CHAPTER 873: COLD AND WET (PART ONE)

The dungeons beneath Lothian Manor hadn’t seen much use in the past fifty years, ever since Lothian City grew large enough for the city’s constable to build a proper jail that imprisoned most people either awaiting judgment or condemned to sentences of confinement.

Ever since then, the dungeons beneath the manor had been reserved for the rarest sorts of prisoners, either members of the aristocracy or people accused of such dangerous and heinous crimes that demanded the increased security offered by the cells built into the very bones of Lothian Manor.

The cell that Jocelynn had been thrown into had gone more than a decade without an occupant, and Inquisitor Percivus wasn’t inclined to do any cleaning before locking the daughter of Count Rhys Blackwell into the narrow cell that was barely wide enough for a grown person to lie down along one wall.

"I don’t have time to deal with you tonight," the flame-haired Inquisitor said when he fitted a shackle around Jocelynn’s slender ankle, securing her to the wall with a chain so short that she couldn’t reach the iron-bound oak door unless she was willing to kneel down on the bare stone floor and crawl to it.

"Perhaps I’ll deal with you in the morning," Percivus added before retrieving a bucket of water and soaking Jocelynn with its contents. "Or perhaps by tomorrow night. I’m in no rush," he said with a smile that looked like he was setting off to enjoy a fine meal of his favorite foods or the company of a woman. Only it wasn’t a common human comfort that put such an eager, anticipatory smile on the Inquisitor’s face, but the people awaiting him in the cells adjoining Jocelynn’s.

"You c-can’t do this to me!" Jocelynn protested, stamping her foot on the ground as water dripped from her hair and her suddenly sodden dress. She’d chosen to wear one of her best seafoam colored dresses, embroidered with silver patterns of crashing waves around the hem of the skirts and a pattern of tiny, silver birds flying from her hips to the swell of her bosom.

She didn’t think that she could seduce the Inquisitor by putting on such a display, but she wanted to present an image that would remind him that she was the daughter of Count Rhys Blackwell. Even the Inquisition should tread carefully around people of her station, and by wearing one of her finest dresses along with an aquamarine pendant necklace, fine silver bracelets, and rings on her fingers, she hoped to provide an unspoken reminder of her station.

"I’m innocent," Jocelynn shouted as she brushed wet hair away from her face and fumed at the Inquisitor by the door. "I’ve done nothing wrong. I’m not a witch or a demon. Confessor Eleanor just healed me! She proved I’m innocent with the Holy Lord of Light’s own blessing! Ask her, just ask her, and she’ll tell you!"

"Oh, I intend to speak to Eleanor about many things," Percivus said from the doorway. "But I have others to attend to first. Don’t worry," he added as his predatory smile grew wider. "Your time will come," he said before stepping out of the cell and closing the heavy door with a resounding -THUD- followed by the clank of iron as he barred the door from the outside.

With that, Jocelynn was left alone in her dark, narrow cell. There was a small window on the wall opposite the door, set at the very top of the wall, but it was only a hand’s breadth tall and no wider than the length of her arm, fit with iron bars that made it clear that even the smallest of prisoners would be unable to squeeze through it.

At first, Jocelynn saw the window as a blessing that kept the air from turning foul and offered a sliver of light in what would otherwise have been a pitch black room. It was just enough light that she was able to find her way onto the wood-framed cot that served as the room’s only piece of furniture.

There was no mattress or blanket on the cot, only a web of wide leather straps nailed to the frame of the narrow cot that had been bolted to the wall directly beneath the window. The straps themselves were old, stiff, and brittle, but lying on the cot was better than lying on the floor, and so Jocelynn reluctantly prepared herself to spend the night lying on the crude bed.

The room was already cold when Inquisitor Percivus brought her in here, but as the night went on, the window that offered her a tiny sliver of light became her silent tormentor. Cold air seeped in through the window, combining with her wet hair and sodden dress to rob the warmth from her body.

What had begun as a simple indignity turned into an agonizing form of torture as the cold seeped into her bones. Her skin turned even paler, taking on a faint bluish hue, and when she pressed her fingernails into her palm, she barely felt anything. The numbness crept up her arms like a slow poison, making even simple tasks like gripping the fabric of her dress nearly impossible

As soon as she realized the problem, Jocelynn stripped off the wet dress, struggling with her stiff fingers to undo the laces of her bodice and nearly falling over when she pulled the sodden garment over her head. It wasn’t enough to escape the damp layers of fabric, however, and she forced her aching, protesting fingers to twist the dress section by section, wringing it out until there was a shallow puddle on the floor of her cell.

At first, she’d thought that if she could wring her dress dry, she could quickly put it back on to resist the cold, but even after painfully wringing every drop of water from the sodden garment that she could, it was still too damp to feel like it would offer any warmth, leaving her wet and naked in the cold cell, torn between exposing her bare skin to the cold in the hopes that she would dry off faster or putting the wet dress back on.

In the end, it was the thought that Inquisitor Percivus or one of the other guards could return at any time that drove her to put the damp dress back on, but just as she’d feared, the damp fabric did almost nothing to protect her from the frigid, damp air of her cell.

"I-I’m g-going to die here," she realized as her mind flashed back to the conversations her father seemed to have every winter about ensuring that even the most down on their luck sailor or common man had a place that was warm and dry to go to when the winter storms buffeted Blackwell Harbor.

Every year, despite the count’s best efforts, dozens of men with no place to call home died of simple exposure after spending a night out in the cold and wet air of the bitter winter, and if she didn’t figure out a way to keep herself warm tonight, Jocelynn was afraid that she would soon join them!