CHAPTER SEVEN
“Thirty-six people have submitted affidavits testifying to the purity of his character,” Elsdon Taylor said.
Barrett gave a low whistle. “That many?” He glanced over at his Seeker, who was perusing a slim volume containing the prisoner’s records as they walked slowly down the deserted corridor. Barrett raised the electric lantern higher so that Mr. Taylor could easily read the words that had been carefully typed by a clerk at one of the lesser prisons.
They were strolling together through the only truly private corridor in the Eternal Dungeon, namely the narrow hallway that led behind the prisoners’ western cells. At the northern end of the corridor lay the area near the rack rooms. At the southern end of the corridor lay the guardroom, next to the entry hall. In past days, he and Mr. Taylor would have had to time their visit carefully to avoid meeting the stokers who fed the furnaces behind the western cells of the dungeon, but now the furnaces lay abandoned, and the cells in front of them had been emptied to allow laborers to install ducts for the new central heating system. Barrett could hear the laborers clanking away and cheerfully chatting with one another. He also thought he could hear faintly one laborer describing what terrible, awesome creatures the Eternal Dungeon’s guards were.
Barrett smiled. His common-room encounter with the laborer, he decided, would allow the laborer to spend the rest of his days boasting of his hair-raising adventure in this dungeon. If nothing else, Barrett had brought a little pleasure into the man’s life.
Mr. Taylor nodded as he turned a page. “Affidavits have been received from Cornelius Rosero-Black, Secretary to the Queen; Henry Lloyd Argyll, Tutor to the Princess; Edward, Duke of White Oak Landing . . .”
“By all that is sacred!” Barrett was startled into the only oath that was mild enough for him to speak while on duty. “I thought you said our prisoner was a commoner?”
Mr. Taylor nodded again, his expression hidden by the hood that fell to his shoulders. “A commoner, but a scholar of some renown. He began as a scullery boy in the household of William, Earl of Hartgrove, over sixty years ago. Rather than use his leisure hours for relaxation, he used to sneak into a cubbyhole outside the schoolroom of the Earl’s children and eavesdrop on their lessons. He saved his pennies and bought the same lesson-books they used, and thereby taught himself to read. By the time he was twenty-one, he had become so skilled at imitating the style of the books he read that, when he wrote letters to famous scholars, asking them questions about their work, they assumed that they were corresponding with a man of leisure and learning, and so they responded freely to his questions.”
“And he was receiving their letters back?” Barrett said, trying to imagine this scene. He himself had an elite accent, learned from his mother, who was high-born, but his mother’s family had disowned her when she eloped in order to marry below herself. As a result, Barrett had been raised in the mid-class, and his family had only possessed a couple of servants, but he could well imagine how his father would have reacted if he had discovered one of his servants corresponding with his betters.
Mr. Taylor nodded again. “Which was how his correspondence was uncovered finally. There was a confrontation between him and the Earl, which reputedly consisted of the Earl bringing all the fire of his fury upon a meek young man. At any rate, something of a scandal arose from the encounter, because the Earl left the young man half dead in the street. This being the age when the concept of noblesse oblige still held strong in our queendom, many people spoke of their outrage as to the Earl’s actions, particularly the men with whom the Earl’s servant had been corresponding. Nobody believed the Earl when he said that this meek young servant had tried to use the Earl’s own ceremonial sword against him, and even the Earl admitted that the servant had not sought to defend himself until the Earl had slammed him head-first against the wall.
“The young man was healed in a hospital for paupers. His patrons – for that was what his correspondents now became – set him up in a mid-class cottage, stocked with a good library, where he could continue his studies. He did not leave the house thereafter.”
It took Barrett a minute to grasp what his Seeker had said. “For fifty-two years? Surely not!”
“So the reports say.” Elsdon Taylor turned a page, his face still hidden. “He permitted no visitors either. For the first twenty or so years, the only person who spoke to him face-to-face was a maid who came in once a week to bring him supplies and to remove any items that needed to be removed. When she died of old age, her daughter took her place, and he ended up marrying her after about a decade. His wife insisted on caring for him herself, without bringing in a new servant. Neighbors report having glimpsed him occasionally in his back garden, talking with his wife. By all accounts, he has remained meek and gentle, sweetly affectionate to his wife. He has written a number of books on the virtuous life, which have been well received by readers, especially one in which he deplored the dishonesty he had shown to the Earl of Hartgrove in his childhood, and in which he publicly asked the Earl’s forgiveness.” Elsdon Taylor turned over several pages at once. “The Earl’s son has entered an affidavit of character witness for the prisoner. He believes that Mr. Holloway was sincere in his apology and that his books reflect his true character, which is not that of an attempted murderer.”
