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Monday, August 19, 2024

Scornbul by Midnight Act II Scene I

 His captors, not able to see him, had underestimated the suppleness of Melas' arms - not to mention their abnormal length. With a few moments quiet effort he was able to shift his bound wrists from behind his back to under his legs and from there to his front. Once that was done escape was inevitable - it took him longer to undue their sailors knots with his teeth than he would have liked, but eventually they give way to his concerted efforts.

The darkness in the room is total, but the silence is not - he is apparently not the only occupant in this dungeon, as there are

maddened cries coming from his right and fractured sobbing emanating from his left - though how far away it is impossible to discern.

His arms free, Melas waits a bit for his strength to return.  He feels around the room to get his bearings, and tries to peer throught he crack of the door.

The room is not large - some eight feet square - with wooden walls and a mud floor. Feeling along the base of the walls shows that the room is a subdivision of a larger chamber, and the mud means he still has to be near the river for water seepage to have done such damage. There are spots of obvious mold from the slime on his hands, and some areas of the wall feel weaker from rot.

Eventually he locates the door on the sturdiest of the walls. The door is also thick, but not well fitting - the subdivision must have required punching through the wall to make an extra entrance. Melas can not, alas, locate the hinges on this wall, but there are gaps, in some spaces wide enough to admit his little finger, between the inch thick door and the heavy wall.

All of this is accomplished in the total darkness of the room and chambers beyond. The blind pirates obviously have the area memorized, and any other visitors must bring their own light into this dank place. After peering through a crack for some time Melas thinks that he can make out some infinitesimal limning of the passage's opposite wall to his left, from whence the sobbing continues. Perhaps the door to another, lit, chamber?

The only indicator that time has passed comes from the aching of bruises on his body and the beginnings of hunger. It has clearly been an hour at least since he started his careful evaluation.

Melas tests the door, then inspiration strikes and he feels his way around the walls again until he finds the wettest part of the floor.  His desperate fingers seek gaps in the rotting wood, and, bracing his legs against the wall he pulls with all his strength, trying to break apart the weakened boards.

Even as he begins to strain the image of the Signora's horrific visage rose in his mind again, expanding in the darkness to encompass the whole of his being. His fingers lose their strength for a moment and the nobleman finds himself sprawled on his backside, panting from the exertion and hearing the echoing sounds of the Signora's laughter in his mind.

Undeterred, he catches his breath and tries again. After repeated attempts and some small snaps of the moldering wood by the floor he manages to yank free a long piece of weakened maple. Judging by touch Melas expects he will be able to get through the space with some wriggling and giving up any hope of salvaging his outfit. He is also now armed with a board whose length and width are about equal to his forearm - the wood is unwieldy, but tapers to a sharp, potentially lethal splinter. 

Melas tests the tip and smiles.  Suppressing his distaste, he probes behind the rotten boards with his free hand. Beyond it is nothing - an open space that is most likely the next cell to his left, both silent and dark.

A few more minutes of pulling widens the gap a little more - enough that Melas is confident he can get through without injury - but by this point the hunchback is shaking and sweating with exhaustion. Still, the enforced effort is having a beneficial effect - the more he works the more he feels his muscles and his mind shaking off the enervating aspects of the Signora's horrific visage.

Keeping hold of his improvised weapon Melas manages to make the escape from one cell to another. The final push through causes his knees to buckle underneath him and he again falls into the deliciously chill embracing mud of the floor. In the pitch black room time has no meaning: it could have been half an hour since he'd been thrown down here, or half a day, but the urge to sleep is almost overpowering.

He slaps himself to stay awake and starts feeling along the wall, hoping to find a door or other exit.  It takes two tries to get back to his feet, but with the wall as support he is able to keep moving. This cell is laid out much the same as his, so locating the door is no difficulty. Holding himself upright when that door begins to swing outward is slightly more difficult - obviously his captors don't bother to bar the doors of cells that are not in use. The creaking sound of the hinges feels impossibly loud in Melas' keen ears.

The passage is nearly pitch black. The only exception is the rectangle of light coming from the wall opposite his cell door. Obviously another doorway, even without light Melas can tell that it is of sturdier construction than the ad hoc cell doors, and is probably original to this building. With just a few moments his hand finds the cold metal doorknob, but the room is locked.

At the sound of even this quiet exploration, the voice behind the door breaks out into another round of hysterical sobbing and begging to be allowed to die.

Melas tries to peek in, wondering who this fellow prisoner is. Alas, the door's construction is too sturdy for him to make out anything other than light - there is scarcely more than a hairsbreadth of space between door and sill. What is is able to discern from his other senses is that the prisoner is male (based on the sounds of the voice) and the room must be better kept than his cell, given the scent of potpourri and bathing oils detectable through the cracks.

Seething with resentment, Melas tries to find an exit. Based on his remembrance of his ignominious path down here, the hunchback turns to his right. Beyond that, however, he has no clue what path would lead him back to Signora Huera's house.

Keeping his hand on the wall not just for guidance but balance, he has not gone two steps before that hand bumps into something - a string with a metal weight on the end. Once his hand closes around the weight it is clear to him that this is a key - most likely to the locked room directly behind him.

For a moment he considers pocketing it and leaving, but his curiosity gets the better of him and he turns back.  He approaches the door and tries to unlock it quietly.  After just a few seconds of fumbling the Melas finds the keyhole. The door opens with a small push - unlike the other cells this door's hinges are on the inside, further evidence of it being part of the original construction - and it is certainly quiet over the rising shrieks of panic emanating from inside the room.

The brightness of even the single lamp is enough to bring tears of pain to Melas' eyes after this time in total darkness, but he is still able to take in the confusing scene - the wooden floor, the high backed chair, the four poster bed, the walls festooned with mirrors, and the wide eyed gape of the now silent prisoner. The man is thin and battered but not in obvious ill health, his neck has a collar which is attached to the wall behind the bed by a thick rope, he is covered by a worn cotton nightshirt and - most peculiarly - his hands are wrapped in enough layers of heavy cotton that they are nothing more than large featureless lumps. 

Based on his sudden silence and the look of utter confusion on his face, Melas was not who he expected to open the door.

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