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

by Dusk Peterson

CHAPTER EIGHT

  The prisoner was meek and gentle and very, very afraid. He had gone down on both knees the moment Elsdon Taylor entered the cell, and it had taken a good many soft words by Mr. Taylor to persuade him that he need not stay there. Now he stood with his left arm behind his back, his left hand locked in front of his right elbow, in the manner of a well-trained servant. He looked as though he would faint at any moment.

  In light of Mr. Holloway’s diffidence, Barrett could not figure out what he and Mr. Phelps were doing in the cell. Their presence was not against regulations; any Seeker might choose to keep his guards at his side if he were searching a particularly dangerous prisoner. But guards had an inhibiting effect on prisoners’ willingness to speak truthfully, and so the Code of Seeking strongly discouraged Seekers from keeping guards in the breaking cell during a searching.

  It was not a good sign, that Elsdon Taylor would come so close to breaking the Code on Barrett’s first day of duty.

  Barrett tried giving a brief smile to the prisoner, who looked so alarmed at this development that Barrett abandoned all friendly overtures. He would have liked to have looked away, knowing that having three pairs of eyes on him could not be easy for the prisoner, but his duty required him to watch the prisoner any time he entered the cell. So he focussed his attention on the prisoner’s scar. It must have been well hidden by hair when the prisoner was younger, but now, with the prisoner’s hair thin and wispy with old age, anyone could see clearly what the elder Earl had done when Mr. Holloway was young.

  “Yes, sir,” the prisoner was responding now in a quavering voice. “My wife is always with me at night. Her family is dead, and she pays all her calls to friends during the daytime.”

  “And do you share a bedroom, Mr. Holloway?” Elsdon Taylor asked. As regulation required, he was standing, and he was doing so at a considerable distance from the prisoner. Barrett wondered again what danger Mr. Taylor sensed about the prisoner that was opaque to Barrett’s own vision.

  The prisoner blushed at this question. “We . . . we are fortunate to have a cottage with two bedrooms. We share my bedroom only on the nights when we engage in . . . conjugal relations. About twice a week. Sometimes thrice.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Barrett saw Mr. Phelps raise his eyebrows. Barrett was too experienced to do likewise, but he gave a second glance at his prisoner’s body. The man was seventy-three years old now; he must retain a certain vigor beyond which his frail body suggested.

  “Your wife,” Mr. Taylor said, as though pursuing the same thought, “is twenty-two years younger than you?”

  “Yes, sir, and she’s a great help to me. I . . .” His voice faded out, and the ball in his throat bobbled. “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to volunteer information.”

  “No, go on, pursue your thought.” Mr. Taylor’s voice was gentle. Barrett had learned from other guards that Mr. Taylor’s voice was always gentle when he was searching. He used that gentleness to great effect to break unwary prisoners.

  “Well, sir, my memory is not as well honed as it could be. Sometimes I forget things: where I laid my pen and journal, where I placed a book I want, where I hung a shirt. My wife is nearly always able to find such things for me.”

  “Journal?” said Mr. Taylor, picking up on the word.

  “My health journal, sir. I’ve had bad headaches every few months or so during the last five years. My healer thought it might be due to the head injury I sustained as a young man, after I so foolishly disobeyed my master. He asked me to keep a record of when I had my headaches.”

  “And when you have these headaches, what happens?”

  “I go to bed, sir. The quinine that my healer prescribed for my headaches has failed to relieve them, so I just try to sleep them out.”

  “And your wife does not share your bed on those nights?”

  “No, sir.” The prisoner sounded puzzled now. “She sees that I have water by my bed, and she checks on me in the morning, but otherwise she lets me rest.”

  “And did you have a headache on the night on which the younger Earl of Hartgrove was attacked?”

  “Why, yes, sir.” The prisoner sounded truly puzzled now. “How did you know?”

  Mr. Taylor flicked a glance at Barrett, who carefully extracted from the inner breast pocket of his jacket the small memorandum book and pencil there. Jotting down a note to himself to submit a request for the seizure of the journal for evidence, he cursed the city soldiers’ penchant for ignoring the obvious. A dated diary showing the pattern of the prisoner’s health – surely they should have understood that object’s possible significance.

