Episode 34

Two clouds of dust converge in the middle of the desert. One cloud belongs to Demona and her creature, Carrapacchio, astride their twin Gravidores; the other cloud belongs to the pirate Captain plus one hundred and fifty sailors and their supplies loaded on horses and Aurochs. The Captain, having never seen a Gravidore before, is inclined to view the party of the other part with great suspicion, especially with such a beautiful woman at their helm. Women were not on his ‘most favourite’ list at the moment. Women and little boys. He lifts a hand and calls a halt to his entourage and the two parties confront each other cautiously.

“Greetings Captain. My name is Demona.”

“That doesn’t sound too promising. Demona. Demon. You’re not one of those other-worldly creatures, are you?”

“No, but I’m on the trail of one – a boy.”

“I knew it!” exclaimed the Captain. “I knew there was something fishy about him.”

“You’ve seen him then I take it?”

“Little sod stole my sword…and my mermaid,” he adds. “Chasing him right now.”

“How fortunate. Perhaps we could ride together?”

But the Captain is no unsuspecting fool any longer. He isn’t going to get conned twice.

“Rather not, if you don’t mind.”

“I know where he’s going,” says Demona. “And anyway you’re lost. The way you’re going you’re headed for the burning sands and you won’t last a day out there. So we can help each other,” says the oriental beauty with a bandage on her nose, fluttering her eyelids at him in a saucy kind of way.

The Captain smiles a sickly smile. She really isn’t his cup of tea – but it seems he had better play along if he wants to get his sword back and get out of this damned desert alive. The Captain turns to his retinue. Immediately behind him are the horses and bulls loaded with his own personal belongings: whole bookshelves full of his books, his writing desk and chair, his porcelain bath and toilet, and two wardrobes with all his clothes and shoes in them. Beyond that the horses are burdened down with kegs of beer and rum, ships biscuits and dried meat.

“Pass the word to set up camp,” he says to his valet.

The Gravidores have been inching slowly towards his horse, hoping to get a bite out of him, but the highly strung creature begins to fret and prance and the Captain retreats to a safe distance.

“Easy my pets,” says Demona. “Sorry about that Captain. My babies get a bit playful sometimes.”

“I’m sure they do,” answers the Captain, eyeing them sideways. Ugly brutes they are, missing a front leg and dripping slime and saliva by the bucket load.

“Carrapacchio! What are you waiting for? Unpack us, you miserable toad.”

Carrapacchio unfolds his misshapen form from the saddle and slides down onto the sand. His claws have grown so long that they curl back on themselves and cut into his skin. The Captain’s horse takes another step backwards at the sight of this new horror.

“Please Captain. Drinks in my tent in an hour.” This will give her time to freshen up and put on something more comfortable. The Captain isn’t looking forward to that at all, but he has no choice really. He has to humour this hoyden harpy harridan whatever.

“They’re headed for the Valley of Death – it’s the only way through to the Silvern Sanctuary. We’ll cut them off at the pass.”

“I’d like to cut him off at the knees,” mumbles the pirate.

Demona arranges her charms to her satisfaction, then smiles at the Captain.

“They’re trapped.”

The Captain was feeling a little trapped himself.

“There’s no way through the valley. It’s rather well guarded by a creature, some relative of the Gravidores I take it, just a whole lot bigger. So,” she says, shifting on the couch and showing off a whole lot of leg, “tell me about yourself.”

Carrapacchio is shuffling in his corner, chewing on his teeth in fury. The Captain is trying not to notice her efforts to seduce him. He is also beginning to feel slightly sick.

“I say, my man,” he says to his Valet. “How about a glass of Prosecco?” He turns to Demona apologetically. “It’s all I can drink really. Damn ulcer. But I have some rum if you are so inclined.” If he can force enough alcohol down her she might just fall asleep.

