Black Body

by H C Turk

“Fine, Lucinda, then you will easily locate an area I’ve learned of where sinners have yet to intrude. To gain this place you must ride in a coach to—”

  “Girl, to be dragged within such lumber terrifies me afore it’s begun.”

  “The transport is not without terror for me also, friend, but no harm occurs. Now, we must be firm in our intent. Tomorrow I gain passage for you via coach, and will deliver the papers to you that night. I will also have guidance toward all the places involved, first to the site of the coach’s embarking. The story you should tell the sinners is of having visited a sister who died in this city. Use your true fear to feign grief, an emotion sinners will not comfortably enter. Having gained a certain town days later, you must walk where your nose tells you.”

  “A wild land of God and His nature?”

  “Harsh, I hear, but a witch should live better there than in London.”

  “A wild place and my senses will tell me how to go further,” Lucinda proclaimed. “Yet I have to deal with sinners first?”

  “They will find you ugly, and few have sympathy for unbeauteous folk in grief. Tell them you only wish to depart, and the sinners will not argue. They will not argue because you have paid. Say that you return to a hut beyond the town that I name tomorrow. Can you understand this explaining of mine and how you must speak to the sinners?”

  “Girl, I am fearful that changing what poor safety I have will worsen me. But you are all certainty in your doings, and God makes no fool low enough not to trust a sister’s heart. If you will tell me again, I will do as you say, and bless you with all I have. That is naught but love and God’s best wishes, but all of it and for you.”

  Again I explained. Lucinda feared paper, for what if she were asked of its words? Many sinners cannot read, I told her, something not expected of the poor. State truthfully that the arrangements were made by a friend. I then promised to repeat my instructions the following day, along with further details acquired with the passage. Then finally we embraced, and her fetid smell was grand.

  • • •

  “Miss Alba, I have been in a torment since you’re gone.”

  “Relieve me, please, of your distress,” I sighed to Eric. “Recalled is Elsie’s whining when I have been in the basement too long. Besides, scant minutes have passed, and I return with no disruption. The only difficulty is your concern.”

  “I fear for your safety, miss, and wonder of your problem.”

  “Wonder of your own if the mister and missus discover you here, with me or not. And what exactly is the cause of your presence—to have a place to practice unease?”

  “Unease I do have while attempting to exit my home and reenter these nights. With you I seek to divert concern by passing a bit of time.”

  “Then let’s toss a bit of that timely diversion about, but none if you remain unpleasant with your wrinkled mouth all prepared for apprehension. Understand, sir, that a measure of one’s character is the ability to thrive in difficult times. Since these are not the times you’ve come to share, select ye others.”

  “Such a moralist you are for one hated on occasion by the kindest of dogs.”

  “At your peril, sir, mention elephants.”

  He did not, mentioning nothing in that following, grave pause. Then, as though struck with recollection of his life’s most important aspect, Eric entered his clothing with one hand to bring forth a wrapped material whose odor was unmistakable.

  “I have brought for our victual diversion an unusual foodstuff, miss, a type of beef produced specifically for sailors. Dried and not soon to spoil, it can be eaten without further preparation.” And he revealed a salty-smelling brown substance within his paper, another valuable document containing no joy for me.

  “Oh, and I thought you stank especial, sir,” I groaned, scowling as I stared at the leathery terror in his hand, retreating from his meat.

  Though ignorant of my distress, Eric reacted with applicable humor.

  “Did I mention your being the lady, miss?”

  “God’s bleeding greatest, on one occasion,” I mouthed soundlessly, not sinner enough to vex Eric in his heart. Only his stomach.

  “Sir, I eat no meat in that consuming animal flesh would sicken me.”

  “Have I not heard of this jest before, miss? Only persons of heathenistic religions eat no meat, those normally persecuted, such as Lutherans.”

  “Persecuted I’ve been my life, most recently by my unadopted mother, your partner in social business,” I asserted. “And that entire life has taught me a love of God’s living creatures that sickens me to even consider their cooked flesh. The Church of England persecutes me not for my particular love of God, so I’ll not accept bigotry for preferring fruit to fat.”

