CHAPTER 14

Hope springs eternal, they say. Even when James is a slave working in the rigour of the Mersea salt mines. Even when Helen has become a sex-slave? Even when Wulfstan doesn’t know where those two love-birds are? Even when Mortan is expanding his foulest power?

The only light was Tippi’s escape from Billington.

However, none among the protagonists knew where each other was. Perhaps it was best that they didn’t know. In so many cases ignorance is, indeed, bliss.

The world, the world of Dunara, the civilized world was at risk. At greatest risk. Evil forces were undermining the very fabric of all that was considered precious, fundamental to the creation of any sentiment of genuine humanity. Was it always to be like this? Was the force of moral good to be constantly destabilized by malevolent influences?

Yet it had to be so. Without death there is no life. Without destruction there is no creation. Without imprisonment there is no freedom. Without mistrust there is no trust. Everything is relative…even relativity itself.

***

Wulfstan pondered how he could possibly find out how James and Helen were. Where were they? Were they indeed alive? Recrimination, doubt, futility were pressing in his mind. What should he do now? Send charmed messenger birds? Fly friendly dragons? Unleash the dogs of war? Seek refuge and meditate in an isolated hermitage?

Wulfstan entered the tower of his keep. At its height, safely protected from all the mishaps that could befall the sacred things of his kingdom, was the library of the arcane. He stepped up the helical stairs. Reaching the top, opening the iron-wrought door, he crossed into a room filled with stacks of shelves upon which were contained ancient chronicles, archives and other manuscripts. The largest volumes were securely chained to the shelves. Wulfstan found his way to a corner where he felt the most valuable of these books were kept. There was no title on it. It was just known as ‘The Book’. But he knew that it must contain the solution to the terrible predicament the world, his world was found in. He opened the book at random. This was the way it was to be consulted. On the page opened quite by chance the answer could be found: the true answer.

He read:

‘There is a way your enemy may be defeated. It is through the power of a supernatural being. This power is contained in creatures that live beyond the world of time and space. You must seek them out with your entire mind and all your body. They may be found in distances beyond all known galaxies or they may inhabit places only a stone’s throw from where you are.’

There was the solution! This was the year of the Dragon. Surely a dragon could save. The dragon, the only mythical creature featured in the Chinese zodiac, an especially auspicious sign symbolising power, nobility, honour, luck, and success. Yet, as with humans, dragons were ambivalent beings. Simply put, there existed good dragons and bad dragons. Wulfstan reminded himself of the painting an ancient artist had frescoed on the end wall of his castle’s banqueting hall. It described a damsel being rescued from an evil dragon by a knight in silvery armour. The painting was of course, an allegory. The damsel personified the town of Dunara, the dragon the evil forces of the arch-fiend, the knight the alliance of virtuous nations in defence of the kingdom. The message was clear however. But where could a dragon be found? And was it going to be a necessarily honourable beast?

Wulfstan bethought himself of where dragons could be lurking in his lands. On top of mountains? In deepest chasms? Across swampy wastes? He remembered a summer’s solitary walk to the summit of a mountain known as the Pyramid Peak. He had started climbing from a place known as The Holy Island, a bewitched village by the sides of a deep lakelet with a magical colour imparted by crystals dragged into the water from underground caves. By noon the atmosphere had transmuted itself into a torrid heat. He was thirsty yet no rivulets were to be espied and his container was now empty. It seemed as if all the earth’s water had escaped deep underground beneath the rugged limestone cover.

He turned a corner on his jagged path and beheld an extraordinary site. Before him spread a scattering of enormous holes in the rock dug by action of rainwater. Could water be found at the bottom of them? With rounded sides they looked like giant pots made for a colossal breed of beings ready to cook their soups in. Certainly, from one of them arose a cloud of smoke.

Could this be a dragon’s lair? At that time Wulfstan did not explore the chasms further. He was alone. He wanted to get back in one piece. Quickly he hurried away from the weird spot.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The whip once again cut into James’ shoulder, the drying salt dripping into the wounds stinging deeply and making him wince with increasingly insupportable pain.

°I don’t think I can stand this much longer,” he told the slave standing next to him.

“They all say that,” replied the slave whose back was covered with a multitude of unhealed weals. “But death takes us away at the moment when we have had enough.”

“Does anyway actually escape from this hell?” asked James.

°I am told that last year someone actually managed to flee from one of the work parties but failed to avoid the quicksands which surround all unguarded passages of this labour camp…”

“How did he manage to get out?” queried James.

