‘It was a sound came up from the well. I thought it laughed.’
‘And might it not laugh, hugging its secret all these years? Mayhap it was that laugh killed Fulk. A was found dead there, his head hanging over the well-rim. There were things in his eyes—things seen in the black under water as he lay gasping out his soul. God give him mercy!’
Brion stood silent a minute. Curiosity, enough to hold him to the spot, still fought in him for mastery over his fears.
‘Did he, Fulk, use it, as a well?’ he asked.
The old woman shook her head.
‘That in the court,’ she said, ‘had already been sunk before his time. ’Tis an old, old pit, this—Roman. I’ve heard it called. It was there before the moat itself. Never bucket nor windlass has it had in my day. Like enow they were removed to the other.’
‘And what is that great wheel, mother, fastened to the wall?’
He spoke with a shiver, for in some way the evil spirit of the place seemed concentrated to him in that diabolical mill. But the gammer did not know. ‘Some wicked contrivance of Fulk’s,’ she supposed; but for what purpose it was impossible to say. It was there when she came: and that was all she knew about it.
She bent to her simples again, and, while she sought and plucked, Brion lingered near her. If she knew the reason well enough, she was flattered by the boy’s dependence on her. There was a soft place for him in even her dark old heart. He was a bold beautiful child, so to have dared the terrors of that mystery which to her was an article of superstitious faith; and his flying to her in the last resort had touched her to the quick.
That night, as he was finishing his supper in the great gloomy hall, she came in to him with a handful of early daisies.