CHAPTER ELEVEN
James awoke to find himself in a dimly lit, irregularly shaped chamber. Yellowish light streamed from highly-set windows. The floor was uneven – in various areas boulders emerged from the stamped earth as if the whole space had been gouged out from bare rock. A line of pillars divided the chamber into two parts. James could see names etched in the wall above, names of previous unfortunate inmates. “What happened to them?” James wondered.
The large oaken door to one side opened. Two guards with their faces covered by black-painted visors with two slits for the eyes, as was customary, entered and seized James. “Where are you taking me?” James pleaded. Without a word they hauled him along seemingly innumerable corridors and passages until he entered a more brightly-lit room.
“Ah, the prisoner. The one who tried to capture our source of power. You have him before me,” said an aquiline-nosed heavily-wrinkled figure seated on a padded wooden chair at one end of the room. “So your name is James?” he said, poring over a piece of paper.
“My name is James” confirmed the prisoner. “What do you intend to do with me then?”
“You appear to be a hale and hearty person. Someone like you is what we desperately lack in our salt marshes, especially as we need to increase production to fulfil our quota for the Norsemen.”
James thought to himself, “at least I’m not going to be personally systematised, at least not in the way I’ve heard is usual in this wretched place.”
“Off with him,” said the chamber’s intendant. “Off with him and let him join the rest of them in our marshes. Let him dig and extract there for the rest of his healthy life. Then we’ll decide if he is fit enough to be processed for food for our hunting hounds.”
James’ first thoughts were that he was still alive and that his mind was still in one piece. His next thought was “where, where is my darling Helen? Helen, where are you my love, my life. What are they doing to you? Is your mind still whole? Do you still remember me? Our precious moments together?”
Outside, in the grey morning mist, an open cart pulled by two oxen carried about thirty ashen faced males towards the coast. Blank-eyed and stooping with resignation the group jolted its way out of Mersea. Among them could be discerned James’ features.
The town gates closed behind them. Ahead, sky and sea merged into an uncertain horizon etched by marram grass and lagoons perfumed with sand and salt.
