Wicca

by James Follett

  Harvey Evans was 60. A powerfully-built, thickset dependable man. Until recently he had been Sussex Police's sector inspector for Pentworth but had resigned rather than accept Asquith Prescott's restructuring of the police force. Evans had conceded that recruiting morris men for a rapid build-up of police strength to fifty men hadn't been such a bad idea; the core of the new police force was Pentworth Morris Men side. Evans had been their "squire" and had nurtured them through many changes. The side now had a reputation for toughness since he had introduced sword dances and scrapped the fluttering handkerchiefs. The men were all well-known -- unarmed apart their staffs, and the public had been surprisingly quick to accept them and their now familiar uniforms of straw hats, white blouses, and buckle shoes.

  What Evans had vehemently objected to was Prescott's proposal to recruit the security men, that Adrian Roscoe had been stuck with, as a private army under the command of Nelson Faraday to guard Government House and its immediate surroundings. That meant a gang of untrained black-shirted heavies keeping their idea of law and order in Pentworth's town centre. Nelson Faraday was a sadistic thug. His PNC printout made for chilling reading: the 35-year-old Londoner had a long string of previous convictions ranging from pimping to serious assault. His victims were usually women.

  Evans had resigned knowing full-well that he was being pushed into doing so. The result was that Prescott got what he wanted and was now commander of the morris police and the blackshirts. Evans had hoped that the council would refuse to ratify the situation but it had proved a slender hope because the perception of Prescott's stealthy tightening of his grip on power was eclipsed by the many sensible but tough measures he was pushing through council that were necessary to ensure Pentworth's survival and sufficient to override opposition. Out of loyalty, Malone had offered to resign from the police too, but Evans had wanted him to stay on, saying he'd be happier if there was at least one sane officer on the force come the day when they'd have to pick up the pieces.

  On balance retirement wasn't so bad. Prescott had honoured Evans' pension. The former police officer had his hives to look after and, above all, he could continue to indulge his passion for flying because the council had voted him a fuel allowance for weekly aerial inspections.

  As the tiny biplane neared the town, Evans identified the strands of smoke as coming from North Street -- near Ellen Duncan's "Earthforce" herbal shop. Someone had lit an unauthorized fire that night and put it out before daybreak, not realising that their chimney was still emitting telltale traces of smoke. Pentworth was built on a buff therefore maintaining level flight resulted in him flying above the rooftops at less than 500 feet.

  The streets were busy with hand carts and a few horse-drawn vehicles. There was a crowd gathering in Market Square near the town stocks. Probably someone who was having a clear-out and had set up a stall. All junk had value these days. A queue had formed outside the battery charging centre. He altered course and flew parallel to North Street, enabling him to pinpoint the exact property emitting smoke. He keyed his PMR radio.

  `Alpha Zero One -- Oscar Papa.'

  `Go ahead, Alpha Zero One,' the Pentworth operations duty officer at the police station acknowledged.

  Evans had to press the handset's speaker-microphone to his ear to hear above the harsh buzz of the microlight's air-cooled engine. `A possible recently-extinguished fire,' he reported. `Warren's butcher's shop, North Street.'

  `Thank you, Alpha Zero One. We'll send a unit to take a look.'

  A fire warranted a prompt response. The morris police would check fireplaces and test the temperature of chimney masonry. If Tony Warren had lit an illegal fire, he faced an automatic fine of 500 euros. Among the first measures taken by the council the previous March when the Wall appeared were strict controls on carbon dioxide emissions. Fire licences were issued by Government House for public barbecues, charcoal production, and essential engineering work, and that was all.

  Evans banked and flew south-east, passing directly over Ellen Duncan's property. Her wedge-shaped plot started at the narrow frontage of her shop and widened rapidly in a series of terraced fields as it dropped down the slope. Ellen also owned the adjoining farmland and Pentworth Lake itself. One of her small fields was on a check list provided by Government House, but it had been ploughed and harrowed since his last inspection flight so his digital camera remained in its case.

  He spotted Ellen near the back door of her house, shading her eyes as she stared up at him. He waggled his wings. There was a pause before she waved in acknowledgement. He chuckled to himself when he recalled a flight two years previously when he had caught her unawares.

