Chapter 2: Exodus (4842)
Bishop Thomas Thorman was called down to the burning rooms.
This usually only happened when there was trouble, so that was what he was
expecting when he got there.
The smell of burning meat was everywhere in the temple at
Merric College, but strongest on the floor of the building where the burnt offerings
were burnt and offered. He walked from the butchery tables where the meat came
in, past the altar drenched in ceremonial blood, to the waste bins where the
charred remains were left for later removal and finally where cuts of excess
meat were left for the priests. Over the last year, the rituals had been
streamlined, out of the necessity for speed, more acolytes had been assigned to
the task, more braziers and extractor fans installed. What once had been a
place where parking permits and bus passes had been issued, was now halfway
between an abattoir and a steakhouse. Bishop Thorman preferred the smell of it
to the sight of it, it reminded him of summer barbecues from back before the reditus.
His wife always
complained that the smell of him made her hungry when he came home. There was
nothing that could be done about it though, all clergymen smelled of grilled
meat now.
Thorman
entered the cordoned-off area where the industrial-sized refrigerators stored
the priest-portions, the thick leather curtains pulled aside for him by laymen
and stalked to the far end where there was an altercation in progress.
Shadwell,
the sin-eater, his hand resting on the handle of one of the fridges, was
arguing with an acolyte.
When they
saw him approach, they bowed their heads and mumbled, ‘Your Grace’.
‘What’s
going on?’ he asked. Bishop Thorman was a tall man and towered over both of
them.
‘He’s at it
again, Your Grace,’ said the acolyte, a middle-aged man called Acton, who had
been a councilman before the reditus. In the time before, Acton had been
no more religious than anyone else, going to church, no doubt, for funerals and
weddings only, but was now one of the altar servers, ordained acolytes that
assisted the priests in the running of the temple, specifically in Action’s
case the burning of the offering, one of the most prestigious assignments
available to those of his station.
This was a
council building, or had been before Evermarch had splintered. A tall gothic edifice
built in the 1830s, now consecrated as holy ground and the largest structure of
its kind in the city, the old cathedral having been almost laughably small.
Acton, and many other of the functionaries that inhabited the place had come
with the building.
‘I’m just
here to take what I need, Your Grace,’ retorted Shadwell, the stocky Welshman.
‘Nothing for
you down in the morgue?’ enquired the bishop.
‘Not a
morsel, not a nibble of anything, Your Grace!’ moaned Shadwell. ‘They’re behind
in their deliveries is what I say. I can’t does the vegetarians and the vegans,
as you know Your Grace, if there has been no fruit delivered, in keepings with
the families wishes as you understand. But a bit of bacon, or a little bit of
steak? Where’s the harm? It’s just going in the bin anyways.’
Thorman held
up his hands to stop the scatter-gun rambling of the sin-eater.
‘Now,
Shadwell…’ he began but was interrupted by Acton.
‘He wants to
eat it himself!’ cried the acolyte. ‘He’s lying. He just wants it for himself!’
‘Oh, oh,
oh!’ said Shadwell, almost howling. ‘Of course, I’m going to eat it myself! I’m
a sin-eater aren’t I? I’ve ten down
there I could get sent on their way to their graves right now if I could only
gets me hands on some bacon, or a bit of rib eye, or some chops. They are stacked
up down there, Your Grace, stacked up! It’s a mortal shame, Your Grace, a sin,
to leave them like that, for want of a bit of bacon.’
‘He’ll have
it in between two slices of bread and covered in brown sauce,’ yelled Acton before
Thorman could speak. ‘And take the rest to the pub to sell to his mates. You’re
a rogue, Shadwell, always skulking around in here, on the mooch!’
Irritated at
being interrupted twice by the acolyte Thorman put his hand on the man’s
shoulder. ‘Have as much meat as he desires wrapped up and sent down, Mr Acton.’
Acton looked
like he was going to say something, but then thought better of it.
