The Hunt for Excalibur

27 Imprisoned

Nina awoke to see a blurry face in front of her. Her eyes felt thick, just like her tongue. The repulsive taste of the drug still sat hard in her nostrils and palate. Without warning, she convulsed on the dirty floor where she was lying. An empty regurgitation shook her, forcing her tongue out of her mouth to convey the meager trickles of bile her body rejected. With her eyes pinched shut, Nina could hear an echo in her spluttering. That would account for the cold, wet atmosphere, she thought. She imagined that the place was large and empty.

“Welcome to the Channel Islands,” she heard from a familiar voice.

Nina did not react. She was still too disorientated to focus on her whereabouts, let alone to think up a snappy comeback. The wind howled in her ears, but she kept her eyes closed, because she wanted to be asleep again. Nothing could make her want to get up from wherever this hell was. She listened keenly for signs of Brian being alive, but all she could hear was that wind. And then, a bell. It tolled in melancholy cadence from a distance away, but it did not announce the time. Only the emptiness of the ruined tower it hanged from could steer the wind to rock the bell.

“Come on now, Dr. Gould. You and I both know you will perish if you do not get up and have some soup,” he said again.

“Fuck you, Bernard,” she growled from the floor, still keeping her eyes shut. The rustling of his feet rapidly approached her and he fell to his knees behind her. Nina cried out in pain as Bernard grabbed her hair in his grasp and pulled her upright with one violent jerk. Still behind her, he hissed into her ear. “You might just earn that privilege, Dr. Gould. I have had my eye on your delicious little ass since I first found out you had my scabbard.”

“Your scabbard?” she deliberately mocked. “Well, I suppose blokes like you are inclined to have sheaths instead of swords.”

“You are very close to finding out,” he sneered desperately.

She opened her eyes reluctantly. If she was going to escape and find Brian, she had to be awake and alert to her surroundings. ‘May as well play along,’ she decided. ‘Might even successfully win his trust. Just pretend to be weak. The dumb woman angle always works.’

“Where am I?” she asked with sudden compliance Bernard appreciated. He had read about Dr. Gould’s exploits in those books Sam Cleave wrote. She was not to be fucked with, according to Cleave, but Bernard was yet to meet a woman who could render him powerless.

“Like I said, Guernsey,” he replied.

Nina’s hands were tied together behind her back, and so were her ankles. “Where is Brian?” she inquired, surveying the cell she was in. An arch held the cast iron gates, locked tight. The walls and roof were all crude rock and mortar, like that of an ancient ruin or fortress. Against the walls, she could see several slogans carved, but time had worn the words down.

“Here is your soup. It is practically ice cold by now, but that is your own fault,” Bernard said. She inched herself to sit up, while Bernard cut her hands free. “Eat,” he commanded. “I have to keep you alive until David delivers Excalibur to me.”

“There is a new twist,” she scoffed sarcastically. “I should have known, the way you salivated over that scabbard. Let me guess, the patterns on the leather is a map to find Excalibur.”

“You knew,” he smiled, looking both impressed and annoyed.

“Aye, it is not impossible to figure out for a historian. Those tiny inscriptions are the names of towns that were here before modern eras. Obvious deduction,” she condescended. “So, what did you do with the brat?”

“He is rather insufferable, isn’t he?” Bernard agreed, stepping out of Nina’s cage to lock the gates behind him. “My sister and I grew up in the projects — Red Road flats — and we had nothing easy. But I tell you, that lad has no goddamn manners. I do not care for delinquents or prepubescent scum like that. Threw him in a hole with his slut mother and the old woman.”

“Here in Guernsey?” Nina asked, trying to eat like a lady when she was ravenous with hunger.

“Of course,” he sneered. “Would I leave them all in Glasgow to be found by some prying neighbor or business owner while I am here with you?”

She did not like his haughty manner, but she tolerated it if only to gather information and take the time to examine the building she was in. By the design of the place, the deep bell sound in the wind and the tree tops swaying just above the windowsill high above her head, she figured out where she was being kept.

“Bernard, is this the famous cell from your story about Ronald Hall?” she suddenly exclaimed in surprise. Nina kept up the charade of fascination to tame her captor little by little. He stood with his hands in his pockets, looking at the dripping cracks in the stone ceiling.

“It is,” he affirmed. “Did you think I was making it up?”

Nina shrugged. Normally she would defy him and answer with audacity, but she was trying to win him over. “Sounded accurate to me.”

A feeble wail ensued from somewhere under the stairs that led down one story. Nina could see the black square that marked the opening to the landing and the sound that came out of it made her blood freeze. She perked up, but Bernard did not react at all.

“Do you hear that?” Nina asked.

“Yes,” he replied casually, still looking out the empty window on the far side of the vast hall filled with holding cells.

“And?” she pressed him.

“And what, Nina?” he snapped without giving her the courtesy of eye contact.

“Are you going to do anything about that?” she kept pushing.

“My sister informed me that Sam killed our man in the Callany residence in Glasgow yesterday,” he reported. “That was the man who was supposed to look after the Callany family downstairs, while we are all waiting for Excalibur to be discovered. I am not a nursemaid, Nina. They are suffering because Sam killed Yiannis.”

