Post by Lorpius Prime on Mar 3, 2008 2:35:34 GMT -5
The shock had worn off. The pain from his bruised and swollen head had not, but Jay hardly noticed it. His shoulders sagged as he stared down at his hands and despaired over the iron shackles which bound them together. A heavy chain ran under the table to the fetters which held his feet, which were in turn fastened to the metal hoop of a wagon wheel.
Jay had never been arrested in his life, not once. That fact alone turned his stomach, but the knowledge that he faced something far worse than the confines of a prison dropped it into a bottomless pit. They were going to kill him. Jay was going to die and there was nothing, not a single thing, that he could do about it. He was simply waiting now.
He had been barely conscious when the soldiers had dragged him and Theodore off the train, and most of Jay’s attention had been focused on emptying the contents of his stomach at the time. They had confined the two in a large tent, one of many in the large encampment alongside the rail tracks. The soldiers clamped them into restraining irons and set their prisoners on hay bales behind a table, then they’d posted a single guard and simply left.
After Jay could see straight again, but before the full weight of the situation had sunk in, he had asked Theodore what they were going to do. But Theodore had simply said “Talking is a bad idea.” The sentry’s dark chuckle had been all the convincing Jay needed.
The sentry sat on a chair near the tent’s entrance; he was lighting a cigarette but his rifle was leaning against his knees if he needed it. Theodore was staring straight ahead at nothing in particular, but looking grim. Jay’s head turned between the two of them and he bit his lip.
He wanted to cry, to just break down and give in to the utter hopelessness of his situation. He didn’t even really know why he was holding back the tears, any more than he knew why these people, and his own government for that matter, seemed to be out to capture and kill him. Some century old state secrets? Who honestly cared anymore? It would be a good news story, Jay admitted, but it couldn’t possibly do any harm to anyone now. He grunted with frustration at the madness of it all, and kicked futilely at his leg restraints.
The guard turned his head to give Jay a cold stare. Jay wanted to shout at the soldier, to vent his frustrations with curses and obscenities. What did it matter anyway what he did or said anymore? But he kept his quiet; the civility ingrained into his behavior over the long years was impossible for Jay to break, even now.
Jay wished he knew what was truly going on. Münchhausen’s cryptic rambling hardly explained a thing. He wished he had asked Theodore for his side of the story when they had been on the train, or walking. The young German had seemed much more clear and forthright than the strange hermit, and he probably could have helped Jay understand what this all was. But he had been too tired, too distracted by his own desire to send word of his situation back home, and too bewildered by the whirlwind of the journey itself. Despite having walked so much in the past few days, Jay felt more as if he had been dragged the entire way by some cruel force of nature wholly beyond his control.
Now that it had all been put to a stop and he was forced to think about everything that happened, he was beginning to realize just how many questions he really had. What exactly had happened to Rover that morning? Had they really been shot down as Jack suspected? Why had a Secret Service officer tried to kill him? Jay gulped as a terrible thought bubbled into his head, had they killed John Mills too? Was his fall not an accident at all? And who—or what as a corner of Jay’s mind told him was the proper word—was Baron Münchhausen and what exactly was he involved in? For that matter, since Theodore seemed to be a part of it, who was he? Jay’s head was swimming, he had sunk so very deep into something before he even had an opportunity to wonder what it was! How had they been found on the train? What was a Prussian Army doing camped in field tents outside of Munich anyway?
Someone pulled the flap at the front of the tent aside. The guard spat out his cigarette and got to his feet, holding his rifle at attention. But the soldier who stepped into the little makeshift jail was not wearing the same utilitarian black uniform of the Prussian infantry. Instead the newcomer wore a far more elaborate costume: a high-collared ivory tunic with gold buttons embellished by a red baldric, matching scarlet trousers, and at the waist a sword with an elaborately crafted hilt. The only concession to functionality was the pair of polished black jackboots which seemed to dare any speck dirt to smudge their shine. It took Jay a moment to recover from the sheer ostentatiousness of the outfit and realize that he had seen it before.