‘Mr Jones,’ went
on the bishop, addressing the sin-eater. ‘Go back to the chapel. If you have
any further delays in your deliveries then you should raise them with Reverend
Simpson, as you well know. Gentlemen.’
With that
last word he turned and left the altar room, both men bowing and muttering
‘Your Grace’ as he left. Thorman wished all his problems could be resolved so
easily, but he had a feeling that Shadwell was going to cause more trouble in
the future. The sin-eater had been sent by the arch-bishop, wanting to get rid
of him, in all likelihood, just a few months ago. A left-over man, in the wrong
place when it had all happened, but a cunning fellow that when the seals had
been broken had known where the safest place to be was, namely, the church.
Thorman had
no idea where Wales was now.
Later that
day four members of the Committee brought a sinner to Merric College, a man
that had allegedly been working on a Sunday, demanding that he be punished to
the full extent allowed under the rules of the temple.
He had the
man taken down to the cells and sent the four zealots away, thanking them as he
always did, for their vigilance, but secretly, in his inner-most thoughts,
cursing them for the bloodthirsty fools that they were.
He then
returned to his chambers and attempted to a long overdue letter to the
Arch-Bishop in Strake. When he tried to put pen to paper though, his mind
returned to the sour expression on Acton’s face when he had sided with
Shadwell. Acton would see him dead; he was in no doubt of that. The acolyte
would happily light the fire that burnt him, he’d roast Thorman on the altar
itself if he could. The reditus has bought out the best in some people
and the worst in others and it didn’t take much to get yourself killed these
days. Who would have thought it, that when the Lord finally came again, that
the world would turn to…
Thorman
found that he was stuffing the sleave of his vestment into his mouth and biting
down hard on it. He was stifling a scream, or something blasphemous, or who
knew what? He had been doing this a lot lately, but thankfully only when he was
alone.
Nervous and
unbidden as this habit was, he was sure that he was not insane. It was amazing,
he reflected, how clearly, he saw things now. A miracle, he supposed. Before
the reditus he had been a different man. The coming of the lord had
really changed him, and not particularly for the better. As he often thought,
when he had faith, he had been sure of himself. Now there was no need of faith
and he was sure of nothing, least of all himself.
Slowly he
pulled the surprising large amount of damp cloth out of his mouth. He examined
it thoughtfully. He wondered if he would ever make sense of anything ever
again. At least things had settled down a little since this time last year.
Last year he had been in fear of his life.
His life was
safe now, but small. He went from home to the temple, back to home, with nothing
in between. He was a Bishop, but had no real power, deferring almost everything
back to the Arch-Bishop. Before the reditus his life had been small then
too, but in a different way.
He had been crazy, although like all crazy people, of course
he had not realised it at the time. He wasn’t now, it was like he had gone
sane, but the whole world had turned crazy. Turned on its head.
Before the reditus
he had been driven, the power and purity of his faith driving his eldest
son to suicide and his younger son to drugs. Now Mathew, who would have turned
eighteen, was lost to them, perhaps on a splinter of the world so small it had
not been mapped yet, or perhaps was dead, caught up in one of the early
pogroms, or from one of the countless viruses that scourged the world.
He missed
the boys terribly and was eaten up with newfound guilt. He felt guilt over the
death of Luke, his eldest boy. He had felt nothing at the time, or if he had,
it was deeply buried. All that had been in him then had been an unbending
righteousness, the steel rod of his faith more certain to him than anything
else. Compared to his faith everything, his family, his children, himself even,
were phantoms, mere whisps of dust on the air.
He realised
now that it was his unbending zealotry that had driven Luke first away from
their family home and then a year later from life itself. He felt guilt over
the loss of Mathew, and his inability to use his status as a Bishop to help in
any way. He felt constant gnawing guilt about both these things and for what he
had turned his wife into, a twisted reflection of himself, of what he used to
be.
