A Cage of Bones

by Jeffrey Round

  “I’m out of here tomorrow regardless.” Joshua hesitated. “I’d chance it myself if I thought I could get away with it.”

  The wind lifted Warden’s hair. His will seemed petrified. “I’d do anything for you,” he’d said once. He nodded slowly, listening as Joshua outlined what to do, which questions to be prepared to answer. He handed Warden a passport with his face and someone else’s name on it.

  Warden looked down at the document in his hands, then back up at Joshua. His close-cropped hair and his eyes set with conviction suggested a child in the role of militaristic saint. Saint Joshua.

  Warden slipped the passport into his jacket. “Here’s one for Robin Hood,” he said.

  Warden entered the sleepy-looking bank whose interior suggested the need for quiet, rational discussions. He joined the queue. The black-and-white tiles beneath his feet were like squares on a chessboard, one move leading inexorably to another. Joshua had said it would be an easy-going, relaxed branch. No one would pay much attention to him. How could they miss the bonfire blazing at the centre of his hands?

  The line fanned out and headed toward either of two wickets where customers whispered to faces at the open windows like a private confessional for sins of commerce. One by one the line slipped away in front of him. He fought an urge to run through the open door and back outside. But his hands belonged to someone else now, a madman threatening to reach up and strangle him should he turn or flinch.

  The queue shortened until he was at its head. Someone stepped away from the counter and a woman motioned him onward, smiling as if she knew him. He went to the wicket and spread out the contents of the envelope, explaining in an absurdly casual voice what he wanted.

  “This is my body—eat of it,” said a voice in his head.

  There was something odd in the arch of the woman’s eyebrows, the way her eyes avoided his as she gathered up the slender pieces of paper into her hands. Warden thought he heard a catch in her voice as she excused herself, smile still in place, yet with something moving so fast behind it he couldn’t be sure what it was as she turned and went to the desk behind her. There she conferred in dark whispers with another clerk, older and officious-looking, who also seemed not to be looking at him directly.

  The light was suddenly too bright, the room too narrow. He’d forgotten how to breathe. His heart beat murderous and slow. He looked away from the clerks conspiring his destruction and glanced at a clock as if he might have somewhere to go. He was sure they were taking advantage of the moment to look at him openly, before all the others. People seemed to be moving away from him, as though alerted to the possibility that he might be dangerous.

  At that moment, Warden couldn’t have said whether or not he fully understood what he was doing. Perhaps he really didn’t know. Perhaps he didn’t completely understand what he’d undertaken to do for others. For love. And for that reason, it had been a relatively simple act to walk into a bank and attempt a financial transaction on behalf of another party. He felt something like the vestigial remains of a pair of wings torn from a spot just below his shoulder blades.

  Later, in the courtroom, in a voice that rose and fell with histrionic conviction, his lawyer would argue that Warden hadn’t known, hadn’t fully understood the extent of his actions, claiming he was duped by the do-gooder intentions of others and painting a portrait of those people—smarter, stronger, rapacious—who’d seized on his innocence and held a very real power over him. But in the light of what followed, he could never really be sure if that was true.

  He had an urge, as he stood at the wicket, to look over his shoulder across the street. To know whether the face he saw would be one of an almost holy beauty or extraordinary ugliness. Or perhaps just unbearably ordinary. But he didn’t turn, not even when the uniformed man with the faded grey face came and stood very close and led him to an office in the back of the bank.

  29

  The trial that fall was a small sensation taking on, as trials do, a sense of dimension proportionate to the lives of those cast in its lead roles. It took only two weeks, during which a number of witnesses took the stand, including the teller who’d accepted the stolen bonds, as well as several character witnesses testifying on Warden’s behalf. Elizabeth Smart was there as both his employer and reputable English businesswoman. Calvino’s was a conspicuous absence. Warden’s parents, having travelled so far to be there, had to content themselves with sitting and watching the proceedings from the gallery.

  The public came to marvel over the trappings of glamour. Issues of money, celebrity and revolution drew long queues of curiosity seekers. Here was one who’d lived the high life, his face imbued with a strange familiarity as they recalled him on their TV or from daily newspapers and magazines. In apprehending the crime and its perpetrator, they were trying to understand the difference between his life and their own, pressing their faces up against the dirty shop windows of another world.

  Warden was brought before the court for a reading of the charges. There was a hush, followed by a soft stirring as neighbour leaned to neighbour venturing opinions and fourth-hand gossip. A tap of the gavel admonished the restless sway and the proceedings were set in motion.

  The teller was first to testify. She glanced at Warden anxiously from time to time, as though he might attempt to silence her with a private arsenal tucked inside his jacket that had somehow escaped the notice of the courtroom guards. Apart from identifying him as the man who handed her the bonds, she had little to say other than that she’d thought him exceptionally well dressed for the neighbourhood.

  Warden’s lawyer built a case around his client’s infatuation with the seductive ideals of clever revolutionaries who preyed on his naïveté. He hoped to encourage the sympathy of the jury by portraying him as a young man whose judgement had not before that time erred in any way and who had acted impulsively, without fully comprehending the forces unleashed by his actions.

