Due to all attention being focused on him, Tom alone had the floor for enough time to say, “You can't find Betty guilty of treason. She's our Cuckoo Operative!”
The room exploded yet again in words and noises of disbelief and annoyance. This Betty did observe in her own stunned silence.
“That's enough,” said the judge in his thin voice. Everyone obeyed, perhaps out of sheer exhaustion. The judge said, “Unfortunately, Senior Rank Decapitaria, there is no solid evidence to support your claim. You were not directly involved in the operation, and Decapitaria James Legrand is human and the former fiancé to Miss Cratchet. We are convinced he would say a falsehood to ensure her life, so we dismiss his word. The person who could verify your claim, Decapitaria Clarkin Hannah, is gone. However, another individual of status, and Decapitaria Hannah's partner, is providing evidence of treachery. We therefore must find Betty Cratchet guilty as charged.” The judge gave no pause before turning to Betty, “Do you have any final requests before the murder is concluded?”
Slim shouted and made as though to take on all the jurors at once, but the General put him into a quick headlock and spoke angrily. “The murder has authority. If I do not abide by the rulings I gave them power to enforce, what does that say for the rest of my decisions? Straighten yourselves out, the lot of you. This is about more than Betty.”
The General locked eyes with one person after the other, until everyone had looked away and accepted that Sanctuary would be a very poor place to live if every one of his decisions were called into question, or could be revoked by his whim. As for the jurors themselves, they looked sad that Betty's appeal had been unsuccessful. Betty held out the letter.
“I have gone my whole, albeit short, career reading to others. Won't someone read this for me to hear?”
The judge instantly motioned his willingness, though he had competition in requesting the honor. Betty handed it to him, then stood in the center of the murder and waited patiently. The judge licked his lips and the paper crackled, then he read in a warbling voice which hinted of younger days while everyone listened with downturned faces and folded hands.
“My Dearest,
When you read this letter please do me the justice of reviewing it in its entirety. It contains an honest account, and I fear that in places it may be written too bluntly, but my time is limited.
In my youth, I could amicably be described as flippant and carefree. In less savory terms, I was reckless and irresponsible, and it was the outcome of this attitude which eventually led me into the service. In time I earned the attention of a sergeant who saw my potential. I joined his unit. Here is my first confession. James Legrand became my friend, as we were to be partners the way that Tom and Charles were. Charles initially had students as well, but misfortune befell them as a result of a conflict over wave talkers being by humans for humans. It was Slim who suggested a Cuckoo wave talker—that is, a wave talker raised by humans but with Never Were sympathies at heart. He proposed training the subject, and I was to work with my sister to formulate the other half of the code.
Initially we had three subjects. The first proved to be unsympathetic and was disposed of. The second joined the Never Were cause too greatly to be of use. This left us with you. Brilliant, lively, a joy to listen to: You were the sun on a winter's day.
Then, I can't be certain of what happened between you and James, but you left. He contacted me to find you. By now our promotions had given us each individual partners to train, so James and I did not see so much of one another as we had previously done. You were primarily, if not solely, in James' care, so when you disappeared he was frantic. We had concerns you'd been taken or worse, and it is a simple matter to find someone when you have my contacts. Since you made your aversion to James known through your new contacts, Tom and I were assigned by Charles to watch over your safety. I made your territory mine, and I am ashamed to say it was by this guardianship that I learned more about you and fell in love. I yearned to talk to you, but you were wary of men's attentions and made no close friends for some time.
Tom meanwhile had been working as a go between for my sister and James. The crows became anxious. James loves to talk, and Tom thought it best to keep him company late into the night. He took your rejection hard, and demanded much of Tom's time. We heard of the crow's restlessness, supposing that Tom had grown too fond of humans for Never Were interests. We heard Tom's trial was to occur in the marketplace. As that was an area which you frequented, I penned you a letter in warning. I did not know if you would read it, so I was certain to be in the area. I am glad for my foresight.
Then we met, and I very much enjoyed it. I couldn’t stop from wishing to share my thoughts with you. I find talking a difficult matter, and writing is a much easier mode of communication. Hence these letters. I mean them, every one of them.
The rest of your story you know as well as I do. The who and when and where...it remains to be seen how the alliances of man and Never Were play out, and if Operation Cuckoo is a success or a huge investment of time and effort wasted. But know this: I love you. And I'll do all in my power to come home and see your face again.
