Chapter 19: Jailed

I awoke with sore shoulders and realized that they had left me with my arms tied behind me, still stark naked. I had somehow managed to sleep in the straw on the jail floor along with various of God's smaller creatures including a large family of field mice. I struggled to my feet, disturbing the scurrying mice. The cell was about eight feet long and four feet wide. All four walls were stone and there was one small window with iron bars high on the outside wall. The day appeared to be very gray, and I could see a few snowflakes blowing around. I suppose it was shortly after sunrise. My crushed little finger ached.

"You got a visitor," came a cry from the heavy, wooden door. I heard the lock turn and then Ivy entered, all swaddled in a heavy coat with a hood and carrying some broken pieces of bread and a slice of sausage on a plate.

"Uncle," she said, her voice rather odd as if she had developed a lisp. "I brought you breakfast." She reached up on tip toe and kissed me and pushed something thin and sharp into my mouth with her tongue. "He tore up the bread and ate most of the meat," she told me, looking furious but speaking more clearly. She did not seem to notice that I had no clothes on.

"Here, here," said the guard. "You ain't allowed to touch 'im. Din' I tell you, lass?"

"Sorry," said Ivy very quickly and quietly. "Otto, who-put them-in, said to-tell-you-they-go up."

"What?" I said as if she had spoken Greek. The guard was not paying any attention.

"I'll bring you supper," Ivy said with a small smile. She glanced at my hairy groin and left, and I listened to the lock being thrown, twice. I spit a curved piece of steel, sharpened to a point on one end, onto the floor, sat on it and ate my bread and meat as if I were a dog, without any hands to use.

The key went in the lock a few minutes later, and I quickly scrambled up and shuffled dirt over the shiny pick and then stood on it. I smiled at the jailer.

"Come," he said. "Cap'n wants to see you." He did not smile.

The square jail building held three cells like mine and a office room of the same size. There sat the captain I had met the night before and Corporal Roberts, who stood beside him holding huge, hinged nippers, a blacksmith's tool.

"Well, I see you have stopped bleeding," said the captain, "and I hear someone brought you food. Mrs. Snyder's daughter or son was it? Perhaps we should visit her, eh. Imagine how she would look after a night with my regiment. Would you like that? They are certainly enjoying that indentured woman we found at the Weaver place, doubt she'll last the day."

I stood and waited knowing he would get to the point eventually.

"You still have nine usable fingers and that ugly thing between your legs. Hah, looks worse than mine. Roberts will cut all of them off bit by bit if I ask him to do so. He seems to enjoy it."

I stood quietly.

"Did you break his trigger finger as I asked?" said the captain.

"No sir, didn't have the friggin' time with lady fainting and all," the corporal said.

"Do it now," said the captain, smiling up at me. "Untie him."

The knots came free, and Roberts pulled out my right arm while I shook the left one to try to get it working. The soldier held my right hand against the wall and struck my forefinger twice with his heavy, wrought iron cutters. I think I yelled and know I called him a filthy name. He elbowed me in the gut, and then bent my arm up my back. He yanked me around so the officer could see his handiwork.

"Done, sir," he said, "Broke 'is knuckles."

A knock at the door interrupted them. The guard entered and whispered to the captain while Roberts and I waited, eyeing each other. I was taller, but he was bigger around and bull strong, and it felt as if he was planning on detaching my arm.

"This will have to keep. The colonel has called a morning meeting. Tie him up and toss him back in that cell. No visitors." He and his man stalked out, and the guard looked at me, warily, a pistol in his hand.

"Stick out yer han's," he said. "I'll tie 'em in front so's you can eat and comfort yer cock if y'needs to. Worse lookin' prick I ever seed." He set his gun on the table, and I was tempted to make a try for it but my broken finger demanded almost all my mental attention and he was holding my left hand tightly. Besides I could still hear Roberts and the captain talking out front, so I settled on tensing up my wrists and asking for some water as the man lashed my hands together with a leather thong.

Back in the cell, I dunked my hands in the water, soothing my mashed finger a bit. Then I found the steel pick, got it into my back teeth and pulled the knots at my wrists loose. Once my hands were free, I started working on the base of one of the window bars. I had to use my left hand since my right forefinger was out of commission and throbbing like a church-organ bellows.

It took an hour or so, but eventually I chipped out enough cement that the bar rattled loosely in the bottom socket. By then I had deciphered what Ivy had said and pushed the bar up. It slid easily into the lintel stone, and I bent it back and forth until I could pull it loose. I placed it quietly on the floor and started working on the seat of the next bar, wondering if I could actually get my body through the window even if I got all three bars out.

The key rattled in the heavy lock, and I quickly sat with my hands behind me, gripping the iron bar. I had not held anything that size and shape that gave me so much pleasure for a long time. The captain entered the cell smiling and Corporal Roberts followed, long-handled cutters in his big paw and a nasty smile on his face.

"Get him up from there and take off that trigger finger," the captain said, leaning back against the door as I heard the lock thrown twice. Roberts grabbed my right arm, and I came up swinging my left. I hit him in the nose, driving it up and back flat against his brow ridge. He fell as if her had been shot, and I stepped over him and lunged for the captain, who quickly pulled his sword and parried my blow at his head, cutting my hand. I dropped the iron bar, crushed him against the door with my shoulder and bent his wrist back until he dropped the sword. I kicked it away from us.

"What's goin' on in there," yelled the jailer, fumbling his big key into the lock. I threw the captain into the corner and grabbed the turnkey by the hair as he ducked to enter the cell. I ran him into the far wall face first and turned just in time see the captain jump toward the open door. I picked up his sword and ran him through the small of his back, pulled out the bloody blade and stabbed him again, a bit higher. He screamed and then gurgled. I left the sword in him as he crumbled to his knees, holding the blade that protruded from his chest with both hands. Bright blood poured from his mouth.