The Prisoner of Chillon and Scattered Short Stories Read online

The Prisoner of Chillon

  and Scattered Short Stories

  Erik D. Weiss

  Copyright © 2014 Erik D. Weiss

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-1503152656

  ISBN-10: 1503152650

  ISBN: 9781310477461

  Library of Congress Control Number 2014921216

  DEDICATION

  To my parents, Robert and Ilana, who have inspired me to have wide-ranging interests and passions, and who have put up with me when those passions and resulting directions get so scattered.

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  The Prisoner of Chillon

  The Factory

  Baseball

  Heist at Scone Palace

  A Light in the Dark Wood

  The Egg

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many thanks for finely tuned editing and constructive criticism by Dr. Robert Weiss and Ruo Fu – my unmatchable R&R team!! Ruo Fu is also an amazing computer whiz and was a huge help with formatting, many thanks and love. Also thanks to my mother, Ilana, for taking me to see the Château de Chillon, which inspired me to read Byron’s poem.

  The Prisoner of chillon

  I had not strength to stir, or strive,

  But felt that I was still alive--

  A frantic feeling, when we know

  That what we love shall ne'er be so.

  I know not why

  I could not die,

  I had no earthly hope--but faith,

  And that forbade a selfish death. ...

  These heavy walls to me had grown

  A hermitage--and all my own!

  Lord Byron, The Prisoner of Chillon

  The rippled water lapped against the stern. The flag’s direction shifted and the pilot adjusted his rudder with a keen eye and hand. The orange sun’s shallow rays cast a long shadow of the mast onto the water as the late autumn afternoon descended into dusk. His starboard glance beheld a nearby steep shore while distantly off the port bow the snow blanketed Alps brooded with permanence. “She’ll hold on this course,” he reported to his partner in front.

  “We ought make haste beyond the next turn. Tarrying in these waters is a curse on the booty. They’ll call the tariff at Chillon.” He turned and faced forward, holding tight to the jib rope on their small trading ship. The bags and boxes were stacked behind him, neatly, with a precision necessitated by close quarters.

  Pulling closer to the wind, as far as he could, the pilot pushed his boat faster, glancing from rudder to sail, to jib, to mountain. The blast of a cannon came upon them like wind. The hour had been struck. The cannon was fired from the highest parapet on the Château de Chillon.

  Jutting out on a promontory over the water as an eagle sits over the edge of its nest, Chillon surveyed the watery passage with many cold human eyes and flaming mouths of steel. Galant waving flags, sternly pointed roofs, delicate stained glass, and carved stonework surmounted its long lines of turrets and interior gun galleries. Music played and the ghosts of knights from days gone by challenged each other in youthful mirth in this rich home until stifled by smoking muskets and cannon.

  “Ho, there, why such speed?” came a guttural voice in broken Italian. “We see you, off your stern.” The traders turned and eyed a larger boat behind them, its decks dotted with soldiers. They turned to the castle, and colored hats, helmets with plumes, appeared among the trelliswork. “These waters are restricted for passage, in the absence of a fee.” The soldier on the boat grinned toothlessly as he eyed the two traders scuffling among their small stock. The ship came up beside them and the pilot dropped the anchor.

  “We know the tax,” said the man in front. “We know it and want no trouble.” The soldier stepped over into the small boat with a musketeer behind.

  “We’ll see, we’ll see,” he muttered as he lifted blankets and began prying open boxes against the silent protest of the traders. He turned and spoke quietly to the soldier behind him in French. Then in German - the pilot turned. “Aha, I see clearly.” He climbed toward the front of the boat with a smile, put a hand on the trader’s shoulder, and hurled him into the large boat. As he tried to stand the soldiers directed their muzzles at his face. The butt of a musket collided with the pilot’s chest and he fell overboard. “Fish him out and tie a lead to the boat. Bring them in.”

  The small trading vessel was tugged toward the castle and tied to a pier on the shallow rocks nearby. The traders, one with blood staining his shirt, were dragged toward the castle. They looked up fearfully as the gargoyles perched in the massive archway overlooked their forced march along the drawbridge over the cold, watery moat leading out into the river. They were led through the thick gateway, lined with the metal spikes of the open locks and gates, and up the cobblestoned hill toward the chief guard house. They were entered for questioning in the register and a man in red plumed helmet entered.

