@flinthearted || [x]
Heavy were the chains bound about his wrists; iron and cutting. Beneath them the flesh wore away, rubbed raw, aching any way he moved. And so he sat on the crude bench, back to the stone pillar, with a swollen, aching face where Eleanor’s curled fist had borne into flesh with all the might her rage could muster. In the silence which followed once she had left him Charles had to wonder whether all which she had thrown at his feet had been solely influenced by his behavior toward her or if some was a fester of the poison against herself, too.
But now was not a time to reflect on Eleanor Guthrie and her scream torn from the very pits of her soul to echo against the stone-wall corner and rake against his ears. Time spent alone, locked away in the cell, was time enough for him to think over and over, again and again, of those he had sworn to protect and how the world had shifted beneath previously firmly-planted feet. It seemed as if every time he knew who he was, the world showed him a new face.
Barely turning his head, behind ratty, greasy locks of frizzy dark hair, he peered at the man stood at the bars. James Flint. He shouldn’t be here. Charles’ song surely was sung, with such heavy chains latched around wrists and ankles, with an attack upon the new Governor of Nassau, and with his last meeting having gone sour with Eleanor there was simply no way they would underestimate him. He would be heavily guarded, heavily watched.
They were building a gibbet in the town square. One day he was to be expected to be sent to England, a spectacle paraded before judge and jury, the next (one conversation with Eleanor Guthrie later) he was told he was to be hung for his crimes before all of Nassau. Perhaps there was something poetic that he should die before those he wanted to help free. Charles wasn’t much for reading, had always been far too impatient for it, so he couldn’t be sure if this was a grand moment of metaphors or not.
“Perhaps this is my duty.” He said, voice low. If he spoke too loudly they risked any curious ear catching the rumble of words and wondering who he could be talking with. He straightened, leaning his back against stone, letting his hair fall from his face. “You try breaking me clear of here, what’s to say we both don’t wind up hanging tomorrow, the entirety of what we’re building as good as dead with the both of us? If I die… there’s still you. Jack. Anne. Silver. Bones.” He paused, the dull thudding in the left side of his face never ceasing. “If I die, maybe there’s a chance you can talk some sense into her.”