At this moment he felt a sting on his shoulder as a guard belted out; “cu out this cackle. You are here to work, not talk; work until you die, you less than pig fodder:”

James resumed his task of digging out a channel in the squelching mud so that the waters could flow into the newly drained salt reservoirs. He wanted to get out of this place before he was eventually killed by his labours extreme exhaustion. But how, how could he manage it? Tears entered his eyes as he thought about Helen, his beloved Helen back in the walled city. He continued his train of thoughts. True, he had succeeded in getting himself out of Billington Institution but getting out to where? What odd sequence of events had brought him to this sorry impasse, slaving away is a murky marsh on the sinking eastern shore? His thoughts ended with a laugh, an almost maniacal laugh as he considered the complete absurdity of his present predicament.

***

In Dunara Wulfstan furrowed his brows with anxiety. “We have not heard from Helen and James for over a week now. I fear their plans may have been discovered. They may even have been captured. How stupid we have been if that situation is true: The perfect fool? Ha: It is me who is the fool now. But how, how may we find out what has happened to them?”

Wulfstan continued his pondering as he decided he would summon an extra-ordinary council meeting to discuss the concern. Thoughts of a rescue party even entered into his mind. But lacking all intelligence of James and Helen he was hard put to formulating how the plan would work out and he fell into a pessimistic cogitation. “Whatever happens I can only blame myself if any harm comes to my two young lovers and heroes.” He turned towards the front door, opened it and began to walk up the street leading to the council hall.

***

“Please do not send Helen out to them men,” pleaded Amalia with Phalarea “‘let her be our playmate; we need someone like her to release our worries with, to ease our tensions.”

“So you are saying that she will not be send to serve the elite, that her body will not be an instrument of pleasure for them?” queried Phalarea.

“Yes, that’s right. Please, O please let her stay with us. Let her stay for us, to give us pleasure instead. We will, of course, not forget our duties to the men.”

Amalia’s beseeching eyes, her despairing tone and sinuous movements all had an effect on Phalarea, a desired effect, it seemed for she stated; “All right, let it be. Let Helen serve you and give you pleasure after your labours of the night.”

And so that day Helen became the girls’ own concubine; her body to give them pleasure, her whole being to be devoted to the comfort of their desires, nothing her own, all given to their prying hands and searching lips.

Much as she still felt she was changing into a sex-slave Helen thought to herself that perhaps there was something less tainted in serving her own sex rather than greasy, bearded and evil guardsmen of Mortan’s kingdom. And so, placed into a state of permanent and perfumed passiveness, she gave herself up to the pleasure of the concubines of the citadel’s harem, no part of her body unexplored by their inquisitive hands, her lips bruised by their kisses, her clitoris in a semi-permanent state of redness, her whole body barely recovering from one orgasmic climax and entering into yet another surfeit of pleasure.

Helen felt gradually weakened by this continuous state of sexual arousal: her body fell flaccidly into the arms of her feminine mates; her sleep was the half-sleep of sexual dying and felicity. She did not know whether she was changing into an icon of clitoral worship or whether she was collapsing into a limp rag doll. ­

***

Tippi was debating with herself on how to get out of Billington. Her Krishna, her James, where was he now? Surely, he would return to her, liberate her from the daily tedium of a system she no longer believed in. True, she had Kevin, her boyfriend of six years standing and a member of the Divine Life Mission. But he had become so boring, so predictable to her. And his latest fad – continence – did not appeal to her in the least. Her body yearned for a full and completely satisfying sexual experience, like the ones she used to have once with Kevin. OK, the development of spiritual consciousness was fine. But was it really necessary to preserve one’s energy, one’s kundalini in quite the same way that Kevin had specified. She still slept with him, still slept in the same room in the same house that she had been living in for all those seemingly interminable years. His mother’s house. A nice, a very nice person his mother she too deep into meditation and anti-materialist thought. But now long could this impossible situation go on for? How long could she stand to have Kevin’s desirable body lying flaccidly by her side while he was filled with/his so egotistical thoughts of personal energy preservation’? It sounded like Greenpeace gone scatty. Of course, they were beings gifted with a higher consciousness but she remembered reading somewhere that it was not what you did but how you did it that was the important thing. Fucking or not fucking with her boyfriend wasn’t the issue. Thoughts of Tibetan tantric Buddhism filled her longing body. In those parts making love was a prayer, an orison leading up with a direct line to the all-embracing deity. Indeed, the gods looked kindly on those that offered their bodies to him/her in this way and the rewarded the offering, with the gifts of increased awareness and further steps towards total liberation.

Then why couldn’t Kevin understand this point? She was awakened from her daydream musings by the staff ward nurse reminding her that “it’s time for Friend’s ward inmates to take their medication.”

Tippi smiled surlily at the staff nurse. “To hell with you and your medication,” she thought to herself and, walking towards the medication room, she suddenly took a sharp left out of the exit and into the driveway leading to the hospital’s main gate. “I’m going be free,” she said to herself. “I’m going to be free at last.”