“And the Earl’s son was the victim of the attack.”
“Yes, which is why Mr. Holloway has ended up in the Eternal Dungeon.” Elsdon Taylor’s voice had turned dry. He had been of the elite, Barrett knew, even before he obtained the high-titled position of Queen’s Seeker, but he was said to have no patience with the system of received privileges which ensured that commoners accused of relatively minor crimes, such as failed murders, occasionally had death-sentence charges placed against them.
“Still,” said Barrett, “if the crime took place in the manner that is said . . .”
“A stabbing in the back, late at night, with no apparent provocation. Yes. It was a serious crime indeed, and the city patrol soldiers have been carefully investigating whether the Earl’s son – who is now the Earl of Hartgrove himself – might have done something to provoke the crime. So far they have turned up no evidence that the younger Earl has any serious enemies, nor any evidence that the Earl has entered into the prisoner’s life for the past quarter of a century. At the time that the younger Earl gained his title, he sent a letter to the prisoner, apologizing for his father’s ill treatment and offering to compensate the prisoner for the injuries he had received. The prisoner politely declined, saying that he had only pleasant memories of the younger Earl’s treatment of him. That was the end of all contact between them, as far as anyone can tell.”
Barrett frowned. They had slowed their pace gradually, until they were now standing motionless, three-quarters of the way down the corridor. At the northern end of the corridor, from which they had come, dim light shone from the short hallway that led back to the main corridor of the inner dungeon. Faint sounds of conversation emerged from that end. Ahead of them lay only darkness and silence.
“Who reported the prisoner as having tried to kill the Earl?” Barrett asked.
“The local prison received a note, hand-delivered by a commoner woman whose appearance, alas, was not noted. That prison’s soldiers, who were the initial investigators of the crime, suspect that the note was delivered by the prisoner’s wife, but she vigorously denies having written any note to the soldiers, saying she knows that her husband is innocent of any misdeed. At any rate, when the soldiers entered the prisoner’s house, they found what the note told them they would find: in the prisoner’s wardrobe was one of his own shirts, embroidered with green lions and covered with blood. Hidden within the shirt’s folds was a knife – the same meat-knife from the Earl’s dinner-set that was used against the Earl in the attempt on his life.”
Barrett shook his head. “It could have been planted there by an enemy.”
“Certainly, which is why the soldiers were initially skeptical that their meek
prisoner was the true culprit. Unfortunately, when the Earl’s servants were closely questioned, it was found that a man of Mr. Holloway’s description, wearing a shirt embroidered with green lions, had entered the Earl’s house on the night of the attack, claiming that he was making a delivery. Many of the servants testified to meeting this man, and when they were shown a sketch of Mr. Holloway, they agreed that he was the man. All of them seemed surprised when told who the delivery man had been; the servants who had worked with the Earl’s father during Mr. Holloway’s time in service had all since died or retired. None of the current servants appeared to have any personal grievance against the prisoner; indeed, many had heard of his tale and expressed regret that their testimony placed him at the scene of the crime.”
“The shirt . . .” Barrett said.
“Was hand-made by the prisoner’s wife, and was presented to him on his last birthday. He had not yet worn it into the garden, and as nobody ever entered his home, only his wife could have known of it.”
Barrett sighed. “It sounds as though either the prisoner committed the murder, or his wife made it seem that way for her own purposes.”
“Which is why she is presently being held in custody at the women’s prison within this city. And which is why we have been left with the unpleasant task of determining whether this meek, kind man who is loved by many for his writings on virtue has committed an attack – and if so, for what reason.”
Barrett licked his lips as he began to walk forward with Elsdon Taylor again. This was not the first time that a Seeker had consulted with him before searching a prisoner; Weldon Chapman had been accustomed to doing the same. Barrett always felt inadequate on such occasions. He had not become a guard because he possessed a Seeker’s skills to ferret out the truth about crimes; he had become a guard because he was able to keep violent men under control while using a minimum of violence himself. That was a quality much honored in the Eternal Dungeon, and he wished that his Seekers would let him play his chosen role rather than continually drag him into attempting to do tasks for which they were better suited than he.
