He hadn't expected to feel better. No sense of release or freedom, no rush of power. Which is good, because he gets none of these things. All he has is one more round of blood on his hands, plus one conversation that refuses, absolutely refuses to die.
"You have a choice."
Choice. What choice? To kill another father or to walk out and probably never be spoken to again? What kind of choice was that?
"You can go."
Go where? To do what? Wait for more lists, more little scraps of paper with more instructions scrawled on them? Go out and slave for another thirty-five years until perhaps he was deemed worthy?
"What about you?"
What about him? What about his years of service? What about his loyalty? What about everything he had sacrificed, and for what, for nothing? For a callous dismissal?
The last question is the one that sticks. Over, and over, and over again it loops in his head, and each time he responds as if he has another chance.
"What about you?"
What did Jacob want from him? What were the secret words he should have spoken or actions he should have performed to ingratiate himself, to prove himself, to champion himself? What more could he have done? What did Jacob want?
"What about you?"
What did he want? What did anybody want? Power, and freedom, and release from what was holding them back. Wasn't that what everybody wanted?
"What about you?"
He didn't have power. In fact, he came out from under the statue with less power than he had going in, facing the crowd as the one who had killed their leader, but not the one who supplanted him. That honor went to John Locke.
No freedom. For the first time in his whole life, he is living out from under every authority, every expectation—except the expectation that he is lying, that he is grasping, that he is entirely self-serving, that he is not a man to be trusted. He had forged those chains over a lifetime.
No release. He watched Jacob die, but he feels just as bound as ever, just as abandoned. Strange the two feelings should coexist.
"What about you?"
Why does his heart break every time he hears the question? Why is he compelled to wash his hands so often?
One night, dreaming the conversation yet again, for the first time he sees not contempt in Jacob's eyes but compassionate, sorrowful resignation, and the final question changes: "Was it for me you did those things, Benjamin?"
Why does he wake up sobbing?