Desmond Blake (Sir Desmond, not that it made any difference to the rabble that were holding him) paced his tiny cell and waited to die.
He certainly didn’t want to die, but there was no avoiding it this time. As a member of the Royalist forces, captured by a band of Cromwell’s stinking Puritan fanatics, Desmond had as much hope of surviving another day as he did of reaching Heaven—virtually none. His jailers had confiscated his watch and there was no timepiece in his cell, but judging by the moon outside the tiny, barred window, it was probably around midnight—six hours till dawn; six hours until those Roundhead bastards took him from this cell, marched him into the middle of the town square, and either hanged him or—if he was lucky—cut off his head as they’d taken the head of his King some years earlier. If they pressed the local butcher into service as executioner, Desmond could hope his pain would be mercifully brief.
