H C Turk, page 7
I gave them the regard of offense. A particular slave woman habitually entered my chamber to speak too often. With her I supped in a manner, achieving a social insect-a cockroach-which I retained until the servant came again for chatting. I then ate the creature, which resembled a beetle but tasted like sinners. The woman departed at once with the reddest face and tightest jaws.
All the servants thereafter ignored the new girl, this mutual disregard appropriate in that we presented no mutual danger. Especially safe the servants seemed in being female, none having the energetic smell of their mistress, though often they attempted to command one another to no fruition. The one sent by Rathel to instruct me in dressing was named Elsie, a solid but not large woman who smelled less than young but appeared less than old. Significant was that Elsie had been audience to my roach repast. Without mentioning bugs, Elsie approached me in that shadow aspect of my individual room, came to aid me, so she maintained.
"So I'm here to be helping you learn proper dressing, lass," she offered with uncertainty and insistence, a combination stemming from her desire to aid a youth who had proven herself distasteful, so to speak.
Elsie spoke with an odd inflection, a distinctive manner called an "accent" by sinners, who speak differently according to their locale of origin. In this manner were the sinning regions demarked, not by the natural delineation of glade and valley, but of suburb and estate, of wealthy homes and the dirt streets of workers.
"Not being one of your windows, I require no obsessive draping," I told the servant. "Attired enough I have been, and shall remain."
"Not attired enough, I'm saying, for a lady of any age," the woman retorted, "with no underthings below to hide your figure which one day might be womanly, though not if you don't start eating more properly than you're dressing."
Typical of Elsie was this characteristic of turning sentences into speeches, that initial speaking, remarkably enough, not an end in itself.
"And the purpose, now, is for you to become a lady," she continued, "for having a pleasant face is not enough in fine society. Neither is a handsome figure when its parts are being flaunted and seen within one's dress. A dress, I'm having to add, due more one of my station than an English lady, new or not. And your hair, then, is fit more some wild thing than even me; for at least I'm brushing mine each day and night, more than I'm saying for you, girl, in that your head is all a tangle."
"If Lord God had desired His people to brush their hair," I replied as though some clerical expert, "He would have made our fingers thinner and more numerous."
"If He'd had wished His lovely girls to seem ugly," Elsie retorted, "you'd be looking like me all along."
Yes, she was ugly, I noticed, her only charming characteristic. Though nearly as short as a crone, the servant had none of the subtle nuances of skeletal structure that delineate witches as a different race. Nevertheless, she lacked the pretentious odor of her employer, and required no titular addition to her common name as did ladies and bishops. And though she had the attribute of lacking sophistication, Elsie was a sinner nonetheless, not animal enough to provide me with pleasant company.
Within my (my?) chamber we stood, a site the servant would have me emulate by covering us both with fabric, on our seats and extremities and every vertical surface. Regardless, I had yet to determine why this servant's own attire was inferior to Lady Rathel's, since the fabrics seemed similarly rich. Of course, the gaudier the better was the rule of sinning clothiers. Elsie's frilly, white apron was servants' wear never seen on a lady, not even Rathel, who dressed mildly compared to some. And here was the basic difficulty of our conversation: not appearance but emulation.
"Learning to be a lady is not something I need accomplish and thereby become as calculating as the Rathel person," I declared to Elsie. "No witch would choose to live as bi-zarrely as she, not even one as odd as I."
Standing firmly before me, arms straight at her sides, Elsie reeked of patience as she looked directly to my face and replied.
"Ah, I'm hearing from our mistress of your delusions, lass, but you'd best not be calling yourself a witch, for it's unbelievable with your fine appearance and without you causing the first palsy."
"Only sinners bring plagues," I retorted. "Witches are a healthy folk who require no doctoring. Instead of commenting as to my 'delusions,' Rathel might have explained to you that the common sinning notions of witches are as fantastical and false as tales of elves and fairies."
