Truth Sister

by Phil Gilvin

  ‘So, how are things at the Ministry?’ said the priest.

  ‘How did you–’ said Clara. But then she looked down at her tunic. ‘Oh. My badge. You recognise it?’

  ‘Yes. But then, I did live in London for a long time, so I know what a Truth Sister looks like.’ She cocked her head to one side. ‘Or, I know what a Truth Sister should look like. I seem to remember they used to wear something a bit closer to white. And they didn’t associate with boys.’

  ‘I’m not telling you anything,’ said Clara.

  ‘Forgive me,’ said the priest, holding her hands up. ‘Curiosity isn’t a sin, but rudeness is.’ She glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘Look,’ she went on, ‘I have some digging to do before dusk. Can I leave you to rest?’

  ‘No,’ said Clara. ‘That is, I’ll come outside too.’

  ‘Keep an eye on me, eh? Come on, then. I’ll show you.’

  They walked all around the garden, the priest proudly showing off the vegetable beds, examining the beans, and pointing out where the yams were to be planted. Around the back of the cottage were some fruit trees beside a grassy path.

  ‘Where does that go?’ asked Clara.

  ‘Ah,’ said the priest. ‘I don’t just grow food, you see. That goes through the bushes and down to the river. I keep a little boat there – do a spot of fishing.’

  ‘So, this is all you do?’

  ‘Yes. I pray, and I work. And as I say, I help my neighbours.’

  Clara shook her head.

  ‘I know what they’ve taught you,’ said the priest as they turned back into the vegetable-garden. ‘But I swear, I’m harmless. Look, this is where I’m digging. Come and watch. You can help, if you like. I have a spare spade.’

  The afternoon passed, the digging was done and, amid the gathering clouds, night fell quickly. Clara washed her hands and then woke Jack. The priest lit lanterns, laid out a small table and chairs, and adjusted the curtains to make the room cosier. They finished the remains of the stew, eating mostly in silence while the wind ruffled the trees outside.

  ‘Thank you for the food,’ said Clara.

  ‘She wants to convert us,’ said Jack with a scowl.

  ‘Jack, she needn’t have taken us in. She could have told us to push off. We might have starved.’

  ‘You just told her my name, stupid.’

  The priest chuckled and wheezed. ‘I see I’ll never convert you, Jack. But tell me, how did you come to be starving?’

  ‘We were with,’ said Clara, ‘er, some people. Repsegs killed them all. They shot them. We’re the only ones left.’

  The priest clucked sympathetically. ‘You poor children.’

  ‘We’re not children!’ growled Jack.

  ‘No,’ said the priest with a sigh. ‘I suppose you’re not. You’ve had to grow up quickly.’

  ‘We’re robbers, see,’ said Jack.

  ‘Robbers, eh?’ said the priest. ‘And you want me to disapprove? But why should I? I don’t know you, or why you’re having to steal. Many people have to do that nowadays. But those Repsegs – there’s no need to shoot people just for stealing. With or without a trial’. The priest’s jaw was set. ‘The Republic has much to answer for.’

  ‘At the Academy,’ Clara said, ‘they taught us that religion is wicked. They said you deny science, and you’re just a tool to give men power.’

  The priest shrugged and stared into a lantern, watching its steady flame. ‘Well, your teachers needn’t worry. We’ll soon be gone. The Republic has driven out what little religion remained, and turned all the churches into Provis depots. So it doesn’t matter now, either way.’

  ‘But it is all stupid,’ said Jack. ‘I mean, it’s like believing in fairies. It’s just for people who can’t face reality.’

  ‘And all the wars,’ put in Clara. ‘All the people killed – all the prejudices–’

  The priest waved a hand. ‘It wasn’t religion that caused those wars and killed those people. It was certainty. When people think they have all the answers – that’s when they’re at their most dangerous. Religious or not.’

  ‘Oi, this is stupid,’ said Jack. ‘Come on, Clara. Let’s get out of here.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the priest, ‘Clara. A lovely name.’

  Jack blushed.

  ‘All I’m trying to say,’ went on the priest, ‘is that – well, Truth Sister Clara – can you think of any other regime that is always certain? That always knows that it’s right?’

