The Dark Citadel (The Green Woman)

by Jane Dougherty

  Zachariah pushed the door closed. With fingers trembling at the enormity of what he had done, he pocketed the bunch of keys, undid the guard’s belt, and strapped the stunned man’s hands behind his back. The guard groaned again, and Zachariah stuffed the loaf of bread into his mouth.

  Drawing a deep breath, he took a quick look outside: the corridor was empty. The trembling of his hands had stopped, and he clenched his teeth with determination rather than with fear. Closing the door behind him, he set off cautiously down the silent corridor. The memory of the insolent girl came back, and he wished she could see him now. That idea gave him courage, made him feel more heroic, though the excited pounding of his heart was so fierce he feared it would give him away.

  The walls echoed with the sounds of clanking keys and rough shouts from different parts of the prison. Zachariah hurried with no real idea of where he was going. He looked for a staircase that would take him to the level above. Around the next corner he came up against a heavy door. His heart sank—there were three locks!

  He fumbled with the keys, fear setting off the trembling of his hands again. He looked over his shoulder and listened. Footsteps, heavy and slow, approached from the end of the corridor. He tried one key, then another. What if none fitted? What if this was the end of his guard’s sector? Zachariah froze; his fingers refused to grip the next key. His head rang with the sound of the footsteps. The keys dropped from his trembling fingers. Why had he not brought at least a knife?

  He spun round, brandishing the keys like a knuckleduster. As he crouched on his heels, ready to leap, the footsteps stopped. He heard the familiar clanking noise of a cell door opening and heaved a sigh of relief. The guard’s voice wafted round the corner, rough but low, like a father scolding a son who had fallen and hurt himself. Zachariah listened.

  “Why did you have to go and do it again? Couldn’t you learn your lesson the first time?” The voice sighed. “Now look at you. No hands, no job, what could you do now? You’ll be stuck in this dump for the rest of your useless life, being fed by a prison guard.”

  Zachariah heard the muffled sound of weeping.

  “Get on with you,” the guard went on in mock severity. “No use crying now. Maybe they’ll grant your wife’s petition and let you out. That’s where you’re lucky, you Ignorants. At least your families care about you. My wife—the bitch—nothing would please her more if I never came home at all,” he added with bitterness.

  Zachariah’s heart raced even faster. So he had been put in the wing with the mutilated, the thieves and brawlers with amputated hands and feet! Surely he wasn’t going to be punished like that, was he? Struggling to keep calm he tried another key. It fitted.

  Holding his breath, he opened the other two locks and swallowed hard with relief—short-lived. He pushed open the door and slid through. His heart pounded wildly, then skipped a beat as he heard the sound he had been dreading most of all—the high-pitched shriek of the alarm siren.

  Chapter 12

  Deborah stood on tiptoe trying to see what was going on. The wailing siren was making such a din she couldn’t hear what the guards milling about below were shouting, but from their agitated gesticulations, she guessed a prisoner had got loose. Footsteps crashed down the corridor. Guards shouted and banged on cell doors, swearing when they couldn’t see whether the cell was occupied. Deborah pressed into the corner next to the door, out of the guard’s line of vision. Footsteps stopped outside her cell, and she knew a guard was peeping in.

  “Idle little trollop!”

  The door swung open, and the guard stormed in to peer at the tumbled sheets of her bed.

  “I was looking,” she said calmly from the shadows. The guard started. “I saw him go,” she went on in the same calm voice. “Have you caught him yet?”

  “What did you see?” The guard snarled and took a step towards her.

  Deborah noted the knives in his belt, the bunch of keys, and that he wore no protective clothing, just the white prayer cap on his head and the prayer sash over his chest. He must have been at his morning devotions when the alarm went.

  “He was running across the courtyard towards the little door over on the other side.”

  “Which side? Which door?” He grabbed her and pushed her over to the window. “Show me. Quick!”