Men wearing that uniform had accompanied Jay during his entire first assignment as a foreign correspondent for the Times. They had ensured that he only saw—and thus only reported on—those things which he was supposed to see during that assignment. It had been a frustrating introduction to the realities of his job.
The officer, he was a Colonel, gave the guard a curt not then swept forward towards the prisoners, hands clasped behind his back. He was followed into the tent by another officer, this one a decidedly annoyed-looking Prussian Major. The Colonel paused in front of the table where Jay and Theodore were seated and examined them with his eyes while his neck and back remained stiffly upright.
“These are them?” he asked in crisp Oxford tones.
The Prussian huffed, “Jawohl, Oberst. Da ich—”
“Speak English,” the Colonel commanded without raising his voice. “Or Magyar if you know it. You may babble on however you please with your own men, but your barbarian language vexes my hearing as if it were the grunting of hogs. Do refrain from its use in my presence.”
Jay watched the Prussian’s face turn crimson with rage, but the Colonel ignored his fuming and simply held out his hand.
The Major looked like he wanted to shoot the man who had just insulted him, but instead he handed over the clipboard and papers he was carrying then stepped off to the side and glowered at Jay.
Jay just stared back, unsure of what was happening. The Colonel drew a chair from the side of the tent and seated himself across the table from Jay and Theodore, thumbing casually through the documents the Prussian Major had given him. The guard at the front, who had been standing at attention since the two officers walked in, seemed to decide that since they were both ignoring him anyway it was safe to sit back down as well.
After a minute the Colonel put the papers and clipboard down and folded his hands over them. He turned his head slowly to look both Jay and Theodore in the eyes. It was obvious to Jay that he was asserting his superiority, and it was just as obvious that he was successful.
“I am Colonel Bíró,” he said. “You are in a military district which is at this moment under my command. My orders grant me considerable discretion in the exercise of my authority. And you are my prisoners. Please keep these facts in mind as we proceed.”
The corners of his mouth twisted up in a small smile. Jay and Theodore remained silent and neither of them smiled back.
Bíró nodded and picked up a fountain pen from the clipboard.
“Let us start, then,” he turned to Theodore. “What is your name?”
“Theodore Eremitus,” the response came without hesitation. The Colonel made a few marks on one of the pages in his little stack.
“And are you a member of any insurgent or insurrectionary organizations, Mr. Eremitus?”
“No,” Theodore’s voice carried just a hint of incredulity.
More scratching of the pen, “Mr. Eremitus, the soldiers who arrested said that you claimed to be a wanted criminal and revolutionary agent. They have charged that you were travelling without a passport and that you assaulted and attempted to murder several uniformed soldiers of the Prussian Army.”
Theodore snorted. From the way the Colonel’s eyes narrowed, Jay was afraid that it was all going to end right then. “These are serious accusations, Mr. Eremitus,” Bíró said gravely.
“They are lies,” Theodore retorted without apology.
“Then you have your passport?” Bíró raised an eyebrow.
“No,” Theodore said and his shoulders drooped slightly. “This I admit. But when has a man ever needed papers simply to travel from Augsburg to Munich?”
The Colonel may have nodded very slightly, Jay had trouble telling, but his eyes remained hard and he said nothing.
“I did not do these other things, however!” Theodore continued, anger seeping into his words again. “The Prussian dogs assaulted us! We were attacked when they tried to take Mr. Mills’ bag and—“
Bíró held up his abruptly to silence Theodore and the young German shut his mouth with deferential haste. The Colonel was frowning deeply and he glanced sharply at Jay and then at the Major who was still standing behind him. The Prussian Officer’s face had turned so purple that Jay could only conclude he had decided to focus all his attention on hating the other people in the tent instead of breathing.
The Colonel turned back to Jay, still frowning, and tapped the blunt end of his pen on the table a few times.
“And what is your name?”
Jay answered slowly. He still didn’t see a way out of his situation, but he decided he might as well continue following Theodore’s lead. “John Mills.”
The grimace on Bíró’s face remained and he stared harshly at Jay for a few moments before moving on.
“I see. And am I correct to assume that you are a British citizen, Mr. Blake?”