  “Good day,” he sat down hard in a stiff chair as they stood before him. “Your offense is of a most grave nature-”

  “But we can sail our skip-” the pilot was knocked to the ground by a guard and lay prostrate, clutching the back of his head.

  “Ah, but you may not. It is not permitted. You yourselves, not only your booty, are contraband in these waters. The Governor at Chillon has declared it and so it will be.”

  “We’ll turn back, I swear,” sobbed the other man. “We’ll pay the tax and reverse course.”

  The soldier laughed. “I wish I could do this, good sir!” He gave a wide smile. Another guard pounded the trader to the ground beside his companion. “But no, I cannot. You are contraband. You will return.” He paused and looked out the wrought iron window into the cobblestone courtyard and across to the barracks. “Take them away.” The traders began to scream and beg as guards behind them lifted their pained bodies to their feet and led them out the door, the chief guard waving them farewell. “It is as difficult for me as for you,” he called after them with a grin. “I am obeying my orders.”

  The two traders were led to the side of the gateway and down a narrow and steep stairway. Passing through the kitchen area they could smell the meats roasting and the cheeses ready for the governor’s dinner. They were dragged past the kitchen and led down a further staircase, this a narrow spiral, and into a corridor leading directly to the infantry barracks. The terrified traders watched as each locked door was opened by guards and they were thrust over one cold and wet threshold after another, finally reaching the long stairway that led into the lowest pit of the rock upon which the Château de Chillion was built.

  They pulled back from the smell reaching them at the top of the stairway. The stench was forced upon them as the groans and cries of pain and desperation below began to reach their ears. Even the guards flinched as they opened two further sets of doors. Into the throng of prisoners they were pushed and both fell together by a sleeping old man.

  “Up! Up! I want everyone awake! It is time.” Two cooks entered behind the guards, closely protected by the spearmen at their sides. They tossed bits of bread and worthless meat bones into the air over the crowd of straggling prisoners who converged around each morsel like starving hyenas. The traders did not move. They stared with bloodshot eyes at the chaos in this long, massive, and colonnaded stone gallery. One embraced the other and began to cry before a guard kicked him in the stomach. “Get bread now, fools. There shall be none till tomorrow sunset.” He tried to push them to join the fray with the butt
end of his sword but they resisted with their pitiful shrieks, as of injured hounds. “Suit yourself. This one refused the same and finally received his due reward.” He kicked a man lying near the wall, who fell over with wide open eyes, dead. Two soldiers dragged the corpse across to the water-bound side of the dungeon, opened a trap door in the floor, and shoved the body in. A moment passed before it splashed in the water far below. The traders screamed in terror. “As I said, get your bread now.” They scrambled into the continuing fray of arms and legs, managing to retrieve a small bun to share between them before the cooks and guards left and locked the deathly hold tightly behind them.

  The cries persisted unabated, with groans of gloom accented by shouts of pure ferocity as men struggled to preserve their worthless bits of territory on the icy stone floor. The two new additions were examined closely in the hope that their garments held unseen treasures. They paced along the side, near the high gated windows, allowing the tiny specks of sunlight to reach them until the absolute darkness of night shrouded the dungeon cavern. With blackness came a relative quiet and the moaning became subdued and movement slowed.

  The night’s silent pause until morning was all that could be expected and the coming of dawn brought little new hope or freedom. The two traders were now accepted as equals among the prisoners and walked freely, exercising their swollen and painful limbs. They conversed with farmers, traders, and even lords as they discovered their disordered companions to be the entire strata of political prisoners from the surrounding Swiss territories. Here were placed the most savage of thieves, the most melancholy of writers, and the most confident of spies. Most did not communicate with one another, for the sake of language or hostility bred from desperation. Here were contained close friendships and vicious feuds, all based, it seemed, on the scramble for food and for air.

