Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1940 (10 page)

Captivity

FOR one reason alone I pass over the next six years in a
few words. That is because those six years were empty—heart-breakingly empty. I
was not released from my cell, except for the reason I shall relate. I knew no
passage of time except by the shifting of the sunlighted patch on my wall
opposite the little window, and by the arrival, each
noon
, of

coarse
food in a wooden plate and
water in a leather mug. This was the same
fare,
I make
no doubt, as that of the monks who were my jailers.

On Sundays came a cup of wine, and I could hear the
intoning of a mass. Then I would make a mark to denote a week's passing under
the date which I had scratched in the biggest stone.

These weekly marks added into months, and the months into
years. I found myself pacing up and down, up and down, like a beast in a cage.
To break myself of that frantic habit, I spent hours at calesthenic exercises which
did keep me fairly fit, and at sketching with bits of burnt wood, and
scratching pictures on the wall with the tongue of my belt-buckle.

My best effort was a Madonna, amusing her haloed Son with
a flowery twig. As I worked thus I wondered if the picture would ever be seen
by other eyes than mine. I decided that

probably
it would. The fortress was
old, and might last for centuries. I might die in the cell, and another captive
replace me, a captive who would look at the work of my hands and muse idly
about the predecessor who had wrought thus.

Nobody spoke to me, not even the monk who thrust in my
daily ration. And nobody watched me. In the summer of 1474, my second in the
cell, I decided that escape was not impossible.

First I detached a leg of my bedstead, and with this as a
lever worried the crossbars out of my window. They had been set in mortar, and
had sharp points. Stealthily I began to widen the narrow aperture, working each
night and restoring the bars by day, lest someone look in from the outside and
bring my labors to nought.

After a month I decided my diggings adequate—but they were
not.

Trying to wriggle through I became jammed in the window
tunnel, and there I was forced to stick until a goat-keeper, chasing his
charges around the walls, happened to spy my protruding head. It took two muscular
friends to drag me back into my cell, and I was marched between them to Father
Augustino.

The prior spoke sadly upon my prideful and rebellious
nature, urged me to pray for forgiveness and a softer heart, then sentenced me
to a term of bread and water—and a flogging.

When an attendant came with a knotted bundle of thongs and
laid them like burning wires upon my bared back, rage swallowed my reason.

A sudden jerk freed my wrists from those who gripped them,
and I tackled my flogger, threw him heavily, and clutched his throat with both
hands.

Half a dozen of the Holy Pilgrims, as ready to battle as
to pray, dragged me free before I could damage the whip wielder.

Father Augustino had watched the incident with an
appraising light in his single eye.

"You refuse to be corrected," pronounced he,
very coldly.

"Keep your lash for slaves!" I retorted passionately.
"I will die before I submit!"

To my considerable surprise, he nodded understandingly.
His eye danced a trifle, and his wide lips smiled, revealing other lean white teeth
than the one which showed through the notch.

"Be it so," he granted, in a more human tone.
"I remit the flogging. But you must be closer penned. Brethren, put him in
the cell below his old one."

THEY did so. The new prison was smaller, and for bed had
only a shelf under the window, spread with musty straw. The window itself was cross-barred
and looked out upon a face of hewn rock. This part of the fortress was below
ground, and a footwide

trench
was all that gave me air and light

Gloom and closeness were new burdens upon my soul, but I
had gained one advantage—the stern approval of the prior. To him I sent request
for a lamp and pen and paper. These were given me, and I had surcease from
ineffable ennui by writing and drawing.

Among other things, I set down in outline most of the
story told here in full. That outline is spread before me as I write these
words, and is a check against my irritably failing memory.

I kept up my exercises, too, shadowboxed on occasion, and
incised more pictures upon my wall. Even so, I had many hours in which to
meditate upon the injustice of Lorenzo's decree concerning me, and upon the
things I would do to Guaracco if I ever came within reach of him. Of Lisa I
tried not to think.

