Chapter 2

One late evening a great many months later, Ben was kneeling on the dirty cold stone floor of his cell, trying again to solve a fairly simple mathematical problem he’d recalled from a book, which he had now traced out on the floor in the thick layer of dirt and straw dust. He was not in a good humor, as tonight was very clearly the first evening of the kingdom’s traditional three day winter solstice holiday and neither benevolence nor happy fortune had arrived at his cell door. It had been a covenant for generations in the High-King’s court that even the meanest low cottage of the city and poorest of beggars could expect to enjoy at least three days of plenty ... including, also by tradition, the prisoners in the dungeon ... but perhaps not for its deepest and least cherished denizens.

For the first night of the solstice feast, there was customarily the gift of cake or a rich sweetened milk bread. On the second night, there was a feast commonly of duck, goose or some other roasted fowl. Finally, on the final evening, which had been tonight, there would be an abundant blessing of wine flowing freely to all ... but none of those three things had arrived at Ben’s prison door. Although from the loud sounds of singing, or miserable attempts at it, the wine had flowed well enough through the upper levels of the dungeon, for both the turnkeys and prisoners alike. Even a small token bit of sour wine would have helped to ward off the growing chill of the winter season.

The lad tried to focus his thoughts on the problem, an equation that multiplied a pair of negative values together, but he could not bring his mind to clearly focus through his growing feeling of acute disappointment. He’d been struggling with that problem for three nights and had ‘solved’ it six different times, unfortunately with six completely different solutions. He’d been racking his brain to recall the well-forgotten prior page in the textbook, where the technique to solve the problem was explained and he was about to quit for the night in anger and exasperation when he discovered that he had a very small tiny visitor inside of his cell.

His guest was a small white mouse, with clean dainty paws and whiskers, and an acute curiosity at why a person was down here sharing her domain. A true and proper son of Baad would have crushed the poor little thing, and probably chewed it down whole, tail and all, as lesson to any of its fellows not to disturb a Baad’s territory! Ben, being a rather unsatisfactory ‘evil prince’ and a constant disappointment to his parents and older siblings, had other notions. He gently tossed the mouse a small bit of leftover bread that wasn’t much bigger than a standard silver mark coin, but would make a more than adequate meal for a rodent her size. It was definitely a she, Ben could intuitively guess without any examination of her backend.

“Welcome young mistress to my very, very humble abode, but I fear you have entered this den of misery and poverty with false expectations of finding any great feast down here!” he greeted the tiny creature with a sudden cheerfulness that surprised him. His heart had been in an increasing dark mood these last few days, once it was apparent that none of the traditional seasonal niceties appeared to apply to the last surviving son of Baad, condemned as a traitor to the realm and thrown into the deepest darkest dungeon cell available. This had to mean that the High-King’s anger toward him, a young boy not quite yet thirteen, remained implacable ... and truly he was doomed to spend the rest of his life here.

“I also must apologize for greeting you in my present state of attire. My wardrobe, or lack thereof, available to me is quite unsuited for entertaining any respectable company. There is a children’s story I vaguely recall about a girl who once spun straw into the finest silks and raiment, but I fear that thus far I have been unequal to her example ... perhaps since they have not provided me with a spinning wheel. As for the refreshments that I could offer you, in truth, I have neither cake, nor roasted meat or even some slightly sour wine to provide you with, my unexpected tiny guest,” he added, “but I do believe I can find you some rather hard crunchy bits from the very corner of a crusty over-baked loaf that was presented with my meager meal of stew this evening. This poor fodder, I can freely offer you, unless you’d prefer a tiny scrap of undercooked turnip that I couldn’t quite bring myself to finish. Truly, the catering here at this regal establishment does leave much to be desired! I’ve always hated turnips and wouldn’t eat them at all even when they were served up constantly back home. I’m certain that once, very long ago, some insensitive and obstreperous vegetable once offended a great fairy or sorceress, and since then was transformed into the largely inedible root tuber we now enjoy today.”

The lad shuffled over towards the door, where he had kept those paltry bits of leftovers in his food bowl and returning, he with gentle deliberation tossed them towards his guest. The mouse trotted over, with a good deal of hesitant caution sniffed the meagre fare that was on offer, and after a long pause declined to partake of any of the proffered morsels. Her whiskers twitched with uncertainty, and she then quickly scampered a few paces backwards towards the cell door, making ready to hastily escape, as if she could sense that her host’s mood was now suddenly darkening.

