Then it was dark, and I forced myself into bed.
I woke with the alarm clock going berserk. Three-thirty. For a moment I wondered what the hell I was playing at, setting it for that ridiculous time. Then I remembered. I had to go down a well.
My crate makes a racket at the best of times. I mean, even during the day in noisy traffic people turn, wondering what’s coming. Nearly four on a pitchy morning it sounded like a helicopter. I keep meaning to get it seen to, but the cost’s terrible.
I decided against the bike. On the grounds that I’d probably need every muscle fascicle doing its absolute thing today, I settled for the car despite its row. The trouble was, they’d recognize my motor anywhere. I’d have stood a better chance if Elspeth had lent me hers. Or Moll hers, or Sue . . .
I wasn’t long reaching the Mount, cruising easily on to the down-slope towards the river. Most of our villages have no street lights, so I was relying on a vague, rather shifty-looking moon-glow as I cut the engine. With only wind noise and some wheel-swishing I coasted her down to the pub. Luckily, pub yards are traditionally open at the front. No gates or hedges. We rolled on to the forecourt, and I reached the side of the tavern wall before stopping.
I got out, pushing her slowly forwards until she was as far off the road as she would go. People might assume some early devoted angler had put it there, intending to return for a midday break from boredom. Most of my stuff was in a small satchel I used for carrying my materials as a lad, when I went out painting. The torch was in my pocket, and the pencil and some of the card squares. I sat on the car seat with the door open and changed my shoes for plimsolls. If there was any mud down there my feet would get wet anyway, and rubber soles are easier to climb in. I was shaking like a leaf. The cold night mist seeped into my bones. Sometimes you can talk yourself into a shiver, can’t you?
Ready. I simply turned towards the hill and started up it straight from the tavern yard. There were a few obstructions, mostly large flint-stones and large tussocks of grass. A couple of times I walked straight into a gorse bush, but got off lightly. It was the line of gorse bushes that had tipped me off and gave me the final clue. They followed an obvious contour line as far as the hollow. There they ended abruptly, to recommence about a hundred feet down the hillside. Something had slipped them out of true: the magic landslip of 1847. What else?
No wonder there was a hollow. The uppermost half of the well was tilted. It couldn’t be any other way. I imagined a nail, bent almost to right angles by some powerful force after it had been driven half into a piece of wood. The uppermost half now lay for the finding. And the well-head would be located exactly where the gorse bushes began again lower down the hill.
I blundered into a gorse bush again. The moonglow was too feeble but I guessed I was at the lower half of the gorse line. Which meant that following it left would bring me to its abrupt end. And the well-head would be there. I felt with my hands, touching the spiky fronds at every step.
I wasn’t spooked when I reached the end of the gorse line. Not really. But wells are funny things. In honest and kindly old Britain wells and springs have always been slightly magic. And, often as not, the old folk would protect the magic of their own particular well by some rather odd – and quite evil – practices. It’s no accident that our wells are often adorned with stone faces and completely sculpted Celtic stone heads. Don’t dwell too long on how the fashion actually started. It isn’t very happy reading. These stone heads, incidentally, are worth a fortune nowadays – if you dare risk the spooky vibes. Like most people, I don’t admit to being superstitious. It’s always somebody else.
I was at the end of the line, feeling round on my hands and knees round the tallest of the gorse bushes. I parted the grass on the down-side of the bush and reached underneath. There was a cold stone under my hands. I tried to be scientific, pushed my hands back under and felt around. There was another to its right. There was one a few inches displaced inwards to its left. And a third. And a fourth. They seemed heaped, rather than set in a circle. But wells are always circular. It took me a few more minutes of groping to fathom what had happened. The well had not been shifted sideways, as I’d guessed. It had just been laid down. Naturally, the stones had piled in the form of a small cairn. It was simply an earth-covered, stone-blocked cavern now.
I started picking at the first stone with my minute border fork. It was like trying to extract a tusk with a pin. I started being stealthy and silent. Within five minutes I was swearing and smashing at the bloody stone, probably making enough noise to wake the dead. I paused, wishing I hadn’t thought of it in exactly those terms. That made me work things out more intelligently.
