Penning stopped, but not to look. He waited until the carriage had passed, and then said, "Come."
Willam thought to ask who the men were, but the thought of them hurt his stomach. He followed Father instead, going the way the carriage had gone.
Father called it a "park", like you do a carriage, but there were no carriages. Abruptly, the stoney city became green and dirt like home, and a plank stage erected at the center of a spotty field. People were everywhere, denser than even the mare's-nest streets. Willam hid behind Penning's right leg.
"Ale here!" a man was crying, trapped behind a filled barrow. "Ale! Peanuts! Kabobs! One piece!"
People were seating themselves on a trampled lawn, in a cone extending from the stage. Penning led Willam to the very rear, a thick buffer between them and the rest, just close enough to see the pillories on display. It was a while before Willam pointed and asked.
"You'll see, son," was all Penning said.
Willam didn't look away, eyes beseeching.
Penning turned to him. "You'll see."
Willam said okay and focused on the crowd, staring at it as though it may strike. There were men and women, younger and older, but Willam appeared to be the only child. A few sported the weird dress seen in the city, but the majority wore the homespun rags of Father and the other farmers Willam knew. The women in attendance wore the sparse apparel of those on the corners, some less. The people were all inordinately red in the face, an amber glass for every nose. They walked funny, too, and were very loud, their words making spit. Sacks of shoddy-looking vegetables sat in reaching distance. Others had rocks, piled in kempt mounds.
Willam pointed out a particular couple at the crowd's periphery, a woman in a man’s lap and bouncing about, hands grappling. "What's wrong with them?" he asked Penning.
Penning told him to watch the stage.
They waited, the gap between them and the crowd shrinking then no more, conversations becoming drunker, the sun changing position. Then, at noontime, three men appeared from the park's edge, biceps showing the distinctive white brassards of the Law. They fawned a six-long chain gang, the prisoners slight and hunched, terrorized faces betraying nothing. Willam couldn't be sure, but he thought they were the same from earlier, on the cart. Another man trailed the group, this one large and in a black apron and matching hood, a massive axe slowing his pace.
A hush blew through the crowd, the bodies stilling with it, the silence perfect. The Laws' boots stressed the stage-planks. As the entourage mounted the platform, one of the Laws departed to the stage's edge, a rolled-up vellum in his waistband. With some ceremony, he broke the seal and held it between two hands.
"Ladies and gentleman," he announced, in a bold oratory that carried to Penning and Willam, "we are gathered today to witness the treasons of those who would defect from the South Alliance, by order of The Commonwealth. All hail The Commonwealth. God save The Commonwealth. Are there any today in opposition to this just punishment?"
The Law looked perfunctorily from his document. There was no opposition.
"Then the treasons proceed," the Law finished, and fell back to his compatriots.
Willam tugged Penning's shirtsleeve. "What's 'defect'?"
Penning bent down and cupped Willam's ear. "It means you want to be better than someone, but they won't let you."
Willam started to ask more, but his attention was directed to the stage, with everyone else's. The three Laws unshackled as many inmates and secured them in the pillories, hands and feet reaching out. Wooden blocks were positioned under the extremities, keeping them straight; the wood looked furrowed, like chopping-blocks. One Law fed the people into position as another pointed a six-shot; the third placed a kind of metal tub before each pillory. Then it was quiet again, save for the inmates' sobbing and gibbering. Once the pillories were loaded, the Laws withdrew to the stage's rear, a weird backdrop. There were six total inmates, three left to watch with the crowd.
After a pause, the fourth, hooded man came forward, axe at his side. His eyes glimmered from the depths of the mask, like those in the sentry huts. He approached the rightmost pillory, and the man inside took to shivering, urine pooling out.
"Treason one!" cried one of the Laws, the same that had read the vellum. "Have you any last words?"
The man in the pillory seemed not to hear. His eyes stayed on the faceless figure at wing, disgraced more than afraid.
Five long seconds, then: "Proceed!"
The axe raised up and whistled down and then a hand gone, thudding into the tub. Blood sprayed then ran, also caught by the tub. The axe repeated this again and twice more, the treason amputated fourfold. His screams were second only to the cheers.
Penning had never looked from Willam. He waited until the boy was well shocked, then snapped a finger in his face. "Willam."
The boy blinked, closed his mouth, and regarded his father, the eyes glassed. "Papa?" he said, lost in the din. "Papa?"
"Listen to me," Penning said. "Are you listening?"
A dopey nod.
There was more clatter from the stage, another man screaming with the first, and the cheering refreshed. The Laws stood aside, avoiding the vegetables and rocks.
"See the crowd now, boy," Penning said, pointing.
Willam saw the crowd. A number were standing, arms in a Y, jeering the bleeding men. "Say hi!" they called, or "Good riddance!" Others only laughed and danced and drank, pausing to fling projectiles. "Lend me a hand?" and the crowd guffawed. More couples were bouncing about one another, perhaps in combat.
