The Knowledge Stone (20 page)

‘Either the whip or the scourge. I leave it to you.’

The light went out of the boy’s eyes. Without a sound, he made his mark on the confession paper.

The jailers were not unkind to the boy. He was allowed plenty time to re-clothe his aching and tender body and afterwards they gave him a bowl of food and a cup of water to drink. He gulped down the water thirstily and managed to eat some of the food, which tasted sour and was of very poor quality. Nevertheless, he was grateful that they should give him anything and thanked them politely.

‘You are obviously a well brought up boy,’ they said to him. ‘We don’t usually get thanked for prison food!’ They both laughed, thinking this a splendid joke. Then the men spoke quietly together, looking over at him from time to time.

At last, the First Jailer spoke to him: ‘You’re in luck, tonight. We’re going to put you in a single cell. Normally, we would put you into the common cell – I think we have fifteen men in there tonight – but my friend and I think you might come to some serious harm in there. I’m sure you’re sore enough already!’ The men smiled at each other meaningfully.

So the boy stumbled down a long stone corridor with the Second Jailer, past a large wooden door from which a most frightening noise was coming.

‘Excuse me, Sir, what is that noise?’

‘Oh that? That’s just the men’s common cell. They always make that noise. There are always men fighting or someone being beaten in there.’

The boy was very frightened and was deeply grateful that he was not being put into that terrible cell. Through another heavy door, they came to a row of smaller cell doors and the jailer swung open one of these.

‘You go in here,’ he said to the cowering boy, ‘you’ll be all right, there’s no-one else in there except maybe a rat or two. We’ll see you in the morning. The Court Jailer will come back to see you tomorrow and we must talk about that before he arrives.’ Without another word, the jailer slammed the cell door shut with a deafening crash and turned the key in the lock. The boy heard his retreating footsteps and then the sound of the corridor door being closed and locked.

At first the trembling boy could see nothing in this dark cold place but gradually his eyes grew used to the glimmer of light in the cell and he started to see some details. It was a small cell with a little barred window high up in one wall. The boy was so pleased when he spotted a single star in the sky through the window. ‘I hope that will be my lucky star,’ he said, with a very small, careful smile. He did not want his slashed cheek to begin bleeding again.

Now he could make out a few more details in the cell. A rough truckle bed with a ragged blanket. A broken stool. A bucket in the corner, mercifully covered. The boy lowered himself carefully on the bed and reviewed his position. Just a few hours ago, he had been happy and content; warm, dry and pain-free, secure in his job as a stable boy at the Manor House. A popular and attractive young man who was friendly with everyone. Now, he was a prisoner; dirty, cold and desolate in a dank rat-infested cell. A person who has confessed to a disgusting crime for which everyone will despise him for evermore, with a face slashed by a whip and a body that had known the merciless bite of the birch upon all its parts. Here he was, with nothing but pain, suffering and deprivation ahead of him.

The boy sank on the bed and wrapped the dirty blanket around him: ‘I am finished. Surely my life is over. Perhaps I will die here, in this cell. In some ways, I hope I do.’

For a whole series of reasons, the boy had hardly slept. These included rats, bedbugs, pain, cold, noise and terror. He was already awake when he heard the corridor door being unlocked and shortly after his cell door swung open.

It was the Second Jailer, carrying a bowl and a cup: ‘Here is food. Eat it quickly and then come with me.’ The man waited while the boy forced himself to eat the thin watery gruel and drink the cup of water. ‘Right, come with me, we need to talk to you before the Court Jailer comes.’ The boy stumbled along behind the man, gasping with pain, his body stiffened by its ill-treatment the previous evening. At last they reached the jailer’s room.

‘You certainly are a bit of a mess,’ the First Jailer greeted him.

He addressed the Second Jailer: ‘Take him out to the pump.’ He waved his hand at the door. The boy was grateful for the fresh air of the courtyard, although the shock of the change of environment made him giddy at first.

‘Give yourself a good wash down,’ the Second Jailer said. ‘Here’s a cloth to dry yourself.’

The boy did look rather better when clean. The Second Jailer produced a set of thin prison clothes: ‘Now that you are a prisoner, you need to wear these. Anyway, your other clothes are torn and blood-stained.’

