He unlocked a door, and Nan stepped into the cell.
In spite of the intense cold, the closeness of the atmosphere, the smell of dirt and decay, sickened her. It was some seconds before her eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, for the man with the lantern had shut and locked the door; in a short while he would return; she would hear the key in the lock and he would let her out.
She could vaguely see the shape on the straw.
“Mistress Askew?” she whispered.
“Nan! Is it you?”
“Yes, Mistress. I have brought food and clothes. You are bidden to be of good cheer.”
“You are a good and brave woman to come to me thus,” said Anne. “Have you a message for me?”
“Only that all that can be done for you will be done.”
“Thank you.”
Nan could see the emaciated face; it looked ghostly in the dimness of the cell.
“Take a message for me,” said Anne. “Tell those who sent you that they should not endanger themselves by sending food and clothing for me. I can face hunger; I can face cold and discomfort.”
“It is our delight to help you, to let you know that although you are a prisoner and others are free, they do not forget you.”
“I thank them,” said Anne, and in spite of her brave words, she fell upon the food which Nan had brought, and ate it ravenously. Nan was taking off the petticoats as she talked, and Anne went on eating as she put them on.
Anne’s hands were icy and her teeth chattered. There was hardly any flesh on her bones to keep her warm.
Ah, thought Nan, it is an easy matter to wish to be a martyr; but how eagerly she eats and how grateful she is for a little warmth!
Already the man was unlocking the door.
“Hasten, Mistress,” he said. “There must be no delay. I have not seen the guard at his usual post. Hasten, I say. If we are followed, remember, I know nothing of you and how you came here.”
“I will remember,” said Nan.
Hastily he locked the door of the cell, and Nan picked her way through the dark passages, trying not to brush against the slimy walls, praying that she might not step on the rats.
She felt exhausted when she lay, at length, in the boat, listening to the sound of the oars as she was carried away from the grim fortress of the Tower of London back to Greenwich.
THE MAN WITH THE lantern reentered the Tower and had scarcely taken three steps inside the building when two men took their stand on either side of him.
“Where go you, sir jailor?” asked one.
“Where go I?” blustered the man, and he felt as though cold water were dripping down his back, although he was sweating with fear. “Where go I? To my post, of course.”
“Who was the fair lady to whom you have just bade farewell?” enquired the other man.
“Fair lady…? I…?”
“You conducted her to a certain cell, did you not?”
“You are mistaken.”
The lantern was suddenly taken from his hand, and he was pinioned.
“This way,” said one of his captors. “We have questions to ask you.”
They pushed him roughly along through the gloomy passages. Terror walked with him. A short while ago the Tower had been to him merely the prison of others; now it was his prison.
“I…I havedone… nothing.”
“Later, later,” said a soft voice in his ear. “You shall speak for yourself later.”
They were taking him into unfamiliar byways. He could hear the fierce chorus of rats as they fought with their human victims; he could hear the piercing screams for help from those miserable prisoners who were chained to the walls and who, when they heard footsteps coming their way, shouted for help without any hope that it would be given to them. They took him past the pits in which men were chained, the dirty water up to their knees; the lantern showed him their faces, wildeyed and unkempt, faces that had lost their human aspect, as they fought the hungry pests which could not wait for them to die.
“Whither… whither are you taking me?”
“Patience, friend, patience!” said the voice in his ear.
Now he was in a chamber, and although he had never seen it before, he knew what it was. He had heard much of this chamber. The dim light from the lamp which hung from the ceiling confirmed his horrible fear.
He smelled blood and vinegar, and he knew them for the mingling odors of the torture chambers; and when his eyes were able to see through the mist of fear, he picked out a man at a table with writing materials before him. Much as he desired to, he could no longer doubt that he was in the torture chamber.
The man at the table had risen; he came forward as though to greet the jailor in friendship. There was a smile on this man’s face, and the jailor guessed from his clothes that he was a personage of some importance. He knew that he himself had been a fool to take a bribe and get himself involved with the kind of people who would be