  ‘I know,’ said Clara. ‘You don’t need to tell me. The Republic.’

  ‘I’m probably the last priest left in Anglia. Religions are dying out. But whatever happens, whoever’s in charge, there’ll always be those who are sure they’ve got all the answers.’ The priest sighed. ‘Come now, I sound like I’m giving you a sermon. Forgive me. Let’s turn in. I think there’s rain coming.’

  ‘Is that your god telling you that?’ said Jack.

  ‘No, my rheumatism. Anyway, it’s September. In September, if it’s not raining, it soon will be.’

  The priest was to sleep on her low pallet-bed; Clara was to make do with a roll of blankets on the hard floor. Jack was already fast asleep on the couch. Before the priest turned the lamps out, Clara picked up a book, its spine pale and faded, from a low table.

  ‘This is about William Wordsworth,’ she said, holding it into the light. ‘Was he any relation to the poet, Dorothy? You know – she wrote the one about London Bridge?’

  ‘He was her brother,’ said the priest. ‘Some say it was really he who wrote all the poems.’

  Clara snorted, and threw the book down. ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘you’ve been very good to us. Now, I don’t understand why, or anything, but–’

  ‘Please, Clara, don’t mention it.’

  ‘No,’ said Clara, ‘I mean, I can help you in return.’

  ‘Oh?’ said the priest. She’d now turned out all but the last of the lamps, and her face was half-lit in the shadows.

  ‘Mater Hedera,’ said Clara. ‘She mentioned you.’

  The priest sat down on her pallet, making it creak. ‘You know her, then?’

  ‘Only a little. I was new, at the Ministry of Knowledge. She visited. She said there was one particular priest near Oxford that she wanted to get rid of. And if you’re the last one in the area, it must be you.’

  ‘Ha,’ said the priest. ‘I’m not surprised.’

  ‘She’s sending someone to find you, and arrest you. Medea Carrow is her name.’ Then Clara realised what the priest had just said. ‘Why aren’t you surprised? Do you know her?’

  The priest hesitated. Then she said, ‘Come to the chapel. We don’t want to disturb Jack.’ Then turning up the lamp, she led the way.

  Clara had the fleeting thought that she was about to be subjected to some horrid ritual, as Jack had said; but she dismissed it as unlikely. Still, she let the priest get well inside the room before following. She looked around: a cross on the wall, an ornate box, a thick book with worn covers; a thing for kneeling on, three chairs and a crate of beer. From this the priest pulled two bottles and opened them. ‘May as well have these,’ she said, offering Clara one. ‘Might not get another chance.’

  ‘No thanks,’ said Clara.

  The priest shrugged. ‘Sit,’ she said, doing the same. She took a pull of beer, then thought for a minute. ‘Clara, I’m going to give you some Truth. God may not be very pleased with me when she finds out, though.’

  ‘I thought your god was a man?’

  ‘Ach,’ said the priest, ‘who knows? But that’s not important. This may be. I’m telling you, because it’s time someone knew. She’s going too far, that Hedera woman.’

  Clara couldn’t take her eyes off the priest’s face. ‘What is it?’ she whispered.

  The priest took another swig. ‘Before I became a priest I was a kitchen-girl. We’re talking a long time ago, now, of course. But the kitchen in question belonged to Ms Teacher.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Clara.r />
  ‘She was a minor politician then. It was just before Nile Flu, so – let’s see – ten years or so before she took power. She had a big house in Battersea. Liked to have servants around, liked to pretend it was the olden days. The cloning laws hadn’t happened yet, but the fertility rate was falling and there were lots of stillbirths and mutations. Ms Teacher hated men, even then, when there were still plenty around. Some said she’d once been jilted by a lover.’

  ‘Ms Teacher? She had a lover?’

  ‘Well, that was the rumour.’

  Clara shifted in her chair. ‘Can I have that beer after all?’

  ‘You better had. There’s more to tell,’ said the priest, opening a bottle.

  Clara took a mouthful and let it trickle down her throat. ‘Where does Mater Hedera come in?’