Jay opened his mouth to agree, but held his tongue when he noticed the Prussian Major’s eyes lighting up behind Colonel Bíró. Jay ran the question again through his head and nearly choked on his own bile as his stomach surged.
He tried again, “Ah, Mills, Colonel, my name is John Mills. I am an Englishman, however, yes.” It didn’t matter, of course. Jay’s heartbeat was as loud as artillery fire; everyone in the little tent would be able to tell he was lying.
Bíró’s eyes gave away nothing, but he didn’t order Jay shot on the spot either. Perhaps he was just savoring the torture.
“Well, Mr. Mills, I hope you have a passport at least. They are most certainly required of all foreign nationals.” He smiled again, and again there was not a trace of pleasantness in the expression.
Jay didn’t have the faintest notion of how he was supposed to answer that question. Even if Theodore did have some sort of secret plan to talk their way out of this, he couldn’t tell Jay about it now. With no better lie coming to mind, Jay decided that he had nothing more to lose by falling back on the truth.
“Yes I do. It was in my suitcase.”
The Colonel closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath; Jay could feel the sweat running down his cheeks as he watched Bíró exhale. Then the Colonel slammed his pen down on the table and stood up in a motion which made Jay think of a steam-powered hammer.
“Excuse me a moment,” he said. Then he picked up the clipboard and documents and turned on the Major who had accompanied him into the tent. Bíró made a small, menacing gesture and then the two of them exited the tent. The guard stood up once more to salute them as they passed, then glowered menacingly at the prisoners.
Jay turned to his right, but Theodore refused to meet his gaze and just shook his head. Jay swallowed and looked back at the tent-flap. If Bíró and the Major were talking, their conversation was lost in the general background noise of the camp
After a few minutes, the Major stepped back through the entrance and murmured something to the guard. The enlisted soldier nodded and shouldered his rifle so that he could handle the keys hooked to his belt. Jay wrung his hands together, attempting to suppress their shaking as the guard walked over to the heavy wagon wheel and unlocked one of the two large padlocks secured to one of the two lengths of iron chain. He set the padlock aside and tugged on the chain.
Jay was nearly yanked off his hay bale as the chain whipped around and free of the fetters binding his ankles. He did manage, just, to stay off the floor, but he still got hay down the collar of his shirt and coat.
The guard beckoned for Jay to get up. And if that wasn’t clear enough, the Prussian Major barked, “Come!”
Jay stood up and looked over to the still chained-down Theodore, but the other man didn’t seem to have any advice now, either. Jay worked his jaw for a moment before deciding he didn’t want to risk making his captors angry at him by delaying longer. He picked his way around the table, being careful not to get tangled in the chains between his feet. He tried to shake out the straws scratching his neck, but they just sunk deeper into his clothes.
The Major gestured for Jay to follow and then marched out of the tent while the guard waited for him to pass then resumed his watch over his remaining prisoner.
Colonel Bíró was waiting outside. The Major had let the tent flap fall shut behind him; so when Jay stepped through he nearly walked right into the Colonel, then he overcorrected and nearly stumbled and fell right back into the tent.
Bíró was scowling and staring straight into Jay’s eyes. The effect was intimidating; and impressive considering that he stood almost half a head shorter than Jay. With their heads that close, Jay was able to see that one of the Colonel’s eyes was bigger than the other. Actually, the entire right side of his face looked like it had been slightly squashed. That and his stance clashed with his properly aristocratic mannerisms back inside the tent and it unnerved Jay.
The Colonel smacked his lips and jerked his head back to gesture over his shoulder.
“Over here, then.”
The Prussian officer positioned himself at attention outside the tent while Bíró led Jay to stand outside another tent a few yards away. The sun was up now, and Jay could see more of the camp. He still couldn’t see all of it, however, because it was simply too big. Jay didn’t know if it had been growing since his arrest, or if it had been that large when they had taken him and Theodore off the train. Either way, the endless rows of white canvas tents testified to the presence of a serious army camped out here in what was, for all Jay could tell, the middle of nowhere. He could see no landmarks whatsoever, just tents and trees.
