Chapter 9: 1 Samuel (8028)
The Bridal Shop down on St George Street was boarded up.
Whatever had happened to it, had happened on a night when Samuel had been out
of town. These days he spent most of his time driving slaves from the Stadium
out to their new homes and had not been back to his flat in three days. These
were not his regular duties. He was supposed to be driving priests around
Evermarch, but since his trip to Goldengreens he went out of the city more. He
didn’t care for it.
When he did get a night off, he was spent it in his flat,
occasionally watching the TV, occasionally reading Evermarch newspapers, but
mostly watching the street outside his window, like a nervous cat watching a
sleeping dog. From as high up as he was, he could see a good stretch of St
George Street and the roofs of the houses beyond, and when it wasn’t raining,
he could even see the steeples of the Evermarch churches, shimmering in the
zonal haze.
What kept his interest though was the activity of the muta
down at their ugly brick watchtower. There was a barb-wired barricade blocking
the street to road traffic and the black clad morality police had all but
killed the trade of the shops for fifty yards on either side. They harassed
anyone that came anywhere near them and while they hadn’t carried guns to begin
with, they were armed with thin bamboo canes that they used to issue out
summary beatings to any man or woman who was not following the correct modes of
dress or could not produce satisfactory identification. One warm evening a Land
Rover full of soldiers had drawn up and talked to the muta. Samuel could
not hear what was being said, but he could see the soldiers forcing their way
into the watchtower then taking away some papers and four people the muta
had been detaining. The next morning, there were more muta than before,
and two of them carried pistols on their hips. Something was obviously brewing
in the Delta.
Des had been coming and going a
lot over the last month. She kept her own schedule and was vague about where
she was and what she was doing when she wasn’t around. When her pains hit her,
she would come around to Samuel’s flat and lie on the sofa, groaning and
complaining.
‘It’s just period pains,’ Samuel
would say.
‘How would you know,’ she would
reply. ‘You wait until you feel the agonies. Ask your Bishop why it is fair
that all the women of my family are punished like this when we did nothing
wrong?’
He was beginning to think there
was something in it, because the day that Des turned up at his flat there was
an outbreak of a similar affliction in half the women still at the Stadium.
Des was on the sofa, her feet up
in front of the television, eating his food and drinking his mango juice.
‘I see many women with the same as
you at Angster,’ he admitted as he sat down beside her.
‘I tell you,’ she sighed. ‘When
women can’t hide it, it can be seen. Any drop of blood from the house of
Abimelech in a woman’s veins and her womb be fast closed.’
‘But just sometimes?’ wondered
Samuel. ‘It comes and goes? I can’t make any sense of it, that’s the truth. You
look ok to me now, woman.’
‘I feel better,’ she admitted. ‘I
tell you to ask your friend the bishop. How is it fair? They say when they put
a Canaanite to death, the whole tribe be punished. And no one knows how it
works. No one willing to talk about it.’
‘I don’t talk to the bishop,’ said
Samuel knowing that he was not being entirely truthful. ‘I’m just a driver. I
tell you, now that Angster Stadium is back open, its filling up faster than we
can empty it. People are just going there themselves. Turning their own selves
in. People been living in holes, dey hear you can be fed at the stadium. More
people every day.’
‘Where you bin all night anyway?’
‘I take three up into the hills
today. Thorman must be making a tidy profit outta all these new slaves, seems
like. One thief robbing another thief.’
‘What do you expect?’ said Desdemona.
‘You stupid man. The church all ever so greedy. Some that were best pleased
when slavery come back.’
‘It just…’ mused Sam. ‘They muta
naw take them legally, like the Covenant Code say. Dey just leftovers and backdam
people. They should be allowed to go home.’
‘You planning a rebellion Sam?’ asked Des. ‘Don’t
involve me. Don’t want to end up like Bonnie and Clyde.’
Samuel laughed and quoted a line
from the same song, ‘…I get up in the morning, slaving for bread, sir. So
that every mouth can be fed…’
Des got up from the sofa and went
into the kitchen. ‘You making me hungry…’
She got out a plate onto which she
placed a slice of white bread. She then started sifting through the cupboards
for something to put on it. She found a tin of Lyons Syrup and took it over to
where Samuel was sitting. Enid was now on his lap.
‘You see that, Sam? What do you
see?’
‘What? A tin of syrup?’ asked
Samuel.
‘Look at the logo. It’s a lion,
Sam. A dead lion, surrounded by bees.’
‘So?’
‘Don’t you think it’s a strange
logo to have Sam? A dead lion? Don’t you know what it means?’
‘Why don’t you just tell me
woman?’
‘You should know, it is your
namesake! Well near enough. It a reference to Samson’s riddle. Out of the
eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness.'