His life seems to be riddled with these women - trouble makers, the lot of them. Which is why he took to sea; where you don’t see many. Curse his luck for breaking a mast. If it had not been for the mast he’d never have met that blasted Mermaid and lost his ship, he’d never have met the boy and lost his sword, and he’d never have met this awful woman. God knows what he was going to lose to her, but he is quite sure that she will wreak her havoc upon him in some way or the other. He is going to have to keep on his toes.

Her toes, in the meantime, are inching towards his thigh in a playful kind of way and Carrapacchio is making wretching noises in his corner now.

“Have you finished making the supper that you sit there and make disgusting noises?”

“Nearly done, your buxomness. I just have to p….(he nearly said pee) put some herbs in to spice it up a little.”

“Well, don’t hang around here in all your filthiness. You’re spoiling the atmosphere.”

Carrapacchio scuttles off and starts banging pots and pans together in the other room.

“Where were we,” she says, sliding a little closer to the Captain. He can’t slide any further away…being perched right on the edge of the divan. Her foot is now firmly ensconced in his lap, her pudgy little toes twinkling away coquettishly. She gives his codpiece a little nudge and winks at him.

“How about an aperitif? Something to let the little monkey out of his cage?” she says meaningfully.

The Captain just wants to vomit.

Outside the sailors dance the hornpipe in the sand and the rum flows like rivers of gold. With songs of maidens fair and sailors bold, they sing the deeds of men of old. A hundred fires feed the roasting meat and steamy stories rise into the desert night heat.

This is the one time the Captain wishes he is carousing with his men. He’d have done anything to get out of that tent.

Samuel sat in stony silence. The rain rattled against the windscreen as he peered out into the night. All he saw was a couple of yards of illuminated road. That was about as much as he could see of his own life.

He was angry with her and he was in love with her; tenderly, chivalrously…and probably for the first time in his life. She felt sorry for him. She felt sorry for him because she was way out of his reach. If she stayed in prison or if she made her escape, she was equally inaccessible to him. He wasn’t the type to come and visit in her cell, and he wasn’t the type to leave everything behind and elope. She was like the mirage of an oasis above the desert sands. He had paradise on a plate in front of him and he couldn’t touch it. He was angry with the world for taking away his son…and he was angry at the world for giving him Ronetta, then taking her away as well. He was angry with Ronetta because he wasn’t the kind of man she could fall in love with. She took another look at him. Was he that kind of man? She just couldn’t tell.

 His face was just a picture of pain. Men in love did drastic things. You didn’t play around with them, and to tell the truth, from day one she’d never seen anyone fall so completely head over heels in love with her. It was flattering at first…but now it was a bit frightening. She’d never seen a man so besotted and so desperately hopeless. She’d have to be very careful not to drop him and break him. He might be a braggart and a bully, but beneath that crabby exterior he was a soft and sensitive person. It was always the strong silent types that broke down first and cried on her shoulder. And that this was his first time, in oh so many ways, made him all the more fragile and unpredictable.

She looked at him again, quite amazed that she could evoke such depth of feeling in another person. Just goes to show. Don’t mess around with people’s hearts. Was she messing? She didn’t know. She’d spent so many years messing that now she didn’t know the difference.

“I’ll go back to prison afterwards.” The words were out of her mouth before she realized she had spoken. “I’ve changed my mind…again. What’s the good of being a woman if you can’t change your mind hey?”

Samuel didn’t say anything. He wasn’t even listening to her. He was busy navigating a narrow twisting, turning road running through the warehouse section of the factory near the railway terminus.

“Yes,” she said, “I’ll come back to prison with you, whatever happens,” and she felt relief flooding through her body. Perhaps she too had been dreading her escape; dreading the unknown. She felt happier now that she had decided to go back into her cage. At least she wouldn’t be deserting him…she hadn’t felt at all happy about that…and who knows how things might develop. Suddenly she felt a whole lot lighter than she’d been in a long time, and surprisingly the thought of being near him in jail cheered her up.