Bíró paused facing the tall pole of one of the tents, his right hand resting on the gold wire-wrapped hilt of his sword. Jay stopped too and wondered if there was anyone watching him at that moment. Not that he really had any hope of escape, chained up like he was and surrounded by thousands of soldiers; even if they weren’t all focused on him at the moment, Jay was certain they could be in a hurry.
A bird landed on top of the tent, a fat black raven with a scoop-shaped beak. It cocked its head at Jay and emitted a flat squawk. Colonel Bíró paid it no mind; he turned around and fixed Jay with another withering stare.
“Your name, again.”
Jay looked away from the bird back to the Colonel, “John Mills.”
“Your full name, please,” Bíró demanded.
“John, ah, Jacob Mills,” Jay quickly made up, and then tried to swallow down his fear. He had never known Mills’ middle name, nor indeed if the man had even had one.
“And your passport was in your bag, Mr. Blake?”
Jay was ready for it this time, “Why do you keep calling me that, Colonel?”
Bíró was scowling deeply again, “Excuse me. Your passport was in your bag, Mr. Mills?”
“In my suitcase, yes,” Jay was beginning to feel a ray of hope, it seemed like Bíró was despairing of a good excuse to continue holding him.
“Very well then, Mr. Mills. Will you please tell me exactly what your business is in Augsburg and Munich, and what your association is with your friend back there?” Both of Bíró’s eyes were narrowed into contemptuous slits.
The ray of hope died. “Uh... I’m just on vacation. Thought I would, well, see the Cathedrals in Württemberg and Bavaria, the Catholic ones, that is… of course. I’m an, ah, engineer, so I like that sort of thing. Needed the time off and I had heard how remarkable they were, it seemed like a good time,” Jay was lying through his teeth and on the fly, and was sure that he was making an utter hash of the job. But he pressed on nonetheless, “Theodore is an acquaintance of one of my business associates. Er, so Barry said to meet up and he could show me around. And he has; too, only he doesn’t seem to like the military very much. I don’t know anything about it, really, not one for, uh, for politics. But he’s really a nice bloke, and he’s my guide to boot. So when we were on that train and those soldiers burst in, he—well—I thought I had to go along, and you know how that goes, eh?” he finished rather weakly, cursing himself.
The Colonel looked highly skeptical, but he only nodded, “I see.”
Jay exhaled, suddenly realizing he’d stopped breathing.
“Well,” Bíró said, “I’ll show you back to the tent now. I’ll be checking your story with the other prisoner, of course. After that… well, we’ll see.” He made a shooing gesture for Jay to turn around and walk back the way they’d come.
Jay’s stomach sunk so low it was threatening to fall right out of him. He could barely force himself to take the steps necessary to bring him back to the tent where Theodore was waiting. They were the steps of a condemned man. He should have known it wouldn’t be so easy. He had been foolish to think there was any hope at all, from the very moment they’d been discovered on that train; Jay Thomson Blake was a dead man. He swallowed again as he passed back through the canvas threshold.
Theodore still wouldn’t look at him. Jay tried desperately to think of a way to tell him what had happened, but it was simply impossible. Theodore stood up silently after Jay’s chains had been replaced and his removed. Then he walked out with Bíró, leaving Jay to wallow in the knowledge that they were doomed.
Jay wondered how it would happen. Would the Colonel simply order them both shot on the spot? No, Jay was sure it would be far worse. There were rumors that the Holy Roman Empire still tortured people to death. Jay had never seen any indication that the rumors were true, had not been aware of a single execution during his tour there. But the Hungarians had made absolutely certain he didn’t see or report a single thing they didn’t want getting out. Jay wondered if Bíró himself had ordered the quartering or impalement of unruly serfs or, more likely, rebels against the state. Probably.
Each minute was an agonizing torture in itself. Jay thought he was about to go mad from it all when Theodore returned through the entry flap, chains grinding softly against the dirt.
Bíró was right behind him, looking livid.
“Release their restraints,” he ordered. “They are free to go.”