  The paper of his memorandum book seemed unnaturally bright under the newly installed electric lights in the ceiling. Already he was missing the soft waver of the furnace fires that had long burned behind the frosted glass blocks of every breaking cell – though he supposed that this prisoner, with his thick spectacles, might prefer the steady electric light. Certainly the new heating system seemed to be working well, pumping a steady stream of warm air into the cell. It was a shame that the High Seeker couldn’t take the hint from this and move the Eternal Dungeon into the modern age in other ways.

  “And how did you first learn of the attack on the Earl, Mr. Holloway?” asked Elsdon Taylor.

  “From my wife, sir. She heard the balladeers singing the news when she went to fetch food from the grocer’s the next morning, and so she brought back a ballad for me, since she knew that I had served with that family. She sang it to me over breakfast, and then I went upstairs to change out of my dressing gown and to prepare a note of condolence to the Earl’s manservant for the pain that his household had undergone.”

  “You knew the manservant?”

  “No, sir. But it seemed more proper to address myself to him than to the Earl. I . . . was once foolish enough to send letters to men much higher than myself, and in the arrogance of my youth, I let them think I was of their class. Fortunately, the men I corresponded with forgave me when they learned of my deception, and even showed me great kindness. But of course I would not trouble my betters again in such a way.”

  “You have said that you were treated kindly by the younger Earl, I believe.”

  “Oh, yes, sir. He never spoke an unkind word to me when he was a boy, and he sent me a most gracious note after his father’s death.”

  Mr. Taylor nodded. Barrett wondered whether it was only his imagination that this line of enquiry had utterly foundered. Either the prisoner was truly innocent of all misdeeds, or he was a consummate liar – and if he was the latter, Barrett could not imagine how Mr. Taylor would go about breaking him.

  “Mr. Holloway,” said Mr. Taylor quietly, “you stated that your wife would do anything for you.”

  “Anything within the law, I meant, sir,” the prisoner responded quickly, evidently seeing danger in this question. “She is an upright woman and would never assist in any matter that was unlawful.”

  “But if the matter appeared lawful, she would do it?”

  The prisoner hesitated, apparently uneasy at the use of the word “appeared,” but finally said, “Yes, sir.”

  “And so she delivered your note to the soldiers, telling them where to find the bloody shirt and knife.”

  The prisoner’s mouth opened, and stayed open, like that of a fish. Out of the corner of his eye, Barrett could see that Mr. Phelps’s mouth had likewise fallen open.

  “Mr. Holloway,” Elsdon Taylor said gently, “you are in the Eternal Dungeon. You could not have thought you could conceal such a matter here for long.”

  The prisoner bit his lip and stared at the floor. Barrett had a sudden, vivid image of him as a young man, confronting the wrath of the angry Earl.

  “How did the shirt come to be in your wardrobe, Mr. Holloway?” The junior Seeker kept his voice soft.

  “I don’t know, sir.” The prisoner’s voice quavered. “I swear by all the Queen’s mercy, I have no idea how it came to be in my wardrobe.”

  “W
hen did you find it there?”

  “On the morning after the Earl’s death, when I went upstairs to change. I . . . I nearly fainted when I saw it. And then I saw the knife, just like the knife that the balladeer said had been used to kill the Earl. . . . I’m sorry, sir; I should have reported it at once, and I should have told you at once that I had found it. It was very wrong of me to seek to conceal that information from you.”

  “Why did you decide eventually to alert the soldiers?”

  “I . . . I just did. It seemed the right thing to do.”

  “You did not consult with anyone?”

  “No, sir.” The prisoner’s voice was firmer now. “I was the only one who knew about the shirt, and I consulted with no one.”

  There was a pause, giving Barrett time to wonder how his Seeker was determining which of these answers were true and which were false. He himself could not have guessed – which was probably just as well, as he did not wish to be the one responsible for declaring the punishment for a false answer.

  Mr. Taylor said, quite softly, “You have saved your money over the years?”

  “Yes, sir,” said the prisoner, looking startled at the change of topic. “I am a man of little needs, and I have received generous sums of money from my patrons and from the sales of my books. My income has grown lesser in recent years, but it’s of no matter, for I have assured myself enough money to see myself and my wife through to our final days. That being the case, I have been making plans to give the rest to the hospital for paupers that cared for me when I was young.”