“No little one, I bear you no ill-will or spiteful malice,” the dejected boy said, as he paced over to the furthest corner of his cell and set his bare arse down upon the thick pile of straw that had been gathered there for his bedding, “but I find it both depressing and yet oddly laughable that I possess nothing now in my life that is even of meager interest to a mouse ... and that you, tiny and weak as you are, have far more freedom and independence of choice, and better fine dining options, than I have!”

Ben found this thought increasing ironic and he began to slowly laugh, softly at first and much harder, in genuine mirth.

“Go away now, my tiny visitor, and go find yourself a better, grander feast elsewhere in these dark halls, for surely the uncouth gaolers and guardsmen lolling about in their barracks nearby have eaten and drunk their fill and more this night, and scattered about a feast fit for at least a hundred of such as you about the floors ... and they likely will already be far too drunk to notice such a small intruder as yourself. Go find your solstice rewards elsewhere ... for you will find no such happy fortunes here!”

Benjamin then burst out laughing and then laughed even harder still, as all of the acute disappointment and anger he had been repressing for months was now being released. It must be admitted that this was exactly the same sort and tone of laugh his father used to make, usually while enjoying someone else’s pain, torture or other malicious torment, and it took him several long minutes to regain some measure of control over his emotions again, as the laughter turned to bitter flowing tears.

Later, when he had composed himself, he looked about to see if his visitor was still present ... but the mouse was gone and once again he was entirely alone in his misery. He looked for her return in the days and weeks that followed, but when she did not reappear again, the lad soon nearly forgot about the tiny visitor entirely.

As winter now began to bite her fury upon the castle, even the deepest dungeon cells felt the creeping damp coldness of the season. Soon it was too chilly to exert himself by performing hard physical exercise, as the sweat chilled excessively to his bare young flesh and gave him the shivers for hours afterwards. For months, it seemed, the lad began to obsess about his pending meals, feeling the pangs of hunger quite often, even just after eating. He’d spend an increasing number of hours cocooned inside every bit of straw that he could wrap around himself, trying to find some small measure of warmth to ward off the constant chill.

The assistant turnkey, who certainly was not the lad’s friend, had tempted him with the offer of a thin wool blanket, should the lad submit to the poxed fiend’s romantic advances, but his will held firm ... as he practiced, as often as he could, all of the fire spells that he could remember. He warmed the hard rock stones of his cell with flames, small and greater, and basked in their warmth as closely to this radiant heat as he could, until he was dizzy from the mental drain from the magic, then rested briefly wrapped in his cold straw until he had the strength to heat the rocks yet again once more.

Gradually, the chills of the season past and his cell resumed its normal, more tolerable, ambient coolness. He had survived and had not succumb to the lung fever that had taken many of the other dungeon prisoners that especially harsh winter. More importantly, the knowledge that he had survived the worst that the dungeon could threaten him with, now gave him more strength, determination and will than he had possessed beforehand.

Now that it was the spring of a new year, the young lad (now barely a teenager) redoubled his training and set his jaw firmly to the needs of the future ... his continued survival.

Sometime around mid-summer the following year, the young man’s tiny visitor, the white mouse, returned to pay him a second visit. It had been a very long time since he had seen the creature and had thought, quite reasonably, that the small rodent had suffered some misfortune during her travels in the dungeon, or had found a better, safer source of food. Perhaps a cat or two had endangered her, the lethal mousers being kept near some of the nearby storerooms, or else one of the often-drunk screws had gotten lucky while flinging a boot at her. In any case, well over a year later she, or one of her identical looking mice daughters, had now come to visit him again.

“Hello again little one,” Ben calmly addressed her, “or are you perhaps a close relative of my previous visitor? In either case, I bid you welcome once more. It’s almost dinner time, I think ... I can feel that my belly is a taunt as a drum and it’s rumbling inside like a horde of northern barbarians sweeping across a field, their boots shaking the ground itself. Poetic, isn’t it! My tutor had an old book of poetry and he used to read it out loud to himself, whenever he though no one was in earshot of him. Horrible stuff, it was ... full of roaming in the gloaming and dreams of lovemaking while laying down in the heather with a bonnie lassie. Go figure ... an insane old Warlock with a price on his head in at least a dozen different kingdoms, pined for that sort of high-country rural romance ... at least when he wasn’t moaning about wanting to stick his staff of life into dead women, or worse, reanimated corpses. I rather think that no border highland poet will ever be writing any sonnets about that sort of macabre romance!”

