CHAPTER TWO
“You worked at Parkside Prison?” said Weldon, unable to hide his surprise.
The prisoner smiled. “Not officially,” she said. “Did you work there, before you came here?”
“Me?” Weldon gave a sharp laugh. “Not in the least. If I had worked at any of the lesser prisons, it would have been at Alleyway Prison.”
The prisoner looked puzzled for a moment; then she too laughed, in an easy manner. “Of course,” she said. “I thought there was something odd about your accent. You have risen far in the world.”
“Indeed.” Weldon was watching her closely as he spoke, scrutinizing her for signs of how this news would affect her. He had never tried to hide this fact of his past from anyone, for he had found over the years that the knowledge of it usually had one of two effects on his prisoners. If the prisoner was high-born, he was likely to be highly offended to learn that he was being searched by a man who had been born a commoner. If the prisoner was also low-born, he was likely to be jealous. In either case, Weldon knew how to handle the matter.
Weldon could not remember the last time he had met a prisoner of high birth who seemed delighted to be searched by a Seeker of common origins. “Are there many people with your background working in the dungeon?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Not in the inner dungeon,” he said. “Not among the guards and Seekers. I started work here in the outer dungeon, whose workers help to keep the Eternal Dungeon alive with food and fuel and other such services. It is fairly common for guards to rise to the position of Seeker, but I know of no other cases where an outer dungeon worker has become a guard and then a Seeker.”
He let his eyes rest lightly upon her as he spoke. He could guess that she was asking this question because she wished to know whether the Eternal Dungeon was idiosyncratic in its method of hiring. In truth it was, a fact more due to the character of the High Seeker than to any rules enshrined in the Code of Seeking. But Weldon did not wish to raise false expectations in the prisoner.
“You have women working here? I thought I heard a woman’s voice in the corridor.”
Weldon suppressed a smile at this direct question. “Not in the inner dungeon. Many of the outer dungeon workers are women – you must have heard one of our cleaning women.”
“Ah.” The prisoner showed no sign of disappointment. “Yes, it is like that at Parkside Prison too. Women are welcome in the outer areas of the prison, but they are not permitted to have contact with the prisoners.”
“Mistress . . .” He hesitated.
“Birdesmond,” she supplied.
“I thought you might prefer to be referred to as Mistress Manx.”
She smiled again. “I would if I were a man. But as you can see, I am a woman.”
“Mm.” Weldon tried not to let his eye roam; he had learned long ago that this made female prisoners understandably nervous.
Having deliberately avoided the portion of Birdesmond Manx’s records that gave her personal information, such as her date of birth, he had drawn two competing images in his mind of what she would look like. One image was of a scrawny girl, still at the age of sexlessness and confusion over what it means to be a woman. The other image, more sinister, had been of a mannish spinster, loud and aggressive, demanding to be called by her family name as though she were a man, and undoubtedly wearing bloomers.
The prisoner before him fit neither of these images. She was a soft-spoken, attractive woman in her early thirties, with her hair swept onto her head in a manner that emphasized rather than detracted from her femininity. In accordance with the customs of the Eternal Dungeon, she had been permitted to keep her own clothing, and in accordance with the customary treatment of female prisoners, her body had not been searched. The latter custom had once resulted in Weldon being stabbed by a concealed knife, and he found his gaze flicking down toward the dress that might conceal anything. It too was utterly feminine, with its tight waist and ballooning skirt and high collar. The only concession to comfort seemed to be the dress’s cloth, which was a practical flannel, and the low-heeled boots, which Weldon had noticed briefly when Mistress Birdesmond curtsied politely upon his entrance.
It was just as well concerning the boots, as she had refused Weldon’s offer to take a seat, a courtesy only offered to female prisoners. Weldon wondered whether she was trying to prove that she was as strong as a man. Manifestly, she was not: her frame was slight, and he could easily overpower her if she became violent.
Not that he would do so except in the most extreme circumstances; the Code declared that such matters must be left to the guards. For this reason, Seekers were hired for their mental powers, not their bodily strength. Weldon hoped that Birdesmond did not know this.
“You were speaking of Parkside Prison,” he prompted.
“Yes, well . . . Commoners are not so absent from that prison as you might think, Mr. Chapman. It is true that its officials and guards are high-born, but most of the prisoners are commoners – servants from households in the Parkside district.”
Weldon raised his eyebrows. “The rich in Parkside do not commit crimes?”
“The rich have money to bribe the soldiers to overlook their crimes,” she replied tartly. “And alas, the rich have the influence to persuade prison officials to take different courses of action with their prisoners. . . . Many years ago, I had a maidservant whose man was arrested on a charge of petty thievery. She begged me to go to the head of the prison and intervene on her man’s behalf, as she feared he would be dealt with harshly. I accompanied her to the prison and was appalled by what I saw there: dozens of families crammed into the outside room, waiting to see the prisoners or to plead on their behalf. No attempt had been made to provide proper waiting space for these people. Any high-born visitor was ushered immediately into the keeper’s office, but the common folk were required to sit on the floor, with no access to water or other such comforts. Babies were screaming, young women were weeping, and the guards took no notice of any of them, except to kick them out of the way when new prisoners arrived.
