Leaving the families to their drowned tears and leg-pulling and the crowds to their revelry, I turned my collar and hurried in the direction of the walled path to Mistley. From there I would veer right, heading south into the canopy of woodland at Furze Hills and into the arms of my beloved Rachael. We would be out of this parish by sundown and would finally be free. She of her chains and me of my obligations. Together, we could take the first steps together on whatever path this world might now choose to offer us. I had studied just enough of the time before my departure for us to profit, both from hard knowledge and from some well-placed wagers.
I would give her the best goddamn life I could.
* * * * *
Within a few minutes of me walking away Ravven, having pushed the witches, watched them stretch and now positioned at the side of the gallows furthest from The Ale House, finally decided that his duties were done. It was raining, he was hungry and he had - in his eyes - well earned a tankard. He checked to see that no-one was watching and, with Porter seemingly engrossed in conversation with the locals, he stepped forward and walked the line of ragged dollies, his face full of contempt. Passing the final body, the youngest of the four, he caught sight of her hand, hanging as limply as she and swaying gently. He sneered, spat on the floor and walked swiftly past.
Then stopped.
He took three steps back and stopped again, this time staring intently at that hand. Then at his own. There was dried blood and skin still packed under his nails, along with much else. Blood from the wretch as she had wrestled free from him on the tracks, tearing her own flesh as she did. Her right hand. This hand. Yet on this hand was no tear. No rip. No visible flesh.
Cautiously, he reached out his own hand and placed two fingers tentatively under the young girl’s chin, raising her head as one might appeal to an upset lover. His eyes widened, then narrowed. This was not the wretch. It was a wretch, that was for damn sure, but it was by no means the one he had tangled with. This was an impostor. And that could only mean...
Gritting his teeth in anger, he swiftly looked around to where I had been standing just a few minutes earlier and saw only an empty space. He looked around further and scoured through the crowd, eyes darting and teeth spitting in readiness for the fight to come. Still nothing. The little fucker was gone. He should have known better than to lay any trust at the door of a hired hand.
Without a care for the innocent girl, for that was not who had truly been hurt here today, he let her head fall violently back to her chest and stormed off through the crowd, barging and pushing. Toward where I had been. Toward where I might now be. Because, wherever the hell that was, you could bet your slimy little ass it was where the true witch might now be found.
No-one pulled wool on Ravven. Not no-one.
At the furthest end of the square, as the crowd started to thin, he happened to nudge hard against a middle-aged man with one good eye and one ragged socket, clearly fresh from the wars. Flecks of rain spat from his deep brown tunic as it swung open. A quick glance showed Ravven that the man was carrying about his person a flintlock pistol.
So, using his own uniform as authority, he took it.
* * * * *
Ravven’s antics were not noticed by many and the few who did notice were not of a mind to understand nor to care. Today was the dawn of a new day; the precursor to a better tomorrow and the first step on the road to a brighter future. Evil had been banished, the rains reminded them that crops would flourish and all hardship within the parish was coming to an end. Of course, that hadn’t happened on the numerous other occasions that they had chosen to hang witches in this square, but today would be different. Probably. Perhaps. Either way, it was a day off work for many and there were plenty hours left within it to down some ale and take a trip down the path of caring very little one way or the other. So nobody cared what the fat soldier was blustering about, or why he had chosen to storm away red faced, pushing the crowd like an autumn wind pushes leaves.
Save for one.
Little escaped Porter, least of all on a day such as today. Today was one of those days when all needed to go to plan, however distasteful those plans might be. His very standing depended upon it. Engrossed as he was in mind-rotting conversation (about what horse fodder produced the best consistency of dung for the fields) with three farm-hands - the same hands which would soon remove and dispose of the bodies down The Arl’d Well beside the Launderwoods - he had not seen the man checking out the girl’s hand, but he had seen him check her face and he had seen the look which had formed on Ravven’s own soon thereafter. With intent eyes, deep-set under brows dripping with rain, he had then patiently watched him scour the crowd with visible malintent before taking a huff and pummelling his way through. Clearly Ravven thought something was amiss here and, whilst he might well be one of the armed forces’ more clumsy and unwieldy swords, blunt further through overuse, he was a sword nevertheless. This could not be good.
Turning away from the farmhands with no shortage of relief, he used his stick to slowly but purposefully hobble over and take a detailed look at the still-swaying, bedraggled body of...
...Prudence Hart.
FIFTY-ONE
Friday, July 21, 1645.
Furze Hill, Essex, England.
She was still there, as I had somehow known she would be. In the days, months and years to come we would, together, find places on this earth where we could both feel safe but for now she had only one, and this was it. This was the place from which she had once tried calling home. More importantly, this was the place from which home had listened.
Still coated in filth and her clothes clinging, she was sitting with her back against the big old girl, her upper frame rocking backward and forward very slightly. She was staring at the ground ahead of her, at nothing, and mouthing something to herself in slow, constant repetition. It sounded once more like “I shall not want...”
