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“Ah, there’s nothing like Jamaican rum! But my dear Embry—it’s not to your liking?”
“Who was the barrister for the defense?”
“Why, I was, of course. I thought you might have recognized it from the start. You must admit, though, that you were not very helpful.”
“I thought... Damn!” Nicholas ran his fingers irritably through his hair, wondering why his thoughts were hard to collect. “If she was on trial too, then who...”
“My dear fellow, I thought that should have been explained. I was her prosecutor at the same time! Although unfortunately... But is there something wrong...?”
How long Newbury’s voice seemed to go on echoing. Like the other voice that had pronounced so solemnly, “Prisoner at the bar, you are hereby sentenced...” Sentenced to what? It had been nothing more than a grotesque, silly piece of game-playing. Charades...childish games...spin-the-bottle... spinning top... spinning...
His head seemed to be spinning too, each time he tried to move it. Dammit, he must have had too much to drink. That damn Jamaican rum of Newbury’s. Lie still and breathe deeply before you open your eyes—someone had taught him that when he was very young and just starting to drink. But he had not felt this way in years, and the thought that a few drinks in one evening could... As he lay there unmoving with his eyes still closed, Nicholas could sense the gradual seeping-in of different sounds and sensations through thin cracks in his consciousness. All unfamiliar, making remembering where he was difficult, even if it did not seem too important yet. Damp, river smells. Mildew and other indefinable odors. Cold—that was it. He had waked up because he was cold and he was lying on something hard and lumpy with no covering and no... Opening his eyes wasn’t much better. Blackness. Void. Perhaps he was still in the grip of some strange nightmare! In any case his head ached, so closing his eyes and going back to sleep was more sensible. And when he finally did wake up it would be to daylight and the smell of coffee. But it was strange, all the same, how weighted down he felt, somehow.
“Your Lordship? You should have had a nice long sleep by now, sir. Long enough to sleep off everything, eh? But you’ve got to wake up now. It’s almost time.”
Time? Nicholas opened his eyes into the single orange eye of a lantern that moved and then was hung up with a click of metal against metal as two men, bulky shapes against the light at first, moved forward. “Thought you might like to take a look around, sir. Always helps, in the beginning, to know where you are. I’m Brown and this is Partridge, and it’s both of us or either of us you’ll be seeing as long as you’re here. And there’s no need for your Lordship to worry about your clothes or your wallet and such. They’ve all been put away and duly accounted for, and you’ll get ‘em back, sir, when it’s time for you to leave here.”
“Here?” Nicholas said carefully.
He tried to sit up, and the man who had spoken— Brown?—sprang forward solicitously to help him, saying apologetically, “You’ll get used to it after a day or two, sir. Except for certain times, you’ll be able to move as far as the other wall there.”
“He might get used to it!” the other man, speaking for the first time, said judiciously. “Some don’t. Not if they’re used to the soft life. Being locked up in a prison cell’s hard to take for any bloke, even if he ain’t had it easy.”
His cell was a boxlike space enclosed by three brick walls and a heavily barred door, the only tiny light that penetrated the gloomy darkness coming from a tiny grating set high against the ceiling. The “bed” was a raised cement block against one wall, covered by a thin mattress filled with straw and nothing else. A slop bucket across from the bed and straw scattered on the floor—the bare essentials. What the hell else did he expect? It was hard, at first, not to burst into a shout of bitter laughter. It was hard to believe that this was the reality he had awakened to.
With difficulty, Nicholas swung his feet down to the floor, the length of chain between them heavy. He had already noticed that his wrists were manacled too, with a two-foot length of chain separating them. And as bedposts two cement pipes at the head and foot of the bed bore convenient manacles as well. He must obviously be considered a dangerous criminal! He looked up to find both men watching him with understandable curiosity tinged with cautiousness, and wondered what in hell they thought he could do, especially under the circumstances, since the chain between his wrists happened to be attached to a sort of pulley set into the ceiling so that by a tug on the other end by the cell door any movement he made could be limited. Or...? It was an unpleasant thought, and one he’d rather not face just yet. What exactly had he been “sentenced” to at that so-called mock trial? And how did they—whoever they were—think to get away with this? Unless they meant to kill him. And there suddenly flashed into his mind the memory of a high-pitched voice chanting, “Hanged by the neck until he’s dead, dead, dead!”