That person,
that version of Thomas Thorman was gone now. Now that God was here (and if he ever
doubted it, he just had to look up at the sky) there was no need for faith anymore.
A year and a half in and a bishop had the same function now as a bricklayer or
a car mechanic. It was a job that needed doing, that was all.
The seventh
seal had been broken, there was no need of faith. The righteous madness that
had once gripped him was gone. If he wanted to see it, he just needed to walk
along the main street of Evermarch. If anyone had thought that the coming of
the Lord was going to simplify things, they were sorely mistaken. With the loss
of faith, religion had lost its goodness, or so Bishop Thorman thought, and
with God as a solid stone fact, like the Sun or Mount Everest, everyone seemed
to be taking turns to persecute everyone else, safe in the knowledge,
supposedly, that if they were doing something wrong, God would step in and stop
them.
‘God forgive
me,’ whispered Thorman as he bit into his sleeve. ‘God forgive me.’
Over the
next few days, encouraged by his favourable encounter with the bishop in the
burning rooms Shadwell had started visiting Thorman after his shift had ended.
It had started with discussions on scripture, something the bishop could hardly
discourage, but soon ranged onto other topics, gossip mainly, but also long rambling
stories of Shadwell’s days before. It was not something that Thorman had
encouraged, but the sin-eater was a law unto himself, like most others of his
vocation, he was not afraid to speak his mind or barge into places he had no
right to be in.
And so it
was not unusual when, a week later, as the evening descended into darkness there
was a knock at the door and the sin-eater came barging in. Bishop Thorman quickly
hid his chewed wet sleeve under his desk.
‘Shadwell. What
is it?’ he asked softly.
‘Home time,
Your Grace,’ smiled the sin-eater as he sat on the edge of the desk.
‘What’s the
plan for Charlie in the cells, Your Grace?’ asked Shadwell.
‘Who?’
‘The man the
muta brought in last week.’
‘You
shouldn’t call them that,’ chided Thomas mildly. ‘I’ll hear his confession.
Write to the Arch-bishop.’
‘Ye’ll not
kill him, surely?’
‘Of course,
I’d rather not Shadwell, but you know what they’re like.’
‘Kill them
all and let God sort them out, Your Grace?’
‘I’ll do
everything in my power to help him, Shadwell,’ said Thorman placing his hands
on the desk, then pulling them back again when he saw the state of his sleeve.
‘Can’t ask
for more than that,’ said the sin-eater as he got up to leave. ‘See you
tomorrow, Your Grace.’
‘Remember to
read the those verses I…’ began Thorman, but by then the other man had gone.
The next
morning Bishop Thorman went to the cell of Charles Jett and heard his
confession. In truth he’d forgotten about this man, and felt rather bad that it
had taken the sin-eater to remind him. Jett looked and smelled like an
alcoholic. He was in his late fifties, fat, bald and dull witted. Easy prey for
the Committee. Thorman had heard a great many confessions since the reditus,
this was not much different from the others.
After he had
confessed his sins and pleaded his case, however uselessly to Thorman, and
Thorman had explained that nothing was up to him at all, but that sentence
would be passed by the arch-bishop and then another half an hour or so of tear
filled begging and wheedling, and once the tears had stopped and there was
nothing, really nothing, else to be said on the subject, Jett’s mind seemed to
free-wheel for a while and not wanting the bishop to leave him alone to his own
deliberations he began a discussion on how the world had…
‘… get into
this mess? I owned a garage, man. I had a house, two cars, I had six people
working for me. The kids had all left home, we were happy though, ken? My wife
was visiting her sister in Canada when it happened. I lost her, the kids, the
garage, everything. I ask ye, where is the sense in any of it?’
‘It was
God’s will.’
‘Aye maybe
but come on. There were no warnings at all. You’re a bishop though, didn’t you guys’
plan for anything like, like… this?’ said the condemned man waving his hands
around in circles to encompass the world.