She looked up as I approached, her face still filled with tears and fears. She smiled ever so slightly but it was not natural. It seemed more as though she somehow felt she should. Somewhere behind that reflex however, I reasoned, was some small degree of recognition and that was something I just knew I could build upon. Her mind was not gone, not yet, but it was heavily damaged. Like any scientist I would use the bits that were working to heal the bits that weren’t. One day, soon I hoped, she would come back to me fully. We were free and I would make her feel that way. Free to be whoever she wanted to be. It might take years but we had plenty to go at and I would use them all. She was worth it. She was Rachael and she always had been.
I crouched down in front of her and reached out my arms, slowly and tentatively offering her a hug. She barely responded, but nor did she pull away from me. Instead, a single tear started to roll, its path already having been cleared down her cheek by the many which had preceded it. I took a moment, holding her tight, and though she felt cold in my arms it was still the warmest sensation I had been offered in a long, long time. Certainly the warmest in this place. In many ways it reminded me of the first time I had held her, in front of Big Red, and the strange sensation I had felt way back then. The sense that, for once in my life, I might be truly happy if I could somehow make this last forever.
Pulling back, I smiled softly and moved behind Old Knobbley, pulling a small leather bag out from the undergrowth. Reaching inside, I removed a small purse and a crude flask of water, both made from leather. From inside the purse I retrieved a large pellet, reddish-brown in colour and clearly hand formed,
“We need to start making you well,” I said softly. “You have an illness.” Her face and body were caked with filth, all of which I would cleanse in due course but, more worryingly, she had clearly been coughing again whilst I had been away. Her chin was thick with dried blood once more from the tuberculosis eating away at her lungs.
“When can we go home?” Rachael said, her voice still raspy. She looked at me as though she did not know me, but that she felt I might just hold the an
swer for her. As though she were asking a stranger the time.
I thought for a moment, searching for the best way to tell her; to deliver bad news. I found nothing.
“Where is home?” I asked eventually.
She too took a moment to think, and seemed pleased with her own answer. “Home is where our heart resides.”
I smiled. “Then we are home,” I said. And I meant it. “Please, eat this...”
I handed over the pellet, quite a size, and the flask. If my calculations were correct then the pellet contained approximately 60mg of C43H58N4O12: Rifampicin, an antibiotic. That was 10mg per kilo she weighed.
According to research I had done before I had left, in 1957 a sample of soil coming from the same Aleppo pine forest I had visited in Montpellier had been brought for analysis to a research laboratory in Milan, Italy. There, a research group had discovered a new species of bacterium which appeared immediately of great scientific interest to them since it was producing a new class of molecules with antibiotic activity. Because the researchers were particularly fond of the French crime story called Rififi, about a jewel heist, they decided to call their new compounds ‘rifamycins’. From that day forth and even now it would seem, some time before, Rifampicin was used almost exclusively in the treatment of Tuberculosis. As a result of the high dosage I would need to give her, Rachael may well suffer hypotension, shortness of breath, nausea, diarrhoea and/or an orange staining of many of her bodily fluids, but she would - as long as I did not exceed 600mg per day - live. That was all that mattered. She would shake the disease.
Rachael was unsure, but she took it, followed by a swig. She winced hard as it carved its way down her dry throat, her eyes tight closed. When she was done she opened her eyes once more. Wide.
Too wide.
Something, or someone, was behind me. I got that immediately. Something or someone I had not heard approach, which put whatever it was at least fifteen feet away, I figured. Either way, they were there because Rachael was looking way beyond me now and fear was stretching her face as though she were melting right in front of my eyes. I had no idea who or what it was and no desire to turn - not until I’d had at least one failed attempt at formulating a plan - but whatever it was it was scaring the living shit out of her. She was shaking.
Then a sound. A snap. To the untrained ear it might sound like a twig breaking under a foot. Or a paw or hoof. Which didn’t really narrow things down. To an ear like mine, however, it sounded a little different. It sounded exactly like the safety catch on a flintlock being released as the cock was pulled from half to full. And that, coupled with the scent I was now picking up on the breeze, narrowed it further. I could not help but find it amusing that, without the sound, the smell had merely suggested an animal.
I closed my eyes and sighed without turning. Eventually, I said just one word, out loud: “Ravven.”
“You frees all witches or just pretty ones?” Ravven’s tone, whilst trying to be humourous as best he might, showed that he was in a mind to be anything but.
I turned, slowly, and shrugged. “Just the pretty ones,” I said with an unaffected smile. “Why? You want her?”
Ravven looked thoroughly disgusted. “I would no more put my meat inside that filth than inside the arse of a diseased horse,” he said.
I looked at him, trying as hard as I could to appear unfazed. I narrowed my eyes as though working something out in my mind. “Is that a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’,” I asked.
Ravven did not have the skills to respond and silence fell. I had to bring it to an end, time was pressing. “She is to be my wife,” I said, my voice resigned as though appealing to a better nature I already suspected did not exist.
Ravven moved the pistol slightly, pointing it now toward Rachael, still curled against the tree. “In sickness..?” he said, cruelly. He turned the gun back to me. “Or ’til death does tear you apart?”
“Either/or,” I said, calmly. I hadn’t time for this shit. “But I warn you now, far more powerful forces than you have tried.”
“And did they win..?” Ravven asked.
