The Mill

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  “They’re still mostly homeless there. We have a chance for four or five women, I reckon. This one’s pretty, but that’s not going to bring a fortune.”

  But Freya had turned, and she saw the long thin legs crawling and the silver flash of a blade. The four men who had been sleeping were still asleep but would never wake. Pod had stabbed through the neck of each one, ripping sideways. Without a murmur they died. As she felt the warmth of Pod’s silent body behind her, Freya swung her roped wrists over her captor’s head, and pulled the knots into the front of his neck, tighter than she had imagined possible, and with a grunt and a gulp of blood, he fell backwards, dead or dying. Pod slashed through Freya’s ropes and jumped on the man sitting next to her. He jerked up, barely aware of what had happened. But the axe was already crashing through the back of his head. Six of ten were dead, but the other four leapt on Pod.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  There were many levels of cages. Each was floored in wooden planks, each walled in wire mesh, and each roofed in more wooden planks. A door in the wire mesh, also made of wire, was padlocked.

  The cage where Doria sat, clinging to the frame of the door, was on the second level. She therefore had someone else caged above her, another below, one either side, and yet another behind. Nothing in front except the gaolers, and the visitors who walked the corridor, peering in and laughing, poking with fingers and canes, catcalling and comparing the ugliness of one to another.

  Tall enough to allow standing, long enough to allow lying out, the cages were strong and steady, but if one inmate played the fool or raged in temper, then every level rocked, while other inmates cried and called for mercy.

  Known as the Madhouse, and as the Island of the Madhouse, few bothered to call it Trealvast Hospital, the real name once given and still painted over the portcullis, nor refer to Treal Island, where the dark and ugly building stood. Few of those who worked there chose to live there, and even the night workers slept in the city during the day and took a wherry for a long and dismal night’s trudge up and down the corridors. Food was supplied twice a day and was usually slipped beneath the cage doors, avoiding unlocking padlocks and risking a sudden charge from an inmate. More guards were employed than others – nurses, cooks and doctors – and two guards were resident. Those inmates who attempted escape were killed.

  As the portcullis was raised with grating metallic echoes in the dawn’s rosy glimmer, the wind whipped up from the east and whined like a pricked cat as it sought the sliver of unprotected skin between cape collar and the dip of each guard’s felt hat, its brim not tugged sufficiently low at the back. The inmates, living together and locked in the vast open attic, had begun to let down their buckets, roped from the windows, to beg for provisions from visitors and any passers-by. There was no corridor here, and no speaking to visitors, for these were the inmates considered dangerously insane, and who had been known to attack the guards and even murder each other. The wind at least helped disperse the stench.

  Kallivan glared ahead of him, spurring his horse over the worn cobbles, the jangle of harness at his back with the outriders, armed guard, and his own groom trotting tight at the rear. With no Bridge to cross the Corn from south to north within the city limits, he had headed much further upstream where the waters were narrow and shallow, easy enough to cross on horseback. But this had delayed his return, and now that his business lay in the south, each return to the city was an elongated irritation.

  But now there was business also in the city, and he rode Banks Road from east to the city gates which had been opened and swung wide, only moments before, as the dawn paid its rent with lilac streamers, and settled in for a day of sunshine.

  Kallivan dismounted and threw the reins to one of his outriders. “I’ll be some time. Take them off for food and grooming. But I’ll be back later, and back south tonight.”

  Another of the guards yelled for a wherry, and stepped in behind his master, calling for Treal Island. It was one of the larger islands, flat and colourless, sitting just beyond the midstream current towards the southern riverbank. Yet, being well upstream from the southern Bog docks, it could not be reached from the south. The great canyon bordered the banks, and that was all that could be seen from the high windows on that side beneath the rafters.

  It had been a great many years since Kallivan had been to visit the Madhouse, but he had visited twice as a young man, having conspired, for several reasons which had seemed important to him at the time, to declare his tutor insane, and have him committed.

  The story for the slut Doria was now similar.

  Entering beneath the rattle and creak of the portcullis, Kallivan asked the cage number, was told, and then found his own way to the second level, which meant an upstairs corridor built as a mezzanine. Kallivan followed the numbers. But a figure already stood there, tall enough, but a little bent. He approached, and the existing visitor turned.

