Bring It Close by Helen Hollick

Author:Helen Hollick [Hollick, Helen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Romance, Fantasy, Historical, Fiction
ISBN: 9781906236625
Google: SEaLZwEACAAJ
Amazon: 1906236623
Publisher: SilverWood Books
Published: 2011-06-21T23:00:00+00:00

Forty Nine

Friday 25th October

The two-and-a-half storey brick built Capitol Building of Williamsburg, Virginia, was essentially in the shape of an H. It was actually two structures of seventy-feet by twenty-five, connected by a central arcade. Each wing on the southern side terminated in a semicircular apse, with the ground floor punctuated by three circular windows. The classical, corniced architecture was topped by a six-sided cupola crowning the ridge of the hipped and dormered roof. To most observers it was an impressive building, but Jesamiah, being marched and prodded across the road from the gaol to the rear entrance and the single small holding cell beneath the courtroom in the west wing, was not overly enamoured. The Capitol Building was only thirteen years old and this cell seemed to have accumulated every bit of dirt and muck from every one of them.

In a room no more than a few yards square, the unwashed and unshaven prisoners sat in near darkness along a bench, their shackles chafing at wrists and ankles from the short but uncomfortable walk.

Yesterday, some of Jesamiah’s fellow prisoners had been taken to their doom. Immediately after trial and sentencing the eight-year-old boy had been given a severe thrashing to his backside and sent on his way. Two of the men had spent the rest of the day in the stocks being gleefully pelted by rotten vegetables, mud and dung – human and animal – and three had been branded on the cheek as thieves and set free. Were they to be caught again for the same crime they would hang without trial or deliberation.

This morning, three men had been hanged, one of them the whoreson Jesamiah had attacked. Another had been Henry. His trial was short, a foregone conclusion. He had been caught performing a sexual act of gross indecency with another man twice his age in a tavern’s miserable back room down in Jamestown. The man had escaped leaving Henry to take the full wrath of Christian moralistic judgement. He had pleaded guilty and had walked with pride and dignity to the gallows. It had been the bully who had pleaded for mercy, broken down and wept as the noose had been laid around his neck. He had taken twenty minutes to die, slowly strangling, accompanied by the sound of hisses and boos. The crowds did not like a coward.

Jesamiah’s invitation to join the proceedings was the last to be issued. He dared not say anything as the bailiff prodded him towards the door and the short flight of stairs beyond. What was there to say? This was all a lie, a misunderstanding? He had been saying that since his arrest, with only Maynard to speak up for him. But Maynard was not here in Williamsburg. He was at Jamestown with his ship, or at sea somewhere, it did not matter where.

It was difficult walking with the leg irons, twice Jesamiah stumbled up the steps, only to be punched in the back and grumbled at. He halted

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