  “To the giraffes with it then,” Eric declared, and tossed the vile stuff upward. “The next day I bring a prune,” and the scattering particles came crashing down into the foliage of our too-wild locale.

  Skulking away like thieves, we moved beside the corner column of Rathel’s fence, kneeling within the hedge, our shoulders touching as we waited for society’s attack. And though I found no discomfort being hip to hip with Eric, the male found some pain in his pants.

  “Miss! I must leave now,” he whispered harshly, and turned from me while standing. From below his belly, I smelled a particular sweat, one in its latest perception to seem scarcely more unpleasant that a filthy witch.

  “You are ill?” I asked, causing Eric to halt after a single step.

  “I am.”

  “And truly depart?” I continued, and what a witch I was to detain the suffering creature. But should not ladies be offended by smelly lust?

  “I do, but promise to return.”

  “Not tomorrow.”

  “You have business outside again?”

  “To benefit your own peace, do not ask.”

  “Then later. My prayers for your night business, miss.”

  “And mine for your health.”

  “The illness will pass,” Eric concluded, and moved away, bent at the waist, unable to hear my final mumbling.

  “Must have been the meat, sir.”

  • • •

  Aiding Lucinda depart would not be practice for my own rejection of London, but a substitution. Since I could not send myself, at least I would have my family conveyed to safety. If I failed, Lucinda’s next home would be Satan’s. Yet if Rathel again found me beyond her townhouse, Elsie’s home would be prison. I had come to jeopardize my friends with my very being; but above all my friends, I knew to aid the one nearest in blood, the one nearest death.

  I chose a new exit. I would visit the basement, then steal through the rear gate. Beneath my apparel, I concealed a cloak and bonnet, stepping past the servants in the kitchen, entering the basement to make enough sound for the sinners to notice my presence. Only Elsie would disturb me in my hiding spot, and Elsie I could manipulate. Then I quietly departed, to the gate and gone.

  Down the street I walked until finding a brown, open carriage. I hired the driver with borrowed, earned coin. And pleased was the man to hear me requesting his knowledge.

  “Oh, and no, miss, but we only provide travel about the city. What you seek is a different sort of service. Those folk have not the fine, sleek carriages we offer, only large and crude wagons needed for the long journeys you refer to. But, yes, I can take you to one of which I know, though there might be others.”

  His would suffice. Then I recalled the assistance received from a previous coachman, previous friend, and was saddened to think that no longer was he either. So I wished him fine employ with another company, one not having to deal with such an opera as the Rathel and her family.

  No further acute feelings had I as the carriage proceeded, only that normal dull bloating. This sensation remained until a long ride later when the carriage turned onto a street never seen by me, though a lady there was familiar, the Rathel stepping from a coach to an elaborate office as greeted by a male sinner seen in church.


  Down to the floorboards went I, my heart moving also, high into my throat to stop my breathing. Such a commotion I produced with my dropping like a chamber pot’s contents out the window that the driver had to ask of his carriage’s rocking, had to ask too loudly whether the lady behind was in some distress.

  “No difficulty here, sir, beyond minor slippage,” I lied, but my greater response was a prayer to Lord God that Rathel had not noticed the ruckus in the carriage passing her that very moment.

  Peering above the door like a coach roach, I saw Rathel enter the businessplace with the businessinner, having seen nothing of her own daughter. So up onto the seat with me as though a lady and to the travel agency with no further attacks on my dullness, no further prayers and but the single curse, that to Eric for conniving me into hiring this cheap, open ride. London before me was scarcely noticed, previously unseen streets with new commons and decent greens, a university building larger though less grand than St. Nicholas Cathedral, ladies and gents and then an old, discomforting sight: constables at work, males with long staffs and distinctive hats pressing coarse persons away, surely leading them to a prison that even with new inhabitants would house a young witch.

