She was encouraged from helping the little girl to escape and prayed she had made it back safely to her family. What was her name? Ella something. Their punishment was that the jailors had separated them. She had not seen, or been told, where they had taken her husband. He could be anywhere. Or dead. She forced the thoughts to the back of her mind. 

Her new ‘home’ was a smaller, cramped cell with a smaller, wetter stone slab to sleep on. The room was circular with a hole in the centre of the floor. Surging water coursed below. The rim of the hole was damp and reeked of human waste.

She had a view, of sorts. Directly above the hole was a wide chimney that towered upwards with a small circle of sky at its limit. The occasional cloud drifted by. She had managed to clamber up the rough walls of the stack on the second morning and had squeezed her head between the narrow bars of a grate mortared into the brickwork at the top. The rods would not budge despite her best efforts. All she could see was barren desert stretching for miles in every direction. 

Her bare feet were grubby and covered in scratches from the recent chimney climb. She flexed her fingers and saw that her hands were much the same. Dried blood mixed with dirt was smeared past her emaciated wrists.