Finally Barrett asked, “Did the soldiers find anything else unusual in the prisoner’s house?”
“No knives.”
Barrett gave a startled glance at Mr. Taylor, moving the lantern upwards to try to see his eyes. “Sir?”
“The prisoner’s house had no serving knives, no table knives – nothing that could be used for stabbing or slicing. When questioned, the prisoner said that, while his severe injuries at the time had wiped away all memory of his encounter with his former employer, he took seriously the elder Earl’s accusation that he had tried to stab the man with a sword. Therefore he had divested his house of any stabbing instruments, so as not to permit himself any such temptations if he should ever quarrel with his maids, or later with his wife.”
“Oh, dear,” Barrett said.
“Yes, he’s far too honest,” said Mr. Taylor, with his usual uncanny ability of reading into the thoughts of the person he was talking to. “Though he has not confessed to the crime, he has provided the soldiers with all sorts of superficial evidence that has led them to believe that he committed it. He ought to have had a legal counsellor by his side, who would have advised him to remain quiet. As it is, it will be very hard indeed for me to prove that he is innocent, unless we can determine the true culprit.”
Barrett nodded. One of the paradoxes of the Eternal Dungeon was that the Seekers, after doing their best to extract evidence of their prisoners’ guilt, were then require by their duty to argue in court that the prisoners were either innocent or deserved only light punishment. Barrett had never been able to figure out how Seekers managed this miraculous transformation from accuser to defender.
Mr. Taylor sighed suddenly as they started to walk forward again. “This is the most frustrating case I’ve come across in a long time. It might take as long to work out as that of my first prisoner.”
Barrett winced. The Eternal Dungeon was quite small, as prisons went, and it was one of the only prisons in the queendom that was permitted to house men and women accused of the most serious death-sentence crimes. As a result, there was quiet pressure on every Seeker to break his prisoner as quickly as possible. If the prisoner was not determined guilty or innocent within a week, the Seeker would begin to receive enquiries from the dungeon’s Record-keeper as to how matters were proceeding. If another week passed without change, the Seeker and his guards would be called into the High Seeker’s office to explain their delay. It was rare for any prisoner in the Eternal Dungeon to remain silent as to his guilt or innocence longer than three weeks.
Elsdon Taylor had broken his first prisoner in the space of six months. Only the High Seeker’s illness during that time had allowed him to get away with such a slow breaking, and Mr. Taylor had later received an official reprimand for his delay. The reprimand had not changed matters much. Mr. Taylor remained the slowest Seeker in the dungeon, determined not to overlook any clues as to extenuating circumstances or to his prisoner’s possible innocence – understandable, since he himself had once been a prisoner, but this meant that he and his guards were continually being questioned and reprimanded by the High Seeker. If Mr. Taylor’s rate of success as a Seeker had not been so high, it was likely that he would have been stripped of his hood long ago. As it was, the Record-keeper took care these days to assign him only prisoners who could be reasonably expected to hold out for long periods under any Seeker.
Five months, though . . . “I’m not sure, sir,” said Barrett carefully, “that this is the right moment at which to test the High Seeker’s temper.”
He could hear the smile in Mr. Taylor’s voice as the junior Seeker replied, “There is never a right moment at which to test the High Seeker’s temper, Mr. Boyd – particularly not when one shares a living cell with Layle Smith. But I took an oath to suffer for the prisoners, and I don’t regard that oath lightly.” He gestured toward the door they had just reached, leading to the guardroom.
“I took no oath,” Barrett muttered, envisioning an upcoming reprimand from the High Seeker, but he kept his comment too low for Mr. Taylor to hear. His friends had warned him of the disadvantages of becoming Elsdon Taylor’s guard, so he could not claim to have been ignorant of what sort of role he was entering into. Fumbling one-handed with his key as he held the lantern near the door lock, he managed to push the door open for Mr. Taylor.
Mr. Taylor stepped through the doorway, then stopped abruptly. Following in behind him, still blinking at the bright light, Barrett was just in time to see Mr. Sobel’s lash land full upon the naked back of a Seeker.
The Seeker grunted as the lash’s force drove his body against the thick whipping post that his arms were bound around. His hooded head was turned away, making recognition difficult. Barrett, taking in the situation at a glance, quickly turned to lock and bar the door, so that no other guard or Seeker would make the mistake that he and Mr. Taylor had just made.
