After Bell Hill

by Robin Tompkins

  ‘For reasons best known to themselves,’ Ovis added.

  ‘After nearly eighteen years of our rule…’

  ‘The people of the Mid-Lands and West are now seeing…’

  ‘The many benefits.’

  ‘It is time now…’

  ‘To further help the people.’

  ‘Specifically, it is time to…’

  ‘Come to the aid…’

  ‘Of the women of the Mid-Lands and the West.’

  Almovar waved a hand at one of the Ushers.

  ‘Bring in Farella,’ he said.

  A dark, oak panelled door at the back of the room opened and a young woman entered. She had a prison pallor and was simply dressed in a navy-blue shift, her hair pinned up under a dark blue bonnet.

  Almovar/Ovis gestured for her to come forward and stand before the Duchesse.

  Farella had large, dark expressive eyes, with which she regarded the older woman with open curiosity.

  Albermora’s smoke grey eyes were equally appraising.

  ‘Well, my dear, I have never seen your like before,’ The Duchesse said.

  ‘A woman of the Fatherland? Farella said.

  ‘Indeed, few have, sequestered as you are.’

  ‘Seq… seq?’ Farella repeated uncomfortably.

  ‘Cloistered then,’ Albermora said. Then seeing the girl’s uncomprehending look, she added, ‘kept apart, hidden away… has this poor girl no education?’

  ‘Education would not make her a better vessel for the seed,’ Almovar said.

  ‘Or a better nursery mother,’ Ovis added.

  ‘I am not, ‘hidden away,’ Farella said, bridling. ‘I am cared for and protected.’

  ‘Poor girl, had we won, we could have helped such as you,’ Albermora said.

  ‘It is your women that need help,’ Farella said, eyes burning. ‘Constantly forced to mate when you are not in season? Living out amongst men of all kinds, who might attack you at any time? Young women expected to help to cook and clean, when all know that is the function of old woman past child bearing age like you, for they have no other use. In times of trouble your women are made to dress like men and go to war! There is no one to order your day and guide the best use of your time. You all wander willy nilly and confused through your lives. Your women have lives that are short, brutal, mithering and frightening!’

  ‘There is much pleasure to be had in ‘mating out of season,’’ Albermora said dryly.

  ‘Shameful old woman!’ Farella said, ‘Planted in the wrong season the crop cannot grow and the precious seed is wasted!’ And look at you! Dressed to entice men when you are too old to mate.’

  ‘Farella, my scullery maids are better dressed than you my dear,’ the Duchesse said.

  ‘I am not in season; I must not raise false passion. When I am ready to mate, I wear silks and satins and paint my face, to rouse a man, to bring his seed boiling forth, as is right and proper.’

  Albermora looked at the young woman for some moments, waiting for her to calm herself.

  ‘You truly like life in a Gynaeceum?’ The Duchesse said, calmly, meditatively.

  ‘Yes, why, yes of course?’ Farella answered, as though it were the most ridiculous question she had ever heard. She looked at the Duchesse in open amazement.

  ‘Our lives are calm, ordered. We live all together with our own kind. We are safe, comfortable and cared for… and we have a purpose.’

  ‘Yes, my dear,’ the Duchesse said, ‘as do sheep and cattle.’

  ‘Poisonous old hag,’ Farella spat out.

  ‘One of the great pleasures of life my dear, is deciding how to live it,’ Albermora said.

  She turned to Almovar/Ovis.

  ‘I presume you have some purpose in parading this poor unfortunate before me?’

  ‘It is you who are so very unfortunate,’ Farella said, compassionately, ‘those who reject the truth and the way, lead such unhappy lives.’

  ‘You may go Farella,’ Ovis said.

  ‘Blessed be your womb, may it bear many sons,’ the Father/Son chanted in unison.

  ‘Oh, thank you, thank you Father/Son,’ Farella said beaming, ecstatic at being blessed by God on earth. She crossed the room in a giddy trance, almost skipping. She paused at the door, turned and addressed Albermora one last time.

  ‘It’s all for the best, you’ll see,’ she said.

  ‘Now that you have seen…’ Almovar said.

  ‘Just how happy are the lives…’ said Ovis.

  ‘Of women who live apart in Gynaeceum.’