  A drone of mutterings, grunts, spastic laughs, and enraged scowls pervaded all moments - even silent ones. These were cast out erratically by the man chained to the center column. He was mad, all said. A vagabond in old and worn clothes who had been in the dungeon longer than any prisoner could remember. He sat alone, leg clasped in the heaviest of shackles and tied by strong chain to a nail, embedded deep into the stone column. Stories, fed by the guards, had it that he had one day killed and devoured all of his fellow prisoners in one single winter night and had been chained to the column for their own protection.

  The two traders moved cautiously past this chained man as he glared and growled after them, some said with hunger and appetite in his eyes. His look was low and close to the ground. Burn marks scared his arms and legs, forever imprinting the forms of leaded tongs on his skin. He looked up at the prisoners and the guards with a sly and suspicious glance, revealing the penetration of his big hazel eyes under bushy eyebrows. His grayed hair and thick beard emerged from darkness as he bathed in the cracks of light from the large and barred window. During the day, he would pull his chain as far as each of its links would allow toward the light. And all made way for his desire and his frenzy.

  The guards entered once each day to serve the prisoners their scant meal and to threaten death or remove the dead. With a pike they forced the chained man to lie prostrate on the ground, moaning and screaming, thrashing back and forth as a cook came within a safe distance to throw food down in front of him. In the midst of their own frenzy to partake in the joint scramble for bits and pieces, the two traders watched as the chained prisoner, always unchallenged by any other, slowly and meticulously devoured everything put before him, grunting and nodding.

  It was said that he had not spoken a single word in years. Some said that he spoke only a far off tongue that none could comprehend as it was neither here nor there nor even of a human mind. As stories were told of his Russian or Chinese background, of his animal forefathers, of his exploits in devouring his fellow prisoners, or of the possibility that he truly was more than two hundred and thirty three years of age, they eyed his penetrating eye, examining their cunning reaction, as if seeking for a sign of understanding. It was assumed that the castle governor kept this monster alive so that one day he would be released, kill all the prisoners, and clean the dungeon for a new population.

  When new prisoners arrived and were thrown into the constant scuffle for food and air and light, the prisoner mob pushed and cried and bit, while the chained prisoner just growled - and stared and pondered. The traders eyed the chained man closely each day. To them, his look was certainly unbridled. His eyes, though - his hazel eyes were looking and thinking and calculating. All at once, they realized on one quiet day, ferocity merged with simple anger and a calm, penetrating glance. A sane, human aspect fused with the chaos of his profuse animal hair.

  Days passed, the common ordeal of isolated misery within a mass of disparate humanity. Some inmates were friends, and some were sworn enemies to the death, who threatened each other with bites and punches and kicks in the constant struggle for food. For the outcome of losing that ongoing battle was death, as seen through the water-door.

  The two German traders cried together, a rare grouping among the chaos. They had known each other since childhood and each of their cries and grunts in the melee bore a common tongue and a common background.

  One rainy day they were offered a share of meat. The chained prisoner of Chillon reached out his hand, stared through ragged gray hair, thrust out a handful of meat and nodded. Pulling back in fear, the traders circled at a safe distance and then one - Franz had been his name - took the meat.

  Scrambling through the mob of raging men to the wall, the two huddled. And stared at the chained prisoner. He had gone back to shouting and swinging his arms at the other prisoners, the chained animal. "I felt his eyes," Franz spoke.

  The other trader pondered the ground, then peered sideways at the chained prisoner. He had been called Ludwig once, although that name seemed an almost forgotten memory. The two had lived together in the streets after their families had fled the attack of an invading army. They had formed a bond of necessity rather than of friendship, and bought and sold wool and guns along the roads and waterways of the mountains.

  "He saw us, I know he saw us."

  More uncountable days passed before they dared approach the chained prisoner again, after he had received a musket butt from one of the newer guards which left him prostrate and muttering as he devoured bread slowly and quietly. When the traders approached under of the cover of a spray of food scraps from the cooks and guards one day, he looked dead. Ludwig pushed his arm.

  The chained prisoner rose to his knees and growled at them in Italian, unintelligible. Again in a broken French that sounded like the ramblings of the drunkard.

