At this moment I actually saw one of the inhabitants. He emerged from a side-passage and padded past us and disappeared into another. He gave a palm-up salute to Kaselm as he passed which Kaselm answered. He was dressed in a filthy leather tunic with a hood hanging at the back. He also wore wide, slit-sided, striped breeches with fringed bottoms, a floppy leather boot and one foot bare. His belt was stuck full of variously and murderously shaped weapons—knives, a chain with a spiked ball on one end, a saw-edged dagger. He was pale and had a lot of greasy hair of an indeterminate colour.

Kaselm and I moved on.

“Who lives in these labyrinths?” I said.

“Oh—various people who prefer it to any other life,” he said.

Those I saw were all ruffianly and pale. Most ignored us, but some saluted Kaselm and he replied in kind. What were they? Gangs of smugglers? Wanted criminals who at some time or other had escaped Justice? Families who had been here since ancient centuries?

“Do the Court and Temple know of them?”

“They don’t know the labyrinth exists. We’re a long way underground here, you know.”

At this moment my breath caught in my throat. A black-robe was coming towards us. Kaselm advanced without surprise. Could he mean to betray me after all? Were the torture-chambers at least down here? As the figure passed I saw it was a girl, walking demurely, painted lids lowered, pink-nailed fingers catching up a trailing fold of black vestment.

There were several layers of labyrinth, for we passed stairs leading down and up. There were occasional gratings and ventilation-chutes. The temperature in the lit sections was tepid, even warm at times.

I saw none of the ruffians’ women, unless they look exactly like the men, but in a hewed alcove we passed three children. They all had a lot of unkempt hair falling over their pale faces, and stopped their work to stare at us from violet-rimmed eyes hard with unafraid appraising suspicion. A boy about eleven was sharpening a blade, a fierce blonde girl of eight or nine feeding spoonfuls of chunky meat-gravy to a thin baby playing with a jewel-studded bracelet. An iron pot hung on a chain from the alcove roof, over a fire full of blue flames.

Later our feet splashed in pools of water but there were no fountains about. I kept quiet for a while, till I noticed a bunch of real sea-weed in one of these large puddles.

“Where does this water appear from, Kaselm?” Somehow I no longer thought to call him Holy.