Book One, Chapter:
-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-16-17-18-19-20-21-
-22-23-24-25-26-27-28-29-30-31-32-33-34-35-36-37-38-39-40-41-42-
-43-44-45-46-47-48-49-50-51-52-53-54-55-56-57-58-59-60-61-62-
Appendix: -A-B-C-
Jay had never been arrested in his life, not once. That fact alone turned his stomach, but the knowledge that he faced something far worse than the confines of a prison dropped it into a bottomless pit. They were going to kill him. Jay was going to die and there was nothing, not a single thing, that he could do about it. He was simply waiting now.
He had been barely conscious when the soldiers had dragged him and Theodore off the train, and most of Jay’s attention had been focused on emptying the contents of his stomach at the time. They had confined the two in a large tent, one of many in the large encampment alongside the rail tracks. The soldiers clamped them into restraining irons and set their prisoners on hay bales behind a table, then they’d posted a single guard and simply left.
After Jay could see straight again, but before the full weight of the situation had sunk in, he had asked Theodore what they were going to do. But Theodore had simply said “Talking is a bad idea.” The sentry’s dark chuckle had been all the convincing Jay needed.
The sentry sat on a chair near the tent’s entrance; he was lighting a cigarette but his rifle was leaning against his knees if he needed it. Theodore was staring straight ahead at nothing in particular, but looking grim. Jay’s head turned between the two of them and he bit his lip.
He wanted to cry, to just break down and give in to the utter hopelessness of his situation. He didn’t even really know why he was holding back the tears, any more than he knew why these people, and his own government for that matter, seemed to be out to capture and kill him. Some century old state secrets? Who honestly cared anymore? It would be a good news story, Jay admitted, but it couldn’t possibly do any harm to anyone now. He grunted with frustration at the madness of it all, and kicked futilely at his leg restraints.
The guard turned his head to give Jay a cold stare. Jay wanted to shout at the soldier, to vent his frustrations with curses and obscenities. What did it matter anyway what he did or said anymore? But he kept his quiet; the civility ingrained into his behavior over the long years was impossible for Jay to break, even now.
Jay wished he knew what was truly going on. Münchhausen’s cryptic rambling hardly explained a thing. He wished he had asked Theodore for his side of the story when they had been on the train, or walking. The young German had seemed much more clear and forthright than the strange hermit, and he probably could have helped Jay understand what this all was. But he had been too tired, too distracted by his own desire to send word of his situation back home, and too bewildered by the whirlwind of the journey itself. Despite having walked so much in the past few days, Jay felt more as if he had been dragged the entire way by some cruel force of nature wholly beyond his control.
Now that it had all been put to a stop and he was forced to think about everything that happened, he was beginning to realize just how many questions he really had. What exactly had happened to Rover that morning? Had they really been shot down as Jack suspected? Why had a Secret Service officer tried to kill him? Jay gulped as a terrible thought bubbled into his head, had they killed John Mills too? Was his fall not an accident at all? And who—or what as a corner of Jay’s mind told him was the proper word—was Baron Münchhausen and what exactly was he involved in? For that matter, since Theodore seemed to be a part of it, who was he? Jay’s head was swimming, he had sunk so very deep into something before he even had an opportunity to wonder what it was! How had they been found on the train? What was a Prussian Army doing camped in field tents outside of Munich anyway?
Someone pulled the flap at the front of the tent aside. The guard spat out his cigarette and got to his feet, holding his rifle at attention. But the soldier who stepped into the little makeshift jail was not wearing the same utilitarian black uniform of the Prussian infantry. Instead the newcomer wore a far more elaborate costume: a high-collared ivory tunic with gold buttons embellished by a red baldric, matching scarlet trousers, and at the waist a sword with an elaborately crafted hilt. The only concession to functionality was the pair of polished black jackboots which seemed to dare any speck dirt to smudge their shine. It took Jay a moment to recover from the sheer ostentatiousness of the outfit and realize that he had seen it before.
Men wearing that uniform had accompanied Jay during his entire first assignment as a foreign correspondent for the Times. They had ensured that he only saw—and thus only reported on—those things which he was supposed to see during that assignment. It had been a frustrating introduction to the realities of his job.