Brown and Partridge. Better to concentrate on his—what did they call them here in England??
??jailers? “Am I allowed to ask questions?” Nicholas said at last in a carefully controlled voice.
“There’s some that we can’t answer, milord. But you can ask away all you like! Helps, I should think.” That was Brown, the talkative one, moonfaced, with a reddish fringe of hair and a mustache to match. Partridge was smaller and had a full head of brown hair and a large nose.
“This is a prison? Which prison? And where?”
“It’s a prison all right, sir. Can’t say any more’n that, though.”
“And would you happen to know just why I am here? And for how long?” Nicholas added grimly as more memories came flooding back, “I think I can remember how I happened to be brought here.” Newbury, of course, and that damn coffee that must have been spiked with more than rum alone. But for God’s sake, why?
“Well, sir...” Brown scratched at the bald spot in the center of his head. “All we’re told is what our duties are, you see. But I’ll be fetching you a piece of paper that was left, sir. It’s supposed to tell you the whys and wherefores of your being here, I think. And...” Brown shifted from one foot to the other a trifle awkwardly before he added. “Everything else, sir. You’ll be supposed to read it each time—before, your Lordship.”
The lantern flame seemed to dance and waver as if a draft had come into the cell. They had given him prison trousers to wear, complete with stripes. No matching shirt. Perhaps he shouldn’t ask his next question and leave whatever came next as a surprise. But then, he rather liked Brown and hated to disappoint that expectant cherubic face. “Before what?” Nicholas said, and waited until Brown stopped looking at the tips of his thick boots and looked up again, carefully avoiding his eyes while he cleared his throat.
“Before you’re flogged, sir.” And then he added awkwardly, “I’m sorry, sir. One of the duties I don’t much care for, ‘specially when it’s a gentleman like you who stays calmlike and don’t fuss. But it’s my job, you see.”
He hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath until he heard himself expel it sharply. Not a mockery, not a game after all. They were obviously after blood. And what else? A plea for the “court’s” mercy? A retraction of some things he’d admitted to? Damn them! “I think I do see,” Nicholas said quietly enough. And then he laughed harshly and said to Brown’s startled face, “There’s nothing I can very well do about it under the circumstances, is there? Although I can’t promise to grin and bear it either. When? And how...”
He was ashamed of his hesitation over that until Brown’s unhappy reply wiped everything but shock from his mind.
“Well, sir, every day, sir. I really am...”
“Jesus Christ! And for how long? Until I break? Or until I’m dead, dead, dead...?” And then, violently, “Fuck them!”
“It’s not that bad, your Lordship, I promise you. Maybe the first time, when you ain’t used to it; but after that it won’t be too many lashes each day, and I won’t lay ‘em on real hard the days there’s no one to watch it done. You seem like a good sport, your Lordship, and it’s a shame, but...”
“Christ!” He had to stop himself from laughing bitterly again, although it was almost funny. A travesty of a trial and the purging of his sins. Would they give him absolution afterwards and take him back into the fold if he survived this particular trial by ordeal? By God, it really was funny, but if he laughed now poor Brown would blame himself for driving him insane with terror. Poor Brown, who had to perform his daily duties whether he enjoyed them or not.
He wished suddenly that he could have something to drink. Brandy—rotgut—anything. But that was probably against the rules. He was saved from asking the question he felt almost compelled against his will to ask by Partridge, who suddenly took an important-looking watch out of his pocket and looked up at Brown to say, “It’s almost time. Better have everything done with and ready before they arrive.”