Samuel looked at the tin. ‘I never
thought of that before.’
‘Because you don’t think, that’s
what I’m talking about stupid man. You don’t see the things right before your
eyes,’ she said and went back into the kitchen to finish making her snack. ‘You
should read the bible more.’
‘You think I got time for that
woman? I come home from work at midnight, and I have time for decoding the
meaning of syrup tins? It all coming at once. Too much, too much. I got too
many tings in me head right now. Too much all at once.’
‘Try being smart like me. I went
to University of Guyana you know? The good it did me.’
‘I know you did, don’t you tell me
everyday woman?’
The next morning, they had
breakfast together, eating side by side on the sofa as the watched a local news
channel. There was a rather timid knock at the flat’s main door. Samuel and
Desdemona turned to look at each other, both their mouths frozen in mid chew. No
one liked unexpected knocks these days. They both stood up slowly, putting down
their plates. Samuel took a butter knife from the table and holding it behind
his back, went to open the door. He unlocked the door and opened it on the chain.
Peering through the gap he saw a short, sweating bule in a camouflage
patterned shirt. The bule did not seem threatening, in fact he was pale
and thin, holding an oversized parka jacket in his left arm and wearing a pair
of cheap looking black framed glasses half hidden under a mess of unwashed
black hair.
‘Are you Samuel Benjamin?’ asked
the stranger.
‘Who wants to know?’
‘Ahh… my name is Darren Marks. I
think you played a part in getting me released from the Committee? I’m here to
talk to you about the tropospheric dish.’
Samuel slid the chain and opened
the door fully. As he ushered Darren into the room he said, ‘you can come out
Des, I know this man.’
Darren entered the small living
room and sat down in Samuel’s chair once Enid had been gently moved off it. A
cup of tea was offered and accepted from the pot that sat on the low table
beside the sofa.
‘I got home a couple of days ago,’
said Darren. ‘I thought I should come round and say thank you for getting me out
of Bricktown.’
‘I just whispered your name in the
right ear,’ said Samuel modestly.
‘Well, Lisa gave me a call, and
told me it was you. I am very grateful indeed!’ declared Darren, putting down
his cup. He then took off his glasses and began cleaning them on the hem of his
shirt. ‘She also said you were interested in talking to someone on the
tropospheric?’
Samuel sat up. ‘Yeah, man. You can
get it working again?’
‘I’ve not been to the Red Cross
centre yet, but I should be able to.’
‘Can I come round after work?’
As the two men talked, making
arrangements, Des slowly edged back into the living room, from where she had
been hiding behind the bedroom door.
‘Hey, you were in Bricktown?’ she
asked Darren. ‘One of me sisters be in there.’
‘Oh, only for two days,’ he
admitted. ‘I was mostly held at a detention centre in Shields.’
‘What was it like?’ continued Des.
‘Being held by de muta?’
Darren seems to hesitate. Samuel
could see that the young man was still a long way from processing what he had
been through, and it was not his lack of desire to be helpful that made him
stutter, but an inability to put it into words.
‘Hey man,’ said Samuel. ‘If you
want…’
‘No, it’s ok,’ replied Darren. ‘I
guess I’ll just start at the beginning and tell you everything.’
He took another breath and
composed himself and began.
‘Well, ok. This is the story… I
live in Shields with my wife and two young children. One night, the Committee turned
up in cars and about fifteen of them came into my house. They were not
aggressive, but they said they were arresting me. They tied my hands and
blindfolded me, then sat me down on my kitchen floor. They said I was a heretic
and that they had witness statements saying I was a Methodist. That’s nonsense
by the way, I attend Temple like everyone else. Anyway, still blindfolded, they
took me outside and then into a car. We drove for about half an hour, then I
was taken into a building. At that time, I didn’t know, but it was just a
house, a tenement block that they had taken over and were using as a detention
centre. There they took off my blindfold and the zip tie around my wrists. They
took everything out of my pockets and wrote it down, then photographed me and fingerprinted
me… uh, then I was taken to a doctor that examined me for any devil marks. It felt
like it was a well-practised process, like the people doing it had done it a
hundred times before, you know, impersonal, like it was normal. I guess for
them it was. Well, after all that they tied my hands again and put a bag over
my head. It was a dirty sack that smelled of piss. One of them took me outside,
then into a big army tent. There I was sat on a chair and tied to a pole. After
an hour both my arms were numb. After ten hours or so someone came for me and
took me to an interrogation room in the house. They accused me of being a
heretic, I said I wasn’t and so they tied me to the pole again.’
Darren paused as if ordering his
thoughts. He sipped at his tea then went on;
‘This was all on the first day of
me coming to the detention centre. Later a Committee woman came with some food.