  For his part, the prosecutor tried to make out that the court was dealing with not just one irresponsible act but, rather, a wilful insubordination on the part of a privileged young man. Warden’s desire for notoriety, he claimed, had led him to commit a crime more befitting a Robin Hood in the Middle Ages before the implementation of modern forms of social justice. Warden’s social milieu was one of idle playmates and thrill-seeking jetsetters. It therefore came as no surprise that charges like the one he was facing would eventually befall him. Warden had ignored his social advantages, he claimed, and hid behind his good looks just as he was now playing at being good in order to elicit the sympathy of his jurors and escape what he had coming.

  In the end it made little difference—his reputation was spotless. His past was clean, according to everyone who testified on his behalf. He was seen as a solid youth who had had a momentary lapse of judgement, having fallen into bad company and been seduced by the socialistic aims of helping the underprivileged and fighting against oppression and injustice.

  Before the week was out, the tabloids had given the trial an open debate. The Daily Mirror depicted him with the sheen of a martyr struggling to Golgotha, while The Sun raised the ghost of his celebrity, seeing in his social activism a red herring thrown onto the parade ground of the trial. Both papers carried drawings of the courtroom beside photographs from his career. Public fascination grew along with an unabashed sympathy over the plight of one so handsome.

  His lawyer was largely successful in separating Warden’s idealism from the anti-social actions he’d perpetrated. The public was looking for a hero. All that was needed was a good-looking young face with a spotless reputation to bring out cries of “our lad” and “brave boy” from the voices of morning paper vendors.

  Again, with their noses for sensation, the press latched onto this angle and began declaring him a modern day Robin Hood. One paper went so far as to take an on-the-street reader poll, finding fully eighty-percent polled in sympathy with his aims, although opinion was divided sharply as to the means of carrying them out.


  In the middle of the trial, Lisa phoned. Warden could hear her voice over the wire, a small comfort so far away. She asked how the trial was going and offered words of support. They had little else to say and soon brought the call to an end.

  Later he would remember the faces of those who sat in judgement on him, their boredom or their amusement at the unfolding of his life before their eyes, and mostly their bewilderment to think the same thing could happen to them but for the long grey vista of dullness that separated their lives from his.

  Rebekah was one of the character witnesses. She dressed regally, embodying a sense of aristocratic propriety he’d never seen in her before. Warden’s lawyer took it upon himself to inform the court of her social prominence and her title, which, Warden was surprised to learn, was real. He questioned her about her relationship with his client and the circumstances under which she’d come to know him. Finally, he asked her opinion of him as a person who might be capable of stealing for personal gain.

  “Not possible,” she declared. “He would never hesitate to give you the shirt off his back or anything else you might ask of him, even if it might lead to his detriment, as seems to have been the situation here.”

  When asked why she thought he might have committed the act he was accused of, she replied simply, “Sheer enthusiasm—he wanted to help others not as well off as himself.”

  She began a tale of social atrocities she herself had heard, of violence and segregation and inadequate care centres for orphans in foreign countries. She spoke as though she were making bold sketches on bright paper for the entire courtroom, her voice ringing with a whole history of inflections. His lawyer finally cut her off, thanking her for her opinions. She seemed to Warden more remarkable than ever.

  After the day’s session, a reporter eager to get a statement asked Warden what thoughts he had of home as he was led from the courtroom.

  “I miss it…” he began, feeling a wave of emotion. His eyes searched the crowd for a sign of his parents. “It’s very big and open. There’s a lot of space back home. I wasn’t used to the crowds when I first came here.”

  He recalled his awkward attempt at describing it to Valentino. He’d fooled himself about his country’s true nature, underestimating its worth. Whatever else it might have been, it was lost to him now.

  “And what do you think of England now that we’ve dubbed you our twentieth-century Robin Hood, Mr. Fields?”

  “I think it’s a very witty nation,” he said, as others crowded around him. He felt like he was giving a bad performance in a ridiculous melodrama. “That’s all I have to say.”

  “Good luck to you,” the reporter called as he was led away.

  Warden’s behaviour had been exemplary throughout the trial. Apart from his recent social life, the prosecution found little that was damaging or reprehensible. Even the tabloids were losing interest. The laundry had been washed and the dirt that came out was trivial compared with the events of the real world.

  The following day, the prosecutor unexpectedly called Rebekah back to the stand. She responded politely as seemingly irrelevant material was covered once more. The prosecutor asked her to recall for him her remark that enthusiasm might have led Warden to the consequences of which they were now deciding the outcome. He asked if she thought such enthusiasms might not be obsessive and had she ever had any obsessions herself.

  Yes, she had, in fact—an obsession with shining shoes. “At one point,” she declared, “I owned seventy-two shoe brushes,” covering her flippancy with a coy smile.

  “And no doubt many pairs of exceptionally clean shoes,” he replied with an icy smile. He pondered his next question. “Miss Wentworth, how close would you say you were to the defendant?”

  “Very close.”

  “Intimate?”

  “Not that close.”

  There were titters in the gallery and among the jurors.

