Europe, 1623.
There were cries of alarm, shouts as men tried to organized themselves, and above all the roar of the blazing fire. The cathedral, by far the largest structure in the village, was ablaze. Had been set ablaze. The flames brightened the night throughout the village, even as far as its edge, where a cart was being slowly driven away.
The cart was drawn by a pair of horses instead of just one. The extra muscle was needed; there were four men in the cart — two on the seat and two more sitting beside a large chest wrapped with a chain. As the cart left the outskirts of the village, embarking on the King’s Road, the road sloped down just a bit. The driver goaded the horses into a faster pace.
One might expect that the men in the cart would turn around to look back at the greatest conflagration in a generation or more. The cathedral had been the greatest for hundreds of leagues around, or so it was said. Visitors were common, even in these dark days when it was dangerous to travel; armies were on the march and their scouting parties were always suspicious of strangers on the road. If the army had been hired by the King (all of the armies were for hire), a traveller might be safe, depending on his direction. But if the army fought for a different King, or worse, for the Pope, anyone finding themselves on the road did their best to escape, or to hide. Or rarely, perhaps revealing themselves to be exactly what the scouting parties feared, weapons would appear unexpectedly from hiding and there would be fighting. Bitter, desperate fighting, for by now war had been raging for years and none of the sides — there were far more than just two — were any longer in the mood to give quarter.
The cart continued down the dark road until, purely by its outline against the stars, one of the men murmured and pointed to a particular tree. The driver reined the horses, directing them off the road to the left where there was a faint track leading into the forest. The track would be easy to miss in broad daylight, it was only by the man’s long experience on this very road that they found it in the dark.
Just as the cart disappeared between the trees, the men heard some slight change in the sounds from the town, growing fainter behind them. “They come,” one muttered. “No one comes,” replied another. The driver urged the horses forward, but being in the dark with trees looming so close, the horses thought better of attempting any more speed. On they plodded.
If there were pursuers — which the men clearly feared, but couldn’t be sure of — they didn’t discover the faint track leading off the King’s Road. By morning, the cart had passed through the forest into the hills beyond. Finally, just in the forenoon, the man directing their path called a halt in a meadow at the base of a steep hill; they were in the foothills of the mountains looming miles ahead. The weary men climbed down from the cart to stretch and rest and dig in their bags for a bit of bread or meat. The weary horses, pleased to find themselves amidst thick grass, began their long-delayed breakfast.
After a short break three of the men labored to haul the heavy chest out of the cart. Another climbed the hill and scanned the surroundings. The view all the way to the forest was open, and the man sprang back down the hill as soon as he had had a good look. “They come!” he called to the others.
All four men applied themselves to the chest, carrying it, with some difficulty, partway up the hill to where huge rocks were jumbled, the leftovers from some catastrophic collapse. Two enormous rocks leaned against each other, leaving a gap large enough for them to enter. They were careful to leave the underbrush as undisturbed as possible, to obscure their path. A short way past the leaning rocks the direction-finding man took a torch from his bag. It fired easily, and the others could see that they were in a cave leading deeper into the hill, and down.
They were not yet too far into the cave that they couldn’t see the entrance behind them. After conferring, one man was chosen to go back out to drive the cart farther into the hills to draw their pursuers past the cave entrance. He hurried out, and the other three continued deeper under the hill.
