The Raven Girl

Chapter 8

This chapter has been faithfully rewritten and edited *wipes away the beads of sweat from brow*. I just hope this is paying off!

Asta was herded around corridors and stairwells like a sheep that had lost its group, one hand forever on her shoulder to remind her who was in control. It would have been more helpful for them to offer her an arm, something to stop her straying from the pathway when she lost her balance, but instead they kept their palm rested like stone upon mortar, solid and unyielding.

After a while, the guard stopped to take a candle from one of the many iron cast sconces that lined the walls. This was, she figured, where he led her onwards to her cell, where she found out just how many of those tavern rumours were true. She bit her lip and walked onwards at his command without a single word, but even through her silence, fear was very visible. The guard did not laugh, did not mock, yet neither did he comfort. He was just there and nothing more.

They began descending down a narrow stairway, spiralling so steep and so precariously that Asta was frightened she would fall. With every step they took, the light grew dimmer and the night grew ever stronger, ever more intense. The single flame he clasped was none to match the blackness of the autumn evening and she found that when her eyes failed her, so did her other senses – she had to rely solely on the guard and tripped on every other step.

There, at the bottom of those stairs, could be heard a raucous melody of coughing and moaning and wheezing and shouting.

Her body stiffened, as if by instinct refusing to move toward the noise, the threatening noise, the noise of murderers and thieves and witches and conspirators alike. Surely she didn't belong in there. Not amongst them.

Yet, according to the guard, she did, and she was pushed in the direction of those criminals.

And pushed past them. Every cell, which was stocked full of ailing men, was not her cell. It seemed all were full of half-crazed people awaiting a trial of some sort or awaiting their end, all of whom were beyond dignity and battered the guard through the bars for some bread or, in some cases, the key.

"I'm innocent!" A man begged as they walked past. "I didn't know about the plot. I didn't know about it!" His words fell on deaf ears, but that didn't stop a nearby cell of supposed witches from trying.

Asta looked at them through the bars and they looked at her in turn. For a moment, concern flickered in their faces for her, concern, maybe, for their fellow woman of the night, but that died the second she was led away from them. She was no witch. Yet it didn't stop their unholy screeching and it frightened Asta more than she would dare let on. Perhaps it was for the best that she was not left to sleep near them.

They reached a dead end after walking for what seemed like miles, keeping pace only with the constant dripping of water that collected in the old straw. It was not laced with lavender as had been the case elsewhere in the castle. Why would they bother when most that came down here would never come back?

"Have we taken a wrong turning?" Asta asked timidly, glancing around in the darkness to make sure she hadn't missed anything.

The guard did not reply but stared down at the floor. He needn't have done anything more.

She wasn't going in a cell. She wasn't going to be beheaded, drowned, hung, drawn, quartered – her death was not to be displayed, it seemed. Yet, she could not think of a worse way to end.

When she followed his eyes, the first thing she noticed was how odd the straw lay upon the stone. It was all heaped over at the sides, kicked out the way. It was then she noticed that the sparse flooring was not stone, as had been the case before, but wood and the wood had iron fastenings and a handle. There, in the stone, was a trapdoor. A trapdoor, she wagered, that opened to a long drop down.