  Mr. Phelps frowned. Barrett was frowning too. He was no Seeker, but he had read enough penny-novel tales to be able to guess what was coming next.

  Mr. Taylor did not disappoint them. “Your wife,” he said, “is twenty-two years younger than you.”

  Perhaps the prisoner had read the same novels; he instantly paled. “Sir, you cannot mean— Sir, my wife has never been greedy for money; you cannot think that she would seek to increase her wealth by—”

  “Who receives your money in the event of your death or life imprisonment, Mr. Holloway?”

  Mr. Holloway bit his lip again before saying, in the same firm voice he had used a short time before, “My cousin.”

  Elsdon Taylor sighed and briefly brought his fingers up to cover the eye-holes of his hood. When he finally looked up, he said, “I am very sorry to hear you say that, sir. You ought to have guessed that I have been given access to your legal records; I know that your wife is named as the sole recipient of your fortunes in your will. Take off your shirt, please, and face the wall, just under that ring. Mr. Phelps?”

  Mr. Phelps, quick to gather in the situation, had already taken into hand his coiled whip. The prisoner now looked as though he would pass out within seconds. Barrett, glancing in an assessing manner at Mr. Holloway, shook his head and handed Mr. Phelps the binding rope he himself had just slipped out of his trouser pocket. Under normal circumstances, he, as senior guard, would bind the prisoner, while Mr. Phelps would beat him, but in a case like this, with a seventy-three-year-old prisoner, he did not want to take any chances with Mr. Phelps’s unknown skill with the whip. He managed to catch Mr. Taylor’s eye as the Seeker backed up to provide room for the guards, and Mr. Taylor nodded slightly, approving the switch.

  The prisoner, obedient if not truthful, had stripped himself now of his shirt and had turned to face the far wall. Returning his coiled whip to its usual clip on his belt, Mr. Phelps bound the prisoner’s wrists to the whipping ring high upon the wall. Barrett noticed, with an inward sigh, that the binding rope had begun to fray again. It was made of a soft hemp that was thought by the High Seeker to cause less abrasion to prisoners’ skin than the leather binders that had been used in the prison for decades, but the rope continually frayed, leaving guards with the duty of cutting off frayed ends at spare moments. Barrett would just have soon kept the leather binders, but he had not been consulted.

  The life of a guard, he thought to himself as the prisoner wriggled in his bonds, trying to catch sight of Mr. Phelps’s whip, evidently believing that the junior guard would both bind him and beat him. Barrett did not bother to correct his misapprehension. His eye was on the junior Seeker, and he was wondering what Mr. Taylor was feeling at this moment. Not the sadistic thrill that the High Seeker would have felt, surely. At one time, it was rumored, Mr. Taylor had received a certain emotional release from watching beatings, but that was when he was younger and had only recently been permitted escape from the care of an abusive father. These days, Barrett guessed, Mr. Taylor probably relished the sight of a tortured prisoner no more than he himself did.

  Elsdon Taylor’s voice remained steady, though, as he said, “I told you at the start, Mr. Holloway, that there would be adverse consequences for you if you lied to me. However, I want you to understand that your honest responses will receive their due reward. The prisoner is securely bound, Mr. Phelps?” The junior Seeker walked forward to the prisoner, who was still trying to catch sight of Mr. Phelps behind him; as he did so, Mr. Taylor quickly held up five fingers toward Barrett.

  Mr. Phelps, stepping back now that his duty was over, caught sight of the gesture and waggled his eyebrows at Barrett, obviously enquiring as to whether Mr. Taylor had given the proper number. Barrett nodded back. Five light lashes was the minimum of punishment that the Code permitted to a prisoner who lied, but in a case like this – where the prisoner had a spotless record and was clearly lying to protect his wife rather than himself – such a low punishment seemed justified.

  He could only hope that the High Seeker would agree.

  Barrett took a quick look at the prisoner’s back. He disliked what he saw. Like a vulture, old age had stripped flesh from the prisoner; the back barely held any fat, and Barrett suspected that it had never held much muscle. The prisoner’s ribs stood out against his skin. It was going to be very hard to find places to land the lash that wouldn’t cause excruciating pain, and severe pain was not permitted in a light beating. With only five lashes planned, however, he thought he could manage to locate room for the lashes.

