The Eternal Dungeon: a Turn-of-the-Century Toughs omnibus

by Dusk Peterson

CHAPTER THREE

  So things went on after that in the same manner. My mind wasn’t much on our conversation these days; I had my eye on the top in the corner, wondering whether the youth would be able to control him if he started becoming violent. But it did occur me to ask the youth about some of the things the soppish guard had told me about life in the Eternal Dungeon. “He said that the Seekers aren’t content with breaking a man’s body and making him confess to his crime. They want to break the prisoner’s mind as well, making him say he was wrong to have committed the crime.”

  The youth shook his head. He was sitting on the end of the bed-shelf closest to the door, with his back to the green-eyed Seeker, who was having one of his moments of furious scribbling. “I might have made that mistake at one time. I’ve come to believe, though, that it’s wrong to tamper with men’s consciences. Some prisoners truly do need the help of the Seekers to recognize their guilt, but there will always be a few prisoners who are so convinced of the righteousness of their deeds that you’d have to change them into a different type of man before you could convince them of their guilt. I don’t feel qualified to transform a prisoner’s character to that extent. In cases like that, all I’ll aim for is a confession of the crime.”

  Well, this was news to me. He might have told me that from the start and saved me weeks’ worth of nightmares of me being on the rack, screaming, “I was wrong to kill Mendel! I’m a terrible man for having done it!” The image of the screams had bothered me more than the image of the rack. I hated the idea of becoming one of those boot-licking bottoms who agrees with every bit of nonsense that the tops throw our way.

  I was thinking about this, and thinking that I was lucky not to be in the hands of any other Seeker, when there was a knock on the door. The burly guard stuck his head through the door, saying, “Mr. Chapman would like to speak with you, sir. Shall I show him in?”

  “No, I’ll speak with him outside.” The youth gave me one of his tedious apologies and stood up, walking toward the door.

  The green-eyed Seeker had been scribbling all this time, oblivious even to the guard’s interruption, but when he saw the youth open the door and begin to walk through it, he shot to his feet as though he were a child being abandoned by its mother. “Mr. Taylor?” he said.

  I swear, there was panic in his voice. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t been there.

  “It’s all right,” said the youth in the tone of a mother comforting her child. “I’ll be just outside.” And he left, closing the door behind him.

  The green-eyed Seeker continued to stare at the door, as though expecting the youth to leap back into the cell. His board of papers had fallen from his hand when he jumped up, and now his hands were tightened into fists. He was beginning to shake.

  This was bad; this was very bad. It was clear that the green-eyed Seeker was aware of his own unsteadiness and believed that he’d lose all control if he wasn’t in the same room as the youth. And if he lost control, there was only one person in the cell who was available to be the target of his fury.

  I decided it was time for a little force on my own part. Trying to keep as far away from the green-eyed Seeker as I could, I went up to the cell door and hammered on it. The burly guard opened the door. Beyond him, I could see the youth talking to another Seeker, no doubt discussing some trivial business matter.

  “Look,” I said in a loud voice to the youth, “can’t you talk with this bloke when you’re finished with me? I’m not going to wait around forever for you to get back to work with me.”

  I don’t know what the youth thought I was going to do as an alternative to waiting for him – start a xylophone band with the green-eyed Seeker, perhaps – but he said promptly, “Of course, Mr. Little. Mr. Chapman, would it be possible for us to discuss this later?”

  The other Seeker murmured something in assent, and the youth returned to the cell. By the time he got back, the green-eyed Seeker had recovered enough that he was sitting cross-legged again, writing on his paper, but I could see that he was still shaking. The youth looked over at him, then knelt down beside him and put his hand on the other top’s hand. He murmured something soft in the top’s ear.

  That solved one mystery that had been teasing my mind: I’d been wondering whether the green-eyed Seeker had any interest in the youth other than business. I remembered my imaginings about the youth’s hero worship. Well, maybe that was how their mate-bond had begun, but judging from the way that the green-eyed Seeker listened silently to what the youth was saying, it was clear who was the top in this relationship now.

  It was disconcerting to learn that the youth I’d thought so soft was serving as leader to a top like this. Not that I let that stop me from being angry at his idiocy. I waited till the youth and I were seated together again, and I was sure that the green-eyed Seeker was immersed in his work. Then I hissed at the youth, “Don’t you ever leave us alone again! Don’t you realize he’s on the point of breaking?”