‘Of course
not,’ admitted Thorman. ‘Do you think the Scottish church spent much time
worrying about the Book of Revelations? We were all raffles and tombolas,
collections for the roof, jam and Jerusalem,’ said Thomas who tended to be less
guarded when talking to people who would most likely be dead within a day or
two.
‘Aren’t you
afraid he’s not listening?’ hissed Jett, leaning in conspiratorially.
‘I’d rather
he did, because quite frankly, I’ve some questions,’ stated Bishop Thorman and
meant it.
‘But it’s
all real, aye, Bishop? All of it?’
‘Apparently
so.’
‘So where
will I go?’
Thorman
didn’t want to answer that question so changed the subject.
‘You never
found your wife?’ he ventured. ‘No word through the DP agencies?’
‘Not a word,
Bishop,’ sighed Jett, lapsing back into tears. ‘They said that that part of
Canada just vanished. Maybe at the bottom of the sea, I don’t know. I gave up
asking. I don’t want to die, Your Grace.’
Thorman had
been through this cycle of self-pity with Jett twice already.
‘You have
nothing to fear, Charles,’ he said standing up and smoothing down his
vestments. ‘We are all in this together now.’
‘Pray for
me, Bishop, will ye? And for my family?’
‘I will do
that Charles, I will do that,’ repeated Thorman as he bowed out of the room. As
he walked away, one of the cell laymen closed and locked the cell door behind
him. The bishop rubbed his eyes as he waited for the lift up to the seventh
floor. He thought about going home early tonight. He had no desire to talk to
the sin-eater today.
***
‘Surely a
bloody husband art thou to me,’ said Bishop Thomas Thorman’s wife as he crossed
the threshold of his house. It was a large six bedroomed sandstone house in
Evermarch’s suburbs. The splintering had placed it close to an area of Delta
slums which had since been removed. Now their west facing upper windows looked
out on recently planted park land that lay on the other side if the Zone.
‘What is
it?’ he grunted at her. He went to the kitchen and started to make himself a
sandwich. As he did so he drank from a large glass of red wine. He had already
deduced there would be no dinner made for him tonight and he was taking matters
into his own hands.
She was
talking about Committee matters, but he wasn’t listening. As always when he got
home his thoughts had turned to trying to figure out how to get himself out of
the mess he was in. He took the cheese sandwich, the glass and the bottle
through to their living room and switched on the TV.
‘Are you
even listening to me?’ she demanded.
He raised
his eyes up to look at her as he bit into the bread. Here she was, five feet
two in her stocking feet, a slim and still attractive woman in her late
forties. You would not think it to look at her, the number of people she had
sent to their death. How he wished she would die. Or someone would kill her.
Someone out for revenge for a relative killed by the Committee, it was not
unheard of.
Besides all
that bloodletting, there was a big drive about circumcision, it had been
building all summer. He had no idea how they came to these decisions, or why
they thought this particular thing was important when balance against
everything else, but there it was.
‘Well?’ she
asked. ‘What’s happening at the temple? What’s going on? Elder Ritchie has had
no answer to his e-mails and he’s coming to me to ask you directly.’
‘Ask me
what?’
‘What I’ve
just been talking about for the last half hour! About what the church is going
to do about the uncircumcised. You can’t expect the Committee to handle
everything.’
‘It’s not up
to me, it’s up to Arch-bishop Sinclair. You know I have no power over these
things.’
She grimaced
at him and shouted, ‘then what bloody use are you?’ before turning on her heals
and leaving him alone in the large room.
‘None at
all,’ he muttered to himself and glugged down half a glass of wine in one go.
There was a
leaflet from the Committee on the table beside the sofa. He picked it up and
read the front page. “The Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the
Prevention of Vice” it was titled, then the subheading read “If you live with
another as man and wife but are not married – it is a sin!”
There was a
picture of a man and a woman hugging and kissing together while the man rested
his back against a door, as if holding it shut.