In the crimson light of the late afternoon sun a lone nightingale had already begun singing his transcendentally virtuosic serenade. Trills permeated the soft evening scents.

(Warning for delicate readers. This chapter contains sexually explicit descriptions.).

CHAPTER TWELVE

Helen was stripped of her clothes and finding herself in unaccustomed nudity tried to cover her breasts with her hand.

“None of that,” said Phalarea smiling at her. “From now on you own no part of ­that body of yours. It is to be changed into an instrument of service for the Elite. Come dear, surely, you don’t want to work in the marshes?”

Helen had doubts about whether, in fact, the marshes would have been preferable to the bondage into which she was now being initiated.

“Amalia, see that Helen will be properly processed as befits your classical Trojans’ namesake?” continued Phalarea.

Helen was led into a small ante-room from which a semi-circular staircase led down into a sunken hemi-style shaped bath. Two concubines washed her body with sponges and soft seaweed and dried it in a perfumed linen towel. She was then led to another room and told to lie down on a satin-covered couch. Here her limbs, her arms, her breasts were massaged with scented unguents and rich oils. Cosmeticians painted her eyelids, her finger and toe nails. Another concubine led her to a large chest filled with gems and jewels and asked her to choose from the dazzling treasure.

Unsure of her choice Helen looked at one of them. “You choose,” she said.

Helen found her arms loaded with bracelets set with agate and chalcedony. Her newly-pierced ears were now adorned with golden ear-rings and sapphire-studded necklaces encircled her neck and stretched down to her freshly-talcumed breasts. Every one of her fingers sported a richly elaborate ring, some with amaranthine, others with ruby stones. Rings and anklets encircled her toes and limbs. Her lips were reddened with bright ochre and the nipples of her breasts were likewise heightened with reddish tints

“How beautiful you look now, “said her attendant Amalia. You resemble a real prince, ready to act and serve your lord and master.”

Helen gawked at her in disbelief.

“Verily, I could fall in love with you right now,” added Amalia.

“Is she ready yet?” asked Phalarea.

“Truly, she is as ready as she or any other woman could ever hope to be, a feast for all princes and kings of this earth.

“Then let her be instructed in her tasks,” commanded Phalarea. “You, Amalia, will begin teaching her duties towards the men of this court.”

Amalia took Helen to one side of the room and told her to lie down on a scattered cushion.

“I will now teach you the different ways of caressing and stroking,” she said to her softly. “You need to know how to start making the most of your assets.

Amalia started gently touching Helen’s legs and moving up and down her flanks. “You have such a beautiful body;” she remarked.

Her hands then found her breasts and she carefully stroked them with a circular motion paying special attention to the rising nipples. Helen felt a surge of quiet pleasure rise in her skin. Amalia moved her face towards Helen, caressed her cheeks and then firmly and surely implanted a sweet liquid kiss on her mouth. Her tongue parted her lips and searched her palate, the lips ever more strongly pressing on each other, her head moving from side to side as if trying to squeeze the kiss ever more deeply.

Helen tried to push her aside but felt tightened by Amalia’s embrace.

Her assistant’s hands now started exploring the cleft between Helen’s legs. Gently stroking her mount in gradually increasing movement Amalia heard Helen starting to moan distantly, her initial resistance, now sinking away quickly. Amalia moved her hands even faster over Helen’s clitoris. Helen felt herself weakened all over; helpless to put up any resistance to Amalia’s expert master strokes she gave herself inevitably in to the oncoming moment and felt a supreme wave of pleasure fill her body from head to toe with consummate delight as her orgasm shuddered through her every vein and pore; an orgasm nurtured by Amalia’s delicate fingers and succulent lips.

“My love,” she whispered.

“You too are my love” concurred Amalia. ‘

And together bound each to each by their soft-skinned bejewelled arms, their limbs intertwined, they fell back lip-to-lip into the depth of the satined cushion and entered into the sleep, the dreamy sleep, of newly-found lovers.

(Hector Hanoteau and Gustave Courbet, 1858)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

James awoke to find himself in a dimly lit, irregularly shaped chamber. Yellowish light streamed from highly-set windows. The floor was uneven – in various areas boulders emerged from the stamped earth as if the whole space had been gouged out from bare rock. A line of pillars divided the chamber into two parts. James could see names etched in the wall above, names of previous unfortunate inmates. “What happened to them?” James wondered.

The large oaken door to one side opened. Two guards with their faces covered by black-painted visors with two slits for the eyes, as was customary, entered and seized James. “Where are you taking me?” James pleaded. Without a word they hauled him along seemingly innumerable corridors and passages until he entered a more brightly-lit room.

“Ah, the prisoner. The one who tried to capture our source of power. You have him before me,” said an aquiline-nosed heavily-wrinkled figure seated on a padded wooden chair at one end of the room. “So your name is James?” he said, poring over a piece of paper.