  Being right-handed, he moved to the left side, beyond the prisoner’s vision. Mr. Taylor had already taken his own place, along the wall to the right of the prisoner. The prisoner, without need for instruction, was watching his Seeker.

  “Mr. Holloway,” Elsdon Taylor said softly, “I know that you spent your boyhood in a household where honesty was not rewarded. So did I. You need to understand that matters are very different in the Eternal Dungeon. In this place, lies represent pain, while honesty and a desire for reparation represent relief from pain. That would be true even if you were never touched by an instrument of torture. This time, the lesson in pain and lack of pain will come from me; I hope that, in the future, you will be able to bring your own peace to yourself.”

  Barrett, doing a last-minute check of his whip to see that it was ready for business, wondered what the bloody blades Mr. Taylor was talking about. The only “relief from pain” that the prisoner would experience would be the end of his beating, and that ending would have no connection with honesty or lack of honesty. He inwardly shrugged and set his mind back to the task at hand.

  “Yes, sir,” said the prisoner, clearly as bewildered as Barrett was.

  “One lash to begin with, then, in punishment of your previous lie. Mr. Phelps, are we ready?” He looked over at the junior guard, who was standing directly behind the prisoner, and who now had the task of determining, from his central position, whether the three men in front of him were all in the right position for the beating.

  “We are ready, sir,” said Mr. Phelps, his mid-class accent clipped short, more so than usual. Barrett guessed that he was no more eager to witness this beating than Barrett was to give it.

  “One,” said Mr. Taylor, his gaze now fixed upon the prisoner’s face.

  Barrett pulled back the whip and landed it on the spot he had selected, a narrow band of muscles below the jutting shoulder-blades. T
he prisoner gasped. Barrett flicked back the lash, satisfied. If he had landed the lash wrong, the prisoner would have screamed.

  “Now, then,” said Mr. Taylor to the prisoner, “I am going to ask you four questions. Every time you respond to one those questions with a lie, you will receive three more lashes than you just received. Do you understand, Mr. Holloway?”

  The prisoner’s breath was heavy, which was just as well, as it covered up the sound of Barrett muttering curses to himself. He totted up the numbers in his head. One lash to start with, and then four more lashes multiplied by four – seventeen lashes total was within the maximum of twenty lashes that could be given for this offense, but it was too many for such a slight matter. And Barrett could not imagine where he would find room within the narrow ridge of back muscles for that many lashes. The prisoner would surely be screaming in agony by the end.

  Well, his job was to deliver the lashes, not decide how many should occur. Grimly, he held himself in readiness.

  “Did your wife know the contents of the note, Mr. Holloway?” the junior Seeker asked.

  “No.” The prisoner’s voice was faint but firm. Mr. Phelps winced. Probably, like Barrett, he was beginning to figure out the pattern that Elsdon Taylor had already perceived: which tone of voice revealed that the prisoner was lying.

  “Two through five,” was Mr. Taylor’s response, and Barrett brought down the lash four times, in rapid succession. He landed them where he had planned to land the final four lashes when he had thought there would be only five. Then he paused, sweating, not only because of his exertion, but because he could not figure out any place to land the lash next that would not cause the prisoner unnecessary pain.

  The prisoner was sobbing now. Mr. Taylor, backing away, said, “Mr. Phelps, would you please wipe Mr. Holloway’s face?”

  Mr. Phelps came forward, handkerchief in hand, and silently wiped away the moisture that was dripping from the prisoner’s forehead and eyes and nose. The prisoner said to him, in a shaking voice, “Does your whip have knots?”

  Mr. Phelps backed out of sight, properly leaving it to his Seeker to respond to the prisoner’s question.

  “No, Mr. Holloway,” said Elsdon Taylor, returning to his previous spot. “None of the whips in the Eternal Dungeon are designed to maim. And I promise you: If you answer the next three questions truthfully, you will receive no more strokes.”

  Mr. Phelps turned to Barrett, his face filled with consternation. Barrett struggled to figure out what his Seeker had in mind. It was strange enough, that Mr. Taylor should be questioning the prisoner during a beating. Usually questioning was reserved for when the prisoner was on the rack, when lies would be punished by greater pain, while honesty would be rewarded by—

  Ah. The answer came to him in the same moment that Mr. Taylor asked, “Did your wife know the contents of the note?”