“It was as though I had stumbled upon the scene of a great fire or flood. I had no idea what to do first. Ignoring the protests of the guards, who wanted to draw me from this room as quickly as possible, I sat down and minded the babies and comforted the young women and talked with the older women. The next time I came, I made sure I was supplied with plenty of food and water, until, after several weeks of this, the prison officials were shamed into providing somewhat better facilities for the prisoners’ families.”
“I should imagine your work would have been done then.” Weldon was trying to react to this recital with a mildly interested expression, as though he had never heard such a tale before. In fact, much of this story had been told in Birdesmond’s application to become a Seeker. In reading the account, Weldon had been unable to make up his mind whether the writer had been motivated by naïveté or by a desire to bully the prison officials. Now he recognized, from the matter-of-fact tone of her voice, that Birdesmond was simply practical. She had done what she thought needed to be done, in the unfussed manner of a competent nurse or schoolmistress.
A slow smile curled its way onto Birdesmond’s lips. “I suppose it would have been, if I had not heard by then the stories of the families and realized how much remained to be done.”
The rest of the tale was easily told: Birdesmond’s unplanned journey to becoming the confidante of the prisoners’ families, the person that the women and children turned to and told their secrets to, certain that she would not betray their best interests, even if she believed that what their menfolk had done was wrong. Gradually Birdesmond came to believe that she could have equal success in persuading the prisoners to confide in her – better success at least than the prison workers, whose harsh indifference to the prisoners’ fates invariably elicited nothing more than terrified lies or cynical evasions.
“I had the opportunity to test this theory,” she said. “My uncle’s manservant was arrested for
arson soon thereafter. My uncle was convinced that another man had committed the crime, and he persuaded the prison officials, over their better judgment, to release the manservant and arrange for the arrest of the other man. But I was sure that the manservant had done the deed. I talked to him and was able to make him see that it would be wrong for him to let another man suffer imprisonment for his own crime. . . . The manservant’s self-deception as to what he had done lay deep; it took many days of talk between us before I could begin to reach the core of the lies he had used to shield himself from his pain, and to help him find a way toward healing himself. It troubles me that no one in the place where he is now imprisoned is willing to help him transform himself, but he and I continue to correspond, and I am convinced that he is better off where he is now than he would have been if he had continued his life of self-deception. Certainly the innocent man who was released is better off.”
Weldon paused a moment to see whether she would add protests that none of this was due to her own abilities, or whether, on the contrary, she would boast of her accomplishment. She did neither. Having told her tale in the briefest manner possible, she added, “I wanted very much to learn how to be better at this, and to find a way to help other men who had been arrested. But the officials at Parkside Prison would not permit me to work with the prisoners. Even if they had, I doubt that the workers there could have taught me anything more than I had figured out on my own.”
“And then you learned that such training was offered to Seekers,” said Weldon.
She smiled, saying nothing.
“And committed a crime of your own,” he added.
Her smile did not waver; she nodded. “A most terrible crime.”
“I do not suppose you are yet ready to speak about that crime?” he said softly.
“Not yet,” she said. “No doubt I will in the end. But . . . Well, I am sure you have had reluctant prisoners before.”
Her smile was so engaging that Weldon could not forbear a chuckle.
“Including women prisoners?” she asked.
He gave her a sharp look to see whether she was being coquettish, but it appeared that she was not aiming to use her feminine powers against him. So he let the conversation travel down the path she wished; this was often the best way with prisoners who seemed likely to cooperate in the end. “Yes, this dungeon is one of only a select number of prisons in Yclau that is authorized to search prisoners who have committed death-sentence crimes. It takes special training to search prisoners who are likely to be violent, and we receive too few women to justify starting a second dungeon for female prisoners alone. So we find ways to cope with the difficulties of such prisoners.”
“Ah.” Birdesmond seemed amused by his remark. Until now she had been holding her gloves in her ivory-skinned hands, lightly fingering the calfskin, but now she stuffed them into her skirt pocket and straightened, as though a turning point had arrived on the path. “Are the female prisoners assigned randomly to any Seeker who is available, or do you use another system to decide who will search female prisoners?”
“Such matters are regulated by the Code of Seeking, our book of rules and ethics,” Weldon said, keeping his eye carefully upon her. “You have heard of it, I suppose?”
“I have read it – I trust that is not a crime? I found a copy of it in my uncle’s library.”
“Most of the Code is not a secret. However, the details supplied in the Code as to how its principles are implemented are not published or spoken of to outsiders. I am afraid I cannot answer your question.”
He waited to see her rage at him or to weep with frustration, but she only said quietly, “I apologize, sir. It was wrong of me to question you in any case; I am your prisoner.”
“Mm.” Weldon scrutinized her, seeking signs that she was being sycophantic, but found none. Finally he said, “I do not mind questions, though I cannot answer all the ones you may ask. I can tell you that many of the female prisoners who arrive here are assigned to me.”