"What Mistress Amanda is explaining to me," Elsie added patiently, "is of your former life tainted by evil. So I might be pitying your past, child, but since your present will be fine as soon as you allow it, I'll just be on with me job." Then she approached to aid in my ladylike dressing. But between us women, only I understood that the true delusion was the false life being forced upon me that I would continue to reject.
"So I'm showing you, girl," Elsie added, "the difference between petticoats and pantaloons." Then from a tall bureau she removed fabric items that she placed upon the bed, innumerable white parcels with crinkly edges that she would have me apply simultaneously. "The proper order I'm telling you, and an aid in donning them as well I'm being," she concluded, and stepped toward me, implying direct contact.
Though I made no aggressive move as the servant neared, I reached her first, taking the woman's wrist with no exceptional pressure, though I was discomforted by the contact.
Never before had I touched a sinner. But from the grip of sinners to steal me, kill me, I knew their flesh to be warm, and felt this heat upon grasping Elsie, unable to understand how they could bear such an inner fire. Was this not the aspect of their nature to make them so active? Always driven by their own, internal heat, the cause for flames being so desirable to them. Elsie's response was thus predictable. Unkindly, I intended to disturb her. Herein I succeeded, for with my firm touch, the servant looked down to my hand, thereafter pulling her entire body away.
The Lady Vidgeon had poked my hair and fabric. Elsie received all skin, cold skin.
"Blessed Jesus, lass," she hissed while looking toward me with a distraught visage, "you would have to be dead to feel so cold." And she continued to step away, quitting the room as though she had been asked to tend the dead. So absolute was her move that I assumed she also quit the Lady Rathel's household, as though such employ were abundant.
It is noi. Rare is the witch with a servant. I retained mine, however, for Elsie remained. Though I desired only to have this sinner avoid me, I was surprised to find her soon returned. She wore gloves, the type used to protect sinners from winter. These would protect Elsie from a witch's coldness. Standing again with her arms comfortably straight at her sides, Miss Elsie stated her position.
"You and I, lass, shall become familiar."
Though making no move toward me, the servant controlled my dressing. Remaining in the ^.doorway, Elsie pointed with her gloves that would surely insulate her from my cool demeanor. Firmly, literally, she pointed out how and where to apply each article of clothing.
I smelled her fear, but also her determination. And I complied, the witch not pleased but nearly amused with this stern servant. Because I was a witch, I felt shame for cooperating, but loneliness precluded my receiving torment from understanding that the next person to share with me familiarity would be a sinner.
A seamstress was hired to construct apparel in accord with my specific shape. Standing in thin undergarments as a humming woman hovered about me was less distressful than many previous manipulations of the sinners. And Elsie's observing every move of the seamstress was somehow supportive. Perhaps she had mentioned cold skin to this woman. Perhaps not. Days later, a raft of garments began entering my chamber and my personal furniture. Elsie was grandly pleased at the finery, but I had no appreciation. Rathel was nearer in response to her servant than her ward.
"I am so pleased that your attire is now excellent, Alba. Despite your disregard for satisfying me, I thank you for pleasing Miss Elsie. Eventually you will find her a mild and cordial person. As a type of reward, I would like to show you a part of London that may refresh you in its wildness. Perhaps on our journey you may find a way of escaping the city. Perhaps not."
Perhaps I would agree to see Rathel's wild site with the briefest reply and no mention of escaping, a possibility I had not rejected, though flight is no topic to be discussed with one's captor.
Since the overall ambience of the city was oppressive, I continued to have difficulty in sensing London as I would a new forest whose parts would be comprehensible from familiarity with the genre. Being dragged about by captured horses was no aid. Along the street only moments before reaching our destination-but we did not stop. Through the window, I saw a green area of trees and grass, and though flanked by streets and containing a few walking sinners; nevertheless, this was wilderness compared to the brief frontage of Rathel's town house.
"This is not our goal?" I asked the sinning lady.
"This is but a park," she replied. "Our goal is grand."