  As though my current business were common, I blithely had the coachman wait before the travel agency’s unimpressive office. Behind were expansive stalls with horses and those great carriages mentioned by my driver. This rear compound seemed a barn, a farm for nurturing sinners’ transport; and how could I achieve this travel when before I had failed? My business, however, was not for me, but a sister. And these folk, curse Satan, were rarer than angels.

  I demanded decisiveness to accompany my fear. Succinctly I would learn of this travel and the required cost, then return to buy passage after pawning half of Rathel’s household. Therefore, I affected the position of a young lady in a rush, stepping quickly past those people on the walk and through the flimsy door of the Mortwaite Agency Of Travel to find sinning men cursing their peers.

  “Aye, and indeed I did have the gent at our wagon in the agreed time, but damned if the bloke did not call me watch a liar. With one hundred bleeding miles to go and he thinks he’s late to begin.”

  This speech came from a male standing before another settled at a desk. Upon noticing me, the latter displayed a severe visage toward his obvious inferior. As the males turned to me, I initiated my part in the theater, facing only the superior sinner as he stood.

  “Sir, if I might interrupt your foul communications unworthy of great England and her king, I would discuss my business rather than your previous client’s temporal inadequacies.”

  The inferior looked toward me as though smothered by my words. As the superior spoke to his new patron, the lesser changed his gaze, viewing me now as though meat for the eating rather than a lexicon whose content was unreadable.

  “My truest apologies, miss, for the coarseness of this driver. But surely a young lady of your evident quality understands how difficult it is to obtain employees of culture.”

  “Understand I might, but understanding is neither acceptance nor agreement,” I countered haughtily, and turned to the inferior as though he were meat for the puking.

  With an ungentlemanly grimace and a violent gesticulation of his entire arm, the superior thereby informed this “Percival” that he would be out of the room at once. After bowing to me, the latter complied, appearing chastised though his hunger had not abated. Then I attacked the remaining male.

  “Sir, my time is severely brief. You might aid me, then.”

  “My greatest pleasure, miss. Please be seated,” he replied, and ran around to offer a chair—which I accepted—thereafter reseating himself posthaste.

  “And now, what might I do for you this day?”

  “You know of Wales?” I asked.

  “Yes, miss, I do.”

  “You provide transport to this area?”

  “We do, miss, but few are the towns there.”

  “Aid me, sir, in my lack of knowledge. My position is that I’ve an aunt in London for a funeral, so distraught that she cannot recall her village’s name. My intent is to have her returned as quickly as possible to that most comforting site of home. Can this be arranged on your part?”

  “Certainly, miss, in that such passage is our occupation here, as well as my great pleasure to so accommodate you. Readily it will be done if your aunt has retained the paper which tells of her departure.”

  “Unfortunately, sir, she came in the wagon of a friend, who, er, drowned when his carriage tumbled from Hershford Bridge, and therefore can be no source of knowledge.”

  “My true condolences for the misfortunes of your family,” the man replied, looking toward me with uncertain pity. “Nevertheless, if you can somehow determine the specific village which is your aunt’s home, we might yet provide the conveyance.”

  “I had hoped to receive from you a listing of names to spur my recognition. In that my aunt lives on the edge of a wild region, and few are the towns in this Wales, the listing should not be excessive. Thereof what know ye, sir?”

  After a pause for contemplation, the sinner leapt to his feet, moving to a portal in a wall, which he opened, an old man in an adjacent room thereby revealed.

  “Jack, have me a map of Wales at once.”

  “And you will have it, Mr. Wroth,” a high, gentle voice replied. Moments later, a map was passed sinner to sinner through the square hole that was rapidly shut thereafter.

  Placing the paper flat on his desk, Mr. Wroth studied briefly, then applied his finger to a spot and looked up.

  “Well, miss, everything in the mountain region is coarse and undesirable for the building of towns. North and south before these Cambrian Mountains are towns reachable by us.”

  “Therefore, our determination proceeds with your map, sir, in that your stating those townships’ names might elicit recollection.”