  He glanced at his watch. The time allowed for his inspection flight was nearly over. Just a quick check of Temple Farm to the east and then home to a landing in his paddock where his son would be waiting for him.

  Before him lay the Temple of the Winds with its massive sandstone outcrop projecting from the hill's wooded slopes near its brow. The winds of a hundred centuries had carved the edge of the great slab into a strange, gargoyle-like face that scowled southward across the valley to the alien crags and tors of the Farside steppes. The high outcrop was steeped in legend, the most ancient being that the Beaker people had thrown virgins off the precipice to appease their gods.

  If the couple that Evans spotted on the slab near the lookout obelisk were virgins before they climbed the hill, they were now doing their damnedest with horizontal aerobics on a blanket to remedy the situation.

  What Harvey Evans did next was more than merely cruel and immature -- it was downright malicious, but he was downwind, was weak, and had a sense of humour.

  He throttled back and lost height so that he was below the level of the slab, thus the engrossed couple would be unlikely to hear his approach.

  They didn't.

  The realization that their party for two had become a menage de trois came when the Durand microlight appeared from nowhere and roared over them at a height of ten metres. Evans could not have joined in at a worse moment: coitus interruptus with wings. His startled male victim suddenly reared up from between his partner's spread thighs and splattered her. Evans looked back and caught a glimpse of the man bundling his girlfriend towards the sanctuary of nearby trees, trying frantically to yank his zip over a diminishing erection, while the girl played hopscotch with a pair of panties. They became entangled and fell over. The man jumped up and shook an enraged fist at the biplane. Evans recognised them: Josie Smith and her husband. He held his course away from them to spare them further embarrassment.

  A married couple having it off in the outdoors? Well - it wasn't that unusual. There was a local belief that children conceived at the Temple of Winds were destined for good health and prosperity.

  Strange how 2000-year-old pagan beliefs still exerted such a hold over supposedly rational people in the 21st Century.

  Chapter 9.

  ELLEN GLOWERED UP AT the microlight biplane as it flew over her house. A mixture of embarrassment and anger pricked her cheeks whenever she saw the diminutive aircraft. Before the discovery of the flint mine the previous year, when she had had more time on her hands, she had often taken the steep path up to the Temple of Winds on fine days to sunbathe, read, and listen to music. On one occasion she had been reading a book about Isadora Duncan and, feeling exuberant, had emulated her namesake by performing a little dance to Stravinski's Rite of Spring, naked. Harvey Evans had chanced on her so suddenly in his damned flying flea of an aeroplane that she had had no time to grab her towel. According to David Weir, Evans had talked in the Crown about the incident but, thankfully, had never mentioned her name.

  Now the nosy old sod was making her life a misery with his damned Prescott-inspired inspection flights. David's fellow farmers were complaining about the fines they were having to pay for minor infractions of a whole raft of new anti-pollution rules and regulations.

  The Durand waggled its wings. Ellen returned the salute with a wave but two upturned fingers
tended to undermine the friendliness of the gesture. A large black cat, Thomas, rubbed around her ankles and looked up at his mistress with the woebegone expression of a cat forced accept the ugly truth that the last tin of Felix had been opened several weeks ago. Ellen pushed him away with her foot and turned to berate a herb or a helper.

  `Where's that Sarah Gale and Robbie Hammond?' she demanded.

  Tracy stopped hoeing between the rows of chicory and pointed down the terraced slopes. `They went that way, Mrs Duncan. They said--'

  `Miss Duncan!'

  `Sorry, Miss Duncan. They were carrying boxes of digital seedlings to plant in that new bottom field.'

  `I'll give 'em hell if they're not,' said Ellen grimly. `It's digitalis -- good for heart remedies. And careful with that hoe! Can you call upon a working corner of your addled brain to recall why I've marked some plants with coloured raffia?'

  The girl regarded her, doe-eyed. `Because they're the best and therefore they're going to be allowed to go to seed for next year's crop?'

  `Excellent, Tracy. Perhaps your cerebrally-challenged condition was over-estimated by the Apprentice Assignment Committee.'

