TWICE IN TIME

CHAPTER XVI Captivity

For one reason alone I pass over the next six years in a few words. That is because those six years were empty—heart-breakingly empty.

I was not released from my cell, except for the reason I shall relate. I knew no passage of time except by the shifting of the sunlighted patch on my wall opposite the little window, and by the arrival, each noon, of coarse food in a wooden plate and water in a leather mug. This was the same fare, I make no doubt, as that of the monks who were my jailers.

On Sundays came a cup of wine, and I could hear the intoning of a mass. Then I would make a mark to denote a week's passing under the date which I had scratched in the biggest stone. These weekly marks added into months, and the months into years. I found myself pacing up and down, up and down, like a beast in a cage. To break myself of that frantic habit, I spent hours at calesthenic exercises which did keep me fairly fit, and at sketching with bits of burnt wood, and scratching pictures on the wall with the tongue of my belt-buckle.

My best effort was a Madonna, amusing her haloed Son with a flowery twig. As I worked thus I wondered if the picture would ever be seen by other eyes than mine. I decided that probably it would. The fortress was old, and might last for centuries. I might die in the cell, and another captive replace me, a captive who would look at the work of my hands and muse idly about the predecessor who had wrought thus.

Nobody spoke to me, not even the monk who thrust in my daily ration. And nobody watched me. In the summer of 1474, my second in the cell, I decided that escape was not impossible.

First I detached a leg of my bedstead, and with this as a lever worried the crossbars out of my window. They had been set in mortar, and had sharp points. Stealthily I began to widen the narrow aperture, working each night and restoring the bars by day, lest someone look in from the outside and bring my labors to nought.

After a month I decided my diggings adequate— but they were not. Trying to wriggle through I became jammed in the window tunnel, and there I was forced to stick until a goat-keeper, chasing his charges around the walls, happened to spy my protruding head. It took two muscular friends to drag me back into my cell, and I was marched between them to Father Augustino.

The prior spoke sadly upon my prideful and rebellious nature, urged me to pray for forgiveness and a softer heart, then sentenced me to a term of bread and water—and a flogging. When an attendant came with a knotted bundle of thongs and laid them like burning wires upon my bared back, rage swallowed my reason. A sudden jerk freed my wrists from those who gripped them, and I tackled my flogger, threw him heavily, and clutched his throat with both hands. Half a dozen of the Holy Pilgrims, as ready to battle as to pray, dragged me free before I could damage the whip wielder.

Father Augustino had watched the incident with an appraising light in his single eye.

"You refuse to be corrected," pronounced he, very coldly.

"Keep your lash for slaves!" I retorted passionately. "I will die before I submit!"

To my considerable surprise, he nodded understanding. His eye danced a trifle, and his wide lips smiled, revealing other lean white teeth than the one which showed through the notch.

"Be it so," he granted, in a more human tone. "I remit the flogging. But you must be closer penned. Brethren, put him in the cell below his old one." * * *

They did so. The new prison was smaller, and for bed had only a shelf under the window, spread with musty straw. The window itself was cross-barred and looked out upon a face of hewn rock. This part of the fortress was below ground, and a foot-wide trench was all that gave air and light.

Gloom and closeness were new burdens upon my soul, but I had gained one advantage—the stern approval of the prior. To him I sent request for a lamp and pen and paper. These were given me, and I had surcease from ineffable ennui by writing and drawing. Among other things, I set down in outline most of the story told here in foil. That outline is spread before me as I write these words, and is a check against my irritably failing memory.

I kept up my exercises, too, shadow-boxed on occasion, and incised more pictures upon my wall. Even so, I had many hours in which to meditate upon the injustice of Lorenzo's decree concerning me, and upon the things I would do to Guaracco if I ever came within reach of him. Of Lisa I tried not to think.

In the fall of 1474, and again two years later, attacks were made upon the fortress. There was cannonading from the stronghold, and in reply from ships, and once an effort was made to storm us. I heard commotion, fierce yells, the clash of steel. In the end, I could hear the austere soldiers of the church had repulsed their assailants, and for a day the castle rang with chanted paeans of praise.

I grew to have a philosophic sympathy with my jailers. They acted upon agreement with Lorenzo in imprisoning me. They confined me closely only because they must. If my food was plain, my bed hard, so were theirs. For the rest, they were sincere worshipers and fierce fighters. The world was full of worse people.

Thus I reasoned, but still it was a desperate struggle to remain contented and sane. I tried to remember "The Prisoner of Chillon," which had one or two stanzas of comfort for the captive, but it would not come to mind. In any case, Lord Byron would not write it for a good three hundred and forty years.

