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

by Dusk Peterson

CHAPTER FIVE

  He found her staring at the fiery wall again, but she did not turn when he entered. She said abruptly, “The first line in the Code of Seeking is, ‘A Seeker must be willing to suffer for the prisoners.’”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “That line is also in the oath all Seekers take.”

  “The words seem odd to me,” Birdesmond said. “It is the prisoners who suffer most, not the Seekers. It is the prisoners who must be broken, and perhaps tortured and sent to their deaths. How dare the Seekers think of their own pain when they give such great pain to others?”

  Weldon scrutinized the back of her head. It was tilted as she looked up at the iron ring from which tortured prisoners were bound, and he felt a pang of sympathy for her. She was quicker than him. He had already taken his vow as a Seeker before he realized the extent of the power he held over prisoners, and what the consequences of that power must be.

  But then, she had already used her skills to send a man to prison. Perhaps this had been on her mind all this time, and she had simply been waiting to find someone to whom she could ask the question.

  So he answered her, saying, “The pain we feel is almost never as great as the pain of the prisoners. We do our best to lessen the difference between ourselves and the prisoners; we imprison ourselves in this dungeon and we undergo training that requires us to feel much of the same pain as we may inflict on our prisoners. But even so, our pain can rarely match that of our prisoners, because what hurts them most is the unknown – the uncertainty as to whether their breaking will destroy their futures.”

  “Perhaps,” she suggested in a low voice, “no one has the right to inflict such pain upon another person.”

  It would be easy, oh so easy, to let this be the end of the conversation. All he need do was agree, or perhaps remain silent, and she would be left without any justification for what she was doing to him and wished to do to others. He could end her journey now.

  But the answer was there, in the very words she had spoken. He guessed that the answer would come to her late some night, even if he did not supply her with it. So he said, “We do not vow to suffer as much as the prisoners. All we vow is to be willing to suffer for them. If our duty requires us to undergo pain for the prisoners, or even to die, then we must embrace our suffering willingly. We must be prepared at any moment to give all that we have to help transform the prisoner.”

  She turned then; her face was clear, and there was a firmness in her eyes that disturbed him. She said, in a voice as gentle as though she had been the one offering the comfort, “It is easier for the Seeker, though, if the prisoner recognizes the need for his own pain, and accepts it.”

  “It is much easier,” he agreed, and waited.

  Her gaze travelled over him, and he wondered what she was seeing. He had often looked at himself in the mirror when he was younger and had decided long ago that he was the stereotype of what a commoner should look like: stocky, rough-haired, coarse in looks, with no grace in his bodily movements. He did not place much concern in this. As a Seeker, he knew that ugliness of the body might be matched by beauty of the soul, and he must have enough of that beauty to have drawn the High Seeker’s heart to him. But that was many years ago, at a time when Layle was willing to be his friend. The past was past.

  “I was thinking overnight of what we discussed,” Birdesmond said in a clear voice. “It occurred to me that there must be a number of men in this dungeon who are unable to feel passion for men – is that not so? Perhaps you know some of them?”

  He could have laughed. It was the most elementary device a Seeker could use to comfort his prisoner: to allow him the opportunity to create an imaginary friend until such time as the prisoner was ready to admit that his friend’s troubles were his own.

  “I do,” he agreed. “One of my friends is in that situation.”

  Birdesmond nodded. She was not fiddling with her gloves today; her hands were relaxed at her sides. “It occurred to me also that different men might have come here for different reasons. I am sure, of course, that all of the Seekers and guards here wish to help the prisoners. But perhaps some of the men here – perhaps a very few – came here in an effort to hide from knowledge about themselves.”

  Weldon felt himself relax; it seemed that Birdesmond was going to continue exploring what was old territory to him. “You mean my friend might have come here because he was nervous around women and sought to live in a place where he would not have to undergo the trials of courting women? Yes, I think that has occurred to him.”

  Birdesmond looked at him steadily. “So your friend is nervous with women?”

  “I think so. At any rate, he has been able to reconcile himself to the fact that he will never marry.”

  “And so your friend who is nervous around women makes all effort to avoid the company of women in the Eternal Dungeon?”

  Her soft words hit him like a blow. His mind staggered, and he sought to maintain his balance. “He – he has worked somewhat with women since his arrival here.”

  “Somewhat, or a great deal?”

  “No one in the inner dungeon works a great deal with women,” he said quickly.

  “But he has worked with women more than the other guards and Seekers do.”

  Silence. Then: “The decision whether to work with women is not entirely his own. He is given his work assignments by the Record-keeper, who often consults with the High Seeker—”

  “But he could refuse to work with women, if he wished to? He could ask for other assignments?”

  Another silence. Then, stiffly: “I am not sure what you are suggesting.”

