S T A V E
XLIX
A sergeant hit her with his stick. She fell, the folds of her skirts entwined 'round her legs, red sand burning the creases in her face. "Cunt." He throttled her to keep her still. She surged towards Grace, but a hand pulled her back down – the sergeant, his face twisted cruelly. He rolled her to her back, tossed up her skirts and a drip of his sweat on her cunny. She went to slap him, but other hands held her fast. She looked at the sergeant – Elliot and her arms suddenly undone. She embraced him . . .
She awoke, the cold sun rising over the Brooklyn Heights on a cloudless morning. Her mouth, cottony, and her stomach lurched. She jumped from the bed holding her mouth, reaching for the chamber pot.
******************
The same light pushed through the window of the wood and iron door. The cell, till now, had been black, conveying to the senses hard surfaces and sharp corners, that, and the assault to one's nose. Prisoners sprawled upon the floor, drunk mostly, and whenever touched, they'd lash out with semi-conscious kicks as rats were about. And Geordie, in the last open space, curled upon the cell's raw deck, never imagining wood could be so hard, wood that reeked of bile, blood and urine, baked into its surface day-after-day, hour-by-hour. In gaol, nobody hears yer calls, the timber walls absorb them. You're meant to suffer. And with the beam of morning light he saw a poor devil jerked against the wall, hands banging the floor without rhythm. Spittle bubbling as he kicked in spasms. No one cared, except Geordie. "Guard! Guard!"
"Leave 'em," a raspy voice croaked. Geordie turned to the fellow next to him who had a swollen face and skin the colour of old corn. "He's been doing it all night," the soldier said. "Ain't nothing left to 'em but that. A guard won't do 'em no good." The soldier rubbed his nose, a translucent bulb of spidery veins. "God, for some liquor." And he winced as he brushed the bulge of his liver.
The convulsing man stopped.
Geordie's stomach pitched, his temples pounding. "I think I'm dead."
"Don't you wish," the jaundice soldier said. "Dead would be a mercy."
YOU ARE READING
TEARS OF THE FOOT GUARDS
Historical FictionA lively, yet dark and polemic retelling of the American Revolution through the unapologetic eyes of women and soldiers in the British Army, a two-time finalist in the Faulkner/Wisdom Literary Contest for the Novel and Novel-In-Progress categories...