It looked like they were starting another campaign, going
after unmarried couples. As bad as it is now, he realised, as bad as it had
been in the past, it’s going to get much worse. They were regularly stoning
people now; they had been stoning people for working on Sundays for a while now.
People were terrified to leave their houses, and it was only a matter of time
before the Committee were in there too, rooting out the sins that went on
behind closed doors.
He poured
another glass of wine and watched the news. More plagues in Egypt. As the
country had suffered in the bible, it suffered now. There was a no-fly zone,
enforced by angels, or so it was reported. He didn’t know what to believe in
the news these days, there was so much of it that was fake it was hardly worth
watching.
The reporter
went back to local news and regretted to inform the viewers that still up to
fifty percent of men in the Delta area were still uncircumcised. He interviewed
a Committee spokesperson that chastised all those that had not gone to a clinic
to have it done yet and threatened them with hellfire if they did not. He
switched off the TV, he had seen this all before.
His wife was
in the kitchen, talking to another Committee member on the phone. She’d be
there all night. Thorman drunk himself into a stupor, then went to bed.
***
The next
day, Shadwell came to talk to Bishop Thorman once more. His recent reading of
the first chapters of the bible, for the first time suspected the bishop, were
leading him into the dangerous territory of near blasphemy.
‘I mean,’
rumbled on the portly Welshman, ‘I’m maybe being picky here right, but why did
Moses and God wait until everyone was thirsty and moaning about it until they
actually did something? I mean, this was what God wanted after all aye? March six
hundred thousand people into the desert. Didn't he realise they'd get thirsty?
Very poor organisational skills and he doesn't even apologise for it, instead
makes a big show of how great he is by providing them magic food and water and
infantilising them even more.’
‘For God’s
sake, Shadwell,’ hissed Bishop Thorman.
‘I mean,’
carried on the sin-eater regardless, ‘You can organise food and water for
people without magic if you think ahead enough. Those poor buggers marching
around in the desert for forty years, continually being told off and
continually acting up. Did I tell ye I had four brothers? It was just like that
with my da. He never got tired of thrashing us!’
‘Please be
quiet, Mr Jones!’ demanded Thorman.
‘Sorry, Your
Grace,’ replied Shadwell.
Bishop
Thorman looked down at his desk, he could never finish anything. All of his
work lay undone. He had had a secretary at some point, but they had
mysteriously disappeared, probably they lay dead out in the Delta somewhere,
assassinated by a muta death squad. The Arch-bishop had not seen fit to
assign him another one. He let it all pile up. If someone really wanted him,
they either had to call him or come to see him at the temple. Then there was
Charles Jett to deal with, languishing down in the cells, wondering if today
would be his last. He really needed to talk to the Arch-bishop at some point
today. He started shuffling through his papers, looking for something that had
happened last year that was tickling his memory.
Shadwell was
not quiet for long. ‘But God speaks to you right?’
‘Yes, of
course,’ lied the bishop. It was a lie he told so often he no longer noticed he
was doing it.
‘I wish he’d
talk to me,’ sighed Shadwell. ‘And explain it all to me. I can’t believe… you
know, back when things were normal, you have your life, and it’s under control,
more or less, but then... This must have been what World War Two felt like to
our grandparents, on an even larger scale. An incomprehensible upheaval.
Everything changing. What were you before all this?’
‘I was still
a bishop.’
‘I was a
singer,’ a fact that Bishop Thorman was very well aware of since Shadwell had
told him many times. ‘Who would have thought it eh? My family had a sin eater
in it from two hundred years ago, or so my grannie told me. It was crusts of
bread and ale back in those days of course…’
Thorman
sighed, put down the papers he was trying to read and looked up at Shadwell.
‘Sorry Your
Grace,’ said the porty Welshman. ‘I’d better leave you too it. Oh, here’s one
though, since we’re on the subject. I read this one the other night - And it
came to pass, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed: and when he
let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses’ hands were heavy; and they took
a stone, and put it under him, and he sat thereon; and Aaron and Hur stayed up
his hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the other side; and his
hands were steady until the going down of the sun.’
