The Mill

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

“He was bitterly jealous, because he wanted Hyr,” Chia said, also standing and wrapping her fingers around her husband’s arm. “We all lived together, and he thought Fraygard and Hyr were – bedded. All three of us probably, since his imagination was vile. So he got rid of Fraygard so he could claim Hyr, and tried to. So many lies.”

  “My father’s dead.” Now Jak stood. “But I shall compensate for my father’s sins if I can.”

  One toe first, and then the foot: the cool swirling ripples of the incoming tide inched up to Freya’s ankles, and she risked deeper.

  “It feels so much better,” she had told Pod. “Am I better? Can you tell?”

  He cupped her chin, lifting her face to gaze into her eyes. “Your pupils are clear. Black tunnels, open and warm and welcoming.”

  “How long has it been?”

  “A ten-day,” Pod counted on his fingers, “then six more. Sixteen days. That’s not a cure and it’s not a new life, nor a new birth. But it’s a great surge of hope.” He kissed her forehead. “They say its two ten-days needed, and even then, sometimes it brings bad nights. But you look so fresh and you sound so glorious. It may not be over, but it’s very nearly done. My dearest love, your courage is glorious.”

  She looked down at her bare toes. “Not courage, I’m afraid. I didn’t choose to – stop – even though I’ve known I should – and told myself to stop for years back. But kept on anyway. I stopped just because I had no choice. No more poppy juice so it was necessity and not courage.”

  But whether forced or not, you’ve handled this nightmare with great courage. Now we leave tomorrow.”

  “Will you turn away if I bathe in the sea?”

  “Of course I will. I’ll walk to the next arm of the estuary and start packing.”

  The tunic she wore was all she had, and it was a sad stained shroud, so Freya walked into the ocean still wearing the rough linen, hoping it would wash just as she intended washing herself. The incoming tide rose to her knees, pulling her into the sudden chill. Her head, uncovered, burned like the logs in a fire, and her shoulders through the tunic were scalded as if bare. Her feet were as brown as a puppy’s, and when she finally slumped down onto the sandy bed beneath the water, her body tingled and the blood rushed to her head, like a roast chicken from the spit being thrust suddenly into the ice.

  Rubbing with her hands, scouring with broken nails and strong fingertips, she washed beneath and above, over her breasts and down her legs. She dipped down and washed her hair, then leaned back and kicked up to float. The little white bubbles broke around her face, and her hair stretched out around her head. Gradually the sand and grime floated from her feet, and her toes popped from the water like small pink oysters.

  As her body refreshed, so did her mind. Freya knew herself cleansed, washed both outside, but also in. She had not yet fulfilled the two ten-days that the doctors proclaimed necessary to recover from a poppy addiction. But she was a doctor and felt as though she had conquered everything. She had conquered poverty, slavery, whoredom, misery and the poppy denial. She was now rebirthing herself and knew herself ready for a new life. She did not even care what the new life might bring, since she could conquer anything and everything.

  The dazzle and dream of Jak still remained in her mind. He still floated into her dreams and remained in her arms when she woke. But she laughed at herself for the nonsense she chose to follow and accepted that she would never see him again. Perhaps she might and would not even recognise him after more than ten years. He would be a callous lord like every other, marching with his demands to the whorehouse, fighting his friends when drunk, and playing games of conspiracy when he needed money to replace whatever he had wasted.

  She would not love the grown Jak, only the boy she remembered.

  Now there was Pod, and she could marry him without fear of rape. She never wanted a man to see her naked, to touch her, to poke inside her, nor to demand his cruel desires and leave her pregnant and in pain.

  Pod was to be the ideal husband. No sex. No children. Just the warmth of his arms around her at night, and a gentle kiss to wake her in the morning.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  As the cavalcade took the long roads back to the city, Symon rode almost alone. Armed guards rode ahead – three, their eyes raking the hedged banks and forest glades for marauders, spies, and bandits. With safety now assured, Lord Lydiard, Lady Chia and her husband Fraygard, their horses sometimes stopping to graze, rode the long country paths without haste or interest in what they had passed so many times.