  “I shall so state, then, miss,” he agreed, and looked down to his map. “Available on our route are the towns of Laerffniogwrtyd, Wystghllaenniomb, and Cwynhdaeth Rhaneddfsmawrt.

  What a horror to suffer nightmares while awake.

  “To what, sir, did you say?” I asked, for those names spoken were incompatible with my hearing, much less my mouth.

  “The towns of Wystghllaenniomb, Cwynhdaeth Rhaneddfsmawrt, and Laerffniogwrtyd, miss.”

  “Oh. So I thought. These towns, then, are near unpopulated locales?”

  “They are, miss, in that not far beyond all is virtual wilderness.”

  “Well, sir, in that they all sound so similar, what might the difference be? Which is most remote?”

  “I would have to judge, miss, that they are equally remote,” Mr. Wroth determined while studying his map.

  “Then, sir, which town is the nearest and most easily achieved?”

  “That, miss, would be Cwynhdaeth Rhaneddfsmawrt, which is nearly due west, and a fine, small town to which we may provide conveyance.”

  “Sir, you now have struck me with a certainty of recognition. Yes, this, er, this town you mentioned is unquestionably the site I seek. To be absolute in my identification, however, kindly write the name upon a paper that I might verify it with my aunt.”

  Pleased he was to comply.

  “Additionally, sir,” I continued while reaching for the unreadable paper, “because my aunt requires her home to cure her increasing despair, some urgency we have as to her leaving. Therefore, what day is most reasonable for her departure?”

  Before I had concluded my query, the sinner was delving into a book of bound listings, looking closely with his eyes and a finger.

  “A coach goes so far as Lucansbludge this Tuesday next. Space yet remains for one or as many as two persons and their baggage. An additional yet nominal fee will allow us to take your aunt thereafter to Wales, the further sum required since she alone will occupy the coach to Cwynhdaeth Rhaneddfsmawrt. Therefore, miss, an advance payment will allow me to add your family member to our schedule.”

  “
The total sum might therefore be?” I asked, and Mr. Wroth stated a quantity that revealed the limits of my tutoring, for I knew not whether the amount was parsimonious or extreme, knew not how to translate his pounds into quids.

  “Very well, sir, I leave,” I stated, and rapidly stood.

  “But, miss, I assure you the fee is especially reasonable,” Wroth asserted as though fearful of losing his only income. Finding his reasonableness believable, I continued with our dealing.

  “Sir, I have no argument with your fee, but you say no coach departs sooner.”

  “No, and I am sorry, miss, but no coach of ours can leave before Tuesday for this section of the island.”

  “What island, sir, is that of your reference?”

  “Why, the main island of Great Britain, miss.”

  “Oh yes, of course. I was thinking of another island. Know ye of Man’s?”

  “Certainly, miss, Man’s Isle is well known.”

  “And which is the nearer journey, Man’s Isle or…this?” I asked, waving my paper.

  “Cwynhdaeth Rhaneddfsmawrt is quite the nearer, miss.”

  “Very well. Then I return tomorrow with your fee, its receipt to expectedly induce you toward formally arranging my aunt’s being scheduled to…,” and I waved my paper.

  “At my personal doings, miss, the arrangements shall be made. A draft from your bank will be most welcome.”

  “I ruddy well wager it would, sinner,” I mumbled incomprehensibly.

  “To beg your pardon, miss, I failed to hear.”

  “I said a good day I wish you,” I concluded, and turned to depart, stepping away as though in a race, since Wroth desired to leap from his desk and open the door for me. But I won, onto the street and into my waiting carriage.

  Before I could begin to wonder what item of Rathel’s to steal and where to sell it, a man came running alongside my carriage, begging for the young miss to please halt as he waved his hands. I had the carriage driver fulfill the sinner’s request, for this was the Percival male of crude linguistics from Wroth’s office.

  “Sir, your business with me I must demand,” I demanded.

  “Ah, miss, and I can get your auntie to Wales before Tuesday,” he replied with some respirational difficulty from his running.