The Evangeline by D. W. Buffa Page A

himself to sit straight. ‘We were out of food, and there were eleven of us left.We…’
    ‘Eleven?’ asked Roberts. ‘There were fourteen, then Wilson drowned…’
    Trevelyn shrugged. ‘Ten days, two weeks—things happened. You would nod off—crowded like we were—wake up an hour later and someone next to you might be gone. Fell in, or went of their own accord rather than face another day of it, I couldn’t say. After that ship we saw, after what we saw Wilson do, it was like I said: we were all dead, the only question how we wanted to die.’
    Pausing, Trevelyn looked around the courtroom, a hard shrewdness in his hollow eyes.‘It isn’t like going hungry for a few days, knowing at the end of it you’ll be all nice and safe with lots to eat. After a while you start to feel your body start eating itself. We would have died out there, if we hadn’t done what we did. It wasn’t what they did was wrong, but the way they did it. None of it was fair.’
    ‘Before you tell us what you think was or was not fair,’ Roberts interjected, unable to hide a certain irritation,‘tell us first what was done.’
    Trevelyn turned away from the courtroom crowd, scowling at the interruption.
    ‘What was done? I’ll tell you what was done! There were ten of us left—’
    ‘Ten?’ cried Roberts in frustration. ‘You just said there were eleven!’
    ‘Did I call the witness, your Honour?’ asked Darnell, perplexed.‘ Because if I did, when the prosecution is finished with its cross-examination, I should like to have the chance to ask a few questions on redirect.’
    Roberts had lost all patience with the courtroom theatrics of the legendary William Darnell. He waved off the remark. ‘Ten, eleven—which is it?’ he demanded.
    ‘Ten, eleven—how would I know?’ Trevelyn fired back. ‘I was as good as dead; so were all the others.What difference did it make who was left? Another day, maybe two, and we all would have died!’
    Trevelyn’s eyes moved down to the foot that was no longer there. A scornful look passed over his face. ‘Might have been better if we had,’ he muttered under his breath.
    ‘Tell us what was done,’ repeated Roberts with stern insistence.
    Trevelyn raised his eyes, but this time he looked at Roberts without animosity. ‘The boy was dying. There was no mistake about that. He might have lasted a few more days, but that was all. And those few days—none of us would have lasted any longer. That’s when Marlowe decided. That’s when he decided the boy had to die, and that it could not wait. And that’s what Marlowe did. He took his knife—the boy was still alive—and he got behind him, held his hand across his mouth, and tore open his shirt. He plunged the knife straight into his heart. That’s how he killed him.’
    ‘Stabbed him in the heart! Why?’
    ‘Why? I’ll tell you why. So the others—some of the others— could drink the boy’s blood, that’s why! It was nourishment, that’s what Marlowe said. It would keep you alive, that’s what he said. And you had to do it that way, while the heart was still beating, because if you waited, if you waited until it stopped, if you tried to do it after someone was dead, the blood coagulated, dried up. It would be useless then. We had to do it—that’s what Marlowe said.We had to drink it, or we would die.’
    ‘ We had to do it?’ said Roberts sharply. ‘You also…?’
    ‘I was out of my mind with hunger and thirst! But I hated myself for doing it. I swear that’s true!’
    Roberts turned away, perhaps to hide his revulsion. He went to the counsel table and glanced through a file. ‘And then, I take it, the body of the boy was used as well?’ he asked, looking up.
    ‘Yes. The head was removed, and the feet and hands. The same way with all the others.’
    A tremor ran through the courtroom, a great collective sigh of dismay and disapproval. Some of the jurors looked at Marlowe as if he had been revealed as something not