  The prisoner, after a breathless moment, whispered, “Yes.”

  Mr. Taylor held up his hand, warding off any potential blows, in case Barrett should have misunderstood his intentions. “Did your wife suggest the wording of the note?”

  The prisoner was beginning to cry again, and not from the pain of the previous lashes, Barrett guessed. “Yes.”

  “Is she the one who suggested that you report the shirt’s presence to the soldiers?”

  The prisoner replied only with a nod this time; he was crying too hard to speak.

  “Thank you for your honesty, Mr. Holloway. Mr. Phelps, you may release the prisoner.”

  Barrett, slowly coiling up his whip, wondered to himself why he ever bothered to try to second-guess Seekers. In this case, though, he thought he was justified in feeling more than a little confused.

  What Elsdon Taylor had just done was quite out of the ordinary. Normally, torture was divided into two categories in the Eternal Dungeon: a fixed degree of pain for punishment through a beating, and an indeterminate degree of pain for punishment and questioning through the rack. When beaten, prisoners simply received the punishment they had incurred for their ill behavior. When racked, on the other hand, they were encouraged to answer questions honestly by being told that they would receive less pain or release if they were truthful.

  Mr. Taylor had just reversed that custom by giving Mr. Holloway an indeterminate punishment through beating; as he had promised, he had given Mr. Holloway relief from pain when the prisoner answered truthfully. Rapidly, Barrett reviewed in his mind the relevant sections of the Code of Seeking. He could not see any point at which his Seeker had violated the Code. Indeed, if asked by the High Seeker, Barrett could truthfully say that Mr. Taylor had told him to give the prisoner five lashes, and he had done so.

  Barrett sighed. Life with Mr. Taylor, he was beginning to suspect, would be like walking on the edge of a cliff, waiting for the inevitable moment when the ground gave way.

  He glanced over at Mr. Phelps, who was still holding the frayed rope. The junior guard’s brow was furrowed as he looked down. Barrett refrained from rebuking Mr. Phelps from taking his eye off the prisoner; he himself was worried. He was always worried after a prisoner was searched under torture.

  Belatedly, he was beginning to recognize what Mr. Taylor must have recognized from the moment he examined the prisoner’s records: Mr. Holloway had a record of lying. He had been forced to lie in his youth, in order to cover up his furtive education and his scholarly work; then, when the truth had emerged, he had been viciously beaten by the man questioning him. Little wonder that Mr. Holloway had lied to protect his wife; his only experience till now had been that truth was rewarded with unjust punishment. Mr. Taylor had questioned Mr. Holloway under torture in order to teach him, in a quick and relatively painless manner, that any truthful statements he made to the Seeker would be rewarded, not punished.

  It all made sense, if . . . if Mr. Holloway had indeed spoken the truth under torture. Mr. Urman’s voice drifted into Barrett’s mind: “If you hurt a prisoner enough, he’ll say anything he thinks you want to hear.”

  Barrett shook his head and tried to focus his thoughts back on the scene before him: the Seeker standing in the middle of the cell, with Mr. Phelps a yard behind him, still fingering the binding rope, and the prisoner standing as far as he could from the Seeker and guards, in the corner of the cell nearest to the whipping ring. He was wiping the moisture off his face with his sleeve, and he was trembling.

  Barrett glanced at Mr. Taylor. The young Seeker had an upright carriage and was standing still, embodying all the authority of the Queen’s Seekers. It was a reassuring stance. Barrett reminded himself that he was serving as guard to one of the most talented men in the dungeon. What was dark and murky to him was no doubt clear as sunlight to Elsdon Taylor.

  “Mr. Holloway,” said Mr. Taylor, “if you believe anything I tell you, please believe this now: I am going to ask you a question, and there will be no penalty for you, regardless of what answer you make. I will trust that you are giving me the truth, and I will not punish you under any circumstances. Do you understand?”

  Mr. Holloway, looking understandably unnerved by this turn of events, nodded as he steeled himself for the question.

  Still soft in tone, Mr. Taylor asked, “Did you answer the last three questions truthfully during your beating?”

  All of Barrett’s trust crashed in on him, as though the cavern holding the Eternal Dungeon had suddenly collapsed.

