Part II: Discovered
Aidan woke to the sound of a grandfather clock chiming ten. He sat up with a start when he felt Noah’s warm body beside him, still soundly asleep.
Panicked by the late hour, Aidan shook Noah awake. Noah groaned incoherently and blinked the fog of sleep from his eyes.
“Whaisit?” he mumbled, squinting, as his eyes had obviously not yet adjusted to the intensity of the sunlight pouring in through the window.
“It’s ten o’ clock.”
“It is?” Noah said, rather loudly.
“Shh!” Aidan hissed. “You have to go now, and for God’s sake, make sure no one sees you. We’re lucky if they haven’t already.” Aidan gave Noah a quick peck on the lips. “Goodbye.”
“Bye,” said Noah. He made sure the coast was clear before climbing back out Aidan’s bedroom window.
Aidan combed his hair and put on his shoes. He walked out of his bedroom and descended the stairs leading into the hall below. Nerves tugged at the back of his stomach, though he tried his hardest to suppress them. He reached the drawing room and hesitated for a few seconds before determinedly turning the handle.
As the door swung open with a quiet creak, Aidan came face-to-face with a most unpleasant scene. His entire family—mother, father, younger brother, and older sister—were sitting there with a black-haired girl. Her name was Alice; she was the girl her parents had arranged for him to marry just six weeks earlier. All of them wore identical scowls, except Alice, who looked on the verge of tears.
She trudged over to him and slapped him in the face.
“How dare you!” she cried in a shrill voice, her lips quivering. Although he did not love her, Aidan did hate it when Alice got angry. “I come over here to see you, even offer to take your breakfast up to you, and what do I find? You! In the arms of another man! Sleeping in the same bed, no less!”
“I-I can explain,” he spluttered, but he honestly could not.
“Explain at your trial,” his mother said coldly.
“Mother—”
“I am not your mother,” she cut him off. “I am no kin to a sodomite.”
Aidan then felt two large, strong hands squeeze the pressure points on his neck, temporarily immobilizing him. The owner of these hands hauled him to the front door and down into the street, tossing him into the back of a horse-drawn police carriage as though he were some kind of savage beast. Though, that was probably all the man saw him as—an animal.
Aidan landed on hard wood, grazing his elbow on the floor. He looked up to see Noah’s eyes shining purple in the cart’s sparse light.
“I’m so sorry,” Noah gasped, enveloping his lover in a tight embrace. “This is all my fault.”
“No,” Aidan disagreed. “It’s not. We should have expected this to come eventually. It was only a matter of time…”
“Even so—” A soft kiss prevented Noah from completing his sentence.
“This is neither your fault nor mine. Cruel fate takes the blame. We were destined to fall in love, but we have been star-crossed. It’s not our fault we were both born male.”
They stopped at the prison after about two hours. The entire time Noah and Aidan rested in each other’s arms, aware that this was probably the last time they would be able to do so. They did not speak much during their journey, as they had already said all they needed to.
The only thing left unsaid was those three small words both of them wanted so badly to express one final time, but didn’t, for fear of being overheard by the man in the front seat.
When they heard heavy footsteps coming around the carriage, Aidan quickly pulled himself from Noah’s embrace before the two large guards entered. They brusquely put the two young men in handcuffs before dragging them inside.
The jail was a dreary place. Every room had either two or four cells, most of them occupied by filthy men who grabbed at their clothing as they passed. Aidan felt a pang in his chest when he looked into their eyes. They were dull and pleading; they were eyes that had seen much suffering, and wanted desperately to get out. Others stayed huddled in the far corners of their cells, angrily shouting curses and insults at them when they walked by.
The men dragged Aidan and Noah to a room with two empty, adjacent cubicles, separated by only a grid of iron bars. The two guards put them in separate cells.
“This is the room we save especially for your kind,” one of the guards sneered with a heavy Cockney accent. “Both can see the other, talk to him, but can’t touch him.” They both laughed and walked out, their booted footfalls heavy on the stone floor.
“We can’t touch can we?” Noah said skeptically from the next cell, observing the size of the rectangular gaps in the barrier.
Noah was right. They could not hold each other; that was certain, but they could touch if they tried.
“Come here,” said Noah, moving closer to the obstruction. Aidan automatically complied. Noah fit his hand through the opening, though just barely. Aidan placed his hand over Noah’s, and squeezed tight.
“O kiss me through the hole in this vile wall!” Aidan sighed, quoting A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Noah smiled somewhat as Aidan closed his eyes and pressed his face against the cold, hard iron. Noah’s lips brushed Aidan’s, but they were not able to make full contact. The bars were just too thick.
Aidan jumped when he heard a quiet cough from the back of the cell. He peered into the shadows and saw the hunched silhouette of a man. He stood up and staggered into the dusty, gray light streaming in through a high window. His hair, which they guessed was once a beautiful golden color, was streaked with gray, though his face did not show too much age. He had probably been once very handsome, but prison seemed to have drained him of his former good looks.
