Free Unseemly Science by Rod Duncan Page B

frame. “How do you know?”
    “I came last summer. But for a holiday. There was a camp for children from the city. We walked in the woods. It was... different. No prisoners. They told us the history of the place. Before anti-tubercular medicines, people with consumption came here.”
    “To die,” said a woman further up the row.

    Sunset came without sight or smell of food. Nor did we have lamps. There wasn’t much speaking. Just a few apologies when people had to move to use the chamber pot and ended up dragging the chain. And soothing words from the mother to her children, who were crying from hunger.
    Lying in the dark, panic churned in my stomach. I had examined our confinement from all angles but found no possibility of escape. The more I focussed on the problem, the faster and more disorganized my thoughts became until they were bouncing off each other, little more than a blur.
    In a moment of clarity, I realised what I was doing. I took a series of deep breaths then started to recite the thirteen times table in my mind. After one hundred and ninety-five I became lost, but the exercise had done its work. My thoughts had slowed. In an effort to divert them from my imprisonment, I focussed on the puzzle of Mrs Raike.
    It was only a few hours before that I had been reading through old volumes of the Derby Herald . Her organization had started twice. The first time seemed natural enough. Councillor Wallace Jones had been at the helm. They had made some mistakes in dealing with local businesses and ended up in a controversy that reached the front page. The second time had been very different. ‘Controlled’ was the word that came to mind. Unnaturally smooth. Mrs Raike had made her appearance and Wallace Jones had vanished from the scene.
    My thoughts were interrupted by the door banging open. A young constable entered with a tray, on which rested three loaves, a saucer of butter and some knives.
    “Why did you turn out the lamp?” he asked.
    He seemed taken aback when Tulip told him that no lights had been given us. But he left without offering help.
    It was Tulip also who organised the distribution of the food, tearing the bread into portions and making sure everyone had their share of the butter. I chose to eat my bread dry, though it proved hard to swallow. I also managed to end up with one of the butter knives, which I slid into my boot. The knife was too dull to be used as a weapon and would probably prove useless. But the act of stealing it comforted me. A taste of defiance. The illusion of control.

    After the others were asleep, I reached under my bed frame and dipped my finger in the butter I had hidden there. I greased the skin of my wrist and started to work the manacle, pulling first one side and then the other, feeling it bite into my flesh. Discomfort turned to pain. The pain became unbearable. But however hard I pulled, the iron would not slip over my hand.

Chapter 11

    The tyrant has ever held law to be synonymous with justice.
    From Revolution
    Our gaolers were constables with no experience of prison work. That much was clear from the start. Just as it had been no one’s job to bring us lamps, we soon discovered that it was no one’s job to empty the chamber pots. We had to beg the man who came in the morning with our breakfast. He relented at last. Our chain was unlocked from the ring bolts in the floor and we were allowed to walk in procession, carrying the soiled and stinking porcelain out to the latrine hut to be emptied and rinsed.
    Everything about the prison was haphazard except the chain itself.
    With the arrival of the noon meal – more bread – we had another chance to make demands. This time it was for our water jugs to be re-filled and to be allowed a few minutes exercise in the spring sunshine.
    “How long will this go on?” Tulip whispered to me as we walked circles around the hut.
    “Till the treaty’s signed, I suppose.”
    “And then?”
    “They don’t want us in the