  Perfect Swiss German. Words flowed from his mouth as from an author of fine books. The traders hadn't heard their own tongue spoken so sweetly. "Come sit by me during the night, under the darkness."

  The night came after hours of anxious waiting. Sleeping during the remaining daylight, Franz and Ludwig kept their spot along the wall. The night fell and with the darkness the savage cries and rantings of the day softened into angry mutterings and the dream-words of the terrified.

  They approached. The prisoner spoke slowly and quietly. "I do not know how long I have been here. Men who have fought in this ceaseless and insane fracas for food and space have died long ago and will continue to die.

  "This crowd has produced attacks on our guards many times. But no more attacks on guards than attacks on each other - soon after I arrived here, I knew that to survive I had to be isolated, protected from this mob. This chain and my madness protects me. No one challenges me for food or space. But I continue to live with one desire: to fight. To fly. Madness serves no end, we live only to be free.

  "Our guards arrive almost every day with food. When they do, at random times, isolated attacks have been by one, maybe two prisoners. This always ends in one, maybe two dead men dragged to the water door. W
e need to build a joint purpose in this scattered mob. We are divided by language, by experiences, by suspicion, and by pure self love and protection. The greatest insanity of this place is forgetting that our preservation can only be gained together, with one purpose, as one fighting force.

  "You and I know that you are the ones to speak, to tie this mob together. I have long waited for a pair such as you. I heard you speak a little to the others, you speak minimal French and Italian, that is all we need. Speak to them, speak to as many as you can, one by one. I will hoard food and you offer it to them as peace gestures! You must make each on his own realize that his own life depends on the life and actions of everyone around him. Winning our own scraps of worthless food will keep us alive only so long, and I have seen many times that that is not very long. Our goal is together, fighting as one.

  "When you have captured as much of this collective purpose as you can, we can speak to them as one, and jointly strike. Our guards, our tormentors, must die."

  And so it began. Slowly, days upon days ran by as the two traders approached their fellow prisoners, mostly in the light, some in the dark. With many, there was no reply or at most a violent outcry that threatened injury or worse. With many there gradually was a shred of patience. They brought food morsels with them to gain trust. Language was often a barrier, with some it was insurmountable, but with time cold or scared eyes melted into some semblance of sympathy. They spoke again and again, to at least one prisoner each day.

  The chained prisoner of Chillon watched and nodded to them. The fear of this central chained prisoner was too strong to overcome for many in the wretched hole, but the soft words of the traders become a faint beacon of what could be. If they broke through the walls they had created between themselves, they could together break the walls that held them all in this deadly dungeon.

  They counted their converts and on a sunny day in July, the chained prisoner determined that the numbers gained would suffice and hopefully their joint attack would not be stymied by the few that remained alone. The word went out to each of the prisoners, when the signal would come and what it would be.

  Over the days, the traders had noticed that the chained prisoner became more quiet, more withdrawn. He had sacrificed much of his own food to provide bargaining chips for the traders to use. He spoke in more weary tones. They eyed his chains, chafing at the edges of his skin burn marks. How would they break these chains? The prisoner never mentioned them, maybe he had a plan they did not know.

  The time was ripe regardless, with new prisoners arriving every few weeks, it would be difficult to maintain a sufficient joint cadre, and the time was at hand. Enough of the prisoner mob knew what was at stake and what was required of each of them. A joint purpose would create a joint effort.

  They picked a dark, rainy day. The chained prisoner had instructed them that increased shadows in the dungeon would conceal attacks, especially directed from the far walls.

  The many door locks began to click and turn one morning. Franz ran to the central pillar to which the chained prisoner had been tethered, and slapped his palm five times firmly on the stone. The prisoners looked up and several scrambled to the walls and corners. The doors opened and the guards entered, followed by the cooks. Each held a spear and carried a sword at his belt. Some likely had additional knives hidden in their uniforms. There were four guards. The cooks held pails and long metal tongs. There were two cooks.

