I waited a moment, and my eyes adjusted enough to make out a figure huddled in the far corner.

I said something to the prisoner. Words that must have been comforting in both their sound and their meaning, but I wasn’t really aware of either. He started to sob, which silenced me. I felt a gap between us, then, yawning up like a chasm. This boy, no more than sixteen years old with a life yet to be lived, and I… a man with little left. But what separated us was more than simple time, the chasm was a depth of suffering. The boy had suffered more than I ever could. I nearly turned and fled.

Instead, I felt compelled to step further into the room. The light from the corridor gave the young man shape: short hair, cut back like most prisoners; a thin, prominent nose; and holes where there should have been eyes.

He trembled violently.

Crouching, I cleared my throat and said, ‘Hello?’

He flinched and tried to bury himself further into the corner of the room, but St Leonars’ stone offered only resistance.

‘He’s become mute,’ the warden said.

I glanced back to see her haloed in candlelight.

‘Tongue’s still there, mind.’

In another situation I may have been shocked by her casual delivery, but I had little shock left. I turned back to the boy, who wore a rough-looking smock but no shoes. He smelled faintly of lavender. ‘Can you hear me? Do you understand?’

He continued his struggle to put a distance between us. I waited for him to calm himself, but eventually it became obvious I would only be a continuous source of agitation. I stood to leave.

‘Inside the sockets,’ the warden said. ‘You need to… You should see.’

I could tell nothing from the warden’s expression, except that there was no room for argument. Tentatively, I stepped towards the boy as I would a dangerous animal; I felt shame at that thought, but it was there nonetheless. He was shaking his head with such force, his scalp ground against the stone wall and filled the cell with the smell of blood.

There was something else where there should have been eyes, just as the warden had said. A white pip lurking in each of those pools of darkness. Drawing closer, I took them to be bone – perhaps the boy had shattered a bone in his face and that had ruined his eyes. With such poor light it was hard to be certain and I found myself inexplicably reaching out a finger. My hand, my whole arm shook. As if sensing my intent and giving what permission he could, the boy stilled.

I touched the hard white pip, feeling a slight serrated edge. I withdrew quickly, hurried out of the room, and slammed the cell door shut.

‘Teeth?’ I said, incredulous, but the warden was nodding before I even finished.

‘Likely the cause of it; the pain becoming too much.’

‘I’m sorry?’ I said.