  “My dear boy. An unexpected meeting.” Thribb regarded his son. “You seem to have lost something, Kallivan my boy.”

  Glaring back at his father, Kallivan ignored the question, and tucked the arm with the missing hand behind him. “I imagine you’re here for the same reason I came. To warn this girl not to speak of us, or of anything to do with the mill.”

  “Does the mill still stand?” Thribb asked. “I had expected it destroyed, either by the Lydiard boy, or by yourself.”

  “By neither. I’ve no interest in the place and no intention of going back. I have new interests in the south.”

  “Which presumably stopped you coming to visit me in the hospital north west,” Thribb accused loudly. “Yet you took me there, such an act of kindness, but then abandoned me. I might have died.”

  Having listened for some moments, Doria now screeched and rattled the wire bars. “Who you done come to visit, you bastards?” she yelled. “You come to help me or no?”

  Looking at her did not appear to lessen the conflict. Kallivan turned to Doria’s livid face and bloodshot eyes. “Listen to me now, girl. You will not speak one word concerning myself or my father, of the bitch we left in your care and of what your father did to her, neither to the authorities here, nor to anyone else. Do you understand?”

  Doria sniffed. “Long as you gets me outta here.”

  Shaking his head slowly, his smile tucking into his mouth but not his eyes, Kallivan spoke softly and with menace. “You will forget you know me. You will forget you know my father. You will forget every detail of what occurred at the mill, except that you lived there with your own unpleasant father until he died, when you set out to find companions in the city. Once I am assured of this, after perhaps a month or less if you are rigid in your behaviour, I shall declare you sane, and have you released from this house.”

  “You ain’t got no idea how fucking ‘orrible it is in here.” Doria was crying. “I can’t even piss till I calls fer a pot, and if there be folks passing, they watches me.”

  “Then piss at night,” Thribb laughed. “I imagine you get little enough to drink. Hold your piss.”

  “I reckon the blokes in the building behind, they spurts it at visitors.” She wished her body allowed her to do the same.

  “Possible,” Thribb laughed again. “And I guess they’ll be made to drink it if they do that. You filthy lunatics get treated as you deserve.”

  “I ain’t a lunatic,” Doria sobbed.

  “Just a stupid trollop,” Kallivan grinned. He was watching the elderly woman in the next cage, watching her as she played with one breast where she appeared to be growing two nipples. Aware of his gaze, she looked up urgently, tucking her breast back into the front of her tunic.

  “Sir, you look like a man of quality and intelligence,” she said, standing and coming to the door or her cage. “I was put here by my sister, because she wanted the inheritance. But I am neither mad nor stupid.”

  Kallivan ignored her, but Thribb answered at once. “Madam, I saw what you were doing. That wasn’t sanity. Not in a public place.
”

  She bushed. “No one ever visits me, sir. I am constantly alone with nothing to do. Not one thing to do pass the time, and it is astonishing, I think, that these years have not sent me crazed. Two years. Perhaps a little more. I cannot count them when day seems like night and night never follows day. It is all the same here. I did not think you would look at me, since you were talking to the new comer. And I have one very small deformity. It is my body that betrayed me, not my mind.” She was now on her knees, hands clasped. “Speak to the authority, my lord, I beg you. Tell them I have one small blemish, and this is not proof of insanity. I would be eternally grateful. I would be your slave, scrub your floors. I can cook well. I would share your bed, I would do anything.”

  But Thribb was laughing. I’ll not welcome a mad bitch to my bed, and I live at court where cooks and cleaners come when I call.”

  This was the first time that Kallivan had heard of his father living at court, and he turned. “When? How? I left you many miles away.”

  Both the woman in the next cage, now entirely ignored, and Doria in her own wire corner, were crying. Doria’s sobs turned to shrieks. “You come to see me, that yer own stoopid dad.”

  Kallivan permitted the distraction. He told Doria, “Do as I say. Keep your ugly mouth shut concerning myself, my father and the mill, and after a suitable period, once I can be sure you’ll remain quiet, I’ll tell the authorities you’re not mad after all, simply foolish.”

