“Then you do know,” said Katerin to Peter, “how cruel the Governor was to the poor unfortunates. And that is why you seek him.”
“What was done to my father and me—what was it? Only the ordinary thing of the old days, as you know. Yes, that is why I seek Kirsakoff, and why I ask your help to find him.”
“And how long were you in the prison?” asked Michael. “There must have been a charge against you?”
“I was in prison three months, as near as I can tell,” replied Peter. “Three months of hell on earth and in darkness, forgotten to the world! It might have been three years, or three hundred, measured in my suffering—the terrible sounds by day and by night, the rats—and I might have been there till now, or dead, so far as Kirsakoff cared.” His bitterness was growing, and his face was getting livid with rage.
“And for nothing?” asked Katerin. “Had you done nothing against the Governor—or the laws of the Czar?”
“Ay, even Kirsakoff would have mercy on a boy,” said Michael.
“I did nothing, I swear,” went on Peter. “It was the orders of Kirsakoff which sent me to prison. It was this way—an officer knocked me down in front of the post-house. And when my father came to pick me up, the Governor ordered both of us taken away to the prison.
“You see, my father belonged to the free gang—he was a political, as were you. My mother died here, in the Street of the Dames. I never knew her. But my father was good and kind to me. He was all I had in the world, he was all I loved, though in those days (and Peter smiled wistfully) I was taught to love the Little Father, the Czar.
“My father was struck down before my eyes, and when I was taken to the prison, the officer in charge of the books was drunk—and he put my name down in the book wrong—put my name down as my father’s—gave my father’s name to me, so that the records appeared to show that it was my father and not me, the boy, back in prison. I did not know what they were doing, and for three months it was supposed that it was my father, the political, who was in the cell by order of the Governor.”
“Then no doubt the Governor freed you—gave you the pardon,” said Michael.