"The Law Hath Slept; Now 'tis Awake" - Dracula fan fiction (2/?)
Title: The Law Hath Slept; Now 'tis Awake
Fandom: Dracula
Character/Pairing: Mina, Jonathan, Jack, Arthur
Summary: Six months after the end of the story, Mina, Jonathan, Jack and Arthur find that the government has finally started to take an interest in their recent actions. And under the cold scrutiny of the court, those actions may not seem so reasonable.
Rating: PG-13 (for this chapter)
Warnings: This chapter has quite a lot of possibly disturbing content. According to Jack, I should warn for unprofessional medical practices, and that does seem like the most specific warning I can give, so there you go.
A/N: For the "Unforgiving" prompt at 50_darkfics.
Chapter One
Chapter Two: Indignities of Imprisonment
File of Mrs. Wilhelmina Harker upon her admission to prison (before the time of her trial)
Initial results of the physical examination of April fourth, 1895: Mrs. Harker is possessed of a round birthmark at the middle of her spine and a small scar on the third finger of her left hand. She displayed no signs of any contagious illness or parasites upon her person.
Mrs. Harker was, upon her admission to this institution, extremely uncooperative and troublesome.
Number Assigned: This process has been delayed until after her trial and probable conviction.
(Note: Because of the serious nature of the crimes Mrs. Harker has been accused of and the convincing nature of the evidence presented so far, she and those others accused of being involved in said crimes are to be treated in the same manner as those who have already been convicted of their crimes, up until such a time in which they shall be able to clear their names of all charges.)
Not a word was said to Mina during the long carriage ride to the prison. She was relieved at this, for it gave her time to collect her thoughts, something which she had found little time to do while shackles were being fastened around her wrists. At that point, she almost immediately began thinking of strategies, things to say that would convince someone with authority that they were all innocent, but all the plans ended up coming to nothing, because, clearly, the Count had found a way of defeating them that they had no way of escaping from. Anything that she said in her own defense could easily be countered by a statement of his, and which one of them would have more credibility when she was standing in court accused of murder?
And so she spent that carriage ride in silence, her head lowered, her hands folded loosely together in her lap in a manner that seemed unnatural because of the shackles around her wrists, to all outward appearances defeated and docile. But, within her, there was a burning determination to continue fighting that overcame but did not obliterate the seeming lack of a solution to her present situation.
After what must have been quite a long time, but seemed to last an instant in the world of Mina’s thoughts, the carriage stopped, and she, though she could not see anything outside of the windowless carriage, assumed that they must be at the prison. When the door was pulled open, she stepped out and saw that she was correct. The prison, which was not a building that she had come across ever before, was an unappealing, intimidating building of grey stone with few windows. For a moment, she faltered before it, but only for that one moment, as she quickly lifted her head and followed where the officers beckoned her.
She was led briskly up a few stairs to the front door, and then inside it to what must be the front hall of the building, though it was so blank and monotonous that, were it not for its position in the building, it would have been impossible to distinguish it as any specific room. An officer (and she hadn’t been able to distinguish them from one another either, nor had she tried) grabbed one of her shackled wrists and pulled her down another hallway to the left, this one long and ending in a single door at the end, the way she always imagined interrogation rooms looked, with a long walk leading up to them giving the prisoner time to imagine what horrors might be waiting inside.
At that moment she was suddenly afraid.
But she kept walking with her head lifted high, for to give into fear would be to give the Count what he wanted out of this. If she let herself fear even at this, then she would fall to her knees begging him for freedom eventually, and she would not make herself his slave.
Eventually, they reached the door. One of the officers knocked upon it three times, and, after a second, opened it, leading her inside.
The room had some of the trappings of the office of a doctor; there were shelves with what she vaguely recognized as medical instruments, as well as a few bottles, presumably of medical drugs. There was a desk in one corner, and an examining table - with shackle-like rings of metal that seemed to be made to hold a patient down by the wrists and ankles. Within the room there was one man with pale hair turning to grey in some places, dressed in a white coat and presumably a doctor. Near him there were three men in a uniform that she didn’t recognize. They had the look of prison guards.
One of the officers who had arrested Mina handed her warrant to the doctor, who read it with a look of recognition in his face. “Ah, yes, the murderess. I heard about her earlier. Now here’s a case that ought to prove notorious.”
The officer nodded, and there was something of a smile on his face. “I’ll see you at the trial, then?”
The doctor smiled back. The two were obviously familiar with one another. “Certainly.”
After that, the officers left, and Mina was alone in the room with the doctor and prison guards, completely unaware of whatever was about to happen to her.
The doctor took a small key out of the drawer of the desk, and walked over to Mina, swiftly unlocking her shackles and putting them down on the desk. The absence of the cold metal around her wrists seemed to loosen her tongue, and a flood of words poured out of her, almost without her willing them to. “I shouldn’t be here. It’s the Count, the one who must be accusing me of all this, there’s something that you need to know, he’s lying, they’re all his crimes, and I haven’t done anything -“
But she was immediately cut off by the doctor’s voice, which was dismissive, crushing any hope that anyone in this room might be sympathetic to her plight. “Inmates at this prison aren’t supposed to speak unless they’re spoken to Mrs. Harker,” he said, walking behind her as he spoke, “Now, let’s get a look at you.” She didn’t even react to the statement then, because, almost before she realized it, she felt the doctor beginning to unbutton the back of her dress.
Her reaction to that was almost instinctive as she turned around, grabbing the doctor’s wrist and digging her nails into it before slapping him across the face.
Unfortunately, however, the three prison guards had a reaction to that as immediate as hers had been. They rushed forward, the fist of one of them colliding with her cheek as another directed a blow at her ribs and a third at her left arm. The sudden combined pain of that caused her to fall to the floor, where she remained, breathing heavily through the pain.
Meanwhile, the doctor walked to the desk, taking out a sheet of paper and beginning to write something, speaking to Mina at the same time, his voice unaffected by the events of the past few seconds, “Mrs. Harker, you have resisted physical examination and have assaulted an employee of the government in the process. These are facts that I now shall be obliged to add to the record of your crimes.”
“There’s no point,” said the guard who had hit her in the ribs, “she’s probably going to get hanged anyway, so there’s not much more they can do to her. Have her punished according to the prison rules. She’s one of the convicts now anyway.”
The doctor only considered this for a moment. “Very well. Note her down for twenty lashes tomorrow. For now, get her on her feet so I can undress her, and then put her in the examining table. It seems that such measures will be necessary for this one.”
Mina heard this conversation with a sense of shocked disbelief. Surely, she thought then, this wasn’t actually going to happen, surely all these things were just threats. They weren’t going to strip her of her clothes and examine her; they weren’t going to whip her like a slave or…a convict.
Oh, gods, they were.
She had no rights now, she realized as the guards hauled her unresisting body to her feet, one of them holding each of her arm. They could do anything they liked to her and the rest of the world would say that she deserved it because she was a murderer. Even the trial wouldn’t make any difference. After all, who had ever heard of a trial in which it had?
But the trial had to make a difference, she thought as the doctor finished unbuttoning her dress and pulled it off her body, then doing to same to her camisole. If she didn’t believe that she would be able to convince the court of her innocence, then she would never find the strength to continue living. And Jonathan, Arthur, Jack…if they were being arrested at just this moment, she had to believe for their sakes.
Soon it became difficult to concentrate on those thoughts, for the doctor had finished unlacing her corset and was now pulling each of her petticoats off, prompting lewd whistles from the guards, whistles that the doctor made no attempt to halt. She was soon down to her chemise, and felt terribly vulnerable. She hoped for a brief instant that the doctor would leave her that amount of clothing, at least, but, of course, she had no such luck. As she began to finally struggle, the thin protective layer of cotton was stripped from her, and then her shoes, stockings, and finally her drawers were taken off. And so she stood, naked, shivering and terrified, in the center of the room.
