‘Argh, argh,’ I said, dutifully. ‘Please, no, that hurts so much.’
His eyes went wide. They flicked up to stare at me - then he stabbed again!
‘Aaaargh,’ I informed him courteously. ‘Cruel man! Have you no mercy! Cease this agony! I beg of you, I cannot stand it any longer, et cetera et cetera blah blah.’
And again!
‘No!’ I yawned. ‘You are the most merciless man alive. You are the devil himself. How can you be so cruel as to inflict this torture on a poor, innocent young man who has done nothing to you? Can’t you see how I am writhing in pain? Argh, Argh, Argh, and so on, and so on.’
And again! And again!
‘Please! Have mercy on me! You are destroying my manhood! How will I ever be able to look another man in the eye after this, deedle-de-dum de-dum de-dum.’
Stab! Stab! Stab!
‘And you’re also destroying my trousers, by the way. Have you any idea how expensive a pair of trousers is in London nowadays? Especially with a skinflint for an employer?’
‘Shut up! Shut up, shut up!’ The torturer was sweating by now, madly stabbing away at the considerable bulge at the juncture of my thighs. At the time, I had thought I’d been a bit generous for polite society, but now it was proving enormously beneficial. Goes to show that what they say isn’t true after all - size does matter.
‘If you go on like that,’ I politely informed my captor, ‘there won’t be enough for mincemeat left down there. Don’t you want to take a little break? Maybe sharpen your knife?’
‘I said shut up!’
‘All right, all right! It was only a suggestion. No need to get your knickers in a twist. You’re doing a good enough job with mine already.’
The only response to this was a garbled string of curses in Portuguese which, despite my best efforts, I was unable to decipher.
‘Could you repeat that with translation, please?’ I enquired. ‘Some of those sounded really interesting! I’d love to share them with my friends at home. They could come in really handy at tea parties.’
‘Keep your mouth shut, you bastard son of a bitch!’
‘Ah, I see. And what was the corresponding Portuguese, again?’
In answer, the dagger was slammed so hard in between my legs that it dug right through the trousers and buried itself in the wood of the chair underneath. With another Portuguese profanity, the fabulous Fidel tugged at his torture instrument of choice, and it was suddenly yanked from the chair, flying from his hand and sailing through the air, to fall to the stone floor a few feet away. Fidel staggered back, staring at the juncture of my thighs. It wasn’t the first time in my life that a man was staring at this particular point of my anatomy, but usually they did it a bit more discreetly and with less abject horror on their faces.
‘What are you?’ Fidel whispered, his voice ragged.
I gave him back a winning smile. ‘Didn’t you know? I’m unique. Like a snowflake.’
The poor torturer stumbled back a few more steps. ‘W-what I do now? Heavens, what I do now?’
I nodded at the door. ‘Your boss went that way. Why don’t you go and ask him?’
Fidel looked right, then left, as if desperately looking for a solution - then turned, and ran out of the dungeon, conveniently leaving the door open, and the knife lying on the floor. Too bad he hadn’t also untied me before he ran.
‘Oh well.’ I sighed, and began to rock in my chair, gently but steadily pushing it towards the gleaming blade on the ground. ‘You’re an independent girl, Lilly! You can’t expect men to do everything for you.’
I was rather fortunate that there were no guards in the vicinity. They would probably have heard the crash of the overturning chair, not to mention the barrage of English and - I’m proud to say - Spanish and Portuguese curses that followed soon after. A minute or two later and only a few bruises richer, I hurried out of my cell, brushing the last cut remnants of rope and splinters of wood off my dirty tailcoat.
All right. What now?
I looked around. From down the corridor, on my left, I could hear low voices mumbling and laughing in Portuguese. Light shimmered on that side, whereas in the other direction, there was only darkness. Darkness and more dungeon cells.
I would have to get past the guards. And to get past the guards, it would be very helpful to have someone along who actually knew how to load and fire a gun - like Karim, or Mr Ambrose. Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t planning on becoming a damsel in distress. But I was definitely a damsel under stress. I mean, I was trying to escape from a military prison, for heaven’s sake! Nobody, not even my inner feminist, could expect me to do that without help. Besides, if I left Mr Ambrose behind to rot in a dungeon, who would sign my next pay cheque? And if I left Karim behind to rot in a dungeon, I would never get the opportunity to remind him sweetly every day that I had saved his butt, his beard and everything in between.
I turned and hurried off down the corridor, deeper into the bowels of the prison. There were little barred windows set into every cell door, probably to allow the wardens to leer at the prisoners inside, or to spit at them if they were in a really good mood. Ducking low, I glanced in through each and every opening. In the first few cells, there only were a few scraggly individuals who looked about as similar to Mr Ambrose as a grizzly bear to a statue of King Richard the Lionheart. Then there came one with a decorous pile of bones. And then-
‘Ah! There you are!’