“My name is James” confirmed the prisoner. “What do you intend to do with me then?”

“You appear to be a hale and hearty person. Someone like you is what we desperately lack in our salt marshes, especially as we need to increase production to fulfil our quota for the Norsemen.”

James thought to himself, “at least I’m not going to be personally systematised, at least not in the way I’ve heard is usual in this wretched place.”

“Off with him,” said the chamber’s intendant. “Off with him and let him join the rest of them in our marshes. Let him dig and extract there for the rest of his healthy life. Then we’ll decide if he is fit enough to be processed for food for our hunting hounds.”

James’ first thoughts were that he was still alive and that his mind was still in one piece. His next thought was “where, where is my darling Helen? Helen, where are you my love, my life. What are they doing to you? Is your mind still whole? Do you still remember me? Our precious moments together?”

Outside, in the grey morning mist, an open cart pulled by two oxen carried about thirty ashen faced males towards the coast. Blank-eyed and stooping with resignation the group jolted its way out of Mersea. Among them could be discerned James’ features.

The town gates closed behind them. Ahead, sky and sea merged into an uncertain horizon etched by marram grass and lagoons perfumed with sand and salt.

CHAPTER TEN

Red roses bloomed vigorously in their beds interspersing the wide green swards surrounding the Billington hospital. Figures, some alone some in small groups, paced the lawns with slow steps taking advantage of the exceptional summer weather. To one side a low-slung building, more glass than wall, indicated the “friend’s ward”, filled as was its way with the usual motley crew of homeless, battered wives and repentant alcoholic husbands. The morning therapy session was about to begin.

“What I want to know,” a lank, tall young man began, “is where he has gone. The only person here that spoke any sense; he said I needed a job and I rose up to greet him as Jesus Christ. Where is he now? They haven’t crucified him have they?”

“Don’t worry” reassured him a bi-focalled doctor “He’s gone, we may be worried but in any case he wasn’t sectioned we can’t stop him. He’ll come back and visit you. You can be sure. “

Behind him, seated with other nurses and doctors was Tippi, James’s ‘Radha’. She smiled sympathetically at Bill, the lanky, worrying young man. She was glad James had managed to get it together to go from the institution. He had done something which for some time now she had wanted to do. How long had she been working at this place? She tried to work out the years on her fingers. At least seven. Tippi remembered when she had left her north London outer suburb and her indifferent mother to go east and join friends staying at Billington town. With no money on her she had felt herself highly fortunate to have got a job at the hospital as a cleaner. For two years she had swept up after the patients. Then, encouraged by a particular nurse who had become her boy-friend, she had started her training as a psychiatric nurse, passed her practical and her exams and become qualified. For five years she had handled paranoia and schizophrenia and all the other labels which the professionals placed on the jetsam and flotsam of wrecked humanity and had slowly but surely become increasingly disillusioned. ‘What’s in a name?’ she asked. And surely they were only treating the symptoms, not the causes? In her disillusion Tippi had joined an eastern cult, a divine mission to save mankind from the material world and raise it to the highest spheres of the spiritual. The leader of the cult was a boy, a cherubic-looking boy, hailed as a new prophet and whose every pronouncement were seized upon as gospel, or rather Vedic, truth Even here, however, the Divine life mission had begun to disillusion her as much as the hospital. Gradually, the early days of the mission with the seemingly total selflessness, their direct camaraderie gave way to a harder, politically edged, power struggle with rival gurus claiming each one was the only, true voice to be heard. Interpretations and, re-interpretation filled the meetings. Gone were the simple truths, the supernal light which had almost given haloes to the participants of the early meetings.

Tippi wanted to get out, fast. But where was this Krishna, this James to be found? “Medication time,” reminded one of her colleagues and with almost indifferent resignation Tippi walked to the medicine trolley and started to look down the list of drugs she would have to dole out to the sheep-like queue of patients that was beginning to form before her, shuffling with their slippers towards her, almost as if she were about to administer the modern Eucharist to their needs. With hands outstretched they swallowed the bread of lagarctyl and drank the wine of methadone.

***

James felt a hand force something bitter into his mouth. His head started reeling and he felt himself falling, falling and collapsed in a bundle on the stone floor of the vaulted passageway. Before he passed out he could hear Helen’s voice evermore faintly moaning “James, James, where are you?”

He awoke to find himself in a small chamber with a skylight. He could not guess how many hours had passed. But it was day, however; a faint sunlight streamed through the skylight’s bars. Where on earth was he? James asked himself. And where was Helen? God, where was Helen? He felt totally despairing and dejected without her, not knowing where she was and whether she was still alive.

After what appeared to be an interminable period of time James heard the door to the chamber creaking open. A faceless, vizored guard came towards him, seized him with both arms and took him out into a long corridor.

