A Fine Line Runs Through Seville
By Hippy Gypsy (with assistance from Avena)
Chapter Four: Introductions and Jail Breaking
The chase did not last long at all, and the four of them found themselves being escorted to a temporary dungeon within the hour. Tulio and Miguel went quietly, not knowing the guards' line of humor, but Isabella and Meg, more acquainted with their captors, struggled against their binds. It finally got to the point where when the captain of the guard approached Isabella, one of the men had to grab her by the hair to make her stop. She obliged, then gave a sheepish smile when the captain shook his head in frustration at her.
"Isabella, back again?"
She smiled sweetly, then sarcastically replied, "What can I say? I love the accommodations."
He rolled his eyes and jabbed his thumb to the first cell of the dungeon. "Throw them in there."
They were thrown into a rather large cell that served double as a storage area for equipment. Piles of wood, pulleys and rope strands stood in the corner, above which stood a small ledge and a barred window. Tulio, Miguel, and Meg moved into the cell and looked around, but Isabella stepped in, crossed her arms, then leaned against the wall next to the dungeon door as if it didn't phase her.
The guard locked the door then stuck his face into the little window where he could see in. "We'll come down to get you when the judge becomes available, and for the love of God you two…" Here he looked directly at Isabella and Meg. "Stay put! And if you don't, make sure I never find you. Got it?"
"Whatever you say," Isabella replied merely looking at the tips of her nails.
"I told ya he likes you," Meg muttered.
"Shut up," Isabella mumbled back.
The guard's face left the window and Isabella stepped up to watch to make sure all the guards outside had left for the moment. About a minute later she heard another door from outside slam and she turned to Meg and said, "Get to it."
Meg instantly ran towards the ledge near the window muttering to herself, "Ya know, you'd think after the past two times we broke out of here they would quit putting us in this cell."
"Check the window?"
"Si."
Tulio and Miguel watched their movements with curiosity and could not fathom what the two women were up to. Did they actually intend to escape from the Spanish guard?
Isabella turned around and watched them a moment, sizing them up before she looked to Miguel. "Hey blondie, little help?"
Miguel shook himself, then replied, "Uh, sure. Of course." He stepped forward, and with quick effort they lifted Meg up onto the ledge.
Once she sat comfortably at the top in front of the barred window, she looked back over and smiled down at Miguel. "Gracias. By the way, since we didn't get a moment for introduction, I'm Meg. And chica right here is Isabella." At her acknowledgment, Isabella gave a half smiled greeting.
"Oh, um, well, I am Miguel, and that man over there is Tulio," Miguel said, obviously intimidated but trying to remain polite.
Meg smiled from her perch. "Nice to meet ya."
Isabella crossed her arms and returned to her spot near the door playing lookout. "Ah yes, Tulio," she jeered to herself. "The man who opened his mouth and stuck his nose into business that wasn't even his."
Tulio snapped out of his silence and took a step towards Isabella. "Excuse me, but if I remember correctly, you were the one who actually stole that man's money and did something illegal this afternoon."
"You, senor, should've shoved off when you could've. What good did all that do?"
"I don't usually pick fights with strangers," Meg said balancing on the ledge and examining the bars of the window, "But seriously, you should've gotten out of there when we told you to."
Tulio turned to look up at her, and possibly retort, but instead his concentration broke. "What in the hell are you doing up there anyways?"
"A little concept that's probably foreign to you. They call it 'jail breaking'."
Miguel's eyes widened and he raised his eyebrows. "Jail break? Out of here?" he asked incredulously.
"Yeah," Meg replied matter-of-factly. "We've done it twice before."
Miguel looked to Isabella. "You have?"
"It's not that hard," she replied.
"Uh ladies," Tulio suddenly interjected. "Those are steel bars. They're not exactly easy to get through."
"Are if you've worked them through once with an exceptionally sharp nail file," Meg replied pulling one of the bars easily from it's place, then tossing it around just for show.
Miguel and Tulio, impressed in spite of themselves, raised their eyebrows in amazement and exchanged a look. Meg turned back to the bars, satisfied at the reaction and continued examining their path of escape. "Hmm…hey Bella, they did replace the center two. We'll have to use that contraption again."
"Go for it," her partner replied from doorway. "It's completely silent out there."
"Gotcha. Okay you two, ready to help?" Meg said looking down at Miguel and Tulio.
"Come again?" Tulio replied carelessly.
"Look macho cabrio," Isabella snapped from her place at the door. "Do you want to get out of here or not?"
Tulio crossed his arms and once again tried to make himself look intimidating. Isabella was not moved in the least by this and instead glared at him, mumbling Spanish swears under her breath.
Isabella won and Tulio turned to Meg and asked, "What do you need?"
Meg smiled and pointed to the pile of rope. "Untangle a good length of that and toss up one end. Then see that really big plank?"
"This one?" Miguel replied pointing to a long two by four.
"No, no," she replied pointing lower. "That really big one under it. Get that over to the ledge. We're gonna use it as a battering ram."
Tulio came back towards the ledge and tossed up a length of rope up to Meg, who instantly began stringing it through a set of pulleys that hung from the stone ceiling of the cave. "Thank you, now if you just get that over here, we'll be in business."
The three of them worked at a fast pace for a few moments, silence falling between them. Isabella stood at the door, watching for guards or anything suspicious, but nothing seemed to show. After about ten minutes, she turned to her partner in crime and asked, "Estimated time of departure?"
