Prisoner

Chapter One Inveraray, Scotland Winter 1861 He cracked open a weary eye, his vision blurred by pain and fever. "Evenin', yer lordship." A heavy set of iron manacles dangled ominously from the warder's grimy fist. "How are we keepin' tonight?" Haydon regarded him warily and said nothing. The warder laughed, exposing a jagged array of rotting teeth. "Quiet this evenin', are we?" With his muddy boot he nudged the dish of congealed porridge abandoned at the foot of Haydon's wooden bed. "What's this? Supper not to yer likin', milord?" "The lad can have it." Haydon nodded at the scrawny figure opposite him hunched upon the frigid floor. "I'm not hungry." The rawboned youth did not bother to look up, but remained huddled in a ball, his thin arms locked around his knees in a vain attempt to find some warmth. "What say ye, Jack?" asked the warder, shifting his attention. "Are ye wantin' his lordship's supper to fill yer belly?" The boy looked up, his gray eyes hard and glinting with naked hostility. A thin white scar marred the otherwise smooth skin of his left cheek. "No." The warder laughed. The rations provided in the prison were as foul as they were mean, and he knew the lad had to be hungry. "Hard little bugger, ain't ye? Don't need a thing from anyone -- except for what ye steal, of course. Thievin' runs in yer blood just like whorin' ran in yer ma's, don't it, lad?" The boy's lean body tensed. Haydon watched as his skinny arms tightened farther around his knees, fighting to keep his anger under control. "That's the trouble with ye whores' bastards," continued the warder. "Ye're born with bad blood and ye die with bad blood, and in between ye do nothin' but stink and make life a misery for the rest of us. Well, today," he drawled, jangling his manacles ominously in front of the lad's face, "I'm goin' to see if I can't beat some of that bad blood out of ye." A hint of fear seeped into Jack's cold gaze. Haydon clenched his jaw as he slowly eased himself onto one elbow, fighting a wave of pain and dizziness. The beating he had received some two weeks earlier had broken several ribs, and fever had sapped him of much of his strength. Even so, concern for the lad made him force himself to a sitting position. "What are you talking about?" he demanded. "Been sentenced to thirty-six stripes o' the lash, our young Jack has." The warder took perverse pleasure in the alarm that drained the blood from the youth's filthy face. "Did ye think I'd forgotten about that, lad?" He laughed, then spat on the floor. "The sheriff takes a dim view of scum like you stealin' valuables from honest folk. Thinks a little beating and a few years spent at a reformatory school in Glasgow might cure ye of yer evil ways. But we know different, don't we, Jack?" He sank his beefy hand into the boy's hair and hauled him roughly to his feet. "We know a filthy little shit like yerself can only end up dead, either killed by yer own kind, or hanged as a murderer, like his lordship over there." He shoved Jack hard against the wall. "Now, I suspect that bein' strapped to the whippin' table with yer wrists manacled and yer bare arse bleedin' beneath the lash of my whip ain't goin' to cure ye of yer wicked ways. All the same, I want ye to know," he finished, laughing, "that I am goin' to bloody enjoy it." Rage, hard and hot, suddenly flooded the lad. With a quickness and strength that Haydon found surprising in a half-starved youth, Jack plowed his bony fist deep into the warder's flaccid gut. Sour air blew from the jailer's rotting mouth, part groan and part curse. Before he could recover, Jack had drawn his fist back and rammed it into his tormentor's jaw. TheMonk, Karyn is the author of 'Prisoner' with ISBN 9780553577624 and ISBN 055357762X.