  From the tension in the youth’s body, I guessed that he did. He said stiffly, “I apologize, Mr. Little. You were in no danger, but I should not have placed you in a position where you felt that you had anything to fear.”

  Typical top nonsense. They’re incapable of thinking about anyone but themselves, so if you express concern over the welfare of another human being, they think you’re worried only about yourself. Mind you, in this case I suspected there was at least a little concern on the youth’s side for what was happening to the green-eyed Seeker. I’ve been around enough men who are best mates with each other to recognize that bond when I see it.

  “This is ridiculous,” I said, still keeping my voice low so the green-eyed Seeker wouldn’t hear. “If you think he would be helped by getting back to work, why don’t you just hand me over to another Seeker and go to work together on another case?”

  “That’s not permitted by our Code, unless it’s in the best interests of the prisoner.”

  Bloody rules; I ought to have known that a top would worry more about business regulations than about his best mate. Even from a business point of view, it seemed to me that the youth was being shortsighted. When an owner becomes too ill to work any more, the business always suffers before a new owner is found. And if the owner loses his head and begins giving insane orders . . . I’d been in a situation like that, and the top had done a lot of damage before the tops working for him had gotten up the courage to throw him out of the business.

  I’d seen the green-eyed Seeker’s look when I arrived. I knew what sort of damage that bloke could do.

  And that he was on the point of breaking I no longer doubted. It’s never pleasant, watching a man slowly lose his mind; it has happened to enough mates of mine to sicken me. What I couldn’t understand – I’ll never understand this about tops – is how the youth could watch this happening to his best mate and not abandon his work immediately. What the bloody blades did it matter whether I or any other prisoner was broken, if his mate’s mind was lost in the process? What is it about tops that makes them care more about running a business than about the people around them?

  I was beginning to respect the green-eyed Seeker, though. Day after day he sat in the corner, his mind unravelling – and he was clearly aware that his mind was unravelling. Yet never once did he interrupt the youth’s conversations with me or ask for any sort of help. It was bloody stupid, but it was the type of stupidity I could admire.

  So I knew that matters had reached a crisis point the day that the green-eyed Seeker suddenly threw his writing board to the ground with a crash, pressed his legs against his chest, and cradled his head in his arms. His body was shaking again.

  The youth looked back, made one of his idiotic apologies to me again, and went over to kneel by the Seeker. I couldn’t hear what the two of them were saying; Seekers are the softest talkers I’ve ever run across. After a while, the youth helped the green-eyed Seeker to his feet and said, “I’ll be back in a minute, Mr. Little.”

  He was
as good as his word; he was back in the cell in one minute flat. The green-eyed Seeker wasn’t with him. I stared at the youth in alarm. I didn’t like the idea of a mad top wandering around the dungeon alone. “Where is he?” I asked.

  “The High Seeker is waiting in the next cell for us to finish here,” the youth replied.

  It took me a moment to realize what he was saying; then my jaw dropped. “You’re making mock,” I said. “You locked your mate in a cell?”

  He stiffened; I’d forgotten the top propensity for pretending they didn’t have any special relations with the men they worked with. “The High Seeker thought it best that he wait next door,” he said. “He didn’t want to be a disturbance to our work here.”

  I don’t think I’d been so angry since the day Mendel beat the boy. That was cruel enough, but to lock up your best mate when you know that he’s on the point of mind-death, just so that you can finish a bit of business . . . I’d always known that tops’ mercilessness knew no bounds, but I’d never imagined anything like this.

  “You bloody idiot!” I shouted. “Get out of here! Go back and get your mate out of that cell, take him home, give him something warm to drink, tuck him into bed, and then sing songs to him or whatever you tops do to bring people back to themselves!”

  “There’s no need to shout, Mr. Little,” the youth said in an infuriatingly calm manner. “If you don’t feel like continuing our conversation today, I can come back tomorrow.”

  Typical top: you give him a gift, and he thinks you’re asking for a gift. “Come back in two weeks!” I shouted. “I don’t want to see you till then!” If he wanted to think me a frightened prisoner, so be it, as long as he took care of that mate of his.

  Well, he returned to my cell the next evening, at his usual time. I would have bashed in his head, except that it was clear from the tension in his body that he hadn’t had a good day. Perhaps the singing hadn’t worked.

  “Where’s your mate?” I asked before he could speak.

