IN THE CELL
When Margaret came to herself, after she had fallen in a senseless
heap on the cavern floor, she found herself in darkness, and lying on
some straw.
Sitting up, she began to link up slowly with the past, so that she
recalled her desperate venture into the place which had so much in it
to terrify her. With this came the remembrance of the voices she had
heard. She recalled it all, and the dread returned, for surely she
was lying in the same place, and her surroundings were distressing as
before.
These were her thoughts; and, presently, she determined to move away,
to get into the outer air again; anywhere, rather than endeavour to
find her way along those forbidding passages which led to Herman's
home.
She rose to her feet and moved cautiously, with her hands stretched
out before her, lest her face should beat against something in the
darkness. She had not gone far before she touched a wall, and it
felt cold and damp.
Still going carefully, one hand moving along the wall, or what she
supposed to be the rocky side of the cavern, she shivered at the
thought of what her feet might presently touch--those forbidding
skeletons over which, when she first came with Herman, she had thrown
her cloak in reverence for the unknown dead.
But with the dread there was another thought, and one of surprise.
This rock, or wall, which she was touching was wet, and the air had a
clammy feeling in it. Her hand became so damp that she caught up her
skirt to wipe it. She shuddered when she felt her way on again,
thinking to get to the opening to the river, for her hand touched a
chill and slimy substance, and then it moved.
What did it mean? The rock which she and Herman had gone round was
dry; the floor was crisp and dry as well. Thinking of this, she bent
down to feel what the floor was like, and it was wet.
She was bewildered. Was she in the same place, or had she wandered
somewhere else in a state of semi-consciousness, in a sleep-walk,
perhaps? Determined to solve this problem, she moved on, and then
her hand touched something which brought a cry of wonder to her lips.
There was a break in the wall, and her hand went out into the open
air, but as she moved her hand farther it struck against something,
and her fingers closed over a cold iron bar. There was another, and
a third. Running her hands up and down the bars, she came to a stop
at the top; to another stop at the bottom. Looking before her, she
saw something glinting, and, watching it, she knew it to be a star.
In her growing astonishment she saw another, and yet one more; then
many. There was a moon somewhere, but hidden behind the clouds which
again and again rolled by and shut away the stars.
It began to dawn on her that she was not in the cavern. She
continued her progress along the wall, and came to something, the
discovery of which brought a cry of anguish to her lips. It was a
door, cold to the touch, and sheeted with iron, rough on the surface,
as though the rust had formed on it because of the dampness of the
place. As her soft hand ran over it she felt iron ribs crossing the
door from left to right, and solid studs like the square heads of
great nails.
A greater horror came to her than if she had found herself shut up in
the cavern near to Herman's home; for now she knew that she was not
in it.
This was some other place--but what?
Determined to assure herself, she stood with her back to the door,
and walked forward slowly, groping in the darkness, with her hand
stretched out before her. She had not gone far before her feet
brushed against something which rustled, and, stooping, her hand
touched some spread-out straw. Once more upright, she moved across
the straw, and came to the wall.
The truth dawned on her now, and she sank on the straw with a sense
of horror, hopelessness, an indescribable fear--she knew not what to
call it. But this she knew, that she was in prison!
She buried her face in her hands and, shuddering, tried to think this
thing out. Why should she be in a prison cell, and not in a cavern
with an outlet to the open air, where, when she came to herself she
might have waited by the river till the day dawned, and she could
have gone to the city gates, and so to her home?
She recalled the voices which had startled her in the cavern. To
whom did they belong? Were they river robbers? and was it possible
that they made the cavern one of their hiding-places? She began to
put the thing into shape. These robbers had found her, and had
carried her to some inner place, thinking to deal with her later on,
when they had time.
It was a terrible plight for a delicate girl to be in, and she prayed
for God's shielding if she had fallen into the hands of desperate and
disreputable men.
Another thought gripped her which seemed more terrible than the
other. What if those voices belonged to the emissaries of the
Inquisition, who had gained an inkling of the fact that William
Tyndale was hiding hereabouts, and had come to search the cavern on
the chance of finding him? If that were so, then they had found her
while she was unconscious, and had carried her to this cell. It was
fearful to contemplate the possibility, that this was one of the
dungeons in the place which was known throughout the city as the Holy
House.
Margaret crouched on the heap of straw until the light of the
day-dawn began to creep through the barred window. When she lifted
her white, drawn, tear-stained face, and gazed around, she saw that
it was as she feared. She really was in a prison; and from what was
there, it surely was a part of the Inquisitors' House. When her eyes
ranged round the damp walls, where the morning sun came in brokenly,
and made the lines of trickling moisture gleam, she saw a great
crucifix hanging opposite the window, so placed that the prisoner
could not fail to be reminded of the religion and the Church to which
she was supposed to be a renegade. The size of this one in the cell
was disconcerting, for it was as large as life, as though the
Inquisitors meant that the figure of the suffering Saviour should be
intrusive.
The long hours went, and Margaret was left to her loneliness. No one
came with food, and nothing had passed her lips for all the hours
that had gone since she left her home on her father's errand to bid
Tyndale leave the city. She looked about to see whether the usual
prison fare was in the cell--the bread and water; but none was there.