“You can only afford two goons?” she mocked. Nina did not care that her attempts at winning Bernard’s trust anymore. If this was his caliber of disposition, she could not hide her contempt for him. Her words must have had some impact, because he turned and walked towards her. His footsteps were accompanied only by the wailing wind, serenading the desolate ruin in perfect synchronicity with Mrs. Callany’s weeping. Bernard stopped in front of Nina’s cell and smirked.

“Congratulations,” he said, his face fraught with juvenile condescension. “Your continued insolence just cost young Brian his short, miserable life.”

“Wait!” Nina protested desperately. “You cannot kill a snot-nosed kid over your hurt feelings!”

He kept walking, flipping back his jacket to reveal a holstered weapon. Nina charged at the iron bars and screamed after him. “Are you seriously this sensitive, you nancy?”

Bernard descended the steps. Mrs. Callany’s whining escalated into a full-blown keening as she heard Nina’s objections through the hallways. It was a clear warning that Bernard was on his way to kill Brian, and the women threw the boy behind them and shielded him. They were weakened by malnutrition and lack of sleep, but their fight burned like a furnace inside them. Although the ill Mrs. Callany cried hysterically, Brian’s mother stood her ground without a sound. The boy held on to his mother’s arm as Bernard entered the ill lit chamber where Irma Bormann had met her fate seventy odd years before. Drawing his gun, he aimed at each of the Callany women before lowering his weapon to find Brian’s forehead behind his mother’s hip.

“Please! Please, don’t!” Pam screamed. “I will do anything you want!”

“I have no use for you. You are only here because I made a deal with Brian’s headmaster, you stupid bitch,” he winced, quivering with the thrill of their fear. In the background, they could hear Nina shouting, but her words were swept by the gale, unheard, ununderstood. “Until I hear from him, there is no reason for me to even come down here.”

“Water,” Mrs. Callany begged. “Please, just one pitcher for us?”

There was a pause in the solemn atmosphere. From somewhere above them Nina cried, “Bernard! Be a decent man and give the weaker prisoners some water. You are better than the goddamn Nazi’s whose tracks you are walking!”

“Psychology does not work on me, Dr. Gould,” Bernard called back to her. He knew what she was trying to do, and yet, as he looked upon the mothers and the child, he could not help but consider Nina’s affirmation. Was he really a monster? Could he be a firm chief without resorting to cruelty? Then the question came that had him faltering. As an antiques specialist, was this how he wanted to use his expertise, cultivated through two decades of trade and knowledge?

Something did take hold of Bernard’s reasoning after Nina mentioned his humanity after all. He could not deny it. For a moment, he honestly took stock of what exactly this level of malice would afford him as a man, as a dealer of relics and literature from ancient worlds. He was more than this. Under Major Rian, a Black Sun operative, Bernard had become a decaying relic himself. Years of splendor and passion had been reduced to just another vindictive Nazi personality, bullying the helpless in cages.

“Jesus,” he murmured as he turned his back on his prisoners, letting his gun hand drop to the side of his thigh.

Bernard Somerset had truly not realized how depraved and greedy he had become in service of Major Johannes Rian and his colleagues. ‘All of this happened when that wretched school Principal Willard and his son, Paul, entered the antiques world. Conniving bastards!’ he lamented in his mind, recollecting the moment when his delight for history and its objects was defiled and twisted into a hunt for power and wealth.

“Bernard?” Nina kept at it. Even she knew that aggression would be the worst thing right now, so she tried the gentler approach. “Bernard, give them some water. Come on. They are just people like you.”

Another blow fell in Bernard’s soul.

“That is enough! You think I cannot see what you are trying to do? I am in charge! Me!” he thundered. The Callany women instinctively jumped in fright, whimpering at his sudden outburst.

“I know you are in charge,” Nina cried out. “Otherwise I would not be sitting in a fucking cage right now, would I?”

Bernard looked at the three Callany’s. “Thank her for your slow demise.” With that, he retired to his section of the ruin on the west wall. During the Second World War it was the quarters of Stabsscharführer Martin Hessler, the man who gave the command to terminate those chosen families before Irma had Colin’s killed. Bernard sat in the room and poured himself a glass of brandy. Considering whose room he was occupying, he could not help but compare himself to Hessler — the man who had his lover executed in the worst way — and to think on his own crass decisions about his captives.

“I wish you would just get the bloody sword and be done with all this!” he raged to himself, drinking another shot of brandy. It was seeping through, after all, that this was not who he was and that one truly becomes the company one keeps. The schoolmaster was a prime example. He invited Dr. Gould to attend his school’s history week, knowing who she was, all to get her into the fold at a later stage. He could be amicable towards the people he targeted for strategic reasons. Why couldn’t Bernard?

It vexed him, this clash of morals, but as long as he stayed in the large room that almost remained completely the same in décor and comfort, he could not be confronted with his fickle ability to maintain allegiance with those he served. Figuring that, if he stayed in here, he could not hear the cries of those he was torturing, was a terminal mistake. Bernard would only learn that his victims’ cries could reach him anywhere at anytime, because there was no escaping one’s conscience.