They have built a hall with no windows and gone down into it on purpose, into the dark, as we go down only into the cellar for turnips or the earth for burying. Below there is a great heartbeat, louder than any bell I have heard, louder than the smith at his anvil, and it does not stop. It beats through the floor into my feet, into my chest, as though the ground itself had a fever.
The young folk stand crowded as sheep in a fold, yet each faces alone. They do not dance the round dances of the green. They tremble in place, eyes shut, hands raised, and I confess it looked like prayer, though I saw no altar and no cross, only lights that flash like a storm the good Lord sends when He is angry. Some had glass eyes over their own eyes, dark as pitch, in a room already black. What sun do they fear that is not there?
They pay coin to enter and pay coin for water. Water. In my village a man may drink from the beck for nothing and thank Christ for it. Here they buy it back like a stranger's mercy.
No one sleeps, and the sun rises somewhere above the earth while they stay buried under it, sweating, shaking, joyful in a way I cannot name and do not trust. No harvest is got here. No wool spun, no wood split, no child fed.
Lord forgive me, I have never in my life longed to be idle. But I have longed, on the black winter nights, for a fire this warm and a company this glad. They have found it. And they hid it underground where no daylight and no priest can see.