I had to eat quickly. I think it was evening of the second day after that, as
it was getting dark outside the tent. After I had eaten, I was sat on the chair
again with my hands tied. If I fell off the chair, then someone came and sat me
back on it. I think I was sat on the chair for about two days initially, with
my arms tied to a pole. Some other people were brought into the tent, maybe
three or four. I could hear the guards coming in and going out. Then they came
and put me in the interrogation room again. I sat there for half a day, and I
could see that my hands were red and swollen. Somewhere I could hear someone
reading the bible. A Committee woman came in with someone from the Temple, I
think it was an adept. He asked me about what I was accused of and how I was
being treated. I answered truthfully.’
Darren put down his teacup and
rubbed his wrists, remembering the pain. His hands began to shake so he put
them in his lap. He took a deep breath then continued.
‘… after that though, it was like
I had done something wrong. I had offended them in some way. The Committee
woman took me back to the tent. I was left again with the sack on my head, but
this time the chair was further away from the pole so that my arms, my knees,
my back were in terrible pain. Then they would take me back to the
interrogation room, then back to the pole for another six hours or so.
Sometimes I would be standing, sometimes sitting. I was not allowed to sleep.
After four days or so I started to hallucinate, I started thinking that my
family was dead. I could see them lying there in front of me. After about ten
days I was hallucinating so badly they let me lie down for five hours. On the fifth
day I developed a pain in my chest. I complained and they took me to the
doctor. He told the Committee guards that they were tying my wrists too tightly
and that it was affecting my blood pressure. When they took me back to the tent,
they tied me to the pole even tighter than before. I didn’t complain to them
again after that. After about ten days I stopped feeling pain. They
interrogated me every six or so hours, usually there was no violence, just the
same questions over and over. I was not the only one at the camp, maybe ten at
any given time. I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t know what they wanted. I
guess I didn’t have enough imagination to even pretend to be a Methodist. I
don’t know what they do. I was fed only twice a day, so I lost a lot of weight.
After about a two weeks they lost interest in interrogating me, so they put me
in a cell that was one metre square and full of urine. I tried to stay standing
up; I decided I didn’t want to sit in piss. After many hours in that cell, I
started to hallucinate again. I was taken back to the tent and tied onto a pole
again. I stayed there for two more days. It became really cold, and I think one
side of the tent had been opened to the wind. I always had a sack on my head.
Sometimes I could feel the rain and snow on me. I became numb all over. Then
another Adept from the temple turned up and said that I was malnourished and
should be sent over to Merrick College. I think the Committee didn’t want to
hand me over though because I was put into a car and driven to Bricktown…’
Darren trailed off.
‘Then what?’ asked Des who was on
the edge of her seat.
‘Oh, I was given a shower and some
new clothes. I was given a bed to sleep in. There were other prisoners there
too. They said I would probably be executed at some point. But then some armed
Temple guards came and took me out. They took me to Merrick, I signed some
papers and then they drove me home.’
No one spoke for a while after that. Samuel went to the
window and stood looking out, watching the drizzle in the streetlamps down on
St George Street. There was no one about now, even the muta had gone
indoors to keep dry. Enid rubbed up against Darren’s legs and he reached down
to stroke her back.
Enid meowed loudly, breaking the
silence. Des leaned back on the sofa and grunted. She pulled a face and said, ‘it’s
different for black people, dey break the bones. Poke out an eye.’
‘I didn’t see any of that,’ said
Darren. ‘I was only in Bricktown a few days. Well, anyway, thanks again for
saving my life, Samuel.’
‘Thank de bishop,’ said Samuel. ‘All
I did was mention your name to him.’
‘Even so, I owe you one. Come to
the Red Cross Centre any time. I’ll get you a call out on the tropo.’
‘Can we do it tonight?’ asked
Samuel.
‘Uh… Sure, of course.’
After Darren had left Des said,
‘why you care? Why you want to talk on this thing?’
‘To talk to Father Nimite. He’s
not been heard of for a week now.’
Des remembered Nimite well, from
the days before the reditus and knew him to be a good man. Despite this,
she was pragmatic about offering any help to a priest of Evermarch Temple.
‘It’s business between the church and the muta Samuel, you don’t want to
get mixed up in that. It’s a one-way ticket to Bricktown.’
Samuel was not dismissive of her
point of view, he too had developed a strong survival instinct over the last
year and a half. Like anyone with any sense he had learned to look the other
way when he needed to, to guard his tongue, to ignore the bodies hanging from
lampposts during the purges, to seek a place of safety and to keep his head
down. He was on a dangerous path now and he knew it, but he worked for the
church and Nimite was his friend.
‘What am I supposed to do? All I
want to do is talk to Willaim, I don’t like thinking of him stuck down there by
his own self. Helping the church is not a bad ting. Just this, then I stay out
of it, ok?’