“There it is,” she said, breaking out of her reverie and pointing to a neglected old warehouse. After all these years she still recognized the place. She felt a relief that it was nearly all over. It had been more stressful than she allowed herself to think.

Samuel switched off the lights and the engine, and coasted quietly to a stop outside the doorway. It looked like no one had been there in years. Suddenly he was icy cold. The shock of the whole event suddenly caught up with him and he began shivering in his seat. He clasped his hands between his knees and bowed his head. Now that the moment had arrived he was too scared to go through with it. Ronetta sat quietly by his side and waited with him. But what was going through his mind was ultimately worse than he would probably find so he finally took a torch from the glove box and forced himself to get out of the car. He had never been so petrified in his whole life. What would he find? He just prayed that Joshua was still alright. He couldn’t stand it if something had happened to him. Clara had threatened to kill him if he was dead…but she’d have to get in line. He would be first in the queue.

The beam of light was shaking in his hands as he forced himself to go forward, the blood roaring in his ears, deafening him to everything else.

He was surprised to find Ronetta at his side. He didn’t know if that was a good idea, especially if the old lady was as crazy as they thought, but he was thankful for the company. She smiled at him and took his hand.

The door swung open at their touch and his torch swept the empty room. It was empty of people……but there were plenty of signs that someone had been there: a cot, a table and chair, drip-feeds and such. Joshua had definitely been there – but they were too late. The birds had flown.

Episode 33

Follow-my-leader; round the washing machine and under the kitchen table, over the back of the sofa and out of the window. What a fun filled game when you are a child, the crazy, mad, mindless rush. What a dangerous game when you are an adult. Follow-my-leader, burning your bridges as you go…up the hill and tumbling down the other side into some dark-alley-deeds-done by drinking too much Dutch courage.

Early knock off time on Friday and everyone looking forward to the desperately named ‘happy hour’; as in the ‘happy farm’ or the ‘happy home’.

By seven o’clock the inhabitants of Mercia, not having eaten since their lunch-time sandwich, were more than happy. By eight o’ clock they were heroes in all but the making, and headed for the town jail. But their righteous quest had ended in disappointment, and the bitter bile of failure and the unrequited hatred of kidnappers boiled in every vein of the crowd surrounding Clara. She was still at the centre. But for how long. And what was she to do with them now.

Follow-my-leader is an age old institution. If you want to get something big done, that’s the way to do it. But a leader is nothing without his followers and vice versa. You, as a leader, are not separate from the people. You become them, and they become you. Your ideas become theirs, and theirs become yours. You become part of a collective will. You don’t, as leader and instigator, have a separate will anymore – you can’t change your mind once you have made a contract with the crowd. You belong to them as much as they belong to you. They don’t just follow you blindly – you follow them too. You can’t just change direction willy-nilly, and you can’t just call the whole thing off in mid-flight. Mobs are notoriously hard to stop once they gain momentum. If you opt out they’ll just push someone else to the fore (usually every four years or so if it’s a political mob) and carry on doing what their hearts are set on. These were some of the implications soaking through into Clara’s consciousness. Basically she had a runaway train on her hands. It’s easy enough to turn the switch on …but stopping is a whole other matter.

A burning prison behind her and a crowd all revved up with nowhere to go was a recipe for disaster - an open invitation for any loony-toony to step into the breech and suggest something crazy. The setting was sublime…scudding clouds across a sickle moon, electric torches and burning brands heaving up and down in a tumultuous sea of bodies around her…a real night for devilry. Clara was frightened out of her wits. Things had gone so badly wrong. Once inside the prison the crowd had been outraged at being cheated of their prey. All that had been left for them to do was break a few bits of furniture on their way out and drift off home. But that would have been a most unsatisfactory outcome. They had come too far to fizzle out like that. They were on the boil. They needed to do something to get rid of all the pent up adrenaline pumping through their veins.

