Vivisepulture (11 page)

He concentrated on not rear-ending the Triumph sports car ahead as they meandered up to the Field of Judgement, which tomorrow would return to grazing cattle. 

A steward waved them into position, and as they pulled the hamper from the boot, the kids ooh-ed and aah-ed at the hundreds of pieces of kit on display. Over each marquee the twin banners of the Union flag and the cross of Royal Order of the Knights Inquisitor of St. George snapped in the breeze.

Tom looked around, half-hoping half-dreading that he would see someone he knew. No-one, he thought. Sighing with mingled relief and disappointment, he held up his knife and one of his knee-pads, the rusty spikes of the pad dull in the sunlight. “With a little imagination, I could have passed as a torturer when we first met,” he said to Linda with a wicked grin, though the spikes were designed for nothing more sinister than gaining purchase on a thatched roof. He shrugged at Abi’s look of disdain. “Maybe not.” Dropping the knife and pad, he slammed the boot shut.

Tom followed his wife and daughter’s gazes, and smiled at the ceremonial torturer at the main gate. The man was a black-clad wall of flesh and leather standing nearly seven feet tall, arms folded across his chest, muscles highlighted by a sheen that Tom suspected came from oil. A broadsword hung from his waist almost down to the ground. 

“He looks like the guy on the cover of The Sword of the Torturer,” Shane whispered. He’d read it perhaps a dozen times.

“They never had anyone like that on the gate when we were your age,” Linda said. Her tone was disapproving, but her eyes shone.

“Did you have anything that wasn’t prehistoric when you were our age?” Abi muttered. “No doubt the Witchfinder-General, ankle-length skirts and iron maidens?”

“We met at a show like this,” Linda smiled, as if she hadn’t heard her daughter’s sarcasm, and Abi rolled her eyes. “They’ve made it more like a funfair now.”

She’s right, Tom thought. The clenched fist to scare the weak, hot-dog stands and test-your-saintliness-quotient for the children’s hearts and minds. No one ever said the Order were stupid.

To one side of the show was an Army recruiting tent. Two squaddies chatted up a couple of lanky young girls in Goth outfits, one of whom leaned up against a tent-pole. She turned and surveyed Tom with kohl-lined eyes then losing interest, looked away. On the other side a funfair blared Kylie, and staring back, Tom hummed, “I should be so lucky, lucky, lucky…”

“She’ll be lucky not to be accused of Satanism,” Linda said, and glared at Tom. "Wipe the dribble off your chin."

"Meow," he replied.  

The family wandered through the crowds. The wind was bitter, and huge columnar heaters filled the spaces between tents, the hot air above their gaping muzzles dancing like a mirage in the desert.

Open-sided caravans sold toffee apples, cups of tea, t-shirts, even Babushka dolls. Linda clucked. "I don't like these. What are they doing selling Godless artefacts?"

"They're pre-Revolutionary, these dolls," Tom said. "They weren't Godless then."

"They have Inquisition ones, Mum," Abi said. "How twee is that?"

Tom decided not to say that he liked them; liked the idea of layers within layers. Very symbolic, he thought. 

At the History of the Order stands, old-style iron racks echoed to the screams of volunteers. Nearby, cats-tails hung in a neat line next to an iron maiden. They passed a modern stainless-steel rack with a fat old man on it, another --younger-- man standing at one end. 

The second man paced up and down, running his hands through his hair. He opened then closed his mouth, and held his hands out, imploring the torturer. At the inquisitor's blank-eyed look the other man snatched them back, and turned away shaking his head in obvious distress. 

Naked, the folds of the older man’s flesh hung down. He screamed for mercy, and Linda tutted. The sweet, savage sound of his bones and joints cracking echoed across the stillness, followed by the man’s choked-off scream. 

Moments later, the younger man shouted for help. 

“Oh!” Linda wrinkled her nose. “Someone's lost control of themselves. How,” she searched for a word that wasn't too judgemental, “…unfortunate.” 

“Jilly Robert’s dad says,” Abi said, “That those who can't take the pain shouldn't seek to gain.”

“Good for Jilly Robert's dad,” Tom said.

A medic came running.  

The Inquisitor called to him, “The suspect dislocated his shoulder. I think it brought on a heart attack!” The Inquisitor was young, maybe performing his first unsupervised interrogation, or he'd have kept it quiet. Instead a crowd gathered as word spread faster than an electric current. 