It seemed to her, a feeling caused - as she was well aware - by only irrational and disjointed thoughts, that the Count was watching all of this and laughing at what he had already, so easily, reduced her to. And, at that, there was nothing that she could do but hang her head in shame, because it was true. She had been easily demoralized, by only a few blows and a simple removal of her clothing. Was she so fragile that nothing but layers of cotton and linen held her together?
No. She could not be.
She barely had time to consider that, because the ordeal was not over. With some word from the doctor that Mina didn’t quite catch, the guards dragged her to the examining tables that she had noticed earlier, placing her in it and fastening the rings of metal around her wrists and ankles, holding her completely and totally in place.
The doctor began to examine her then, leaving no spot on her body untouched. Her hair he sorted through systematically, seeming to be looking for lice. He forced both her eyelids open so far that they hurt, and did the same to each of her nostrils and ears. He forced his fingers roughly into her mouth and, from there, pushed it open as far as her jaws would go, nearly making her gag. He examined every inch of skin on her neck, chest, and arms. He examined the most private parts of her body with no less scrutiny. He event separated each of her toes, looking between them as if there would some key to her guilt there. He then unfastened the rings of metal from around her wrists only to turn her over onto her stomach in an ungentle manner which caused the now forming bruises on her body to hurt in a sharp, stabbing manner, which almost made her cry out, but she suppressed that instinct, belatedly trying to regain some amount of dignity even as he examined the other side of her body, an examination no less invasive than the other.
Finally it was over and she was allowed to get off the examining table. Quickly, before she did anything else, she grabbed her chemise and pulled it on, but before she could continue redressing, one of the guards said (the doctor had gone back to his desk and was recording something hastily), “It’s to the baths now. You won’t need all your clothes for that, and you won’t need them afterwards until you get out - which we all know won’t happen. So, come on.”
He grabbed her arm while reaching over to pick up the warrant still lying on the desk and began leading her to a door at the other end of the room form the one she had entered by, seeming to now know better than to expect her to obey anything on her own. But she didn’t resist, not now. After all, it couldn’t get worse. Not yet, at least.
She didn’t pay attention to where they were going until they had reached the baths, a long, narrow room with five stalls on each side; only a few inches between the stalls on one side and the stalls on the other. The room was barely illuminated by a dim, grayish light coming from unwashed window near the ceiling. As they entered, a dark haired woman wearing a high-necked grey dress approached them. The guard handed her the warrant. “This is Mrs. Wilhelmina Harker. She needs a bath and then clothes. She hasn’t been assigned a number yet, so just put her in any open cell.” The woman nodded, taking the warrant from the prison guard (were they just passing the thing around between them?) and leading Mina towards one of the stalls. “Get in,” she said as Mina heard the departing footsteps of the guard, “I’ll go get you some clothes.”
Mina felt slightly better away from the claustrophobic terror of the office, and still without shackles, but the mere few inches of water in the wooden tub she faced was the dull brown color, and looked as though it was more likely to dirty her than make her clean. Swallowing hard, she gritted her teeth and pulled off her chemise before stepping into the tub and sitting down, allowing the stagnant brown water to swirl lazily around her chest but somewhat unwilling to completely submerge herself in it.
As she bathed (if it could be called that, for she was certainly not getting any cleaner) her attention was caught by the sound of splashing from the stall across from hers, startling in the near silence of the room (she had thought herself the only one there without having looked around at all). Glancing at it, for there were no doors on the stalls, she saw a girl splashing in the water of the tub opposite…a girl who looked enough like Lucy, that, for an instant, Mina thought her dear friend had returned to her.
At second glance, they didn’t look quite the same. This girl had hair of a more golden color than Lucy’s, and eyes closer to grey than Lucy’s had ever been. But she still looked remarkably like Mina’s friend, and when she turned to look at Mina, a smile on her face, the resemblance was even more striking.
“They called you Wilhelmina-something, didn’t they?” she asked Mina, her question catching Mina off guard for an instant.
“Mina…you can call me Mina,” she said after realizing what she had been asked.
The girl’s smile really was winning. “Nice to meet you, Mina. I’m Elizabeth. What’ve you done to be brought here?”
She didn’t want to answer the question, but she did. “They say I murdered three women…I didn’t. Not really. It’s a long story.”
There was sympathy but also amusement in Elizabeth’s voice. “It always is. I’m in for burglary. I’ll be out in a couple years.” She frowned, seeming to notice something, “Where did you get those bruises?”
Mina’s voice was suddenly flat with the reminder of the recent events. “I fought when they tried to examine me.”
A low whistle came from Elizabeth’s throat, one that was somewhat sympathetic. “Are they going to try you for that too?”
Mina shook her head. “No. They assigned me twenty lashes.”
At this, however, Elizabeth laughed, as if the seriousness of the situation had suddenly been taken away. “You’re starting early. Most people don’t get whipped for a week, at least. Or until after their trial.”
Anything Mina might have said in response was cut off, as the dark haired woman returned, carrying a pile of clothes and dumping them in front of Mina. “Put these on,” she said, her voice betraying no emotion whatsoever. Mina nodded and got out of the water, squeezing the remnants of dirty water out of her hair and looking for a towel or sheet to dry herself with, but finding none. Sighing inwardly, she resigned herself to damp clothes for a little while at least, and looked to see what clothing she had been given.
It was precious little, really. There was a thin dress, slightly too short for her, in a garish canary yellow, and a single petticoat trimmed with yellowing lace that was falling off at some points. There were also coarse wool stockings patterned in stripes of blue and red, and a white hat, as well as worn out boots that Mina could tell from a glance would not fit her. She put the clothing on, feeling uncomfortable and completely unlike herself, but it was better than nothing, after all.
Elizabeth was getting into clothing identical to Mina’s, except that her dress was a bright red rather than canary yellow. Then the woman gestured for the two of them to follow her, and they did, Elizabeth taking a hold of Mina’s hand with a surprising amount of trust for someone who had only just met her, and Mina could briefly imagine that she was holding Lucy’s hand.
~
File of Dr. John Seward upon his admission to prison (before the time of his trial)
Initial results of the physical examination of April fourth, 1895: Dr. Seward is possessed of several scars upon both of his hands which he said, without being prompted for an explanation, came from work done while he was in medical school. He displayed no signs of any contagious illness or parasites upon his person.
Dr. Seward was, upon the time of his admission to this institution, cooperative and easy to deal with.
Number Assigned: This process has been delayed until after his trial and probable conviction.
(Note: Because of the serious nature of the crimes Dr. Seward has been accused of and the convincing nature of the evidence presented so far, he and those others accused of being involved in said crimes are to be treated in the same manner as those who have already been convicted of their crimes, up until such a time in which they shall be able to clear their names of all charges.)
Jack submitted to the required physical examination with all the professionalism of any doctor who understood the importance of such examinations to the medical process. Though, he had to admit to himself, the way that this particular examination was conducted was quite unprofessional, as the doctor neither explained what he was about to do nor why he was doing it. But he did understand the necessity of such procedures, and also understood the necessity of requiring all prisoners to bathe immediately after being admitted to the prison. But it was very different to understand all of it conceptually, and to experience it. And, despite all of his rationalization, he couldn’t stop the instinct that made him feel humiliated at being forced to walk through the cold hallways of the prison wearing very little clothing until they reached the baths.
And, upon reaching the baths, almost all of Jack’s respect for the medical procedures conducted by the prison evaporated. The room was made up of two rows of stalls containing one tub of water each, with no privacy between stall, which in and of itself wasn’t despicable, if somewhat uncomfortable for Jack (he recalled what he had read as a student of the baths in the Roman Era, and thought that surely the type of modesty that was virtuous in their time was perhaps not universal, and there could be as much virtue in that sort of sexless nudity as in the modesty admired in this era), but the water within the tubs was dirty, brown and slimy, looking as though it hadn’t been changed for a long time. Almost forgetting for an instant that he was in this prison because he had been accused of murder, Jack turned to one of the guards who had led him in and said, “This is completely unsanitary. This could cause anyone who bathes in such water to contract one of the many illness that can be transmitted through such things.”
But the guard only sniggered. “So, the murderer thinks that our water isn’t good enough for him? Well, it’s all he’s going to get, so he better not scorn it!”