He was trying to convince himself
more than Des though. He might well be with the church, and they were powerful
people to work with, but the muta was right here, literally on his
doorstep. It didn’t do to annoy anyone on the Delta. It had not been so long
ago that they had been hanging bodies on the lampposts down on St George Street
and the people that had done it were still down there, manning the barricades.
Just one call, to check if Father William was ok, he told himself, then he
would go back to keeping his head down.
***
The only other truck in the village was wrecked and rusted
and lying on its side in the dried-up stream. The small river was used as the
village dump, relying on the rainy-season floods to eventually wash it all into
the Berbice River. Any occasional breeze would lift some of the rank air from
the streambed and remind everyone that lived nearby of the shameful state of
its banks.
The village was dirty and
ramshackle. There had been some proper brick-built houses here at one time, but
now it was all brightly painted wooden clapboard shacks sat together apparently
at random on the red earth of the jungle clearing. This whole area was lightly
forested, it lacked the foreboding menace of the jungle to the north, but any
comfort from that was lost by being under the direct glare of the impossibly
hot sun. There was nowhere to cool down, the river was dry, and the shops no
longer sold ice cream or cold drinks. The best the people here could hope for
was a spot of shade a midday and the brief cool period before dawn. Willaim
Nimite didn’t know it, but this was where Tina Harris was from. Paradise was a
plantation, or it had been before the reditus. Now it was the last stop
on a road to nowhere. Nimite could see that the people here suffered, cut off
as they were from the rest of what was left of civilisation. There was no
doctor, there was a pharmacy but no one to work it. No food was brought in from
outside now, they had to grow everything themselves. Their clothes were worn
and patched; the people here were having to re-learn the old skills of
surviving in the jungle.
There were many houses lying
empty, people had gone north if they were able or had been taken away by the
Committee or slavecatchers. The old, the young, the lame and the sick were all
that remained, a collection of people that no one had a use for. For the people
that lived there, it was not considered safe to leave, at any time of day or
night. The nearest thing to law or civic protection in the village was a few
old men with hunting rifles who patrolled the main street to no set pattern,
simply shifting themselves from their front porches to stretch their legs as
the mood took them.
Willaim had been given one of the empty
houses near the church to live in. He was the first priest to be seen in
Paradise in a year so the services he gave in the small, whitewashed church
were well attended.
It had been slow going getting to
Paradise. Before the reditus the village had only been ten miles away
from Goldengreens, but now it was more like sixty. The had passed through two
Zone-lines along the road, but both had been jungle to jungle with no obvious
changes of biome, just the tell-tale haze and steady breeze associated with
Transitioning.
When they had finally arrived,
Willaim had asked about the muta trucks, if anyone had seen them or had
any idea where they had gone, but everyone had been tight-lipped, unwilling to
talk about the Committee in any regard.
Paradise was set back from the
main road by a good mile, but the red-soiled trail was clearly visible from the
village and the trucks must have been seen and heard as they passed, even if it
had been in the dead of night.
William had not meant to stay
long, but the people had begged him to stay, to hear their prayers, to tell
them of what happened in the north and to ask if anyone was going to come and
help them. He could not offer them false hope, no one from Evermarch knew or
cared about this tiny speck stranded deep in the patchwork remains of the
Amazon jungle, but he could comfort them with the word of God.
It was two hours before Vespers on
their third day in Paradise and Father Nimite stood at the doorway of his house
watching an old lady water her garden that lay across a wide dirt track. As he
watched two skinny kids crept up behind the garden wall, looking to either
surprise the old lady or steal some of her crops. Big Bertha was parked nearby,
and he could hear Ned tinkering around in her rear compartments, occasionally
cursing or whistling a few bars of an old tune. The boys jumped up to scare the
old lady and she turned in fright, throwing her arms in the air. The children
laughed and ran, as she came to the wall and looked over it, shaking her fists
at them as they scampered down the street and disappeared around the corner.
Willaim was still not sure whether the woman had been genuinely frightened or
if they boys had been grandchildren she had been playing with. He had not seen
her at church yet and did not know he name, and he was considering going over
to introduce himself when Ned leaned out of the door at the back of his truck
and called out to him. ‘We are getting an incoming call, Father!’
Nimite jogged over and climbed up into the truck. Ned shut
the door and then put the call on speaker.
‘Hello, Father?’ came a tinny
voice. ‘Can you hear me? It’s Samuel Benjamin. We’ve got the dish working
again. It took ages, but here I am.’
‘Good work Samuel. Where is the
bishop?’ asked Nimite, speaking into the mic on the desk.
‘He seems busy with other things
father. Anything you want to say to him, then tell me and I can pass it on.’
