Helpless: Day 7

Word Count: 42,061

Summary of Events:

The following morning Mikolaj cut the meat of the bull more thoroughly and got roasts smoking before he prepared to grind the tougher cuts to be made into sausage. He tried to get Klaudia to help, to no avail, and was quite frustrated by his mother's chastisements of his efforts. The next day he, his mother, and his 13-year-old sister worked on filling the sausage casings when two knights of the Wojewoda came to the door, arresting Mikolaj for not merely killing the bull, but also purportedly deliberately ensuring the bull escaped his pasture and fell into the cellar. Mikolaj was carried to Wielisów across the back of one of the knight's horses, who hastened the journey by their faster gaits, even if the experience was unpleasantly uncomfortable for Mikolaj . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

Finally the knights rode into the courtyard of a grand dwór, where they slowed their pace before ultimately coming to a stop.

At the longest last, Mikolaj was untied from the saddle and herded into the dwór via a side door that led down a dark corridor.

The speed at which Mikolaj was shoved down the corridor, especially considering his legs were recovering from the tight binding they’d endured, prompted Mikolaj to stumble regularly, which caused the knights to utter oaths and strike his head with the heels of their free hands.

Mikolaj stumbled with particular severity when they reached the stairs, as Mikolaj hadn’t been able to see the stairs, and thus had been startled when his foot didn’t meet the ground where he’d expected it to.

Nonetheless, he nor the knights behind him fell down the stairs, although the lower they descended, the more Mikolaj wanted to go back up the stairs, for an odour began to permeate the air which sickened him horribly.

The knights refused to let him, however, and he was pushed down to the bottom of the stairs, where a grimy man with a candle appeared to be waiting for them. He looked to Mikolaj like a disgraced knight, or a man who’d wanted to become a knight, but had failed to achieve such prestige.

He led them down a corridor lined with doors fashioned of heavy iron bars, behind which Mikolaj glimpsed what could’ve been living men or corpses, some of whom moaned and cried out, only to be shouted down by the man with the candle.

Finally they stopped and the man opened a door, through which Mikolaj was thrown, his knees crying out in pain as they struck the stone.

The door was slammed shut behind him and locked before the light faded away as the knights and the man departed.

Mikolaj shifted off his knees and rubbed them to dispel the pain as fresh tears flooded his eyes. He hadn’t expected Wojewoda Aureliusz to keep such watch of his cattle that he would’ve been arrested just two days after killing the bull — not even two days — and he was angry at himself for having been so foolish.

At the same time, he didn’t know what else he could’ve done. Even the knights wouldn’t have been able to — if they’d even dared try — remove the bull from the cellar without killing it.

Swiping the tears from his eyes, Mikolaj groped about in the dark to get a feel for his surroundings, which he found to be four stone walls, one of which had the iron-barred door set in it, and a wooden cot that was mounted to another one of the walls, which bore no bedding whatsoever.

Despite its lack of comfort, Mikolaj climbed up onto it and laid down, facing toward the stone wall, using his hands as a modest pillow while tears continued to trail across his face. If his tiny glimpses of other prisoners were anything to go by, he was going to rot to death in here before he ever saw the fatty face of Wojewoda Aureliusz.

Pronunciations:

Dwór: dvawr

Aureliusz: aoorehleeoosh