And so it proved. There were the same ferns and mosses sprouting between the bricks and the same inch or so of mud and water still seeping through the rough patch of stones and mortar that had been used to shore up the well close to its base. I might have saved myself the time, the trouble and the possible danger to life and limb for all the good this second exploration had done me. Eris wasn’t there, and never had been there as far as I could tell. I swore. My instincts were wrong. My sense of her presence, my conviction that she was close at hand, was not God-given intuition, but a trick of my own imagination.
Deflated, angry with myself for being such a fool, angry with God for what I saw as His cat-and-mouse games, I leaned against the wall of the shaft and stared up at the distant circle of sky, overlaid with its tracery of interwoven branches. In a minute or two, when I had calmed down and got my second wind, I would ascend the ladder, make my way back to the Lilywhites’ cottage and, tomorrow morning, begin my homeward journey to Bristol. Failure was a bitter pill to swallow, but I made myself face up to the unpalatable truth that I would probably never now discover what had happened to Eris …
Someone was looking down at me, head and shoulders outlined against the backdrop of sky and trees, elbows bent, hands resting on the rim of the well. Man or woman? It was impossible to say at that distance.
‘Hello! I’m coming up!’ I shouted, and waved my arms before grabbing at both sides of the ladder and beginning an ascent that was more precipitous than prudent. Unsure if my presence had been noted, I didn’t want whoever was up there thinking that the well had been carelessly left open, and replacing the lid.
In some ways, it was easier climbing up than down because I could see where the gaps in the rungs were. Even so, it required all of my concentration, and I didn’t look skywards again until I was about three-quarters of the way up the ladder. Pausing to catch my breath, safe in the knowledge that I was now easily visible to the person above me, I raised my head, ready with some self-deprecating jibe about fools who possessed more curiosity than sense. But the words died on my lips as I realized, with a sickening jolt to the pit of my stomach, that the face I was staring at was no face, only a hood worn back to front – blue this time instead of grey – two slits cut for the almost invisible eyes, the liripipe hanging down like some obscenely elongated nose.
Fear held me paralysed – only for a minute, but it was a minute too long. The masked figure disappeared. I heard the grunt and thud as of someone moving a heavy object and knew at once it was the lid of the well. I began to climb faster, spurred on by the panic that was now driving hard at my heels. My whole body was jarred as I failed to spot another missing rung and my foot slipped back to the one below. I was breathing heavily and my hands were slippery with sweat, but I was nearing the top. A few more feet and I was there …
Something hit me squarely in the chest. In the few desperate seconds while I struggled to save my balance, I recognized it as the end of a good, stout cudgel – my own cudgel, in fact, which I had left lying beside my cloak. I could feel myself tottering and grabbed wildly at the ladder just before everything went black as the lid of the well was finally hauled, with a muffled curse, into place.
I have never understood, not even to this day when I am old and grey-haired, how I stopped myself from pitching head first to the bottom of that well, as I was undoubtedly meant to do. Perhaps it was nothing but sheer good fortune or the Hand of God beneath my elbow. Or maybe it was the determination born of rage at having been attacked with my own weapon that saved me. Whatever the reason, somehow or another I managed to regain my balance just as I began to wobble backwards off the ladder. Luckily, the masked man had been in so much of a hurry to seal me into my tomb that he didn’t wait to make sure that he had done the job properly. (I was now convinced that my assailant was a man. No woman, I felt sure, was strong enough to lift the lid of the well single-handedly. Furthermore, the arms wielding my cudgel had displayed the sort of strength not possessed, in my experience, by females.)
I don’t know for how long I clung to the ladder, not daring to move, still not entirely certain that I wasn’t really lying at the bottom of the well shaft, seriously injured. My face was pressed so hard against the rung above the one I was clutching, that the flaking iron scratched my cheek; and I was shaking so violently that the whole ladder vibrated with my fear. Slowly, however, I managed to get my emotions under control, although my legs felt like lead when I started once again on my upward climb.
By this time, my eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, and I could see enough to make out the curve of the walls and the shape of the ladder. I also discovered an added bonus in the light that filtered between the planks of which the lid had been made. It was not a solid circle of wood as I had at first imagined, but several separate pieces nailed together.
My nerves began to steady a little. I was now a mere foot or so from the lid and was able to reach up and push at it with my hands. I strained as hard as I dared but it didn’t budge. I don’t know what I had expected. Common sense should have warned me that it would be almost impossible to lift from beneath. It was too heavy and fitted too snugly around the rim. And while I was pushing and heaving, I had to maintain a precarious foothold or I could yet fall backwards into the depths. I lowered my hands and hung on to the top rung of the ladder while I regained my breath and assessed my situation.
I was trapped. How long would it be before someone else visited the ridge? People did go up there, I knew, to gather firewood – Sir Anselm, for example – but it might be days; days without water, food or warmth. Then it occurred to me that when I didn’t return to the cottage by nightfall, the Mistress Lilywhites would raise the alarm – they knew where I had been headed – and relief washed through me. How stupid not to have remembered that at once.
Presumably, my attacker (of whose identity I was now almost certain) assumed that I was lying lifeless at the bottom of the well; although he, of all people, should have known that it was possible to survive such a fall. But why had he decided to make this attempt on my life now, when I had announced my intention of leaving the following day? Panic was the only answer, for he must know that there was nothing in the well to indicate what had happened to Eris; and without being able to prove that she was dead, whatever suspicions I entertained were useless as far as any hope of justice was concerned. And I wasn’t even sure that justice was appropriate in this case. The longer I thought about it, the more I felt convinced that Eris’s death had most likely been an accident …
I swayed and nearly lost my grip on the ladder. The darkness was having a disorientating effect upon me, and the stench that I had noticed on my first visit to the well now rose up and threatened to overpower my senses. If I wasn’t careful, I really would slip off the ladder, and if I pitched head first to the bottom, my assailant’s prayers could be answered. Somehow or other I must try not to lose consciousness before help arrived. But how long might that help be? It would be hours before Maud and her mother-in-law began to get worried.
I forced myself to go over what facts I possessed again and again in my head, fighting off increasing nausea and dizziness. Three morrells … Three morrells in a row, that was what I needed. Petronelle Rawbone was the first. Go home, she had kept screaming at Eris. Go home! Tell everything to your mother. Tell her that you’re going to marry Nathaniel Rawbone. But why? What could Maud do to prevent her headstrong daughter from doing exactly as she pleased? I believed I had the answer, and lined up Maud as my second morrell. Which left the person who had just tried to murder me as the third. Ned Rawbone – who had adopted the same disguise for this attempt on my life as he had done when he attacked Sir Anselm and Lambert Miller.