So
was the first day's work accomplished and so was built the first
layer of the walls of Castle Rodriguez.
On the next day the bowmen again felled a hundred trees; the top
of the first layer was cut flat by carpenters; at evening the
second layer was hoisted up after their under sides had been
flattened to fit the layer below them; quantities more were cast
in to make the floor when they had been gradually smoothed and
fitted: at the end of the second day a man could not see over the
walls of Castle Rodriguez. And on the third day more craftsmen
arrived, men from distant villages at the forest's edge, whence
the King of Shadow Valley had summoned them; and they carved the
walls as they grew. And a hundred trees fell that day, and the
castle was another layer higher. And all the while a park was
growing in the forest, as they felled the great trees; but the
greatest trees of all the bowmen spared, oaks that had stood there
for ages and ages of men; they left them to grip the earth for a
while longer, for a few more human generations.
On the fourth day the two windows at the back of the bowmen's
cottage began to darken, and that evening Castle Rodriguez was
fifteen feet high. And still the hundred bowmen hewed at the
forest, bringing sunlight bright on to grass that was shadowed by
oaks for ages. And at the end of the fifth day they began to roof
the lower rooms and make their second floor: and still the castle
grew a layer a day, though the second storey they built with
thinner trees that were only three feet through, which were more
easily carried to their place by the pulleys.
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