Six months later...

  Maria quickly grew accustomed to life at Sucrut Jail for Women, and all the things that came with that. Days blended into one, an endless, unbroken cycle of wake up, read, get to work. One thing she had learned very early on at Sucrut was that work was everything.

  As soon as they arrived, the prisoners had been put immediately to labour. Maria, as one of the older members of the jail, was mostly kept to cleaning and servicing duties. It was the middle of summer, and the heat was fierce. When she did not have time to herself, she was sweeping the concrete floors, clearing dirt from the courtyards, the leaves in the gutters, and maintaining all along the jail grounds. Once a month, Sucrut received a new intake, and this was the only time she ever saw carriages and wagons entering the jail grounds. Any movement in and out was new prisoners, or supply wagons.

  She slept in a modest room and had no bunkmate, which was lucky, as many other prisoners were made to share with somebody else. Maria thought that perhaps some might enjoy this company, but the nights were unpredictable and Maria was simply glad that any time there was a disturbance, it had nothing to do with her.

  It was a Thursday, Maria’s day off, and she had been called to the head warden’s station. Accompanied by a tall and sturdy guard, she made off through the corridors of Sucrut jail without saying a word. Her outfit was poorly-fitted and cheap—she even had the thought that it may have been manufactured at the jail itself by prison workers—and made loud shuffling sounds as she walked. Her feet ached; every second night (for this was how often they were allowed to bathe) when she removed her shoes and socks and soaked them in the cold baths, she felt more pain than relief as the water seared into her wounds.

  The guard accompanying her stopped outside the warden’s room, and remained there. Maria walked in by herself, the door shutting behind her.

  “We have received revised orders regarding your time here at Sucrut,” said the warden in a straightforward tone. “Your original sentence of ten years has been reduced to four. You are also to be moved to B Block and instated to a new job at the sugar fields.” The warden slid a letter across the table to Maria, who took it in her wrinkled and callused hands.

  The letter stated that she was to be worked at a place known as Moscati’s Sugar Exports. She had not heard the specific name before, but she had known that there was a sugar plantation neighbouring the prison and that, several times a week, you would see a group of inmates departing by foot in an organised line to work there. She knew that they did not come back until very late, and that those were expected to be long days.

  She accepted it without complaint, however, for inmates at Sucrut’s jail for women did not get much say in these matters, and four years was better than ten.

  That night, she was relocated to B Block and made to share a cell with a black woman of similar age to her, her hair frizzy and white. Her name was Agnès. For at least the first months of her stay there, Agnès became the only other person with whom Maria shared private information—though, of course, escaping it was not much of an option.

  My dear Antoinette, she wrote.

  I hope that things are well. Are you practising your dancing? You know what they say, if you do not keep up with practise, then your dance shoes will stop fitting.

  She couldn’t think of what to say, her pen over the page. She had found, the longer she had been in Sucrut, the more difficult it became to write.

  “I seen you write to her before,” Agnès said, practising stretches in the middle of the room while Maria sat on the tiny writing desk. “Who is she?”

  Maria put down the quill. “Antoinette,” she said in a soft voice. “She will be thirteen soon. The first of her birthdays I will miss. It feels so very strange, this distance that I feel growing between us. I find it more and more difficult to write.”

  “I know that feeling,” Agnès responded. She stopped her routine and ended up in a cross-legged position on the floor, staring up at Maria. She spoke through long breaths that made her entire body undulate like it was riding on ocean waves. “I haven’t seen neither of my sons in eight years. Last I ever had contact with them was likely 1824. Worst thing is, I don’t even know if they dead or just ignoring me…and I’m not sure which is worse.”

  “Eight years, eh?” Maria remarked.

  Agnès smiled sarcastically. “For stealing a bag of potatoes. Well, that’s what they say, anyway. I’ll be out next year, though. You don’t really ever get out, though, in here.” She prodded her head with two fingers. “Jail’s a tattoo on the mind.”

  Maria thought about this. She already knew she had had some degree of protection coming into the jail. She was treated differently to other prisoners; she had been, even from the very beginning. Was this Alfred’s influence? Did they know, to some degree, her history? Her original sentence was thirty years, negotiated down to ten, and now merely four. Hardly enough time to acclimate, if you went by Agnès’s timeline of things.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “What did you do?” Agnès asked.

  Maria sighed, staring at Agnès’s waiting, soft eyes. Although she knew they were both going to be in there together for a while, and there wasn’t really any reason as to why she ought to keep any of this a secret from Agnès, it still came as a surprise to Maria when she began telling the full story, starting from the witches in the cemetery in Fosseville...

  #

  Every Thursday and Friday was work at the sugar fields.

  Maria awoke early these mornings, was fed a more substantial meal than most other mornings, and departed with the small group. Usually it was just over a dozen of them, in rotation. The selection was varied; most often, these inmates had been in the jails for a longer time or were nearing their date of release. According to Agnès, the jail had a deal with Moscati’s Sugar Exports and, in exchange for supplying workers, the Sugar Exports supplied the jails with a cut of sugar and profits, which in turn helped keep the jails running.

  Maria thought this was a lousy deal, considering she wasn’t personally seeing any of the money coming in. Agnès told her better not to complain.