  Deborah appeared to hesitate, dodging from side to side, taking up all the space in front of the narrow window. “He came out of...there, and he ran over...there.” She pointed off to one side.

  “Where? Get out of the way and let me see.” The guard shoved Deborah aside and pushed his face up close to the iron bars. “What door? You dreamt that one, I think,” he snapped in irritation as he strained to see round an impossible angle.

  Deborah reached for the chair. “If I could just” —she put the chair down behind the guard —“get a bit” —she stood on the chair— “higher…”

  “There is no door in that corner, it’s just a—”

  Deborah grabbed the guard’s head in both hands and threw all her weight behind an almighty thrust. His head went through the bars, stopped only by his ears, and he roared in pain. He tried to pull back but Deborah clasped her hands together and dealt him a savage hammer blow to the back of the head. For an awful moment it stuck, but a second good shove got the ears through.

  The guard roared and jerked his head backwards and forwards in fury, pulling frantically at the bars like the prisoners in the stocks Deborah had seen on the public scaffold. She wondered if she ought to do something to stop his noise, but the din from the alarm and the guards charging about covered most of it. Calmly, she twisted her headscarf tightly round her face, leaving just a space for the eyes. She closed the cell door behind her and listened. She could have sworn she heard the faint notes of joyful laughter before it melted into the satisfying clang of the cell door closing behind her.

  Chapter 13

  In a high, airy room of the Parliament Building, looking down on the great square, a short man in military uniform paced angrily. Standing to attention, Principal Anastasias of the Providence Central Institute for Girls, almost two heads taller and infinitely more distinguished than his superior, might have been tempted to smile at the little man’s posturing, but he waited in respectful silence. The Lord High Protector certainly looked like a rosy-cheeked buffoon, but his small hog-like eyes glittered with malice.

  “Of course, she must be punished like any other unruly child,” the Protector said, wheeling round smartly on his heels to face the principal. “But was it absolutely necessary to lock her in the House of Correction? Would a good whipping not have sufficed?”

  The principal put his hands together in an ecclesiastical pose, and an expression of serene superiority settled on his hawk-like features. “The city is already rife with sedition, Excellency, treason, and heresy among the Ignorant population. The girl is just one example of how evil has wormed its way into the population, picking out the most susceptible and turning them into champions of the Serpent Witch. In your own household, Excellency, the Lady Selene—”

  “Leave my wife out of this, Principal! She is my problem and mine alone. A single headstrong female with delusions of grandeur hardly amounts to a threat to State security.”

  The principal bent his head in the briefest of bows. “As you wish, Excellency. You know the Lady Selene’s capacity for meddling better than anyone. You must decide how best to curb it.”

  “Thank you, Principal Anastasias, for according me the right to act as master in my own home,” the Protector said with a facetious curl of his lip. “Now, this girl. She has, of course, rebellious tendencies—it’s in the blood and to be expected. But she must not be allowed to go too far. It is your job to stop her, to nip these notions in the bud. Imagine if her rebellious instinct drove her to commit an unpardonable crime. How could she be executed? How could we execute our only, most precious hostage?”

  “Perhaps, Your Excellency, it would be better to crush the venomous serpent now, before she has
a chance to contaminate other young minds. It could be done…discreetly. Now that she is safely locked away, who would know?” The principal spoke softly, suavely. “Remember Eve, the bane of Mankind? The Book says—”

  “Don’t quote the Book at me!” His Excellency the Lord High Protector stamped his glossy-booted foot. “Have you not listened to a thing I’ve been saying? You seem to forget that the vermin who spawned this child is loose in the desert. Of course, you could easily hide the murder of an anonymous schoolgirl from the population. What would they care anyway? But you could never hide it from her mother. And if, in her wrath, the green whore decided to throw her army of demons and monsters at Providence, then what? What defence have we ever had but the Serpent’s own daughter? And you want to cut the little bitch’s throat? Talk sense, man!”