  “I believe you said at one point that the defendant, Mr. Fields, would gladly give you the shirt off his back. Do you remember saying this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then would you say you were close enough to share one another’s clothes?”

  “Well, if I had to but I doubt that there’s very much in each other’s wardrobes we might want…” she began, but he cut her off again.

  “Have you ever traded clothes with the defendant?”

  “Of course not,” she said.

  “Then what would you think if a young man like Mr. Fields were suddenly to start wearing women’s clothes, for instance? Would you still call him ‘enthusiastic’ or would that fall under the category of ‘obsessive behaviour?’”

  Rebekah suddenly looked very frightened. “Why—I don’t know.”

  Warden’s lawyer broke in to stop the questioning as being groundless. The prosecutor spoke privately to the judge who overruled the objection. He then asked Rebekah if she knew what a transvestite was. She looked briefly out to the courtroom and saw Warden cover his face with his hand.

  “Yes,” she answered.

  “And what would you think, miss,” he continued, “of a young man who dresses up in women’s clothing?”

  “I would think it amusing,” she snapped, “as I have a sense of humour.”

  Warden’s lawyer leaned over and whispered to him. Without taking his eyes off Rebekah, Warden whispered back. The prosecutor produced a set of photographs and showed them to Rebekah.

  “Would you kindly tell the court what these are, miss?” he requested.

  “They’re advertisements … for Fabiano Jeans.”

  “Very popular advertisements, I’m told. And the young man in these photographs is the defendant, Mr. Fields, is it not?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you seen these photographs before today, miss?”

  “Yes.”

  “And do you know who the other person in these photos might be—this person here, right beside Mr. Fields?”

  Rebekah didn’t answer immediately.

  “Miss?”

  Rebekah looked out across the courtroom.

  “Possibly,” she answered, tight-lipped. “But I had no idea till just now.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “That will be all.”

  She stepped down from the stand, passing by Warden. Her gaze held him, eyes saddened, as though she already felt the pain of what he was about to face.

  The court listened raptly as the devastating evidence was revealed. Warden heard the scandalized reaction over the revelation he knew would haunt him for some time. He saw his mother’s face fold like a crushed flower, his father’s a cold white moon reflecting back everything that came toward it.

  By the time the prosecution was finished, Warden’s reputation as an innocent defender of public interest had been irreparably tarnished. Tabloids once on his side now screamed out the sensational disclosures. Headlines blazed on street corners the next day as the proceedings began. “Robin Hood or Maid Marion?” demanded one. “Transvestite Trial Causes Public Outcry!” proclaimed another while under his photograph the caption read, “World’s most beautiful woman is one of Europe’s leading male models.”

  They dragged up stories of a perverse lifestyle he’d been engaged in at the say-so of ‘witnesses’ swearing to events that never happened, damning him with inaccuracy and lies. He stood accused now for the same looks that once lifted him above the mire. Once again the gallery was full. Spectators were evicted for pushing and shoving. Several times the judge admonished her courtroom to silence while Warden’s lawyer tried to salvage the case he’d watched fall to pieces around him.

  The Fabiano Company immediately pulled the offending ads featuring their once-favoured model, issuing a retraction by company heads denying any knowledge of the actions of either the photographer or the model involved in the advertising campaign. All subsequent ads were cancelled effective immediately. Ironically, sales for the company had never been better.

  Warden talked to Andreo by phone that evening. Oliviero
’s voice trembled, overwhelmed by the event, and sorry he’d ever taken the photographs. He blamed himself for what had happened. Warden was moved, reminding Andreo he wasn’t on trial for the photographs but for a senseless action which he’d clearly admitted his mistake in doing.

  “I smell the world in it—small, mean and empty,” Andreo said. “I have created a terrible destruction that has hurt an innocent. In Italy such things would never happen. Who would have thought something I could do would bring such unhappiness? Put on your best face and brave the world, bello. Goodbye, goodbye.”

  In her summary, the judge stressed a need for acting responsibly and warned of the dangers that might result by taking the law into one’s own hands. What would happen to society, she asked, if every individual did such a thing?

  Ivan leaned to Rebekah, who sat silently awaiting the verdict, and whispered that it would be a far sight better if those who took the law into their own hands were half as responsible as the authorities were irresponsible to the world.

  The judge continued in her calm voice, advocating individual and collective care in the exercise of power, citing a Buddhist proverb that in order to make a better world, each person must better fill his or her own place. “We must not lose the scale of things,” she instructed, “the notion that even the smallest gesture counts, and that every effort is not wasted if directed towards a positive end.”

  They waited as she spoke, restraining their impatience and hoping to glean some hint of his punishment from the morass of words as she strove to isolate the faults she wished to rid society of. At last the entire court seemed to breathe a sigh of relief when she sentenced Warden to a twelve-month term. He’d been let off easily.

  The public and jurors dispersed, some stopping to congratulate Warden and the lawyer who had effected such a miracle, while others left, satisfied by the turn of events that had held their attention for a short time. His mother cried and his father hugged him. Rebekah kissed his hands over and over again.