The spring of 1477 saw yet another attack by enemies, a stronger and more stubborn effort to carry the Fortress of the Holy Pilgrims. I could hear the battering of a wall close to me, and the overthrow of part of it. So hot was the fight, so narrowly balanced for an hour, that the very jailer monk rushed from the corridor outside my cell to help defend the ramparts. During his absence I had time to do a thing I had long planned to do.

The lamp that lighted me was an iron saucer with a central clip to hold aloft the wick. I ignited the straw of my bed, and, holding one edge of the lamp saucer in a fold of my jerkin, contrived to heat the opposite edge red hot. Then, with a loose stone for a hammer and the bed shelf for an anvil, I pounded, reheated, and pounded again, until I beat that rim into a knifelike edge. After the battle the jailer returned, but he had not heard my noisy labors. And I began to whittle at my wooden door.

The planks were thick, and seasoned almost as hard as iron. But I persevered, all that stifling summer. I counted myself lucky when, between one dawn and the next, I shaved away as much as a handful of splinters.

Boresome it was, and eventually heart-breaking, for my first burrowing brought me to metal. I dug at another place, hoping to avoid such a barrier, but found more; more, that is, of the same sheet. * * *

Eventually I had removed almost all of the door's inner surface, and found myself confronted with a copper plate, a central layer, probably with as much wood outside as I had already disposed of. My tappings and proddings convinced me that it was solidly massy, except for the small slide-covered opening for food.

I am afraid I both cursed and sulked. I had no cutting tools. The blunt-edged piece of glass I used for an occasional shave was far from adequate. Even if I'd had tools—file, chisel, or drill—I would not have dared use them, for the noise would attract guards. What then?

Acid came to mind—sulphuric acid. But where to get it? The stones of my cell were volcanic, might contain sulphides. But how could I burn or distill them? Even if I got the acid, would not its strong odor bring investigation? I approached the problem from another viewpoint, considering not the best acid but the most available.

Chilly fall was upon us, and the sharp, strong wine was served daily instead of on Sunday only. Once again I was inspired.

When my next food was brought, I pleaded for a little vinegar, to medicine a chest ailment. It was brought me in a saucer, and I steeped in it some shavings, whittled from my door. When they seemed sour enough, I placed them at the bottom of my wooden bucket. Into this, day after day, I slowly trickled my ration of wine. It produced a greater quantity of excellent vinegar—at least, for metal-destroying purposes—and after tasting it I felt sure of my acid. Acetic acid, perhaps eight or ten percent at the most.

Painfully scrabbling with a spoon in the trench outside my window, I gained enough clay earth to mix with water and fashion into clumsy basins and jars. These I cautiously hardened in another fire, and employed to hold my supply of vinegar as I increased it, also for other things.

For instance, I constructed a really workable distillery—a narrow-mouthed vase or bottle, suspended above a fire which I fed with chips from the door and furniture, and straw from my bed. As winter came on I heated vinegar in this, and the vapor passed through a hollow reed which I cooled with bits of ice from just outside my barred window. The condensed drops I caught in my cup. They were not pure acetic acid, but a liquid with a high content.

These labors lasted for months. I speak of them briefly, saying nothing of the trial and error, the ludicrous failures and the chance successes that finally made my skill and product adequate. At length, well after Christmas of 1477, I began my attack upon the copper plate that held me from freedom.

At the height of my forehead, and again at the height of my knee, I constructed clay troughs against the metal. These I filled, and kept filled, with the acid. When the action proved slight, I hit upon the device of adding salt, procured by soaking my preserved meat, then evaporating the brine, to the liquid. Thus I got a crude form of hydrochloric acid, which made an appreciable impression. I constantly scraped away the weakened particles of metal, and replenished my supply of salted acid. I wrought for months, and finally was rewarded when the last of the copper along those two narrow lines was eaten away.

The perpendicular acidulation was more difficult, but I managed it by fashioning two clay tubes at the edges of the door, open at the top, rather like the covered tunnels built by tropical ants. These I filled again and again, sometimes pulling them down to pry out the digested copper, then building them afresh for new attacks. * * *

Here, too, I was successful, and one day in February I was able to pry away the whole rectangle of metal within the compass of my four acid-cut channels. There was more wood beyond but, heartened by my triumph, I scraped and chiseled until the door was almost as thin as pasteboard. To the outside view it might appear as strong as ever.

At mid-day of April 16, 1478, I made my bid for escape.

The attendant came to my door, pushed back the slide, and stooped to thrust in my food. I had been waiting for an hour, tense and ready. As I heard him outside, I sprang, bursting through the thin wood like a clown through a paper hoop.