His eyes glittered powder blue as he looked intently at the boys, causing Aidan to blush furiously.
“Please, continue,” said the man, in a shockingly cheerful voice, though, Aidan did catch an undertone of cynicism. “It is refreshing to see such devotion in this dreadful place.”
“Who are you?” Noah asked, confused.
“A kindred spirit,” was his unsatisfactory reply.
“What’s you’re name?” Noah reworded his question.
“They call me Oliver,” he said. “I am here under the same charges as you, but my love betrayed me. He told the courts that I had forced myself on him. I am scheduled to be hanged tomorrow at noon.”
“That’s horrible,” said Aidan.
“On his part, yes, but I get to die for him just like I had promised. However, he broke his promise to me; he had said that no matter what, we would die together." He shrugged. "I suppose it was my own blind faith that brought me down in the end.”
Why is he telling us all this? Aidan thought.
It seemed that Oliver had read his mind. “I’m telling you this to remind you how lucky you are. You still have each other.”
Noah and Aidan looked into each other’s eyes, silently agreeing to make the best out of the situation. Oliver’s words struck them both with great force, and they did at last realize how fortunate they were to have such strong love.
Aidan and Noah spent that night on the ground by the defective barrier, hand-in-hand. Noah whispered sweet nothings to Aidan through the bars, until the tide of sleep finally overcame them both.
Part III: Trial
“Today’s the day.”
Noah was right. Today was the day. Today was the day Aidan would lose his cellmate, who both he and Noah had grown so fond of since the previous afternoon. It was the day of their trial, the day their fate would be decided once and for all.
The London courthouse was a vast place. It seemed fit for the king and queen themselves. Plush red carpets met beautifully lacquered wood furniture, only to be brightened by the noise of excited conversations all around—women gossiping with their friends, clucking disapprovingly at the “downfall of the York baroncy;” men boasting about being able to “put those young buggers in their places;” small children asking each other, baffled, what on earth was going on.
The only two not speaking were the two accused. They were at a long, wooden table, their hands cuffed behind their backs. They sat in silence, not daring to say a thing that would give the bailiff, who sat there menacingly supervising them, anything he could use to their disadvantage.
The sound of the judge’s gavel on the podium silenced the loud buzz of chatter. The judge opened in prayer, asking God to help him keep justice.
But what kind of God considers this just? Aidan wondered.
The judge finished his prayer and the courtroom was filled with murmured amens.
Straightaway, people were called to the witness stands. First was Alice, telling her account of the previous morning. She broke into tears before she could finish her story, but her point was inevitably made. Next, was Aidan’s mother, who disgustedly told the jury that Noah and her son had been inseparable since Christmas. Even the maid that had once caught them together had her story to tell.
Noah and Aidan’s hands were un-cuffed so that they were able to make the required oath of truth on the Holy Bible. The judge first asked Noah what he had to say for himself.
Aidan thanked God that Noah was being questioned first. Maybe he would be able to get them out of all this. However, Aidan had not expected in the least the words which then came out of his lover’s mouth.
“It was I,” he said. “I take the blame for everything. I forced myself on him the first time. While it is true that I couldn’t help but fall in love with the boy, I should have better controlled my lust.”
“Noah!” Aidan whispered, moving his mouth as little as possible, so only Noah could make out what he was saying. “What are you doing?”
“Shush,” Noah replied, but Aidan would not—could not let Noah do this to himself.
“No!” Aidan half-shouted, so that everyone in the courtroom could hear him. “I won’t let you die for me. If we die, we die together!” Aidan supposed that Oliver’s lover had said something along these lines, but Aidan’s promise was different. He meant every word of it.
Aidan’s eyes burned as tears blurred his vision. He took Noah in his arms and kissed him passionately; the stunned silence was broken by the sounds of gasps from everyone in the courtroom.
After a few seconds, Aidan felt himself being pulled away from Noah to be bound once again.
“And what do you have to say, young Lord York?”
“All I have to say,” he began, tears streaming. “Is that I love this man. I live for him and I will die with him. It is easy to kill a man for loving another man, but you cannot kill the love itself.”
“I take that as a confession,” said the judge, impassively.
“Take it as whatever you like,” Noah suddenly interjected.
And so he did. They were sentenced to another week in prison, and all too slowly came the day of their execution.
However, they did not face their hanging with cowardice. Instead they marched up to the gallows, facing their death and still partaking in the so-called crimes for which they were being punished, mocking their own sentence.
Epilogue
Never once did you tell me a lie.
You wiped away every tear that I cried.
We lived and we loved and we died,
All promises kept, hand-in-hand, side-by-side.
I'll always love you, and you'll always love me.
If we are reborn I want it to be
In an age, in a place where we can be free
To fall in love, a world that will see...
To forbid love is to forbid life in itself.
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tired
tragic