Almost instantly, the door scraped open. A wart-faced man wearing a deranged smile stood to greet us.
“Aye, Lady Bridget. Welcome to His Majesty’s torture chamber of Dover Castle.”
He descended into hell...
Behind him, sobs and whimpers from various contraptions filled the dimly lit room, stuffy with putrid odors and the faint scent of rotting death. A sorrowful excuse for a human hung in chains from the wall and moaned a low, guttural moan while another person who looked to be closer to death than life whimpered from the rack. From the ceiling hung a cage that looked like something a bird might live in, only this cage held a human. A woman with long, stringy hair and empty eyes.
Her legs hung over the side and a pained look contorted her sallow face. A fat man with a handful of feathers stood below her cage. He looked at me, then up at her bare foot. A sadistic grin spread his thin lips wide. He raised his handful of feathers and brushed them along the bottom of her bare foot. She groaned as she jerked to get away, as though the touch to the bottom of her foot was painful, only then did I see that she was tied. Upon closer inspection, the bottom of her foot looked like raw meat.
My stomach turned to think of how long she’d been there, forced to endure tickle torture. What could her crime be?
†††
“You go sit there.” One of the men gestured to a wooden chair at the far end of the room. “Since you’re on trial, that’s where you will stay until told to do otherwise.”
Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name...
I dragged my stiff leg behind me as I walked the length of the room. Jeers rose up from the crowd on either side of me. Men, all men. Someone threw a carrot at me, but it missed. The tomato, however, splattered against my shoulder.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.
Please, do your will today, Father.
†††
“Do you know why you’re here, young lady?” A severe judge stared down at me from beneath a fiercely powered wig as I took my seat.
“Treason!” The word echoed about the room as it was shouted over and over again by men who came to watch me suffer. “High Treason to the Crown!”
I looked up at the unsmiling judge. “I believe I am here because some believe I have committed treason.”
“You have committed treason. Now tell me. How did you escape from His Majesty’s castle?”
I glanced out at the sea of faces that glared back at me. Not one look of hope, not one look of sympathy. Hungry wolves, all of them. Only through my torment would they be fulfilled, but only temporarily. Once my suffering and humiliation were over, they would become miserable yet again.
Lady Rochford flickered to my mind, her smiling face on the day of her execution as she smiled down at me. It was all so clear now. She had been searching for any ounce of kindness, any friend amid a surfeit of foe. Something deep inside me wished she were here today, staring up at me, as I was on trial for the very crime that cost her the most precious of all things: her life. Treason.
“Answer, damn you!”
Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee.
Be with me, too.
“I walked out of the castle gate.”
“Did nobody try and stop you?”
“Nobody was able to stop me.”
The judge addressed the bickering crowd. “Who helped you? Surely a stupid woman couldn’t have escaped from His Royal Highness’s castle without some sort of assistance?”
“Escaped?” I didn’t have to feign shock. “I was told I was a guest. I did not realize that I was His Majesty’s prisoner.”
A clever lawyer could have run amok with my words, alas, no lawyer was appointed to help me. Instead, the judge simply ignored me.
“Tell the Court of your dealings with Jean.”
“Jean?”
Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
The rapping of a gavel against wood brought the chittering courtroom back to an obedient silence. “Jean St. Bromaine. The servant of His Majesty that coincidently went missing the same night as His Majesty’s future wife! You!”
“Does that mean this Jean of which you speak was also a prisoner of His Majesty without knowing it?”
The judge stammered in a response but wound up closing his mouth instead.
So I continued. “Did this Jean know that he was not supposed to leave? And are you entirely certain he left and it wasn’t some tragedy that befell him instead?”
The judge’s eyes grew wide.
“Perhaps someone should search for him instead of—”
“Enough!” The judge’s voice climbed an octave and I feared his red face might send him into a heart seizure. “Who do you think you are to tell me anything about anyone at any time!”
He banged the gavel righteously, like a madman, until his face was a light purple in color. “Order, order, order! For God’s sake!”
When he finished his fit, his wig sat askew, and his wide eyes were punctuated with small, red dots on the whites of them. “Take her away, men! Back to London where she will be rightly and justly executed for treason.”