Back in the room, the men directed the boy to sit on the bench once more. ‘The Court Jailer will be coming to see you this morning and we just want to prepare you so that we don’t have any more trouble.’

‘Sirs,’ the boy responded, ‘I know I have confessed to this crime but I am innocent!’

The men sighed and looked heavenward.

The Second Jailer spoke quietly: ‘Listen carefully, boy. If you say that to the Court Jailer when he comes you will be back in that room next door with me. Is that what you want?’

The boy paled. ‘But, Sir, does the Court Jailer not want to know the truth?’

‘Listen again, boy. Do you not think that every prisoner claims to be innocent? If the Court Jailer believed them, there would be no criminals in the Jail. They would all be out in the Town committing crimes. Anyway, you see this paper? It says you did the crime and it is signed with your mark. This means that the Court Jailer will take you to the Town Court and you will be tried for the crime.’

‘But Sir …’

The First Jailer held up his hand. Now he spoke sharply: ‘Stop speaking! Listen to me. The Court Jailor will speak to you when he comes. He will ask you two questions. It is part of the process of justice – that’s why he’s doing it. So listen carefully. When the Court Jailer asks: “Is this your confession, given without duress?” you are to say “Yes”. And when the Court Jailer asks “Do you have anything else to say?” you are to say “No.” Do you understand? First answer – “Yes”, second answer – “No”.’

‘Yes, Sir, but I am innocent!’

The two men looked at each other. The First Jailer spoke slowly and clearly, speaking in an icy tone: ‘Boy, if you do not obey me, do you know what will happen?’

‘No, Sir.’

‘I will tell you exactly what will happen. The Court Jailer will leave and we will whip you until you faint with pain. When you waken up, we will give you another confession to put your mark upon – and you will do it, just as you did last night. And, boy, we can repeat this every day until you answer the Court Jailer’s questions in the way I have told you or until you die under our beating. It is your choice. Do you understand now?’

‘Yes, Sir.’ A whisper; the boy was totally crushed.

Noises of activity heralded the arrival of the Court Jailer, who hurried into the room.

‘Good morning, men,’ he said jovially, ‘I trust you are ready for me?’

‘Yes, Sir, we are quite ready. Here is the boy’s confession with his mark upon it.’

‘Excellent,’ the Court Jailer was unsurprised; his jailers rarely let him down in these matters. ‘Where is the boy?’ The man looked round and saw the small, despondent figure slumped on the bench. ‘Sit up, boy,’ he said sharply, ‘prisoners are not allowed to rest without permission.’

The Court Jailer now sat down at the table and perused the confession. ‘Come and stand here,’ he gestured to the boy, observing his slow and painful progress with a slight smile. (Perhaps he should examine the boy’s body? The Court Jailer always enjoyed that. But, no, perhaps today there was no time!) He held up the confession paper to the boy’s face: ‘Is this your confession, given without duress?’ Silence. The Second Jailor coughed loudly and was seen to be stroking the stock of a small whip.

‘Yes.’ Barely a whisper.

‘What?’ The Court Jailer sat forward sharply.

‘Yes, Sir.’ Slightly louder.

‘That’s better. Do you have anything else to say?’ The jailers stopped breathing.

The boy’s eyes had a spark of courage burning deeply within. His mouth opened and then: ‘No, Sir.’

The relief of the jailers was expressed in a great explosion of jollification, sending almost visible vortices of gleeful energy around the room. ‘A really skilled job, Sir,’ they said in joyous, deafening tones. ‘You are so skilled in these matters and you exercise them with such great aplomb.’

The Court Jailer smiled thinly and thanked them for their kind words. He would now start to prepare the case for the Court and would return with the date and time in due course. This would not be soon, he warned them, the wheels of justice proceed slowly: ‘There is so much crime to deal with, you see.’

In the midst of all this spontaneous gaiety and congratulation, the stable boy stood forgotten. Head bowed, his slight figure faded to virtual transparency, a grey spectre half in an alternative dimension of hopelessness. However within that unmoving, amorphous body, a mind raced. In a brief moment of pure desperation, he considered throwing himself at the feet of the Court Jailer and pleading his innocence – but this spasm was quieted almost immediately at the prospect of being whipped to a certain and agonising death.