If the well-head had been toppled sideways by the sliding hill, then the surest means of gaining entrance would be through the great heap of stones at its mouth. Stones fall down, not up, I lectured myself severely. At this rate I’d be exhausted before I even found a route into the wretched well-head, let alone climbed down into the tunnel.
I walked round until I was standing overlooking the gorse bushes, then slid down, hanging on to the grass like grim death. I located the marker stone and wriggled back upwards until I was somewhere over the middle of the well’s outline. There I started digging, using only the hand shovel. I was shattered when my blade struck something hard and it turned out to be a brick. I worked harder then, after the first moment of amazement.
I had the sense to splay myself to one side so that if the well caved in I wouldn’t go tumbling in and get myself crushed to death by falling masonry; one foot was hooked round the stem of a gorse bush as an extra precaution.
It took me the best part of two hours or so. Then, when I was telling myself I’d perhaps made enough of a hole to get through, I was helped by the incaving I had feared. The well side gave way with a rumbling sound, and the bricks I had exposed simply folded in. I only just saved myself from falling in after the bloody things by grabbing for the grass and holding on. I lost the shovel, which was tough. That didn’t matter much for the moment, because I was the jubilant owner of a hole some three feet in diameter into a medieval well which led straight to a valuable possession any antiques dealer would give his limbs to own. I found my satchel and the torch. Now I was able to direct the beam downwards into the hole. Nobody could see it from the road.
I wasn’t prepared for the filth which confronted me. There were deposits from wildlife several inches deep along the brickwork which now formed the floor of the well’s lumen, possibly from badgers or foxes. I’d heard tales of the fury with which dog badgers attack an intruder. Maybe they’d be afraid of the torchlight. I tied a handkerchief round my face against the dirt, slipped over, and clung to the lip of brickwork with one hand, while shining the torch with the other.
The well descended in a slow curve into the hill, down and in. I let the torch rove and found small recesses with a single brick lip. Some form of primitive handhold? They seemed to be spaced about right for a climbing man. As long as there were plenty, and as long as they went all the way down, otherwise I’d have to risk the rope. I let my satchel fall. It hit the layer of filth and set up a smog of dung. I made sure that I could reach upwards again from the floor of the well before letting go. Careful old Lovejoy. Now nothing could stop me from getting out once I’d completed the task.
From above it had looked miles long. Once down there, it seemed that I’d only taken three or four steps before I was having to hold on to stop myself from slithering forward. A few more paces still, and I found myself actually climbing downwards, holding on to the projecting bricks in the shallow recesses and fiddling about with my spare foot to catch the next slot. It’s easier said than done. I never know why people go climbing, anyway. After about ten steps on my brickwork ladder I thought maybe it was time I shone the torch to see in which direction I was now heading. Confident now, I turned from my position and shone the light down. Down.
Down, down it went.
Down into the bowels of the planet.
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br /> I whined feebly. There seemed to be nothing, nothing but a great hole whizzing vertically into the earth. And I was dangling from the merest foothold, one – one – single brick wide. I whimpered, and froze. Sweat poured down my face and prickled between my shoulders. I felt my hands ice up. My thighs quivered horribly. I even made a move to start up again, heading for fresh air and safety. Then I felt it. A glow began in my chest. From down below, deep in the hole, a radiance emanated. It warmed my chest and set my mind clicking again. My hands eased without being told. I felt the beauty of whatever was down there set up vibrations, with me in the very track of the waves. I found that my foot had begun to search for the next foothold almost of its own accord. I began breathing again, slowly at first but with regularity. I realized I’d gone down another step. Then another. Then again another.
I developed a rhythm, moving five careful, well-tested rungs, then shining the torch. Later, I realized I ought to have had the sense to count while going along, to estimate the distance. You can’t think of everything. In fact, when you’re terrified you can think of nothing.
