(Ok, enough with the real world stuff. I return here to the thing I do that is the best that I do. I was good at other things once, but now I write. Below are three flashes all on the same thought, like beads on the one thread. They are examples of writing from the heart and putting something of myself into the work. But they are fictions, too, and fictions first. In a few days I will return to Port Brokeferry, a happier place for me to play in.)
GALL
There’s a voice that he uses. Soft at first, and plain, as though he means no harm to anyone. He is confident that he will be heard. He stands tall on a raised platform and beckons those passing to come listen to what he has to say. And the people stop, trusting this gentle voice in their community.
There is ash or silver in his hair and his face is lined with the years he has lived. He is the voice of experience, he tells them, and so he is to be believed. The people nod to show that they do believe.
There is a woman, he says. Her heart as black as the dark at the bottom of the well where drowned kittens in sacks were found last Sunday. Black as the charred bones of the murderer, Merkel, burnt to death in his own house and some said it was the hand of god was at work there. And this black-hearted woman, he says, calls on Hecuba in her sleep and she makes mischief for the villagers and casts spells to hurt those she takes against.
The crowd shake their heads and the words in their mouths are all stone and sting and fright.
And this woman is one we call friend and neighbour, he says. A woman we have heaped blessings on and given prayers to. For which she pays us back with curses and witchery.
There, it has been said. A murmur runs through the crowd, like fire when it is set to the fields in autumn after harvest. He knows he has them now and in a voice growing more strident and hectoring he details the wrongs suffered by the villagers. Orchards that did not bear good fruit; hives where all the bees were dead and no honey stored by for the winter; monies lost from the pockets of drunk men; bitter words exchanged between those who were lovers before. All this and more he lays at the feet of Hecuba’s whore. That’s what he calls this woman, and the people raise their fists in the air and add their own grievances to the voice of the grey haired old man.
He is pleased at what he hears.
Time was that this silver haired man and this woman might have shared the same bed. Recent time. He bestowed favours on the woman and smiled on her and wrote her sweet words on expensive paper. They sat together in silent rooms sometimes, the man holding her hand in his or stroking her hair as though she was a child. And at last kisses were exchanged, his tongue pushed into her mouth, and his rough hand and quick was under her skirts. It was not what she wanted and so she dared to protest and say him ‘no’. But the man does not tell the people this, does not reveal the spite in what he does now. The people gathered outside on the village green hear only what he wants them to hear.
And he names her then. Points a finger to where she lives. A hush falls on the gathering. Solid as stone and heavy as the quiet laid on the world before a storm. He fixes the people with his grey eyes, looks deep into the faces of everyone there. He spits on the grass, but the taste is bitter still in his mouth. He knows that this is the moment and all he has to do is wait.
Suddenly there is a great noise, the voices of everyone raised as one. Loud as the trumpet blast that felled the walls of Jericho, all clamour and indignation and bile. And the hand of god turns hard against the Widow Judith as it did against Merkel. That is the way of things.
The Right Reverend John Smith sees his work done. He watches the backs of the people as they move away from where he stands. He nods his head and is satisfied.
THE SHUNNED
She stands in the pulpit, raised above us, ranting like a good ‘un. Pointing the sharp stab of her finger in the air and accusing everyone there of sin. She is the upright pillar of our community. She does good deeds, conspicuously, so everyone can see; and she has suffered personally, and she makes sure we see that, too. Gives her the right that does, to beat us over the head with her tablets of stone and her one, two, three commandments of thou shalt nots. Thou shalt not cross me. Thou shalt not do what I would not do. Thou shalt not steal from others in the community but especially not from me.
The congregation shifts a little in the pews. Nodding to each other. Agreeing with what she says. After all she is the voice we all listen to, the voice we put our faith in. And she has the power to crush us with a wave of her hand or a look. That’s what it feels like at least. And so we nod to the people left and right of us and everyone is witness to our nodding.
But though I do as the rest do, there is a secret I knows. How I can tell it, I am at a loss to say. For saying it out loud would risk her wrath and the finger pointing at me then and her stare as sharp as pins. But I knows. I have seen it with my own eyes. What she has done. And it is a sin against her own commandments.