At that, the guard pushed him into the tub of water, and Jack, caught off his guard, had his nose and mouth filled with the brown water, which was every bit as slimy and disgusting as it looked. As he sputtered and managed to sit up, the guards left, laughing and congratulating one another, he heard a familiar voice coming from the stall next to him.
“Jack?”
“Art?” He replied, not sure whether this was a welcome or unwelcome surprise. He certainly didn’t want Arthur to have been arrested as well as him, but, he had to admit, he felt a selfish relief that he had someone else here with him. Turning to look toward the source of the voice, he saw Arthur, looking embarrassed as being seen by Jack in a bath of dirty water, but his face also showed the same relief that Jack felt.
“It’s so good to see you, Jack…well not like this but…” Arthur seemed to be struggling for words, which seemed slightly unnecessary, as Jack knew completely what he was saying.
“It’s all right, I understand,” Jack said hastily, and there was a brief awkward silence. Arthur broke it soon, speaking quickly as though, if he didn’t get the words out now, he would never have a chance again to do so, which was, perhaps, true. “I asked Alice to call our family lawyer, and she should have an appointment for us soon. Don’t worry; we’ll get out of here. You, and Mina, and Jonathan and I won’t have to be stuck in this hell for too long.”
This caught Jack off guard, though it didn’t quite surprise him. “Have Mina and Jonathan been arrested as well?” he asked, though the question was quite redundant.
Arthur nodded, looking at Jack with surprise in his eyes, “Did you not read your warrant?”
Jack was beginning to get an ominous feeling about all of this. “No. The officers who arrested me merely read the charges to me.”
Arthur’s next words were hesitant, careful. “Then you don’t know…about the Count?”
Surely the ominous feeling was, horribly, terribly, correct! “I don’t.”
As he spoke the few, meaningful words, Arthur didn’t look at Jack. “He’s alive.”
He was alive? The horror that had destroyed the lives of Lucy and Renfield and Quincey and nearly of the rest of them, the horror that they had worked so long and hard to destroy, was still alive?
Jack had no idea what to say to that, nor indeed if there was anything he could have said to it. But he didn’t have to, because the prison guards returning, carrying piles of clothes, and more guards emerged from the other direction, dragging with them none other but Jonathan.
Jonathan was wearing even less clothing that Jack had been wearing when he entered the baths, and there was a strange sort of terror in his eyes. Upon seeing Jack and Arthur, he looked even more relieved than either of them had been upon seeing one another. Like Jack, he looked revolted upon seeing the bathwater, but, unlike Jack, he willing took off the remnants of his clothing and got into it after a brief pause. Before they had a chance to say anything to another, however, the guards who had brought the clothes said to Jack and Arthur, “Put these on. They’ll be what you wear while in prison here.”
Jack quite willingly got out of the dirty water, peeling off his old clothes, which were wet from having been pushed into the bath by the guards. But, examining the clothes that had been left for him, he found that they were only a brown shirt and a pair of trousers of the same color, both rather threadbare. Jack was sure those two single pieces of clothing would offer little warmth if any warmth was necessary, but he put them on nevertheless.
Arthur, however, was starting at his clothing, which a shirt in the same color as Jack’s and trousers of a bright yellow, with some disgust. “Can’t I wear my own clothing?” he asked one of the guards.
“No, you have to wear party clothes now. Put it on now. We don’t want any trouble from you.”
Reluctantly, Arthur did as the guard said.
After that, the two of them were led away to their cells, without the chance to say even one word to Jonathan. Jack soon found out that his cell consisted of a board that was apparently supposed to be a bed, and a reeking bucket in one corner. More unsanitary conditions. Sighing, Jack decided that he would try to go to sleep. Maybe he would wake up and this would have all been a strange dream.
~
File of Mr. Jonathan Harker upon his admission to prison (before the time of his trial)
Initial results of the physical examination of April fourth, 1895: Mr. Harker is possessed of a scar on his right knee and his hair has turned prematurely white, a subject on which, when questioned, he refused to speak about. He displayed no signs of any contagious illness or parasites upon his person.
Mr. Harker seemed, upon the time of his admission to this institution, quite nervous and agitated. This may be taken as signs of his guilt.
Number Assigned: This process has been delayed until after his trial and probable conviction.
(Note: Because of the serious nature of the crimes Mr. Harker has been accused of and the convincing nature of the evidence presented so far, he and those others accused of being involved in said crimes are to be treated in the same manner as those who have already been convicted of their crimes, up until such a time in which they shall be able to clear their names of all charges.)
Jonathan hardly slept that night, partly because the only thing he had for a bed was a hard plank, and partly because worry for Mina nagged at him and made sleep seem traitorous. And so, when morning came and the door to his cell was pulled open by one of the guards, he got up feeling as though he had slept hardly at all, and his body ached in a multitude of places from the hard wood against his body. He followed where the guards led, not paying much attention to quite where that was in his exhaustion. It could have been an interrogation room in which they forced him to confess to crimes he had never committed through sheer intimidation and he would have followed just as easily.
But he was not being brought to an interrogation room, he was being brought to eat breakfast. Though he was at first intimidated by that room as well, because it reminded him of the stories he had heard about the new factories being built, with their immense amounts of workers, all sitting in straight lines completing identical tasks. The room that he had just entered - which was a prison and not a factory, a fact which was, perhaps, not comforting - was large, filled with long tables and equally long benches. One half of the room seemed to be for the men, and the other half for the women. Everyone sat, almost completely silent, with identical empty bowls in front of them, waiting to be given whatever food they would be supplied with. Prison guards stood at various intervals, looking at the prisoners suspiciously. Jonathan didn’t much want to go and sit down there, but he did.
Luckily, he was able to see Jack and Arthur sitting at a table relatively near him, and there was an empty space beside them, so he hurried over and sat beside them. The three of them said nothing to one another, but the looks they exchanged said quite enough. After all, the emotions that they would have tried to communicate with words were the sorts of emotions that they all shared completely, and that would be awkward to express with words anyway.
They only waited there in the not excruciating but actually rather peaceful silence for a few minutes, and then others who worked for the prison emerged from the same doors that Jonathan had entered by, carrying large black pots and ladles. They walked through the aisle between the tables, ladling out a bowlful of whatever it was in the pots to everyone they passed. When one of them reached Jonathan, he saw that it was porridge. Instinctively, he looked at up at the man who had handed him the porridge and said, “Thank you,” with a smile, but that simple friendly gesture earned him several glares from various people near him, both prisoners and staff. Not from Jack or Arthur of course, which was a small but significant blessing. It was clear having others with him here, others who knew the truth of matters and who were on his side in everything would change everything for the better. One of the things that he most remembered about his time as a prisoner in the Count’s castle was the isolation of it. He could have gone mad in that place, and he never would have known the difference.
Lost in these thoughts, Jonathan had utterly forgotten about his porridge. Remembering, he picked up his spoon and took a bite of it. True, it was utterly without taste, but it was tolerable. After a few bites, he looked up and happened to glance at one of the tables in the women’s side of the room. At the same time, someone on that side lifted her eyes and happened to glance at him.
And so Jonathan met the familiar eyes of his wife.
Mina wore a dress of a bright canary yellow that she would have never chosen to wear of her own accord, and there was an ugly bruise on one side of her face (a bruise which Jonathan felt painfully, instantly guilty for because, yet again, he wasn’t there to protect her from something, whatever it had been), but she was still very obvious herself, even more so when her face was illuminated with a smile as she recognized him.
At that smile, Jonathan couldn’t just remain in his seat and smile at her from across the room. He got up, rushed to her side - she stood up at the same moment, as if she would have run to him had he not executed the impulse first - and put his arms around her, holding her as close to him as he possibly could. “I was so worried about you…” she whispered, quietly enough that only he could hear.
“I’m fine. Are you?” he was referencing the bruise on her face, and she knew that.
“Yes…yes, I am,” she tried to laugh, but it didn’t come out sounding like one, not quite. “I don’t know if either of us will be for very much longer, but I’m fine now.”