I suppose I’d been slowly climbing down for about a quarter of an hour when I shone the torch and saw something there. It was a straight line going from side to side across the well’s black base. Another three rungs and I could see there was another line, also dark and somewhat mottled, but parallel to it. At a rough guess I was about thirty feet above the lines when the rungs ran out. I saw the reason for the mottling. They were steel railway tracks, and bricks had fallen, partly covering them here and there.
The trouble is that common sense leaves you when you’re near to what you want. It hadn’t penetrated my thick skull that I would enter the tunnel at the top of the vault and probably break my neck the instant I forgot this elementary fact. Yet I nearly did.
It was only the vague worry of how to climb up again that stopped me literally letting go, I remembered the care with which I’d entered the well-head, and mercifully paused to wonder the same thing. I realized how close I’d been to falling. I got the shakes again and had to hang on for a minute.
I held on with my left hand and got the hammer out, clenching the haft in my teeth. I decided to bang in all the nails I had.
It took several attempts to get even one in. I dropped two, which left me seven. Some elementary mathematics took over. I spaced five more out in twos, one above the other, and wrapped the clothesline round each pair in turn. It would be less of a strain on them if my weight was shared by three pairs instead of one single long vertical column. God knows how long it took me, but in the end I was gasping and spluttering in the brick dust. And I’d had to hold the torch in my teeth while starting each fresh nail off. Worse still, every stroke of the hammer echoed and hummed up and down the well-shaft. Like being the clapper in a bell. My mind reeled from the racket. The hammer fell when I was clouting the last nail in, and thudded into something soft at the bottom. I gave up then, just turned the rope round as I’d planned and tied it in a million knots for safety.
In the descent I misjudged the rate of sliding and got a couple of rope burns. Added to that, I found myself wheezing from something musty in the air when I finally crashed down on the lines. As long as I stayed on the iron rails I would be all right. If they could bear the weight of a train they could carry me. I got my gear together and shone the torch about.
I was in a space, a bubble in the earth. It was no longer than ten feet and didn’t reach quite to the tunnel walls. The brickwork of the tunnel vault disappeared behind an upslope of desiccated mud. Only the rails were exposed; it was rather odd. I remember thinking that at the time. Mud doesn’t get flung upwards, does it? It lies there just being mud. The lines ran under the roof fore and aft. I was stuck. There was no sign of the little decorated carriage that I’d read about.
I shone and looked, shone and looked. There was an odd feel about the whole thing. I felt as if I’d come across a stage set with no play. I stayed straddling the rails, though the flooring of the tunnel seemed intact. I prodded it once or twice experimentally. It seemed just a tunnel floor. Then I noticed the rope.
It had rotted, but in its day it had been a good enough rope. Parts still felt waxy. It was coiled unevenly among the dust and the fallen bricks on the floor as if it had fallen after hanging down. Yet it must have been there a hell of a time to have rotted like that. I picked it up and noticed the iron stanchion ring still attached to a small length of it. Somebody had been here before me, but a century and a half ago. And he had come to a prepared spot, where a rope waited for him inside an old sealed well – a well with climb-holds. And, having escaped by hacking his way through into the well-shaft, he could pull across some odd bush or other, and from there it would be easy in the confusion to appear as if by a miracle near the nearest vent-hole. And misdirect the rescuers?
I sat down, my skin prickling with revulsion. Jonathan Chase had escaped according to plan, babbled of vent-holes, and deliberately directed the rescue teams away from his two entombed men. And he had lived a hero’s life, even been decorated for his services and his bravery.
But if the Right Honourable had made his honourable way through this chamber, I reasoned in the darkness, and out through the well-shaft, then he must have entered it by some route that should still be visible. I shone the torch round again. From the angle of illumination the mud-caked bricks seemed indented near one rail. As if somebody had shoved anything he could find to fill a hole. It was on the inward direction of the rails, which meant that the carriage might be on that side. The shaft above me seemed to be at a slight angle to the vertical. That suggested the deeper part of the well lay on the incoming side too.