***

Helen was knocked unconscious by a blow on the head. When she woke into realisation she found herself in a large draperied, windowless chamber scattered with large cushions on its carpeted floor. Sylph-like veiled figures began to appear before her eyes.

“Where am I?” she asked.

“‘You are privileged to be in the harem of the elite of Mersea,” a large matronly woman whispered to her. “Welcome to your new life.”

“What is my new life,” queried Helen anxiously. She was overwhelmed by the unused luxury of her surroundings.

“You are to serve the Elite, serve their every need.”

“I will not prostitute myself,” asserted Helen.

“Would you rather die a slow lingering death in the salt marshes, racked by disease and despair then?”

“I’ll survive.”

“You might even be trepanned if you show signs of dissidence.”. Helen looked aghast at the matron.

“Look dear,” continued Phalarea, the matron. “Anything is better than that. Here you will find rich food and rich clothes. Your body will be dressed in fine cloths and your person will be bejewelled in gold and silver. Some sex slaves will even succeed in being mistresses over their lords. Come on, be sensible.”

What was Helen to do? Her first thought was survival, survival for her dearly beloved James. She could not survive in the marshes and her mind could be taken away from her – she could even die – in the dreaded trepanning operation. Perhaps Phalarea was right: to serve bodily the evil retainers of the Mersea fiefdom was better. After all, they might use her body but they would not be able to access, take away her mind. Helen submitted; “All right. I can see your point. I will become a sex slave to this fiefdom.”

“Good for you dear,” smiled Phalarea. Now what I think you should do is have a good bath. After that you will be oiled; massaged and perfumed. Suitable costly apparel will be chosen by you. You may select your jewels – by the way your ears will need to be pierced – and then spend this afternoon in a good, deep sleep in expectation of your nightly services.”

Helen hoped that James would understand that she was only prostituting her body

– not her mind – and that life for him was better than death without any one.

Another sex slave approached Helen.

“Hi, Helen, “my name is Tania. Follow me to the bath. You are so beautiful I am sure you will be a great success here.”

Helen followed Tania like a resigned poodle. At least, she thought to herself, “I am still alive.”

CHAPTER NINE

The night before their attempt to repossess the holy relics James had another dream, vividly remembered as usual, for only a few minutes after he woke up.

It was in a dimly-lit alley under an arch in a back quarter of London’s West end. He was with a girl, an olive-skinned girl with a wonderful cascade of dark hair down to her shoulders. The girl was against the wall. He approached her. They kissed one long, interminable liquid kiss. Ocean waves, midnight lagoons, unending strands flashed before his mind. The girl pressed her body against his. He had never quite been kissed like this before. It was as if he had taken the cap of a bottle off, a bottle under extreme pressure. He gazed into her bottomless eyes. The umbrella which she had placed to one side against the wall fell down. “I’m like that umbrella,” she remarked. Above them the interstellar sky of a new year was slowly gyrating into new solstices as yet unknown. Still, her body pressed even more against his. Still the sky was moving. Her eyes, her infinite eyes caught the glint of a gas-lamp. Across the yard from the arch a cat slinked on the cobbles. A curtain moved almost imperceptibly behind the balcony window on one side.

He was now standing at a bus-stop near Trafalgar square. It was already early morning and already light on this frosty January morning. He was shivering with cold. He hoped the bus would arrive soon. The cafe behind was still shut and would remain shut. The square was deserted. He thought of the night he had spent. The party in the mansion of the lost domain. Revellers dressed in fantasy robes: from musketeers to buccaneers, from wolves to cats. In his everyday clothes he had described himself dressed ‘as a poet’. ‘The kiss stolen from the girl by the master of ceremonies at the start of the grand staircase as he pressed her against the balustrade another long, unending kiss, as he looked on in helplessness. The angry father in her basement flat on the square as the daughter was returned in the small hours. “We elders have been swept by the wayside.” 

That was the end of that. The sublime vision, the attainability of the unattainable vanished like an opium reverie. The hard winter morning partly slept on a bench in St. James’s park where he was awakened by an inquisitive police officer. All gone, all, all gone.

He had woken up. It was still dark. Next to him Helen was tossing and turning. Suddenly she whispered to him:

“I can’t get to sleep, darling. Are you awake too?”

“Yes I am. Look, are we really going through with this?”

“Of course my sweetheart, of course. Why, do you doubt me? You know I don’t.”

And searching for each other’s embrace they fell asleep once more in the prelude to the unknown morning.