The officer, he was a Colonel, gave the guard a curt not then swept forward towards the prisoners, hands clasped behind his back. He was followed into the tent by another officer, this one a decidedly annoyed-looking Prussian Major. The Colonel paused in front of the table where Jay and Theodore were seated and examined them with his eyes while his neck and back remained stiffly upright.
“These are them?” he asked in crisp Oxford tones.
The Prussian huffed, “Jawohl, Oberst. Da ich—”
“Speak English,” the Colonel commanded without raising his voice. “Or Magyar if you know it. You may babble on however you please with your own men, but your barbarian language vexes my hearing as if it were the grunting of hogs. Do refrain from its use in my presence.”
Jay watched the Prussian’s face turn crimson with rage, but the Colonel ignored his fuming and simply held out his hand.
The Major looked like he wanted to shoot the man who had just insulted him, but instead he handed over the clipboard and papers he was carrying then stepped off to the side and glowered at Jay.
Jay just stared back, unsure of what was happening. The Colonel drew a chair from the side of the tent and seated himself across the table from Jay and Theodore, thumbing casually through the documents the Prussian Major had given him. The guard at the front, who had been standing at attention since the two officers walked in, seemed to decide that since they were both ignoring him anyway it was safe to sit back down as well.
After a minute the Colonel put the papers and clipboard down and folded his hands over them. He turned his head slowly to look both Jay and Theodore in the eyes. It was obvious to Jay that he was asserting his superiority, and it was just as obvious that he was successful.
“I am Colonel Bíró,” he said. “You are in a military district which is at this moment under my command. My orders grant me considerable discretion in the exercise of my authority. And you are my prisoners. Please keep these facts in mind as we proceed.”
The corners of his mouth twisted up in a small smile. Jay and Theodore remained silent and neither of them smiled back.
Bíró nodded and picked up a fountain pen from the clipboard.
“Let us start, then,” he turned to Theodore. “What is your name?”
“Theodore Eremitus,” the response came without hesitation. The Colonel made a few marks on one of the pages in his little stack.
“And are you a member of any insurgent or insurrectionary organizations, Mr. Eremitus?”
“No,” Theodore’s voice carried just a hint of incredulity.
More scratching of the pen, “Mr. Eremitus, the soldiers who arrested said that you claimed to be a wanted criminal and revolutionary agent. They have charged that you were travelling without a passport and that you assaulted and attempted to murder several uniformed soldiers of the Prussian Army.”
Theodore snorted. From the way the Colonel’s eyes narrowed, Jay was afraid that it was all going to end right then. “These are serious accusations, Mr. Eremitus,” Bíró said gravely.
“They are lies,” Theodore retorted without apology.
“Then you have your passport?” Bíró raised an eyebrow.
“No,” Theodore said and his shoulders drooped slightly. “This I admit. But when has a man ever needed papers simply to travel from Augsburg to Munich?”
The Colonel may have nodded very slightly, Jay had trouble telling, but his eyes remained hard and he said nothing.
“I did not do these other things, however!” Theodore continued, anger seeping into his words again. “The Prussian dogs assaulted us! We were attacked when they tried to take Mr. Mills’ bag and—“
Bíró held up his abruptly to silence Theodore and the young German shut his mouth with deferential haste. The Colonel was frowning deeply and he glanced sharply at Jay and then at the Major who was still standing behind him. The Prussian Officer’s face had turned so purple that Jay could only conclude he had decided to focus all his attention on hating the other people in the tent instead of breathing.
The Colonel turned back to Jay, still frowning, and tapped the blunt end of his pen on the table a few times.
“And what is your name?”
Jay answered slowly. He still didn’t see a way out of his situation, but he decided he might as well continue following Theodore’s lead. “John Mills.”
The grimace on Bíró’s face remained and he stared harshly at Jay for a few moments before moving on.
“I see. And am I correct to assume that you are a British citizen, Mr. Blake?”
Jay opened his mouth to agree, but held his tongue when he noticed the Prussian Major’s eyes lighting up behind Colonel Bíró. Jay ran the question again through his head and nearly choked on his own bile as his stomach surged.
