“Do you ever feel like you’re being manipulated by some ignorant and willful source you can’t reach?” Tim asked Gullet, as they sat in their jail cell.
“All I know is that the guards here are wonderful people” replied Gullet the Ghoul. “I don’t look beyond today’s feast for tomorrow’s famine.” A guard routinely dumped dead rats into their cell, because his work was unfulfilling and he needed an outlet for his frustrations. (That’s just a fancy way of saying he was brutal and cruel.) Gullet was gaining weight during his incarceration.
They were in the lowest cell in the most deserted and dim part of the prison. Besides the guard who threw dead rats into their cell, they saw almost no one else. Their wormy bread and cheese was brought by a scullion who had been knocked on the head by a mullion, and lived in a perpetually silent daze.
Complacency and a full belly make for dull company, so Tim went back to his solitary pondering -- replaying the past few months in his mind. They had just escaped from the Bog of Sluggery and were enjoying the wholesome and mild countryside on a starry night when a brigade of horsemen rode up, asked for their identity scrolls, and, when Tim and Gullet said they didn’t have any such thing, summarily tied them up, threw them on the back of some mules, and brought them to Larry’s Lockup -- as the guards jocularly referred to it.
Sir Lawrence Hector Gnawson kept the prison at the King’s command, for the incarceration of all strangers and tramps and traveling cutpurses who could not prove their settled existence with an identification scroll from their home town, or who looked funny or spoke in a funny accent. It was also the final destination of anyone who embraced poverty. The kingdom of Generic (accent over the first syllable) is a lush and busy land, where anyone can make a living by raising something as mundane as radishes or selling bags of river gravel. Those who choose to get sick or lose an arm or leg or go blind and can no longer find a suitable means of employment are considered troublemakers. Sir Lawrence was especially charged with seeking out such malcontents to segregate them from the honest citizenry.
When Tim first insisted that Sir Gnawson contact the merchants in Mountebank about his identity the brooding knight had promised to look into it. But being of an introspective nature, Sir Gnawson had instead fallen into a deep funk about the injustice of trees being rooted in one spot so they could never move about and broaden their knowledge of the world. He roamed the dank dungeon hallways all night, oblivious to everything around him, asking himself out loud “Are we any better than the trees, just because we have legs?” The guards were used to his midnight rambles, knowing they could safely ignore him -- he never asked about the prisoners and took no interest in their welfare or the processing of their cases. His diet consisted solely of parched nuts, and he drank nothing but pollen water. His ascetic habits had turned his brain into a dried turnip.
So Tim continued to wilt in jail, month after month. When he had held up his bag of the King’s gold coins to indicate he would be willing to buy his way out of Larry’s Lockup the guards guffawed roughly before rudely wrenching it out of his hands to divide among themselves. Those guards certainly had some issues with respecting private property!
But they did Tim a good turn by despoiling him of his gold. It is well know -- or at least it should be well known, if more people would read heroic lays and ballads nowadays -- that authentic heros do not buy their way out of challenges. Heroes have to struggle and heave and sweat to achieve things that later generations will marvel at and make statues about. There’s no such thing as a rich hero. Riches lead to a careless villainy that is the opposite of heroic operations.
So Tim had to plan an escape. He would knock out the guard that brought the dead rats, change into his uniform and take his keys, then with cunning and guile work his way out of the prison, jump in a river (jumping in water is a mandatory part of any dungeon escape) and make his way back to Mountebank. Gullet could stay and fill his stomach with all the dead rats he wanted.
Tim’s plan went perfectly, until he met Sir Lawrence Hector Gnawson on his way to the main gate. This particular night Sir Gnawson had at last worked things out to his satisfaction about the injustice done to trees -- he would fund a caravan that uprooted trees and carry them to all parts of the Kingdom, and perhaps even beyond, so they could experience the benefits of an ambulatory life. To celebrate this breakthrough Sir Gnawson decided to promote the first guard he saw to become warden of the prison. That way he would be free to accompany the tree caravan on its delightful journey!
“Come here, fellow!” Sir Gnawson called to Tim the moment he saw him skulking towards the main gate in his stolen guard’s outfit. “I would have a word with you.”
Tim had no choice but to shuffle up to Sir Gnawson, keeping his face lowered. After months in a filthy cell, Tim had grown a scruffy beard and his hair spilled unkempt down to his shoulders. Sir Gnawson did not recognize him as the trim young prisoner who claimed to be from Mountebank.
“Here, my good man -- take my keys and the King’s silver truncheon. I make you Warden of this establishment, as is my right as a Lord of Law and Knight of the Realm, under the King’s command. By the way -- what’s your name?”
“Um . . . “ began Tim.
“Very well, Um. Instruct the bonger to bong the gong so I can proclaim your promotion.”
The gong was bonged, the guards assembled, and Sir Lawrence Hector Gnawson officially turned all the affairs of the prison over to Tim. When the disrobed guard that Tim had knocked out staggered up to Sir Gnawson to explain why this was a bad idea, he was hustled away by order of Master Um, the new Warden, and locked up in the kitchen potato bin.
“Farewell, all ye my colleagues!” cried Sir Gnawson cheerfully from the back of his steed as he went out the main gate. “Heed your new Warden’s words as you would mine own until I return! And say unto the King that I . . . “ But what he wanted them to tell the King was never to be known, as the portcullis came crashing down, nearly impaling the knight, and startling his steed into racing madly across the drawbridge and into the distance, with Sir Gnawson holding on by a thread.
“What are your orders of the day, Master Um?” asked the chief of the guards.
Tim looked around him, half in wonder and half in fear.
“The prisoners, all of them” Tim began. “Let them eat cake!”
