Memento Mori

All is not lost; the unconquerable Will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield

-John Milton, Paradise Lost

The walls wept with moisture. Thick and cool despite the tropical heat, they were none the less slick; green and black and moldering in places, pock-marked and scarred from past transgressors who noted their date, their name, their love with a heart, the number of their days and their favorite sexual positions in crude, graphic detail. She rested her brow against the cold stone, feeling fevered, flushed and chilled all at once. The narrow wooden plank that was bed, seat, and the ladder from which to hang yourself if you chose to form a noose of your own clothing, sat flush against the wall, and she had pulled her legs up, her tether over, and curled herself inward as she shook and shivered, tracing out one of the names etched into the unforgiving stone. Albert .1787. Putain. Her finger tips were crusted black with old blood, and where her nails had once been smooth and polished to the pink sheen of the inside of seashells, the beds lay exposed, rough and furrowed. It made her fingers strangely sensitive, feeling with parts of her flesh that had never been exposed before. She wondered if it was Albert who had written 'whore' beneath his own name, or if that was a revision by a later author. Her other hand rested delicately on her lap, throbbing in a dull sort of way with any little movement.

The slaughterhouse smell of sweat, blood, shit and fear permeated every labored breath. It was in her clothes, her hair, in her very pores. She had not had water to bathe for days, and the dress that had once been crisp and virgin-cream was now hopelessly stained and soiled beyond repair, here brown with dirt, there yellowed with sweat, rust red with spilled blood, the lacing torn from eyelets. The soles of her feet were black with filth; they'd taken her shoes so that she was bare-footed as a slave, and the elaborately knotted scarf that had covered her hair; the symbols of her status as a woman of the gens de couleur libres. She could feel the swelling in her face; when she opened her mouth, her jaw made a clicking noise. How long had she been here?

The hatch marks told her three days.

It's important to keep your mind occupied on anything but your own condition. She'd studied the lock, the links in the chain, the bolts in the wall. Locks she knew, they were simple enough. The hard part was finding the right tool. It had to be thin enough to fit inside the lock, long enough to trigger the spring mechanism, strong enough not to break under pressure but malleable enough to be shaped to purpose. The four empty walls stared back at her.

They were made of soft stone, easy to carve. The plate where her chains were bolted to the wall was already chipping at the edges. She'd managed to loosen a nail from the bench. It was only a thought, but it gave her a purpose. Even freed from her chains, there was the door, the guards, the compound outside. But on the second day, when her hands were still fresh and bleeding, she began to pick at the stone like a fox gnawing at it's own foot. It calmed her, though the pain was almost unbearable and she'd woken the next morning in a fever with her hand swollen and red.

Her hands.

Her hands.

Somewhere, someone cried out. Someone yelled, and the sound of a heavy iron door scraped and rattled open. Foot steps echoed down the corridor, heavy booted feet. A man...no, men's feet. What hour was it? The light through the iron grate gave her a sorry reference. Sometime after noon. They didn't usually come until later, as if ashamed to commit their acts beneath the honest light of the sun. Her head was swimming, and it was difficult for her to focus her thoughts. The door to the cell opened. She barely moved but to glance over her shoulder, to see what rough beasts of perdition stalked the halls today .

Benjamin Ashley Monroe was of a new man, and came through the doors of the holding as though he were truly there to tear them apart from the inside out. His hair was cut and clean, his face shaven and the scent of the after spoke of wealth and a gentleness that was meant to be deceiving. His shoes had been shined, the buttons on his coat, and the buckles all had their moment to flash in the light--one by one as though he had drawn down the stars, yet even still his fabrics were of a lighter variety and of a more practical mind.

Monroe was a very tall man, one that hardly had to look up to anyone and he carried that height to his advantage. He used it to work in his favor as well, and did so even now as he placed the binding of his book on the counter of the jailer.

“Mademoiselle Hebert,” His voice not a request but a command, and the keep looked up rather startled. Ashley didn’t wear his powdered wig this day, and his hair he didn’t keep long enough to be tied behind his neck. Yet, everything else was enough to demand the respect that came with the educated and those that practiced the law, and the man stood to show him the way.