  ‘She comes in around about then. Ms Teacher went on a “mission for the government”. She said she’d been in Wessex, negotiating, and it’s true there was a lull in the fighting then. But she was away for a whole year. Then a few weeks after she returned, she announced she was adopting a baby.’

  ‘And that baby was Mater Hedera?’ Clara whistled. Then she remembered something Grana had told her, about Sophia being away when Clara was “being Cloned”. Out loud she said, ‘So, are you saying that Mater Hedera is Ms Teacher’s Natural daughter?’

  ‘There’s no direct evidence,’ said the priest. ‘But soon afterwards, the entire household was dismissed. Except for one of the menservants.’

  ‘So you’re older than Mater Hedera?’

  The priest chuckled. ‘I suppose I’ve aged well. Anyhow, it’s not her being a Natural that’s the scandal. In those days cloning was still rare. But with Ms Teacher’s attitude to men, and to purity, it’s all a bit wrong, don’t you think?’

  ‘There’s another thing I should tell you,’ said Clara as they returned to their beds. ‘The Repsegs are after me, too. They found me in Oxford, but I got away.’

  The priest turned the lamp down low. ‘Then you really better had get away in the morning,’ she said.

  Clara opened her eyes. Someone was shaking her. ‘What’s going on?’ she mumbled.

  ‘Quick,’ hissed the priest. ‘Wake your friend. Repsegs – coming this way!’

  ‘Where? What’s happening?’

  ‘I don’t know. Get out of the back door, there. Go carefully. Use the path behind the bushes and take my boat. Keep your heads down, and get away down the river.’

  ‘Take it?’

  ‘Yes. It doesn’t look like I’ll need it anymore. I hope it’s me they’ve come for.’

  ‘No, it must be me,’ moaned Clara. ‘It’s too much of a coincidence.’

  The priest waved a hand. ‘Just get Jack up.’

  Roughly, Clara shook Jack awake.

  ‘Is it breakfast?’ he groaned, rubbing his eyes.

  ‘No – it’s Repsegs. Come on, now.’

  Jack was on his feet in an instant. With trembling hands the priest held open the back door. Then, as they peered out through the morning mist, they heard a pounding on the front doors.

  ‘Open up!’ cried a voice. ‘Security.’ The voice sounded like Shavila’s. But then, a lot of them would.

  ‘Looks like it’s clear this way,’ said the priest. ‘Here, there’s food in this bag, and a few boudicks. Now go. I’ll try and hold them.’

  ‘Will you be all right?’ said Clara.

  ‘Go!’ said the priest, pushing them outside and closing the door.

  They scurried down the wet path, squeezing between still-dripping bushes, until they came to a short jetty. The boards creaked and sagged under their weight; no more sounds came from the cottage. They found the boat, short and rounded and light as a lily-pad. It was hardly big enough for two. Clara felt Jack’s bony knees digging into her back as they scrambled down onto the thwarts. Jack struggled with the rope for a moment before pulling out his knife and hacking through it.

  ‘Good job it’s foggy again,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t paddle yet. We’ll drift on the current, quiet like.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Clara, ‘I want to see what’s happening. If we keep low, we can hide in the reeds.’

  Jack let go of the jetty and the boat drifted a few yards downstream to where a great clump of bulrushes had colonised the right bank. Clara reached out and grabbed at the leaves, suppressing a cry as their sharp edges cut her hand. Jack managed to steady the boat.

  Peering between the rushes, Clara could just make out the cottage through the mist. They could see the clearing in front of the garden wall, where two figures stood outside the gate: a tall, fair-haired man, and a grey-uniformed Repseg. In a moment, there was a crash as the door was thrown open, and Clara saw the priest being frog-marched through the garden by another Repseg. Following behind was another woman, thin and hawk-like. Even through the mist, Clara knew her.

  ‘It’s Carrow,’ she whispered to Jack. ‘She’s the one who was after me in Oxford.’

  ‘Better get going,’ hissed Jack. ‘If the priest doesn’t tell on us straight away, they’ll torture it out of her.’