The mouse seemed to be listening attentively, so the lad continued, “Oh, but we were discussing dinner, weren’t we. That’s the pity ... I’ve been thinking about food, and my lack of it, since last winter. I’m supposedly a growing strapping lad now and my stomach thinks I could be eating enough for two, when there is barely enough fare provided for just a small boy now on offer. Oh, did my cracking voice startle you just now? Sorry little one, my voice breaks up now and then when I’m talking to myself. My voice changing as I’m starting to grow up, I would suppose. It’s not like I’ve got a surviving male relative that I can ask about these sort of odd, teenaged ‘boy becomes a man things’. I’d ask one of my jailors, but I really can’t say that I enjoy the leering look of wanton hunger that the younger turnkey gives me, especially when he’s looking at my bare behind. Look and laugh, little furry one ... I’m even starting to get a little hair on my chest now, and even a bit of fuzzy down fur down there too! No, that’s not in the least bit impressing to you ... you’ve already got a nice white fur coat, but trust me, every single little hair that I can grow just might keep me that tiny bit warmer this next coming winter. Even with your fur coat, you probably wouldn’t like how miserably cold the stone down here gets, especially when you’re bare-arsed! Ah, I think I hear our dinner coming now, the scullion’s footsteps coming down the hallway towards us, so let me gather up our meager meal, once it has been served to us, and I’ll allow you, my guest, to take the first sniffs of it to see if tonight there anything that meets with your fancy!”

Tonight’s meal was a chicken stew that was heavy with broth and selections of older, last season’s harvest of root vegetables from the furthest corner of the larder and far too much celery, and preciously weak on actual morsel bits of the chicken. If the portion in the small wooden bowl had been double the volume, it still wouldn’t have been near enough to satisfy the growing boy’s fierce hunger. There was a bit of hard seed bread also that might have been a nice treat if it had been a day or two fresher, and about triple its present size. Still, this was a very slight improvement over the usual stale bit of white bakery breakfast loaf that was sometimes provided.

He gazed at his meal with some visible longing, but despite his ravenous hunger he set the bowl and the bit of seed bread down on the floor closer to the animal and gently pushed them closer to it, trying not to frighten the creature. Then he took a step or so backwards and knelt down on his knees to wait for his dinner companion to take her fill first. This time she ate, trotting up and nibbling a few of the seeds off of the bread crust at first, but then she lifted herself up on her back legs to examine the weak stew, but clearly she didn’t much approve of it. She made a show of twitching her whiskers restlessly as she examined the fare and then decided that one bit of floating onion didn’t look or smell too disgusting, and she selected that for her main course. She took it in her mouth and then trotting away from the bowl, signifying that she was done, and that her host might enjoy the rest.

Usually the lad tried to eat slowly, to savor and stretch out his meal, to make a small amount of food seem to last longer ... to the eyes anyway, if not the stomach, but his hunger tonight was such that he swallowed the watery fare with much greater haste than usual, his tongue barely getting the time to taste what he was swallowing. Worse, now that he’d finished, it felt as if he’d only enjoyed a small appetizer and his stomach rumbled some more, eager that yet more fodder be provided to fill it.

“I think they’re trying to starve us, little one,” he muttered, as much to himself as to his dinner companion. “That scant bowl might have fed a smaller boy, assuming the youngster in question was already a stout little fellow, with plenty enough amidst his belly to spare, but as a dinner for two, it leaves rather a great deal to be desired!” The mouse cleaned her whiskers and paws, but seemed in general principle to agree with her host.

His guest remained and the lad did his best to make polite post-dinner conversation until the scullion returned to collect the bowls and the waste pot, at which time the mouse began to exhibit increasing signs of nervousness. As the lowly kitchen maid departed, the mouse frantically ran for the door but stopped for just a moment to look back upon the boy before she passed with ease through the bottom food hatch, and then she was gone.

His diminutive friend didn’t return again until the last day of the winter solstice holiday, once more. Winter had come early that year and already the dungeons were uncomfortably cold. Ben had already hastily eaten his inadequately meager dinner before her arrival, which contained none of the traditional seasonal feast items, yet once again. The lad was no longer even disappointed at being passed over yet again, for the third year now ... but he was delighted to see the mouse once more!