Cloak of Silence (Jake Harding Adventures Book 1)

Jake stood stock still, waiting for the timer to turn off the lights before he made a move. He felt drawn to the tiny window like a moth to a flame, but he used the time to examine one of the monk’s robes hanging on the wall. There was a collection of them on a row of hooks, limp and ghostly.

It wasn’t yet six o’clock and it wouldn’t be dark for another three hours. He’d be in full view of the windows at the back of the monastery as he left the building, but Taki had said it was time for prayers and all the visitors would have gone. He’d simply run for the gate and, if anyone saw him: too bad. He fingered the gold coloured key in his pocket; His Get out of Jail Free Card.

The light from the staircase suddenly blacked out and he removed a robe from the nearest hook and pulled it over his head.

Two fancy dress outfits in one afternoon.

The material was rough against his skin but he was glad to be able to make his bright shirt disappear. The robe was too small for him and the sleeves sat well above his wrists. He tried the next one; that was better. As he pulled the hood up over his head, it felt as though he had become almost invisible. Now nobody would look at him twice as he walked through the monastery garden, except to wonder why that monk was bunking prayers.

He set off down the corridor, towards the warm afternoon sunshine beyond the tiny glass pane. There were three archways on each side, the first and second pairs having been closed up with brickwork panels, metal doors and keypad locks. The final pair of arches, nearest the outside door, had no doors and large spaces disappeared off into darkness on either side. There were windows on each side, but little daylight showed through the wooden shutters fitted over them.

The right hand space looked like an old-fashioned kitchen, with a pair of refrigerators, a cooking range against the back wall and a large scrubbed table in the centre of the room. A sink near the window and a work counter and cupboards completed the picture. So this is where Taki spent some of his time.

On the opposite side of the corridor, two long refectory tables disappeared into the gloom. Wooden benches were set either side of them making Jake think of the dining hall at school.

He pulled the hood of the robe firmly over his head before walking to the garden door. The tiny window was set at eye level and he peered out to make sure that there was nobody outside. Even though this was the basement, the slope of the land meant this doorway at the back of the building was at ground level. A path from the door bisected the monastery’s back lawn as it curved down the hill towards the trees sheltering the bay. There wasn’t anyone about, so he slowly turned the door handle.

The handle squeaked, the door rattled, but didn’t move.

‘Taki!’ Jake’s stomach knotted. ‘‘Never locked’ you said.’

It was a solid old door, perhaps the original, with a lock that would take a big old-fashioned key. He looked around urgently, but there was no key in sight and no hooks with keys hanging on them. Through the small window the late afternoon sunlight played on the tall trees and a bird on the grass chattered loudly.

His heart was beating fast. There was no obvious way out. But there must be some way of escaping, surely?

He checked out the dining area, starting with the window. He could slide the sash open easily enough but the shutters were secured from the outside. In addition, thick metal bars fixed into the stonework above and below the window like a cartoon prison cell made escape that way impossible.

Apart from the two long tables and benches, a sideboard and a large cupboard were the only items of furniture. There were cutlery and paper napkins in the drawers of the sideboard but no keys. A number of religious pictures in gilt frames adorned the walls and heavy curtains on a wooden pole could be drawn across the archway. There were no other doors or windows and the ceiling was an impenetrable brick barrel vault.

Jake walked up the corridor to the door where he had talked to Taki, trying the doors in the archways on one side going up and the other side coming back. They were all locked. He hadn’t noticed the code that Taki had punched into the key pad on the entry door and after trying a few random numbers realised it was futile.

He slipped into the kitchen and made straight for the window. It was identical to the dining room window with those thick metal bars. He really was trapped.

He opened every cupboard door and drawers and looked in the fridges. There was plenty of food and even Mythos beer but no keys.

‘I won’t starve, anyway,’ he thought glumly.

A bar of chocolate or an apple would have been good, but neither of those was on offer.

Somebody must come eventually, he reasoned, but if it wasn’t Taki, he had better be out of sight when they did come. The best place to hide, in fact almost the only place, was behind the folds of the curtains in the dining area. They reached nearly to the floor and the heavy material bunched up into folds that he could pull around himself and stand there unseen.

He sat down at the refectory table and cast his mind back to the things Taki had told him. What on earth could ‘blitzing’ mean? Warren seemed to have a similar accent to Matt, so maybe it was South African slang for something.