  Behind were the two grooms, the valet and the personal assistant. Lady Chia did not bother with a maid or other female, since she had lived alone so many years and now preferred to look after herself. Besides, back at court there were maids aplenty. Three more armed guards rode last, completing the procession.

  Behind Jak, Symon rode a placid sumpter, large enough to take the weight and peaceful enough to carry a man with little idea of how to control a horse. But Symon was comfortable, and dreamed his own dreams as he plodded, with Jak’s horse in front flicking his tail in Symon’s eyes. The change of plan – horse instead of train, was one consolation.

  The conversation did not interest him. Fraygard spoke of the many years in prison. Having the high cell, shared with one single other prisoner, a man of intelligence who became his friend, this did not sound like prison to Symon. It sounded like luxury in comparison to the dungeons where he had passed his own incarceration.

  They spoke then of a man named Logon, whom Symon did not know; they spoke of reading, which Symon had never done in his life, they spoke of the court and the king, which interested Symon not a scrap, as he never expected to go there, nor wanted to.

  The wandering miles on a horse’s back instead of his own feet also seemed an unnecessary discomfort, and Symon plodded into his own thoughts. He missed the simplicity and focus of how he had once lived. He missed the person he had once been. Without relish of his own past stupidity and unthinking brutality, somewhere inside that head had been himself, now lost. He was older now, knew more, had different and more interesting experiences than before, and no longer desired positions of leadership and violence. But he seemed to have exchanged the freedom of his own choices for the plodding stupidly of following without choice. Freedom remained, but he did not use it.

  It was time, he thought, that he left the pointless clip clop at Jak’s side. Whatever he thought of Lord Lydiard, and that was considerable admiration and liking, he was no longer living his own life. And with sudden determination, Symon decided that he needed to discover his real self again.

  With a wide smile at the sun streaked clouds above, Symon thumped his horse’s neck, and heaved one joyful breath. The horse lurched and thundered into a gallop. Symon immediately rumbled from its back, the horse stopped and turned to see what its rider thought he was doing, Jak halted, Chia and Fraygard immediately afterwards.

  Everyone, including the horse, stared at each other.

  “My dear Symon,” asked Jak, “what exactly are you doing?”

  “Being meself,” said Symon from the ground.

  One of the grooms had quickly dismounted and now helped Symon up, and back to his large dark sumpter, which was standing patiently waiting for the remount, still wondering what on earth his rider had been up to.

  Fraygard said, “And did you find yourself, my friend?”

  “Reckon I did,” said Symon.

  The endless sands once more stretched ahead and the brilliance of the ocean lay behind. With her head pounding from the heat and direct blast of sunbeams, Freya staggered, but continued over the dunes, struggling up, only then to struggle down. Her nice clean feet were thick with sand. Abruptly something collapsed over her head, and her eyes blinked, discovering shade. Pod had stripped off his shirt and draped it across the top of her hair. The removal of the glare in her eyes was suddenly blissful, but she said, “Oh, my love, no. You’ll burn. And blister.” She grinned at him. “You can’t stand this hea
t without a shirt. It won’t help me if you die from sunburn.”

  “Won’t be great news for me if you do, either.”

  “Let’s both stay alive.” She stopped a moment, then continued both walking and speaking. “Alright, let me have this just for a very, very little while, and then I have to give it back. We can take turns.”

  They took turns.

  It had been two days, and already Freya felt the knowing grip of poppy starvation again, and the burning weariness of the walk. Pod had his shirt back when he pointed ahead. “What’s that? Not a storm, I hope.”

  The sands were swirling out on the horizon. A massive disturbance, but too far away to see clearly, came crashing through the dunes, making its own path towards them.

  Pod said, “It’s another bad sandstorm.”

  And Freya said, “No. It’s camels.”

  They had seen camels, just two, while they had performed in the theatre. “Slud,” had said the people, “breeds the beats. Better than any train, they are, and go where you tells ‘em, instead o’ where the trains says.”