  Ellen turned her back and set off in search of her missing helpers, leaving the doe-eyed girl wondering if she'd been complimented or insulted. Thomas followed, pausing to outwit and kill the occasional dead leaf.

  Apprentices! thought Ellen, tramping downhill. The delinquents she'd been saddled with by the assignment committee were real dumbos. All they would ever grow was bored, and they were already experts at that.

  Ellen was not wholly in favour of Prescott's apprenticeship scheme. Having less bright kids completing their education in apprenticeships to wheelwrights, cartwrights, wainwrights, bakers, candlestick makers and all the other many vital trades that had been on the point of extinction, might be a good idea but to Ellen it smacked of selection. But, whatever the rights and wrongs of the scheme, she grudgingly had to admit that it seemed to be working. They were nearly into July -- 13 weeks of the Wall and the whole community was abuzz with activity, taking advantage of the long hot, hours of daylight.

  Some kids were taking the wrong sort of advantage; shrieks of laughter enabled Ellen to locate her missing helpers. Sarah Gale and Robbie Hammond were naked, splashing each other in the depleted stream, the boy doing his best to kiss the Sarah's breasts but she kept pushing him away with playful flicks at his hopeful coat peg erection.

  `When you two have finished,' Ellen bellowed, her hands cupped to her mouth, `there's that digitalis to be planted!'

  The couple stopped their horseplay. The boy clapped his hands in front of himself and hid behind Sarah who was quite unabashed by her nakedness.

  `We're taking a break from the stink of that tree down there!' said Sarah defiantly. She was referring to Ellen's ginkgo (maidenhair) tree whose terrible smell kept deer away from her herb crops. It had also deterred weekend ramblers in the days when they had been a problem. In fact the tree deterred anything that could walk, crawl, swim or fly. It was a biological stink bomb of awesome potency.

  `You'll get used to it!'

  `No way!' Sarah declared.

  `Sorry, Miss Duncan!' the lad called out over Sarah's shoulder. He was fearful of Ellen's temper. `We'll get back now.'

  `Not without gas masks!' Sarah yelled.

  Ellen's explosion of anger was checked by someone calling her. She wheeled around. It was Tracy, the doe with the hoe, out of breath. `Message from Vikki, Mrs-- Miss Duncan. There's a Mr Hardy to see you urgent in the shop!'

  `Urgently! It should be an adverb!'

  `I don't think so. Vikki didn't say he was selling anything.'

  Ellen didn't bother trying to work that one out. She hurried back to her little herbal shop to discover that Tracy's Mr Hardy was Bob Harding.

  The scientist's expression was grim. He came straight to the point. `I owe you an apology, Ellen, for the number of times I've not voted with you. Until now, I've usually gone along with Prescott because I think he's been doing a good job and always has the best interests of the community at heart. But this time he's gone too far. You'd better come and see what's happening in Market Square.'

  Ellen asked him to wait while she changed quickly into clean shorts and a T-shirt. She left Vikki and Thomas in charge of the shop and had to trot to keep up with the scientist as he strode towards Market Square. In answer to her questions he said, `you'll see,' and kept walking.

  They were nearly at the square when Harding asked: `By the way, Ellen, how's the work going on David's traction engine?'

  `Charlie Crittenden is testing the boiler tomorrow.'

  `Excellent. We can set a date for the operation for next week if our wonderful chairman agrees.'

  Ellen's scathing response that the decision to carry out the scientist's crazy plan for an assault on the Wall would be taken in full council never materialised. She followed Harding through the small crowd and stared in a mixture of astonishment and horror at the scene before her, not hearing Harding's excuses that there were problems at the new ice-making plant that he had to attend to.

  Brad Jackson, the scourge of Pentworth, was in the town stocks. The delinquent was naked and sobbing in terror, writhing and twisting -- his wrists and neck bleeding from abrasion against the rough timbers in his desperate but futile efforts to avoid jets of urine being fired at him by a large woman wielding a formidable plastic water rifle with a large reservoir. A jeering crowd had gathered, some trying to get near enough to spit but prevented by three white-bloused morris men. A fourth morris man was moving through the throng, warning people not to throw anything. Nelson Faraday, dressed in his customary black leather, was standing nearby, idling twirling some keys on a chain and scowling at everyone.

