Guava and Trail Mix
Story: Timeless { backstory | index }
Title: A Cold Cell
Rating: G
Challenge: Guava #17: she’ll be coming around the mountain, Trail Mix #27: a cell/prison
Toppings/Extras: none
Wordcount: 638
Summary: Lidia Graham is glad that she has friends in low places.
Notes: I shall have to write something on the archrivalry of Lord Ashdown and Captain Graham later just because it’s funny.
Being a girl, she had been allowed a blanket, but it didn’t offer her much protection from the cold. It was the sort of cold that penetrated to every cell. She was surrounded by it, deep in the stone walls and floor and ceiling, and a constant draught pulled tantalising at the thick, dark fronds of her hair as she sat on the squeaky wooden bench that was her bed. The pillow had about the consistency and thickness of a newspaper.
Sighing in tired irritation, Liddy Graham stuck her hands under her armpits for the sparse heat that could be found there and wondered what on Earth her father had done this time. She’d always been warned that this would happen if she kept his surname, but stubborn as she was, she wouldn’t budge on the matter. She was Captain Jacob Graham’s daughter, even though she was illegitimate, and she would keep his name.
The half-Spanish girl’s head suddenly snapped up as though on a string when she heard a faint clang. Was someone coming down to the cells? Pulling the blanket tighter around herself, her pulse began to quicken. She glanced up through the tiny window up in the corner of her cell: she was underground, but the very top of the room had a small grille that offered her a tantalising glimpse of freedom. The sky was black, and had been for quite a while. She cold only guess at the time, but she supposed it to be long past midnight.
Her sleepiness draining from her, she brought her knees up and crossed her hands over it, keeping her fingers twined tightly in the blanket to keep it in place. There were footsteps, obviously attempting to be quiet, but she could hear every single one striking the stony floor gently. She bit her lip-she knew better than most that Ashdown played dirty. Could this be a nighttime ‘accident’ waiting to happen? But surely not-surely he was more of a gentleman than to execute an innocent young girl...
Innocent enough, anyway.
Sort of.
“Oy! Lids!” She leapt out of her skin at the hissed exclamation. She had been concentrating so hard on the footsteps that she had quite forgotten about the tiny window above her. She spun around and squinted: the sky was ink-black, but she could make out a starless gap that she assumed was where the voice had come from. She tilted her head.
“Rosy?” she asked, hope filling her up.
“The very same!” replied her friend. Rosy Joe was called so because years of heavy drinking had left him with permanently ruddy skin: he was a friendly teddy bear of a man with great greying sideburns and small, sparkling eyes that seemed to giggle in the light. Liddy couldn’t help but grin widely. If Rosy was here, then her father couldn’t be far away. She rushed to the space below the tiny grille and stared up at him.
“There’s someone down here!” she whispered quickly.
“I wouldn’t worry about that, chicken,” Rosy said with a wink in his voice. “That would be Kell.”
Liddy’s grin widened. There wasn’t a guard in the world that had a chance against the churlish, pithy Keller.
“How did you get here?” she asked. “The walls are bloody huge!”
“What would yer father say if he ‘eard you swearin’ like that, young lady?” Rosy said. Liddy sighed. She could never understand how her father could go around stabbing and robbing people, yet one drop of the b-word and she was up to her neck in it. Thankfully, it was clear from his tone that Rosy was joking somewhat. “We climbed, o’ course. An’ you will be, too.”
“Where’s my father?” she asked.
“’E said that ‘e was off to shoot Ashdown.”
“Those two have problems,” Liddy sighed.