  ‘You will no doubt…’

  ‘Be delighted to hear…’

  ‘That one will be built in every major town…’

  ‘And that rows of cottages will be commandeered to serve the same purpose in smaller villages.’

  ‘Thus, will the women of the Mid-lands…’

  ‘And the West be made happy…’

  ‘And the men of the Mid-Lands…’

  ‘And the West more useful and productive…’

  ‘Being no longer distracted by the smiles and glances of the women.’

  ‘Please be kind enough…’

  ‘To ensure the full and…’

  ‘Complete cooperation…’

  ‘Of your people.’

  ‘You may go!’ the Father/Son said in unison.

  The ushers began to push forward. Duchesse Albermora of Perl stood her ground, fixed Almovar/Ovis with a cold stare, eyebrows raised. She silently shook her head, as if reproving a naughty child. Then turned on her heel and walked away at a measured pace.

  When the clicking of her heels and the tap of her cane had receded, Almovar and Ovis exchanged a glance. They rose from their seat.

  ‘When the sweetmeats arrive…’

  ‘Have them laid out on the table.’

  ‘That woman disturbed our…’

  ‘Serenity.’

  ‘We shall away…’

  ‘To our private chapel…’

  ‘For a few moments…’

  ‘Of prayer.’

  The pair gathered up their robes and made a stately progress to a small door tucked away inconspicuously in the far corner of the room. They opened it and disappeared inside in a rustle of golden cloth.

  A short, panelled corridor just a few paces long gave onto a larger, heavier door of oak, quilted with dark, red leather. Once this door closed behind them, they were in total silence and virtual darkness. Just one tiny gold lamp, with a thick, red glass shade glimmered dimly in the altar niche, more silhouetting, the idol of the twin god than illuminating it.

  Almovar and Ovis found each other’s hands in the heavy twilight. Their hearts filled with a little thrill of anticipation, their stomachs with a flurry of agitated butterflies.

  Would the God speak?

  More than forty years of devotion and belief had hitherto produced not one word from their beloved deity but this last year, as they had tightened their grip on the captive Mid-Lands and the Wester lands… a miracle.

  With a creak and a groan, the god’s two gilded wooden heads turned to face them and the eyes, closed in serene meditation, popped open.

  Almovar’s grip tightened, Ovis squeezed reassuringly back. Had they continued to please the God?

  The statues jaws dropped awkwardly, opening its mouths. Its lips were unmoving as it said…

  ‘Good and faithful servants, thou art most welcome in my sight,’ the voice had the booming resonance of a waterfall. It sounded just exactly as anyone might expect a godly voice to sound.

  ‘I see all that you do and all that you do is good in my sight. Continue to find and apprehend the witch scourge. Do not be afraid to use their own magic against these rebels… I saw in your souls that you had misgivings…’

  The Father/Son backed away in fear.

  ‘I forgave your doubt, my loyal sons, do not fear. You doubted but still you did my will and look now, the evil outlaw Bracken is within our grasp!’

  ‘The introduction of Gy
naeceum will stop the plots of the women. The Bracken rebellion will be beheaded and once we have all the witches rounded up… the Holy Judge, will reckon with them! And the South Lords… they think they are safe behind the fortified passes of the Tabarra but we shall bring the good word and the right way to their suffering people. Once the Twins, are ready, the South shall fall and its people be folded to the embrace of our twin bosom. All the lands between the ice and the sea will be ours!’

  The wooden heads snapped back around, the jaws clacked shut and the eyes closed. The statue was once again, just a statue.

  Almovar and Ovis turned as one and hugged each other with utter delight.

  ∆∆∆

  Esmaelia watched the two men hugging, she wondered for one moment if they might actually dance with joy. She sucked her teeth and chuckled.

  ‘You silly, silly little men…’ she muttered to herself.

  Esmaelia broke the connection and the still, black water returned to being a muddy pool that smelled of pitch. Esmaelia was left to look at her own narrow, hawk-like face. Her head twitched this way and that like a lizard.

  ‘Esmaelia, you are a thing of beauty darling…’ she said to herself and chuckled again, a sound not unlike a stone rattling around an empty cup.

  She stood and pulled up her leather hood against the cold wind that blew fine powdered snow in whirls and spirals like drifting smoke across the bleak East Marsh.