  “The High Seeker’s location isn’t important,” he said. “Now, we were talking yesterday about a prisoner’s right to follow his own conscience . . .”

  I could guess well enough where the green-eyed Seeker was. I imagined him locked in the next cell, pressed all in a ball as he strove to keep back madness on his own, while his best mate engaged in chit-chat with a prisoner.

  I’d just about made up my mind before the youth arrived, but that settled it. “Right,” I said briskly. “I’ve decided to follow my conscience. I want to make my confession.”

  He looked startled; even a clever top can be incapable of recognizing what’s in front of his nose. He recovered quickly, though. He called in the burly guard – the guards didn’t have to strain to record my words from behind the door after all – and then he had me describe what I’d done. I was brief about it, saying I’d killed Mendel with my own hand, with no one else’s assistance, and that I wasn’t sorry for what I’d done. That seemed enough of a confession to me, but the youth insisted that I say for the record what I’d told him about Mendel’s character and about him beating the boy. I suppose he thought that would make me look better at the trial.

  I could have told him otherwise; I’d been in and out of the magistrates’ judging rooms enough times not to have any soppish illusions. All the magistrates are tops, after all.

  I was eager to get the youth out of my cell and back to the green-eyed Seeker, but he, being a top, was utterly oblivious to what was going on. I swear, I think he even believed I was angry at him for spending time worrying about his best mate. He would never have guessed that I despised him most for not putting his mate’s interests first.

  At one point he told me that he’d asked the High Seeker two nights before whether it would be possible to bypass the dungeon rule that prisoners could only be offered eternal confinement in the Eternal Dungeon if they repented of their crimes. Bothering his mate with business at a time like this! Honestly, the midwives must do something to tops’ minds at birth to keep them from having any sense of reason.

  After I’d given my confession, the youth insisted that he needed to spend time with me to prepare me for the next day. Since he was being stubborn about this, I made him send a message to his mate, by way of the guards, that I’d given my confession. I hoped that the news would be enough to pull the green-eyed Seeker back by whatever slender thread attached him to sanity.

  The youth and I had a nice conversation that evening, I’ll grant that. I wasn’t much surprised to learn that he’d been a prisoner himself – his earlier remark about being broken had made me wonder – but it was a shock to hear what he’d been charged with, especially when, at my insistence, he recited the gory details of what had happened. Well, you never know about tops: you think one’s a soft puppy, and you learn he’s a cold-blooded kin-murderer. It helped me to understand, though, why he hadn’t given me any lectures about what a bad baby I’d been. He wasn’t really in a position to do so.

  He was able to tell me what my trial would be like, and we talked a bit about the hangman. It turned out that the youth had thought, up till the last moment of his own trial, that he’d be executed. I didn’t have any illusions about last-minute reprieves – the youth had been one of those prisoners who stated his repentance in his confession – but still, it was nice to talk about shared experiences. Reminded me of the times I’d spent with my mates, grousing about what we suffered under the tops.

  There’s not much more to tell. The trial was the travesty I’d figured it would be; the youth did his best for me, but I could tell that the magistrate had taken one look at me and started fitting me for hemp-rope. Afterwards, the youth wanted to accompany me to the executioner, but I told him that I wasn’t like his mate, needing an escort. I was eager to get the youth out of there before he went soppish on me.

  No such luck. He said softly, “I’ll always remember you.”

  I laughed then, but he said earnestly, “I mean it. The other Seekers all say they remember their first prisoner.”

  “I was your first?” I was pleased, I’ll admit. It’s always nice to know that you’ve taken someone’s cherry.

  “The first and undoubtedly my worst,” he said, all his soppishness disappearing in that disconcerting fashion of his. “If the High Seeker gives me another one like you, I’ll go into retirement.”

  I laughed again, clapped him on the back, and said, “Get out of here. Your mate’s waiting for you.”

  He left, laughing. That was for my benefit, I think; he knew by now how I hated soppishness. I was left to deal with a fool guard who thought I’d been assaulting a Seeker and wanted to warn me against making an attempt to escape.

  Like I had any chance of that. The guards returned me to my bindings and escorted me out. As we were travelling down the corridor, I saw the youth again. He was with the green-eyed Seeker, who’d been at the trial, but who’d been seated at the back of the judging room, behind me; I’d caught only a brief glimpse of him till now.

