“What have you to say of that, little whore of my flesh? Answer me!”
She knew not where she found the words, nor the courage to speak them. She only knew that they were right.
“The final reckoning has not yet come,” she said quietly. “Your imagined victory will slip through your fingers like sand.”
He bolted from his chair and came at her, before either realized what had happened. Pinning her against the door, he mastered his wrath only long enough to cry out in a dreadful voice:
“Be gone! Out of my sight!”
Mary fled from the room in tears. He slammed the door after her, then struck it so violently that the oak shivered and his hand nearly broke. For she had committed the one act that no evil man can tolerate.
She had spoken the truth.
That evening Lieutenant Ballard appeared, to escort the ladies to, “More suitable quarters.” He led them, along with two armed guards, to the high tower at the furthest extremity of the Castle.
After a long and torturous spiralling of stairs (for their escort would not let them rest), they came at last to the uppermost story. There Ballard took a long iron key, and forcing the eye of the lock, pulled back the thick wooden door, pierced by a single, barred window.
They were ushered in, and all doubt of their position left them. It was a prison cell. Piled hay on the floor comprised the beds, two water buckets, one filled, the other empty, their only toilet. Two woolen blankets had been rudely thrown down, as if their captors resented even this small show of humanity. But for these, and for the water, the place might have gone unchanged for a hundred years.