There were only enough mats for about half the prisoners and Alfie didn’t even try to get one. He just stayed where he was, sitting on the cold bare stone floor, his knees hunched up, his shackled ankles sore from the weight of the iron. He put his head into his hands and tried to sleep, but the cold iron of the manacles kept waking him up. The fire began to die down and the moon shone through a tiny window high on the wall. By its light, Alfie could see a large rat emerge from its hole and scuttle along the side of the crumbling wall. It sniffed at the pocket of one of the prisoners who yelled and lashed out with his shackled foot and the frightened rat scaled Alfie’s legs and returned to his hole in the wall. After that Alfie dared not sleep. He stayed awake watching the lice crawl across the stone floor, their hard, shiny backs glinting in the moonlight. What time was it, he wondered. He hoped that half of the night was over, but he guessed from the height of the moon that it was probably only about midnight.