As they narrowed down the row again Ashley took in his surroundings once more. This meeting was a little different than the one with The Savage, and he looked for flaws in the jail as though reading a book--Ashley knew he would have to use everything to his advantage in this case, and keeping a woman in such deplorable conditions? Well...that certainly would win him some favors with the locals. However, upon arrival of her cell the man became noticeably nervous, as though he were to grow ill, and once Ashley saw the state of the woman inside his heart sank.

On the outside he showed no signs of his emotions cracking, and turned to face the man with a very dire and dark demeanor.

"Open the door, and then I would suggest you fetch the doctor and prepare the paperwork of her bond." All around him eyes were looking out from their holding, and that only made the man stand straighter, "I'm unaware how the Spanish conducted their imprisonment before, Monsieur, but I assure this is not how the civilized world treats innocent people."

"Bu-'but, Sir. She--"

"Has not been tried nor found guilty of any charge placed against her-"

"My Lord I--"

"OPEN THE DOOR." Ashley's voice boomed and shook the very core of the man as he fumbled for his keys to do exactly as the attorney demanded.

She heard the argument outside the door, an unfamiliar voice raised, and for a moment her heart skipped a beat. Hope, for the first time in days. And a glimpse of a face as familiar as her own, whispering through the bars. The jailer fumbled with the keys, but the door opened and it was like seeing the sun for the first time after a season of darkness; she was elated but fearful. Standing to her feet the chain slid onto the floor, her good hand holding her bodice closed as she approached the first man to enter. Could it be? She wanted to cry, but held her tears in reserve, her ruined hand with fingers dark and unnaturally shaped fluttered like a trapped bird over his form, as if afraid that Nicolai was an illusion, and a mere touch would see him evaporated before her eyes.

"You will be alright now." How desperately she wanted to believe that she could walk away from here and merely wash everything away. Her voice when she spoke was stale and harsh with misuse, "What is else, not to be overcome?" She replied in heavily accented English. The jailer walked away after a moment of indecision, and as his heavy footfalls disappeared her eyes followed the unseen course, listening carefully "...never shall his wrath or might extort from me, to bow and sue for grace on suppliant knee." she whispered with bitter vehemence, though the effort of speaking pained her. Never in her life had Marceline hated anyone before, but she had learned many a harsh lesson behind these walls, in the course of these three days. She hated this place. She hated her jailers. And she hated most of all Claude Dutoit.

But Nicolai was not unaccompanied. She saw a man behind him, a blanc, immaculately dressed, and entirely out of place in the setting of her tiny, filthy cell. Suddenly she saw herself as a stranger might. Dirty and ragged, barefooted, with her hair wild and unkempt. The bruises like ink stains on her face, the blood caked where nails once rested. A sad, destitute little figure. Her pride was sorely wounded. Picking up the tatters of it, she spoke again in her perfect French, as if they were strangers in a ballroom and not in a prison cell shared by rodents and vermin, "Je ne crois pas que nous avons été introduits , Monsiuer." The front of her torn gown held tightly closed, but for a slim second her slight figure as imperious as a Queen.

*I do not believe we have been introduced, Sir.

"Je ne crois pas que nous avons été introduits , Monsiuer."

The French sang to him in such a sweet sound that he almost found the gentle tones bewitching, and Ashley could only come to the woman's side and touch her arm gently.

"Ashley. They call me Ashley, I'm an attorney from America and I'm freeing you from this place." Ashley had long since passed his bar in France as well and was accepted in the courts there so his status as an outsider would not hinder him here, as he was as versed in the laws of this land as he was his own.

"But she's a negro and...and a woman!" The Jailer spoke as though she was nothing more than an animal there on the bedding and Ashley left her side to start in again on the man,

"How would you like that printed in the tomorrow's pamphlet, hmm? Your face alongside it." His voice faded out as he took the man by the shoulder as though they were nothing more than old friends in a row and he moved them from the room to work on her bond.