Forgive me for any troubles I have given you on my account. I am not a perfect mate. But I love you.
Eternally yours,
Clarkin Hannah, Decapitaria”
Someone sniffed back tears; one of the jurors. Olivia made a noise half way between a hiss and a sigh. Everyone else was respectfully silent, the same way that Betty's neighbours made certain not to comment upon the color of her underclothes even though they were in perfect sight while hanging on the line to dry in the back yard. For this Betty was grateful.
The judge blinked, folded the letter, and said, “In conclusion to this murder, I demand that Betty Cratchet be returned immediately to her post. Olivia, Tom, Ladybird, James Legrand, remain for clarification on a few points addressed in Decapitaria Hannah's letter. All else are dismissed.”
The General went out first, then a tobacco-chewing Mr. Gresley who appeared as though Never Were court had not just been held in the radio station's filing room with his employee's life at stake. Betty stayed long enough to retrieve the letter, then she went.
They led her to where the generals were still arguing, and they redirected their anger straight onto her. Had Betty been raised in a normal household where people weren't prone to military level dress downs, Betty would have been rendered to a tearful, incomprehensible mess. But she had seen her father like this often enough, both for her own missteps and when she witnessed him scolding someone else, so she took it in the usual vein of silence and barely acknowledged murmurs that she heard what was being said, not giving a clue that she was or was not responsible for whatever they were claiming. After her own murder, this was hardly a trial.
Her calm demeanor of course angered one or two of them, but before they could get red in the face, her father and two others called them into order. After all, it was ridiculous to insist that she alone was responsible for the deaths of troops—though it seemed that the most angry of the officers were the ones who had made mistaken calls which had cost them their position or worse.
When all was somewhat calm again, Betty waited a little bit longer, then said, “You need me to host again. The troops refuse to listen to the others.”
Someone began to object, but they were silenced by her father's glare. Betty sat down at the map, surprised to see that they had drawn up one afresh, one without all the scribbleweeds from before, and she read it as they made new motions and indicated where they wanted what.
It seemed that one of the previously endangered units had survived, but this time they had been placed on the railroad she planned to bomb.
She took numb notes, writing down the phrases and who should go where. The only part of this plan she wanted to hijack was where the bombs should fall. And her breath fell, because she did not know if the endangered unit would move—they seemed to be corralled in their position by the enemy, and were awaiting aeri
al help to get released from it. There wasn't enough troops in the area to both hit the roads, the railroad and shake their unit free.
When Betty sat down before her speaker, she felt dizzy. When she went on air, she sat there, staring into nothing for several long seconds before she spoke.
She did what she could. Warnings. Kept a couple of planes on their usual path. The rest went to blowing up the trains and some roads.
How she phrased this, she didn't know. For all that she knew, she might have blindly rattled off the list of orders.
But when she finished and looked at the clock, too long had passed for her to have just done that without commentary. When songs came on, Flight of the Valkyries, a suitable if cliché song to signal the attack, she just stripped off the headphones, sat there a few minutes, then slowly wandered her way through the halls. She sat down in the break room, which was full of hustle and bustle she did not pay attention to, and she put her head in her hands and sat there with her eyes closed.
Others tried to talk to her. She didn't hear them. Welch hugged her at one point, but she did not give sign that she noticed. When a half hour passed and the hall filled with cheering, Betty stood again. She found her father.
“Is there anything else?”
He was about to say yes, but then his expression changed, reading her face. “No.” He hesitated. “Sit down. I'll have a car come get you.”
So she sat down.
She opened the letter and read the letter again. At the bottom there was a familiar indecipherable scribble and beneath it, the words, C. Hannah. The judge had stretched the truth about his closing signature, made it an official statement instead of a casual closure.
Betty read the letter over and over. Following the wake of the day's events, it took a long time to read past the first paragraph. This was his handwriting. If he was dead, this would be what she had left of him. When she read it all the way through, its contents did not shock her. After what happened today, she was beyond shock and moved into mute acceptance.
Before she could decide how she really did feel, Geri pulled up. Betty wondered how her father had Geri's contact information, but decided it did not matter. She got into Geri's car.
Once safely in Geri's car, the excitement, the terror, and the fears of the day crashed down around Betty. She sobbed when she told Geri about Clarkin, and didn't stop until they were going down familiar lanes. She dried her face and tried to breathe normal. All things considered, a ten minute outburst was not a bad run, and she convinced Geri she'd rather be alone tonight when she was dropped off at her house.