As he turned back, he saw the High Seeker gesture impatiently at them from his position on the other side of the punished Seeker, watching the man’s eyes during the beating, as the Code required. Mr. Taylor turned and made his way silently to the sliding door of the guardroom that was only closed when this portion of the room was used for punishment. It was the most private place in the dungeon for punishment, since punished Seekers or guards could be brought in through the little-used passage that Barrett and Mr. Taylor had just traversed.
Barrett managed to get to the door before his Seeker, sliding the door open and closed for him. Then they were both past the danger, and they let out their breaths simultaneously.
The guardroom was usually crowded at this time of day, during the dusk shift, with guards coming off-duty or getting ready to start their duties for the evening. Not surprisingly, the room was presently deserted, except for a knot of guards standing near the door leading to the dungeon’s entry hall.
Mr. Taylor did not hesitate, but moved to the left
, so that he would be hidden from the view of the guards who would no doubt quiz him and Barrett if they tried to move past. This left them standing in front of the door to the long, slender room that made up the guards’ washroom.
With professional courtesy, Mr. Taylor waited for Barrett to enter first. As a Seeker, he could only enter this room as the guest of a guard, for Seekers had their own living quarters in the inner dungeon – their “cells” – and it was there that they partook of their refreshment. Barrett, who had moved to living quarters in the outer dungeon when he reached seniority, rarely came to this washroom any more, though he had many fond memories of the place.
“Sanitation,” Barrett’s sergeant major had once said to him, “is more of a problem for our army than for the Vovimian army.” What he meant was that, in Vovim, washings and calls of nature were done in public, with merely a minimal division between sexes. Only the homes of the elite had private water closets; mid-class folk and commoners made do with communal privies. Nearly every Vovimian boy grew up used to bathing and relieving himself in public, just as every Yclau boy considered privacy in such matters to be a hallmark of civilization.
It had come as a considerable shock to Barrett, as a young guard in the Eternal Dungeon, when he had discovered that the guards’ washroom consisted of a single room, with no stalls to divide the occupants from one another. A ceramic trough on one side of the room carried away bodily fluids; a ceramic trough on the other side of the room held the bathing water. The latter trough had been replaced with separate showerheads in recent years, but still the principle remained: the Eternal Dungeon’s guards bathed in public, not in private.
It had not taken long for Barrett to understand the reason for this and to understand what the other guards felt at sharing the same sort of conditions that their prisoners did. In most dungeons, prisoners were humiliated by being required to relieve themselves and bathe themselves in cells that could be watched by their guards at any time. The Eternal Dungeon, in its usual topsy-turvy manner, made public bathing an act of pride for its guards, and the guards in turn found subtle ways to indicate to prisoners that they did not look down on the prisoners for being forced to bathe and relieve themselves in public.
Guards being guards, they had found other ways in which to enjoy this place. Barrett had been present one long winter night when a group of his fellow day guards had decided to clean one another. They had no fear of interruption by Mr. Smith, who never visited the washroom and who was well ensconced on this night in a prisoner’s breaking cell. Nobody in the dungeon would have thought to interrupt a Seeker at his searching, over so trivial a matter. As a result, not much time had passed before sponges and soap were replaced with lips and tongues, while nipples and groins had become the favored spots to be cleaned. This had led, in due time, to a friendly argument over whether use of the soap as a lubricant was likely to cause irritation to the skin.
Barrett, who had been an observer rather than a participant, had nonetheless jumped half a foot in the air when the washroom door – which he had carefully locked himself – had suddenly banged open to reveal the High Seeker, carrying a very large bottle filled with pale liquid.
“Gentlemen,” said Layle Smith, as guards with burning faces scrambled to their feet, “you are members of the royal dungeon, the elite among the guards of this queendom. You are famed for your ability to be ready for duty at all times. On no account do I wish to ever see you unprepared again.” And he had swept out of the room, leaving behind him the large bottle, which proved, upon examination, to be filled with lovemaking liquid.
It was thus, and through similar, darkly humorous episodes, that Layle Smith had managed to put across his point to the guards and Seekers: “Don’t you dare break the Code, because if you do, I will know.”
Now Barrett and Mr. Taylor made their way through the mist of spray emitted by the shower of a lone guard, who took no notice of their passing. Not until they had exited through the door at the opposite end of the room and were standing in the entry hall did Barrett ask, “Do you know which Seeker that was?”
Mr. Taylor did not respond to his question; the junior Seeker’s gaze was travelling across the entry hall, which was filled with guards and Seekers. “Excuse me,” Mr. Taylor murmured, and stepped away.