He tried again, “Ah, Mills, Colonel, my name is John Mills. I am an Englishman, however, yes.” It didn’t matter, of course. Jay’s heartbeat was as loud as artillery fire; everyone in the little tent would be able to tell he was lying.
Bíró’s eyes gave away nothing, but he didn’t order Jay shot on the spot either. Perhaps he was just savoring the torture.
“Well, Mr. Mills, I hope you have a passport at least. They are most certainly required of all foreign nationals.” He smiled again, and again there was not a trace of pleasantness in the expression.
Jay didn’t have the faintest notion of how he was supposed to answer that question. Even if Theodore did have some sort of secret plan to talk their way out of this, he couldn’t tell Jay about it now. With no better lie coming to mind, Jay decided that he had nothing more to lose by falling back on the truth.
“Yes I do. It was in my suitcase.”
The Colonel closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath; Jay could feel the sweat running down his cheeks as he watched Bíró exhale. Then the Colonel slammed his pen down on the table and stood up in a motion which made Jay think of a steam-powered hammer.
“Excuse me a moment,” he said. Then he picked up the clipboard and documents and turned on the Major who had accompanied him into the tent. Bíró made a small, menacing gesture and then the two of them exited the tent. The guard stood up once more to salute them as they passed, then glowered menacingly at the prisoners.
Jay turned to his right, but Theodore refused to meet his gaze and just shook his head. Jay swallowed and looked back at the tent-flap. If Bíró and the Major were talking, their conversation was lost in the general background noise of the camp
After a few minutes, the Major stepped back through the entrance and murmured something to the guard. The enlisted soldier nodded and shouldered his rifle so that he could handle the keys hooked to his belt. Jay wrung his hands together, attempting to suppress their shaking as the guard walked over to the heavy wagon wheel and unlocked one of the two large padlocks secured to one of the two lengths of iron chain. He set the padlock aside and tugged on the chain.
Jay was nearly yanked off his hay bale as the chain whipped around and free of the fetters binding his ankles. He did manage, just, to stay off the floor, but he still got hay down the collar of his shirt and coat.
The guard beckoned for Jay to get up. And if that wasn’t clear enough, the Prussian Major barked, “Come!”
Jay stood up and looked over to the still chained-down Theodore, but the other man didn’t seem to have any advice now, either. Jay worked his jaw for a moment before deciding he didn’t want to risk making his captors angry at him by delaying longer. He picked his way around the table, being careful not to get tangled in the chains between his feet. He tried to shake out the straws scratching his neck, but they just sunk deeper into his clothes.
The Major gestured for Jay to follow and then marched out of the tent while the guard waited for him to pass then resumed his watch over his remaining prisoner.
Colonel Bíró was waiting outside. The Major had let the tent flap fall shut behind him; so when Jay stepped through he nearly walked right into the Colonel, then he overcorrected and nearly stumbled and fell right back into the tent.
Bíró was scowling and staring straight into Jay’s eyes. The effect was intimidating; and impressive considering that he stood almost half a head shorter than Jay. With their heads that close, Jay was able to see that one of the Colonel’s eyes was bigger than the other. Actually, the entire right side of his face looked like it had been slightly squashed. That and his stance clashed with his properly aristocratic mannerisms back inside the tent and it unnerved Jay.
The Colonel smacked his lips and jerked his head back to gesture over his shoulder.
“Over here, then.”
The Prussian officer positioned himself at attention outside the tent while Bíró led Jay to stand outside another tent a few yards away. The sun was up now, and Jay could see more of the camp. He still couldn’t see all of it, however, because it was simply too big. Jay didn’t know if it had been growing since his arrest, or if it had been that large when they had taken him and Theodore off the train. Either way, the endless rows of white canvas tents testified to the presence of a serious army camped out here in what was, for all Jay could tell, the middle of nowhere. He could see no landmarks whatsoever, just tents and trees.
Bíró paused facing the tall pole of one of the tents, his right hand resting on the gold wire-wrapped hilt of his sword. Jay stopped too and wondered if there was anyone watching him at that moment. Not that he really had any hope of escape, chained up like he was and surrounded by thousands of soldiers; even if they weren’t all focused on him at the moment, Jay was certain they could be in a hurry.