  A group of teenage girls were pointing and laughing at the youth's genitals while chanting, `Brad's got a little one...! Brad's got a little one...!'

  Ellen didn't know any of morris policemen because there had been many new recruits recently. Faraday seemed to be in charge so she rounded on him. `This is inhuman! Release him immediately!'

  Faraday took a step back, folded his arms, and studied Ellen quizzically, looking her up and down like a Roman senator contemplating the purchase of a slave. His gazed lingered approvingly on her breasts before he gave her a sardonic smile.

  `I will in 45-minutes,' he said. `Then it'll be the turn of his mates. A hour each. Chairman's orders.' He jerked his thumb at a dogcart where two members of Brad Jackson's gang were manacled to a cross-bar, their eyes wide with terror.

  The women with the water rifle ran out of ammunition. She started forward with the intention of kicking the youth but was restrained by a morris man. Nevertheless she managed a well-aimed glob of saliva that trickled down her target's tear-stained face.

  Ellen stared around at the crowd and saw the same faces and the same twisted expressions of hate that she saw in her recurring nightmare of a terrified young woman being driven around the town. It was a bright, sunny day, yet the vision sprang at Ellen, swamping her senses. The young woman had luxuriate black hair like Ellen. She was chained naked to the cross-bar of a dogcart, her legs streaked with mucus and semen from the mass rape she had suffered at the Temple of the Winds. She gave a scream at something she had seen in the middle of the square. But it was a silent scream. It was Brad Jackson's real scream of pain from a well-aimed stone that banished the stark images, bringing Ellen to her senses.

  For some moments she was disorientated, her brain a madly spinning kaleidoscope, but she managed to marshal her thoughts and square up to Faraday. `Listen, you scumbag -- what you're doing here is illegal and a flagrant violation of human rights!' she snapped, her face white with fury.

  Faraday's smile faded. His expression hardened to a scowl. `No one calls me a scumbag.'

  `I call you what I damn well like. This is illegal.'

  Faraday's eyes glittered hatred. `Best you argue with this little delinquent about what's legal and what's illegal. He and his ma
tes were caught trashing this lady's home this morning. He stays in the stocks another 45-minutes. Chairman's orders.'

  Ellen controlled her temper. `So you're saying that it's not much use my arguing with the monkey when my argument's with the organ-grinder?'

  Without waiting for an answer, Ellen glanced up at Pentworth's coat of arms fluttering from the flagstaff on top of Government House, indicating that Prescott was in, and walked slowly away. Faraday and the hostile crowd watched her crossing the square. Ellen was too intent on her next course of action to notice Detective-Sergeant Mike Malone also watching the proceedings with interest from his favourite table outside the Crown public house. He was off duty, enjoying the sun and a tankard of Pentworth Breweries latest special malt beer. Much as he admired Ellen, the detective's attention remained on the small crowd, particularly the nucleus -- the twenty or so who had gathered even before Brad Jackson had been locked in the stocks.

  Suddenly Ellen broke into a run and veered towards Government House.

  `Stop her!' Faraday yelled.

  The two black-shirted men standing each side of the entrance were members of the security team donated by Adrian Roscoe. They knew Ellen was a councillor and hesitated. Their momentary indecision was enough for her to thrust them aside and storm into the lobby.

  Jesus Christ! she thought, racing up the stairs. Blackshirt palace guards now!

  On the fourth floor Diana Sheldon and Vanessa Grossman tried to stop Ellen but weren't quick enough. The infuriated woman burst into Prescott's office. The chairman was sitting behind his expanse of desk and had a warm smile of welcome in place that masked his concern. He had seen Ellen break into a run and head for Government House and was alarmed at the ease at which she had entered the building and his office. Security would have to be stepped up. He rose, hand outstretched in welcome. As usual, he was wearing a spotless white safari suit, open-necked, his florid complexion a little less rounded now because he was losing weight and looking better for it. He motioned Diana and Vanessa to withdraw.