  With his cackle of laughter renewed, Thribb pushed his face to the wire. “And I heard as how you killed my dear son’s mistress. With his help, no doubt?”

  “He done left me there,” Doria muttered. “And the old bitch were proper nasty. Chuck her out the window, bloody Kallivan said to her. And I reckon she were ready to do it. So I knifed her. Why not?”

  “Her son found her,” Kallivan began to walk away.

  “Wot’s he?” Doria sniffed. “You his dad?”

  Thribb sniggered. “No, stupid bitch. Her stepson’s Lord Jak Lydiard. He’s a prick too, and I hope he was so sad to find the dear lady dead.”

  Later that evening when a guard pulling a cart plodded the corridors, slipping plates of bread and cheese and small cups of water below the cage doors, the woman next to Doria leaned forwards, whispering to the protuberant ear of the guard. “Hi, Webb, I want to ask something mighty important. I’ve got to see old man Dowker, it’s urgent. Will you tell him?”

  It seemed that the guard already knew the woman. “Old man Dowker don’t ever take no notice of me,” Webb said, half whispering.

  “Beg him. Tell him he’ll be glad once he knows. It’s urgent – court secrets.”

  “Oh come on, Stilla,” he answered. “How come you knows anyfing ‘bout the court?”

  “I do, and it’s important,” Stilla said. “Just tell him.”

  Four furious slave-traders remained alive but fought like ten. Two men had grabbed Freya and a third fisted her hair, hauling her head back, clumps of her hair now in his hand. “Bitch. Think you can outsmart us?” He turned to Pod, “I kill the bitch, lest you drop yer weapons.”

  Pod had been grabbed. A dagger was held tight to his throat, piercing the skin. Just two drops of blood shone beneath the blade. The camels were up, sidling and snorting, milling in nervous circles. Pushing and still sidling, they searched for their masters, not realising some were now dead. They moved together, and from behind bumped the man holding Pod. Pod lurched forwards and the dagger dug deeper into his neck, bleeding and throbbing. He almost fell, steadied himself with one hand to the ground, pushed upwards and, whirling the axe, he sent the man sprawling, his belly split open and oozing muck onto the sand.

  Blood spun like drops of red rain, and another trader left Freya and rushed to Pod, his sword raised.

  Freya twisted. Her attackers held her tightly, but both were watching Pod, not sure whether they should help kill the brat. Abruptly Freya twisted the other way, and ducked. At once she broke free, and although four hands grabbed her again, her arms were up and flying as she rammed two fingers into each of one man’s eyes. With a yowl, cursing, he backed away and Freya turned on the last man. She had neither knife nor other weapon, but he did. Freya ran behind the nearest camel, pushing it, pushing harder, bringing it towards the man now running to grab her. But the camel was now between them, and reaching around the camel’s tail whilst the man reached around its neck, she pulled his long bladed knife from his wide leather baldric, and slammed it back into his ribs. With the blade immersed and dripping both blood and shattered bone, the man reached out and grabbed Freya.

  Now both Pod and the wretch on the ground, who was half blind from Freya’s broken and jagged fingernails, had scrambled up. The camels continued to circle, uneasy. One broke away, lifted its head and began to make a hoarse grumbling sound, almost a growl. Another began to trumpet, more like a thunderous hoot. They shoved, unable to break free since their reins, long and loose, were tied to the packages stacked now on the ground.

  The smaller trader holding Freya stabbed her three times and she tumbled, groaning, but he also fell, and tipping face downwards, the knife in his ribs pressed deeper inwards, and the man pumped up blood and lungs and died, writhing. Pod fought furiously with the living slave-trader, now half blind from Freya’s fingers. Another knelt by his friend, furious at the deaths, then strode to Freya and grabbed her again by the hair, swinging her around. Again she had no weapon, and felt the tearing of her hair from her scalp. As he heard her scream, Pod slammed his fingers into his assailant’s eyes, and already half blind, the creature now had lost both eye balls and was shrieking in both pain and fury. Pod left him and ran to Freya.

