Extract from To the Ends of the World
© Jenny Barden
The City of Mexico
November 1569
*
"I am next."
Kit felt the length of the reed in his hands; he held it up towards the light for all to see. The response was hushed.
"May God have mercy on you..."
"No prayers." Kit put an end to the muttering. "Say no prayers for me."
The five men with him shuffled, coughed and lapsed into a silence in which only breathing could be heard.
Kit sat back down, pressed his shoulders against the wall, and clasped his hands round his knees. He sought to be free from the touch of others, and that was possible now, if he hunched up small. He had been close enough to his companions over the last few months, forced to rest in turns because there was so little room on the reed-strewn floor. He had to find peace. He looked up at the light. It entered in three slender rays, through tiny holes set in stones that were too high to reach. The light was like milk smeared over black crystal, and in it were motes that sparkled and drifted, although the air was motionless in the dark at the bottom of the cell.
The rays were his link to the world outside. His eyes fixed upon them, and his fear was so great he could barely think of much else. He stared at the holes. If he was taken to his death then the light would fade and be gone, and later return with a dawn he would not know. But he could not accept that his death might be near. He could not conceive of a world continuing in which, for him, everything was over. Perhaps he had not lived long enough to come to terms with that idea. He was only seventeen. Heaven was not Earth, and it would be stranger than the difference between the Indies and England. How could he be reconciled to the end of his life? He squeezed his hands together and shook.
He had made himself brave in front of his friends, and that was good. They were all much older; and when the time came to leave he would have to show courage because the others would be watching. If he charged out like a lunatic, or shrank back until the Spaniards seized him, then he would have failed, both them and himself. This was why the lots had been drawn: to prove that Englishmen were not cowards, to give the next man chance to prepare, so that when the moment arrived he could be calm in going.
But he was afraid. After the first prisoner had been taken, the Spaniards had soon returned to drag another man away. He might not have much longer to reflect.
Kit pressed his forehead to his knees, and rocked back and forth.
What would happen? All that was certain was that he would not be set free. He could be taken to another prison, tried before one of the Viceroy's courts, questioned again by the Bishop, or marched back to the coast, all the way from the city of Mexico, to be delivered to the Inquisition in a ship bound for Spain.
Someone groaned; a small quiet sound, but enough to make him think of other sounds he had heard.
He might be tortured.
For weeks on end he had listened to screams, cries that could have been made by anyone, sick or wounded or deliberately hurt, perhaps even other Spaniards who had made enemies amongst their own. But one man calling had been begging for his mother, that word had been clear, but who had he heard? Someone amongst the hundred and more English prisoners captured in the fighting, or left behind, or later set ashore, or exchanged, like him, as hostages before the battle. He had heard someone whose voice was womanish and shrill, but any voice might be made womanish by what the Spaniards could do, Kit realized that was so: any voice, including his. Did it matter who he had heard? It mattered that he had not heard his brother crying out. He had not heard Will...