  Luckily, whether because of her age or something else, Maria’s job was split between cleaning tools and processing the sugar inside the facilities, and only occasionally tending to the crops outside. She was also working with Agnès, and the two spent most of their days in each other’s company. The times Maria saw people from Moscati’s Sugar Exports were few and far between. She occasionally saw members of the company checking on the workers out in the fields, and sometimes saw them arriving and departing. They usually wore suits, and rode in on fancy carriages with large horses powering them. She imagined that theirs was wealth that had accumulated for some time. Businesses like these had endless opportunities.

  Two months into working the sugar fields, Maria was systematically walking through the crops and watering them. It was towards the end of her shift and the work was winding down. The air had become cool and a terrific sunset stretched across the sky. She was tired, her feet aching as they did at the end of all of her shifts. The only thing she was thinking of apart from the immense exhaustion and hunger was taking a bath.

  She lowered herself towards the young crops and sprinkled them with water. The smell in the air was always the same out here. It was that too-sweet smell of sugar mixed with the dirt. Depending on where you were, there was also a faint touch of sweat and body odour in there too, particularly as you came to the end of the day.

  Maria finished watering her crops and then looked up to see somebody watching her. At first she thought she must have been hallucinating, but sure enough, even as she eventually stood up and came within clear sight of the person, he remained.

  The first thing she noticed was that he was not wearing the same outfit as the other workers, nor anything that resembled the attire of Moscati’s Sugar Exports employees.

  The man slowly approached her, careful not to step on anything. Once within ten or so feet, Maria observed more details about him. Firstly, he was quite tall but could have blown away in a sudden gust of wind. His age was surely quite young, something his youthful appearance did not deny. He was dressed simply, in a blue shirt and brown pants tied at the waist. His boots, however, were well-trodden in but polished, and seemed to be of high-quality material.

  Maria let her watering can sway at her side as the man approached. “Hello?” Maria said to him. “Hello, young man? Should you be here?”

  His eyes widened. “Are you Maria?”

  “Excuse me?”

  He pointed someplace far off in the distance behind him, causing Maria to look there, but she saw only hills and fields. “Otto mentioned that you would be here. I’ve come searching, from far away, to find you.”

  “Otto sent you? What— Who are you?”

  “I am Jacques Ardouin,” he replied.

  Maria experienced a sudden pang of noise in her ears. The feeling was as if the final connection in a puzzle had been made, causing the whole picture to illuminate.

  Jacques Ardouin, the last scribe of her younger brother, the one who had caused all of this trouble when he had profited off her brother’s work with Remy. She nearly dropped the watering can in disbelief at the man who now stood plainly before her. “Yes, I know who you are,” Maria said. “You’re the reason I’m here.”

  Jacques’s expression, which itself was mixed shades of disbelief and exhaustion, suddenly became frightful. His lips moved, yet without words.

  “I...I swear, I am not here to cause trouble,” he said. “I’d only like to apologise.” He clasped his hands together, as if in prayer. “I know what I did was terrible. I was foolish back then. I…”

  “You gave my brother’s pages to a man called Remy, is that right?”

  “So you did speak to him.”

  “Why did you do it, Jacques Ardouin?”

  “I did not think it through. I was desperate. After the fire destroyed everything, I was out of work. I know, it was foolish, but I did what I could to survive. Maria, would you not have done the same?”

  Maria was flabbergasted. “No! You ruined my family!”

  “No! Please, you must understand, it was not malice against your family—”

  “Idiocy, then,” Maria said.

  “Please accept my apology. I came all this way.”

  “Indeed. That is some way to have travelled.” She stared at him, pitifully. He must have ventured far across the countryside to get here. Days, and weeks on the road.

  She could not imagine a scene more miserable than what was transpiring before her, on the long, expansive sugar fields. Jacques Ardouin all but grovelled in this moment, looking about to cry, utterly pathetic. How could such a fool cause a circus of this magnitude. Exposing family secrets, destroying her reputation, wasting their time chasing the past…

  Maria began to laugh and could not stop herself. It just came pouring out of her. Hot and fast laughter that swept the fields, drenching the man who stood before her. “Get out of my sight, Jacques Ardouin!” she snapped through fits of laughter. “Go back to the hopeless hovel you come from and, the gods have me, next time I see you, I won’t be so kind.” She spat as far as she could, then wiped the saliva that corded to her bottom lip. “You animal, you clown, get out of my sight.”

  Jacques simply stared back at her. “Please…”

  Maria threw her watering can at him, forcing him to awkwardly defend it mid-air, lose his footing on the uneven fields and crash down in a pile of limbs and dirt.

  Staring up at her, he shouted, “He loved you, Maria!”

  “Pfft! We are Lucien, we are incapable of it.”

  A sheet of horror came over the scribe’s face, and he scrambled up from the dirt mounds, brushing himself off the best he could. “Forgive me—”

  “Go!” Maria screamed. “Off with you, rat! Out of here!” And the scribe turned around, sprinting, and did not look back once.

  Maria sniffed, her lips trembling as she stared at the pinprick in the distance where Jacques Ardouin had fled to, with the setting sun turning the sugar fields red.

  THE END.