Dark Night Hidden

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The spiteful wind of a bleak, icy February blasted down the muddy track and around the sparse huddle of buildings as if it hated the world and everything in it. There had been snow earlier in the day, but now it was too cold for further flakes to fall. Even if they had, they would have been blown halfway to the chilly sea before being allowed to settle. The wind was out of the north-east: it could as easily have come from the frozen Arctic wastes.

One of the buildings was a gaol. Inside one of its three cells, a young woman lay on the soiled stone floor. She had spent many hours trying feebly to discover which area of the dank stone was the least wet, but such meagre effort was now beyond her. The damp in part comprised melted snow that had found its way in through the cell’s single, tiny window; too high to allow a view of the forgotten world outside, too small to permit the flow of fresh air, good only, it seemed, for letting in the fast-blown snow. In part, the moisture seemed to be a constant weeping from the very flags of the floor.

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