“Are you married?”
He was taken aback by the question – not because it had been asked, for he had heard it many times over the years. Female prisoners always seemed to think they could tell something important about him if they knew whether he was a bachelor. However, the question usually came earlier in the searching than this.
“No,” he said. “Seekers are not permitted to marry. You may recall that is mentioned in the Code of Seeking.”
He hoped she would take this hint that she was ill-prepared to be a Seeker, but she said simply, “I fear I did not understand that portion of the Code. Why should it be wrong for a Seeker to be married?”
Weldon could have sighed in relief. He should have guessed that this particular portion of the Code would prove a barrier to the attractive woman in front of him – indeed, he would have been surprised if it wasn’t. The only surprise was that this lady was not yet married. “You are engaged?” he said.
“I became engaged last winter,” she said. She added with a smile, “I know I am old to be unwedded. The fates know that I have had plenty of suitors, but . . . Well, it is hard to find suitors who are willing to abide a woman whose deepest ambition is to be a prison worker. I have scared away quite a number of men by being honest with them.”
“I am glad you found one who was sensible,” said Weldon. “I cannot see that there is anything wrong with wishing to help the outcasts of society – it is just a matter of discovering which work is best suited to one’s abilities.”
He waited to see whether she would be riled by this gentle suggestion, but she simply nodded. “By becoming a nurse, for example.”
“Exactly.” Weldon felt the prick of annoyance that always stabbed him when a prisoner proved to be more difficult than he had anticipated. This particular prisoner, it seemed, had already considered her various options. She was not proceeding on her chosen path out of ignorance.
She had a look of polite interest on her face, and he remembered belatedly that she had asked a question. He said, “Since you are engaged, you will understand that two people who are bound together may suffer greatly if one of them is required to remain for a lifetime in a place that the other could leave at will and probably should leave at some point. For this reason, Yclau law forbids life prisoners from entering into marriages, even if circumstances should allow them to have temporary contact with their loves.”
“And as a Seeker, you are eternally confined,” said Birdesmond, stealing the climax of his speech.
She had, it seemed, read the Code of Seeking quite carefully. “Yes,” he replied. “We Seekers call ourselves prisoners, for that is what we are by law. We cannot leave this dungeon at any time in our lives except with special permission from the Codifier – our ethical supervisor – and that permission is almost never granted. This being the case, it would be wrong for us to take wives, since we would either have to bind them to similar imprisonment, or else condemn them to a separation at a later date. So anyone who wishes to become a Seeker must give up all hope of ever marrying.” He looked pointedly at her.
“I see,” she replied. “I had gathered as much from the Code, but it is helpful to hear your explanation of it. Very helpful.” She smiled.
And with a jolt of the heart, Weldon recognized that smile. It was the smile of a Seeker who has just learned how he can break a prisoner.
o—o—o
“She is trying to demonstrate her abilities to me,” Weldon reported. “She wishes to show that she has the skills of a Seeker.”
Layle Smith nodded. He looked unsurprised. “It was the only reward she could gain by coming here, after all,” he said. “She had already explained in her application why we should train her. Now she wishes to give us proof that such training will not be wasted.”
“You were her first choice for the witness to such a demonstration, I am sure,” Weldon said. “She seems content for now to talk with me, however. How do you suggest I proceed, sir?”
The High Seeker lea
ned back in his chair, his gaze lifting to the grey ceiling above. Dusk had arrived, in this period between the end of the day shift and the beginning of the night shift. Elsdon, who was assigned to the night shift, was scooping up the playing cards on his table, readying himself for work. Weldon had not bothered to sit down, knowing that the High Seeker would leave this room when Elsdon did, though Layle would secrete himself in his Seeker’s cell while Elsdon was away.
“The decision is yours,” Layle said finally. “But if you wish my advice . . . Let her play her game. I think she will quickly find that the game is not so easy as she thought, particularly if you are to be her prisoner. Do you know what crime she plans to search you for?”
“Abusing my prisoners, I think. She has hinted at concern for the female prisoners here.”
“Has she?” Layle’s eyes wandered away from the crystalline ceiling above, to rest upon Weldon.
“Yes,” said Weldon, narrowing his eyes to try to read the High Seeker’s gaze. It was the most useless exercise he had undertaken in a long time: the High Seeker revealed nothing he did not wish to be revealed. “Is that important?”
“It is of passing interest. I must go, Mr. Chapman.”
Weldon turned and saw that Elsdon had reached the doorway and was looking back, waiting for Layle. This too was a game – a delicate game Elsdon played in order to pretend that the High Seeker, not he, was the one in charge of their relationship. Elsdon would never humiliate his love-mate by simply ordering him out of the room; in public, at least, he always gave the appearance of being Layle’s subordinate.
And now Weldon must play the same game with his prisoner. He sighed. Really, he wondered whether he should request that no more female prisoners be assigned to him. At least with male prisoners he had a fighting chance of understanding how their minds worked.
The Eternal Dungeon: a Turn-of-the-Century Toughs omnibus Page 36