“Do they truly think I’m going to try to escape?” I almost laughed. “What would be the use of that? I’d still be inside the walls of the fort.”
They were both silent for a moment. Then Spink said unwillingly, “The armed guard will be protecting you on the way to the courtroom, soldier. Feeling has run very high against you. There have been threats.”
“Oh.” Cold washed through me. The studied calm that I’d been practicing for the last two days suddenly cracked. This was real. This was now. I’d step out into sunlight, walk a short distance, and then stand before seven men who would condemn me to death. My legs felt weak, and I was suddenly terrified that I would faint. “No!” I forbade myself in a low rough voice, and the vertigo passed.
“While there is life, there is hope,” Spink said suddenly. I heard the cadenced tramp of feet at the end of the hall. I recalled my resolution. They would be armed. If the opportunity presented itself, I would make a run for it. I could force them to kill me. I just had to find the right moment and the nerve to act. I had to be ready.
The men they’d sent to escort me were brawny fellows. The sergeant was half a head taller than me, and his steely gaze left no doubt that he’d happily shoot me down if I ran. I primed him for it, meeting his stare with an insolent smile. They formed up their patrol around me. Just when I thought fate had finally smiled on me, the sergeant produced a set of leg irons. As he went down on one knee to fasten them tightly above my ankles, he observed, “We promised the ladies of the town that there would be no chance you’d escape trial and the death that you deserve.”
Having my solution yanked so neatly away from me paralyzed my thoughts for an instant. He clamped the iron cuffs tightly around my legs, just above the bones of my ankles. “He’s too damn fat for the irons!” he observed with a guffaw, and then crimped them tight enough to make them latch anyway. I cried out in pain and anger as the iron crushed the tissue of my calves, but he latched the second one anyway.
“They’re too tight!” I complained. “I won’t be able to walk.”
“Your own damn fault for being so fat,” he observed. “Let’s go.”
It was only when he was once more standing beside me that it occurred to me that I should have kicked him while he was down. If I tried to escape now, all I would earn myself was a severe beating rather than the bullets in the back I’d anticipated. Another opportunity lost.
The patrol stepped out smartly around me and I trudged in their midst, taking quick short steps in a futile effort to keep up with them. The leg irons bit instantly and painfully. In three steps I was limping. I awkwardly double-stepped up a short flight of stairs. By the time the outside door of the prison was flung open and the harsh sunlight assaulted my eyes, the pain was such that I could think of nothing else. “I can’t walk,” I told them, and the man behind me gave me a firm shove in the back. When I tottered and nearly fell, they laughed. I jerked my head up and looked around me as I minced painfully on. Beside me, Spink’s face was scarlet with fury, his mouth held so tight that his lips were pinched white. I caught a quick sideways glance from him, steeled myself to the pain, and walked on.
The short walk from my cell to the building where I would be tried was a gantlet of mockery. The only other time I’d seen the streets of Gettys so packed with people had been right before the Dust Dance. The crowd surged forward at the sight of me. A woman I had never seen before screeched the foulest invective I’ve ever heard before falling to the ground in a sort of hysteria as we passed. Someone shouted, “Hanging’s too good for you!” and threw a rotten potato. It struck the guard next to me and he cried out angrily. This seemed to incite the mob, for a veritable fusillade of rotten produce was launched at me. I saw a ripe plum bounce off Spink. He kept walking, eyes straight ahead. The sergeant roared at the crowd to “Give way, give way!” and they reluctantly let us pass. The pain from my chained ankles vied with the flood of hatred that rolled out from the mob.
The courtroom was stuffy. I shuffled up a short flight of steps to the prisoner’s box. A solid half-wall topped with iron bars separated me from the spectators but permitted all the gawkers a good view. Below and in front of me, Spink sat alone at a table, a small stack of papers before him. Opposite, at a larger table, sat a captain and two lieutenants. Behind them, seated on benches, an assortment of witnesses waited impatiently to testify against me. Captain Thayer, Captain Gorling, and Clara Gorling were seated in a special section. My seven judges sat at a high table on a dais in the center of the room. A line of guards held back the mob that had surged in to watch the proceedings. Folk who could not crowd into the room peered in through the windows. I thought I caught a glimpse of Ebrooks, but when I turned my head, he was gone. Other than that, the only soul I recognized was Spink.
I stood still and straight and tried to ignore the agony of the iron clamped tight into my flesh. I could feel blood seeping down my left ankle. My right foot buzzed and went numb.
The proceedings began with a lengthy reading of a document that said that the military would conduct my trial, and in the event that I was found guilty, the town of Gettys would have authority over my punishment for crimes against the citizens of Gettys. I listened to it through a haze of pain. We were momentarily allowed to sit down. Then we had to stand again for an extended prayer to the good god that asked him to help the judges to fearlessly render justice and condemn evil. I could barely stand upright for the wave of red pain washing up through me; my ears rang with it. When we were finally allowed to be seated, I leaned forward to explain my discomfort to Spink, but the officer in charge of the proceedings commanded me to silence.
I sat, agony rippling up from my legs, and tried to listen to the testimony against me. The officer in charge listed my misdeeds. The charges began with my rape of Fala, moved on to her murder and my subsequent concealment of the crime, my assaulting of respectable women on the streets of Gettys, and my poisoning of the men who had managed to claim my horse’s harness as evidence against me and finally reached a crescendo with a long list of my supposed crimes the night Carsina had walked into my cabin. One woman fainted when the words “necrophiliac depredations’ were uttered. Captain Thayer lowered his face into his hands. Clara Gorling stared at me with the purest hatred. Witness after witness spoke against me as I endured the silent torture of my leg irons. Once I leaned down to touch them, to try to shift them on my compressed flesh, and the judge shouted at me to sit straight and show some respect for the court.
The damning evidence piled up against me. A horde of women testified, one after another, that they had witnessed me terrorize poor Carsina in broad daylight on the busy streets of Gettys. Others told how I had scowled at the noble Dale Hardy when he had sought to protect Carsina’s honor from my scurrilous behavior. One claimed to have heard me mutter threats against him as I left. A doctor I’d never seen before testified that the manner of my ambushers’ death was such that poison was the only explanation. Sergeant Hoster’s letter from beyond the grave was read aloud, and Clove’s harness held up so that all might behold the telltale piece of less worn harness compared to the strap that had been “pried out of the livid flesh about poor dead Fala’s neck.”
Late in the afternoon, Spink was finally allowed to address the judges. I heard his speech through a haze of pain. A runner was sent to fetch Amzil to testify. While we waited for her arrival, Spink read aloud statements that both Ebrooks and Kesey had thought me a good man and that I tended the graveyard well. After a significant wait, during which the judges scowled and the spectators shifted and muttered, the runner returned. He stated only that “the witness is unavailable.” That sent a buzz of speculation through the courtroom. Spink gave me one stricken glance and then maintained his composure. With the judge’s permission, he read a statement from Amzil. I wondered why she had refused to come, but when I looked around the courtroom, I realized it did not matter. My fate had been decided before I even left my cell.