‘Tell him I am going south. I need
to, well… I need to speak to him about it, but it can be later. For now, tell
him I am going south with Edward McQuade of the Red Cross.’
‘You are not coming back Father?’
‘I need to see where all the food
from Develde and the other farms is going.’
‘Does anyone know what’s down
there in the jungle anymore, are you not scared, Father?’
‘I am Samuel, but I know the Good
Lord watches over me. And we are in a place called Paradise now. With a name
like that it can’t be that bad don’t you think?’
‘Then be careful Father. I will
tell the bishop.’
‘I will, I will. Thank you,
Samuel.’
After they had finished talking
Samuel moved away from the mic at the Evermarch end and Darren talked to Ned.
‘Good to speak to you again,’ said
McQuade. ‘Darren, I have a new Z-sheet for you. Are you ready for transmission.’
Nimite heard someone rummaging
around and the clicking of buttons, Darren said, ‘Go ahead.’
Nimite watched as McQuade flicked
a couple of switches and a machine next to the desk mic made a series of
crackles and hisses. McQuade then read a series of numbers and Darren said,
‘received and verified.’
***
Samuel was late back home again.
Des, in a kindly mood, brought him his dinner. Dhal curry, pholourie, egg balls
and plantain chips brought from a street vendor. Des had purchased some
bushmeat too, but that was just for her, Samuel never went near the stuff. As
she laid out the food on the low table in the living room, her curiosity won
over her caution, and she asked, ‘well, did you talk to Father Nimite?’
‘Yes, I did,’ he replied then went
on to tell her about everything that had been said.
‘And another thing,’ he said at
the end. ‘Darren printed out some sort of coded message sent by Ned. I took a
picture of it with my phone while he not looking.’
Des eagerly took Samuel’s phone
and zoomed in on the code. ‘It just numbers,’ she said.
Samuel went to the fridge to get a
cold drink, while Des continued to look at the page of numbers. She was still
looking at it when he went to bed. ‘Don’t let the battery die,’ he said before
turning in.
Sometime around dawn she woke him
up. She had a sheet of paper in her hand.
‘Wake up! Wake up, stupid man.’
‘What?’ said Samuel groggily as he
pulled himself up.
‘I tell you I went to University
Sam. You never head of book substitution ciphers?’
Samuel reached over and tugged
back the curtain so he could see the paper in her hand. She clutched it to her
chest, as if hiding it.
‘I don’t Des, you know I don’t.’
‘You use the words in a book. The
numbers are page numbers, then line numbers, then word numbers. That’s the
code. You look up the words in the book and write down the numbers. It only
work if both people are using the same book.’
‘So how you know what book to
use?’
‘Well, if he is out in the field,
would book would he use?’ asked Des as if he was a child.
Sam’s face was a blank.
‘You are so stupid. What book is
everywhere? Even the muta would have a copy.’
‘Just tell me, you so cleva.’
‘The Bible, Sam, they used the
Bible for the code.’
He tried to take the paper from
her, and she snatched it back. Suddenly the colour drained from her face.
Samuel stopped and looked at her. ‘What it say?’
She handed him the paper and he
read the words written in her neat University-educated handwriting; ‘Going
south to where the sky is blotted out by the smoke of a volcano. Nimite thinks
that is where the food produced around Goldengreens goes. Committee members on Develde
Farm have hidden marks – 666 – the number of the beast.’
Samuel groaned and put down the
paper. Des had been right; he really should have stayed out of it.
***
By the time Bishop Thorman finally
make it home his wife had stocked up a goodly pile of complaints.
He had the driver drop him off at
the end of the road so he could walk the rest of the way, but somehow, she had
known he was coming and was waiting for him in the hall with a Bible in her
hand.
Theirs was an old and elegant
house, with a wide staircase to the left of the door leading up to the first
floor. He skirted past her and headed upstairs, aiming for the bathroom.
‘You stink!’ she cried as he
wafted past, and although she followed him upstairs, she did not follow him
into the bathroom. He took his time, running a hot bath and simply lay back for
a while. He let his mind wander and drew doodles on the steamed-up tiles. This
room was probably still original he mused, the ancient bathtub had lost some of
its enamel at the tap end, as had the sink. There was a stone above the doorway
of the house that had the numbers 1868 carved into it and he assumed that was the
date the building had been constructed. He suspected the bath he was in was
about the same age, it would have not surprised him. He had no idea who had
lived here before the reditus, and his wife had been too busy with
Committee work to think of redecorating the place. Thorman hadn’t read any
Dickens, but he had watched a few dramas on TV set in that period, back when
those sorts of things had been on, and many of the rooms of the house had that
feel to them. Victorian, he supposed.