  Birdesmond smoothed down her skirt before saying, “It seems to me that, if your friend is so comfortable around women that he is willing to work with them more often than other Seekers do, then the trouble he believes he escaped by coming here cannot have been simply a nervousness around women. Perhaps the trouble was something greater than that.”

  His mouth was dry. He swallowed. “What sort of trouble?”

  She did not answer at once. Her gaze wandered away from him, exploring the smooth stones of the cell, the metal door behind him, the well-swept flagstones, and finally the hard sleeping-bench provided for prisoners. “Your friend – has he fallen in love with anyone since he came here? Has he felt passion of body and heart toward anyone?”

  “He thought he did once,” said Weldon, adding swiftly, “but that was toward a man. He has discovered since that time that he cannot feel passion toward men.”

  “But he has not fallen in love?”

  “No. He lives in the Eternal Dungeon. He cannot mate himself with another man—”

  “Yet you say he works with women.”

  A third silence. Weldon could feel the blood surging through his veins as his heart hammered within him. His skin had turned hot. He said, “The women he works with . . . they are prisoners. It would be inappropriate for him to fall in love with a prisoner.”

  “Certainly it would be inappropriate for any prison worker to establish bonds of love with a prisoner, but I do not recall that the Code of Seeking is so foolish as to forbid the Seekers and guards from involuntary responses, such as falling in love with prisoners. Surely that is not uncommon? It happens quite a lot at Parkside Prison.”

  His breath was starting to rasp; he tried to steady it. “It depends on the Seeker or guard. Some men are better than others at controlling their responses—”

  “Oh?” Birdesmond raised a delicate eyebrow. “So the well-controlled Seekers never fall in love?”

  Involuntarily, Weldon’s mind leapt to an image of Elsdon kneeling beside Layle. Elsdon, Layle’s former prisoner. Weldon was not so foolish as to think that Layle’s love of the young man had begun only after Elsdon ceased to be his prisoner.

  “I am not sure . . .” His voice faltered, and he tried again. “I am still not sure what you are trying to say.”

  “Well, your friend’s situation seems odd to me. You say that he can fall in love with
women, can feel passion for them, and yet, after all these years of working with female prisoners, he has not felt passion for a single one of them. Is it possible, Mr. Chapman, that, if your friend had remained in the lighted world, he would have failed to feel passion for any of the women he courted?”

  Breathing now seemed an exercise that took more effort than it was worth. He stared at Birdesmond blankly, as though he were in darkness and could see nothing before him. No path, no door – never any door. It was not beyond his view; it simply did not exist. It had never existed.

  “I cannot love,” he whispered.

  “What did you say, Mr. Chapman?”

  He stared at her, dimly seeing the soft contours of her face. She was beautiful, she was attractive in both body and soul. And he felt nothing. Nothing.

  “He cannot love,” he said hoarsely. “My friend . . . He is incapable of love. He – he is misshapen, he has a crippled soul. Something must have gone wrong when he was reborn into his new life. Here in the Eternal Dungeon, where some men are celibate, he can hide his deformity more easily. But he is twisted, down to his very heart.”

  Birdesmond responded by frowning. She glared at him, as she might have glared at an ugly slug that had slid its way onto her path. She looked thoroughly disgusted. “Really, Mr. Chapman,” she said. “I might remind you that you are a commoner.”

  It was a blow he was not prepared for. He turned his head, as though she had doubled a whip and struck it against his cheek. He remembered Layle saying, “I am placing you at some risk.” He ought to have heeded those words.

  He had seen it many times in his work, what happened to a prisoner at this point in the searching. The prisoner’s terrible vulnerability, as though he had been stripped of all skin, so that any blow taken would be a death blow to his soul. It took skill – oh, so much skill – not to harm the prisoner in those moments. This was particularly the case when the prisoner had revealed himself, through his confession, to be a vile person, one who could be worthily scorned. It took all the skill of a Seeker to keep from scorning such a prisoner, to keep from harming him beyond repair.

  And Mistress Birdesmond was not a Seeker. He ought to have remembered that. He had taken the most dangerous step in the world: he had allowed someone who was not a Seeker the opportunity to search him.

  He was shaking now, thinking of her look and her words, thinking of the contempt he had endured when he first came to work in the inner dungeon. He had survived such contempt because he had convinced himself that it was unjustified. He was not a vile man. He was not “common” in the true sense of the word.

  Only he was. However unjustified the high-born might be in scorning other commoners, the scorn had been justified in his case. He was a man incapable of love, a man who was not truly human. He had hidden that knowledge from himself and from others, but now it was clear to him. He had felt no stirring of the heart toward Layle, not only because he was unable to feel love toward men, but because he was unable to feel love toward anyone.

