An Evil Eye

121

“ Marta?”

“I am here, kyrie.” Her voice came out of the darkness behind him.

“Can you move?”

“Not very well, kyrie. I can move a little-but it is cold.”

“Yes.” Palewski tried to remember how Marta had been dressed, but after a while he gave up. All he could remember was the trusting look she had fixed on him earlier, in the drawing room.

He shifted slightly on his knees, to ease the discomfort; his kneecaps crackled against the damp stone. Already his knees hurt; in an hour, they would be worse. He imagined the cold, and the cramps shooting up his thighs.

“Marta, have they made you kneel on the floor?”

“To kneel, kyrie? I am sitting down, but I cannot move my arms. They have tied my arms behind my back.”

“You can move your legs?”

He heard the sound of her skirts rustling against the stone floor. “Yes, kyrie.”

“Could you-stand up?”

“I–I think so.” He heard her move again. “I can push myself up against the pillar.”

“Reach out with your foot, Marta. As far as you can, but gently. Perhaps you can reach the wine racks, with your foot?”

“Just, kyrie. I think I brushed it with my shoe.”

“That’s good. That’s very good.”

“Kyrie?”

The sweat beaded on his forehead. “I’m thinking, Marta, that we need a knife.”

In the next ten minutes, too, he thought: I don’t think I can stand this, on my knees, much longer.