Betty lingered at the gate she remembered Clarkin closing ever so carefully, walked up the concrete he had whistled on, then stood at the door he had kissed her at. Sometime later, she took off her shoes and coat, hung up her scarf, and lit a lantern. The house was so dull and empty, so quiet, she could hear the kids playing with a growling puppy through the wall.
What would she do from now on, where would she go? Betty wasn't sure any longer. It wasn't entirely the loss of Clarkin which bothered her. She realized now that she liked wave talking. It came naturally to her. Despite her protestations, she liked the games, the guessing of who was doing what and why. And as much as she didn't want to admit it, she liked the sense of importance that made powerful men prostrate themselves before her while they said they needed her. Did that make her a bad person? That she wanted to live on that high, to speak a word and have it obeyed? There was a career to be had, that was for certain, and the ease which she could take that power was frightening.
She came to the kitchen, her eyes fuzzy with tears, and took a cup of tea off the stove, sipped it, and sat down in her chair. A dim crackling came from the stove and she listened to it as she slowly drained her tea. She put it in the sink, stared out at the birds swooping down on bread heels and pecking at it. Betty blinked, because she didn't feed the birds. She looked down at her tea cup. Had she made it when she came home? She didn't remember doing it, but neither did she remember unlocking her door and hanging up her keys.
But there was wood stacked by the back door, too, and the wood would have had to been retrieved from the garden shed because her father's men had used up all the wood when they were here last.
Then she realized all of a sudden that there was a fire in the stove, water keeping warm on a side of the stove which she was not in the habit of using, and a lanky arm draping over the side of her bed.
“Decapitaria Clarkin Hannah?”
Her voice faded into the darkness, and she stilled, not believing it. Then came his voice, muffled by the pillow, “Reporting.”
Betty knelt beside him and took his hand, lowering the door to the stove so she could see him better by the light. Bare skin seemed to shine in the flames, and when she moved the blanket aside, she saw where his ribs had been bound in roughly torn scraps, the remains of a shirt most likely. Betty touched his shoulder and slid her hand down his body.
“Nothing broken,” he said, turning on his side to face her. The week had been hard on him, draining his face of color and putting lines of strain under his eyes. “Got a slice across the chest and a bit of a beating. Had to spend time escaping and shaking them off my tail.”
Betty felt pain, physical gut wrenching pain, when she saw the dark spots where bruises were healing and her mind went blank with worry. “What happened? I thought they lost you...”
He slid his hand up her arm, over her shoulder, and put his fingers along her scalp, then stared into her eyes. The caress of his cool fingertips against her skin made her tremble, drowning out any rational thinking.
For an instant, Betty couldn't believe he was there with her and her world just stopped, and she was staring into amber eyes with bated breath.
“I wasn't expecting you back for a while. The troops probably aren't off the ground yet...” Her eyes opened wide. “You didn't desert, did you?”
He tapped her shoulder with a knuckle. “I had a different mission than the men today.”
She nodded.
“Just so you know,” he whispered, his voice drawing prickles of pleasure across her skin, “I want to make love to you tonight, if you'll have me.”
“But your chest?”
“If I can evade capture, fight, and smuggle aboard a plane and freight trains to get back with my unit to fight to get back here, I think I can please the woman of my dreams,” he said, his voice a mixture of amusement and frustration. “Unless you mean to decline my attentions.”
She threw her arms around him and lost herself to the secrets of the night.
If you enjoyed Black Locust Letters, and I hope you did, please show your support by leaving a review, recommending my name to a friend, or picking up one of my other stories. You can also Subscribe to My Newsletter. I'll let you know whenever something exciting is happening like a new book, podcast, or audiobook.
About Me
I'm an author, editor, and I dabble in illustration, all of which earns my husband pitying pats on the back and the promise that one day, I'll make money. After skipping across Nevada, Utah, Montana, Idaho, and Leicester I landed in Yorkshire, UK, where I never get a sunburn and it is seldom too hot to enjoy a steaming mocha.
About Black Locust Letters
Black Locust Letters was written as an authorial version of a one-night-stand. It ended up being a long term relationship. Don't ask me how. It grew up from a short story which was (thankfully) turned down for publication. That short story and this novella share perhaps five or six paragraphs in common. It's been a fun time, but I'm glad this is now out in the world instead of within my head.
See you later,
Nicolette
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Black Locust Letters Page 17