Another dream. She was there again in it. The girl of the mews arch. The girl of the cascading hair and the fathomless eyes. This time she was leaning out of a large window which gave a view of a large perpendicular-style chapel, overwhelming in its regal splendour and almost ridiculously placed when contrasted with the mundane domesticity of the little provincial street which ran below the window. The girl still leaned out, further and further. James thought she might actually fall down among the shoppers in the street below. He took his camera out and took a snapshot of her. Where was that snapshot now he wondered?  Then he remembered he had torn it up like performing a definitive action against an impossible a seemingly impossible attainment: the girl: the girl had now changed her appearance. Now longer the ingenuous beauty of the dark passageways of Knightsbridge she had now transmuted herself into the cosmopolitan executive of the international airwaves. Sophisticated make-up adorned her face, accentuating her classical features and making them both more immediate and remote. An elegant couturiered dress enfolded her sinuous body. None of his other female acquaintances had been as sophisticated looking as this one. As he escorted her into the front quadrangle of the college to which the chapel belonged he felt a thousand eyes looking at them – a thousand eyes which seemed to express “how long will this last?”

It was unfair; his last days at the college – if not the last day. He had told her: “I’m going away, going east.” As much as he had wanted to see he again he felt unable to face the possibility of defeat in the re-burgeoning relationship between him and her. His escape to the orient was indeed an escape from her: he had fallen in love too much with her to want to face involvement and the sadness and recriminations any end between him and her might bring. She was too precious to undergo that kind of karmic encirclement. For James, nothing ventured was everything gained: like a prize model vehicle, never removed from its cellophane and cardboard box, never played with, never regularly handled for fear the dust and time’s corruption might decrease its value, destroy the very thing he wanted preserved above all others.

After a night spent in the mid-point between sleep and awakening both James and Helen felt they could have done with more sleep. All the same they felt ready to face the mission which faced them on this day: the mission of liberation of the slave-labourers of Mersea and the emancipation of the eastern kingdom from the corrupt machinations of the dark lord Mortan.

The eyes of the conspirators were on the two as they got ready for their journey in the underground vaults: leading eyes, saddened eyes, hopeful eyes.

“May God protect and preserve you,” said Tamara as she embraced Helen and James in a flood of affection. Simon, John and Ashley assented in her wise “It’s been good knowing you,” said Ashley. “May we continue to have that pleasure when you return safely and successfully?”

At this moment Alfred the cat suddenly appeared from behind the fire as in knowledge that he too was to play an important, if not the most important part in the conspirators plans. He appeared well-fattened – the night must have been more than full of scurrilous mice and rats – and purred loudly in his satisfied appetite.

The first part of the journey was straightforward: they would follow the main vaulted passageway for about three hundred yards until they came across a shaft of light – the same shaft that gave light from a section of the town’s main square. They walked swiftly but carefully keeping their eyes and ears open for any strange or unexpected sound.

It was after they had passed the shaft of light that they thought their lives and their mission prematurely ended.

They had begun the second part of their journey, a slow ascending way to the top of the citadel through the subterranean passage, their cloaks brushing away the innumerable cobwebs that attached themselves to the massy pillar when they heard a distinct sound, the sound of a woman in pain. This sound was quickly succeeded by other sounds of other women, some laughing, others groaning, one even screaming, in pleasure or pain – it was hard to distinguish.

“What under earth is going on?” exclaimed James. At that precise moment invisible hands laid themselves on his shoulder and he turned round just in time to see Helen being violently led away from him by a group of grey-hooded persons.

CHAPTER EIGHT

In his chamber in the citadel Mortan was consulting with his group of advisors.

“So the system has been tried out. Do you perceive any success in it?” he queried a grey-bearded doctor.

“It will take a few weeks to fully reach a judgment of the operation’s success,” replied Zunan, the chief doctor. “But the initial perception is that the outcome is already very encouraging. We were successful in the operation in remaking the right part of the cortex cerebellum.”

“Good, well done,” answered Mortan. “Now how many operations could you perform in a day?”

“Provided we have managed to train ten assistants correctly we should be able to do about one hundred slaves per diem.”

“That means that within three weeks we should have done the whole of Mersea and can start thinking about the inhabitants of the conquered and to-be-conquered lands,” said Mortan confidently.

“Exactly, O master,” confirmed Zunan, gleefully rubbing his hands.

“Master of the World, nothing less,” stated Mortan apocalyptically. “Now which sector of the town shall we begin with?”

“I think it is best with the north-east quadrant, the one around the former cathedral.”

“Send my elite troops and flush out the area. Take the inhabitants to the Citadel where they may be prepared for the systematization operation.”

“So soon master?” queried Zunan.

“The sooner, the better”, roared Mortan.