  “The hostage is not our only defence, Excellency,” the principal corrected. “The Lord Abaddon, they say, is assembling a formidable host in the desert. He desires the destruction of the Witch as much as we do—”

  “Because he desires her power,” the Protector interrupted.

  “And once he has destroyed her,” the principal carried on unperturbed, “think what an ally he would be. His army could rid us of all the traitors and partisans of the Witch and turn Providence into the most impregnable citadel, the hub of the greatest power the world has ever known.” The principal’s eyes glittered; his voice was loud and exalted.

  The Protector eyed him coldly. “So, you would have me open the gates of Providence to Abaddon and his demons?”

  “Demons, Excellency?” the principal objected in the smoothest, most diplomatic way. “The Ignorants have certainly spread lies about the Iron Horde, as they have about their filthy Serpent Witch, to create fear and unrest among the population. But who has seen these demons? Of course The Book makes great mention of the evil spirits that inhabit the desert, but surely this can be taken in a, let us say, metaphorical sense, suitable to the understanding of, how shall I put it, unformed minds?”

  The Lord High Protector’s expression hardened. “Stick to what you know, school-teacher. Go back to your maidens, give orders to your matrons, timetable your sewing classes. But leave the defence of Providence to men who have seen more than you have dreamt of in your worst nightmares.”

  The principal bowed his head, but not before the Protector had seen the furious glitter in his eyes.

  “We must hope, then,” the principal said, struggling to master his anger, “that her stay in your House of Correction will not give the Serpent’s daughter rash ideas, and she will soon be able to take up her sewing lessons again.”

  “I should not have to remind you, Principal,” the short man said hotly, puffing out his military chest, “that the girls in your charge should be chaste, demure maidens with thoughts only of obedience and motherhood. There should be nothing taught in your establishment that could turn them towards bloody and traitorous rebellion.”

  “I assure you—”

  “Naturally,” the Protector interrupted, adding graciously, “and your idea of bringing forward her betrothal, it’s a good one. That brute of a boy Hector Deodato will see she dances to the right tune. So get her out of the ridiculous mess you’ve organised and get her married. Right away!”

  “Excellency!” The principal bowed his way out of the room, his white robes swishing the glistening stone flags like the tail of an angry cat.

  Chapter 14

  Zachariah pushed the door open to the deafening wail of the alarm siren. At the end of a short corridor was another door, heavier than any he had so far encountered. Listening carefully, he could hear the rumble of handcarts and the purr of motor vehicles. The door opened onto the street and was certain to be guarded on the outside. In any case, he had run out of keys.

  At either side of the outer door were two high, windowless rooms. The right-hand room contained wheeled baskets filled with linen. Zachariah peered inside one of them; the smell was fresh, the linen was neatly folded. Each basket was labelled with the name of a wing. He reckoned this must be the linen store for the entire House of Correction.

  He put his head around the door across the corridor and wrinkled his nose: the smell was decidedly less fresh. The linen baskets were brimming over with crumpled bedding and stained sheets. Large cloth bags of dirty laundry were piled against the walls, stacked almost up to the ceiling. There was scarcely enough empty floor space to manoeuvre the heavy-wheeled baskets. The laundry must be due for collection.

  Zachariah pressed his palms and his cheek against the outer door and listened. The thick steel plate muffled the sounds from the street outside, but what he could hear drove his heart into the pit of his stomach. Hoarse laughter rang out intermittently amid the sound of tramping feet. Heavy-shod boots kicked the door, followed by more laughter and swearing. The footsteps tramped away, a commanding voice barked an order, the loud voices died to a low murmur of discontent.

  Guards. Disgruntled Black Boys. Zachariah closed his eyes, and as the adrenaline subsided and the pent-up tension eased, he felt like weeping.

  The siren howled like a demon, filling the entire prison with its call to search, search, and find. Zachariah clapped his hands over his ears, but still he imagined the demon voice denouncing him, prying demon eyes discovering his hiding place. Soon he would hear the sound of marching boots in the corridor that led to the laundry. All Zachariah could do was pray to whichever minor deity looked after escaping prisoners that today was a washing day. There was nothing else for it; he had nowhere else to go. He would have to go out with the dirty sheets and just hope the alert would not interfere with the laundry timetable.