The medic fumbled the shackles loose, then pounded on the old man's chest. “Take over!” He told the Inquisitor, and pulling a hypodermic and small bottle from his bag, filled the hypo. He injected the patient, waited thirty seconds and checked the man's pulse. 

He looked up at the young torturer, and shook his head. 

The torturer slumped, face twisted in anguish. 

The second man had stood by, chewing on a knuckle. When the medic shook his head, he turned to the crowd, arms outstretched. “Oh, torture is so good for the soul, isn’t it?” His voice was ragged, gravelly with emotion. “Tell that to him!” 

The crowd started to edge away. “No one wants to risk being linked to sedition,” Tom muttered, leading Abi away. His guts roiled again in sympathy and he bit off a whimper, fighting a rising tide of bile.

The young man wailed, “What’s the matter with you all?” He shook off the young torturer’s hand, and dodged a constable who had wandered over. “Are you all sheep?” 

The crowd answered silently by scattering in all directions. 

The Inquisitor with the goatee who had spoken to them at the gate passed on his way to the disturbance. He leaned close to Tom as he passed and murmured, “We don't torture people for hypocrisy. I think we should. It's the worst crime of all…” leaving Tom to stare at him in alarm.

The goatee'd Inquisitor had the young man led away, still struggling and shouting until he was out of sight, when his shouts ceased abruptly.

Tom rounded on Linda. “Happy now, you’ve exposed the kids to this?” He gestured at the old man's body. 

Linda said, “The children should see the truth.”

Tom thought,
The truth? You wouldn’t know the truth if it leapt up and bit you on the arse!
You live your cozy life, smug in your certainty, and never think about the cost of it all.

Tom pointed at Shane who was shaking, and a tearful Abi. “People dying is too much for them to see.” He took a deep breath, and then noticed a familiar shock of hair. His heart momentarily stopped, then the woman turned, and Tom saw that it wasn’t who he thought it was. He breathed again.

They drifted; passing an old man slumped in the stocks. A despairing cry arose from the mutilation tent and the flap opened to show the Inquisitor holding up a thief’s amputated hand. They bought hot-roast rolls and munched outside a news-tent, watching the state funeral of a Klansman at the Breckinridge Memorial in Dallas; on the next screen something large, black and inhuman loped through the radioactive ruins of Reykjavik. A third screen showed the streets of The Plague Lands; volunteers in quarantine suits bearing the logo of the Fist of God coalition piled up bodies. Even bloodthirsty Abi shivered, and when Tom saw Shane staring wide-eyed in horror, he ushered them on. 

A large crowd gathered around it almost hid the ducking stool, except when the suspect arched above their heads before falling back. “Mum,” Shane tugged at Linda's sleeve. “Can we watch?”

Linda gave Tom an odd look, half-pity, half-challenge. Tom shrugged. “Why not --he seems to have got over the old man’s death.” 

"Kids are resilient," Linda said.

Linda took Shane's hand, and Tom took Abi's, until she snatched it away. What thirteen-year-old wants to hold her Dad's hand, Tom thought with sadness. He was losing her already. 

The four of them nudged, wriggled and oozed through the crowds. The smell of frying onions from a hot-dog stand blended with the singed flesh of cauterized stumps. 

The so-called stool was a strapped chair -- under the water when the family nudged their way through to the front. Tom took Abi's hand again. It was sweaty, but he kept a tight grip. “See,” Tom said. “This is the follow-up to an Anti-Social Behavior Order: When a criminal breaks an ASBO, it’s the stool for them.” 

A mop of brunette hair floated on the surface, the naked woman clamped by her wrists and ankles to the stool. A thin stream of bubbles drifting to the surface was the only sign that she still lived. 

When the bubbles stopped, Tom wondered if the Knights Inquisitor were going to suffer the unprecedented embarrassment of two deaths in one afternoon. 

The attendants scrambled and brought her up. The woman vomited a lungful of sanctified water and took a whoop of air. Her head lolled as the attendants swung the chair around and the crowd hooted in derision. A loudspeaker intoned, “…forgive those who trespass against us.” She began to convulse, and the first-aiders pulled her out of the seat.

Even with her face hidden by the lank bundle of sodden hair, the woman’s body sent shivers of recognition down Tom’s spine. Then he heard the words “…Lord, forgive your daughter, Alice Lisle, for the sin of fornication…” and felt sick.