"About three minutes," Meg replied making a double knot in one of the lengths of rope. "I just have to-"
SLAM!
Everyone's eyes went wide and their hearts began to pound. Isabella looked out the window, then frantically whispered, "Basta! The captain!"
"What do we do?" Miguel asked worried they had been caught.
Meg expertly somersaulted off the ledge and landed on her feet next to the large wooden beam they were preparing to use as their means of escape. "Let the ropes fall," she said out of the corner of her mouth, "And sit on the beam. Then they won't see."
Isabella stayed put at the door, but the men obeyed Meg. She sat between the two of them and spread her skirt out to cover the log as much as possible. In the dim light of the cell, it was hard to tell what was even happening in the first place. Not a moment later the captain's face appeared in the window of the door.
He raised an eyebrow at them when he peaked in. Meg sat hunched over as if she were waiting sadly for her end to come for the past hour. Isabella once again resumed the role of picking and cleaning her fingernails. The captain tried to find something to say, exchanging a look of curiosity with Isabella, but in the end he merely stated, "The judge will be down in a half hour to speak to you."
"Good to know," Isabella replied.
Simple as that, the captain turned and left the dungeons once again.
Meg was up like a bullet. "Quick! Let's get this up and get out of here!" Miguel instantly lifted her to the top of the ledge and she set right to work on fixing the battering ram.
Tulio had had enough at that point and stepped right up to Isabella, the inevitable fight about to take place. "Look ladies, you're breaking out of prison from the Spanish Guard. I admit that I've gotten caught before, but that was by Captain Cortez on some separate occasion. You want to seriously be on the run from the law, right out of their own cells?"
"Yep," Meg replied ignoring everything else, and not stopping on her work with the ropes.
Isabella however, went wide eyed with wonder and curiosity overtook her. "How in the hell did two saps like you get positions on Cortez's ship? Isn't he the most hot tempered bastard that ever crossed the Atlantic? I highly doubt the two of you could've got posts on his fleet."
Miguel looked up and replied earnestly, "Well, we accidentally stowed away about a year ago."
Isabella cracked a laughed. "Right, and how exactly is it that you're not in Cuba then? Why are you even alive?"
"Well, we hijacked a row boat, then managed to find our way to El Dorado."
Everyone stopped and Tulio did everything he could not to slap himself in the forehead. They had never mentioned El Dorado to anyone in hopes no one thought they were nuts. After all, all they had to prove it were a pair of earrings, which Miguel believed to be buried with the body of Chel. Isabella was completely on the prowl.
"El Dorado eh nino?"
"Yes," Miguel said defensively.
"And I suppose you became filthy stinking rich with the city's gold and met the chief and the mystical priests and all that?"
"Yes, and they even worshipped us as gods."
That was it. Meg and Isabella exchanged a look and not being able to help it, the two of them erupted into mountainous laughter. Tulio glared and Miguel merely blushed and shuffled his feet defeated. Eventually Isabella wiped the tears from her eyes.
"I can't believe it," she said still chuckling. "All this time I thought you two were trying to be brilliant masterminds and outsmart us, and it turns out you're just a couple of gold diggers. I'm losing my touch."
Meg shook her head from her perch and set back to work, tying up a last couple of knots.
Tulio stepped up, pointing his index finger right at Isabella. "Listen to me you little-"
"Look Tulio," she interrupted him. "Forget about it, because in a few minutes it's not going to matter. We're never going to see each other again once we walk through that escape path, and there's nothing you can do to stop that."
"Done!" Meg exclaimed as she hopped down one last time to meet up with the group.
Isabella nodded in note, then turned back to Tulio. "Listen Tulio, Miguel. You two may have a conscience and may want to stay, but I would say that is very stupid because you two didn't even do anything. Meg and I, on the other hand, are going to escape and further our lives outside of Andalucia, away from this village. So you really have two options here. Number one, you can stay behind here, wait for the judge, then inevitably be whipped…ya know if you're into that sort of thing…" Here Isabella and Meg exchanged a look with raised eyebrows. "Or option two, you can follow us out and run for you life. It's completely up to you."
To two woman went towards the makeshift battering ram, and took hold of a couple of the ropes. "As for us, we know our decision."
All at once, Meg and Isabella pulled hard on two of the ropes, and in one smooth mechanical motion, the battering ram swung back a far amount, then with great speed and weight, slammed into the remaining bars of the window, knocking them out and creating a rather convenient path of escape to the streets of Andalucia. Taking hold of another rope, Meg and Isabella tugged, and the battering ram fell, the weight of it pulling at the ropes and lifting the two women gracefully to the ledge above, where they stepped off without a scratch. Tulio had to admit, though he hated it.
They knew what they were doing.
Meg made a beeline through the hole and disappeared from sight. Isabella took her time and strolled, saying to the men below her, "You may want to decide quick. The captain will have heard that."
Tulio and Miguel exchanged a look, then looked back at Isabella. She had stopped right before the hole through the steel bars. She merely smirked then said lowly, "Adios…dos huevos." With that, the two woman had disappeared.
Note from the Author: Hey all, thanks for reading this far and there will be more to come soon. Special thanks to Avena as always for helping me to write this and get all of my ideas sorted out. I think this is my favorite chapter so far, but like I said, more to come. Peace out and please review!