  Earlier, when crossing the dunes southwards, they had watched a camel caravan leave the town through a great stone archway into the endless sands.

  “It’s a caravan coming then,” Pod told her. “That’s not good.”

  Trading, carrying supplies, food and the folk themselves, Freya had thought camels to be delightful. “They run or they walk, they don’t bite and don’t kick, you can pile things on their backs, or ride them yourself. What’s wrong with camels?” demanded Freya.

  “There’s nothing down here,” Pod muttered. “No town, no village, no market, not even a camp. This is a huge caravan, twenty camels at least and maybe more. What are they doing right down here?”

  “Swimming in the estuary,” said Freya, but knew it wasn’t probable.

  They were coming nearer, at neither gallop nor trot, but a sage wander. Freya saw the elegance of thirty camels, heads held high, moving with a slow amble, as though they came simply to look at the sands. Their flat hooves displaced little, but some men were walking, kicking at the dunes and using sticks to balance themselves. Now they could see clearly, and both Pod and Freya stood aside, still and silent.

  Twenty-four camels passed, and ten or more men, some mounted, others on foot. Pod breathed deep. They were walking past.

  Yet they were not. As each camel turned, Pod and Freya were surrounded, and the circle swayed a little, moving inwards. Freya reached out and stroked one camel’s neck. It ignored her. But its rider did not. He looked down. “Who are you both? What business have you here?”

  Pod stepped forwards. “We have no business. My wife has been ill. We escaped a storm in Slud nearly two ten-days past. The storm destroyed the whole town. No doubt you know about that.”

  “We do.” The man swung his leg over the camel’s neck and slid down its side, still holding to the bridal. “But you came a long way south. Where are you heading now?”

  “Back to Slud,” said Freya. Her tunic was threadbare, and she crossed her arms over her breasts, feeling uncomfortably exposed.

  “Folk are waiting for you?”

  “No, sadly, no one,” said Pod, and immediately wished he had said the opposite. The men and their beasts were closing in around them. The wide circle had tightened and now it was almost impossible to move. Pod said quickly, “Well, yes, a few friends, but then we’ll be on to the city. Many people are expecting us there.”

  Another of the men laughed. “A quick change,” he said. “Perhaps you guess who we are?”

  But Freya shook her hair, half knotted, half hanging bedraggled down her back. “I’ve no idea. But I love the camels. They move so slowly, so beautifully. I worked in the Slud theatres and they had two camels there. Yours is so elegant. Does he have a name?”

  Again the man laughed. “She’s called Majesty. She’ll welcome you for a ride.”

  Freya’s eyes sparkled. “I’d love to, but,” and looked at Pod.

  It was the camel rider who answered her. “Oh, you’ll get a ride, fair enough, girl. But you may not approve of the destination. Your husband stays here. You come to the slave market out by Plaws, far east. That’s the market, and we sell to the Shammites as well as our own people. Plenty of customers. You’re a skinny bitch, and your tits are flat. But you’re pretty enough and we’ll feed you up. Since you’re married, and of a fair age, early to mid-twenties I’d guess, I reckon you’ve been well experienced in fucking, but we can test that later.”

  The camels were now so close their flanks pushed, trapping Pod and Freya, but both now held their knives, and stood immediately back to back. “You’ll take neither of us as slaves,” Pod yelled. “I’ll stab anything that tries to grab her.”

  But the same man laughed once again. “Not you, foolish man. The market is over-run with males and wants only the very young or the very muscled. And that’s not you. And I’ll not kill you, since that’s against my god’s orders. You’ll be buried up to your neck in the sands and left here to burn.”

  Freya twisted, lunging with the knife blade, and Pod swung his own knife. He cut the laughing man’s leg, and Freya’s stabbed another man’s hand. She knew her knife wasn’t long enough to kill a camel and she had no wish to hurt one. It was the men she wanted to kill and she stabbed out again. This time the man she struck slipped from his saddle and grabbed her by her neck and one arm. He twisted her arm until she cried out, and one handed, began to strangle her. His hand was large and strong, and Freya slowly began to fall.

