Andrew Taylor - The American Boy

The other laughed. A moment later the trap-door slammed down, leaving me once more alone in the darkness.

But not quite as before: I was no longer pinned motionless in a box. I could not doubt that they had brought me to this lonely spot in order to kill me. But at least I could make their job difficult.

There followed one of the most exquisitely painful experiences of my life. I threw out my hat and boots to give myself more room. Slowly I hauled myself to a sitting position. Clinging to the side of the coffin, I raised myself up to a crouch. I swayed from left to right with increasing vigour until I had achieved enough momentum to pitch myself inelegantly out of the coffin. Sobbing with pain, I lay huddled on my side on what felt like damp and filthy flagstones.

Gradually I straightened up, as uncertain as a child taking his first steps, until I attained a kneeling position. I found my boots and managed to put them on. My situation was almost as bleak as before. I feared that I had merely exchanged one prison for another, albeit a larger one. I examined it as well as I could in the darkness, which was not easy bearing in mind the fact that I was still bound at the knees and at the wrists. I paid particular attention to the stairs and to the trap-door. The latter was close-fitting but I believed I could discern a trace of light at one corner. I tried to heave it up with my shoulders but it would not budge.

When I stepped back from the stairs, I trod on something that seemed to snatch at my foot. With a muffled cry I sprang away and there was a clatter on the floor, as though there were an equally terrified animal in the cellar with me. Reason came immediately to my aid. The sole of my left boot had caught on the point of a nail protruding from the upturned lid of the coffin.

I knelt down and with cold, clumsy hands swept the floor until I found the lid. I ran my hand along its edge, touching the sharp points and the squared edges of the tapering nails. There were six of them in all. I brought my bound wrists down on the nearest one and began to saw.

I scarcely knew what drove me. In the conscious part of my mind I had already half-surrendered to whatever fate had in store for me. But there was another, deeper part of my being that continued to struggle. It was this that drove me to ignore my aching knees and my bleeding arms; to rub and hack at the cord that bound my wrists with the tips and sides of the nails.

I had no means of measuring the time. It might have been an hour before I felt the first strand part. For a time, this pushed me on to work with renewed vigour, but it was another age before I felt another strand give. I sawed the cord against the edges of the nails, I poked their iron points into the knot and worked it to and fro, and sometimes I merely snarled and tore at my bonds with my teeth, hoping if they were not vulnerable to one method then they would be to another.

I was in so much pain from the chafing of my skin and the many times I had accidentally dashed a nail against my arm rather than the cord that I barely noticed when the rope gave way. My hands flew apart. I sat back on my heels and wept, raising my arms and stretching them as far behind me as I could, as if I were arching a pair of wings. I looked up as I did so, and for the first time glimpsed a crack of light filtering between the boards. The night was ending.

I drove myself to work at the knot that bound my knees, which had been previously inaccessible to me, since it was at the back. I could not use the nails for this, and my hands were feeble. I had hardly begun when I heard footsteps above my head.

I hobbled quickly to the stairs and slumped on the floor against the wall near the foot of the stairs. A bolt was drawn. With a creak, the trap-door rose and fell back against a wall. Light flooded into the cellar. The day was more advanced than I had thought. Heavy footsteps descended the stairs.

A hand fell on my shoulder and shook me. With all the strength I was capable of, I spun round, straightening my knees, and jabbed my outstretched fingers at the face of the man looming over me. He gave a shriek, for one of my nails had caught his eye, stepped back incautiously and tripped over the coffin. I hauled myself up the stairs towards the rectangle of light with the fallen man screaming imprecations behind me.

"Mr Shield," said a rich, husky voice behind me as my head and shoulders emerged through the trap-door. "This really will not do."

I turned. Not four feet away from me Mr Iversen was seated in a chair by a table, with a pistol in his hand. He had changed his professional robe for a brown travelling coat. The crutches were propped against the table.

"Raise your hands in the air, if you please," he continued. "Climb the stairs slowly. No, no, Joseph" – he addressed the man below – "leave him alone for now."

I ascended with ungainly hops into a room fitted out as a kitchen, with a great range at one end and a dresser at the other. I struggled to my feet and looked about me. The place was indescribably dirty. I must have presented a sorry spectacle – unwashed, unshaven, with my coat torn and my cuffs and breeches bloody from my efforts to untie my hands during the night. I turned back to Mr Iversen.

He was no longer in the chair. Instead he was standing, pistol in hand, in the middle of the kitchen. The crutches were still against the table. He saw the surprise on my face and his mouth twisted into a smile.

"It is a miracle, is it not, Mr Shield? How truly edifying. You will find a pump in the yard. Joseph and I will come with you."

They took me out into a yard beyond the kitchen, watching me hop and stumble through the mud to the privy, which I was obliged to use with the door open. From the seat of ease I saw, over the roofs of the outbuildings at the far side of the yard, the chimneys of two large, modern buildings some sixty or seventy yards away. Mr Iversen noted the direction of my gaze. "No one is within earshot," he observed. "You might as well save your breath."

"Where are we?"

He shrugged, evidently deciding he had nothing to lose by answering my question. "We are to the north of the village of Kilburn, in the middle of a large tract of land set aside for building. This was once a farmhouse and in former times much of the surrounding land belonged to it. The establishment over there with the tall grey chimney-stacks is a madhouse. They are used to the sound of screams and calls for help. The building next door – you see it? with the belfry? – is the workhouse. It is a most convenient plan, I understand, for the inmates may pass from one to the other as their guardians see fit. This parish is run on the best rational lines."

I rose and buttoned my trousers. "I do not understand what you want with me. I beg of you to let me go."

He ignored these words. "They even have their private cemetery. Look through the gateway. You may catch a glimpse of its wall behind the limes over there. Madness and poverty share this characteristic, that they commonly end in death sooner rather than later. Consider the tender feelings of the village people, what is left of them; consider the inhabitants of the brave new streets and squares and crescents that one day will spring up on this spot: they would not care to await the Last Trump in the same burial ground as these unfortunates, would they? But with this private cemetery, everyone is happy, and everything is convenient. Admirable, do you not agree?"

"Why have you brought me here?"

"All in good time, Mr Shield. The burial ground has its own sexton, an admirable fellow, though not a polished one."

"And does he provide the coffins for his employers too?"

Iversen glanced at me and gave a quick, approving nod.

I said, "No doubt with the assistance of the men who brought me here?"