Jonathan was tackled from behind and shoved down to the floor. He hit hard and found himself lying right next to the fallen Bishop, who was unconscious and bleeding from the temple. Jonathan's arms were then pinned behind his back and he was roughly maneuvered to a standing position. His satchel and staff were ripped from him and he was shoved out of the room, with his hands still pinned behind, as three angry priests guided him down the hall and a long flight of stairs. At a large, wooden door with two heavy bars they halted. One man opened it and Jonathan was tossed in, as hard as a person could be, against the cold, stone floor of a dark room.
It took him several minutes to sit up and recover from the shock, and a few more for his eyes to adjust to the near blackness of the cell. Even before he could see he heard low voices very close to him and then felt somebody touch his arm and help raise him from the floor.
"Where am I?" he asked.
"In jail," came the faceless reply.
"And about to be burned in the square as soon as your turn comes," added a different voice, right next to him.
Very slowly his eyes adjusted to the room. He first perceived the dim shapes of about ten people standing around him, mostly men, he guessed. Then he noticed that the room stretched in one direction quite a ways. There were narrow slits along one wall which let in a little light. They seemed to be placed about every ten feet, and he counted seven of these at least, receding away.
He asked the man who helped him up how many people were here.
"About two hundred, I think," said a bearded man.
"And why are you here?" asked Jonathan. "What have you done?"
"We don't know for sure" replied the man. "Most of us were picked out when we disembarked at the harbor."
Then another one chimed in, "they come to this cell each day and pick out twenty of us to be illuminated at the evening service. They came today just before you arrived."
"You mean burned at the stake," said Jonathan, slowly recovering his wits. "But are you conscious of any wrongdoing?"
"None," said an old, white-bearded man who stepped forward. "None for these people. I was thrown in because I disagreed with our Bishop about the killings. Why are you here?"
Jonathan could tell he was talking to a priest, and replied, "because I've just now had the same disagreement and happened to smash the skull of this same Bishop."
Most of the people surrounding Jonathan seemed to gasp at this statement, which he thought strange from a group about to be burned. Then he realized that they were innocent of any crime, and except for their predicament, still thought like any other Church-fearing citizens. But now a larger crowd gathered around him as whispers ran through the room.
"Why do you leave it so dark in this dungeon?" Jonathan asked naively. "Why don't you light a fire?"
"We have no matches," one of them said.
"When do the guards bring you food?" he continued.
"They don't often," said the former priest. "They sometimes bring us stale bread, but they’ve not done this for two days now. Many here are ill and close to death."
Jonathan pondered these words in silence a moment. "What, no food, how can you survive? How long have you been here?"
"I have been here for almost a moon," replied the old man mournfully. "There’s a broken pipe at the far end of the room, so we have water, and we have air and light from the openings."
Indeed, the air and the light were as scant as the food. The room had a dreadful stench. Now Jonathan began to explore the length of the cell while a small crowd followed him. He could see people along each wall, leaning or lying in the most abject of postures. There were women and even small children and babies here, and the thought of this dungeon sickened him.
"Every morning we take the weakest," continued the old man, "and place them next to the door. They are the first taken away. We know that they are...illuminated, because those that were brought here more recently can attest to having seen some of our people in their final agony, with their own eyes."
Jonathan was closely listening to this man, but at the same time he was ripping off the lower portions of his robes into strips and thinking ahead.
He was now in the center of the room.
"Is there any wood in this place?" he asked the crowd.
"There is straw," said one.
"There are some old crates we can break up," said another.
"Good, then go fetch them," said Jonathan.
He had already drawn his knife out and was removing from its sheath a piece of flint that he always kept there. With a few strokes he had the straw burning and built a small fire. Then he took one of the slats of wood and wrapped the strips of cloth tightly around it, to make a torch. He told two young men to feed the fire, while he continued down the room.
His torch now illuminated a scene of gaunt, ghastly, cowering faces and bodies weakly propped against the stone walls or sprawled on the floor as if dead. He proceeded to the very end of the room, with his crowd still following and found the broken pipe running at eye level across the end wall. He could see the crack in the middle section where the water dribbled out. It was an old, rusty pipe and the water had a smell. A small line of women and children were standing nearby, waiting their turn to catch some of the liquid in their hands and drink.
As Jonathan was examining this wall, with the torch close between his face and the pipe, someone in the crowd came forward and clasped his arm tightly, saying, "my son, my son."
Jonathan turned with his torch to see a stout, middle-aged man with a short, curly beard and a round face.
"I know who you are," said the man excitedly. "You took my son with you to the miraculous spring. Remember me? I'm his father, the carpenter."
"Yes," replied Jonathan, staring back, "you must be Paul's father."
The man appeared confused at this.
"I mean 'Sprint,' or rather 'Nosy,'" said Jonathan, catching his error.
"Yes, yes, that's him," said the man. "Is he safe?"
"Yes, he's doing very well. He's married now to the young girl who was my first assistant," Jonathan assured him. "But why are you here?"
"I and the rest of my family were picked out as we came off of the ship that brought us here, fifteen days ago," he began. "We did nothing wrong. We had our baggage with us and were moving in the long line down the ramp, like everyone else. At the bottom there were officials watching us as we passed. They stopped my youngest son, he's over there against the wall with my wife and two daughters. They stopped him and tore from his neck the little figure that his brother had given him last summer. You might remember him carving it. He said you told him the story. It was of the boy riding a dolphin. Anyways they became angry at this and brought us straight here, where we must perish."
He spoke these last words sadly, squeezing Jonathan's arm as he did so. Jonathan told him not to worry.
"We'll at least put up a struggle," Jonathan said. "There’s still hope." Then he added, "show me your family."
They walked a little ways back towards the fire and Jonathan was directed to a group of four people huddled closely together. The mother sat against the wall with a daughter on each side and the youngest child, a boy of five or six curled up on her lap, apparently sleeping.
Jonathan knelt before the frightened woman and told her also not to worry, he would do all in his power to free her. He had no plan in mind, but the injustice of this spectacle set him to working on one. He still had his gun and bullets strapped under his shirt and a mind to use them profusely.
