Page 1 of Iron Cross

Prologue - The Prisoner

Eoghan

Two weeks after Kira goes missing

Afield mouse took up residence in Morelli’s cell. I could hear its infernal shuffling feet and distressed squeaks. In my deluded mind, it sounded like the mouse was barking, trying to protect its master.

Morelli had a pet. How fitting that it was a vermin.

My instinct was to get rid of it. Poison it. Kill it in a trap that would cut it in half like a guillotine.

Deer mice, the most prevalent around these parts, carried diseases if one ingested or inhaled their droppings. I wonderedif Morelli would end up succumbing to some medieval plague, with nothing but this pest for company.

My knee-jerk reaction to prevent Morelli from poisoning himself with his pet’s leavings was replaced with the exhaustion that ruled my existence.What did it matter if he died?

He was a prisoner, manacled to the stone foundation of the Green Mansion.

I had bled him for the paint that now graced the masterpiece in the foyer. Then I had him relocated to the secluded underbelly of the big house, in a part of the basement no one ever went. I set up security cameras, and ensured that only one other had access to the space. No one would ever accidentally stumble on my unwilling houseguest again.

After I made my interpretation of Rubens’The Descent into Hell of the Damned, my madness had cooled. The fury that had fired my veins and clouded my vision drained away.

Morelli was just a prisoner. I had him fed, bathed, and dressed in plain sweats to better fight the winter chill. I’d had him shackled to the wall so he could stand and sit, instead of hanging him by the arms. His shoulders were put back in their sockets.

He’d borne the indignity with a stoicism that I admired. That was likely why my malice had drained away, becoming toothless even as I wanted to hate him.

But not so much that I was willing to let him go. With sick fascination, I had come down here, and sat on the floor across from him, silently watching him eat off the iron plates I gave him - leftovers of the meal upstairs.

I’d watch him in silence as he eyed me with reciprocal suspicion. We sat in almost companionable mistrust, trying to ignore each other.

But not today. Today, I decided I would speak.

“Have you heard of the Prisoner of Chillon?” I asked, “the poem by Byron.”

He looked up at me with his steel gray eyes - the only thing still vibrant on him. Steely eyes, and a sharp mind. He swallowed what was in his mouth, his Adam’s apple bobbing on his skinny neck.

“Refresh my memory,” His eyes narrowed as if contemplating if this was a trick.

He picked up the fork in his slim hands, and stabbed it into the roasted chicken.

He’d gotten thin in the last two weeks. We didn’t feed him much that first week. And still, he refused to die. Refused to weaken. And when my anger about Kira waned into a simmering pain, I begrudgingly had to respect the man.

I recited the verse, because it seemed so apt for the man I saw reduced before me.

“My limbs are bow'd, though not with toil,

But rusted with a vile repose,

For they have been a dungeon's spoil,

And mine has been the fate of those

To whom the goodly earth and air

Are bann'd, and barr'd—forbidden fare;”

I loved the words on my tongue. The poetry of it, even though I knew I was not a poet.

“Hmm,” Morelli said, leaning back as he stared at me from his perch on the stone cold ground. “What a grim thought.”

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