13
Lonely birdcalls, the passage of a patch of sunlight on his wall, the rat-ta-tat of drumrolls from the parade ground. Duncan’s world had become an incomplete mosaic of sound and light. Blessedly, the cells for the most desperate of prisoners had been built into the top floor of the tallest building, owing, an escorting guard had explained, to an embarrassing escape by a tunneling prisoner years earlier. This meant that through the small window seven feet above the floor a misshapen rectangle of sunlight traveled across the cell wall during the morning hours. That was when Duncan sat below the window, listening to the birdsong coming from the nearby orchard and woods. The drums rolled for morning and evening muster, and he learned to expect food after each, a bowl of glutinous porridge