Then some bright spark had the idea to throw her burning brand into a wastepaper basket. Many people attest to the fact that it was a ‘her’, with punky hair and black lipstick. With a loud cheer the crowd had then scarpered out of there before the police could nab any of them and had run down the high street towards the city centre. They had finally stopped in the park opposite the Town Hall and were now waiting for Clara to speak. What was she to do?  She needed help desperately, but for once Samuel wasn’t there to help her. This was where she missed him…his guidance….the things he could do that she never gave him credit for. No use calling him now…she doubted he’d ever come back, except to get his clothes. She had pretty much alienated him for life, and the memory stung her again like a bee. She had been so horrible to him; she doubted if he would ever speak to her again.

But the crowd were milling about over her shoulder and starting to get agitated by her dithering and lack of direction. She was losing her grip on them. Alice, to add to all her troubles, was standing at her side, nudging her in the ribs and whispering things in her ear but Clara wasn’t listening to her anymore. It was listening to Alice that had got her into this mess.

She had to do something…give the crowd a focus. But what? Ronald Watts was missing…God knows where. She didn’t have much else to suggest except a house to house search and all the hell that would unleash.

Then she remembered the priest knocking at her door this morning.

“I was hoping you would do a favour for me,” he had said. “I am holding a midnight mass tonight for Joshua, and I would like you to come….and bring your family with you.”

Clara remembered how kind he had been to her…how un-judgemental and friendly…and then she thought ‘that’s it’. The crowd couldn’t refuse to go to a mass for Joshua. This was a sure way of getting everybody to calm down and break the momentum of the mob. None of them were regular church goers, but none would refuse, and it was getting to the witching hour.

“How ugly are we.”

The priest sniffed and looked up at the overflowing flock blocking the aisles and entrance halls. Some even stood outside, craning their necks to catch a word or two.

“How ugly are we when we bray like a bunch of donkeys at a gatepost. How ugly are we, when we run roughshod over our feeding troughs and trample our keepers.

“How unlike the humble little donkey that stands patiently by the child born in his manger. How unlike the gentle donkey that carries Jesus into Jerusalem.

“We are donkeys. No doubt about that. He who would argue against that may bray away in vain. We make as much sense as a donkey. We generally have as much dignity. Stubborn and intractable, we follow our appetites and our irascible inclinations without giving any thought to others. We don’t care who we tramp on in our search for self-fulfilment; our neighbours and even our own children.”

He paused to give them the evil eye. He could hear by his tone that he was in a bad mood tonight. He never knew it until he started lashing into them. But he was only human after all. He was tired and irritable. He’d been very busy of late. Three teenage suicides in the last month and the parents didn’t have a clue. They never do. Totally unexpected they said. But he knew there were a whole lot of hurting youngsters out there with nowhere to go in a dead-end town that didn’t care about them. Yup. He was in a bad mood alright. He knew there were kids out there that needed help, but none, or very few, ever came to him. He was too yesterday. Today they dealt with their problems in a different way. This was the age of the pointing finger. Whip up a witch hunt and pin the tale on someone else.

“We are sneaky and treacherous. We cannot be trusted. We only look out for number one. If we can get away with something we will certainly try. If we could steal our neighbour’s apple, we would. If we could blame someone else for it, all the better. A donkey does not take responsibility for what it does.”

He paused here for a moment. The crowd were waiting to see which way he went with this.

“How ugly are we. Unloved donkeys. Biting the hand that feeds us. Kicking the one who brushes us and cleans our stall. Then we look around and say…how ugly is the world.

“Well, what can you do with a donkey like that? Can you hold him to account for his actions? Hee haw. Certainly not. It’s a donkey for goodness sake. He knows not what he is doing.

 “Uncared for and uncaring. And if these donkeys go on a rampage and trample a field of corn, or take an innocent young man and nail him up on a cross, are these donkeys to blame? Are they evil donkeys?