Landing on the monk's unsuspecting back, I whipped an arm beneath his chin, shutting off his breath. He could not cry out, and his struggles availed nothing. I choked him until his limbs grew slack, then stripped off his robe. I donned this and pushed him, senseless, through the smashed door into my cell.

Then I headed down the corridor, cowl over my face, his keys in my hand. I unlocked the door at the end, mounted steps, and came to an upper level. Another corridor I traversed, with measured tread, as though deep in meditation, and none challenged me.

I came into the main hall, saw the doorway to the courtyard. Beyond would be the open, the beach, a boat. I would row away, they would think that a brother was fishing. After that, I would seek land, even among the Turks. But a voice spoke at my elbow.

"You pass me without saluting, brother."

Father Augustino! He had fallen into step beside me. I lifted a hand to my hooded brow, and his single eye fastened upon it.

"How white your flesh, brother. I thought that every monk of our order was tanned brown by God's sunlight. Who are you?"

There was nothing for it but battle. I sprang at him.

Surprise was on my side. I tipped him and fell heavily upon him. But that old priest-soldier, lame and half-blind, was as strong as I, as fierce. I clutched and pressed his throat, but he caught my two little fingers in his hands, bent them painfully backward until I quit the grip.

His thumbs drove into the inner sides of my biceps, torturing nerves between the muscles, and I rolled free of him. We came up to our feet. I struck him heavily on the jaw, and his one eye blinked, but he did not stagger or flinch.

Strongly grappling me around the waist, he rushed me back against a wall, and so held me, despite my pummeling fists in his face, while a dozen monks, swords and axes in hand, rushed in from all directions. In an instant I was secured, and Father Augustino stepped clear of me, dabbing at a trickle of blood from his scarred nose. He panted and grinned, as if he had enjoyed the scrimmage.

"Here's a stout sinner," he growled. "Never did the blessed angel clip Father Jacob more strongly. Thank you for the bout, my son. Put him in my office."

There I was kept under close guard, while the chief stumped away to investigate. He returned after half an hour, and dismissed the guards, but kept his dagger drawn lest I attack him.

"I am amazed at the cunning and courage and labor of your attempt," he began. "How did you manage to cut through the door, copper and all?" * * *

I described my method, and he listened with interest. Several times he asked me to amplify my remarks. At length he smiled.

"You have science and inspiration. How great would be your works if they were turned to honest, godly uses!"

"Being held prisoner, I can turn them only to an effort at escape," I replied.

"Aye, that. Your months of toil, so brilliantly planned and so wearily carried out, came to naught within short minutes. A tragedy." Father Augustino paused and meditated. Then: "My son, what if I gave you freedom?"

"Freedom!" I echoed him hopefully.

"Within limits, of course. Take you from that cell and let you live among us. You could work more science, with true materials to aid you instead of such makeshifts as you fashioned in prison." He gazed at me encouragingly. "Say but the word—swear that you will not seek to flee from this island—"

"I am sorry," I broke in, "but I cannot so doom myself."

"Doom yourself? But you are now held by iron bars and guards."

"And by a false charge, brought against me by a vile rascal," I finished for him. "I thank you, good Father, for your offer, but I live only to escape and to avenge myself. I cannot give you a parole."

He shook his scarred head sadly. Going to the door, he called his monks.

"Hither, some of you," he commanded. "We must find this fellow a straiter prison still."

A new figure pushed through the circle of black gowns, a man in the dress of the world, all particolored hose and plum-purple mantle, with a gay beard and curling locks. Plainly he was a visitor from some Italian city.

"Surely," quoth he, "this is Ser Leo, the artist and scientist, who is held captive by order of Lorenzo the Magnificent."

"Aye, that." Father Augustino nodded. "You know him?"

"I know him," was the reply. "Where doth he go now?"

"To an oubliette, I fear. From there he will need wings to rise."

Two of the armed brothers had torn away my disguising robe, and now marched me down steps, more steps, to a level of natural rock where no light shone save a torch. One of them hoisted a great iron trap-door. I looked into a bottle-shaped pit, at least twelve feet deep.

At that moment the upper levels of the castle wakened to noise—a blown trumpet, a chorus of yells. The two monks turned to look. I tightened my sinews for a desperate fight against them before I might be hurled into that tomblike prison. A flying figure came downstairs.

"The infidel Turks! Their galleys blacken the seas! Come to the defense!"

"As soon as we lower this captive into—" began one of my guards.

"No!" A bearded face looked over the black-clad shoulder of the newsbringer. It was the visitor who had recognized me. "Bring him along, he will help fight!"

"Well thought of!" came the deep voice of Father Augustino, higher on the stairs. "Free every captive who can bear arms! Let them fight for life!"

We all raced up the steps together.