The Court Jailer had gone. The room was transformed into a more relaxed place.

‘Now that we know where we’re going, we’ll need to make sure he doesn’t get sick. He needs to look well-treated for his case in the Court.’ For this reason, the jailers decided that they would keep the stable boy segregated in his single cell. ‘More trouble for us but I suppose it’s for the best,’ they agreed. ‘Maybe he can exercise with some of the other prisoners but we’ll need to keep an eye on him. We don’t want him getting damaged just before his case is heard. The Court Jailer would blame us for that and it would not go well for us.’ They nodded at each other sagely.

Also, the jailers decided that the boy should be given better food than the dreadful meals that were served to the other prisoners. This better nutrition meant that the boy’s body was able to recover from his wounds; it was not too long before his bruising had subsided and his skin healed. However, he had an obvious and permanent scar on his cheek where the Master had struck him many weeks before. He had seen his face in a looking glass and thought the scar might be an advantage to him in his new life:

‘I can always tell them I got it in a knife fight – which I won!’ The boy grinned.

In fact there was another reason why the jailers were being kind to the boy. One evening during their regular evening meal, the two jailers found that their thoughts about the stable boy were surprisingly in accord. They had been talking about their prisoners and how they always insisted they were innocent of the crimes for which they had been convicted: ‘They say this even when they are caught red-handed!’ The men laughed at this.

After an introspective silence, the Second Jailer said, very quietly and uncertainly: ‘You know, I think he is innocent.’ A silence of ten seconds. Then: ‘I do, too.’ The men looked at each other in surprise, a surprise that turned into conspiratorial grins of relief. ‘If the Court Jailer could hear us say that …’ The First Jailer drew a finger across his throat.

After a long pause, the Second Jailer spoke, his expression far away: ‘I remember that first night so well. All routine to me, you know. You know how many beatings I’ve done – that’s right, hundreds, maybe more. And it was all just the usual routine, the stripping, strapping the arms up, giving the warning; you know, nothing unusual. Then he looked at me. He kept telling me he was innocent, in such a sincere way. And I found, when the time came, I didn’t want to do it. But I’m a professional. So I started, just as usual. I concentrated on all the usual places, then worked out to cover everywhere else and, yes, he cried, he screamed, just like all the others. But he did something else, too. In between the screams and the cries, he kept telling me he was innocent.’ The man placed his head in his hands, his eyes becoming moist with tears: ‘He is, I know it.’

‘I know it, too.’

The two men sat pondering. ‘What shall we do?’

‘What can we do? We are nothing in the community, just jailers. Nobody listens to us.’

‘He’ll go to trial. He’ll be found guilty. He’ll be sent back here and we won’t be able to protect him anymore, because by then he will just be a criminal serving his sentence.’ The two men looked at each other with helpless dismay.

After a long silence, the First Jailer spoke: ‘I have just had an idea. Listen …’ The men talked together very quietly for some time.

Lying in his narrow bed, still cold and uncomfortable despite his three blankets – a gift from his jailers – the stable boy shifted and twitched in a fitful sleep, dreaming of the day when this nightmare would be over. In his waking hours, he never pursued such a dream, for he recognised the hopelessness of his position, not only for now but for the rest of his life, however long that may continue: ‘One thing I have learned,’ he thought, ‘that poor weak people never receive justice from the Court. Even when they are known to be innocent, they will be forced to admit guilt and then punished severely for things they have not done.’ The boy knew this was exactly what would happen to him in due course. He sighed with hopelessness.

‘Excuse me, Sir, there is a man here asking to speak to you.’

‘Who is it, lad?’ The Head Stableman was not expecting any visitors at this time of the day; most of the tradesmen who came to sell him animal feeds and other materials came in the morning.

‘I do not know who it is, Sir. He says he is from the Town,’ the stable hand replied. Going outside, the Head Stableman found the man standing in the stable yard, dressed in neat working clothes and holding his headgear in his hands as a mark of respect.

‘You wish to speak to me? Have we done business before?’

‘No, Sir.’ The man was very respectful. ‘Many years have passed since we met. In fact we were boys together at the Town School. You were always very clever and were soon apprenticed to stable work.’