***

Wulfstan was browsing through the collection of documents kept at the Assembly Hall. His attention was drawn to one parchment: the prophecies of Athanasius. Wulfstan scoured through the yellowed document and read the following:

“And it shall come to pass that when the relics of the Cross on which our most Holy redeemer died shall be taken by rude hands a great suffering shall cloud the lands by the eastern shore and one day a fool, a perfect fool shall be found by a spotless maiden and taken to the town of the church of the Magdalen. And he and the maiden shall set forth armed with the sword of Christ to bring back that which belongs to the righteous. And through their love they shall succeed and all forces of nature shall come to their aid: both from the land and from the sea. From the land sleeping dragons shall awake and breathe their fire into the faces of those that persecute and kill the mind. And from the sea shall awaken the monster of a thousand tentacles and take all the evil ones in his grip and strangle them into pulp. And peace and happiness shall return to the land which for so long has languished. And the inhabitants shall break their bonds asunder and give praise to the fool and his love and highest of all to the Lord Almighty.”

Wulfstan had, of course, read this passage before. But it gave him hope and confidence, so when he felt doubts creeping into him he went back to the parchment and read it once more. Dunara had absolute confidence in Helen and James: they were merely fulfilling the prophecies – there could be no question that they would succeed and restore the land to its former happiness and prosperity.

***

James was awakened by the howling of the wind whistling through the passageway leading to his chamber. The intermittent sound of heavy rain could be heard on the cobbles and slate roofs of Mersea.

“A gale brought by the eastern current,” confirmed Tamara. “Have you slept well?”

“Wonderfully,” said James and Helen in unison.

“We’ll have breakfast and then you can meet the action group, that is the group of persons dedicated to the overthrow of this terrible regime. Needless to say, they are also the few who have escaped the mutilations Mortan has wrought over so many of our town’s inhabitants,” said Tamara.

And so Helen and James met up with Simon, John and Ashley.

“Mersea is built on a complex system of vaults. It is raised on them to prevent water logging from the marshes. Formerly we all knew their plans, their layouts. But all diagrams have now been confiscated by order of Mortan. And memory cannot be entirely relied on,” explained Ashley.

“We can only surmise there must be a line of vaulting that reaches beneath the tabernacle in which the nails are kept. All the older persons and the priests who knew this passage have been put to the sword, however,” added Simon.

“We’ll find a way there and back,” confidently said Tamara.

At this moment a large tabby tom-cat entered their chamber and stroked his face against Helen’s leg. He seemed to know something and to wish to help the conspirators in their seemingly unresolved predicament. “Why, of course,” started James. “A cat!”

“What about a cat?” questioned John.

“Cats catch mice, mice roam through underground passages. We could take a cat with us. He could find the way.”

“What way, how?”

“Of course, we will have to find the correct route to where the tabernacle is situated, carrying the cat with us. Then, on the way back we would just have to follow him,” explained James.

“Are you really so sure he’ll find the way back?” asked Ashley…

“Of course,” said Helen. “Haven’t you heard of cats finding their way home over hundreds of miles?”?

“Perhaps it’s not such a bad idea after all,” suggested Ashley. “We need to everything and anything. Come on Alfred (for that was the name of the cat) are you going to help us?”

Alfred lifted up his whiskered face and put one paw on Ashley’s foot.

It seemed a certain feline way of confirming that, indeed, he could help. So all was arranged. Helen and James would set out with Alfred and attempt through the vaulted passes to reach a point directly underneath the tabernacle. Then they would search for some way of getting to the surface. Perhaps there would be a trap-door way out. But even here there was no certainty.

“The vaults in that part are used to hold the bones of the deceased,” explained Tamara. What goes down must come up. Even seals may be broken. Anyway perhaps we should treat this first expedition as a recky, just to find out what the best method is of repossessing the relics.”

Above and around them, the town awoke to its daily grind. Those who still had a tongue left in their mouths began to utter in a weary, hopeless tone. The clanking of chains, the shouting of the task-masters, the wailing of children and babies could all be heard by our party, who held their heads down in sadness and respect for the victims. They had escaped. For how long they knew not. But they had escaped. And now their fate was in the hands of three living beings. Slowly they faced their journey of liberation as another day of oppressive misery in the salt marshes faced the ashen-faced inhabitants of Mersea.

CHAPTER SEVEN

At dusk, three days after they had set out from Dunara, James and Helen entered Mersea. Before them the dark foreboding mass of the main gate loomed oppressively in the half-light. The two had already changed into grey cloth capes which the Mersea inhabitants wore. Forged amulet-like passes were shown to the visored guard at the massy door. The gates creaked open: they were inside. As the spy’s report had prepared them to expect, it was silent within these walls, very silent. No joyous laughing no busy chatter, no human sociability. Ghost-like hooded figures flitted like automatons down the straight streets, neither turning around or looking up. James and Helen knew what their mission was: to regain possession of the Holy Nails. James now realized that it was these, so sacrilegiously stole from the main church of Dunara, the church dedicated to the Magdalene. Just how were they to achieve their goal? Where would they stay the night without being seen, without arising suspicion?