He couldn’t hide for ever in the
bathroom though and after wrapping himself in a towel, he went through to one
of the upper rooms that he used as his dressing room. Again, his wife did not
follow him in. She never ventured into his lair, so she did not know this was
the only room in the house where pictures of their sons were displayed. The
largest was one of the boys together, in their early teens, in shorts and
T-shirts, sat on a bench in a small park in Barcelona. It was a random picture
of nowhere particularly special, but it was a rare in the fact that they were
both smiling. After he had dressed, he looked at the picture for a few moments.
It always gave him a mixed feeling of pain, regret and yet comfort. There was
Luke, the older brother, happy in the Spanish sunshine, his arm around his
younger brother, Mathew. They boys had not been friends, but in this picture,
they appeared to be. Just a normal couple of boys, enjoying a happy holiday.
Thorman had been a different man
back then. He had beaten them, tormented them, and played them off against each
other. One of his greatest regrets was that he had consciously and deliberately
broken their fraternal bond. It was Erica that had taken the picture, Thorman
had been elsewhere that day and she had taken her sons out a walk along the
Ramblas. She had been different then too, protective of her boys when Thorman
was at his worst.
‘A bloody husband art thou,’ she
snarled, reminding him of how much had changed as he finally exited his room.
He nodded and headed to the kitchen. It was late and he was unannounced, so he
did not expect any dinner. ‘Where have you been? Why did you not call or send
word? What sort of man are you to abandon your wife in such a way?’
He had no answers to any of those
questions, so as he warmed up some leftovers, Erica went on to remind him that
the Church was meant to be enforcing the Christmas ban. He nodded and agreed,
although he knew he would do nothing about it, and likely, she knew that too.
There was a new complaint in the
lineup tonight as well, originating from Elder Richie as always. ‘The
scriptures are clear on this one,’ she said while holding the Bible in both
hands. ‘No man should eat until evening. Elder Richie proposes a ban on lunch. For
men anyway.’
‘Where is he getting that from?’
asked Thorman, finding himself being drawn in to her arguments despite himself.
‘Samuel 14. But Saul … He made
this oath: “If any man eats food before evening comes, before I finish
defeating my enemies, he will be under a curse.”’
‘That’s…’ sighed Thorman as he
tried to remember. ‘That’s been dealt with. It only applied to Saul’s
soldiers.’
‘It applies to anyone wishing to
defeat Philistines,’ countered his wife. ‘Elder Richie has been contacted by
God.’
‘Has he?’ asked Thorman, who very
much doubted it. If God had any sense, He would have nothing to do with a dirty
old fraud like Peter Richie.
‘All shops and restaurants should
stop selling black pudding. Eating blood is directly against God’s law.’
‘Look, Erica,’ Thorman said as he
pulled his food out of the microwave. ‘That was settled too, it was all
settled. You’ll have a job on your hands trying to ban pudding suppers in the Evermarch
chip shops.’
‘Not with the Committee it wasn’t.
And don’t forget that Elder Richie wants all Amalekites slain, and all their
possessions destroyed. The Bible is very clear on this.’
‘No!’ he shouted over his shoulder
has he took his steaming pile of Shepard’s pie into the living room. ‘There are
to be no more purges, not while I’m bloody bishop of Evermarch.’
‘Don’t raise you voice at me!’ she
shouted back. ‘The Committee is quite happy to go over your head to Archbishop
Sinclair on this one! I bet Angster is full of Amalekites. Allow in the
Committee Purity Unit and we’ll do it all for you.’
‘No more witch hunts. Besides,
there are no Amalekites in Angster. Mainly Methodists.’
‘They too must be punished for
their heresies!’ she declared, working herself up into a fervour. ‘Exodus
34:13, but ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down
their groves: for thou shalt worship no other god: for the Lord, whose name is
Jealous, is a jealous God.’
‘But they do worship God!’
‘Not the way they are meant to!’
‘Enough Erica, enough! Let me eat
in peace. Keep your CPU away from the Stadium. Everyone in there, whether they
came from Goldengreens or wherever, is church property now. As slaves they are
protected by the Covenant code, so I don’t see how Richie can square punishing
heretics with going against God’s law.’
His wife grunted. ‘Huh! Since when
did you care about any of this? Since when did you grow a spine? Well, at the
very least do something about the graffiti! There are some very unflattering
things written on the walls about Elder Richie and the Committee. Take a look
at the Mount Anner underpass. It’s utter filth.’
Erica Thorman then turned on her
heal and left, leaving Thomas with the unusual feeling of having won an
argument against his wife. A sensation he’d not felt it since just before he’d
gone to Strake. Perhaps he was just at the end of his tether, he didn’t know.
He fell asleep in front of the TV and woke at dawn. The TV had been switched
off and there was a blanket over him. It must have been Erica that put it over
him, exhibiting a tenderness towards him that he had thought had long since
departed.