  The cooks moved forward, and as they reached their tongs into the pails, the prisoners rapidly converged. Those in the front and sidewalls attacked from the front and those from the corners by the doors attacked from the rear, taking the guards from behind. As the traders threw their weak frames into the scuffle, Ludwig managed to steal a sword from one of the guards. The doors were opening quickly and more guards were heard running down the stairs toward the dungeon entrance.

  The spears were captured first and made a speedy, bloody end to the guards in the room. The cooks fell next. With weapons in their hands, these prisoners who had felt the pain of beatings and whose stomachs growled constantly wasted no energy in sympathy. With more guards quickly entering the dungeon, the only thought was to kill or be killed.

  Minutes of fighting ensued. The guards were merciless, but the prisoners were desperate. Seizing access to the heavy chamber doors, the prisoners emerged into the antechamber and attacked the few cooks and guards at the foot of the stairs. Step by step they fought their way through disorganized guards up the long stairwell.

  Ludwig dashed into a kitchen to the right, at the top of the first flight of stairs. Waving the sword he had captured from the first guard, the cooks fled before him. He frantically scanned the kitchen instruments, seizing upon a fireplace iron with a right-angle head. From his young days on the streets with Franz, he appreciated a makeshift torsion wrench. He also grasped two large forks and ran back toward the stairs and down.

  Jumping over the dead guards and cooks, he ran to the central pillar and the chained prisoner looked up at him. "Get out there! You should be fighting with them!!"

  "You should be fighting with us." Ludwig attacked the chain clasped into the rock pillar. He pried at the chain link with the iron wrench, struggling with all his weight while the chained prisoner implored him to help the others first. "You can lead us better than me and Ludwig!"

  Without a word, Ludwig dashed away to the body of one of the fallen guards. He quickly picked the pockets and carried sacks bound to the man. "Gunpowder. We need to strike a fire!" He ran back and poured the powder evenly around the chain links near the stone pillar. Grabbing the forks he had taken from the kitchen he began to scrape them fiercely against the stone, hoping for a spark. "Keep as far back as you can," he shouted at the prisoner, who pulled the chain taught.

  A small spark. No reaction. More scraping. Small sparks became bigger ones.

  Ludwig was thrown backward as the gunpowder ignited. He rose with black soot covering his face and a burning sensation of seared flesh. "Pull!" he shouted to the chained man.

  The chain broke. It was the first time Ludwig had seen the chained prisoner stand. He was tall and thin. He quickly grabbed the chain links up, holding them in a ball at his chest, as he ran for the door and up the stairs with Ludwig close behind him. They could hear the shouts and screams from above.

  They emerged into a hallway along which a few scattered bodies were strewn, and followed the sounds of desperate cries onto the courtyard. A few of the prisoners had climbed up to the parapets and were firing captured muskets into the guard units below.

  The prisoner pointed to the Château gates along the far corner of the courtyard from where they stood and began to run. They reached the gate after Ludwig managed to severely injure a guard near the cobblestones leading up to the exit pathway, and the chained prisoner took the man's spear in one hand, dragging the heavy chains with the other. They attacked the gate lock mechanism.

  The heavily bearded prisoner shouted at fellow prisoners who had begun to seize the other gate. "We need to use this gate! It leads out to a small side pathway. If reinforcements have been summoned by the cannon signal blast I heard, they will come by the larger road on the other side."

  The scattered, formerly captive men stared at the ragged prisoner, still carrying his chains. Those who understood German ran to him, and the others quickly followed.

  The lock mechanism was in fact simple, and soon the long cross-fitting beam was being lifted to open the gate. There were more shouts and musket blasts from the rear, as the prisoners perched on the parapets were shooting down at boats converging on the Château de Chillon. With the gate opening, they began to pull back from the high walkways and scrambled down the stairways, onto the courtyard and toward the now open gate.

  They ran out onto the small dirt pathway and scrambled as fast as their tired legs could carry them up a nearby hill. Fr
anz and Ludwig grasped each other’s hands and ran to the bearded man still lugging his chains. "Go," he said to them. "Go. Go live!! I will now live my life! First free action?! To the blacksmith!!".

  The Factory