  He was about to climb into one of the big baskets when a thought struck him. The things were on wheels, but he couldn’t be certain they ever left the prison premises. What if they were just unloaded manually onto the carts he’d seen occasionally pulled by Ignorant workers? They’d find him and turn him in. No Ignorant would risk his skin to help an escaping prisoner. The Ignorants hated Providence people; it was a well-known fact they’d like to see their Serpent Witch murder them all.

  Grimacing because of the smell, he set about emptying one of the cloth bags. Selecting the least stained and smelly sheets and blankets he could find, Zachariah climbed inside the empty bag and padded himself around as best he could. Then, pulling the drawstring inside, he tied it firmly, pushed the ends back outside and settled down to wait for the laundry cart.

  Chapter 15

  The House of Correction rang with running footsteps, with clanging cell doors and angry shouts from the guards as they searched for whatever or whoever it was had gone missing. Deborah realised as soon as she stepped outside her cell and started to run that she had no idea where she was going. At the end of her corridor she hesitated. The terrible din of the siren seemed to increase, urging her to hide—anywhere.

  A door stood ajar—she peeped inside. The room was empty except for a prayer mat on the floor and a table sprinkled with crumbs from a chunk of bread abandoned next to a half-empty bottle and a dirty glass. On the wall hung a guard’s jacket, and propped up next to it was the long baton the guards carried on their rounds. She darted inside and closed the door, shutting out the racket, aware for the first time of the excited pounding of her heart.

  Apart from the table, the room contained a small narrow bed, a metal filing cabinet, and a washbasin, over which hung a medicine cabinet with a broken catch. A quick look inside the filing cabinet revealed little except a spare pair of boots and a few dog-eared bits of paper. She opened the medicine cabinet. There was nothing in it but rolls of lint and gauze, sticky tape, syringes, and a large bottle of disinfectant.

  Well, what did you expect? she asked herself angrily. A cloak of invisibility and the keys to the front door? She was on the point of giving way to panic when there was a bright flash of light that blinded her to everything except the picture in her head. The picture showed a half-familiar scene: white-coated men and women with cheerful expressio
ns on their faces moved briskly between small, neat rooms. In the rooms, people lay in bed or sat up in armchairs. Some had legs in traction; others had the waxy pallor and haggard features of the very ill. All smiled back at the white-coated figures. Everything was white: the walls, the uniforms, the bed linen, the patients’ faces. Hospitals must have been like this once, Deborah realised, places where sick people went to be helped and cared for. And then she had an idea.

  * * * *

  A guard trotted down the corridor, struggling with the buttons of his too-tight jacket, a bewildered frown on his face. He had been told to search for an escaped prisoner, but nobody had thought to give him a description. The fugitive could have been anyone, a desperate Ignorant murderer armed with a hatchet, or a blind, toothless grandmother accused of ration-card cheating. How was he supposed to know? And where was there to hide in a prison anyway except in a cell? There didn’t seem much point in breaking out of your own cell to go and hide in somebody else’s, did there? He scowled at the stupidity of his superiors, then at the improper sight heading towards him. A medical assistant, a girl, carrying a tray of bandages was meandering in his direction as if she was on a sightseeing tour.

  “Here! Where d’you think you’re going?” he snapped, blocking the girl’s path. “Haven’t you heard there’s a security alert?”

  “I’m sorry,” Deborah replied sweetly, her downcast eyes fixed on the tray she was carrying. “Our class is here learning first aid.” She held up her tray full of packages of gauze and bandages, taking care not to look the guard in the face. “They called for more dressings in the infirmary, and I was sent. I seem to have lost my way.”

  The guard frowned and stroked his beard suspiciously. “The infirmary? You’re miles out of your way.”