  Three of the men had moved aside and were digging a deep and narrow pit. Pod was kicking, punching and stabbing. He grabbed Freya’s knife as she tumbled, and now with two blades he fought for his life. One man’s face now hung in ribbons, cut from mouth to eye, and he ran, howling. Another fell unconscious, and a third died at Pod’s feet. But that was the final achievement, and the men grabbed him, stunned him with the handle of a shovel, and two others tied his wrists behind his back.

  As Freya regained consciousness, she saw Pod’s body tipped, feet first, into a great hole in the sands. He was barely conscious himself, but spat at his attackers, his knives clattering to the depths of the pit. The sands surface came to his shoulders.

  “We should go deeper,” one said.

  The first man shrugged. “No matter. He’ll never get out, and he’ll be dead in two days from the sun. Fill in the pit around the bastard and keep him trapped. Get the girl and move.”

  Freya now had no knife, and was slung, her wrists roped in front of her, over the neck of the camel. “You’ll enjoy the ride, girl,” the rider behind her said, tapping the camel’s neck to move on.

  Her stomach lurched and her head swam. The rough furred sides of the camel’s body rubbed against her like scrubbing brushes, and it seemed to roll and pitch as it walked, making her nauseous. But she was thinking hard. She could no longer see Pod, but she knew where he was and how they had buried him.

  With his eyes blurred with fierce tears and the stab of the burning sun, Pod twisted his head around, seeing only sand in a huge golden haze. The last ambling disappearance of the men and camels, the slave-train of the Southern Sands, were just a shadow now slipping beyond the horizon, heading directly where the sun was fading.

  He began to wriggle. The rope around his wrists was loose. The man who had tied it had not taken more than cursory notice, and did not see, or perhaps did not care, that Pod was stretching out his hands to make the rope less tight and less secure. Within minutes, Pod freed his arms, stamped and kicked both feet outwards fifty times, and as the sand tumbled, began to dig himself free, hands and legs. It was neither fast nor easy, but finally successful, and Pod fell face down in the heat and gasped for air.

  As the sun sank over the dunes, Pod crawled back a short distance and retraced to the cart which the slave traders had not seen. Fumbling through the belongings still piled there, he found the sword and the axe, pulled the rope pulley around his shoulders, axe in one hand an
d sword in the other, and walked quickly in the direction that the camels had gone.

  A squeak of wheels was faint, but when Pod saw the shadows of the traders before him, he left the cart and crept on, staying low. He could not see Freya but knew she was there, and the sun was setting. The sweet cool darkness fell like velvet curtains from the sky. Pod crept on.

  At some distance, the company had stopped. Sacks of dried grass had been strewn for the camels, and although they remained haltered, they wandered far out into the shadows to eat and then sit for the night. Four of the men were building a fire. Most of the others were pulling cloaks over their heads, lying where the hot sand had been hollowed, and were ready to sleep until woken by the smell of food. The food in fact had little smell, but the rising flames and the burning twigs and reeds rose noxious in the dark smoke.

  Freya had been hauled from her place, hands still roped, and sat as best she could amongst the men, as far from the fire as she could wriggle. Four men were now asleep. Three were cooking. The other three sat waiting, and one of these squeezed Freya’s cheeks, turning her face to his. “Pretty girl but thin as a camel’s leg. You’ll eat what I give you tonight, and you’ll get more tomorrow. No starvation here, so be thankful. But after the food, I’ll fuck you and see what you’re like. Are you still tight?”

  She felt sick. “I want nothing to eat and I won’t answer your questions.”

  The man shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll find out everything I want to know. But you’ll have the food pushed down your throat if you try to refuse. I’m not a patient man.”

  But now Freya looked away. Something had interested her. She flexed her fingers and her calves.

  With the crackle of the fire and the new laughter, the discussion on price and whether they’d find others to sell, covered the soft noises which Freya had heard. “One bitch won’t bring us much, pretty or no,” one man said. “Half the company should go back to see what they can grab from Slud.”