The next day Thorman found some
time to return to the Temple and one of the first things he did was visit
Shadwell. The Welshman was being held in one of the purpose-built cells deep
under the college, a network of scattered chambers patrolled by sunken-eyed
acolytes. A year ago, there had been dozens of people down here, awaiting their
fate, but now there were only a handful. Shadwell’s cell was small. A bed, a
table, a chair, a toilet, a sink, a bright strip light and a humming AC unit.
There was no window, just a cross on the far wall. A bible was open on the
table. There were some newspapers stacked under the bed.
Shadwell stood up as the bishop
entered. He immediately started speaking. ‘Your Grace! Your Grace, it’s so lovely
to see you. I have been thinking all this time, Your Grace. Do not blame
yourself for my condition, you know, I can see why you did it, of course I can.
Nothing but trouble I am, I brings it on myself. I should know better, at my
age, to get so drunk. The demon drink my mother used to say, and no truer a
word spoken. Well, I am happy to meet my fate. A fate that I no doubt richly
deserve.’
He stopped talking for a moment
and glanced nervously at Thorman. ‘Do you bring news of my fate perhaps, Your
Grace?’
‘Archbishop Sinclair has
instructed me to cut off your thumbs and big toes,’ replied Thorman.
Shadwell gulped. ‘And why haven’t
you?’
‘He’ll have to come here and do it
himself. Sin-eaters are above all religious laws. That’s the trade-off for
taking on the sins of the dead, that was one of the things God has been pretty
clear on.’
The Welshman was not altogether
convinced. ‘What about when he becomes a Judge?’
‘I’m so sorry Shadwell.’
‘Don’t be Your Grace. Don’t be sorry.
If thumbs it is, then thumbs it is, and I will consider it a well and just
punishment. A man can survive without thumbs I dare say, and my big toes are
nothing to write home about. I’d see no great harm in disposing of those ugly
things, will save having to clip them.’ Then as if trying to put the matter of toes
and thumbs out of his mind he gestured down at
the open Bible. ‘I’ve been reading more, Your Grace, and well, my thoughts have
turned to bleak subjects. I suppose on account of my current position I suppose
and the things that I have been reading have been leading to questions I don’t
know the answer to. Perhaps you can help me understand, Your Grace. On the
subject of demons. God is back, we all know and can see that. So, does that
mean the others are back too does it? Baalim, Baal and Ashtaroth.
Baal-berith?’
‘No Shadwell. It doesn’t mean
that.’
‘Right, but did you know who that
is really? Beelzebub, Your Grace. And another thing, do you think he was a
demon or just another competing God? Maybe Yahweh just, you know, did a number
on him, but he was really just another regional deity?’
‘No good will come of these
thoughts Shadwell,’ cautioned Thorman. ‘And besides, there is no doubt about
God now. If there were demons running about the place, I would know about it.’
Shadwell nodded. ‘I dare say, Your
Grace. You would know better than me of course. As you say, if there were
demons going about then you would know about it. They always used to tempt
people, didn’t they? Entice them. To stray from the straight path. To fall into
evil ways.’
‘I suppose so yes, but its not,
well… It’s not something that has come up yet.’
Shadwell sighed. ‘Oh well, I
wasn’t very important I suppose, Your Grace. Like I said, I have been having
bleak thoughts.’
‘I’ll do my best to get you out of
here, thumbs and all,’ said Thorman as he lifted the Bible from the table.
‘Let’s see if we can find a better passage or two for you.’
Bishop Thorman did his job, said
prayers with Shadwell, heard is confession and eventually left the cell and
returned to his office.
As he sat in the back of the car
on his drive home, he silently cursed himself for using his one big favour with
the archbishop to set Charlie Jett free. Now he had no leverage with the
archbishop to save Shadwell with.
Thorman had his driver take him
home via the Mount Anner roundabout and as they slowly worked their way around
its long sinuous curves he looked down into the underpass and by the
streetlights he could see graffiti scrawled across the wall which read “Elder
Richie can suck Santa’s dick!” The bishop laughed out loud and shook his head.
***
Shadwell was worried, of course,
but it did not affect his appetite. Each morning he waited eagerly for his
breakfast. He was a popular fellow within the Temple and the cooks knew that he
liked his food, so the trays that the guards brought down to him were always
fully laden. Sometimes they even sneaked a newspaper or a magazine to him or
would stop for a chat. The guards had a lot less to do now that the cellars
were mostly empty.
The morning after the bishop had
been to see him it was Randolph Jack that brought him his tray. The door was
opened, and the young man gently eased himself in, dressed in army fatigues and
a red beret, his sleeves rolled up to show his tanned dark skin. He smiled as
he put the tray down onto the table, then cheekily helped himself to a slice of
toast.
