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Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 43: Cooper 14
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Brown 296
The hike back to the town did not take as long as the ride out. Cooper hadn’t realized just how roundabout the trip had been, since they had left the city and followed the river to another crossing, then made their way back to pick up the road home. The fact that they were stopped before they got that far suggested that this Geisler was determined to catch them and anticipated that they would have done that.
They crossed the bridge, and he noticed that his escort stopped to do homage to the hat. He did not, but kept walking briskly, forcing them to catch up. “It’s this way, isn’t it?” he said in English, then realizing his error repeated it in German, “So ist es, nicht wahr?” The befuddled guards didn’t answer, but didn’t change his direction. “Come on, boys, try to keep up, here,” he said, confident that they wouldn’t understand a word of it.
There was a bit of conversation in what he took to be Italian when they reached the office, and they put him in a different room. This one had a chair, to which they secured him with leather straps. It occurred to him that this was the medieval period, and prisoners were routinely tortured. Also, the chair was heavy, and the guards did not bumble about too much to tie him to it. Obviously he was but the latest in a number of people who had sat here. Two guards remained in the room with him, standing by the door and the window, respectively, and he consoled himself that at least for the present they were probably less comfortable than he.
He was there for about twenty minutes, by his best guess, when a man entered, elderly, well-dressed, stern to the point of severe, and a good hundred pounds overweight. Before he had the chance to wonder who it was, both guards out of synch with each other said “Herr Geisler”, and awkwardly stumbled to attention. He looked at them with what might have been a sneer, but turned his attention toward Cooper and spewed a line of what again might have been Italian.
Raising his eyebrows in as innocent a way as he could manage, Cooper replied, “English?”
“Eeng-lish,” the man sneered slowly through a thick accent. “Ja, good. I want to know how you escaped from my jail. Did you bribe my men? No, you could not have bribed enough of them and I not heard.”
Shrugging, he told the story again. “I was asleep and I awoke. The door to my cell was open, and the guard in the hall asleep. I went seeking someone, to ask if I was to be fed, but the guard in the office was also asleep, and as the doors were all open I walked out, opened the city gate, and left.”
Squinting one eye, Giesler said, “I am to think that my soldiers were so incompetent as to leave all the doors open and go to sleep?”
“Oh, I don’t think so. At least, that’s not what I think.”
“And what do you think?”
“I think God miraculously delivered me from your jail, because he needed me elsewhere.”
“God released you from my jail.”
“Why not? He has done it before.”
“I think you use, what is the word, witchcraft? You are a sorcerer who bewitched my men and made your escape.”
Cooper laughed. “Witchcraft? I hardly think so.”
“Yes. I will call for the inquisition. The priest was right, I think.”
“Jesus has delivered me before, and will do so again. I don’t know when, or how, but it will happen.”
“We will see,” he sneered, gave an order to the guards in Italian, and left the room.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #503: Versers Progress. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
