“What be your name?” the clerk demanded.
Trick stared blindly ahead. A long silence stretched.
“What be your name?”
He hung his head, looking too weak to lift it. Too weak to answer.
A speculative murmur rose from the onlookers. The guard prodded Trick with his pike, and Trick stumbled to his knees, taking the prisoners on either side down with him. With a rattle of chains, they hoisted him back up.
“Black Highwayman, what be your name?”
Inside her, Kendra was screaming. He was too ill to defend himself; couldn’t they see it? Couldn’t they wait for another day?
“Black Highwayman,whatbe your name?”
“Can you not see he’s ill?” she called out. A gasp of disapproval rose from the crowd, and the clerk glared in her direction.
Trick’s gaze snapped to meet hers.
Recognition lit his eyes. But from where Kendra stood, they looked black, not golden. Dilated and dark, filled with regret and defeat.
She’d lost her amber highwayman already.
The clerk tried another tack. “Black Highwayman, what do you plead?”
Trick’s gaze was still locked on hers. One hand reached into his pocket, and he slowly drew out a piece of paper, crumpling it in his fist. Something was written upon it in black ink, but much too far away to see.
“The press!” The crowd began to chant. “The press! The press!”
“What is that?” Kendra asked, afraid she didn’t want to know.
“They call itpeine forte et dure,” Ford whispered. “Prisoners who refuse to plead are stripped and laid on their backs, a wooden plank placed upon them and piled with stones.”
“Stones?” It was even worse than she’d imagined. Salty blood flowed into her mouth, and she realized she was chewing the inside of her cheek.
“Yes, stones.” Ford’s fingers tightened around hers. “Three hundred pounds or more. And they add another fifty pounds every half-hour until the man agrees to plead.”
“The press! The press! The press!”
They couldn’t. They couldn’t do that to an ill man. How could this mob demand such a thing? What kind of barbarous riffraff were they?
“The press! The press! The press!”
“Silence!” The clerk’s bellow rattled the very air, and the chant abruptly cut off.
Soft rain pattered in the sudden stillness as he looked to the man in red robes.
“Guilty,” the judge declared, doubtless thinking his decision merciful since the prisoner was too weak to plead.
Ford’s hand squeezed Kendra’s so tightly, it was a wonder her bones didn’t snap. He succeeded in quelling her outcry. But inside, every fiber of her being was howling.
Though Trick had been spared the press, she had no doubt what the sentence would be for a highwayman when she’d seen another man sent to the gallows for stealing a piece of fruit.
“Death by hanging.” The judge banged his gavel. “Tomorrow at noon.”
Trick’s gaze remained on hers, his eyes imploring. His mouth moved, but no words came out. Her fingers worried the amber bracelet, and she could see on his face that he noticed. A single tear welled and rolled down his cheek, making her own tears flow faster.
Suddenly he looked away and started scraping with a fingernail at one of the crusty scabs on his wrist.
