4127.105 · April 15, 1807 AD
Kindling and Coin
The bread has turned to ash and the gaoler's footsteps have faded. Now there is only William, the silence, and the memories that refuse to leave him be. A mother's flour-dusted hands. A father's quiet pride. A crooked grin on a rain-slicked street and a watch that gleamed like a promise. Some debts are paid in coin. Others are paid in years — and in the names you can no longer speak without shame.
The cell has no clock, but William Jeffries does not need one. Time is measured here in dripping water and shifting light, in the slow crawl of a pale beam across the flagstones. And in memory — relentless, uninvited, sharper than any iron bar.
He sees Butcher Street as though he never left it. The cobbles slick with sea spray, the tang of fish and salt, his mother kneading bread with hands worn raw by other people's laundry. He hears his father's voice, steady as stone: There's no shame in honest work, lad. The shame's in taking what isn't yours. Words that once sounded like simple wisdom now fall like a sentence already passed.
And then the rain comes back. A spring shower on the Portsmouth market, cobblestones gleaming, and a man leaning against a wall with copper hair and a grin that promised easy coin. Jack Hawley. The watch was gold — real gold, not plated — and it sat in William's palm with a weight that had nothing to do with metal. The constable's boots struck the cobbles before the promise had time to cool.
Now the eight o'clock bell is tolling, and the boy from Portsea who once scrambled for kindling at his mother's word is gone. What remains is a man who must walk into a courtroom carrying nothing but the truth — and the question of whether it will be enough.