There was desperation in Jonathan’s voice, he knew that, and he knew also that it worried her, but he couldn’t have hidden it from her, not then, “We’ll be all right, Mina, I’m sure we will.” Because his words lacked conviction, Jonathan kissed her gently, hoping that such a gesture would more convincing, but, instead, it merely prompted the guards to take more notice of them.
“Both of you, back to your seats, now!”
Jonathan moved away from Mina slightly, but kept holding onto her hand, and she onto his. “I will not. She is my wife, and I will not allow you to separate me from her.”
There was a moment when Jonathan wasn’t sure what the guard would say to that, but any hopes Jonathan might have had of sympathy from him were quickly lost. “That’s direct disobedience. An hour in the stocks for that, both of you.”
Mina reacted to that with a brief wince, but nothing more. Jonathan, however, was more stunned, and Mina ended up being the first one to speak. “The stocks are a punishment that was officially abolished more than twenty years ago. You cannot use them on us.”
The guard laughed. “All that doesn’t apply when you’re in prison, darling. Now, come on, we might as well get this over with.” He paused and looked closely at Mina for a second. “And aren’t you the one admitted yesterday? You’re down for a whipping also.”
That news startled Jonathan, but, despite his horror at this entire situation, he realized that this whipping Mina was supposed to undergo must have something to with the bruises on her face. He didn’t have a chance to ask her about it, though, because they were both soon being dragged out of the room, and most of the other prisoners were hurrying to follow, like London crowds at the time of a hanging.
~
File of Lord Arthur Godalming upon his admission to prison (before the time of his trial)
Initial results of the physical examination of April fourth, 1895: Lord Godalming is possessed of a small mole near his left ear. He displayed no signs of any contagious illness or parasites upon his person.
Lord Godalming was, upon the time of his admission to this institution, mainly cooperative, though he asked many questions as though doubting our proper knowledge of the procedures we were performing.
Number Assigned: This process has been delayed until after his trial and probable conviction.
(Note: Because of the serious nature of the crimes Lord Godalming has been accused of and the convincing nature of the evidence presented so far, he and those others accused of being involved in said crimes are to be treated in the same manner as those who have already been convicted of their crimes, up until such a time in which they shall be able to clear their names of all charges.)
Everything happened so fast, that Arthur wasn’t exactly sure what was going on. Mina and Jonathan were clearly about to be punished for something, and it was clearly something that they should not be punished for, but he didn’t quite understand what was gong to happen to them, or what exactly they had done - especially Mina, who seemed to have done something yesterday that was causing her to be punished even more. Arthur longed to be alone with Jack, Mina and Jonathan, to be able to discuss all this with them, to be able to finally find out what had happened to each of them, and what they all intended to do about it all.
He also longed, at that moment, to confront the guards, to stop Mina and Jonathan from being unjustly punished after everything that they had suffered already. Somehow, it felt to him as though, if he could stop their unjust punishment at that moment, he would be capable of stopping the unjust punishment that all of this was already to the four of them. If he could have enough courage to save Mina and Jonathan from even something so much smaller than all their greater troubles (some of which he refused to even think about, because, if he did, he would never dare to think that they could win again), than he would have enough courage to save them all. At that moment, the most courageous thing he had ever done was to drive a stake through his beloved fiancée’s heart, and even then, he had acted to late to save her completely, and he could have done nothing but lose her. He was resolved not to let the same happen again to the remainder of those he cared about.
But at that moment, he was incapable of doing anything but following with the rest of the crowd (and Jack at his side, always there, probably already figuring out some solution to this that Arthur hadn’t even considered) and feeling horrified.
The area where Mina and Jonathan were apparently going to be punished was a courtyard of sorts. Somehow, however, the fact that one could see the sky there didn’t make it any more comforting a place to be. One was still surrounded by the grey stone of the prison, and beneath one’s feet was a type of mud that seemed completely unlike the sort of mud from which any plants could ever grow. There was what Arthur vaguely recognized as the stocks several feet away, looking almost ominous to him. The whole area seemed even more unwelcome when Arthur saw Mina being dragged forward to the middle of the courtyard, and heard Jonathan’s voice calling out, “Let go of her!”
Mina mouthed something to Jonathan that Arthur couldn’t make out, something loving, the sort of thing a wife would always say to her husband to comfort him (the sort of thing Arthur wouldn’t ever hear from Lucy’s lips). Arthur, glancing to where Jonathan was being held back, near to where Mina had been brought, saw him calm a bit and nod to Mina in response to whatever it was she had said.
And then it began, in small little movements that seemed to be commonplace to those who accomplished them, but were horrifying to Arthur. One of the guards (there were many there in the courtyard, and they spoke to one another quietly, in hushed tones; those were conversations of which Arthur did not desire to know the contents) took a hold of one of Mina’s wrists in each of his hands and lifted her arms above her head at full tension. Another handed a whip to a third and then moved to stand next to Mina, lifting her skirt up - Arthur thought he heard Jonathan call something out then, but he hardly noticed, so lost in his own horror - which bared her back completely to the dozens of convicts standing there watching, as well as revealing a single petticoat, trimmed in yellowing lace, over red and blue striped stockings. This display caused many of the convicts to jeer and call out lewd comments, which made Arthur blush with shame for Mina’s sake. But they quieted as the third guard began to lift the whip he had been handed.
It was then that Arthur should have said something, done something. But as the whip came down with a crack on Mina’s bare back, Arthur was left trembling, relieved that he couldn’t see Mina’s face then, despite the fact that it surely must be as stoic as her perfectly straight back was, and feeling completely and totally disgusted with himself.
For a time it continued like that, with Mina showing no sign of pain or discomfort, at least from the back. Until about the eighth lash, when the guard who was holding Mina’s hands above her head adjusted his grip a bit, so that he was holding both her hands with one of his, his hand crushing both of hers together.
Arthur realized the significance of the change immediately, and he knew that Jack did as well, because the look he exchanged with Arthur clearly showed that. But, of course, how could either of them forget that terrible night? Mina, kneeling on the bed in front of the Count with her mouth pressed to his chest, both her hands held together by one of his so tightly that his grip crushed them…
The very same memory must have been coming back to Mina as well, because immediately upon the change her body began to visibly tremble, the shudders growing more and more violent until she lowered her head and retched, the contents of her stomach coming out onto the mud beneath her feet.
Arthur began to wonder at that, the consideration coming in the back of his mind beyond the horror and sympathy, whether, after that night, Mina had thrown up many times, her body instinctively rejecting the substance that had been before forced into it, but unable to do so, because the Count’s blood had already seemed into her own, infiltrating her blood stream and starting to destroy her.
She probably had. At the time he had been talking to Jack and Quincey and Professor Van Helsing, though the other three had done most of the talking. He had felt as useless then as he did in the prison, adding nothing to the Professor’s plans, and knowing that he would be unwelcome if he went to the Harker bedroom to aid Jonathan in attempting to comfort Mina.
As Arthur considered all this, the blows continued falling upon Mina’s back, unfaltering despite her sudden reaction, until finally, after what might as well have been an eternity, they were over and she was unceremoniously dropped into the mud, her face falling into her own vomit.
There was complete and total silence then for a few seconds. No one in the crowd said a word, and Jonathan and Jack seemed frozen with horror, which was how Arthur felt. Mina didn’t even move. When the silence was broken, it was by one of the guards who said, seeming used to such sights as that of a woman lying in her own vomit while her back was covered with blood, “Now for the stocks. Get them in there, and then we’ll leave them until it’s time for them both to be let out. Oh, yes, and you can leave the other two involved in their case here with them. It seems…appropriate.”
It was back to awfully systematic movement then, as Mina was hauled to her feet and her shoes and stocking stripped from her, and Jonathan’s shoes were pulled from his feet. Then, just as awfully, they were both brought, completely unresisting, to the stocks that Arthur had noticed earlier, and their feet locked in. Arthur saw them grasp hands briefly and then, realizing something or other, let go.
It was not long before everyone was gone, leaving the four of them alone together, just as Arthur had wished they could be. But, somehow, it seemed that none of them could find anything to say.