I cast about for my hammer, but couldn’t find it. I took my satchel off. Holding my torch in my mouth was making me gag, and I started coughing and coughing again. For a moment I remembered firedamp, the silent odourless gas of the mines, and the terrible tales I had heard about it as a lad. There was only speed to counter that, speed in escaping. And I would be out of this hole like a bat in another instant. I made myself a fervent promise, and set to clawing the earth and bricks away from the indented spot. There was a space behind, a long hole just wide enough for a man. I took my jacket off and rolled it into a sausage shape. I wasn’t going to leave it behind, and it would be impossible to push ahead or I wouldn’t be able to see a thing. I noticed how cold it had become now that I had stopped really moving.
The small crawl-way Jonathan Chase had made for himself through the mud sloped up through the fall for a couple of feet then levelled off. With the torch I could see a space at the end of it. The whole course could not be more than twelve feet. I didn’t like it, but twelve feet didn’t seem for ever, or so I thought.
I ducked my head in and crawled forward with the torch leading the way. Easy. Not roomy, but easy. I reached the lip of the inner chamber. From the bobbing rays of the torch I could see by squinting ahead that it seemed at least as spacious as the one I’d just left. I caught hold of the crumbly lip to pull myself forward – and nearly fell into the lower half of the well. I screamed like a stuck pig, squealing and yipping with terror and dangling in space from a crumbling mass of rubble with my feet flailing in empty air. The torch was lodged in the aperture at one side where I’d just emerged, but I was in a mad scramble to get back. My leg caught on something hard. I felt the skin give down my calf. The other leg scagged on projecting iron and the skin tore. I had to do something quickly or my limbs would be shredded. My right leg flung wildly sideways. It struck iron, a firm rod of some sort. I rested it carefully on the metal, pressed, and let it gradually take my weight, or part of it. My fingers relaxed. I stood like a deformed acrobat, at a weird angle. I reached shakily for the torch. I seemed to be standing precariously on a single rail. The other had gone heaven knows where. Beneath me was the well. It wasn’t bottomless. The light descended about sixty feet before water caught the beam and reflected it against the sides. Floating in the water, or stuck there on a muddy
sediment, were the remains of two men. Presumably men, though now they were skeletal fragments crumpled under a dark brown slime.
My moan echoed hollowly. I fixed my position so I wouldn’t slip and turned my head, holding the torch with my arm flexed underneath. I saw the carriage. Had I been facing the other way I could have reached out and touched it. As it was, I dared not let go or I’d fall.
The decorated bogie had stopped right on the edge of the well. It rested on two rails. The left one was shorn away and couldn’t be seen. It was a small version of the hand-cranked wagon which plate-layers sometimes use for carrying their tools and metal supplies. A chair was rigged to the front part. It was almost as macabre to see the elegant chair in such a position. And on the chair was a glass case ribbed with dark wood. Even in the state I was, my heart gave a lurch. I looked at my right foot. The rail seemed continuous. If it held it could be a way across the well’s five or six-foot gap to reach the carriage. Surely it would take my weight? You sometimes hear of several landslips, one after another. Well, everything’s a risk.
I got myself upright, pushing carefully on the lip of the narrow aperture through which I’d just wriggled. I drew several deep breaths for reserve and stuck the torch back in my mouth. No daft nonsense about balancing. I crouched down and dangled my legs over the rail, straddling it. Then I shuffled along, swinging my legs and using my hands. It took twelve shuffles. Then I actually touched the glass case. It was beautiful. A feeling rose up inside warming the whole universe. I knew the Contrivance was in there. And, praise God, it was mine. I vowed a forest of candles to St Osyth in thanks and swarmed off the rail on to the wagon. There was hardly room to move between the side of the carriage and the sloping wall of dried mud, but I got there. A huge wooden sleeper, torn somehow from its bed and projecting from the mass of earth, almost slammed me backwards towards the gaping well by wobbling on to the carriage as I disturbed it. It fell with an almighty thump alongside the carriage, projecting over the horrid dark space below as if waiting for somebody to walk the plank.
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