POOR BY WINTER

The dog would not leave the trench alone.

For three nights running Bear had slipped his rope and Joan had found him at the well-head by dawn, curled in a heap of turned earth with his muzzle dust-grey and his tail beating a slow rhythm against the planks as if keeping time with something underground. She had dragged him home by the scruff the first two times. The third time she did not bother with the rope at all — only sat on the edge of the trench in the dark with her lamp shuttered to a sliver and watched him work.

The new well was communal, sunk on the boundary between her father's claim and Widow Crane's three strips, which meant it belonged to everyone and no one. The digging had stopped when Pascow the dowser ran out of contract and coin in the same week, and the trench had sat half-finished for a fortnight — a raw scar in the spring earth, ribbed with the roots of the olive trees Old Hamo had planted before Joan was born, lined at the bottom with the first courses of dry-stone that would never keep water out unless someone paid for mortar. In the morning the village argued about whether to assess another round or wait for the bailiff's spring visit and hope the crown took pity on a new settlement without a functioning well. At night the trench belonged to Bear.