As they walked down the high street they had a feeling already of being followed.

“Let’s turn round down this alley. Perhaps we can see if we are really being followed,” suggested Helen.

And indeed they were being followed by one of the nameless grey cloaks who seemed to be gesticulating to them to stop.

“How do we know if it’s a friend or foe” asked James.

“We’ll have to stop,” said Helen. “Carrying straight on and trying to ignore them could make us really suspect.”

They turned round to greet the figure, which took off the cape of its cloak to reveal an attractive looking olive-skinned woman in her late twenties.

“I am glad you stopped,” she said in a soft voice, full of sympathy. “I know who you are. I am here to help you. Come with me.”

They followed her down some further alleys until they entered a low doorway in a side wall built of massive stone blocks. The doorway led to a passage dimly lit by waxen tapers at the end of which they found themselves in a small chamber with a rush-strewn floor punctuated by brightly embroidered cushions.

“You must be hungry,” said Tamara, (for that was her name). “Here’s some buttermilk and toasted oats for you to eat.”

James and Helen, ravenous after their long day, set to eating and drinking. Helen thought of her palfrey, which had been left at the manor. She hoped it would be well-looked after and not miss her.

Tamara began to speak:

“It is well that we have met so soon after your entry into this town of dreadful night. There are many guards patrolling the streets and, although I know that your passes look so much like the real thing – the craftsman was adept at imitating them I see – you could have so easily come to an unfortunate conclusion so soon. In brief, the situation in Mersea is becoming ever more desperate. Mortan intends to spread his kingdom of evil throughout the eastern coast. He has imported Greek fire and now knows how to make it for himself. We have tried to steal the formula but it is too well concealed. Nightly he and his minions perform necromantic rites and abuse the holiness of the relics. They hope, thereby, to achieve greater physical and supernatural powers, for they’re all drunk on power, crazed by it.”

Helen and James had now polished off their meal and were all ears to Tamara’s narrative.

“Mortan’s ambition is to wield absolute power, I have said. To support his forces and artillery he needs rations and he has now almost entirely turned the entire population of Mersea into slaves working on the salt marshes near Maldon. He exports the salt to the Frankish kingdoms and to the Norsemen who highly prize its quality. I have seen them, entire family doing back-breaking work in the marshes, for ever wading in the malarial damp. Disease afflicts them: few live beyond the age of thirty. It is hopeless back-breaking work. The once proud dignity of our citizens has been trampled underfoot. Their eyes are dulled, their smiles are gone and now worse is coming. Indeed, worse has already come. To remove dissidents, to remove simulation, to destroy uprisings Mortan has instituted a new process: ‘Personal Systematization’ he calls it. You will be horrified and completely disgusted to know what this so-called ‘personal systematization entails. He calls it the 3-M program: eMasculation, eMuting, eMentalisation. Weak or diseased males are emasculated, their virility cut off to prevent from even accidentally breeding. All yes, all are now having their tongue removed so that dissidence may not have a tongue, literally, and new ideas may not be generated by conversation and all social intercourse will be cut. In short, any gathering of more than one will be considered a conspiracy.”

James and Helen listened with increasing concern to Tamara’s seemingly hopeless narrative.

“You really are placing too much reliance on us,” complained Helen.

“Indeed you are,” echoed James.

“No matter,” said ‘Tamara. “They must have chosen you two for a special, a very special reason, in Dunara. Wulfstan knows how critical the situation; has become; he would not act foolishly.”

Embraced in each other’s arms James and Helen had little wish to express their love passionately. Their minds were too full of the horrors they had heard, of the dangers they would be facing on the morrow. James remembered one phrase which had been mentioned in his context when he had first stumbled into this situation in the eastern kingdoms. “The fool,” he remembered. “The perfect fool.” What was it about this perfect fool that was so precious? What could the perfect fool perform that no other human could undergo? Why was he a perfect fool? He somehow felt, justifiably he though, somewhat offended by the appellation. But then he thought of other perfect fools: Parsifal, for example.

It clicked with him. He should no longer question the unfolding of events. A greater hand than his was at work. The web of redemptive resolution was being spun by the spider of inevitability. He should only trust in the working out of this Master plan. Resistance could be fatal. In any event things were too far gone. He could now change little or nothing:

The reed candle was flickering its last. In the stone chamber giant shadows projected on the walls. In his arms Helen, beautiful, lovable Helen. He stroked gently her downy cheek. He looked into her fathomless eyes. She was still awake. “I love you,” he murmured to her. “Me too,” said Helen. She continued: “if love is for us who can be against us?”. Imperceptibly, their thoughts, their bodies merged with the unknown night, the night of uncertainty, the night of hope preceeding a new dawn.