cold
wet
dark
hunger
filth
stench
humiliation
pain
madness
death
England’s traitor awaited the court’s verdict sitting in a puddle of his own filth on freezing stone, even in summer, barely able to move for cold and pain:
his back against the equally freezing stone wall,
his knees up and his arms propped across them,
his head hung low,
his ankles with bracelets of iron, a short length of chain betwixt them to hobble him; a matching set gracing his wrists—the two chains connected by a third to keep him secure from escape,
his waist-length hair matted, filthy, crawling with lice and maggots,
his beard, thick and coarse, itching and crawling with the same vermin as his hair,
his body emaciated and weak, his stomach aching from hunger.
Two years.
He had been sitting thusly for two years here whilst his trial lumbered toward the inevitable conclusion of his execution.
To keep his mind sharp, he created word puzzles and riddles. He made lists of the books in the library at home and which ones he had read. He named the names of every tenant, villager, and boarder on his estate.
To make himself laugh, he recited by memory long passages from Pope’s Dunciad; following that, the works that had inspired such brilliant insults. He stood in the middle of his cell and delivered monologues from Shakespeare and Marlowe, twisting them beyond recognition into bad puns that made him cackle at his own jokes.
To keep his sanity, he recalled his boyhood, spent running hither and yon with his older siblings, racing their horses through the woods, hunting small animals with primitive snares and weapons, playing games with the village children, sneaking into the sea caves to hunt pirate treasure.
To keep hope alive, he flew far away from this place, to the Ohio river valley he had found and made his home for a fortnight, land he had coveted so much he had paced it off as if to verify a purchase. Upon reflection, he should have known it could never have been his, but in this time and place, as it had for the last two years, it was.
He split logs for the fences that corralled his bleating, stinking sheep. He walked behind yoked oxen guiding a plow, his feet bare in the cool, damp, rich black dirt that had never before met steel. He dug precise holes into which he carefully set saplings for apples and pears, then carried water and mulch with which to nurture them. He mucked his horses’ stalls and milked his cows, and when he emerged from his stables, he looked over acres and acres of grain, pastureland, and meadows to the horizon—all his, as far as he could see.
He turned and saw his home, his beautiful home, the one he had built with his own hands, along with equally beautiful furnishings inside. Here, a rocking chair he had labored over. There, a well-designed roof hip he was particularly proud of.
A simply dressed woman waved to him from the porch, called his name, and returned the smile that grew upon his face. He could not see her very well, though, for he was rather far away. He could, however, hear his children squawking at one another over this favored toy or that—one he had made.
Come to supper, my love! The sun will set again yet tomorrow.
“A moment, my love,” he whispered, and gazed again over his land—his!—marveling at its vastness.
The day guards thought him mad, for all that he spoke to himself, asking and answering his own questions, reciting the same lists and soliloquies over and over again, conversing with his nonexistent wife and children, scratching out crop plans on the stone with the jagged edges of the links that tethered him.
The night guards had nothing better to do than listen to his plans and scoff.
“TRAITOR!”
Jerked out of his reverie, he smirked at the screech that came through the narrow bars far above his head. He wiped his mouth with his filthy hand, chuckling. How many times had he heard that?
Traitor. He heard it shouted outside the prison walls for hours at a time, the populace clamoring for him to dance from a gibbet.
Traitor. He heard it shouted outside the courtroom where his trial took place, where he stood stooped because of his shackles. His appearance condemned him even to those who could not quite be convinced by any other means that he was guilty of high treason.
Traitor. The word was splashed all over the gazettes, or so he was told. Almost no one would speak of it to him, even when he begged for the truth. Only his mother understood his need for the truth—and gave it to him.
Truth: There was a word whose concept he had long forgotten, if it had ever existed in the first place.
Honor: He had been betrayed by the Crown itself, its political interests in his death paramount to any claim of honor.
Nobility: His home, the place he had left fifteen years ago, the one to which he had wanted to return for so many years— He would never see it again.
Reputation: Shredded beyond repair, his family name forever black, his siblings left to bear society’s disdain and contempt. His unmarried sisters, still in the schoolroom, would find it difficult to make a decent match. His brothers would find the task equally burdensome, which, if remained unaccomplished, would be the death knell of their family.
It would not be long now until he was shuffled off this mortal coil, if the rising clamor outside was any barometer.
I did not bear weak men, Son. Keep faith. Your brother will get you out of this Godforsaken place, and if he doesn’t, I will.
Ah, but his mother had always sailed into the wind, making little headway, but determined to defeat Fate, refusing to lose or to fail no matter how difficult the task. He himself had inherited a good measure of that foolishness, he knew, and perhaps his father truly had the right of it: allow Fate to deal the cards, then play the hand given without complaint. It certainly must be easier.
That bloody Hanoverian jackanape has taken too much of us, of you, and I will cheat him of his goal if ’tis the last thing I do.
Mother, you would make me a fugitive? I will never see you again.
I would rather never see you again, knowing you are alive and well, than watch my wonderful, courageous boy sacrificed on the altar of politics. You will not die before I do. I’ll not allow it!
“‘Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more,’” he whispered, then shook his head furiously. “Lord, Mother would have my arse, thinking thataway.”
He might allow as how his father’s philosophy was easier on the soul, but he was indeed his mother’s son. Visions of a life on the American frontier persisted, which meant he would go to his death mired in hope.
Yet for all his misery, he had endured far, far worse. Two years alone in these unaccommodating accommodations was far more preferable to the fortnight of hell he had endured in the hold of a Royal Navy frigate that marked the beginning of his career—the one he had never wanted.
Here, he was left alone but for a guard’s occasional half-hearted taunt.
Here, he was given at least a bit of gruel and water.
