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A figure had been carved into the keystone. He ran his thumb over what appeared to be long robes. In the background of the representation was a boat with a crude sail.
Aleksey turned to ask Ben’s opinion, when he discovered him missing. For one moment, just for a fraction of a second, he thoughttime-portalbut then he thought pond, and true to his nature, Ben emerged from the crystal-clear water, shaking his hair and grinning. ‘Oh, what’s that? I didn’t see that.’
Aleksey smiled privately and went back to studying what he thought was an exceptionally interesting medieval wall.
The pond however, was also a great find, he had to agree.
‘Look.’ Ben waded back into the water, sank under the surface and…didn’t re-emerge.
After what seemed like an inordinately long time to him, Aleksey swore and waded in himself. As soon as he did, Ben rose once more, gleeful. He flicked his head. ‘Follow me.’
Aleksey plunged under the surface of the water and turned on his back to see the sunlight slanting through. He swam after Ben and then he surfaced when Ben did. They were under a little stone bridge to the very northern end of the lake. There was about a foot of headroom, although the bed rose steeply here only leaving a shallow stream, which then emerged on the other side of the bridge and trickled in a gentle, short fall of water to the rocks on the shore below. If they’d wanted to, they could have wriggled through and lowered themselves into the sea. Aleksey slithered around and pulled himself up onto the bridge. He was now looking towards the back of the old wall, although through the trees and shrubs he could not now see it.
Ben climbed up and joined him and they sat dangling their feet.
‘Clear-Water Pond.’
Aleksey smiled. ‘Man of the Boat Bridge.’
Ben scoffed at his efforts, then cupped his face and kissed him and they lay back on the old mossy stones and enjoyed themselves with nothing more than their own bodies and the sunshine and love.
* * *
Chapter Fifty-Four
When the evening started to draw in and the temperature drop, they untangled reluctantly and began to wander back towards Guillemot. They took yet another different route, this one leading towards the back of the house by their reckoning. There was no discernable path through the woods where wild bluebells had colonised the entire area. The sunlight filtered delightfully through the canopy above them. Satiated on sex and the languid end-of-day quietness, neither of them was taking as much care as usual. If put to the rack, Aleksey would have to admit that they were fooling around like teenagers. Well, he was annoying Ben, and Ben was attempting in his faux-irritation to retaliate. He had just managed to put some flowers in Ben’s hair when, swiping them away, Ben took a step back and…disappeared.
It was such an awful repeat of his accident on Dartmoor that Aleksey’s heart tripped with a cold shiver until he heard swearing and saw a hand. He grabbed it and hauled Ben up.
It was an old well, brick lined, but flush to the ground.
Ben, apparently unconcerned about his near-death experience, peered over the edge. ‘Can’t see the bottom.’ This wasn’t exactly what Aleksey wanted to hear. ‘What’s wrong?’
He shook himself and came to look as well. ‘It should have a wall? Wells have walls around them?’
‘Maybe this one is dry, so they took the bricks for something else? When they got the pump fitted into the house it wouldn’t be needed. There’s a cover.’ Ben had spotted an ancient, slightly rotten wooden board under the bluebells. They extricated it, brushed it off, and laid it over the hole. It fit, but neither of them wanted to risk standing on it.
They moved it off once more and got down onto their bellies, peering over the edge to consider their find. ‘How about Dead-Ben Well?’
Ben turned to look at him. ‘Is that what you thought?’
‘Oh, no, the earth just swallowed you up, but I wasn’t worried.’
Ben smirked and rubbed his hair. ‘Aw, you love me. Ninja here, remember?—I have sneaky skills.’
Aleksey didn’t dignify this with a reply but rummaged around for a pebble and dropped it in. They heard it land, but it was pretty deep. ‘We’ll bring some rope tomorrow and you can climb down and see what’s there.’
Ben frowned and instead of eagerly agreeing, which is what Aleksey expected him to do, he appeared to be thinking deeply about this.
‘What? Are you afraid of a little hole, Benjamin…given your sneaky skills? I have always been under the impression you were very fond of holes.’
Ben wrinkled his nose as if he didn’t want to say it, but muttered, ‘It’s probably full of snakes.’
This was unexpected and random, even for Ben. ‘Snakes?’ Aleksey peered over the rim once more. ‘Why not crocodiles?’
Ben pushed to his feet and left him to shove the lid back on as best he could. He made a mental note to put some kind of barrier up around the drop before Molly came or he let Radulf wander around unsupervised. Radulf had pretty sneaky skills himself, given he was an incontinent, arthritic, elderly wolfhound, but Aleksey suspected the old boy would not want those suspiciously random afflictions being tested by a plunge into a pit of vipers.
* * *