  And Birdesmond knew this and scorned him for it. Sweet blood; sweet, sweet blood. If he could only get away from here – if he could only find a way to escape—

  He remembered then the prisoner in the crematorium, whose candle he lit every few months. He closed his eyes. No – no, he would not do that. However much he deserved it, he would not do that to himself. Layle would never be able to bear it if he did.

  The thought of the High Seeker brought unexpected comfort to Weldon. Layle too was a man who had committed vile deeds in his life, and he had found a way beyond that. Somehow, Weldon would do the same. He opened his eyes and said steadily to Birdesmond, “The fact that I am a commoner is irrelevant to my friend’s condition. Other commoners are capable of love; my own parents were very much in love with one another.”

  Birdesmond looked puzzled. Then, for a moment, a stricken expression passed over her face. It was quickly gone, and she said calmly, “I apologize, Mr. Chapman; I expressed myself badly. I did not mean to imply that I was using the word ‘commoner’ as an insult. I was trying to point out that commoners are often wiser in matters of love than are the high-born.”

  He made no reply; it was too much of an effort to do so. He dared not let himself hope that he was anything more in her eyes than a slug.

  “You spoke just now of love, and then you said that your parents were in love, as though the two were the same. Do you really equate love with passion?”

  “Of course not,” he said automatically. “It all depends on what sort of relationship is sought. Two friends can love each other without passion, or a parent can love a child—” He stopped, a glimmer of hope beginning to rise in him. It was too small to penetrate the darkness within him.

  “Only friends? Are you saying that, if a man and a woman wish to share their life together, they must feel passion for one another?”

  He frowned, uncertain of where she was leading him now. She sighed and said, “Mr. Chapman, I told you I had many suitors. They came to me and told me that they loved me to the depths of their being, that they would love me through a thousand lifetimes, that their love was as endless as the monarchy. And then, when they learned that I wished to be a prison worker, somehow their endless love disappeared and they abandoned me. After this had happened a dozen times or more, it occurred to me to ask a suitor what he meant when he said that he loved me. It turned out that what he meant by ‘love’ was a stirring here” – she held her hand over her heart – “and here.” She lowered her hand slightly.

  Weldon felt himself blush. Noticing this, Birdesmond smiled and said, “Such stirrings are indeed exciting; I have felt them myself. They hold possibilities for binding two people together. But in order to stay bound . . . I asked my family and friends what they thought love was, and they all defined it the way my suitors did, as a feeling of passion. Then it occurred to me to ask the families I spent time with at the prison.”

  “You received a different answer?” he blurted out. He was trying, desperately, to remember now what it was that he seen in his parents’ relationship with one another that had made him desire so greatly to find a life-mate – the bond he had sensed between Layle and Elsdon, which had made his heart ache with longing again. Surely it had been passion?

  “The high-born can afford such luxuries as marrying for passion,” Birdesmond said. “After all, if their passion dies, they can simply divorce. But people living in poverty cannot afford that luxury. They cannot hire a nurse for their children if they send away their wife, and they cannot persuade someone to earn bread for their children’s mouths if they send away their husband. They must pick their life-mates more carefully. And so, when I asked the young women and youths in the prison waiting-room how they chose their husbands and wives, their answers were down-to-earth. While they enjoyed being in love, they picked their partners on the basis of which people would be likely to stay with them and live the type of life they wished to live. They sought people they could join their fortunes with, whom they could care for and be cared for by, and who would be willing to help them raise a family. This was the foundation of their marriages, and I have no doubt, Mr. Chapman, that if your parents’ marriage was as successful as you say, that this was the foundation for them as well.”

  Weldon stared at the far wall of the cell blankly, watching the flames leap and fall. Finally he said slowly, “I think . . . I think it is not only that way with commoners. I know two Seekers . . . If you asked them, no doubt they would say that they were drawn to one another through passion. Yet one of the Seekers has been gravely ill, and caring for him has been a great burden on the other Seeker. I do not think the second Seeker would have remained with the first Seeker through all this time of illness unless they were bound together through something more than passion.”

  Birdesmond said nothing. After a while, Weldon tore his gaze away from the light. Flames continued to dance before his eyes, but his vision was dark once more. “This knowledge comes too late,” he said hoar
sely. “If I— If my friend indeed took employment in the inner dungeon partly because he believed himself incapable of love and because he sought a place where he could hide this knowledge from himself and others . . . If that is true, it is too late. He cannot leave here. It is still women he is drawn to, even if in a passionless manner, and he cannot join himself with a commoner woman who would be willing to enter into such a marriage as you describe. That door is lost to him; it is somewhere long behind him.”

  “I had guessed as much,” Birdesmond said softly. “And so you see, your friend has deceived himself twice: once by thinking he was incapable of love, and twice by thinking he could find happiness in this place. All he can find here is the pain of knowing that he has left behind the place where he might have found his own kind of love.”

