Full passage
‘Then let’s not keep it waiting,’ said Joe.
They parked by the outhouse and unloaded the equipment. The night was still, the air cool and damp. Inside, the darkness felt thicker than before. Joe started the generator; its low growl filled the silence, and the harsh white light threw their shadows against the stone walls.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Let’s begin at the centre.’
Working slowly by lamplight, they prised up the heavy floor slabs one by one. Beneath them a square opening appeared, revealing a stone-lined shaft.
Joe dropped a pebble and listened to the splash below.
‘It’s a well,’ he said quietly.
‘Still some water down there,’ said Sergio.
‘And something solid beneath it,’ Joe murmured. ‘Listen — that echo isn’t hollow all the way.’
They stood around the opening in silence, the generator humming behind them, the light flickering on the wet stone. The air seemed to breathe upward from the well, cold and mineral, as though the earth itself were exhaling.
Joe straightened. ‘We’ll open it further,’ he said quietly. ‘Slowly. I want to see what it’s been keeping.’
The night air had cooled further, carrying a thin mist from the bogland. Inside the outhouse the generator purred, throwing its harsh white light across the cellar walls. The open square where the slab had been lifted gaped like a wound in the stone floor.
Joe crouched beside it, his torch beam searching the darkness below.
‘There’s water down there,’ he said. ‘But not much. We’ll need to go slowly.’
They fixed the rope to a beam and lowered a metal bucket on its length. It clanked faintly as it struck something below, then splashed. When Joe drew it up, the water was clear but faintly metallic, smelling of earth and rust. He set the bucket aside.
‘We’ll start lifting the others,’ he said. ‘The opening needs to be wide enough for a man to work.’
They took turns, levering the next slab with the spades. The mortar cracked reluctantly, releasing a dull echo. Each stone was heavier than the last, each removal revealing a little more of the shaft’s circular wall — perfectly fitted stones, dry-laid, untouched for generations.
By the time the third slab came free, the well’s mouth yawned wide enough for Joe to kneel at the edge. He shone the torch downward again, tracing the inner curve of stone. The light caught on something rectangular — the edge of a crate several feet down the shaft, its upper edge just beneath the shallow water.
‘There’s something down there,’ said Marietta quietly.
Joe nodded. ‘All right. We’ll not try to pull anything tonight. I just wanted to be sure it exists. Tomorrow we’ll get proper lifting gear and call the Gardaí to witness it. No surprises.’
But Sergio, already peering into the dark, said, ‘It’s not far — maybe ten feet. We could lift one crate tonight, just to see.’
Joe hesitated, torn between caution and curiosity. The seal was intact; nothing had shifted in centuries. Finally, he said, ‘All right — one, and carefully.’
They looped the rope beneath the top crate and heaved together. The water sucked and gurgled as the box broke free. It rose inch by inch, heavy with age, the wet rope straining in their hands. When at last it reached the rim, they rested it on the edge and dragged it onto the flags.
The crate was about three feet long, sealed with pitch and iron bands. The wood, though darkened by time, was astonishingly sound. Marietta knelt and ran her hand across the lid.
‘Whoever packed this knew their trade,’ she said.
‘They wanted it to last,’ Joe murmured. ‘And it has.’
They raised one crate from the water and forced the lid open. Inside lay muskets, blades and gold coins, packed around a bundle of sealed records. The discovery was proof enough that the hidden cache Robbie MacKail had described was real.
Joe lifted the uppermost paper without breaking its seal. Beneath it lay an internal list, written in Robbie’s hand and headed with a total.
‘Nine crates,’ he said. ‘Numbered and itemised. Arms, powder, gold and correspondence. This tells us what should be down there without our opening anything else.’
‘What do we do with it?’ Marietta asked.
Joe set the list back exactly where he had found it.
‘We stop. We leave the other eight where they are, cover this one and secure the building. The Garda can recover the rest in daylight and record everything properly.’
Sergio nodded. ‘Better than trying to haul up nine of them in the dark.’
‘Exactly,’ Joe said. ‘One opened crate and Robbie’s list are enough to establish the cache. Nothing else moves tonight.’
They had begun laying boards across the well-mouth when a sound outside the outhouse made them freeze. For a moment it seemed that someone was moving in the darkness beyond the door.