Chapter Three
Fandom: Dracula
Character/Pairing: Mina, Jonathan, Jack, Arthur
Summary: Six months after the end of the story, Mina, Jonathan, Jack and Arthur find that the government has finally started to take an interest in their recent actions. And under the cold scrutiny of the court, those actions may not seem so reasonable.
Rating: PG-13 (for this chapter)
Warnings: This chapter has quite a lot of possibly disturbing content. According to Jack, I should warn for unprofessional medical practices, and that does seem like the most specific warning I can give, so there you go.
A/N: For the "Unforgiving" prompt at 50_darkfics.
Chapter One
Chapter Two: Indignities of Imprisonment
File of Mrs. Wilhelmina Harker upon her admission to prison (before the time of her trial)
Initial results of the physical examination of April fourth, 1895: Mrs. Harker is possessed of a round birthmark at the middle of her spine and a small scar on the third finger of her left hand. She displayed no signs of any contagious illness or parasites upon her person.
Mrs. Harker was, upon her admission to this institution, extremely uncooperative and troublesome.
Number Assigned: This process has been delayed until after her trial and probable conviction.
(Note: Because of the serious nature of the crimes Mrs. Harker has been accused of and the convincing nature of the evidence presented so far, she and those others accused of being involved in said crimes are to be treated in the same manner as those who have already been convicted of their crimes, up until such a time in which they shall be able to clear their names of all charges.)
Not a word was said to Mina during the long carriage ride to the prison. She was relieved at this, for it gave her time to collect her thoughts, something which she had found little time to do while shackles were being fastened around her wrists. At that point, she almost immediately began thinking of strategies, things to say that would convince someone with authority that they were all innocent, but all the plans ended up coming to nothing, because, clearly, the Count had found a way of defeating them that they had no way of escaping from. Anything that she said in her own defense could easily be countered by a statement of his, and which one of them would have more credibility when she was standing in court accused of murder?
And so she spent that carriage ride in silence, her head lowered, her hands folded loosely together in her lap in a manner that seemed unnatural because of the shackles around her wrists, to all outward appearances defeated and docile. But, within her, there was a burning determination to continue fighting that overcame but did not obliterate the seeming lack of a solution to her present situation.
After what must have been quite a long time, but seemed to last an instant in the world of Mina’s thoughts, the carriage stopped, and she, though she could not see anything outside of the windowless carriage, assumed that they must be at the prison. When the door was pulled open, she stepped out and saw that she was correct. The prison, which was not a building that she had come across ever before, was an unappealing, intimidating building of grey stone with few windows. For a moment, she faltered before it, but only for that one moment, as she quickly lifted her head and followed where the officers beckoned her.
She was led briskly up a few stairs to the front door, and then inside it to what must be the front hall of the building, though it was so blank and monotonous that, were it not for its position in the building, it would have been impossible to distinguish it as any specific room. An officer (and she hadn’t been able to distinguish them from one another either, nor had she tried) grabbed one of her shackled wrists and pulled her down another hallway to the left, this one long and ending in a single door at the end, the way she always imagined interrogation rooms looked, with a long walk leading up to them giving the prisoner time to imagine what horrors might be waiting inside.
At that moment she was suddenly afraid.
But she kept walking with her head lifted high, for to give into fear would be to give the Count what he wanted out of this. If she let herself fear even at this, then she would fall to her knees begging him for freedom eventually, and she would not make herself his slave.
Eventually, they reached the door. One of the officers knocked upon it three times, and, after a second, opened it, leading her inside.
The room had some of the trappings of the office of a doctor; there were shelves with what she vaguely recognized as medical instruments, as well as a few bottles, presumably of medical drugs. There was a desk in one corner, and an examining table - with shackle-like rings of metal that seemed to be made to hold a patient down by the wrists and ankles. Within the room there was one man with pale hair turning to grey in some places, dressed in a white coat and presumably a doctor. Near him there were three men in a uniform that she didn’t recognize. They had the look of prison guards.
One of the officers who had arrested Mina handed her warrant to the doctor, who read it with a look of recognition in his face. “Ah, yes, the murderess. I heard about her earlier. Now here’s a case that ought to prove notorious.”
The officer nodded, and there was something of a smile on his face. “I’ll see you at the trial, then?”
The doctor smiled back. The two were obviously familiar with one another. “Certainly.”
After that, the officers left, and Mina was alone in the room with the doctor and prison guards, completely unaware of whatever was about to happen to her.
The doctor took a small key out of the drawer of the desk, and walked over to Mina, swiftly unlocking her shackles and putting them down on the desk. The absence of the cold metal around her wrists seemed to loosen her tongue, and a flood of words poured out of her, almost without her willing them to. “I shouldn’t be here. It’s the Count, the one who must be accusing me of all this, there’s something that you need to know, he’s lying, they’re all his crimes, and I haven’t done anything -“
But she was immediately cut off by the doctor’s voice, which was dismissive, crushing any hope that anyone in this room might be sympathetic to her plight. “Inmates at this prison aren’t supposed to speak unless they’re spoken to Mrs. Harker,” he said, walking behind her as he spoke, “Now, let’s get a look at you.” She didn’t even react to the statement then, because, almost before she realized it, she felt the doctor beginning to unbutton the back of her dress.
Her reaction to that was almost instinctive as she turned around, grabbing the doctor’s wrist and digging her nails into it before slapping him across the face.
Unfortunately, however, the three prison guards had a reaction to that as immediate as hers had been. They rushed forward, the fist of one of them colliding with her cheek as another directed a blow at her ribs and a third at her left arm. The sudden combined pain of that caused her to fall to the floor, where she remained, breathing heavily through the pain.
Meanwhile, the doctor walked to the desk, taking out a sheet of paper and beginning to write something, speaking to Mina at the same time, his voice unaffected by the events of the past few seconds, “Mrs. Harker, you have resisted physical examination and have assaulted an employee of the government in the process. These are facts that I now shall be obliged to add to the record of your crimes.”
“There’s no point,” said the guard who had hit her in the ribs, “she’s probably going to get hanged anyway, so there’s not much more they can do to her. Have her punished according to the prison rules. She’s one of the convicts now anyway.”
The doctor only considered this for a moment. “Very well. Note her down for twenty lashes tomorrow. For now, get her on her feet so I can undress her, and then put her in the examining table. It seems that such measures will be necessary for this one.”
Mina heard this conversation with a sense of shocked disbelief. Surely, she thought then, this wasn’t actually going to happen, surely all these things were just threats. They weren’t going to strip her of her clothes and examine her; they weren’t going to whip her like a slave or…a convict.
Oh, gods, they were.
She had no rights now, she realized as the guards hauled her unresisting body to her feet, one of them holding each of her arm. They could do anything they liked to her and the rest of the world would say that she deserved it because she was a murderer. Even the trial wouldn’t make any difference. After all, who had ever heard of a trial in which it had?
But the trial had to make a difference, she thought as the doctor finished unbuttoning her dress and pulled it off her body, then doing to same to her camisole. If she didn’t believe that she would be able to convince the court of her innocence, then she would never find the strength to continue living. And Jonathan, Arthur, Jack…if they were being arrested at just this moment, she had to believe for their sakes.
Soon it became difficult to concentrate on those thoughts, for the doctor had finished unlacing her corset and was now pulling each of her petticoats off, prompting lewd whistles from the guards, whistles that the doctor made no attempt to halt. She was soon down to her chemise, and felt terribly vulnerable. She hoped for a brief instant that the doctor would leave her that amount of clothing, at least, but, of course, she had no such luck. As she began to finally struggle, the thin protective layer of cotton was stripped from her, and then her shoes, stockings, and finally her drawers were taken off. And so she stood, naked, shivering and terrified, in the center of the room.
It seemed to her, a feeling caused - as she was well aware - by only irrational and disjointed thoughts, that the Count was watching all of this and laughing at what he had already, so easily, reduced her to. And, at that, there was nothing that she could do but hang her head in shame, because it was true. She had been easily demoralized, by only a few blows and a simple removal of her clothing. Was she so fragile that nothing but layers of cotton and linen held her together?