  Behind her, three tall, wooden pylons carved with strange figures fighting, copulating, or doing both at the same time, supported a platform, topped with a large beehive shaped hut of mud and straw. The structure was taller than the twisted, stunted trees it sat amongst. Curls of smoke spiralled up from its odd phallic, clay chimney to be whipped away by the wind.

  Half walking, half dancing, humming rhythmically all the time, Esmaelia moved across to the narrow, vertical ladder that led to the hut and scuttled up it like a spider. She slipped behind the heavy leather curtain that served as a door and vanished inside.

  Chapter Seven

  King Billy

  Tamarin smelt the camp long before they came into the circle of its firelight and the smell was of rabbit stew and flat bread cooked over coals. The camp was all bustle, like a military encampment. The men moved to and fro with purpose, ‘leatherjacks’ all, some with their faces blackened with cork, like poachers. There were Women also, dressed mainly in britches and tight tunics, with their hair gathered into black caps, that it would not shine in the darkness

  As they moved forward into the amber glow everything stopped. As one, the camp turned to stare at them. Tamarin slipped her hood back from her face and boldly stared back, though inside, she felt very much less than bold.

  ‘I will fetch Abillie,’ Avaric said and moved off toward a canvas lean-to that was just visible against the trees at the edge of the light.

  Tamarin’s nervousness increased as she waited, her slender fingers fiddling with her clothes, though none could see it beneath her cloak. She kept her face impassive as she wondered where she had come to and if she had made a grave error.

  Avaric soon returned, following in the vigorous wake of a short, stout moonfaced man of middle age, who’s wide, stiff shoulders looked as if someone had forced a plank into the back of his jerkin.

  ‘Abillie o’Brackford young miss,’ the stout man said, with a lift of his stubbled chin. Tamarin was vaguely aware that Brackford was in the West and that was certainly borne out by the man’s heavy accent. ‘But you might know me better as ‘Billy Bracken, King o’ the Wood,’’ he said and a broad gap-toothed grin split his face.

  Despite herself, Tamarin’s eyes widened, she did not know what she expected the famous outlaw to look like, younger perhaps, more handsome certainly and at the very least to be in possession of all his own teeth.

  ‘I see you’ve heard of old King Billy,’ he said, with a self-satisfied chuckle. She had but she had never heard of him coming so far North and East.

  ‘Avaric, do you swear to me you were not followed, that there are no dogs following on your tail and a wagging of theirs?’ King Billy said, slapping him across the shoulders.

  ‘None will follow Abillie. There was a dog but Tamarin here... mizzled it in some wise...’ Avaric said.

  ‘Mizzled it, is it?’ Billy Bracken said, looking at her keenly.

  ‘Yes, Tamarin... Tamarin has the cunning ways Abillie,’ Avaric said.

  ‘Well, she’s not had them long I’ll reckon.’ Billy said with a smirk.

  ‘All my life sir,’ Tamarin answered steadily.

  ‘Aye! That’s what I said; you haven’t had ‘em long!’ King Billy said, chuckling at his own wit.

  ‘Abillie, Tamarin is ‘take-in daughter’ and ‘prentice to Mother Goodford, she has come in her stead...’ he tailed off, words heavy with unsaid meaning.

  ‘I had looked to save her but she is beyond saving, eh?’ King Billy said, mood changing in an instant, his powerful voice was grave.

  ‘She is burnt to death sir,’ Tamarin said, with a tremor in her throat but none in her calm voice.

  Impulsively, Billy Bracken wrapped her in his powerful arms and hugged her. Tamarin stiffened as his grip tightened and the smell of sweat, tobacco and wood smoke enveloped her.

  ‘You lost your mother tonight lass and I’m heartily sad for you’ He said, relaxing his grip. ‘Damn but you’re like a stick, girl, there’s nothing of you! Fetch the wench a plate of stew, I reckon she needs it.’ he added, stepping back. ‘Sit Tamarin, sit... you are the guest of King Billy and very welcome you are.’

  The circle about the fire parted for her and a dark-skinned woman of the far south pushed a warm fragrant plate into her hand and gave her a comforting squeeze of the shoulders.

  ‘Eat up,’ she said, ‘it will make you feel a bit better, at least for a while...’

