The Raven King (The Raven Boys #4)(52)

“Currency Act,” Gansey said.

“What?”

“Was passed in 1751,” Gansey said. “Banning the issue of currency by New England. And George the Third became Prince of Wales in 1751, if I remember right.”

“Also” – Henry reached for a light switch. It barely illuminated a low-ceilinged basement with a dirt floor. A glorified crawl space, with nothing but a few cardboard boxes shoved against one of the foundation walls – “the first performing monkey act in the United States.” He had to duck his head to keep from tangling his hair in the exposed wooden beams supporting the floor above them. The air smelled like a concentrated version of Borden House’s aboveground floors – which was to say, like mould and navy blue carpet – but with the additional damp, living scent peculiar to caves and very old basements.

“Really?” Gansey asked.

“Maybe,” Henry said. “I tried to find primary sources, but you know the Internet, man. Here we are.”

They had come to the far corner of the basement, and the single lightbulb by the base of the stairs did not quite illuminate what Henry was pointing at. It took Gansey a moment to realize what the blacker square in the already dark dirt floor was.

“Is it a tunnel?” he asked.

“Nah.”

“A hidey hole?” Gansey asked. He crouched. It seemed like it. The hole was no more than three feet square with edges worn by the centuries. Gansey touched a groove in one edge. “It had a door at one point, I guess. They called them priest’s holes in the UK. Must’ve been for slaves, or for … alcohol during prohibition, maybe?”

“Something like that. Interesting, yes?”

“Mmm,” Gansey said. It was historical. That was Ganseylike, he supposed. He was vaguely disappointed, which must have meant that he had hoped for something more, even if he didn’t know what that something more would have been.

“No, the Ganseylike part is inside,” Henry said. To his surprise, Henry slid into the pit, landing at the bottom with a dull thud. “Check it out.”

“I assume you have a plan for getting back out if I do.”

“There’s handholds.” When Gansey did not move, Henry explained, “Also, this is a test.”

“Of what?”

“Merit. No. Ma— No. There’s an m word for bravery, but I can’t recall it. My frontal lobe is still drunk from last night.”

“Mettle.”

“Yes, yes, that’s it. This is a test of mettle. That’s the Ganseylike part.”

Gansey knew that Henry was right by the zing of feeling in his heart. It was very similar to the sensation he’d felt at the toga party. That feeling of being known. Not in a superficial way, but in something deeper and truer. He asked, “What is my prize if I pass?”

“What is ever any prize of a test of mettle? The prize is your honour, Mr Gansey.”

Doubly known. Triply known.

Gansey wasn’t precisely sure how to cope with being so accurately pegged by a person who was, after all, only a recent acquaintance.

So there was nothing left but to lower himself into the hole.

It was almost completely dark, and the walls intruded. He was close enough to Henry to both smell the bite of Henry’s hair product and hear his slightly accelerated breathing.

“History, that complicated bitch,” Henry said. “Are you claustrophobic?”

“No, I have other vices.” If this had been Cabeswater, it would have been rapidly working with Gansey’s fear to produce stinging insects. Gansey was grateful that intention was not such a powerful thing outside of Cabeswater. This hole in the ground could remain simply a hole in the ground. In this world, he only had to worry about schooling his exterior, not his interior. “Can you imagine having to hide in one of these? Did I pass the test?”

Henry scratched at the wall or something similar; it made a dead, hissing sound as dirt crumbled to the floor. “Have you ever been kidnapped, Richard Gansey?”

“No. Am I being kidnapped now?”

“Not on a school night. I was kidnapped once,” Henry said. His tone was so light and ordinary that Gansey wasn’t certain if he was making a joke or not. “For ransom. My parents were not in the same country, and so communication was not good. They put me in a hole like this. It was perhaps a bit smaller.”

He was not joking.

“Jesus,” said Gansey. He could not see Henry’s face in the darkness to know how he felt about the story he was telling; his voice was still light.

“Jesus was not there, unfortunately,” Henry said. “Or perhaps fortunately. The hole was barely big enough for me.”

Gansey could hear Henry rubbing his fingers against each other, or making and unmaking fists; every sound was amplified in this dusty chamber. And now he could smell that peculiar scent that came with fear: the body producing chemicals that reeked of anxiety. He could not tell, however, if it was his or Henry’s. Because Gansey’s mind knew that this hole would not produce a sudden swarm of bees to kill him. But Gansey’s heart remembered hanging in the cave in Cabeswater and hearing the swarms develop beneath him.

“This is Ganseylike too, yes?” Henry asked.

“Which part?”

“Secrets.”

“True enough,” Gansey admitted, because admitting you had secrets was not the same as telling them. “What happened?”