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I woke up good and well rested on the day I was caught. Not a pain in my body as I came up from the hay, the straw still to my face. Looking out to the whistling guard who was particularly easy with his baton against the steel bars. Ritcher hadn’t visited which was a kind of blessing. Rain had given up to a nice warm sun, that was hot and white in the puddles across Dead Man’s walk or the outside cobblestone passes and bridges. I hadn’t been whipped or bashed against or pushed and single file line to the lunch room after our morning minings went fast.
I ate slow and a big portion thanks to Chaucer. We laughed and otherwise acted the same with no obvious suspicion (I thought) amongst the guards. After lunch, around evening when things were winding down and the torches were being lit I finally mustered the courage.
In my hay was the satchel with the puddy to fill false-bricks, and the chisel and the make shift scalpel done out of the broken trowels we often throw into guard sacks at work. So I bundled them all together and tied them to my thigh, bulge in wards. I stuck my face out and waited for the guard.
“I need to go to the piss room.” I said.
He looked at me and nodded. And I should have known by how little friction there was that something was wrong. But I went to the restroom. Down two fleets of stairs, past several torches, led by the guard in front of me whose armor gleaned as we went around the fires in the camps. Stopping by a sort of lounge for the guards where the banners were set high and gloomy against the leveled light of a lit chandelier. A giant elk, decapitated almost across the flag. Hannibal’s house sigil, I believe.
I came to the restroom and closed the door behind me. There two guards at the front, the one who had escorted me and the one waiting at front like a statue. I looked back as the door closed behind me, then went up the aisle where all the wooden doors creaked and swayed in want. Each begging with their swiveled doors, hinges crying out.
And again I stopped at my door. Number four. Stepping in, one shy foot after another like I was testing water, I slipped my lowered head inside the gap and fitted the door gentle in its latch to close it behind me. I looked around - though there were only two walls to my rear and then in front, to the toilet hole and the bulge of concrete. Freedom waiting behind me, just one removal of brick at a time. My heart raced and the imaginations were sprawled across the dark oak walls of the stalls like a projector in mad frenzy. Love and food and castle sky lines. Roast chickens. Tavern women dancing and laughing.
I put my hand on the stone and felt the rough almost paper-mache tactility on the surface and wait.
Why was it bulging?
My face fell flat. Why was the brick out? The plan was for Chaucer to be here first, certainly. But it was also for him to put it all back to place, to make it seem like no one had gone through the wall at all. So why was one brick bulging?
Why?
I put a finger against the stone and pressed it forward. It sunk. I looked closer to the wall, to the cracking in the stone. It was all ruined. All shoddy.
My face went cold. I’m sure you’ve felt that way, haven’t you? When particular, insignificant things seem off, where they hint to some greater wronging or tragedy. That’s how it was today. The hint was in front of my face. I threw my instruments into the toilet. My hand was cut, my healing (still fractured) arm was numb.
I backed away and pushed the stall open with a kick of my door as I faced the broken wall.
And there they were, both guards surprised as I was. Looking at me as if I shouldn’t have been there at all.
“What’s going on?” They asked.
I should have been the one asking. It’s like they didn’t expect me or it or this whole scenario to quite play out like they hoped. I’m sure.
I stepped back though there was no exit. And out from the fourth stall, I heard the wall break. Crumble. Paste and rubble falling and rolling out of the stall like vomit. I saw the gauntlet grip the edges of the stall. Then it came, like a flood. The splashing foot steps of four other men, wet with grime and dark across their eyes. Six of them now. And Gunther leading them with bitter, disappointed faces.
“Why didn’t you go inside?” He asked.
And I didn’t and hadn’t and will not speak of it hence forth.
As far as they know and knew, I was just taking a piss. And that’s as far as they’ll know.
Still? How did we get caught? I ask myself that now.
My neck jutted out and my arms bit into the chains as I moved to the side, tip-toed below a metal grate where rain water dripped down the patina surfaces, carrying with it the taste of old blood and steel. The drops went down to my tongue where my face soured and I brought it back, only to drink again a few seconds later. A rat walked along one thin line of steel on the grate, looked down at me and sounded too small squeaks before skittering off outside.
The door opened. The draft shook the hanging chains, they all shook like nuns at a church with the devil cometh through the doors. The branding stick sunk into unlit coals, the tray of bloody utensils took two rotations before stopping at the brakes.
“What have you gotten yourself into here?” Ritcher asked. He stepped forward, nodding his head.
“Nothing I’d like to see you about.” I breathed and blew up the bangs to my hair. “What are you doing here?”
“What am I doing here? Did you forget I needed you?”
“No. Yes.”
“Imagine my surprise when I arrived at your cell to be told that you’d tried to escape.” He grabbed a steel chair from a corner desk and made skid marks against the floors as he scratched it across and set it in front of me.
“They say you’re going to die.” He said.
“That right? Well, it was going to happen one day.”
“I can’t have that, Virgil.”
“If I could have it my way, I’d live forever.” I laughed. He didn’t.
“This isn’t good, Virgil. There’s nothing I can do while you’re here in this state.”
“How about getting me down.”
“I’m not even supposed to be here.” He set the book on his lap. Every scar fresh and old about me went cold, raising from their flesh.
“You have a week before the conclusion of your sentence. The other guy…Chancey or whatever-”
“Chaucer.”
“One week before Chaucer sells you out. That’s what they told me too.”
“That’s what they’ve been telling me. I know.” I said. “But I can’t, I won’t.”
“Then we need to hurry along.” He said. “Because if you’re going to die, I’m going to need my answers faster.”
“Why should I help you now that I know I’m dying?”
“You don’t have to help. I just hope that you’ll keep your word like you said you would before.” He said. “That neither trial nor torture would kill the promises past. I would hope that you have your honor.”
“The minute I help you with those names you’ll want nothing to do with me and I’ll die, guaranteed.” All my weight was to my arms and I went in circles, tied to those chains.
“That’s the plan, yes. To get as far as way from you the minute I know what I need to know.” He said. “The locations of your friends, Virgil. That’s all I need.”
“And you say honor ought to compel me?”
“That’s right.”
I smirked. Scoffed. Turned to the side and spat.
“Could I at least-”
“No.” Ritcher folded his legs. “There’s nothing I could give you or do for you now. You either read or you don’t. That’s it. Will you honor your deal? Are you not a man of your word?”
I took a deep breath and my head sunk.
It's not that I was honorable. Or that I had any hope he'd rectify things. But...I mean. What else did I have to do?
And maybe - just a little bit - I wanted to know about myself, as if by knowing, at least I could say I died half-aware of my existence.