No. She could not be.
She barely had time to consider that, because the ordeal was not over. With some word from the doctor that Mina didn’t quite catch, the guards dragged her to the examining tables that she had noticed earlier, placing her in it and fastening the rings of metal around her wrists and ankles, holding her completely and totally in place.
The doctor began to examine her then, leaving no spot on her body untouched. Her hair he sorted through systematically, seeming to be looking for lice. He forced both her eyelids open so far that they hurt, and did the same to each of her nostrils and ears. He forced his fingers roughly into her mouth and, from there, pushed it open as far as her jaws would go, nearly making her gag. He examined every inch of skin on her neck, chest, and arms. He examined the most private parts of her body with no less scrutiny. He event separated each of her toes, looking between them as if there would some key to her guilt there. He then unfastened the rings of metal from around her wrists only to turn her over onto her stomach in an ungentle manner which caused the now forming bruises on her body to hurt in a sharp, stabbing manner, which almost made her cry out, but she suppressed that instinct, belatedly trying to regain some amount of dignity even as he examined the other side of her body, an examination no less invasive than the other.
Finally it was over and she was allowed to get off the examining table. Quickly, before she did anything else, she grabbed her chemise and pulled it on, but before she could continue redressing, one of the guards said (the doctor had gone back to his desk and was recording something hastily), “It’s to the baths now. You won’t need all your clothes for that, and you won’t need them afterwards until you get out - which we all know won’t happen. So, come on.”
He grabbed her arm while reaching over to pick up the warrant still lying on the desk and began leading her to a door at the other end of the room form the one she had entered by, seeming to now know better than to expect her to obey anything on her own. But she didn’t resist, not now. After all, it couldn’t get worse. Not yet, at least.
She didn’t pay attention to where they were going until they had reached the baths, a long, narrow room with five stalls on each side; only a few inches between the stalls on one side and the stalls on the other. The room was barely illuminated by a dim, grayish light coming from unwashed window near the ceiling. As they entered, a dark haired woman wearing a high-necked grey dress approached them. The guard handed her the warrant. “This is Mrs. Wilhelmina Harker. She needs a bath and then clothes. She hasn’t been assigned a number yet, so just put her in any open cell.” The woman nodded, taking the warrant from the prison guard (were they just passing the thing around between them?) and leading Mina towards one of the stalls. “Get in,” she said as Mina heard the departing footsteps of the guard, “I’ll go get you some clothes.”
Mina felt slightly better away from the claustrophobic terror of the office, and still without shackles, but the mere few inches of water in the wooden tub she faced was the dull brown color, and looked as though it was more likely to dirty her than make her clean. Swallowing hard, she gritted her teeth and pulled off her chemise before stepping into the tub and sitting down, allowing the stagnant brown water to swirl lazily around her chest but somewhat unwilling to completely submerge herself in it.
As she bathed (if it could be called that, for she was certainly not getting any cleaner) her attention was caught by the sound of splashing from the stall across from hers, startling in the near silence of the room (she had thought herself the only one there without having looked around at all). Glancing at it, for there were no doors on the stalls, she saw a girl splashing in the water of the tub opposite…a girl who looked enough like Lucy, that, for an instant, Mina thought her dear friend had returned to her.
At second glance, they didn’t look quite the same. This girl had hair of a more golden color than Lucy’s, and eyes closer to grey than Lucy’s had ever been. But she still looked remarkably like Mina’s friend, and when she turned to look at Mina, a smile on her face, the resemblance was even more striking.
“They called you Wilhelmina-something, didn’t they?” she asked Mina, her question catching Mina off guard for an instant.
“Mina…you can call me Mina,” she said after realizing what she had been asked.
The girl’s smile really was winning. “Nice to meet you, Mina. I’m Elizabeth. What’ve you done to be brought here?”
She didn’t want to answer the question, but she did. “They say I murdered three women…I didn’t. Not really. It’s a long story.”
There was sympathy but also amusement in Elizabeth’s voice. “It always is. I’m in for burglary. I’ll be out in a couple years.” She frowned, seeming to notice something, “Where did you get those bruises?”
Mina’s voice was suddenly flat with the reminder of the recent events. “I fought when they tried to examine me.”
A low whistle came from Elizabeth’s throat, one that was somewhat sympathetic. “Are they going to try you for that too?”
Mina shook her head. “No. They assigned me twenty lashes.”
At this, however, Elizabeth laughed, as if the seriousness of the situation had suddenly been taken away. “You’re starting early. Most people don’t get whipped for a week, at least. Or until after their trial.”
Anything Mina might have said in response was cut off, as the dark haired woman returned, carrying a pile of clothes and dumping them in front of Mina. “Put these on,” she said, her voice betraying no emotion whatsoever. Mina nodded and got out of the water, squeezing the remnants of dirty water out of her hair and looking for a towel or sheet to dry herself with, but finding none. Sighing inwardly, she resigned herself to damp clothes for a little while at least, and looked to see what clothing she had been given.
It was precious little, really. There was a thin dress, slightly too short for her, in a garish canary yellow, and a single petticoat trimmed with yellowing lace that was falling off at some points. There were also coarse wool stockings patterned in stripes of blue and red, and a white hat, as well as worn out boots that Mina could tell from a glance would not fit her. She put the clothing on, feeling uncomfortable and completely unlike herself, but it was better than nothing, after all.
Elizabeth was getting into clothing identical to Mina’s, except that her dress was a bright red rather than canary yellow. Then the woman gestured for the two of them to follow her, and they did, Elizabeth taking a hold of Mina’s hand with a surprising amount of trust for someone who had only just met her, and Mina could briefly imagine that she was holding Lucy’s hand.
~
File of Dr. John Seward upon his admission to prison (before the time of his trial)
Initial results of the physical examination of April fourth, 1895: Dr. Seward is possessed of several scars upon both of his hands which he said, without being prompted for an explanation, came from work done while he was in medical school. He displayed no signs of any contagious illness or parasites upon his person.
Dr. Seward was, upon the time of his admission to this institution, cooperative and easy to deal with.
Number Assigned: This process has been delayed until after his trial and probable conviction.
(Note: Because of the serious nature of the crimes Dr. Seward has been accused of and the convincing nature of the evidence presented so far, he and those others accused of being involved in said crimes are to be treated in the same manner as those who have already been convicted of their crimes, up until such a time in which they shall be able to clear their names of all charges.)
Jack submitted to the required physical examination with all the professionalism of any doctor who understood the importance of such examinations to the medical process. Though, he had to admit to himself, the way that this particular examination was conducted was quite unprofessional, as the doctor neither explained what he was about to do nor why he was doing it. But he did understand the necessity of such procedures, and also understood the necessity of requiring all prisoners to bathe immediately after being admitted to the prison. But it was very different to understand all of it conceptually, and to experience it. And, despite all of his rationalization, he couldn’t stop the instinct that made him feel humiliated at being forced to walk through the cold hallways of the prison wearing very little clothing until they reached the baths.
And, upon reaching the baths, almost all of Jack’s respect for the medical procedures conducted by the prison evaporated. The room was made up of two rows of stalls containing one tub of water each, with no privacy between stall, which in and of itself wasn’t despicable, if somewhat uncomfortable for Jack (he recalled what he had read as a student of the baths in the Roman Era, and thought that surely the type of modesty that was virtuous in their time was perhaps not universal, and there could be as much virtue in that sort of sexless nudity as in the modesty admired in this era), but the water within the tubs was dirty, brown and slimy, looking as though it hadn’t been changed for a long time. Almost forgetting for an instant that he was in this prison because he had been accused of murder, Jack turned to one of the guards who had led him in and said, “This is completely unsanitary. This could cause anyone who bathes in such water to contract one of the many illness that can be transmitted through such things.”
But the guard only sniggered. “So, the murderer thinks that our water isn’t good enough for him? Well, it’s all he’s going to get, so he better not scorn it!”