We continued. During this journey, I noticed at the end of several streets smaller versions of that park, areas of natural land-with elms and brush-appropriately termed "greens." But since none was grand, none was visited by the heinous lady and her slave. We did not stop until after my first major horror in London.
The first experience to strike me with fear acute enough to be physical was another variety of sinning transportation. This was no coach nor carriage, however, but a bridge, in some intellectual manner the same as a boat in that both allow passage over water. But boats are sensible in floating like a log or animal; whereas this bridge seemed a road foolishly made to float in the air. Bridges I had seen before on Man's Isle, but they were low and short and encountered prior to a family member's drowning. Those of Man's Isle were sheds; the one we approached was akin to St. Nicholas Cathedral: so massive as to be of another species, like sinners and witches. Hershford Bridge was high to allow the passage of large boats below, and constructed not like a timber bridge of Man's Isle nor the lesser bridges of London. The latter had thick walls with cavelike passages for boats, but Hershford Bridge was set upon pilasters too thin to support its own mass. Perverse these sinners were to make lesser bridges more substantial than their greatest.
I was astonished to look from the coach and see myself above a broad river. Boats floated safely below, but I was suspended by poor idea, for roadways cannot float. They are heavy and must sink, sink to the bottom of this river and take the witch along, the witch utterly fearful of any water since Marybelle had been thrown into the sea. Looting out from the coach, I lost my breath, lost my ability to think; for I was held by the devil and about to be dropped, about to sink and drown and thereby manifest with my own death those nightmares I had been suffering of Marybelle's demise. For I knew not what had occurred to her beneath the Irish Sea, only knew that the ocean had killed my sister as the Thames would soon murder me.
My final fear was the smell of death, Marybelle gone without an odor, but I would smell my own body rotting on the bottom, the stench exactly as permanent as Mother's acrid deposit in the air. My upcoming death seemed punishment from Satan for my foolish inference that because I had never smelled Marybelle's dying, perhaps great God had again overcome the devil and allowed a witch to live. This imbecilic notion vanished as my dread peaked, the certainty that Hershford would hurl me into the water where I would smother with a death as sure as burning. But my terror extended as though a bridge itself, extended as the coach passed over the solid bridge no less
supportive than the following roadway.
As we gained the bank and I frantically made an escape, Lady Rathel grasped me, insisting that I calm and explain myself. I then thought of her stepping upon me as I lay on the ocean floor, thought of her ruining my pride by ruining my proof, but what was the equivalence? My only reply was to reach for the door, but I could not decode the mechanism, fumbling at the metal latch as Rathel restrained me. Finally I spoke the single word, "bridge." Then the sinner understood, providing me with a comparison; for Rathel ruined me again by explaining that to return we would necessarily cross that bridge again. And though she insisted that our next passage would be as safe as the last, I could not heed her truth, defeated again by the sinners' heinous world wherein fear was not an evil to be avoided, but a byproduct of city living.
I was taken to a place of geometry; the trees and hedges of Pangham Gardens were cut into false shapes, cubes and spheres. Pangham's large pools held floating buckets of flowers, and metal fishes swam below. Yes, the fishes in these stone ponds were of the brightest gold-the astounding sinners had managed to coat God's creatures with their evil-est material. And the fishes were real, for they emitted a smell no sinner could replicate. Forever I would walk on the colored gravel of Pangham Gardens where no carriage was allowed and stare at the fishes rather than cross that bridge again, stare at the fishes without wondering further of their organic gold, stare at the fishes until the sinning lady told me they were rare in England but grew wild in the Orient. Stare at the fishes and walk forever until Rathel understood that my prime sight was a bridge in my future, the one to haunt me in the real.
"We return with no delay," she said, "so that your fear will be alleviated. Within the coach, I shall close the curtains so that nothing frightening can be seen. Understand your safety in advance, Alba, for I am with you and have no desire to die."
