The Lady Jailer of Blackthorn – Part 1: Reception

Blackthorn Gaol had been shut for fifty years and now hired itself out for film crews and, rarely, for something quieter. The heavy doors, the iron galleries and the long echoing stairwells were all still in place. Only the locks had been replaced with soft hotel keycards and, on the cells, plain latches that opened from inside.

Imelda stood at the reception desk under a single caged bulb with a ledger open in front of her. She was forty-seven, a prison education officer by day, tall and level-eyed, with a voice that had once quietened a hall of two hundred men. In the ledger, written in her own copperplate, were two names.

Silas Penrose, 42.

Gideon Marsh, 44.

They were friends of twenty years, a schoolteacher and a surveyor, who had told her at a barbecue, after three glasses of wine, that they had both always secretly wanted to be received, searched and sent to a cell by a woman who did not care about excuses. She had been very careful. She had spoken to each of them separately, three times. They had agreed on everything in advance.

The two men stood in front of the desk now, side by side in their own clothes, holding their bags, each trying not to look at the other.

"Before we begin," said Imelda, in her own voice, "the rules. I will read them aloud and you will answer."

She laid the Regulations on the desk. They were typed, two pages, signed by all three. No marks. Nothing painful beyond what each had written down. No real humiliation, no photographs, no one else in the building. The cells had latches on the inside. Each man had a different word, so that either could end his own part without ending the other's. Silas's word was Gallery. Gideon's was Skylight. Hers, if she needed to stop, was Daylight.

"Say your words."

"Gallery," said Silas.

"Skylight," said Gideon.

"If either of you says it, the game stops for that man. I take off the cap, I sit with him, and we make tea. No one will think less of you."

"Yes, Jailer."

"Not yet." She took a long grey coat from the hook behind the desk and drew it on. A bunch of iron keys hung from the belt. When she turned back to them, she was somebody else, flat-faced, cool, and very patient. "Prisoners. Place your bags on the desk. Empty your pockets. Face the wall."

They obeyed. The sound of the bulb was the only noise in the hall. Behind them, she opened the ledger, dipped a pen, and began to write.

"Silas Penrose. Gideon Marsh. You have been committed to this gaol for insubordination. You will be addressed by surname. You will walk where you are told. You will speak when you are spoken to." She stopped writing. "Do you understand the regime?"

"Yes, Jailer."

"Are you content, Penrose?"

"Content, Jailer."

"Are you content, Marsh?"

"Content, Jailer."

"Good." The keys jingled. "Walk."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Lights Out.