Here, he was not stripped, not bound in stocks, not flogged, not—
Here, he could sleep as deeply as he wished without fear.
The nightmares were rare and negligible. They did not shake him out of slumber, nor disturb him when awake. He knew where he was: Newgate. He knew his cellmates: No one. He knew that the bars that kept him in kept everyone else out.
Here he could escape across an ocean and hundreds of miles inland to a land of promise, a land flowing with milk and honey, far away from this meaningless existence.
And here, he had regular visits from people who loved him, who gave him what little comfort they could afford, who had dedicated themselves to winning his acquittal—whether he was innocent or not.
The noise outside was swelling. Pebbles and larger stones were tossed into his cell, their plinking against the walls faster and faster. A collective bellow gathered and rose to a roar.
traitor!
traitor!
traitor!
It was a chant growing in volume and vitriol.
He would be drawn and quartered by sundown on the morrow. Unless his mother had one of her seemingly endless supply of wily feints at the ready, he would never have to worry about anything ever again.
He found that a … relief. Father was definitely more correct in this, he finally decided and hang what Mother would think. At some point, it was easier to accept it than to continue fighting against the inevitable. After all, even the best captains and generals had to retreat now and again. There was no dishonor in losing a battle to win a war, and no war could have two victors.
Thus, he proceeded to unfurl his mind’s sails and head for Ohio as he had done so often, to sink into the soft dirt and sweet grasses on the bank of the Cuyahoga River to await the executioner’s summoning. Then it occurred to him that though he could not have that in life, he could have it in death: He would ask his family to bury him there. His mother would push back the cliffs of the estate to see this request honored. Aye, that was precisely what he would do.
He smiled and closed his eyes, letting his head fall back against the stone wall.
Clanging at the iron doors of the gaol two floors up only surprised him in that it was so soon after the verdict was rendered. The voices of his advocates barely pricked his resignation to Fate.
The haste with which his cell door opened and men rushed in did spur him to lift his head. The sudden light from the guard’s torch blinded him and he raised an arm to shield his eyes.
“My son!” He grunted in pain when his father cast himself to his knees and fell upon him, weeping. “My son, forgive me, I pray!”
There was nothing he could say except, “’Tis of no matter, Father.” Except it was, insofar as he was an obedient and dutiful son, and his tribulations were the direct result of that obedience. “But, please, I must ask you to bury me—”
“Leftenant!” snapped his commander as he sank to his haunches beside him and began to fuss with his manacles.
Lieutenant? He had not been any man’s lieutenant for nigh ten years, but the sharp address certainly made him pay attention. What had he done—high treason notwithstanding—to be reprimanded so by an ally?
“Sir?”
“No one will be burying you in the immediate future. You’ve been acquitted.”
“Acquitted?” he croaked. Surely he had misheard … ?
He sat confused, but that was certainly of no matter, either, since he would die on the morrow and now felt an urgent need to get his request made before that happened. He flinched when the frigid air touched his wrist where the manacle had worn scars into his flesh.
“Father, come.” His older brother’s voice. “Get up. You may weep over him in the coach. Nephew, help me.”
“Grandfather.” Ah, and there was his nephew, his solicitor. Shadows moved as the younger man bent over the older one and urged him away from his supplication.
His commander grasped his left wrist, and he watched in wonder as the key went into the hole, turned, and released the mechanism that bound his other wrist. The manacle fell off, clattering upon the stone floor. He flinched from the sharp sound.
A fourth man stooped over him. “Mother will take you home as soon as you can walk farther than ten feet. You will be at home in time for Christmas!”
“What?” he whispered as he looked at his younger brother, the barrister who had argued his case.
“Do you not understand?” He pulled away when his brother’s nose nearly touched his while he stared directly into his eyes and spoke. “You—have—been—acquitted.”
He blinked. And again.
“Acquitted?” Did he dare hope this was not an hallucination? “I can go home?”
“Aye,” grunted his commander, who was currently struggling with the lock on a rusty ankle cuff. “Your brother did a fine job and your father’s influence is not to be discounted, either. Your mother—well, I should not want to cross her in a dark alley, to be sure. You’re a free man.”
Free.
Nay. Not so long as he could remember the king’s betrayals of him, nor whilst he seethed with the rage that had been building for the last two years.
The first betrayal he had been able to put behind him to fulfill his duties with extraordinary valor.
The second he shared with fifteen other men, all of them cast under the wheels of political expediency.
This, the third …
He was finished bearing the Britain’s sins against him without seeking redress.
Redress.
That which the Americans sought also.
But they were little more than beasts, the colonials, with their primitive weapons, little training, sparse leadership, and no navy.
He was not.
When these men, his family, the people who loved him, attempted to pull him off the ground, his legs buckled. Even his arms, so long in one position, refused to hook around their shoulders with enough strength to hold himself.
“Bloody hell,” his father hissed before sweeping him up in his arms and cradling him as he had done when he was but a wee lad.
Redress.
Revenge.
Suddenly, it was a more intoxicating idea than Ohio.
Aye, he would seek justice for the crimes committed against him and his family, and he would do it in the manner the Crown had trained him. Could there be anything sweeter?
His father carried him out of his cell, out of Newgate, whilst the crowds who screamed for his execution were held at bay by Bailey guards. Soon enough, he found himself ensconced in a comfortable coach, his father tucking warm blankets around him.
“My son,” he whispered as he worked, his eyes glittering, a smile—that smile, the one he loved so much to see—growing. “You are a free man.”
The newly acquitted barked a rough, bitter laugh and said, “Your optimism is always the gentlest of salves, Father, if only for a small amount of time, but look.” He gestured weakly out the window toward the bloodthirsty crowd. “Does that look like freedom? Nay. I shall never be free,” he muttered. “I am a traitor. I will always be a traitor.”