Helpless: Day 13

Word Count: 78,018

Summary of Events:

Mikolaj and his fellow prisoners are notified by a guard that they have been sentenced to death by hanging, which will occur in three days' time. As the youngest of the men in the cell, Mikolaj is horribly distraught at the sentence — which he also doesn't feel is appropriate for the crime of thievery — because of the fact that he's got so much life ahead of him, and he also has a mother and sisters who need him. On the night before the execution, Mikolaj is unable to sleep and tries to think up ways to get free; of which there are few, all of which are highly unlikely to happen . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

If only his uncle and aunt knew he was here and were capable of mounting a sort of rescue so that he wouldn’t necessarily have to hope he himself possessed the level of strength he needed to escape.

But would they really want to risk their lives? Surely they would be much more inclined to have Mama and the girls stay with them, not temporarily as they’d done in the spring when they’d come to celebrate Wódz Książę Sobiesław’s ascension to power — something Mikolaj now had to say he didn’t really know that he considered worthy of celebrating — but permanently.

Mikolaj hunched over in worry as a sustained gust of wind caused the torch outside the door to first flicker wildly, and then go very dim, to the point that Mikolaj couldn’t make out any light from it.

When the gust abated, unlike before, the torch’s glow didn’t grow and return. It had been extinguished, leaving a faint light from the next torch down the corridor to give a vague indication of where the door was, but otherwise leave Mikolaj completely in the dark.

Tears filled Mikolaj’s eyes. He didn’t want to die; not so much because he was too young, but because Mama and the girls needed him. They needed his help, his strength, his capacity to provide for them either by engaging in heavier labour than they could, or by being able to hunt game for them.

As far as he could tell, however, there was no way he could escape the death that the Wódz Książę had sentenced him to for very unjust reasons.

He had been wrong to take the meat of the bull, to even slaughter it, he would willingly admit that if he were asked to, however, he was innocent of luring the bull, damaging the wall, and doing anything prior to that against either the cattle or the Wojewoda’s herdsmen.

If those things were part of the reason why he was being sentenced to this death, then the sentence was unjust and not what he would have expected of the Wódz Książę. If it was purely because of his killing the bull and taking its meat, then Mikolaj, again, couldn’t really say that the punishment was just, as an animal’s life was not equal to that of a man’s, meaning that his death was not a fair recompense for the loss of the bull.

It would be more appropriately just if the Wódz Książę were to sentence him to hard labour or some other sort of punishment instead of death, but Mikolaj knew there would be no chance for him to plead with the Wódz Książę for mercy, even though he desperately wanted to, and he feared that if the Wódz Książę were present at the hanging, his court — including Wojewoda Aureliusz — would be there with him, which would rather thwart any hope Mikolaj might have of being able to plead for mercy.

Whether he liked it or not, the end of his life had come, and even if it would be longer than that of two of his brothers, it wouldn’t be longer than that of the other, nor even of his father.