The black water took the hardwood bell with a deep, hollow gulp that sounded like a drowning giant.
Tomas sat wedged onto the narrow ash bench inside the tun, his knees pulled up against his chest. His heavy oxhide diving waders, greased with four coats of sheep fat, were cold against his thighs. Beside him, Captain Sile Rook filled the leftover half of the cramped wooden dome. His broad shoulder pressed hard against Tomas’s right arm, his breath puffing white and warm in the chilly inside.
Between their boots, through the open four-foot circular bottom of the tun, the black water of the flooded castle rose like a dark, liquid floor.
“Lower away on the main tackle!” Tomas shouted through the small brass voice-pipe in the crown of the bell.
Above them, through twenty feet of dark air, came the muffled creak of the heart-oak derrick and the rhythmic, hollow thump, thump of the double-chamber oxhide bellows. Through the flexible leather air-hose coiled in the dome, a steady stream of fresh marsh air hissed into the bell, smelling of cold sedge and damp wool.
The water rose.
It didn’t rush in. The pocket of tightly packed air trapped within the inverted wooden cone held the flood back by sheer sky pushback. When the bell dropped past ten feet, the water level steadied fourteen inches above the open rim, lapping against the lead-weighted skids with a cold, greasy gurgle.
