm that had swept the city had ended.

A few steps more, and they were confronted by a bush, high, broad, and almost impenetrable, but, finding a way through, they saw the meadow, skirted by the river that rolled on in a stately flow.