I was here once before, much younger. A child. Trying to see beyond the sky.
I had read somewhere that from a sufficiently deep hole, one could see the stars, if the day were clear. You were there, brought on a rare visit. I had persuaded you to help me with my scheme; you watched, eyes wide, fist to mouth, as I winched up the bucket, steadied it on the wall and then climbed in. I told you to let me down. The descent then was scarcely less violent than that the lieutenant's men subjected me to. I had not thought to allow for the bucket's much increased weight, your lack of strength or propensity for just standing back and letting what would happen, happen.. You held the handle, taking some of the strain as I pushed the bucket off the side of the well's stone surround. Freed of the wall's support I plunged immediately. You gave a little shriek and made one attempt to brake the handle, letting it jerk and lift you on to your tiptoes, then you let it go.
I fell into the well. I cracked my head. I saw stars.
It did not occur to me then that I had succeeded, in a sense, in my plan. What I saw were lights, strange, inchoate and bizarre. It was only later that I connected the visual symptoms of that fall and impact with the stylised stars and planets I was used to seeing drawn in a cartoon panel whenever a comic character suffered a similar whack. At the time I was at first just dazed, then frightened I was going to drown, then relieved that the water beneath the bucket was so shallow, then finally both angry at you for letting me fall and afraid of what Mother would say.
High above, you looked over the edge of the well, a silhouette. So outlined, I could see you carefully holding your hair out of contact with the stone wall and the bucket's rope. You called down, asking if I was all right.
I filled my lungs and opened my mouth to speak, to shout, and then you called again, a note of rising panic in your voice, and with those words stopped mine in my throat. I sat there, thinking for a moment, then slowly slumped back, lying sprawled in the bucket, saying nothing but closing my eyes and opening my mouth slackly.
You called once more, your voice full of fear. I lay still, eyelids cracked enough to watch you through the foliage of lashes. You disappeared, calling out for help.
I waited a moment, then scrambled to my feet, pulling down on the chain until it became rope and exhausted the supply at the wooden cylinder attached to the handle on the well head. My skull seemed to buzz but I felt unharmed. I pulled on the rope and stuck my feet out to gain purchase on the grimy stones of the well's throat. I was young and strong, the rope was new and the well only as deep as the moat's level was from the courtyard. I quickly hauled and pushed my way to the top, then pulled myself over the edge and landed on the courtyard cobbles. I could hear raised, alarmed voices coming from the castle's main door. I ran the opposite way, down to the passage under the old guard chamber leading to the moat bridge, and hid in the shadows there.
Mother and Father both appeared along with you and old Arthur; Mother shrieked, flapping her hands. Father shouted down and told Arthur to haul on the winch handle. My mother walked round and round with her hands to her mouth, circling the well. You stood back, looking pale and shocked, gulping and wheezing for breath, watching.
“Abel! Abel!” Father shouted. Arthur laboured at the winch handle, perspiring. The rope creaked on its drum, taking some weight at last. “Damn, I can't see…”
“This is her fault, hers!” Mother wailed, pointing at you. You looked at her blankly and played with the hem of your dress.
“Don't be stupid!” Father told her. “It's your responsibility; why isn't the well cover locked?”
A terrific thrill ran through me then; I experienced a sensation I would only later be able to identify as something close to sexual, orgasmic, as I watched on while others fretted, laboured, panicked and performed for me. My bladder threatened to embarrass me and I had to clench my stomach around a ball of joy at the same time as I crossed my legs and pinched my still hairless manhood to prevent a further wetting of my pants.
Some other servants and Father's mistress appeared, crowding around the well as Arthur brought the empty bucket to the surface. My mother's wails filled the courtyard. “A torch!” my father shouted. “Fetch me a torch!” A servant ran back into the castle. The bucket was perched on the wall, dripping. Father tested the rope. “Someone may have to go down there,” he declared. “Who's the lightest?”
I was bowed in the shadows, still trying not to wet myself. A fire of fierce elation filled me, threatening to burst.
Then I saw the line of drips I'd left, from well to where I now stood. I looked in horror at the spots, dark coins of dirty well water fallen from my soaking clothes on to the dry grey cobbles; two or three for every pace or so. At my feet, in the darkness, the water had formed a little pool. I looked back into the courtyard, to where an even greater crowd had assembled, almost obscuring Father, who was now shining a flashlight down into the well and instructing servants to hold up jackets over his head so that the day's brightness would not dazzle him while he peered into the gloom.
The drops I had left shone in the sunlight. I could not believe that nobody had seen them. Mother was screaming hysterically now; a sharp, jarring noise that I had never heard from her or from anyone else before. It shook my soul, suffused my conscience. What was I to do? I had had my revenge on you though you'd seemed only a little worried, I'd noticed and you had already been partially blamed, but where did I go from here? This had quickly become more serious than I'd anticipated, escalating with dizzying rapidity from a great prank born of a brilliant brainwave to something that I could tell, just from the number and seniority of adults losing their composure would not be put to rest without some serious, painful and lasting punishment being inflicted on somebody, almost certainly myself. I cursed myself for not thinking this through. From crafty plan, to downfall, to wheeze, to calamity; all in a few minutes.
The plan came to me like a lifebelt to a drowning man. I gathered all my courage and left my hiding place in the passageway shadows, coming staggering out and blinking. I cried out faintly, one hand to my brow, then yelled out a little louder when my first cry went unheeded. Somebody turned, then all did; shouts and exclamations went up. I stumbled on a little further as people rushed towards me, then collapsed dramatically on the cobbles just before they got to me.
Sitting up, comforted, my head in my weeping mother's,bosom, my hands held and rubbed by separate servants, I went “Phew” and said “Oh dear” and smiled bravely and claimed that I had found a secret tunnel from the bottom of the well to the moat, and crawled and swum along it until I got out, climbed up the bridge and tottered, exhausted, through the passageway.
To this day I think I was almost getting away with it until Father appeared squatting in front of me, his expression dark, his eyes stony. He had me repeat my story. I did so, hesitating, no longer quite so sure of myself. Had I said I'd climbed out via the bank? I meant the bridge. His eyes narrowed. Thinking I was plugging a gap, in fact only adding another log to my pyre, I said that the secret passage had fallen in after me; there wouldn't be any point in, say, sending somebody down to look for it. In fact the whole well was dangerous. I'd barely escaped with my life.
Looking into my father's eyes was like looking into a dark tunnel with no stars at the end. It was as though he was seeing me for the first time, and as though I was looking down a secret passage through time, to an adult perspective, to the way the world and cocky, lying children's stories would look to me when I was his age.