Fortunate wasn’t a word Magnus would have used to describe his situation. But he could accept the benefits of the second chance Bruno and Fellows had given him.
A symphony of agonies swelled upwards from his legs and he closed his eyes against this new tide. This was how it had been ever since they’d lain him down. Something to do with the blood trying to flow in places where it could not, the doctor had said. Magnus clamped his eyes tight but couldn’t prevent tears escaping. His yellow teeth showed through the fur of his beard as he grimaced. The pain was so loud he didn’t hear the door open.
When he opened his eyes, he was looking at the Grand Bishop. Behind him stood the full complement of his housemaids, ten of them. Magnus was too shocked to speak. The Grand Bishop approached, the femur club held casually at his right side. From time to time it twitched to the clenching of his fist.
‘I’ll make a religious man of you yet, Rory.’
The Grand Bishop smoothed his gown from his buttocks and sat down on the edge of the bed. The movement made Magnus cry out through his clenched teeth.
‘Your domestic staff have been telling me of your mistreatment of them. It’s more than just heavy-handedness, apparently. They say you wilfully and knowingly force them into all manner of degradations. Bestialities, one might even say.’
The Grand Bishop raised the femur club and brought the head of it to rest in his left palm. He tapped it there a few times very gently. He leaned very close to Magnus. So close Magnus could smell the rot on his breath.
‘We have laws against that sort of thing in this town you know.’
‘When have you ever adhered to a single law?’ said Magnus through his teeth.
‘You’d be surprised just how pure a man I’ve been all these years.’
The Grand Bishop moved the head of the femur club a little closer to Magnus’s knee. Magnus caught the motion and tensed. Even that caused the oceans of pain to rise up. His breaths shortened against the threat.
‘Seeing as you’ve ruled this house without a thought for law or decency, I’m going to allow it to rule you in exactly the same way. I will accompany you to your basement where your female staff will be free to make use of you in any way they see fit. And I mean any way. I will be there purely to offer the succour of our God and to accept your conversion before the end of your life.’
The Grand Bishop tapped Magnus’s shin with the tip of his club. Magnus screamed.
‘I must say, Rory, I’m rather looking forward to it.’
The maids approached and the Grand Bishop moved out of their way. Magnus saw the looks on their faces. There was still fear there but they were rapidly overcoming it. When it flipped into anger, he would be lost.
‘Please go ahead, ladies,’ said the Grand Bishop.
Looks passed between the maids and they stepped forward. Hands reached out and caught Magnus by his hair and beard. They yanked and he screamed again. More hands took hold. They pulled him to the edge of the bed. As one, they hauled him off. His torn legs landed heavily and the screaming reached a new pitch. Magnus tried to make himself understood but no words would form through his agony. In this way, they dragged him along the upper hall, through his study and bumped him down the stairs. Each of the women grabbed tools from the walls and drawers.
They jostled to be the first.
She’d have slept badly anywhere in her condition but the wind at the top of the wooden observation tower, had troubled her all night. Cold and insistent it had whined through the gaps in the tower’s planks and chilled her back no matter which way she lay. She was grateful for dawn’s grey arrival; staying awake would be less of an effort than trying to sleep.
The pain and unsteadiness in every part of her body were constant companions now and she decided it would be safer to stay up in the tower than to try and come down. It had been dangerous enough climbing up there. The towers weren’t used or maintained much any more and some of the rungs were missing on the access ladder. She’d risked it because she realised there was no way she could get close to any of the barns where the Chosen slept.
When they sensed her approach, a rigid tension rippled through the herds. It passed from one field to another and through every barn until it was quite clear they all knew she was there. Ten thousand of them setting their minds against her. Perhaps they sensed her sickness and would not tolerate it. She believed that for a while. In time, though, the reality settled over her making her original assumption seem very foolish.
It was simple. They could smell the flesh of their own upon her gowns and probably from her very skin. They knew that she was one who ate them, one for whom they died. Why would they want her near? Why should they let her shelter with them?
There wasn’t long to wait now and she knew it. She had begun to look at things differently in these last few days. There had been time to think, time to be most terribly afraid of what lay beyond her physical end. She was separated from a God who did not speak to her. She was therefore cut off from every other Parson, even the Grand Bishop – this was not something that could be discussed with any of them. She was the natural enemy of Magnus and every MMP worker because she had religious power over them. She was the enemy of the townsfolk because she was an enforcer of the Welfare’s protection.
Surely now, as she finished her life, she could at least be honest with herself.
When the light was strong enough to see by, she stood and looked over the slatted wooden wall of the tower. Down in the fields a thin mist lay between the hedges. Above it rose the well-defined edge of every field and the walls of the barns. In every field around her, the Chosen began to leave the barns. They walked with a crippled gait, rolling a little to each side. Once outside they stretched and yawned. In every field the Chosen stood next to each other, touching. Some leaned their heads together. Some used the stumps of their fingers to rub at the necks and backs of others. This was the kind of contact she had never known.
But she did not envy them.
Here were creatures that spent their short lives herded and controlled by the stockmen. Naked and downtrodden they lived every day of every season outside or in a barn. They were mutilated from birth to suit the townsfolk’s purposes, to suit the laws in the Book of Giving and the Gut Psalter. Finally, they were systematically unmade to feed the hungry mouths of Abyrne. And many mouths there were. For generations it had been so.
Silent in her tower, she watched them as the sun came over the horizon, watched the way they faced it – every single one of them – and seemed to absorb its light. Minutes later, before the stockmen arrived, they broke into random groups or re-entered the barns, behaving once more like animals.
The Parson lay down again when the stockmen came. She didn’t want to be seen or challenged. She lay down on the damp, slowly decaying boards and wept.
For she knew her truth was no truth at all. No God would ever answer her calls. How could He?
The loss of a hundred Parsons was in part to blame but even with the extra muscle they’d have lent, it might not have been enough. The townsfolk were fractious and anxious. They’d been shocked by the blasts at the gas facility. The realisation that there was no more power in the town – not even for the wealthiest areas – had hit hard. Rumour spread from house to house about the struggle for supremacy between their Meat Baron and the Welfare.