The Siege of Rodrigo.
Historical fiction. < Second Draft. >
Second Draft.
I was such a timid boy, scared of his own shadow when I first arrived at the Monastery Orphanage. The slightest unknown noise would make the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. A raised voice would make me shutter to a corner, like a feral cat. Eyes to any route of egress.
It was Father Rodrigo who saved me as a child. Another lost child found along the road to salvation.
And when all hope seemed to be lost… it was Father Rodrigo who picked me up from the rubble. He carried me back up to the wall, and he propped my broken body against the parapet.
I could see for the first time our immense adversary, and the innumerable number of enemy huddled between smoking camps in the dusk. Below me the grounds were littered with bodies. I felt in that moment as if I had died, and found myself in hell. If not for Father Rodrigo, who came to my aid once more.
The Cannons must’ve stopped sometime in the evening I supposed. The morning was cold and Father Rodrigo was happy to find me alive. And I happy as well to be pulled from the rubble. Bruised, deafened and battered, but living none the less.
And for me on that morning the Earth awoke anew in silence. And on this day the peering light gave way to the sight of the vultures, and the dogs with the rising sun, for the carrion was plentiful. I wished the sun to go back down. A horrible host to witness by anyone with eyes to see. I had wished to be blind.
The murmuring cry’s of wounded trapped beyond the walls, that i could not hear. As dogs feasted upon their limbs and open wounds. Powerless to even give them the respite of death. I could not hear their weeping, I could only see gaping mouths and widened eyes aghast in pain.
Father Rodrigo shoved a broken pike under my arm as he moved away along the wall, tending to the wounded. He did not speak, he simply smiled and nodded. As the Father went back down to the courtyard It was then that I saw the innards of our devastation.
Smashed brick strewn about, tripping up those removing the dead. My eyes glazed over the calamity before us and as my scanning gaze came to focus… the body of a small child was revealed to me. I could feel the sadness welling up… but I choked it down. I regained my continence, it being painful just to breath as I was in such a pitiful state.
The boy was an innocent, I knew him. An orphan like myself. Peter… found along the path to Jerusalem, his pilgrim parents murdered and robbed on their way to the Holy Land. He was found wandering a field in France. A Polish boy.
