Deception (The Eternal Dungeon: Transformation #1) ¶ DRM-free multiformat e-book: epub, html, mobi/Kindle, pdf, doc

"Weldon could not remember the last time he had met a prisoner who seemed delighted to be questioned by him."

He thought she had come to change his workplace. He found she was there to change his life.

Still pained by the loss of an old love, Weldon Chapman has his life complicated by an order to question a prisoner with a mysterious past. That she is also a discerning woman seems unimportant at first. Having worked for many years in a prison where he is forbidden to marry, Weldon has long since reconciled himself to the fact that his relations with female prisoners must remain strictly professional.

But Weldon is about to learn that his own past is as much a mystery as his prisoner's . . . and that his prisoner holds the key which will open the door to that mystery.

This novella (short novel) of heterosexual love, gay male love, and a love that's never whispered can be read on its own or as the first story in the "Transformation" volume of The Eternal Dungeon, an award-winning speculative fiction series set in a nineteenth-century prison.

EXCERPT

"Mistress . . ." He hesitated.

"Birdesmond," she supplied.

"I thought you might prefer to be referred to as Mistress Manx."

She smiled again. "I would if I were a man. But as you can see, I am a woman."

"Mm." Weldon tried not to let his eye roam; he had learned long ago that this made female prisoners understandably nervous.

Having deliberately avoided the portion of Birdesmond Manx's records that gave her personal information, such as her date of birth, he had drawn two competing images in his mind of what she would look like. One image was of a scrawny girl, still at the age of sexlessness and confusion over what it means to be a woman. The other image, more sinister, had been of a mannish spinster, loud and aggressive, demanding to be called by her family name as though she were a man, and undoubtedly wearing bloomers.

The prisoner before him fit neither of these images. She was a soft-spoken, attractive woman in her early thirties, with her hair swept onto her head in a manner that emphasized rather than detracted from her femininity. In accordance with the customs of the Eternal Dungeon, she had been permitted to keep her own clothing, and in accordance with the customary treatment of female prisoners, her body had not been searched. The latter custom had once resulted in Weldon being stabbed by a concealed knife, and he found his gaze flicking down toward the dress that might conceal anything. It too was utterly feminine, with its tight waist and ballooning skirt and high collar. The only concession to comfort seemed to be the dress's cloth, which was a practical flannel, and the low-heeled boots, which Weldon had noticed briefly when Mistress Birdesmond curtsied politely upon his entrance.

It was just as well concerning the boots, as she had refused Weldon's offer to take a seat, a courtesy only offered to female prisoners. Weldon wondered whether she was trying to prove that she was as strong as a man. Manifestly, she was not: her frame was slight, and he could easily overpower her if she became violent.

Not that he would do so except in the most extreme circumstances; the Code declared that such matters must be left to the guards. For this reason, Seekers were hired for their mental powers, not their bodily strength. Weldon hoped that Birdesmond did not know this.

"You were speaking of Parkside Prison," he prompted.

"Yes, well . . . Commoners are not so absent from that prison as you might think, Mr. Chapman. It is true that its officials and guards are high-born, but most of the prisoners are commoners – servants from households in the Parkside district."

Weldon raised his eyebrows. "The rich in Parkside do not commit crimes?"

"The rich have money to bribe the soldiers to overlook their crimes," she replied tartly. "And alas, the rich have the influence to persuade prison officials to take different courses of action with their prisoners. . . . Many years ago, I had a maidservant whose man was arrested on a charge of petty thievery. She begged me to go to the head of the prison and intervene on her man's behalf, as she feared he would be dealt with harshly. I accompanied her to the prison and was appalled by what I saw there: dozens of families crammed into the outside room, waiting to see the prisoners or to plead on their behalf. No attempt had been made to provide proper waiting space for these people. Any high-born visitor was ushered immediately into the keeper's office, but the common folk were required to sit on the floor, with no access to water or other such comforts. Babies were screaming, young women were weeping, and the guards took no notice of any of them, except to kick them out of the way when new prisoners arrived.

"It was as though I had stumbled upon the scene of a great fire or flood. I had no idea what to do first. Ignoring the protests of the guards, who wanted to draw me from this room as quickly as possible, I sat down and minded the babies and comforted the young women and talked with the older women. The next time I came, I made sure I was supplied with plenty of food and water, until, after several weeks of this, the prison officials were shamed into providing somewhat better facilities for the prisoners' families."

"I should imagine your work would have been done then." Weldon was trying to react to this recital with a mildly interested expression, as though he had never heard such a tale before. In fact, much of this story had been told in Birdesmond's application to become a Seeker. In reading the account, Weldon had been unable to make up his mind whether the writer had been motivated by naïveté or by a desire to bully the prison officials. Now he recognized, from the matter-of-fact tone of her voice, that Birdesmond was simply practical. She had done what she thought needed to be done, in the unfussed manner of a competent nurse or schoolmistress.

A slow smile curled its way onto Birdesmond's lips. "I suppose it would have been, if I had not heard by then the stories of the families and realized how much remained to be done."

The rest of the tale was easily told: Birdesmond's unplanned journey to becoming the confidante of the prisoners' families, the person that the women and children turned to and told their secrets to, certain that she would not betray their best interests, even if she believed that what their menfolk had done was wrong. Gradually Birdesmond came to believe that she could have equal success in persuading the prisoners to confide in her – better success at least than the prison workers, whose harsh indifference to the prisoners' fates invariably elicited nothing more than terrified lies or cynical evasions.

"I had the opportunity to test this theory," she said. "My uncle's manservant was arrested for arson soon thereafter. My uncle was convinced that another man had committed the crime, and he persuaded the prison officials, over their better judgment, to release the manservant and arrange for the arrest of the other man. But I was sure that the manservant had done the deed. I talked to him and was able to make him see that it would be wrong for him to let another man suffer imprisonment for his own crime. . . . The manservant's self-deception as to what he had done lay deep; it took many days of talk between us before I could begin to reach the core of the lies he had used to shield himself from his pain, and to help him find a way toward healing himself. It troubles me that no one in the place where he is now imprisoned is willing to help him transform himself, but he and I continue to correspond, and I am convinced that he is better off where he is now than he would have been if he had continued his life of self-deception. Certainly the innocent man who was released is better off."

Weldon paused a moment to see whether she would add protests that none of this was due to her own abilities, or whether, on the contrary, she would boast of her accomplishment. She did neither. Having told her tale in the briefest manner possible, she added, "I wanted very much to learn how to be better at this, and to find a way to help other men who had been arrested. But the officials at Parkside Prison would not permit me to work with the prisoners. Even if they had, I doubt that the workers there could have taught me anything more than I had figured out on my own."

"And then you learned that such training was offered to Seekers," said Weldon.

She smiled, saying nothing.

"And committed a crime of your own," he added.

Her smile did not waver; she nodded. "A most terrible crime."