‘It’s the army bringing me my
meals now, is it?’ asked the Welshman as he went to rescue his breakfast.
‘You eat well in here!’ replied
Randolph. He had the morning paper under his arm. He tossed it on the bed.
‘Oh, thank you boyo! Well, well,
it’s not so bad here, I can’t complain. They keep me well fed, I must say. What
brings you here? One last visit for the condemned?’
‘Don’t say that Jonesy!’ said Randy
as he sat down on the cells only chair. ‘So, what’s going on? What have they
said?’
‘Oh well now, it looks like I’m
for the chop. Parts of me at least.’
‘Really? They are going to cut off
a hand or something?’ said Randolph in dismay.
By now Shadwell was sat on his
bed, eating his breakfast on his knees. He knew that Randolph would eat none of
the bacon or the pork sausages. He offered the other slice of toast, but the
young man waved it away.
Shadwell gulped down a forkful of
beans before finally replying, ‘nothing so bad as that, hardly worth mentioning
when compared to a whole hand I daresay. Just my thumbs and my big toes. I
doubt I would miss my toes all that much…’ Shadwell lifted up his knife and
fork to show the current use he was putting his thumbs to. ‘But I expect I
would have cause to regret the loss of my digits.’
‘Don’t let them do that. If I have
to, I’ll bust you out of here myself.’
‘No no,’ declared Shadwell. ‘I’ve
made my bed and I must lie in it.’
‘I thought you were above the
law.’
‘Maybe, son, maybe. It’s being put
to the test now. If the archbishop becomes a Judge I think it’s safe to say its
curtains for me. Don’t worry about me. How are things outside?’
‘Never gets any better Jonesy,’
said Randolph with a deep sigh. ‘Hey, you know, some of the old soldiers I
know, the ones that were in the army before the reditus, well, oh it
doesn’t matter…’
‘What is it lad? Come on now.’
‘Well, they said they had things
back then to help people. People with PTSD... There was dedicated medical
support for combat stress, all that sort of thing. I mean, I’m putting on a
brave face for the family, but nobody talks about that sort of stuff anymore. Now
that God is here, what use are therapists? Now they just tell us to pray. It
doesn’t help. I’m used to praying like a Muslim. Praying like a Christian just
feels wrong to me, and every time I close my eyes – I’ve got, like ten
different horror shows to choose from. The only good thing about having so many
terrible memories is that they all sort of overwhelm each other. I don’t know
why I’m telling you this.’
‘You always wore your heart on
your sleave lad. Couldn’t you leave the army?’
‘Why would I leave?’ said Randy in
genuine surprise. ‘I like the army. And it’s the best place to be right now,
believe me. It’s just the mullah’s that spoil it all. They’re nutters. They are
the nutters that started it all. Forget it, forget I said anything.’
Shadwell was quiet for a moment,
then seeking to change the subject asked, ‘you say the mullah’s started it, but
how did it all start, perhaps you can tell me young Randy? I’ve often wondered
what it was all about. No one in the Temple could ever give me a straight
answer. It was all just God’s will or there was some story about a murder or
something.’
‘You don’t know? Oh. Well, it was
all about this man and a prostitute. You didn’t hear about that?’
‘I’ve not the faintest idea of
what you are talking about, so please do continue.’
‘I heard about it often enough in
the army. This man in Stake was in love with this prostitute, but then someone
killed her and then cut her into twelve pieces and, to be biblical like, he sent
the pieces in all directions, some north, some south, some east some west.’
‘This is really true Randy?’
‘This is what they told us. They
said that the people that had killed this woman were a tribe in the north and
that we were up there to get revenge for that. The death of one tart.’
‘A man in Strake, was it? I wonder
how much Sinclair had to do with it. I never heard anything when I was there.
Nobody told me anything when I was there. The Acolytes were all arseholes down
to the very last man.’
They talked a while longer, then
it was time for Randolph to go. He kindly replaced the bag in the cell’s bin
and took a packet of soap and a tube of toothpaste out of his pocket and put
them on the sink.
‘Such a kind and thoughtful boy,’
murmured Shadwell. ‘You and your brother, such good sons for your mother.’
‘I’m really sorry I got you into
this Jonesy.’
‘Don’t worry boyo,’ said Shadwell.
‘It was always going to be. Sinclair has always had it in for me, ever since
Strake, but in the end, it was the drink that did it.’
‘We’ll get you out of this somehow.’
‘Don’t be silly now, I’ll be
fine.’
Randolph left, with the full
binbag in his hand. The door was locked, and Shadwell was alone.
‘I’ll be fine…’ he said to
himself. After a minute or so, he shrugged and went back to his breakfast.