Nothing living came, save a bird that hopped about on the
window-sill, between the bars, and peeped in at the prisoner.
Standing in the line of light, the little creature sang his song, but
Margaret gained no cheering from it, sweet though it was. There was
liberty for that pretty bit of feathered life, which only served to
make her feel the misery of her own imprisonment.
The bird flew away, and Margaret's loneliness grew on her. Hunger
had begun its torment, and thirst as well. Was this to be her
treatment? Had they who brought her here discovered that she was a
friend of William Tyndale, and now they meant to leave her to hunger
and thirst and loneliness until she died?
That thought brought her from her crouching attitude on to her knees;
and then, with her hands clasped and her head bent low, she prayed.
She asked for deliverance. She knew not how it would come, but God,
she was sure, would find the way. Then came the alternative to her
prayer, but she paused and wondered whether she could take it. Could
she ask for deliverance, but then say, "If it be possible let this
cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt"?
She sobbed, for it was so hard to say, "Thy will be done."
For a time she paused at that point, undergoing the struggle,
shrinking from it. She was half rebellious at first; but presently
the full surrender came; and the words rang out, "Not as I will but
as Thou wilt." If she was to go the way of the martyrs, she pleaded
that she might be true, and go on to the end of her martyrdom.
It was late in the afternoon when she heard a sound by the door. A
key was thrust into the lock from outside, and it screamed as it
turned. Then came the thrusting back of bolts, so many of them,
Margaret thought bitterly. What could a girl do, that she should be
kept in durance by an iron door, with lock and bolts and bars?
The door opened outwards, and, watching intently, wondering who was
coming, she saw two men, cowled and gowned like the Familiars she had
sometimes seen in the streets. Neither of them spoke, but one who
carried a jar of water in one hand and a loaf in the other, set the
water at her feet and tossed the bread on the straw. He turned away
in silence, going back to the door with muffled tread, where, he
waited, without a word.
Margaret sprang to her feet, and, going to him, caught at his coarse,
black robe, but he tore her hand away, still without speaking.
"Why have you brought me here?" she cried, and her face was full of
eagerness.
The man made no reply, but stood looking at her, unmoved, apparently,
in spite of the traces of her grief on her face.
"Have you no answer for me? If you brought me here, what was your
right? And what was my crime, that you should bring me to this
horrible place?"
She spoke impulsively and boldly, like one who was fighting for her
life, and was taking the chance now that it was here.
The man was silent and still, as though he had been stone, and the
girl gazed at him in wonder.
"Do you not hear me?" she cried.
She clutched at his robe and shook his arm, as if to compel him to do
something that was human, and not stand there in baleful silence as
though he were made of stone. He caught her hand in his, and with a
rough wrench that made her cry out with pain, he tore it away from
his robe, and thrust her from him with such force that she staggered
and fell heavily on the straw.
The other Familiar was meanwhile passing round the cell, looking at
everything intently, and especially at the window-bars, as if to
satisfy himself that they had not been tampered with, and that there
was no possibility of the prisoner's escape. He, too, was silent,
and, going to the door when his investigation was ended, he passed
away with the other. The door closed noisily, and those sounds which
followed made Margaret feel the more how impossible it was to hope
for escape.
For a time the bread and water remained untouched, but hunger and
thirst compelled her to eat. The coarse black bread, the like of
which she had never eaten before, was so dry that she had to soak it
in the water. The food satisfied her hunger and took away her sense
of weakness, but there was the long night coming, with its loneliness
and uncertainty, perhaps its horrors.
The darkness began to enshroud the place, so little was the opening
through which the sunset light could come. Somewhere outside,
Margaret could hear the birds singing their evening songs, but these
grew less and less until the last note came, and the silence of the
night began.
Gradually what was in the cell grew indistinct. The image of the
Saviour on the cross faded away; and although she had watched it
disappear, bit by bit, there was nothing of the crucifix at last for
her to see. She turned to the window, but that, too, with its bars,
lost its shape, and the night came on so blackly that she would not
have known where to look for it. After some hours had gone the cell
began to look less dark. The things that had been hidden began to
appear, dimly and indistinctly, until the moon came away from the
horizon and later shone out clearly while she took her silent night
ride through the heavens. This silver light, stealing in, made the
cell seem less lonely.
At last, after shaking up the straw, to lie more easily, she threw
herself down upon it, after prayer, and fell into a dreamless sleep.
When she awoke it was day, and the world was alive and beautiful in
the sunshine, although she had no token of what was going on save
from the songs of the birds. In the cell itself there was silence
but for the scramble of a rat at odd times across the floor. Then
she knew what the creature's errand was, for it had eaten some of her
bread. All else was quiet, and the stillness of the house to which
her cell belonged was such that it appalled her. She would have
welcomed the slam of a door, or the sound of a human voice, however
harsh, or the tramp of a man's feet.
The thought came to her that possibly a part of her torture was this
intolerable loneliness. What might it not mean to her if it
continued many days and nights?