In the fall of 1474, and again two years later, attacks
were made upon the fortress. There was cannonading from the stronghold, and in
reply from ships, and once an effort was

made
to storm us. I heard commotion,
fierce yells,
the
clash of steel.

In the end, I could hear the austere soldiers of the
church had repulsed their assailants, and for a day the castle rang with
chanted paeans of praise.

I grew to have a philosophic sympathy with my jailers.
They acted upon agreement with Lorenzo in imprisoning me. They confined me closely
only because they must. If my

food
was plain, my bed hard, so were
theirs. For the rest, they were sincere worshipers and fierce fighters. The world
was full of worse people.

Thus I reasoned, but still it was a desperate struggle to
remain contented and sane. I tried to remember "The prisoner of
Chillon," which had one or two stanzas of comfort for the captive, but it
would not come to mind. In any case, Lord Byron would not write it for a good
three hundred and forty years.

The spring of 1477 saw yet another attack by enemies, a
stronger and more stubborn effort to carry the Fortress of the Holy Pilgrims. I
could hear the battering of a wall close to me, and the overthrow of part of
it. So hot was the fight, so narrowly balanced for an hour, that the very
jailer monk rushed from the corridor outside my cell to help defend the
ramparts. During his absence I had time to do a thing I had long planned to do.

The lamp that lighted me was an iron saucer with a central
clip to hold aloft the wick. I ignited the straw of my bed, and, holding one
edge of the lamp saucer in a fold of my jerkin, contrived to heat the opposite
edge red hot. Then, with a loose stone for a hammer and the bed shelf for an anvil,
I pounded, reheated, and pounded again, until I beat that rim into a knifelike
edge. After the battle the jailer returned, but he had not heard my noisy
labors. And I began to whittle at my wooden door.

The planks were
thick,
and
seasoned almost as hard as iron. But I persevered, all that stifling summer.

I counted myself lucky when, between one dawn and the
next, I shaved away as much as a handful of splinters.

Boresome it was, and eventually heart-breaking, for my
first burrowing brought me to metal. I dug at another place, hoping to avoid
such a barrier, but found
more ;
more, that is, of the
same sheet.

EVENTUALLY I had removed almost
all of
the door's
inner surface, and found myself confronted with a copper
plate, a central layer, probably with as much wood outside as I had already
disposed of. My tappings and proddings convinced me that it was solidly massy,
except for the small slide-covered opening for food.

I am afraid I both cursed and sulked. I had no cutting
tools. The blunt-edged piece of glass I used for an occasional shave was far
from adequate.

Even if I'd had tools—file, chisel or drill—I would not
have dared use them, for the noise would attract guards. What then?

Acid came to mind—sulphuric acid.
But
where to get it?
The stones of my cell were volcanic, might contain sulphides.
But how could I burn or distill them? Even if I got the acid, would not its
strong odor bring investigation?

I approached the problem from another viewpoint,
considering not the best acid but the most available.

Chilly fall was upon us, and the sharp, strong wine was
served daily instead of on Sunday only. Once again I was inspired.

When my next food was brought, I pleaded for a little
vinegar, to medicine a chest ailment. It was brought me in a saucer, and I
steeped in it some shavings, whittled from my door.

When they seemed sour enough, I placed them at the bottom
of my wooden bucket. Into this, day after day, I slowly trickled my ration of wine.
It produced a greater quantity of excellent vinegar—at least, for metal-destroying
purposes—and after tasting it I felt sure of my acid.
Acetic acid,
perhaps eight or ten percent at the most.

Painfully scrabbling with a spoon in the trench outside my
window, I gained enough clay earth to mix with water and fashion into clumsy
basins and jars. These I cautiously hardened in another fire, and employed to
hold my supply of vinegar as I increased it,

also
for other things.