  The darkness was silent. Weldon felt his legs tremble, as a man’s legs might tremble if he has been running for a long time and is now about to collapse in exhaustion. He could not speak.

  Birdesmond asked softly, “Do you wish to stop the searching?”

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  The darkness did not speak.

  o—o—o

  “Yes, Mr. Chapman.” The High Seeker’s gaze remained fixed upon the document whose margins he was scribbling in. “How are matters going with your prisoner?”

  “Quite well, sir. She has succeeded in breaking me.”

  Layle’s pen stopped in its path abruptly. After a moment, the High Seeker slowly raised his head to look up at Weldon. Dawn was just beginning to touch the crystalline ceiling above them; the strongest light in the room came from the lamp on the table between them, which cast deep shadows over the holes in Layle’s hood, hiding the expression in his eyes.

  After a moment, he said, “You had better sit down and tell me.”

  Weldon did so, grateful to be off his feet. Even though he had forced himself to take a night’s rest before reporting, he still felt shaky.

  The room, which was normally crowded at dawn with men preparing for the day shift and other men returning from the night shift, was deserted but for Layle’s senior night guard. He had glanced briefly at Weldon when the Seeker entered, and then had returned to napping upon a table with his head cradled in his arms. Weldon was not surprised. He had left Birdesmond’s cell the previous day to find a group of Seekers and guards crowded around the notice-board in the dungeon’s entry hall. Signed by the High Seeker, a notice there informed the inner dungeon workers that, for the near future, all senior Seekers would be required to search two prisoners at a time, taking two eight-hour shifts each day, rather than their normal twelve-hour shift. Senior guards would follow the same schedule. All junior Seekers and junior guards would be required to work through their usual dawn and dusk leisure hours, in order to care for the documentwork that the senior members of the inner dungeon would be too busy to do.

  Ignoring the Record-keeper – who was trying to catch his eye in order to assign him a second prisoner – Weldon had left the entry hall, his ear alert for any complaints that the High Seeker was not doing his fair share of the work. No complaints could be heard. Either the inner dungeon workers recognized how difficult it was for Layle Smith to let others do his work, or everyone still feared the consequences if Layle came near a prisoner.

  Now, Weldon supposed, all of the inner dungeon workers must either be working or lying exhausted in their beds. He wished he could join the latter group; he wished he could stay huddled in his cell until he had ridden out the worst of this.

  He managed to give his report in a reasonably calm manner, and if the High Seeker noticed that his report on the final moments of the searching was somewhat lacking in detail, he said nothing. No doubt, Weldon thought, looking at the darkness hiding Layle’s eyes, the High Seeker had guessed all of this long ago. Perhaps it had played a role in the High Seeker’s decision not to renew his friendship with Weldon.

  He forced himself to turn aside from such thoughts. What mattered now was the prisoner.

  Layle had been sitting very still since the end of the report, as though he too were absorbing the impact of a great blow. Then he raised his finger. Weldon caught a movement out of the corner of his eye and turned his head to see that Layle’s night guard had approached them.

  “Mr. Sobel,” said Layle in a quiet voice that barely brushed over them, “I would appreciate it if you would go to Mr. Taylor and ask him, when he has finished his shift, to meet me at the Codifier’s office.”

  The guard nodded and flicked a brief glance over at Weldon, like a night guard who is relinquishing to a day guard the duty of watching over a prisoner. Weldon said to Layle as his guard left, “You will ask the Codifier’s permission to visit my prisoner?”

  “It appears I must.” Layle rose slowly to his feet, far slower than he usually moved. He looked round the common room, as though examining it for the last time.

  Weldon said, his voice beginning to break, “I am sorry I failed you, sir.”

  Layle turned his head. The room was still too dark to show the expression in his eyes, but his voice was calm as he said, “You have not failed me, Mr. Chapman. Not in the least.”

  Weldon was still trying to make sense of this remark when Layle, scooping up the documents from the table, paused in his movement and said, “Mr. Chapman, I am sorry that this has proved to be so difficult a duty for you. If you should need to discuss with a friend what took place between you and Mistress Birdesmond . . .”

  “Yes?” Weldon was suddenly finding it difficult to breathe again. He wished that the candlelight would show what lay within the High Seeker’s eye-holes.

  “Mr. Taylor is a good person to talk to.” And with those words, Layle turned his head away and began to walk toward the door.

  Weldon let out his breath slowly, feeling the familiar chill of disappointment cover his skin. Then he gave himself a small shake, reminding himself again that what he felt was not important. What mattered was the prisoner, and prisoner was now, unawares, about to enter into her greatest danger.

  He hurried to catch up with the High Seeker.