  Tamarin thanked her and began to eat, more vigorously than she had intended, there was indeed comfort in the food. The people moved again, as Billy Bracken came to crouch beside her.

  ‘Let me tell you Tamarin o’Goodford, how I come to be in your woods and not mine,’ he said. ‘Sometimes, I like to play a dangerous little game and I can play it, because I’m not what people expect. Billy Bracken, most would imagine, is a dashing young man like Avaric there, eh? But me now... well I’m someone’s granddad, or their nuncle aren’t I?’

  ‘So, it pleases old Billy, just now and again, to sneak into the Holy Court of the Seven Sanctuaries, mingle with the crowd and watch the great and the good pronounce upon this and that. Know your enemy I say, know his face and what’s on his mind. I know them but they don’t know me and that’s entirely to my benefit I’d say, eh?’

  ‘Now there I am at the back of the crowd, lying low and there up on the platform, on their big golden chair built for two, Father Almovar and Son Ovis are presiding, their fancy kid gloved hands clasped together like a pair of lovers. Then they start speaking, speaking turn and turnabout and finishing each other’s sentences, in that way they have that makes your flesh creep.’

  ‘Now, there’s much that’s very dull as you might expect but then they get on to the subject of witches and the capture and trial of witches and how efforts must be redoubled to root them all out for the good of everyone. Next, they call an usher forward and he gets out a great ceremonial scroll and starts on naming names. Well now there’s nothing new there I reckon...’

  ‘There’s a good many in the crowd as have made the journey up from the West, or the Mid-Lands. They starts to get a bit restless now though, because some of these names aren’t witches at all, they are prominent citizens, ones with a bit of a reputation for turning a blind eye to the rules now and then. Then the crowd gasps and I can’t believe my ears...’

  ‘Gorg o’Priddow, called, ‘the Cunning Man o’Priddow’ by many, is hereby denounced for a witch,’ they say and this the same Cunning Man o’ Priddow, who was called to tend to the Dowager Duchess herself in all her pain.’

  ‘Uncle G
org?’ Tamarin said incredulously, her mask of calm slipping completely. ‘I mean, he’s not my uncle but that’s what I called him... Uncle Gorg...’

  ‘You know him, eh?’ Billy Bracken said, eyeing her intensely.

  Know him? She remembered sitting on his lap as a little girl, the softness of his moleskin trousers, the fresh linen smell of his clean white shirt contrasting with the smell of herbs, tobacco and ale from his fancy waistcoat. He was the only person she knew who owned a pocket watch, a great silver thing with tick like a heartbeat. Even as a child though, she had known that the scrying glass that hung sparkling from its chain was not a toy and she never once tried to play with it.

  ‘Yes, he would call at Elder Cottage from time to time, to visit Ullie and to talk upon matters of cunning and curing,’ Tamarin said, that he had usually stayed the night, in Ullie’s bed, was between them and not for King Billy to know, she didn’t mention it, instead, voice a little wistful, she added, ‘I would come home and find his old felt hat with the feather in sitting on the kitchen dresser and hurry through to the next room, because I knew he would have liquorice for me...’ She raised her eyes to Billy’s. ‘Is he safe?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t rightly know if your nuncle Gorg is safe or not, truth be told,’ King Billy said, setting his jaw. ‘I know I did my best by him and all the others on the list. He touched a finger to his temple, ‘I forget nothing I hear and nothing I see,’ he said, ‘I remembered every name, including Ulleandra o’Goodford, called ‘Mother Goodford,’ and when I got back to Brackford Wild Wood, I split my men down and sent them out to warn and protect as many as I could, the Cunning Man o’Priddow amongst them.’

  ‘I came East with what was left, to the aid of Mother Goodford, as now you know. Being on the move and quietly at that, I haven’t heard how the others fared.’

  Tamarin’s startling blue eyes met King Billy’s shrewd pale ones and neither spoke for a moment or two.

  ‘Something has changed inside you...’ Tamarin said at last, softly but her voice was troubled, none the less.

  ‘Aye, that it has,’ Billy Bracken said, all trace of banter gone for the moment. ‘My, my, you really do have the cunning ways, don’t you?’ He reached out and took her by both shoulders. ‘Time was, I was content to play my little games, run into the field where I knew the bull was tied up, let him run to the end of his chain all in a lather and then slip away, if you take my meaning, missy.’