"See them," Penning poured into his son's ear. "Do you like what you see, Willam?"
Willam shook his head, very slowly, as if scanning the horizon. "They like it, Papa. They like seeing the men hurt."
"They do. And -" Penning paused as the third treason became lighter, now the victim of the crowd's attention. This one, exceptionally thin, slipped from his restraints and went flipping about the stage, the crowd surprised into uproar.
When Penning could again be heard, he resumed: "They do like seeing the men hurt, Willam. Do you like seeing the men hurt?"
Willam's face recorded offense. "Nuh-uh. No. Never." Another headshake, faster.
Penning took his son's head in his hands, gentle but firm. "See the people, Willam. They are with whom you will share this world. They are your neighbors and friends and family perhaps, the Laws who have authority over you. See them now. See them well."
Penning let go and Willam saw the crowd, ignoring the carnival stage to the best of his ability.
The carriage crawled peacefully along the highroad, the horses amongst others, the sun lazing in the west. Riders passed from the right, grinning and red-faced, members of the crowd now disbanded. They slurred "Say hi," and tipped hats, awash with the joy of inclusion. Willam couldn't look.
"Willam," Penning said. It was the first either had spoken since the treasons.
The boy startled as though from sleep, face ashen.
"Do you understand why you were brought here today?" Penning asked, keeping an eye for company.
Willam lowered his head. "I ... I don't know." His hands dueled one another.
A chestnut stallion cantered up alongside, burdened with a hirsute man the size of a water closet. He and Penning acknowledged each other and tipped respective hats, and the man overtook them.
Once the man was gone, Penning indicated the scattered people. "You were shown the treasons so you would know who they are, and who you are." Penning allowed a pause. "Now, do you understand?"
"I think so," Willam said. His hands dropped. "It's 'cause we aren't like them, right?" Then, with a hopeful note: "We aren't like them, are we, Papa?"
"That's right, son." Penning sent a hand to Willam's shoulder, showing a rare and relieved grin. "We are not like them."
They rode a ways, then Penning asked: "Willam, do you hate what you saw today? Those people in the crowd?"
The boy looked up, searching his father for a clue on how
to answer. Finding none, his face opened and he said, "Yes, I think I do. A little." It was how he would look as a man.
"Do not, Willam," Penning said, gently firm, like his touch. "Do not hate them, nor fear them, nor give them what they want or deserve. Just know them and yourself, and remember. Remember what you've seen today, for there is no thing more important in the world."
Willam made no reply, silent the rest of the way home. He did not forget.
JIANG SHI
by William Mitchell
For though man may consider himself blessed to tread his lands unharried, the four winds still carry scents of the corruption that ruled before. From the North, and the frozen pole where nameless hate still screams at the stars it lost; from the West, and the sunken lands now surrendered to terror-haunted deeps; and from the South, where the heat and madness drove even devils to despair.
However it is the East wind, rarest and darkest, that speaks of the horror that endures most strongly, where foul rites seek once more to summon man’s masters, in mountains and black-stone towers of a land lost even from time.
(The Account of Enlil-Ishtar, The Book of the Counting of the Stars, 1200BC)
I liked to call it my "dirty little secret". Not that "little" was the word, of course. Understatement had always been a vice of mine; now, however, I had another. For when the captain of an opium clipper is slowly killing himself with his own cargo, it's something he can be excused for wanting to keep hidden. Could you call it a weakness? Some might. Could I have stopped? Maybe, if I’d wanted to go mad in the process. For if you'd ever experienced the kind of pain that makes you think you'd rather die than carry on living, then perhaps you'd understand why I did it.
However, it was in the month of June 1855 that I was to realise there are things beyond mere physical pain to make a man wish he could escape reality once and for all.
The East China Sea was the colour of pure emerald as we headed north toward the mouth of the Yangtze River on June third of that year. The winds were with us that day, though the sea itself was almost flat, as the China clipper Reliant cut a foamy white line, straight as an arrow, toward the port of Shanghai. I was standing on the foredeck when the land first came into view, letting the sun scorch my back through my shirt as the salt spray scorched my face. We were racing against John Wellan’s boat, the Sea Empress, twelve feet longer than mine and at least two knots faster in the sprint, but still we were winning, my men laughing and hollering the kind of insults that only they could dream up at the Empress’s crew sixty yards to starboard and falling even further behind. Fair skies, eight hundred chests in the hold, and a victory in the bag; right at that moment, it was a good time to be alive. In fact, just for a minute, I almost managed to forget.
"Think we’ll make this pace heading home, Daniel?"
I looked to my left where Tom Adams, the ship’s doctor, had joined me at the rail. Tom was a good twenty years older than me, years he had spent travelling extensively through Asia, and within China itself. He had a quiet, self-assured wisdom I had come to admire greatly.