  He wrenched the trader from her, grabbed him by the neck, and swung him as he had swung Freya. Now they faced one attacker each, Freya darting towards the blind man, and stabbing him through the ear with his own curved bladed knife. He gurgled and died almost on his feet, then fell beneath his own camel’s feet. She ran, now armed, to Pod.

  Bleeding badly, Pod could no longer speak, but continued to fight. Freya clutched her shoulder and chest where she was also bleeding heavily, but together they grabbed their last attacker, Freya stabbed him in the back of the neck and as he tipped to his knees, head falling forwards, Pod swung the axe and the neck sprang open, the man almost beheaded and now quite dead.

  Falling, Freya was caught by Pod, who then also fell. They sat together on the bloody sand, clutching at each other and gasping for breath. In the heat, the blood was drying. There were black puddles beneath them, and dried sticky patches on their clothes, their bodies, and all around them. It smelled like a massacre and the camels swirled, roared and sniffed at the slaughtered bodies.

  “I’m not so badly hurt,” Freya croaked at last. “There’s linen, cotton and flax here, yards of it, and I can bandage your neck, and even myself. There’s a lot to steal here, including the camels.”

  “And weapons,” but she couldn’t understand him. Pod’s voice was just a crackle of spilt pain.

  First washing, then padding with wool, Freya finally bandaged Pod’s neck from chin to shoulder bones, thick and repeated, and gave him a cup of cool camel’s milk to drink. She watched as he drank, but the liquid did not surge back, was not rejected, and slipped quietly and willingly through Pod’s damaged throat. “You’ll be alright,” Freya whispered. “The cut wasn’t as deep as I’d feared.”

  He lay, blankets and pillows beneath him. In the still night, the two moons passed directly over his head as he blinked, almost unconscious. The smaller moon swung east, pouring moonglow in a silver sheen. The larger angled slowly west, leaving a vast swathe of pearly streamers in its passing, brightening the stars into white diamond glitter. Pod sighed, thought it beautiful, forgot where he was, and fell into a form of sleep.

  Hurrying from one to another, Freya spoke softly to the camels, slipping off their home-made bridals, their saddles, and their blankets. She emptied one more sack of their food. Of twenty-four camels, now twent
y were wandering free. “Go on,” Freya whispered. “This is your natural habitat. No doubt you’ll be captured by someone soon enough, but for now you can go for adventures, go swim in the sea, and have some fun.”

  The remaining four camels, placid, accepting their pats and sweet words, bent and ate, still tethered. “You’re for me,” she told the pale one. “And you’re for Pod. You can pull the cart, and you can carry the rest of the baggage.”

  For now, there would be a great deal more than they’d had before. There were two casks of water, a fair amount of unclean bedding, food and clothing. Freya told the pale camel she had chosen for herself, “Camel song is not my favourite. I’ve never heard such weird sounds. You should hear my Pod sing, and I’m sure you will once he feels better. She drank her own cup of camel milk, thanked the camel, curled up on the sand, and fell deeply asleep and into placid dreams.

  Pod woke first, but as the camels started to roar and thunder, Freya woke with a jerk. Clearly Pod was in pain, but he stood, trying to clear his head. Looking at the camels, he turned to Freya. “It was all true then.”

  She would have loved to say, “No. All a dream.” But instead she smiled. “I’m a bit cut up, but not badly. You’re worse, my love and it must be horrible, but it can’t be too bad. You drank milk last night and you’ve kept it down. And look, we’ve gained food and pillows and even some clothes.”

  “I don’t want slave-trader’s clothes,” Pod mumbled. But his voice was gaining strength.

  “I’ll make breakfast.” There were eggs, though she had no idea what kind of bird had laid them. Eagle eggs might not be edible, but these weren’t large enough for that. She cooked them in boiling water over a small fire and pulled stale bread from a sack. “Better food than the last three or four days. There’s more too.”

  “And do we know where we are?”

  “No we don’t.” She hoped it wasn’t too close to the slave market, but she had watched the moons slide to bed that night. “North’s that way,” she pointed. “So lets go a little north west. Those men said they were taking me east.”