BY DR. AGONSON
I find it a dreary place. There’s always a low breeze piping mournful tunes through the long grass. The sky is always grey and it seems to suck the color out of everything. Drab. The houses here are no more than little huts, like giant toadstools. The few grand buildings, the church, the courthouse, the Lord’s manner, are all dark and towering affairs; their shadows oppress my spirit. There is one portion of my prison which does not depress me however, for there is a wide stretch of beach which I am allowed. I go there often, barefoot on the white sands, sometimes spending the whole day gazing out over the dark and troubled sea.
I don’t care about the cold. If I catch a chill and die, it would be worth it. I must have beauty, nature. It’s all flat country here, no woods or hills to explore. Just the marsh, frozen now, but deadly still. I hear there’s a river, I suppose it’s beautiful, but I am not allowed that far.
The townsfolk leave me be. I suppose I should be grateful they don’t trouble me, though I wish I had a friend here. They are all afraid. They know I’m something of a prisoner, and I think I’ve heard them whisper of our old friend—though it’s hard to say if they know anything of my connection to him or if they were just talking. When I overheard them, it had only been a few days after word had come of his fate. The lord read the proclamation himself and ordered a celebration. He thankfully did not force me to participate.
They are not political here. They hate their lord when he troubles them and love him when he leaves them alone. Such is patriotism. They hate our friend, a man they’ve never known, because they’re told he’s their enemy. They drink wine at his death because the lord opened his cellars.
The lord himself is strictly a party man. He has no soul that I can find, though I’m driven to search for it in our many meetings. He’s hardly a person, just a collection of other people’s thoughts repeating on and on without any meaning, but, I should add, without any malice. Whatever he claims to believe, he still plays the part of a lord in the old sense. All he really wants is that his people bare their heads to him when he deigns to walk the streets, that he is fed, and that that he is allowed powder to go kill a few birds nesting in his fields. I suppose he’s not really a bad man. He could be cruel, he could lock me up in his castle dungeon and starve me, but he lets me roam. I just wish I didn’t have to talk with him.
I know you think I’ve betrayed you and the cause. It’s hard to explain. The emperor can step right into your mind. There is no way to keep a secret. No way that I knew. Why he left me alive, I don’t understand. Why he keeps me on this cold, rainy coastland, I don’t know.
All I ever wanted was tradition. I wanted our country for our people. I wanted our nation’s children fed and clothed, and so I wanted men to have good wages and women to have good husbands; but we are a nation of slaves. I wanted our king to be our king, not some vassal of a world state.
I wanted to die for my country. I thought I would when they captured me. But now I find myself on this distant shore, my own nation lost, subsumed into an ever expanding empire. I have no friends, no future, no home. All that has remained since the emperor released me is the sea, deadly and cruel, but ancient as the sky.
Tale Told 