I looked aghast and gestured to Rachael. “Seriously..?”
Ravven shook his head, as though swatting away an intelligent thought. “As may be,” he said defiantly. “Today she comes with me.”
“And I.. what? Die here..?” I asked.
Ravven looked very pleased with himself. Too pleased. “I ’as one lead ball,” he said with a rotten-toothed smile, “and… like I says... she comes with me.”
I shrugged and exhaled long and hard. “Then I suggest you go ahead and shoot me,” I said. “Now. Let us see if I die..?”
“Oh, you shall die,” Ravven said, aiming the gun straight. “And swift it shall be.”
He pursed his mouth in a sour mix of disgust and anger and began the squeeze. An instant later there was a deep, loud thunder which shook its way through the trees and scared away the birds beyond. Soft echoes seemed to dance into the distance as though skimming like stones on a pond. Rachael screamed, long and hard and kicked herself back against the tree. Her screams chased the gunshot out of the forest until only silence remained again. She began to shake uncontrollably.
Having barely had time to register the sound, I looked up and saw that a large portion of Ravven’s face had swiftly broken into ragged red fragments and launched itself away from the rest of his head. He stood there for the briefest moment, like some horribly defaced statue, then fell ‘what-was-left-of-his-face’ first into the deep grass of the clearing. Steam rose gently from a deep hole in the back of his head.
The first thing that passed through my mind, even before I set to thinking about what the fuck had just happened, is that the more I had thought about it the more I had realised that I had indeed found at least some evidence (in the days before my journey here) that Rachael had survived beyond today. Indeed, making that happen had become my task. What I had not done, however, was to find even the slightest piece of evidence that I had. Which had made what I had just said to Ravven possibly one of the most stupid things I had ever said or done. And, given what I already knew about myself, it was not short of some serious competition.
“Oh boy, that was stupid,” I said to myself. “Really fucking stupid.”
I turned to Rachael, crouching down and taking her still-shaking hand in my own. I would deal with whatever had just happened only when I knew that she was alright.
* * * * *
Some distance behind Ravven’s body, and truthfully much, much further than he would have liked, Porter leaned on his stick with one hand and turned the Japanese wheellock pistol around in the other, taking a moment to marvel at just how bloody good it was. Since it had come into his possession many, many years ago, this was the one and only time it had ever been fired and he concluded that it had done an absolutely splendid job. Far better than even he had dared to expect. He shook his head with awe.
It was not just that it had been accurate at such a distance, though that was even more surprising given the shooter, but rather the sheer fluidity of the entire movement. He had clicked it dry on occasion to check the action but today... from sear to wheel and from mainspring to chain... everything had operated so smoothly. The pyrite had struck the spinning wheel with just the right amount of force to create the cleanest spark he thought he had ever seen and the built-in delay on the sliding pan cover had been timed to perfection. No jam, before or after the shot. Whilst the 20 gram leaden ball had hurtled toward Ravven’s head at somewhere approaching 500 miles per hour, it had actually felt in Porter’s hand as though the gun were merely blowing seeds from the clock of a dandelion.
It was... beautiful.
“A thing of beauty is a joy forever,” he said softly; quoting the prose of Endymion with no shortage of admiration. “And it will keep a bower quiet for us.”
He smiled at his own sense of irony.
FIFTY-TWO
Wednesday, August 23, 2043. 2:43am.
5th & Alameda, Los Ange
les, California.
Milton leaned back in the chair, bouncing his bloodied shoe on the toe as though to fight the pain. Presumably for stress relief, he clumsily rolled the Peace Dollar over the top of shaking knuckles from index to pinkie and then back with the thumb. He did this time and time again without saying a word, doing his utmost to seem extremely relaxed - well, for a man who was being held at gunpoint against his will and who undoubtedly had searing pain firing through his entire body. It was all an act, but it was all he could think to do.
“Liberty,” he said, eventually, aiming the word at nobody in particular. The pain he was fighting was apparent in every syllable. He stopped the coin and took a moment a look at the good lady herself, embossed onto the face. “She’s… she’s a fickle mistress, don’t you think.?”
No reply.
“You see…” he took a deep breath and winced again, “…she knows she comes at a price and she isn’t cheap. You can’t buy her for a dollar.”
Again, no reply.
Still without looking at them, he rubbed his left hand along his leg, massaging.
“You do know we’re all going to die, don’t you..?”
He said it like it was the most natural thing in the world, as if it was just one of those things. Again, there was no reply from either guard, though he was certain that, in the reflection of the glass separating the console room from the lab itself, he had seen one of them glance subtly at the other and shuffle uneasily on his feet. Good, he thought. One to focus on if he needed to push hard.
Seemingly unfazed, he continued in broken tones. “Does anyone here know what exactly time Cardou exploded last week..?” He swivelled awkwardly on the chair, steadily turning directly to them, their faces still obscured by the dark visors. Each tensed their guns but neither bothered raising them. Milton was unarmed, hobbled and over twelve feet away. There would be plenty of time to react, if needed. “No?” he continued. “OK then, bonus question: Does anyone here know just how much of Cardou was left after the initial explosion interacted with one of those little beauties..?”
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