Barrett watched him walk over to Mr. Chapman, who was handing a report to the Record-keeper. All around the room, men were talking, and since they were not bothering to lower their voices, Barrett began to hear pieces of what had occurred. He waited patiently, knowing that half of what was being said was rumor, and that his Seeker would soon know the full truth.
He was wrong, though. Mr. Chapman responded to Mr. Taylor’s quiet enquiry with a shake of the head and a brief response. Mr. Taylor nodded and immediately turned away. When he had returned, Barrett said, “He won’t tell you?”
“No. It’s a matter for senior members only.”
“Ah.” Barrett glanced around the entry hall again. From what he could see, the news had travelled well beyond the senior Seekers and guards, but Weldon Chapman was notorious for sticking to regulations, even when those regulations had already been broken by others. “In that case, sir . . .”
“Go ahead,” responded Mr. Taylor with a wave of the hand. “I’ll wait for you in the breaking-cell corridor.”
Barrett returned to him within five minutes, having paused only to pass word to Mr. Phelps, who had just come on duty, and who was making a manful effort to await the news through proper channels. Barrett was a “proper channel,” and so he had quickly briefed the junior night guard before making his way back to Elsdon Taylor.
“It’s Mr. Newton, sir,” he said at once. “Mr. Chapman says that—”
“Mr. Boyd,” Elsdon Taylor interrupted sharply, “is it necessary to my duties that I know this?”
Barrett was taken aback. He had forgotten that Mr. Taylor was said to have just as strong an aversion to gossip as the High Seeker did. It took him only a second, though, to formulate his reply. “I think so, sir. It could affect the High Seeker’s state of mind. Mr. Chapman hinted as much – I suppose that was his way of suggesting I should tell you.”
After a moment, Mr. Taylor nodded, and Barrett added, “Mr. Newton was found to have been arranging for the delivery of letters between his prisoner and the prisoner’s family.”
“For a bribe?” suggested Mr. Taylor. They both knew how serious a matter that would be; the Eternal Dungeon prided itself as being the only prison in the queendom where all prisoners were treated in an equal fashion, without favoritism being shown toward prisoners who were rich enough to bribe their guards and Seekers.
“No, sir. Apparently he just felt sorry for the prisoner, since the prisoner was quite attached to his family.”
They both fell silent, contemplating this. Finally Mr. Taylor said, “The rule against prisoners communicating with outsiders exists for a reason. Prisoners could easily obtain information from outsiders that would allow them to escape, or they could send letters that warned fellow criminals to flee. Since a prisoner is always permitted to spend time with his family on the day of his trial, it’s not wise to allow him to send letters during his usually brief period of imprisonment here.”
“Yes, of course, sir,” Barrett agreed. He did not say what they both knew: that the High Seeker would have dealt in the past with such a well-meant action by reprimanding the Seeker, not beating him.
“Who reported Mr. Newton?” asked Elsdon Taylor suddenly.
“He did, sir. In light of the High Seeker’s recent announcement, Mr. Newton thought it best to report himself, rather than place that burden on his guards, who were aware of the correspondence.”
“And he received how many lashes after he confessed?”
“Mr. Chapman said he was being given the full penalty for such Code-breaking, sir: forty medium lashes.”
Mr. Taylor said nothing as the door to the entry hall opened to admit night-duty guards on their way to relieve the dusk sh
ift. Finally Barrett added, “This will mean that fewer dungeon dwellers report themselves for misdeeds.”
Mr. Taylor did not respond to this obvious statement. Instead he looked over Barrett’s shoulder and said, “You’re ready, Mr. Phelps? Good. We shouldn’t leave the prisoner awaiting us any longer.”
The junior Seeker started down the hall, and Barrett automatically fell into step behind him, one pace behind his Seeker, slightly to the right. Mr. Phelps was walking one pace behind Mr. Taylor, slightly to the left, and Barrett wondered whether he should pass on to the junior night guard what Mr. Taylor had told him about the prisoner. Ordinarily he would have done so in an automatic manner, but the thought of Mr. Taylor’s disapproval of his gossip lingered in his thoughts. Perhaps, he thought, he should consult with his new Seeker as to what his preferences were in such matters.
They approached the breaking cell where the prisoner awaited his Seeker.
The Eternal Dungeon: a Turn-of-the-Century Toughs omnibus Page 82