  I don’t think either of them believed they’d be seen; they were in a dark alcove off the corridor, and their hoods were raised. The youth had his back to me, so I never saw what his face looked like, but I could see the green-eyed Seeker’s face, because he was embracing the youth and had his head resting upon the youth’s shoulder. The lines in his face were relaxed. I guessed that he had managed to make his way back to sanity by that slender thread.

  Well, he’d better have; that’s all I can say. The guards hustled me along, so I didn’t see much more, but I caught the moment when the green-eyed Seeker raised his head high enough to give the youth a kiss on the cheek. It was the sweetest portrait of mate-bonding I’ve ever seen.

  Bloody blades, what a sop I’ve become. I still don’t understand why I did it. What kind of idiot bottom sacrifices himself for the sake of two tops, one of them someone he barely knows and the other his torturer? It doesn’t make sense.

  I’ll tell you something that’s even odder, though.
I didn’t eat breakfast before the trial – my stomach wasn’t up to it – so I know that the youth couldn’t have slipped any silver pot-herb into me. Yet since seeing those two tops hugging each other in the corridor, I’ve been floating, and everything around me looks piercingly beautiful. I can’t make sense of it, but it’s a nice way to go. Even the hood they just put over my head doesn’t change how I feel.

  Maybe the youth will remember me after all.

  o—o—o

  o—o—o

  . . . The list consists of thousands of names, most of which have been crossed out. Prisoners who have suffered execution leave no records of their life.

  We turn now to the (probably apocryphal) tale of Layle Smith’s nervous breakdown in his thirty-sixth year, and how he was saved from madness by a prisoner who sacrificed his own life for the sake of the High Seeker.

  As historians continue to emphasize, although Layle Smith’s brief entrance into madness is recorded by a number of reliable historical sources, there is not a single piece of documentary evidence from Layle Smith’s time to support the tale about a prisoner being the man who drew the High Seeker back from his madness. Yet this tale appears in no less than a dozen ballads that were passed around among the Yclau commoners, and in modern times this folk legend has entered into the history books. It is a shame that we will never know whether this episode actually occurred, but it shows the power of the commoners to make their mark upon history in their own manner. Or as members of the Eternal Dungeon would have put it, it shows the central importance of the prisoners.

  Several months after Layle Smith began to emerge from his madness of 356, a visitor to the Eternal Dungeon praised the bravery of the Seekers, who risked their lives daily to work among dangerous criminals. Layle Smith’s reply now hangs upon the wall of virtually every office of psychology in our nation:

  “Searching other people is easy. Allowing oneself to be searched is an act of courage.”

  —Psychologists with Whips: A History of the Eternal Dungeon.

  Rebirth

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  The Eternal Dungeon is my Gothic Revival series, about a medieval-style dungeon (or, strictly speaking, a Reformation-style dungeon) within a nineteenth-century society. As such, the series initially has as little connection to nineteenth-century history as a Pre-Raphaelite painting. Only gradually, as the series progresses, will nineteenth-century social forces begin to exert themselves upon the dungeon.

  The lack of strong Victorian references in the first novel is therefore not accidental. The anachronistic state of the Eternal Dungeon in this novel represents the state of many nineteenth-century institutions that would later find themselves, with shock, confronting the societal demands of the modern world.

  o—o—o

  o—o—o

  o—o—o

  === Transformation ===

  O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me.

  Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off.

  Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.

  For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether.

  Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me.

  Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.

  Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?

  If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.

  If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;

  Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.

  If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me.

  Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.

  —Psalm 139:1-12 (King James Version).

  Transformation 1

  DECEPTION

  The year 357, the sixth month. (The year 1880 Fallow by the Old Calendar.)

  Every psychologist of our day knows the origin of transformation therapy, though many prefer not to speak of it. It is considered embarrassing to be forced to admit that your primary tool for curing patients was developed by a group of torturers.

  In popular tales told about the Golden Age of the Eternal Dungeon, it is often said that the method of transforming twisted criminals into human beings of healthy spirit was developed by a single, particularly talented torturer. Of course, the truth is far more complex. Many torturers – or “Seekers,” as torturers in the Golden Age preferred to call themselves – contributed to the principles of transformation therapy. Indeed, it is likely that our debt to most of the Seekers has been obscured by the loss of records over time. We who work in the modern profession of psychology will never fully know what courageous acts were committed to bring about the development of transformation therapy. Therefore, we will never fully know what we owe the men who worked in the Eternal Dungeon . . .

  —Psychologists with Whips: A History of the Eternal Dungeon.