She sheds her boots, her cap, her kirtle, her smock, her smalls. She strips down to nothing but her skin, then sets about bundling all that fabric into something small and compact. She can’t afford the bulk of it lying on her body, if she’s going to fit into that hole. She hesitates a moment before tying it closed with some of the last of her waxed thread, thinking she should add her stores, her trinkets, but this is not likely to lead to an escape immediately. Surely there will be more excavations.

And if she can get out, she can get back in. Probably.

She ties up the bundle and comes to crouch by the gap, considering the best way in. Feet first, and she can keep an eye on this room as she goes, but if it is anything less than straight, she will be at a disadvantage. So headfirst it is, despite the flutter of panic in her breast at going straight down into the unknown. She gets onto her belly. She pushes the bundle in ahead of her, then squirms in after it.

She manages to fit her shoulders through the gap, and for once their stringy narrowness is a help to her as she wriggles and twists, inching a little farther into what she can now tell is not just a hole, but a tunnel. There is no other side, not within immediate reach, but she feels that same fetid, damp air moving on her skin.

She has never been so glad to smell shit.

Her heart quickens, and she claws her way forward, past gritty gravel and onto solid stone. Her hips catch on the entry for just a moment, and then she is through, entirely encased in cold stone against her naked flesh. She pushes the bundle of her clothing another half foot ahead of her, then follows it, moving slowly, her knees scraping hard against the rock. It’s not smoothed for human passage; this is not a manmade tunnel. It has not been dug out, only found.

Another foot. Another. She is going down, just slightly, but she can feel the blood beginning to pool in her head. She starts to worry. Should she have gone in feet first? Should she have brought a light, somehow? She can see nothing now, her body blocking what little light comes from the cellar behind her, and she feels her way forward instead. Inch over inch, but the stone is closing in again, and her breaths are coming faster.

A rope. She should have brought rope. Foolish, foolish girl, to plunge ahead without any thought but rescue. Her breathing fills the narrow gap, and her spine presses into the rock above her. Her head thickens, her hands scrabble beneath her, she feels like she is falling.

She feels like she is dying.