That man, meanwhile, had woken up from a deep sleep for a moment or two. His name was Dennis, and he was indeed a deserter from the army camp Agnes knew lay almost a week's walk away.
He felt weak and still very tired, but he was warm, and clean, and his belly was not full, but not empty either.
He knew from bitter experience that after days without food, one needed to take it slow and not overeat, so he bore his rumbling stomach easily.
His befuddled mind could not make heads or tails of the pressure on his throat, though, and he tried to feel what was wrong with it. A collar, made of iron? Was he a prisoner then? Caught by the army, to be tried and hanged?
Fear cleared his mind a little more, and he looked around the room. He was not lying on a pallet, but in a luxurious bed, under down covers, his head resting on a thick fluffy pillow. There was another one just like it on his other side, and the bed was a double.
The room was decorated with care in blues and purples, and there was a roaring fire in a modern hearth. No army camp this.
Feeling the collar once more, and finding the chain, following it to a sturdy brace in the wall, padlocking him to the very room, he didn't understand anything anymore. So he was a prisoner, but not of the army? Was he to be delivered to an army official in the morning, to die for his wish to live in freedom?
It was all too much for him, he was still so tired, and so relieved to be warm even for a single night, he let go of his fears and speculations and went back to sleep.
'Dennis, it's time for your lesson!'
Oh his mum, she was so sweet. People called her a whore, and though he was just nine years old, Dennis knew what that was. He saw her customers all the time, there was just the one room, he had a bed in a little nook, hidden by a curtain, and his mum knew he could see and hear everything, but what could she do?
Send him to Father Jonah to learn to read and write, to forget the world around him for a few days in a book he borrowed from the Father. And not have any more children, nigh on impossible with her job, but she did try.
In hindsight, he realized she had several abortions, lying in bed for a day and night, crying in pain, trying to hide the blood from her boy. Until the last one took her from him, unable to stop the bleeding, pain and putrefaction grew until she slowly faded out of life. Her clients were faithful, one even called a doctor, but that fellow could do little more than relieve her pain a tiny bit.
Little Dennis was heartlessly thrown out of his mother's rented room, landed on the street, no more lessons for him, just fight for survival, always cold and hungry, he knew the dangers of stuffing himself after days without food, or days with just a crust of bread and a spoiled turnip.
He came out on top of the local food-chain, leader of a gang of youths by the time he was fourteen, brash, dangerous and finally no longer hungry. But a few years later, well on his way to becoming a hardened criminal with very little empathy for himself or others, he was caught by the law and pressed into the army.
Life was even harder there, teaching hard bitten youths discipline and weapons skills being virtually impossible without threats and punishments, Dennis tasted the bite of the sergeant's whip more than once, and still he didn't break but merely bent to the stronger force.
After a year of training he was marched across the country in his company, now as familiar and as closely knit as his gang had ever been. But no opportunity to gain leadership for Dennis here, though his character made him very well-suited to handling responsibility for others, his social status precluded his rise through the ranks, a private he was and a private he would stay, always taking orders from soft nobles on threat of corporeal punishment.
Having crossed half the country on foot, he was led onto a leaky ship to be miserable and sick for days, then dumped on a mirror image of the coast they had set off from. The cliffs were the same, the grass and the trees looked the same, but the houses were different, and they soon found out this was France, defended by the superior armies of the Republic, and most of his company was slaughtered in several confrontations, Dennis surviving by luck, mostly.
The carnage he had seen and caused, and the hurts he had taken had taken their toll on his body and his mind, and close to raving madness he had been shipped back to England, marched across it once more on his last legs, then recuperated physically, but not mentally.
As soon as he was back on his feet he had been sent back into training, with another company, under another noble, being beaten by other sergeants, still suffering from nightly terrors and spells of sudden, incapacitating fear.
Being a veteran of the French campaign, his mates managed to hide his weaknesses from the commanding officers, they respected him and wished him well, and life slowly resumed its course.
But when word came through the ranks that they were going to be shipped off to the colonies next, something broke inside Dennis. He couldn't face another campaign of senseless bloodshed, of seeing all his mates cut down by a faceless enemy once again, and if he survived this time, again, and again, undoubtedly.
He decided to flee, desert the army, no matter what punishment awaited him if he was caught. If he could reach the city, he would resume his life on the streets, ready to take back the leadership of a gang, now a seasoned fighter as well as a smart thinker.
But the English moors defeated him as nothing before had ever managed to do. There was no food, no shelter, nothing to fight. Just endless heath and treacherous moors, for days and days he wandered without direction or goal, ever weakening, until at last he gave in to his fatigue and hunger and laid down to die.
He woke from his restless memories to the smell of food, but when he opened his eyes he also remembered the chain, and the threat of being handed over to the law.
'Easy, easy now,' a friendly voice spoke, a woman's voice, and a woman laid her hand on his rough cheek.
'You're safe here,' the voice said, and he saw the lady of the evening before. Had he slept through the night already? The place where they kept him was rather dark, there was no way to tell the time.
'Are you going to give me up to the authorities?'
The voice laughed, and a face came into focus. It was beautiful, no longer young, but beautiful nonetheless. And it found the thought of handing him over to the law very funny, but why the chain then?
'I am not,' she replied, 'rest assured, your neck is safe from the noose. Your uniform has been burned, you can forget the life that you had before, no-one is going to find you here.'
Why didn't that sound reassuring?
