With the battle over, it’s time for Lord John Grey to return to safety in Besieged Section 13. He learns some more bad news.
This is the calm after the battle. There’s time to catch Lord John Grey up on things that he didn’t learn before the battle. He also needs to figure out how to tell Malcolm Stubbs about Olivia and Charlotte. Let’s take a look at the events of the section.
Breaking down Besieged Section 13
The section starts with Lord John Grey returning to Benedicta’s house in Havana. He has Malcolm and Inocencia with him, and now he needs to figure out how to tell Malcolm about Olivia and Charlotte’s deaths.
Before he can do that, Tom and Rodrigo arrive, happy to find out that John is alive and in one piece. It’s certainly a relief for the two men. As John figures out the words to say, he decides to head to the pantry for some food. This is where Tom and Rodrigo are able to have a quite place to talk with him.
Rodrigo shares that when he was retelling the story of him becoming a zombie, he learned that the Menendez family had been killed. The Menendez family were the slave owner and family of those who owned Cano. Cano had promised Lord John Grey not to kill the family, and it turns out that Cano could do that because he wouldn’t go back to do anything. He had already killed them.
There is no guarantee that this happened, but Tom and John believe it all to be true. The problem for John is that he can’t get justice for the family. Cano is now dead, killed by Lord John Grey. At least he doesn’t get his freedom now.
John has something more important to deal with. He needs to get his family out of Cuba.
Could this section be used in a TV adaptation?
Should Besieged be turned into a TV series, I could definitely see a need for this section. It brings a calm at the end of the story. We can’t end a TV series (or any story, for that matter) in the middle of a battle, unless it’s a purposely done cliffhanger into another episode or another season. That wouldn’t likely be the case with Besieged.
So, we’d need to know that Cano had already sort of gone against his word. He should have told John what had already happened. We also need to see John search for a way to tell Malcolm about Olivia and Charlotte. I think we’d need to see John talk to Tom and Rodrigo about that, though.
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