  Mr. Taylor didn’t know. He didn’t know whether the prisoner had given his answers under torture because they were truthful or because he thought it was the only way to stop the torture. And if a Seeker of Mr. Taylor’s talent didn’t know . . .

  Hundreds of prisoners. Barrett had tortured hundreds of prisoners in the Eternal Dungeon, and dozens of them had died because of witness they had given under that torture. How many innocent men had ended their lives in the hangman’s noose because Barrett had hurt a prisoner enough that he would say anything he thought his guards and Seeker wanted to hear?

  Barrett felt the sud
den urge to vomit. He glanced at Mr. Phelps, wondering whether the junior guard was undergoing a similar agony of conscience, but the other guard continued to seem more concerned with the frayed rope than with what was taking place. And why should he not be? He was relatively new to the Eternal Dungeon; he trusted that the Seekers knew what they were doing. Barrett himself had always held such trust; if Elsdon Taylor had not held scruples above that of the other Seekers Barrett had served under, Barrett would never have questioned Mr. Taylor’s knowledge.

  He nearly missed the prisoner’s answer when it came. “Sir,” said Mr. Holloway in a wavering voice, “I can see that you are a man of good character and that you do not wish me harm. I regret exceedingly that I ever sought to hide the truth from you. But you must understand . . . my wife . . .”

  “Mr. Holloway, if your wife is innocent, anything you say can only help her.” Mr. Taylor’s voice was firm. “If she is not, then her soul lies in peril at this moment, and hiding the truth won’t help her.”

  Mr. Holloway gulped visibly before saying, “She is innocent, sir – you must believe me. When she had recovered from her shock of seeing the shirt on that first morning I discovered it, her only thought was to protect me. She suggested that we bury the shirt and knife in the back garden late at night, when nobody would see. We . . . we did consider doing that, sir.” Mr. Holloway’s voice trembled yet more as he made this confession.

  “Quite understandable,” Mr. Taylor responded in a reassuring voice. “Nobody wishes to be accused unjustly of committing a crime.”

  Mr. Holloway seemed to take courage from this statement. He straightened his back and said in a calmer voice, “We talked about it for several days. Each day, my wife would go to buy food, and we would hear from the balladeers what the news was. She even bought newspapers so that we could read the official accounts. Every day, the news said that the soldiers investigating the crime could find no clues as to what had happened. ‘The trail is not merely cold but frozen,’ one of the soldiers said.

  “That was what decided us in the end. The shirt and knife were the only clue to who the murderer was; we couldn’t hold back such evidence, not when the victim was so upright a man as my former master’s son. We agreed that we must tell the soldiers. It was my wife’s idea that I should write an anonymous note. Perhaps . . . perhaps that part of the plan was not such a good idea.”

  “No,” Mr. Taylor agreed. “You would have been less likely to fall under suspicion if you had reported the matter openly.”

  Mr. Holloway shook his head. “Sir, we did not think straight. At the time, all I could think was that, if we truthfully stated that we had known about the shirt for days, we would be arrested for withholding evidence. I was willing to pay any penalty necessary for what I had done, but my wife—”

  His voice broke suddenly, and tears streamed down his face. “My wife, sir. She did no harm, she sought only to protect me, and yet the soldiers took her away. What will happen to her?”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Barrett saw Mr. Phelps pause in the middle of some action with the rope. Mr. Taylor replied quietly, “I will communicate with the women’s prison to let them know the testimony you have offered on her behalf. Mr. Boyd, if you would kindly make a note—” The Seeker turned toward the guards, and then stopped speaking abruptly.

  Barrett quickly looked at where Mr. Taylor was staring. Mr. Phelps was caught in the act of carefully cutting away the frayed ends of the rope with his dagger. Blushing at being noticed neglecting his main duty, Mr. Phelps began to sheathe his blade.

  There was a blur of motion, and before Barrett could see what had happened, the prisoner had leapt past his Seeker and grabbed Mr. Phelps’s dagger.

  Mr. Phelps, startled, made no move to defend himself with his whip. Mr. Taylor said sharply, “Mr. Phelps! Back!” He himself, being unarmed, was moving as far back out of reach of the prisoner as he could, as the Code required under such circumstances.