He looked down at the children, who watched it all, rapt, unaware. Tom caught Linda watching him, her gaze unwavering.

The first-aiders released Alice Lisle, and draped a robe around her. She leaned unsteadily against the central pylon of the ducking stool. Her hair hung down over her face in a matted shroud, but one eye peered Medusa-like through a small gap, and burned into him. He wanted to look away, but might as well have been turned to stone. She mouthed something which he couldn’t make out.

“Just as well she’s single,” Linda said. “They’ll shave her head, and tar and feather her. If she were married, kids, they’d brand her.” Abruptly, she looked away, and Tom saw her wipe angrily at her face.

Without warning, a heavy hand landed on his shoulder, and a gruff voice said, “Thomas James Goodman? Would you accompany me to an interrogation area, please?” Tom looked around into a lantern-jawed, blue-stubbled face from whose fleshy nose black hairs peeked.

Tom licked his lips and tried to protest, but his tongue suddenly wouldn’t work properly. Tears streaked Linda’s make-up. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. 

The constable continued, “You do not have to say anything until you meet the Inquisitor, but if you do, it may be used in evidence.” 

The man was a walking mountain of muscle; it would be futile to argue, Tom decided.

Linda chewed her lower lip, wiping the tears from her face. “Officer, would you give us a moment?” The behemoth nodded and the grip on Tom’s shoulder eased infinitesimally. She murmured, “I’m sorry, darling. I had to do it. One of the children at school saw you with her, and started teasing Abi. You understand?” 

“I know,” Tom said, wondering how pure her motives really were. But recrimination would only make his punishment worse so. “You’d only have rung the help-line after a lot of soul-searching.” “I’m sorry, too,” he added so he kept his voice flat as well. “I tried so hard to resist temptation…” Now that his worst fears had come true, it was almost a relief. Almost, but not quite: He knew what he was due.

“I hope they break him before nightfall,” someone said behind them. “We ain't seen any adulterers branded today...” 

Abi shouted at him, “Shut up, you pig! This isn't a bloody circus!”

Tom felt so proud of her then, before he remembered to be frightened. Shane slipped a hand into his elder sister’s, as Tom thought, don’t speak up. You automatically become an accomplice. Even saying that might implicate her, so he kept his mouth shut. 

People fell quiet in a ripple of silence spreading outwards; in its centre, the Senior Inquisitor stood in a circle of space cleared by his mere presence. This close, Tom could see the three moons signifying that he was a full Inquisitor-colonel on his shoulder epaulets. He ran a finger down his white goatee to straighten it. 

“I didn't see her for a week,” Tom said to him. “Until last Friday: She said she'd been ill. She never told me that she’d been served with an ASBO.”

“She was trying to protect you,” the Colonel said, “and comply with the ASBO. But in the end, she couldn't stay away. People like her –charged by lust—never can.” 

Tom nodded, realizing that in agreeing to meet Alice on Friday, he'd condemned her to the ducking stool. He wondered what –if anything- she had told them under interrogation. 

The colonel said, clapping his hand on Shane’s shoulder, “Your son tells me that you’re a master thatcher?”

Nonplussed, Tom nodded. “I can’t afford to be maimed. I know that might sound cowardly, but you need hands and feet to be whole, up there on a roof, when the wind is blowing --”

“I know, I know,” the colonel, said, soothing. “You have to think of providing for your family. But we’ve subtler methods now." 

He had his men pause at one of the exhibitions, near one of the new devices, a chair with a hooded cowl that rose above it in a cobra’s head, ready to strike. 

“Thought chair,” Tom muttered and at the Inquisitor’s surprised look, said with a sheepish grin, “It was in Examination Monthly recently. In the dentists’ surgery,” he added, answering the second unasked question. “Not quite what it says - but it can sense emotions, and roughly what the suspect is thinking. He can’t lie while he’s under the cowl.” 

The suspect, Tom thought. That was him, however much he shied away from that fact.

“Or if you show him a naked woman, it’ll know if he lusts after her,” Linda said. 

“Mum!” Both children cried.

Tom started. 

He hadn’t realized that the children had followed him.
Go away!
He thought. He knew what the Inquisitor's game was; soften him up with a tour of the exhibits. He could handle it, but he wasn't sure he could if the kids were there. 

The inquisitor said, “It can leave you unscarred - if we want.”