But who would listen to my small voice when hers is so loud? Who would pay heed to me when she is what holds our community together? We know this because she tells us it is so. ‘I am the way and the light.’ And even if the people did listen, is this what I would want for her or for us? To bring the pillar down and the whole roof of the church with it.
‘And you, Tobias, how do you plead?’ she says.
And Tobias, old in years to be sinning, kneels before the congregation and prays for mercy.
‘But you have stolen from us. Taken what was ours and claimed it as your own. Words from my mouth have found place in Tobias’ mouth and he has boasted them his.’
And Tobias wants to make defence of himself. I can see that he does. He starts to speak, but thinks better of it. All this written plain in his face. He bites his tongue and bows his head.
She senses victory. It is something she recognises. She stands straight and tall. Beautiful, like an avenging angel, her hair fanned out as if she is facing a great wind and standing firm.
‘Out,’ she says. Just that. It is enough.
And Tobias slumps a little lower on his knees. The weight of the world on his shoulders it looks like, and the weight too hard to bear. And she in the pulpit looks down on us all, for some sort of affirmation of what she has said. And one by one we turn our backs to Tobias till he is alone and shunned. He gets up from his knees and walks from the gathering. I can hear him as he leaves, the scuff and scuff of his feet. The door closes hard behind him and will open no more to his knock.
But I knows a secret. I knows that she does not keep her own commandments. For she takes from others in the community. Pretends she doesn’t, but I have seen her with her cloth covered wicker basket taking small bits from here and small bits from there. Sometimes not so small. Whole things sometimes. Gives them a new face perhaps, but not so full a disguise that I do not know what she has done and from where she has taken what is now hers. She is as guilty as Tobias. I know she is. But who is there would believe what I say? I do not want to believe it myself. Except for Tobias’ sake and for the sake of every other outcast she has given name to. So I write it all down and seal those words in a white paper wallet. I drop it into the collector’s plate when it is passed round and I wait.
I do not know what difference it will make. People believe what they want to believe. But I wait.
THE STONE THROWERS
Of course, they knew her. They all did. Some part of her at least. The girl she had been. Years back. Picking up dropped stalks of wheat in the fields. Or potatoes out of the mud. Or apples from the trees. And the young men trying to catch her eye.
‘Twas Oren who threaded flowers in Esther’s hair one summer evening and the first to kiss her under the moon. Sweet as strawberries, Oren said afterwards, making more of it than it ever was. And the men in The Stag all nudge and wink, and dreaming into their cups that she’d lain with them in the tall grass, or that she would some day.
Oren might have had the first kiss, but it was Coop who called her to his bed. Stayed together for seven years before it was over, Esther and Coop. Two children from their union, a boy and a girl to feed, and so she returned to the fields in search of work. By then there were other girls turning men’s heads in the village.
Harper was seen some nights, sneaking out of Esther’s house, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. His purse a little lighter, his wife said, the money that was hers by right putting food into the mouths of another man’s children . But Harper denied everything. In church, he did. ‘I swear to God.’ His palms held up and his face all false innocence.
And one morning Esther was discovered pissing in Amos’ field. It was the year the crops failed. Amos drunk for months before that day. Drunk when he should have been working, drunk afterwards, but he blamed her. Said there was a spell cast on his fortunes. Everything pissed away. Truth in that, some. But then he pointed the finger at her and muttered ‘whore of the devil’ and Harper agreed.
It was a bad year. Everyone suffers then. Church was fuller than before and everyone praying for mercy and a better year ahead. Even Amos was there. Dressed in his second best suit, his hair slicked back, and his face had seen a razor that morning. Something respectable he looked like.
And after church the men who had dropped bits of pennies into the collection tray and were not happy that they had, these men looked over their shoulders at Esther, and they spat at her feet when she passed, and they could not see a better day with her in it.
So they lined up in front of her house. The stone throwers. All spit and curse, and brandy making them brave as fools. Weighing stones in their fists. Oren and Coop and Amos amongst them, and Harper, too, and every man that once had dreamed his hand beneath her dress when she was a girl. They all knew her and today they would put their world to rights.
Next year would be a better year for everyone. That’s what they said when they had done. A better year for everyone – except a boy and girl, thin as sticks, seen begging for food at the church door.
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