At that, the guard pushed him into the tub of water, and Jack, caught off his guard, had his nose and mouth filled with the brown water, which was every bit as slimy and disgusting as it looked. As he sputtered and managed to sit up, the guards left, laughing and congratulating one another, he heard a familiar voice coming from the stall next to him.
“Jack?”
“Art?” He replied, not sure whether this was a welcome or unwelcome surprise. He certainly didn’t want Arthur to have been arrested as well as him, but, he had to admit, he felt a selfish relief that he had someone else here with him. Turning to look toward the source of the voice, he saw Arthur, looking embarrassed as being seen by Jack in a bath of dirty water, but his face also showed the same relief that Jack felt.
“It’s so good to see you, Jack…well not like this but…” Arthur seemed to be struggling for words, which seemed slightly unnecessary, as Jack knew completely what he was saying.
“It’s all right, I understand,” Jack said hastily, and there was a brief awkward silence. Arthur broke it soon, speaking quickly as though, if he didn’t get the words out now, he would never have a chance again to do so, which was, perhaps, true. “I asked Alice to call our family lawyer, and she should have an appointment for us soon. Don’t worry; we’ll get out of here. You, and Mina, and Jonathan and I won’t have to be stuck in this hell for too long.”
This caught Jack off guard, though it didn’t quite surprise him. “Have Mina and Jonathan been arrested as well?” he asked, though the question was quite redundant.
Arthur nodded, looking at Jack with surprise in his eyes, “Did you not read your warrant?”
Jack was beginning to get an ominous feeling about all of this. “No. The officers who arrested me merely read the charges to me.”
Arthur’s next words were hesitant, careful. “Then you don’t know…about the Count?”
Surely the ominous feeling was, horribly, terribly, correct! “I don’t.”
As he spoke the few, meaningful words, Arthur didn’t look at Jack. “He’s alive.”
He was alive? The horror that had destroyed the lives of Lucy and Renfield and Quincey and nearly of the rest of them, the horror that they had worked so long and hard to destroy, was still alive?
Jack had no idea what to say to that, nor indeed if there was anything he could have said to it. But he didn’t have to, because the prison guards returning, carrying piles of clothes, and more guards emerged from the other direction, dragging with them none other but Jonathan.
Jonathan was wearing even less clothing that Jack had been wearing when he entered the baths, and there was a strange sort of terror in his eyes. Upon seeing Jack and Arthur, he looked even more relieved than either of them had been upon seeing one another. Like Jack, he looked revolted upon seeing the bathwater, but, unlike Jack, he willing took off the remnants of his clothing and got into it after a brief pause. Before they had a chance to say anything to another, however, the guards who had brought the clothes said to Jack and Arthur, “Put these on. They’ll be what you wear while in prison here.”
Jack quite willingly got out of the dirty water, peeling off his old clothes, which were wet from having been pushed into the bath by the guards. But, examining the clothes that had been left for him, he found that they were only a brown shirt and a pair of trousers of the same color, both rather threadbare. Jack was sure those two single pieces of clothing would offer little warmth if any warmth was necessary, but he put them on nevertheless.
Arthur, however, was starting at his clothing, which a shirt in the same color as Jack’s and trousers of a bright yellow, with some disgust. “Can’t I wear my own clothing?” he asked one of the guards.
“No, you have to wear party clothes now. Put it on now. We don’t want any trouble from you.”
Reluctantly, Arthur did as the guard said.
After that, the two of them were led away to their cells, without the chance to say even one word to Jonathan. Jack soon found out that his cell consisted of a board that was apparently supposed to be a bed, and a reeking bucket in one corner. More unsanitary conditions. Sighing, Jack decided that he would try to go to sleep. Maybe he would wake up and this would have all been a strange dream.
~
File of Mr. Jonathan Harker upon his admission to prison (before the time of his trial)
Initial results of the physical examination of April fourth, 1895: Mr. Harker is possessed of a scar on his right knee and his hair has turned prematurely white, a subject on which, when questioned, he refused to speak about. He displayed no signs of any contagious illness or parasites upon his person.
Mr. Harker seemed, upon the time of his admission to this institution, quite nervous and agitated. This may be taken as signs of his guilt.
Number Assigned: This process has been delayed until after his trial and probable conviction.
(Note: Because of the serious nature of the crimes Mr. Harker has been accused of and the convincing nature of the evidence presented so far, he and those others accused of being involved in said crimes are to be treated in the same manner as those who have already been convicted of their crimes, up until such a time in which they shall be able to clear their names of all charges.)
Jonathan hardly slept that night, partly because the only thing he had for a bed was a hard plank, and partly because worry for Mina nagged at him and made sleep seem traitorous. And so, when morning came and the door to his cell was pulled open by one of the guards, he got up feeling as though he had slept hardly at all, and his body ached in a multitude of places from the hard wood against his body. He followed where the guards led, not paying much attention to quite where that was in his exhaustion. It could have been an interrogation room in which they forced him to confess to crimes he had never committed through sheer intimidation and he would have followed just as easily.
But he was not being brought to an interrogation room, he was being brought to eat breakfast. Though he was at first intimidated by that room as well, because it reminded him of the stories he had heard about the new factories being built, with their immense amounts of workers, all sitting in straight lines completing identical tasks. The room that he had just entered - which was a prison and not a factory, a fact which was, perhaps, not comforting - was large, filled with long tables and equally long benches. One half of the room seemed to be for the men, and the other half for the women. Everyone sat, almost completely silent, with identical empty bowls in front of them, waiting to be given whatever food they would be supplied with. Prison guards stood at various intervals, looking at the prisoners suspiciously. Jonathan didn’t much want to go and sit down there, but he did.
Luckily, he was able to see Jack and Arthur sitting at a table relatively near him, and there was an empty space beside them, so he hurried over and sat beside them. The three of them said nothing to one another, but the looks they exchanged said quite enough. After all, the emotions that they would have tried to communicate with words were the sorts of emotions that they all shared completely, and that would be awkward to express with words anyway.
They only waited there in the not excruciating but actually rather peaceful silence for a few minutes, and then others who worked for the prison emerged from the same doors that Jonathan had entered by, carrying large black pots and ladles. They walked through the aisle between the tables, ladling out a bowlful of whatever it was in the pots to everyone they passed. When one of them reached Jonathan, he saw that it was porridge. Instinctively, he looked at up at the man who had handed him the porridge and said, “Thank you,” with a smile, but that simple friendly gesture earned him several glares from various people near him, both prisoners and staff. Not from Jack or Arthur of course, which was a small but significant blessing. It was clear having others with him here, others who knew the truth of matters and who were on his side in everything would change everything for the better. One of the things that he most remembered about his time as a prisoner in the Count’s castle was the isolation of it. He could have gone mad in that place, and he never would have known the difference.
Lost in these thoughts, Jonathan had utterly forgotten about his porridge. Remembering, he picked up his spoon and took a bite of it. True, it was utterly without taste, but it was tolerable. After a few bites, he looked up and happened to glance at one of the tables in the women’s side of the room. At the same time, someone on that side lifted her eyes and happened to glance at him.
And so Jonathan met the familiar eyes of his wife.
Mina wore a dress of a bright canary yellow that she would have never chosen to wear of her own accord, and there was an ugly bruise on one side of her face (a bruise which Jonathan felt painfully, instantly guilty for because, yet again, he wasn’t there to protect her from something, whatever it had been), but she was still very obvious herself, even more so when her face was illuminated with a smile as she recognized him.
At that smile, Jonathan couldn’t just remain in his seat and smile at her from across the room. He got up, rushed to her side - she stood up at the same moment, as if she would have run to him had he not executed the impulse first - and put his arms around her, holding her as close to him as he possibly could. “I was so worried about you…” she whispered, quietly enough that only he could hear.
“I’m fine. Are you?” he was referencing the bruise on her face, and she knew that.
“Yes…yes, I am,” she tried to laugh, but it didn’t come out sounding like one, not quite. “I don’t know if either of us will be for very much longer, but I’m fine now.”