A bird landed on top of the tent, a fat black raven with a scoop-shaped beak. It cocked its head at Jay and emitted a flat squawk. Colonel Bíró paid it no mind; he turned around and fixed Jay with another withering stare.
“Your name, again.”
Jay looked away from the bird back to the Colonel, “John Mills.”
“Your full name, please,” Bíró demanded.
“John, ah, Jacob Mills,” Jay quickly made up, and then tried to swallow down his fear. He had never known Mills’ middle name, nor indeed if the man had even had one.
“And your passport was in your bag, Mr. Blake?”
Jay was ready for it this time, “Why do you keep calling me that, Colonel?”
Bíró was scowling deeply again, “Excuse me. Your passport was in your bag, Mr. Mills?”
“In my suitcase, yes,” Jay was beginning to feel a ray of hope, it seemed like Bíró was despairing of a good excuse to continue holding him.
“Very well then, Mr. Mills. Will you please tell me exactly what your business is in Augsburg and Munich, and what your association is with your friend back there?” Both of Bíró’s eyes were narrowed into contemptuous slits.
The ray of hope died. “Uh... I’m just on vacation. Thought I would, well, see the Cathedrals in Württemberg and Bavaria, the Catholic ones, that is… of course. I’m an, ah, engineer, so I like that sort of thing. Needed the time off and I had heard how remarkable they were, it seemed like a good time,” Jay was lying through his teeth and on the fly, and was sure that he was making an utter hash of the job. But he pressed on nonetheless, “Theodore is an acquaintance of one of my business associates. Er, so Barry said to meet up and he could show me around. And he has; too, only he doesn’t seem to like the military very much. I don’t know anything about it, really, not one for, uh, for politics. But he’s really a nice bloke, and he’s my guide to boot. So when we were on that train and those soldiers burst in, he—well—I thought I had to go along, and you know how that goes, eh?” he finished rather weakly, cursing himself.
The Colonel looked highly skeptical, but he only nodded, “I see.”
Jay exhaled, suddenly realizing he’d stopped breathing.
“Well,” Bíró said, “I’ll show you back to the tent now. I’ll be checking your story with the other prisoner, of course. After that… well, we’ll see.” He made a shooing gesture for Jay to turn around and walk back the way they’d come.
Jay’s stomach sunk so low it was threatening to fall right out of him. He could barely force himself to take the steps necessary to bring him back to the tent where Theodore was waiting. They were the steps of a condemned man. He should have known it wouldn’t be so easy. He had been foolish to think there was any hope at all, from the very moment they’d been discovered on that train; Jay Thomson Blake was a dead man. He swallowed again as he passed back through the canvas threshold.
Theodore still wouldn’t look at him. Jay tried desperately to think of a way to tell him what had happened, but it was simply impossible. Theodore stood up silently after Jay’s chains had been replaced and his removed. Then he walked out with Bíró, leaving Jay to wallow in the knowledge that they were doomed.
Jay wondered how it would happen. Would the Colonel simply order them both shot on the spot? No, Jay was sure it would be far worse. There were rumors that the Holy Roman Empire still tortured people to death. Jay had never seen any indication that the rumors were true, had not been aware of a single execution during his tour there. But the Hungarians had made absolutely certain he didn’t see or report a single thing they didn’t want getting out. Jay wondered if Bíró himself had ordered the quartering or impalement of unruly serfs or, more likely, rebels against the state. Probably.
Each minute was an agonizing torture in itself. Jay thought he was about to go mad from it all when Theodore returned through the entry flap, chains grinding softly against the dirt.
Bíró was right behind him, looking livid.
“Release their restraints,” he ordered. “They are free to go.”
Book One, Chapter:
-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-16-17-18-19-20-21-
-22-23-24-25-26-27-28-29-30-31-32-33-34-35-36-37-38-39-40-41-42-
-43-44-45-46-47-48-49-50-51-52-53-54-55-56-57-58-59-60-61-62-
Appendix: -A-B-C-