Almost before I was aware, we had reached the outer of those dejected and scattered walls for so many centuries lying the prey of the elements and the spoil of house-builders and church-builders from down the Vale and beyond.
Some of these still remained high enough to show the embrasures where the upper windows had been, tall, slender apertures, one of them far on the other side even now perfect in the stonework of transom and mullions and semi-rounded arch. It was indeed the ruin of a knightly house, once spacious and splendid. The fallen walls seemed to have been struck or hurled outward by some terrific force or inward convulsion, as if behemoth had stirred and heaved himself from beneath the floor.
Flanking the walls to the left, where I had come past two nights ago and encountered the menagerie-keeper, I peered inside, over a chin-high portion, and gave an exclamation of surprise. The thick walls had indeed been hurled down from within. The vast flat slabs of the floor, what few of them remained, were tossed in disorder, and the earth on which they lay was piled in fantastic heaps alongside deep, irregular trenches—all grass-grown now, of course. A few bushes and one enormous beech tree found livelihood inside the wall.
For a couple of minutes Maryvale had been standing quiet behind me, peering this way and that in the twilight, as if he looked for some particular object.
“This gutted carcass makes me fancy things,” I laughed. “Come, Maryvale, sweep the spider-webs out of my mind by flourishing vigorously the broom of truth. In other words, relate to me something about this place, and pity on your life if it’s the old story of ‘deflor’d by Glindur.’ ”
“Why, haven’t you heard?”
“If I did it went in one ear and out the other. Say on.”
I braced my hands on the broken top of the wall and leaped up, making my seat there. Maryvale joined me with very little effort, and we sat there kicking our heels schoolboy-like.
Again I saw him look about very intently, under the beeches, through the gaps between the stones, across the scrub growth between us and Aidenn Water a quarter of a mile distant.
“What are you looking for, Maryvale?”