He Lover of Death

HOW SENKA HUNTED FOR TREASURE

Now of course, he was shaken up, after something like that.

He kept thinking: There’s a monster on the loose, he didn’t even spare the little baby, cut his eyes out too, the fiend! And what does that make the Prince! If he’s supposed to be an honest bandit, why does he keep a villain who gouges people’s eyes out when they’re still alive?

But his thoughts kept skipping from these terrible things to the treasure. He couldn’t imagine it properly, though: it was like the Holy Gate in the icon screen in church. With everything sparkling and shimmering, so you couldn’t make anything out. He imagined chests too, full of gold and silver, and all sorts of precious stones.

But then his thoughts turned to his brother Vanka, and how Senka would go to see him and give him a present – not a wooden horse with a string tail, and not some dwarf pony, like Judge Kuvshinnikov did, but a genuine thoroughbred Arab racer, and a carriage on springs to go with it.

And he thought about Death a bit too – well, of course he did. If Senka had all these huge riches, maybe she’d see him differently then. Not some gap-toothed, freckly kid, not a gnat or a swift, but Semyon Trifonovich Spidorov, a substantial squire. And then . . .

He didn’t really know what came ‘then’.

When he left that hideous room he ran back to the first cellar, with the fat-bellied pillars – that had to be the one Siniukhin was talking about.

Last pillar ‘on the right’ – was that this end or the other?

Probably the other, the one farthest from Siniukhin’s place

Senka was feeling a bit squiffy after everything that had happened, but he’d still grabbed the matches and a supply of splints off the table.

In the far corner he squatted down on his haunches and struck a match. He saw the dressed stonework of an ancient wall, every stone the size of a crate. Just try shifting one of those!

When the flame went out, Senka felt for the joint, tried pushing this way and that – a dead loss. He tried moving the next stone too –the same thing.

Right. He went over to the next corner on the right. This time he lit a splint, not just a match, and moved the light this way and that. The stones here looked the same, but one, at the bottom, was surrounded by black cracks. Was he in business?

He grabbed hold and pulled. The stone yielded, and quite easily too.

He tugged it out with a grunt and pushed it aside. The hole gave out a smell of damp and decay.

Senka started to shake again. Siniukhin was telling the truth! There was something there!

The next stone was even easier to get out – and a bit broader than the one underneath. The third was broader still, and it wasn’t held in by mortar either. He took out five stones altogether. The top one must have weighed seventy-five pounds, if not more.

Now Senka was peering into a narrow gap – a man could quite easily get through it if he turned sideways and bent crooked.

So he crossed himself and clambered in.

Once he’d squeezed through, there was much more room. He hesitated, wondering whether he ought to put the stones back. But he didn’t – what would anyone else want in the corner of the cellar? You’d never see the gap without a light, and the tenants in the Yerokha didn’t carry lights.

Senka was really desperate to get to that treasure, and as quick as possible.

The passage was about a yard wide, with something trailing down off the ceiling – cobwebs maybe, or dust. And there was squeaking from the floor – rats. They were all over the place in the basements –the motherland of rats, those places were. One of them jumped up on Senka’s boot and sank its teeth into the folds. He shook it off and another jumped on. They had no fear at all!

He stamped his feet: scram, damn you.

He walked on through the passage and every now and then the pointy-nosed grey vermin scuttled from under his feet. Their bright eyes glinted in the darkness, like little drops of water.

The lads had told him that last winter the rats went crazy with hunger, and they ate the nose and ears off a drunk who fell asleep in a basement. They often gnawed at babies if they were left unwatched. Never mind, thought Senka, I ain’t no drunk or little baby. And they can’t bite through these boots.

When the splint burned out, he didn’t light another. What for? There was only one way to go.

It’s hard to say how long he walked in the dark for, but it wasn’t really that long.

He held his hands out and ran them along the walls, afraid of missing a turning or a fork.

He should have been feeling for the ceiling instead. He hit his forehead on a stone – the smack set his ears ringing and he saw stars. He bent his head down, took three short steps, and the walls disappeared from under his hands.

He lit a splint.

The passage had led out into some kind of vault. Could this be the chamber Siniukhin was talking about?

The ceiling here was smooth and curved, and made of narrow bricks – not exactly high, but high enough so he couldn’t reach it. The bricks had flaked away in places, and the chips were lying around on the floor. It wasn’t a very big space, but it wasn’t small either. Maybe twenty paces across from wall to wall.

Senka couldn’t see any chests.

But there was a heap of sticks lying by the wall on the right. When he walked over he saw they weren’t sticks, they were iron rods, all black with age.

It looked like there used to be a door opposite the passage Senka had come out of, but it was blocked off with broken bricks, stones and earth – there was no way through.

So where was the huge treasure that Siniukhin and his family had suffered such a horrible death for?

Maybe it was under the floor, and Siniukhin didn’t have time to say.

Senka went down on all fours and crawled round the floor, knocking as he went. The floor was brick too, and made a hollow sound.

In the middle of the chamber he found a big purse of thick leather, which had turned stiff and hard. It was tattered and useless – but something jingled inside. Now then!

He turned the purse inside out and shook it. Scales or flakes of some kind clinked as they fell to the ground. A couple of handfuls, the pieces no bigger than the nail on his pinkie.

Were they leaves of gold?

It didn’t look like it – they didn’t glitter bright enough.

Senka had heard that you tested gold with your teeth. He gnawed on one of the flakes. It tasted dusty, but there was no way he could bite through it. So maybe it was gold. God only knew.

He tipped the flakes into his pocket and crawled on. He lit another three splints and scrubbed the whole floor with his knees, but still he didn’t find anything more.

Then he sat down on his backside, put his head in his hands, and started feeling miserable.

Some treasure. Was Siniukhin just raving? Or maybe there was a hiding place in the wall.

He jumped to his feet, picked an iron rod out of the heap and started sounding the walls out.

And a fat lot of good that did him – all he got was earache from the noise.

Senka took one of the flakes out of his pocket and held it close to the flame. He could make out a stamp: a man on a horse, some initials. It looked like a coin, only kind of crooked, like someone had chewed it.

Feeling all frustrated, he stuck his hand back in the purse and felt under the lining. He found another flake and then a coin – a proper round coin, bigger than a rouble, with a bearded man stamped on it, and some letters too. It was silver money, Senka realised that straight off. There had quite likely been a whole bagful here, which Siniukhin had taken and hidden. No way he would ever find them now.

There was nothing else for it – Senka set off back along the underground passage, with almost nothing to show for his pains.

Well, a round piece of silver. And those flakes – maybe silver, maybe copper, who could tell? And even if they were silver, they wouldn’t add up to real riches.

He took the iron rod he’d used to tap the walls, to keep the rats away. And he was sure it would come in handy – it had a good hefty feel to it.