There was desperation in Jonathan’s voice, he knew that, and he knew also that it worried her, but he couldn’t have hidden it from her, not then, “We’ll be all right, Mina, I’m sure we will.” Because his words lacked conviction, Jonathan kissed her gently, hoping that such a gesture would more convincing, but, instead, it merely prompted the guards to take more notice of them.
“Both of you, back to your seats, now!”
Jonathan moved away from Mina slightly, but kept holding onto her hand, and she onto his. “I will not. She is my wife, and I will not allow you to separate me from her.”
There was a moment when Jonathan wasn’t sure what the guard would say to that, but any hopes Jonathan might have had of sympathy from him were quickly lost. “That’s direct disobedience. An hour in the stocks for that, both of you.”
Mina reacted to that with a brief wince, but nothing more. Jonathan, however, was more stunned, and Mina ended up being the first one to speak. “The stocks are a punishment that was officially abolished more than twenty years ago. You cannot use them on us.”
The guard laughed. “All that doesn’t apply when you’re in prison, darling. Now, come on, we might as well get this over with.” He paused and looked closely at Mina for a second. “And aren’t you the one admitted yesterday? You’re down for a whipping also.”
That news startled Jonathan, but, despite his horror at this entire situation, he realized that this whipping Mina was supposed to undergo must have something to with the bruises on her face. He didn’t have a chance to ask her about it, though, because they were both soon being dragged out of the room, and most of the other prisoners were hurrying to follow, like London crowds at the time of a hanging.
~
File of Lord Arthur Godalming upon his admission to prison (before the time of his trial)
Initial results of the physical examination of April fourth, 1895: Lord Godalming is possessed of a small mole near his left ear. He displayed no signs of any contagious illness or parasites upon his person.
Lord Godalming was, upon the time of his admission to this institution, mainly cooperative, though he asked many questions as though doubting our proper knowledge of the procedures we were performing.
Number Assigned: This process has been delayed until after his trial and probable conviction.
(Note: Because of the serious nature of the crimes Lord Godalming has been accused of and the convincing nature of the evidence presented so far, he and those others accused of being involved in said crimes are to be treated in the same manner as those who have already been convicted of their crimes, up until such a time in which they shall be able to clear their names of all charges.)
Everything happened so fast, that Arthur wasn’t exactly sure what was going on. Mina and Jonathan were clearly about to be punished for something, and it was clearly something that they should not be punished for, but he didn’t quite understand what was gong to happen to them, or what exactly they had done - especially Mina, who seemed to have done something yesterday that was causing her to be punished even more. Arthur longed to be alone with Jack, Mina and Jonathan, to be able to discuss all this with them, to be able to finally find out what had happened to each of them, and what they all intended to do about it all.
He also longed, at that moment, to confront the guards, to stop Mina and Jonathan from being unjustly punished after everything that they had suffered already. Somehow, it felt to him as though, if he could stop their unjust punishment at that moment, he would be capable of stopping the unjust punishment that all of this was already to the four of them. If he could have enough courage to save Mina and Jonathan from even something so much smaller than all their greater troubles (some of which he refused to even think about, because, if he did, he would never dare to think that they could win again), than he would have enough courage to save them all. At that moment, the most courageous thing he had ever done was to drive a stake through his beloved fiancée’s heart, and even then, he had acted to late to save her completely, and he could have done nothing but lose her. He was resolved not to let the same happen again to the remainder of those he cared about.
But at that moment, he was incapable of doing anything but following with the rest of the crowd (and Jack at his side, always there, probably already figuring out some solution to this that Arthur hadn’t even considered) and feeling horrified.
The area where Mina and Jonathan were apparently going to be punished was a courtyard of sorts. Somehow, however, the fact that one could see the sky there didn’t make it any more comforting a place to be. One was still surrounded by the grey stone of the prison, and beneath one’s feet was a type of mud that seemed completely unlike the sort of mud from which any plants could ever grow. There was what Arthur vaguely recognized as the stocks several feet away, looking almost ominous to him. The whole area seemed even more unwelcome when Arthur saw Mina being dragged forward to the middle of the courtyard, and heard Jonathan’s voice calling out, “Let go of her!”
Mina mouthed something to Jonathan that Arthur couldn’t make out, something loving, the sort of thing a wife would always say to her husband to comfort him (the sort of thing Arthur wouldn’t ever hear from Lucy’s lips). Arthur, glancing to where Jonathan was being held back, near to where Mina had been brought, saw him calm a bit and nod to Mina in response to whatever it was she had said.
And then it began, in small little movements that seemed to be commonplace to those who accomplished them, but were horrifying to Arthur. One of the guards (there were many there in the courtyard, and they spoke to one another quietly, in hushed tones; those were conversations of which Arthur did not desire to know the contents) took a hold of one of Mina’s wrists in each of his hands and lifted her arms above her head at full tension. Another handed a whip to a third and then moved to stand next to Mina, lifting her skirt up - Arthur thought he heard Jonathan call something out then, but he hardly noticed, so lost in his own horror - which bared her back completely to the dozens of convicts standing there watching, as well as revealing a single petticoat, trimmed in yellowing lace, over red and blue striped stockings. This display caused many of the convicts to jeer and call out lewd comments, which made Arthur blush with shame for Mina’s sake. But they quieted as the third guard began to lift the whip he had been handed.
It was then that Arthur should have said something, done something. But as the whip came down with a crack on Mina’s bare back, Arthur was left trembling, relieved that he couldn’t see Mina’s face then, despite the fact that it surely must be as stoic as her perfectly straight back was, and feeling completely and totally disgusted with himself.
For a time it continued like that, with Mina showing no sign of pain or discomfort, at least from the back. Until about the eighth lash, when the guard who was holding Mina’s hands above her head adjusted his grip a bit, so that he was holding both her hands with one of his, his hand crushing both of hers together.
Arthur realized the significance of the change immediately, and he knew that Jack did as well, because the look he exchanged with Arthur clearly showed that. But, of course, how could either of them forget that terrible night? Mina, kneeling on the bed in front of the Count with her mouth pressed to his chest, both her hands held together by one of his so tightly that his grip crushed them…
The very same memory must have been coming back to Mina as well, because immediately upon the change her body began to visibly tremble, the shudders growing more and more violent until she lowered her head and retched, the contents of her stomach coming out onto the mud beneath her feet.
Arthur began to wonder at that, the consideration coming in the back of his mind beyond the horror and sympathy, whether, after that night, Mina had thrown up many times, her body instinctively rejecting the substance that had been before forced into it, but unable to do so, because the Count’s blood had already seemed into her own, infiltrating her blood stream and starting to destroy her.
She probably had. At the time he had been talking to Jack and Quincey and Professor Van Helsing, though the other three had done most of the talking. He had felt as useless then as he did in the prison, adding nothing to the Professor’s plans, and knowing that he would be unwelcome if he went to the Harker bedroom to aid Jonathan in attempting to comfort Mina.
As Arthur considered all this, the blows continued falling upon Mina’s back, unfaltering despite her sudden reaction, until finally, after what might as well have been an eternity, they were over and she was unceremoniously dropped into the mud, her face falling into her own vomit.
There was complete and total silence then for a few seconds. No one in the crowd said a word, and Jonathan and Jack seemed frozen with horror, which was how Arthur felt. Mina didn’t even move. When the silence was broken, it was by one of the guards who said, seeming used to such sights as that of a woman lying in her own vomit while her back was covered with blood, “Now for the stocks. Get them in there, and then we’ll leave them until it’s time for them both to be let out. Oh, yes, and you can leave the other two involved in their case here with them. It seems…appropriate.”
It was back to awfully systematic movement then, as Mina was hauled to her feet and her shoes and stocking stripped from her, and Jonathan’s shoes were pulled from his feet. Then, just as awfully, they were both brought, completely unresisting, to the stocks that Arthur had noticed earlier, and their feet locked in. Arthur saw them grasp hands briefly and then, realizing something or other, let go.
It was not long before everyone was gone, leaving the four of them alone together, just as Arthur had wished they could be. But, somehow, it seemed that none of them could find anything to say.
Chapter Three