Gates of Empire

The clank of the sour sentinels on the turrets, the gusty uproar
of the spring winds, were not heard by those who reveled in the cellar
of Godfrey de Courtenay's castle; and the noise these revelers made
was bottled up deafeningly within the massive walls.

A sputtering candle lighted those rugged walls, damp and
uninviting, flanked with wattled casks and hogsheads over which
stretched a veil of dusty cobwebs. From one barrel the head had been
knocked out, and leathern drinking-jacks were immersed ...