  Clara didn’t answer. Part of her knew that Jack was right, but the rest of her wanted to know what Carrow was up to. As she watched, the Repseg thrust the priest in front of Carrow. There was a low-voiced exchange that Clara could make nothing of: Carrow was waving her arms, but the priest appeared to be ignoring her. Then Carrow pushed the priest to the ground, shouting and jabbering. Clara caught the words “pervert” and “eliminated”. The priest was dragged to a standing position again, and the fair-haired man sidled a few yards closer to the river, looking away. Clara felt a sharp pain in her forearm, and looked down.

  Jack’s fingers were digging into her. ‘Look!’ he hissed, his voice shaking. ‘Look at him. It’s Tesley.’

  Clara looked. Tesley it was, the same man who’d been about to rape her, the same schemer who could set Acker on you, the same smiling, half-childish monster. There was no mistaking him now: his posture, the lope of his walk, the turn of his head. All Tesley’s.

  Jack was leaning forward in the boat. ‘He’s not even limping.’

  ‘Limping?’

  ‘We had to leave him behind, remember? He broke his ankle. Or so he said.’

  Clara looked at Jack. ‘So, he wasn’t with the Scrapers when the Repsegs got you.’

  ‘And nicking that boat was his idea …’

  He broke off. Carrow was yelling again, her face inches from the priest’s. Then she stood back and said something to one of the Repsegs. It was over in a second: a single pistol-shot rang through the clearing, echoing metallically off the walls of the church. Blood spurted from the priest’s temple, her body thrown over backwards by the impact. The rooks took to the air, cawing and croaking. Clara whimpered; and as she did so, one of the Repsegs turned to look in their direction. It seemed that she stared at them for a long moment, while Clara and Jack held their breath; then she turned away. Jack prised Clara’s hand from the reeds, and the boat began to bob downstream, twirling in the mist.

  The current took them past silent banks where mallards lifted their heads from under their wings, sedge-grasses waved and water-voles peeped from their dens. The river was high, the waters soup-brown with the run-off from all the fields of Gloucester and Oxford. Clara wondered how much blood ran in it.

  ‘I feel sick,’ she said.

  Jack dipped his paddle into the river. ‘If there wasn’t so many Repsegs, and that nutty teacher of yours, I’d go back and kill Tesley. With my bare hands. It was him all along – him that told us what boat to take, him that told the Repsegs where we’d be …’

  ‘You never trusted him, did you?’

  ‘No, the bastard. All the time he was scheming for himself, just waiting to turn us in. I bet he’s getting paid for it, too.’ Jack shook a fist, making the boat rock. ‘And I thought it was you that’d blabbed. I never–’

  ‘Jack,’ said Clara, ‘there’s something else about Tesley …’

  A
fter an hour, the current began to slacken as the river widened. Jack had been suitably indignant on hearing Clara’s account of Tesley’s forcing a kiss on her. He’d kept up a tirade against him for a good twenty minutes, after which he’d lapsed into silence. But now he sat up, looking up at the sky. ‘Day’s getting on,’ he said. ‘We need to keep the pace up. We’d better paddle.’

  ‘All right,’ said Clara, looking doubtfully at her own. She knew the flat end had to go in the water. How hard could paddling be? But as soon as she shoved it in and pulled, the boat swivelled against the current.

  ‘Oi!’ said Jack. ‘You’re doing it wrong.’

  ‘All right, clever,’ said Clara, ‘how am I supposed to do it, then?’

  ‘The other side, stupid. Paddle the other side from me.’

  ‘I’m not stupid. I’ve never rowed a boat before.’

  ‘Look out, you’re getting water everywhere!’

  ‘Well,’ growled Clara, ‘get your knees out of my back, then.’

  The mist had vanished and the sun was high in the south by the time they pulled into the cover of a grassy bank to eat some of the priest’s food. Jack reckoned they’d covered about four miles. The food was apples and grapes, and it didn’t last long.

  Clara threw her apple-core into the reeds. ‘We must have passed close by here when we came up river with the Scrapers,’ she said. ‘It was only a few days ago. Seems like forever.’ Jack didn’t answer. When she turned, she found him covering his eyes with one hand, his slight body shaking with sobs.

  ‘W-why am I crying?’ he muttered. ‘It’s happened before, it’ll happen again. People die all the time, don’t they?’