  But the prisoner, perhaps sensing from his voice that Mr. Taylor had drawn out of reach, made no attempt to move in that direction. Nor did he try to attack Mr. Phelps, who was still standing frozen, within an arm’s reach of the deadly blade. Instead, just as Barrett pulled his whip from his belt, Mr. Holloway turned and rushed toward Barrett, his arm raised high as he made ready to plunge the dagger into his chosen target.

  He came so swiftly that Barrett had no time in which to uncoil the whip, no time even to curse this change in events. With reflexes honed by years of experience, he pulled out his dagger, turned it in his hand, and hit the prisoner on the side of the head with the hilt in the moment before Mr. Holloway would have plunged the blade into him.

  Mr. Holloway crumpled to the ground. Barrett felt his own knees weaken, and he had to step back against the wall to steady himself. Mr. Phelps had finally broken from his paralysis; he rushed over and took hold of Barrett’s arm, supporting him.

  Mr. Taylor, as Barrett might have predicted, had more important concerns. He ran over and dropped to his knees beside the prisoner.

  This move recalled Barrett’s mind to his duty. Pushing Mr. Phelps’s hand away, he went down on one knee beside the prisoner, doing what Mr. Taylor could not do without breaking the Code: he placed his fingers upon Mr. Holloway’s neck, searching for a pulse.

  His search for life was cut short by a groan from Mr. Holloway. The prisoner struggled into a sitting position. Mr. Phelps, his brow furrowed once more, quickly knelt down, sheathed the fallen blade, and bound the prisoner’s hands behind him with the frayed rope. The prisoner barely seemed to notice. He was staring at the Seeker, his eyes unfocussed.

  “My head,” he muttered. “It hurts even worse than before. Did I pass out?”

  “Yes, Mr. Holloway; my senior night guard knocked you unconscious. Are you well?”

  Barrett, who had taken firm hold of the prisoner’s arm to prevent him from lunging forward, felt Mr. Phelps tense beside him. Young as the guard was, he already knew that, under such circumstances as this, a Seeker’s enquiry after a prisoner’s health was a most ominous question. The words the prisoner spoke during the next few minutes – any excuses he offered for his conduct, whether it be ill health or fear or some other cause – would help to determine his coming fate.

  The prisoner seemed not to have heard Mr. Taylor’s question. With eyes still unfocussed, he said, “But why did he hit me? I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  Mr. Taylor’s eyes rose and came to rest upon the face of his senior night guard. He and Barrett exchanged looks.

  o—o—o

  Barrett glanced into the cell to see that Mr. Phelps was remaining properly attentive to the prisoner, then carefully closed and locked the cell door. A full five minutes after the beating had ended, Mr. Holloway’s screams were only just beginning to diminish. Barrett glanced down the corridor in the direction of the healer’s office, half expecting to see Mr. Bergsen, their regular healer, striding toward them, cursing Seekers and guards at the top of his lungs for their brutal treatment of prisoners. With Mr. Holloway’s screams and pleas still ringing in his ears, Barrett did not feel he could have denied such a charge, even though he knew that his Seeker had had no choice but to order the beating, after Mr. Holloway had denied responsibility for his actions.

  Mr. Taylor was rubbing his eyes with his fingertips, as though he had spent all night tending a prisoner on the rack, rather than having a brief searching session interrupted by an unexpected attack and punishment. “Mr. Boyd,” he said, “I wish that Mr. Urman was tending this prisoner instead of you.”

  Barrett had begun to step away in order to fetch the healer, a necessary action after a medium beating. Now he went still. A rebuke he had expected; he deserved nothing less for having allowed Mr. Phelps to take his gaze off the prisoner. Indeed, Barrett had already begun cursing himself for not passing on to Mr. Phelps the vitally important information that he must not draw his blade in the presence of a prisoner who feared that he would behave violently with blades
. As senior night guard, it was Barrett’s duty to issue orders to his Seeker’s other guards, and he had neglected that duty.

  So a rebuke he had expected, but this was something more than a rebuke. Barrett struggled for a response, wondering at what he point he should tender his resignation.

  Mr. Taylor seemed uninterested in receiving a reply, though. Turning away, he added, “And I dearly wish that Mr. Chapman was searching this prisoner instead of I.”

  He walked down the corridor, in the direction of the High Seeker’s office, leaving Barrett to stare after him.