Taki had never got to tell him what it was that he couldn’t write down. Surely he could put it in a coded message? But maybe he couldn’t write it down because it was too difficult for him to explain, not because it was too secret. Perhaps it was the thing about blitzing that he wanted to tell him.

Hopefully Taki would send him another message with a time to meet tomorrow. Zoë’s disappearance must be connected; surely it was way too much of a coincidence that she had vanished without reason from a place so near these strange people. Was it Zoë they’d been arguing about?

Bill Blizzard had pointed him towards the monastery, but was that just to draw attention away from himself? But things here really did seem weird.

He sat at the table for ages, getting up now and then to stretch, but never moving far from his chosen hiding place. It started to get dark outside and an eerie green glow from the pilot lights on the fridges pervaded the basement.

He consoled himself with the fact that several people knew he had gone to the monastery. Jenny or his mum or dad would certainly contact Father Theo eventually if he didn’t come home. But, in reality, Father Theo had no idea that he was down here in the basement.

Hellfire, why had he left his mobile at home?

A light came on somewhere and Jake was fully alert in an instant. It was the fluorescent lights that had come on, so someone must have walked through the panel door in the museum and was coming down the stairs.

He was behind the curtain by the time the door at the foot of the stairs clicked, opened and, after a moment, closed with a bang. Someone was walking down the corridor towards him, whistling. It didn’t sound at all like Taki and he stayed where he was, drawing the black robe and the curtains around him. Through the gap between the curtain and the wall there was a fleeting glimpse of a monk sweeping past, a torch in his hands. A key scraped in a lock and Jake felt a draught of cool air over his feet and ankles as the garden door was opened. The door clicked closed, the key rattled in the lock and the draught stopped. Silence again. When the lights on the staircase went out he slipped out and tried the door but, as he thought, it had been locked.

He sat down at the refectory table again, his chin in his hands. He must have been in the basement for three hours now and it was incredibly boring. But the whistling monk might come back at any moment and he’d get very little warning if he came back the way he’d gone out. At least someone coming down the stairs made the lights come on, which gave him time to hide. But standing behind the dusty curtains was really unpleasant.

About half an hour later the lights on the stairs came on again and he got back into his hiding place. This time there were two men, talking in a foreign language as they walked down the corridor. Jake couldn’t understand anything being said and didn’t even know what language it was. Again he felt the draught on his feet for a few moments before hearing the sound of the door closing and the key in the lock.

It was fully dark outside now and Jake decided to stay in his hiding place. Anyone looking in through the glass pane might notice him in the glow from the pilot lights if he moved around. There were three of them outside now and he reckoned that sooner or later they must surely come back inside again. What the heck were they doing out there?

About twenty minutes later he heard a noise at the garden door and pulled the curtain closer around him. The key turned in the lock and he felt the now familiar whisper of cool air on his ankles. Someone walked into the kitchen and turned on the lights.

But there was no sound of the door closing and the cool draught continued. An adrenaline rush hit him. Was this his chance?

His senses were on full alert as he eased the curtain to one side. The flow of cool air signalled that the door was standing open. The silence was unnerving but was broken by a bang from the kitchen.

He peered carefully round the archway. There was a monk in the kitchen, filling a kettle at the sink, his back to him. The noise must have been a cupboard door closing.

The man in monk’s robes turned away from the sink and was plugging in the kettle now, but that would take only seconds. He might not get another chance like this. He bit his lip and made his move, stepping noiselessly through the archway, down the short length of corridor and out through the wide open door.

It was cool and fresh in the darkness outside and he could smell the sea. It was hard to believe he was free, but he couldn’t see anything after the brightly lit basement. There were still two monks somewhere outside and he didn’t want to stumble into them. Although he was almost invisible in the black robe, the monks were in robes too and their eyes would be used to the dark. He moved off the path and crouched down next to the building a little way from the door.

There were lights showing in some of the monastery windows, faintly lighting the surrounding lawn and garden. His eyes started to make out details; the path curving across the lawn and dark shapes which materialised into small trees, probably a grove of cumquats. There was no sign of the monks. Perhaps he should walk through the grove, and if all remained clear, carry on down the slope towards the bay and up the steep track to the gate. He patted the key in his pocket. He’d have to ditch the robe somewhere, preferably where it wouldn’t be found.

He rose up cautiously from the shrubs and walked slowly across the lawn to the protection of the cumquat plantation. His heart was thumping and he was ready to run for the gate if anyone challenged him.