Her tactic was successful until halfway across when I ripped the opaque curtain aside to see, for I could smell the water and sense the height and needed to see the bridge collapsing so that I might react. So that I might grasp the air or watch myself fall and sink and drown. But Rathel was correct, for eventually we were over safely, the only damage to my memory, and not to be repaired.
Five
Water held me in the city. Within Rathel's house I remained, having no intents of escaping London since I knew that crossing a bridge would be required. After Hershford Bridge, I was entrapped not by the city, but by my fears, a rather insubstantial prison for so physical a witch.
After enjoying relief from surviving the Thames, I accepted an unusual feeling of security. Although in a city of sinners, I would not be found the witch unless revealed by Rathel, and she desired me for herself. No other dangers threatened me as long as I remained away from the Thames. And though this disposition continued into evening, the day's social end brought a change not to my thinking but to my life.
Donning that light gown for sleeping as per Elsie's education, I waited for a servant to enter my chamber and kill the hated candle, to reduce the evil oil lamp never known in my mother's home. So wicked are sinners that to provide themselves with light after God ends His true light of day they bum little parts of their households. The smells were unlike cooking animals, unlike any odors known to me, but they stank. Worse was the heat: not the quantity, but the immediacy. I could not bear to approach the candle and blow it out or use the snuffer, and the oil lamp was worse in being surrounded by hot glass. No sleeping would I have with those fire sources staring at me, as though prepared to attack, the witch so aware of her surrounds that she now could suffer from them.
Elsie's entrance was virtually joyous, for she was pleased to comply with my congenial request to quench the flames, though she wondered why the tasks were not within my capacity. This acceptable experience with Elsie recalled her assertion of familiarity to come. As I lay with improved feelings, I thanked Lord God that this bed had no major portion made of metal, not the posts nor canopy, only some fasteners ensconced in the joints they secured. But there my praying ended, and misery began.
I felt so eecure that I remembered my past. At once I was overwhelmed by Mother's death. With all of my energy, I struggled not to consider her sight, her self, her companionship and love, all gone, completely gone. This anguish peaked with impossibility, for she could not be gone, could not be absent from every part of the forest, could not be separate from me forever. But she was gone, was dead, was in this impossible state, and would never return, gone with no fault of her own. But I felt no blame for myself, only sorrow, utter sorrow, a tormented state to negate the relief in survival I had found that day. Nothing remained but Mother's death, nothing but a void in my heart where my love for her resided. Then came pain, physical pain in my head and stomach and rigid lungs, a pain to weaken me so much that I could not think, only feel, feel the loss that was my mother, feel an agony that no person -witch or sinner-could be evil enough to deserve, mine nonetheless, my torment forever.
This suffering was the core of my beginning life in London, the awareness of Mother's death followed by bodily pain. But Elsie's kindness of that evening influenced me toward considering Mother's greatest love, which was her daughter, until I understood that Mother would have me survive and love her forever without torment. I thought of the sinners who killed her: the alderman and bishop, the ostensible Lady Rathel, the one to have stolen me-or was it merely borrowing? Had not this woman attempted to spare Mother? This contention of hers was reasonable in that Mother's continued existence would have been beneficial to me, and I was the witch Rathel desired, her purpose to have me kill for her and thereby achieve some vengeance. Now Rathel had provided me with a safe chamber to encourage my cooperation, encourage further murder, but that act was of the future-that act was unbelievable. My current situation was more important: my new home and world and my need to survive therein. Then came recollection of grand St. Nicholas Cathedral, of heinous Hershford Bridge. Thereupon, I was struck not with memories nor details of these experiences, but their power, the inordinate energy they claimed within my existence. As though a chamber pot filled to the brim with urine, that excess energy spilled and slopped upon me, and it stank. My reaction was to demand that I survive the power and potential of my life in London. I determined to understand my current place and live as best as possible with Mother in my memory and God in my heart. I would begin with my chamber, my bed, but not that day, for I was exhausted from emoting. I slept, no dreaming, pleased the entire night to have no further heat within my personal quarters, no fire within my heart.