For instance, I constructed a really workable distillery—a
narrowmouthed vase or bottle, suspended above a fire which I fed with chips from
the door and furniture, and straw from my bed. As winter came on I heated
vinegar in this, and the vapor passed through a hollow reed which I cooled with
bits of ice from just outside my barred window. The condensed drops I caught in
my cup. They were not pure acetic acid, but a liquid with a high content.

These labors lasted for months. I speak of them briefly,
saying nothing of the trial and error, the ludicrous failures and the chance
successes that finally made my skill and product adequate.

At length, well after Christmas of 1477, I began my attack
upon the copper plate that held me from freedom.

At the height of my forehead, and again at the height of
my knee, I constructed clay troughs against the metal. These I filled, and kept
filled, with the acid. When the action proved slight, I hit upon the device of adding
salt, procured by soaking my preserved meat, then evaporating the brine, to the
liquid. Thus I got a crude form of hydrochloric acid, which made an appreciable
impression. I constantly scraped away the weakened

particles
of metal, and replenished
my supply of salted acid. I wrought for months, and finally was rewarded when
the last of the copper along those two narrow lines was eaten away.

The perpendicular acidulation was more difficult, but I
managed it by fashioning two clay tubes at the edges of the door, open at the
top, rather like the covered tunnels built by tropical ants. These I filled
again and again, sometimes pulling them down to pry out the digested copper,
then building them afresh for new attacks.

HERE, too, I was successful, and one day in February I was
able to pry away the whole rectangle of metal within the compass of my four acid-cut
channels. There was more wood beyond but, heartened by my triumph, I scraped
and chiseled until the door was almost as thin as pasteboard. To the outside
view it might appear as strong as ever.

At mid-day of
April
16, 1478
, 1 made my bid for escape.

The attendant came to my door, pushed back the slide, and
stooped to thrust in my food. I had been waiting for an hour, tense and ready.
As I heard him outside, I sprang, bursting through the thin wood like a clown through
a paper hoop.

Landing on the monk's unsuspecting back, I whipped an arm
beneath his chin, shutting off his breath. He could not cry out, and his
struggles availed nothing. I choked him until his limbs grew slack,
then
stripped off his robe. I donned this and pushed him,
senseless, through the smashed door into my cell.

Then I headed down the corridor, cowl over my face,
his
keys in my hand. I unlocked the door at the end, mounted
steps, and came to an upper level. Another corridor I traversed, with measured
tread, as though deep in
meditation,
and none
challenged me.

I came into the main
hall,
saw
the doorway to the courtyard. Beyond would be the open, the beach, a boat. I
would row
away,
they would think that a brother was
fishing. After that, I would seek land, even among the Turks. But a voice spoke
at my elbow.

"You pass me without saluting, brother."

Father Augustino! He had fallen into step beside me. I
lifted a hand to my hooded brow, and his single eye fastened upon it.

"How white your flesh, brother. I thought that every
monk of our order was tanned brown by God's sunlight. Who are you?"

There was nothing for it but battle. I sprang at him.

Surprise was on my side. I tripped him and fell heavily
upon him. But that old priest-soldier, lame and halfblind, was as strong as I,
as fierce. I clutched and pressed his throat, but he caught my two little
fingers in his hands, bent them painfully backward

until
I quit the grip.

His thumbs drove into the inner sides of my biceps,
torturing nerves between the muscles, and I rolled free of him. We came up to
our feet. I struck him heavily on the jaw, and his one eye blinked, but he did
not stagger or flinch.

Strongly grappling me around the waist, he rushed me back
against a wall, and so held me, despite my pummeling fists in his face, while a
dozen monks, swords and axes in hand, rushed in from all directions. In an instant
I was secured, and Father Augustino stepped clear of me, dabbing at a trickle
of blood from his scarred nose. He panted and grinned, as if he had enjoyed the
scrimmage.

"Here's a stout sinner," he growled. "Never
did the blessed angel clip Father Jacob more strongly. Thank you for the bout,
my son. Put him in my office."