"I don’t care," I said. "As long as we’re first."
"If I know you, we will be."
It was a reality of our trade that the races between ships were more than just sport. Only the first ship to land its cargo of tea in London would take the highest price; losing the race by as much as one tide would mean having dragged a hold full of leaves halfway round the world just to sell them at a fraction of their value. Ours was a two-way trade; opium into China and tea out of it, and while the race into Shanghai may have been a diversion, the race back home would be deadly serious.
"I hear Wellan is planning on loading light this time, to beat us back even if his hold is half empty."
I smiled. Despite being the better ship, the Empress’s defeat was not an unusual event. "Captain Wellan would do well to learn some basic seamanship before he starts shedding cargo. Or learn not to put his pride before his livelihood. Who did you hear that from, anyway?"
"I have my sources," he said, smiling in return. Tom had been my friend for seven years but he had his secrets, just as I had mine. Mine, however, he was more than adequately aware of. "How is your leg?" he asked.
It was as if the sky darkened slightly. "The same," I said. "It will be wearing off soon. I can already feel it." In fact I’d tried to push it out of my mind, convince myself that I was imagining it, but those first murmurings from the top of my femur had been making themselves known for a few minutes already.
"And are you going to break your habit this time?"
I could feel my voice faltering even before I spoke. "Yes," I said.
"Then I will help you," he said in return, and I knew that he meant it.
For seven years I’d carried my little companion around with me, seven years since we’d been introduced to one another so abruptly: an inseparable match, seemingly made in heaven, with nothing but a barrel of gunpowder lobbed from a Chinese war-junk to consummate the union. If that sly little fragment had entered my body three feet higher I could have rightfully said that nothing was closer to my heart - though I would have been unlikely to survive the acquaintance. As it was, my left leg had taken the damage, just below the hip, leaving me with a permanent limp and an aptitude for turning compass needles as well as heads.
The navy surgeons had patched up most of the harm, though that one piece remained; and I tell you now, those fiends would have had me strapped down in the operating room biting on wood if it hadn’t been so close to the artery that hooking it out might have killed me.
To begin with it hurt maybe one day in three, a dull ache afflicting me with either impatience or insomnia, depending on the time of day. Even when I took command of the Reliant I had no reason to believe that I would one day be rendered close to incapable, that such a little lump of iron was to cause me grievance so far beyond its measure.
Even demons have their hell, and even devils have their torture. The mountain holds caverns beyond the sight of men, where those that were cast from the lowest places now reside, and agonies beyond the torment of the hottest earthly fires are inflicted upon them.
(The Book of the Counting of the Stars)
I lay on the bunk, gripping the sides with sweat-soaked hands. I could hear noises from above me, heavy footfalls as the crew unloaded the opium chests onto the receiver ship, moored just outside Shanghai port. The first mate, Matt Jarrow, would be overseeing the transaction, ensuring the Manila men gave a fair price in silver and camphor. Normally I would have been there too, and for my absence I had no excuse.
"Just keep calm, Daniel, keep your head clear. You can do this." Tom was with me, sitting beside the bunk, wiping the sweat off my face, though at the time I barely felt it. At that moment, I had far more pressing concerns on my mind.
I can only attempt to describe the sensation. Imagine some kind of clamp, inserted into the very interior of the bone, being slowly twisted to open it up, the bone at first unyielding but then cracking and splintering under the strain, driving vicious, razor-like shards into the surrounding flesh. I looked at my leg, expecting the splinters of bone to already be protruding from the skin, but saw no such thing. The small scar below my hip was the only outward sign that anything was even wrong.
"Give it to me, I need it," I heard myself say, though my voice seemed a thousand miles away. Only the desire not to be heard stopped me from crying out loud.
"No, Daniel. Your body thinks it does, but that's only because you've taken so much. You will come through."
I sat upright, my head spinning from the sudden movement. "I can't!" I said. "It's too much, give me the mud! I need it!"
"Daniel - you don't, and you know it!"
Even in that state, I knew that he was right. The pain from the fragment was bad, or I would never have resorted to the drug in the first place, but nowadays, whenever I tried to stop, it was even worse than before I started. "The pain of withdrawal" Tom always called it. "Just get over that hill," he'd
say. "It will still hurt afterwards, and I will do what I can to help you, but you have to get over that hill."
At that point, though, I could take no more. My leg felt as if it was in shreds, a pulpy mass of blood and tissue whose only purpose was to serve as a conduit for agony. I leapt up from the bed, half delirious, and stumbled over to the trunk where my private store was kept. Tom made no move to stop me, just as he had made no attempt to confiscate my supply. Friend or no friend, I think we both knew what I would have done to him. Once the pouch and clay were in my hands, my fingers worked with an instinct born of long-standing habit.
Something Wicked Anthology, Vol. One Page 22