But he reached the shadowy trees safely and walked slowly downhill between them. They were taller than he was and he felt relatively safe from prying eyes. He stopped as he reached the last of them.

Open lawn extended down the hill for another fifty paces to the tall trees around the bay. It was darker here, further from the lights of the monastery.

He was about to take the first step when he saw a pinprick of light in the trees below him. He shrank back behind the scant protection of a cumquat tree and watched. The light was bobbing up and down and moving from left to right. It swung again and he saw that it was someone walking up the path towards the monastery carrying a torch. He flung himself to the ground before the beam could pick him out. Lying flat on his front, his chin pressed into the cool grass, he watched with apprehension.

The path passed close to the grove of cumquats, but as long as the person stayed on the path he probably wouldn’t be spotted.

It was deathly quiet. The hood of the robe was baggy and he pulled it around his face leaving only a narrow opening for his eyes.

The person with the torch came closer and closer, but the beam of light was being directed onto the path and not to either side. It was a fair slope and, as the person passed by, Jake could distinctly hear their breathing.

But there was another shadowy figure close behind, then another. Monks in their dark robes, shadowy shapes that he could sense rather than see with any clarity. Their laboured breathing was real enough, the third man wheezing slightly. There was another person behind and a strange noise that sounded like someone pulling something up the path. More and more followed, and Jake found himself counting them. Finally a monk with a torch brought up the rear of the unearthly procession.

He couldn’t be completely sure, but there must have been seventeen or eighteen of them altogether including the two with the torches. They were not talking, adding to the eeriness of the procession.

He stayed where he was until he was sure that they had all passed by. He turned his head cautiously and looked up towards the building. The basement door was standing open with light spilling out onto the path. The last of the people entered and the door was shut, the small sound clear in the still air.

What were they doing walking through the monastery garden at night?

The dampness of the grass was soaking through the robe and his shirt, but he let a full five minutes go by before getting to his feet. He pulled back the hood of the robe and listened intently. There were the small sounds of insects but that was all. The basement door was firmly closed, although light could be seen around the shutters of the two adjacent windows. He pulled the hood up again and stepped out of the cumquat grove. The monastery grounds were empty again and he soon reached the point where the track up to the gate ran off at right angles from the main path.

Where could he hide the robe? The hillside above him was scattered with small bushes and boulders and there was nowhere that the garment wouldn’t be seen in daylight.

So he continued on down the path that wound through the tall trees. A small stone building loomed up in the darkness and he pulled the robe over his head, folded it up and tucked it under a bush against the back wall.

Retracing his steps up the path, he felt conspicuous in his yellow shirt even in the dark. He turned up the stony track and after a few minutes’ stiff climb came to the tall steel mesh fence with the gate secured by the big padlock. After fumbling with the key he got it open. Hugely relieved to be clear of the monastery, he locked the gate behind him and hurried up the rough stone steps around the boulder. His feet crunched on gravel and he was at the bench. He paused for a moment to look back towards the monastery. The lights in the basement windows were out now and everything was serenely peaceful.

A light was on in the office when he got back to the school and through the window he could see Jenny busy on the computer.

‘Jake, where have you been?’ She tried to look fierce but managed only to look relieved.

‘At the monastery, with Taki,’ he attempted to sound casual about it.

‘Your father was getting pretty worried,’ she said. When she said ‘your father’ rather than ‘your dad’ or ‘Richard’ he knew he was in trouble.

‘Has he gone out?’ The Defender wasn’t in the courtyard.

‘Yes, he and Matt are doing the taverna circuit with photos of Zoë,’ she replied. ‘Rob is running the Quiz Night in the theatre. Your mum came back a short time ago, worn out – she’s gone off to bed.’

‘I’m going to change out of these clothes and get some food.’ He knew she was annoyed and he wanted to get away.

‘They obviously did the trick,’ she remarked, relenting.

‘They got me in,’ he said, not wanting her to be angry.

‘That’s another one you owe me, Jake. And telling your dad that I knew where you were when he asked about you.’

‘But you actually did know,’ he protested, grinning.

‘Did you find out anything?’

He hesitated. He was hungry and wanted to quietly think through everything he’d found out. But Jenny was an ally and telling her might help to get things clear in his head.

So he sat down and told her everything.

But not absolutely everything – he said he’d waited in the basement to see what would happen.

Admitting to being trapped would be too much information.