Queen V.'s Arc

Chapter 5 of 13

Dinner ended at seven-thirty. The guests pushed back from the tables and gathered near the fire pit, wine glasses in hand. Someone suggested clearing the space for chairs. Queen V. nodded and directed Paul and two others to move the wood stack and flatten the ground where the flames would go. Paul dragged the first pile of logs aside and stopped. He crouched down and brushed dirt away from something dark beneath the soil. One of the other guests leaned in and pointed. They scraped faster, uncovering stones arranged in a circle, blackened with old ash. Then Paul's hand hit something solid. A wooden door, set flat into the ground, with an iron handle. He pulled it open and cold air rose up. Stone steps led down into darkness. Someone aimed their phone light inside. Shelves lined the walls, stacked with beer cases. A stone cellar, dug right where the garden house now stood. Queen V. stepped forward and looked down into the opening. The guests went quiet. She recognized the shape of it immediately—Hank's work, or whoever owned the property before him. A cellar that had been there long before she bought the land, buried and forgotten until her construction crew poured footings right over it. The woman from Alberta spoke first. "Did you know this was here?" Queen V. met her eyes and said no. The lie felt clean and necessary. She had the architect's drawings, the permits, the surveyor's report. None of them mentioned a cellar. She would check them tonight, alone. She closed the door and told Paul to move the brick bench over it. He hesitated, then did it, dragging the heavy seat until it covered the wooden hatch completely. Queen V. turned to the guests and suggested they move the fire pit gathering to the porch instead. The night air had turned cool anyway. They followed her without argument, wine glasses still in hand. She did not look back at the bench. Tomorrow she would decide what to do about the cellar. Tonight, she would finish the evening exactly as planned.