‘That’s very
impressive,’ admitted the Bishop. ‘To quote Isiah so perfectly from memory.’
‘Aye, but
what’s it all about?’ asked Shadwell. ‘What sort of method of fighting a battle
is that? What, was his hand affecting the battle? What was God playing at? I
mean, on the face of it, it’s farcical!’
‘Shadwell!’
scolded the Bishop, feeling panic and fear well up inside him. ‘Look. I’ve a
lot to do. I’m sure you have a home to go to.’
The sin
eater got up to leave, the bishop’s desk creaked and groaned at the Welshman’s
considerable backside was removed from it.
‘I mean,’
sighed Thorman. ‘It’s obviously good that you read the bible so closely, but
there is no need to question every verse.’
Thorman
waved his hand at Shadwell to leave and shut the door behind him. The bishop
then had a mild panic attack, stuffing his sleeve into his mouth, biting down
hard to stifle his moaning. I can’t take any more of this, he thought to
himself, but realising he evidently could. I’m going to go insane. But again,
that wasn’t true, the problem was quite the opposite in fact. The problem was
that he had gone sane.
‘Just focus
on small things,’ he muttered to himself as he unspooled his sleeve out of his
mouth. ‘Do one task, then when that’s done, do another. Push everything else
out of your mind.’
Suddenly his
eyes found the bit of paper he had been looking for. He clutched it in both
hands like a drowning man finding a life-raft. Perhaps if he saved Jett, then
that would be enough for now?
***
Thorman resisted the temptation to go and talk to Jett
before he was set free. The man’s gratitude would have been too much for him,
and not a good thing to have talked about amongst his enemies in the temple.
He contented himself with getting it second hand from Shadwell.
He made light of his contribution, telling the sin-eater it had not taken much
to release Jett, when in reality he had stuck his neck out quite a lot in order
to attain it.
Last year
Arch-bishop Sinclair had granted a reprieve to one of his friends, a former
judge that had been accused of the usual sort of thing and was due to be stoned
to death. Sinclair had intervened and the man had walked free, it was
corruption, certainly, considering how many other people the Committee were
persecuting that the Arch-bishop hadn’t been interested in helping. He had used
the New Testament to do it, claiming the rights of Pontius Pilot, although his justification
owed more to The Master and Margaretta than to the bible, not that those
ignoramuses on the Committee would have known that, but anyway, it was decided
that once a year any bishop could free any one condemned man or woman.
At the time
Thorman had filed away this decree, hoping that he would be able to use it,
should the need ever arise, to save someone from the Committee. A Get Out of
Jail Free card in effect. But a year had passed, and the world had changed
a lot since then, Thorman ran out of people that he cared enough about to save
and the decree sat in his desk’s bottom draw, forgotten.
Now he had used
it to rescue Jett, an act he knew in his heart was nothing more than vanity. He
had wanted to show off to Shadwell, and he had wanted to show to his wife that
he wasn’t utterly impotent.
It hadn’t
been easy; it had taken days to wheedle the pardon out of the Arch-Bishop.
‘You realise
if you use it now, it’s gone? For at least a year anyway?’ Sinclair had said.
‘The only
person I have left in my life is my wife,’ Thorman had replied. ‘And she’s
Committee.’
The
Arch-bishop hadn’t even asked, why this man? Why Jett? He hadn’t been
interested enough to find out. Thorman would have struggled to find a sensible
answer, as the truth was that Jett was no one, hardly even worthy of salvation
at all. Just a man who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and had
ended up in a cell, just like countless thousands everywhere where the
Committee
had influence.
Now though,
as he sat at his desk, his sodden sleeve falling limp across his desk, he
wondered why this one act of mercy didn’t make him feel any better. Before, it
had felt like Jett’s salvation would somehow hasten his own, but in the end he
was left with the feeling that he had made a terrible mistake.