“Well,” he said, looking up at his congregation and taking his glasses off. “How much empathy does a donkey have anyway? How much empathy does a donkey have if he is humiliated and beaten and set to work from a very young age? How much generosity does he have in his heart? Mean, lean and bitter. Life is hard for a donkey. He is a sullen and bad tempered brute to be sure, but who can blame him. His only pleasures in life are giving someone else a kick in the pants so they may feel what he feels. That’s what we often bray at each other isn’t it……‘now you know what it feels like’.

“Who can blame them when they lash out? They are wholly too preoccupied with their own pain to notice yours. They are so busy trying to ease their own lot that they are not inclined to notice yours. Shall we punish these people…these donkeys?”

Many of the people were wondering if the priest had just forgotten about Joshua altogether. Perhaps the huge attendance had gone to his head and had muddled his poor brain.

“For all of you who have come armed with pitchforks tonight, I need to remind you that the person you are hunting….and in this case it seems to be a little old lady whose blood you are braying for…is merely a donkey like yourselves. Someone who is trying, misguidedly, to ease their pain. She has merely done what was done to her. It’s a law of nature. Something precious was taken away from her once, so she has taken something precious from you…as donkeys are wont to do.

“But this is an unforgivable crime you say. Rubbish, I say. And so says Jesus. She does not know the anguish she is causing. This is a senile old lady for heaven’s sake, not some all-powerful witch. This is after all the twenty first century.

“We can pray for Joshua….and indeed we do, but it is not his soul that is in jeopardy here.” And here he paused to look around at the people sitting in front of him. “It is yours.”

A loud rumble of thunder rattled the stained glass windows.

“Revenge is sweet. Like ice cream and coke. You know it's bad for you, but it is delicious. And of course once you've had one you want another. Revenge is never satisfied. We LOVE revenge. We plot and plan and daydream all day long on how to get our own back on someone who has wronged us. If someone hoots at us for whatever reason, don’t we fret and fume and scheme of the slowest possible way to rip out his testicles?

“Everyone knows ice cream and coke rot the teeth and give us diabetes. Diabetes restricts the flow of blood to the extremities of the body like our hands and feet, vital limbs which sooner or later begin to rot and have to be amputated.
This is bad. Revenge however is worse. Revenge rots the soul.
Revenge prevents the soul from accessing its organs of sympathy and goodwill towards man. Valuable organs which begin to atrophy and die from disuse until eventually God comes along and lops them off completely. And that is how we slowly grow into spiteful, miserable old sods that don't have a good word for anyone. And the blacker we paint them, the sweeter our revenge…and the more justified.

“This little old lady has not only kidnapped Joshua, she has kidnapped your minds as well. She has filled you all with hate and revenge and put your souls in jeopardy. She didn’t mean to. Do you think she’d have done this had she been in her right mind…if she hadn’t been suffering some sort of terrible anguish? If she hadn’t been under some terrible duress? Why do I even have to spell it out for you?” he asked, staring at them with a cross face.

“She is misguided….criminal….sure. But she can’t help herself. And she isn’t possessed by the devil. She knows not what she does. She is a troubled soul. She is preoccupied with her own pain and is unconsciously sharing it around with everyone else.

“It is so much easier to just say she is evil than to forgive. We need someone to blame. For the pain. But then again, I suspect this is not just about a wicked witch who stole a little child anymore. I think this is about you….and your pain. I think you see this as an opportunity to get your own back…for all the things that were done to you when you were a child and throughout your life…and take it out on a little old lady.”

He pulls a disparaging face at this.

“This is so outrageous that I am tempted, God help me, to judge you for it, but I just have to keep reminding myself that you are just donkeys…and know not what you do.”

With that he closed the bible and looked towards the windows where the rain was rattling down on the window panes. It was a calming sound. Soothing. The congregation listened for a while, not quite sure what to think or feel about the sermon.

“Let us bray,” was all he said.

It was a quiet and subdued crowd that walked down the church steps…right into the spiteful, scheming arms of Alice.