Crispin's Army

There was the problem of what to do with Elizabeth. She was to be kept under close guard at all times, Tana insisted, and not to be trusted in the least.

The people of Vale had no prison, for they had no crime worthy of the name. Although the reconstruction of the longhouse, as the social and spiritual heart of the village, would under any other circumstances have been the villagers’ first priority, Crispin, Tana and their Urbian comrades assured them that it was of the utmost importance that they first build a place of safe keeping for Elizabeth.

The most obvious location was directly beneath one of the watch towers, where the corner of the village fortifications offered two walls of the prison already. A communal effort raised in a single day the two further walls, with two small windows and a sturdy door, and a roof, while the intended prisoner sat on the grass, with Tana sitting close by, observing her continuously. A bed of sheepskins, a jug of water, and a bowl behind a curtained off area to serve as a privy, these were the simple accoutrements which were added to make ’s new home complete.

“It’s a bit of a come-down, I know, from your last residence,” said Tana as she ushered Elizabeth into her new quarters, “but I’m sure you’ll get used to it. It’ll be a new experience for you.”

“One that I’m sure I could live without,” Elizabeth retorted glumly as she glanced around, wrinkling her nose in disgust at the privy. She scarcely blinked as the door slammed hard behind her and the solid iron bar thudded into place.

Tana took up an invitation from Medda, Melissa’s widowed mother, to move in with her. Medda immediately began busying herself concocting restorative brews to bring Tana back to health and strength. On Tana’s insistence, portions of the same brews were taken to Elizabeth, who would emerge from a shell of indifference to all around her for long enough to accept the offerings with studied politeness, before retreating once more.

During the first days of Tana’s convalescence, Crispin and Josie sat with her for long periods, and they were frequently joined by one or more of the other Urbians, much to the delight of Medda, whose house had become a lonely place since the loss of first her husband and then her daughter.

The friends congregating around Tana’s sickbed talked at great length about the events in the city, their part in it all, and their escape. For her part, Tana skipped over her more harrowing experiences with a dismissive wave of her hand. She said she wanted simply to forget many of the things that had been done to her, and many that she had done to others.

Crispin could restrain himself no longer from asking the question that was on the tip of his tongue. “You said in your letter that you had found another man?”

Tana’s eyes dropped from him, her head hung. She clasped her hands together in her lap and bit her lower lip. “No,” she whispered. “Not quite. I... I said I had found another.”

Unseen by Crispin, who was intent on the crown of Tana’s head, Josie’s eyebrows darted up, and a wry smile twisted her lips as she comprehended the facts of the matter.

“Well,” said Crispin in confusion, “is that not the same thing?”

Tana’s head rose slowly. Her eyes met his. “No,” she said softly. “It isn’t. I love another woman.”

“Another woman?” Crispin gasped, his jaw hanging loosely. “You mean... carnal love?” Tana nodded. He gaped at Josie. “Is that possible?”

“Oh yes,” said Josie.

“And... common?”

“Not uncommon.”

For a moment Crispin was speechless as he tried to come to terms with Tana’s revelation. “But you laid with me?”

“I did,” said Tana. “And I loved you. Truly I did.”

For a long time Crispin was silent, his face in his hands. “And this other woman?” he said at last. “What became of her?”

“I don’t know,” said Tana, her voice strained with emotion. “In the chaos I left her in Sector One. With your daughter - our daughter - Frances.”

Crispin stared at her in numb silence. He felt anger welling inside himself, but had no one to direct it at. Seeing this, Josie said softly that it was time to leave. She took Crispin’s hand and led him back to their own cottage.

“Don’t be hard on Tana,” she urged, closing the door behind them. “She is most certainly going to be hard on herself. But she is not to blame. You have heard what happened. No woman would abandon her child if she could possibly help it. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” said Crispin, with a trace of rancour in his voice. “I understand. But how am I supposed to feel? I have had this most priceless gift, my daughter, my firstborn, dangled before me, only to be snatched away again.”

Josie nodded in silence.

“I feel like murdering Elizabeth,” Crispin declared. “But that wouldn’t solve anything. And Tana went to great lengths to bring her here. She wouldn’t thank me for doing the old girl in.”

And then they came. First the odd one or two, then half a dozen, then a continuous trickle that soon developed into a stream. Refugees from the city began pouring over the mountains, continuous files of them tramping over the passes, many falling by the wayside, many more making it into a land not ravaged by anthrax as they had been led to believe, but benign in the extreme. Most were suffering from radiation poisoning to a greater or lesser degree. Some simply made camps and sat waiting to die. Others wandered on, blindly, aimlessly, following river valleys, neither knowing nor caring what lay at the end of their journey, so long as they were as far removed as humanly possible from Urbis.

Many of them came to Vale. Even when the village was able to boast a fine new longhouse to offer temporary accomodation, resources were stretched to the limit to feed them and bed them down for a night before they travelled on. The villagers looked on them with curiosity and compassion, for they were pitiable wrecks of humanity, emaciated, and looking all the more appalling with bald patches on their scalps where their hair had fallen out, a fate shared by Crispin, Josie, Charlie and all the other city-dwellers.

The steady flow of sick and needy people passing through the village was the crucial test of Crispin’s popularity. There were those in the village who believed that this sudden influx of strangers, or `foreigners’, as they became known, was entirely Crispin’s doing, but they were shouted down by those who asked why Crispin should want to do such a thing to them. Most had grasped that Crispin’s journey to the city and the events which had led to this flight of its inhabitants had more or less coincided. But all could see that their hard times were going to get harder.

Arne was working in front of his house one afternoon, clearing out his drain and laying new flat stones over the top of it, when a little knot of refugees approached. They stopped in front of him.

“You can get food in the longhouse,” he said, without looking up. These walking skeletons had become such a familiar part of daily life in Vale that the initial sensitivity of the villagers had become somewhat blunted.

They did not move. He looked up. They were gathered around a young woman, physically holding her up. Her hands, hanging limply by her sides, consisted of thumbs and stumps bound in rags. Above a torn, thin coat, matted, patchy blonde hair trailed down either side of an ashen face with tired blue eyes and gaunt hollow cheeks.

It took Arne a moment to realise he was looking at his wife.

“Melissa!” he gasped, and sprang to his feet.

She smiled weakly. “Hello, Arne,” she said quietly, then fainted away.

Arne gathered her in his arms, horrified at how little she weighed, and hurried to the longhouse, where there were healing herbs. But by the time he got there she was dead.

Crispin arrived minutes later. One of the refugees who had accompanied her took him aside.

“You are Crispin?” said the man.

“Yes,” said Crispin.

“She wanted you to know that there was another woman with her when she left the city, a woman called Sasha, also of this village. She fell in the mountains. We had to leave her.”

“I understand,” said Crispin. “Was there any mention of another, called Greta?”

“Melissa spoke of her, but we don’t know anything about what happened to her. She probably never made it out of the city.”

Crispin nodded.

The man looked again at Melissa’s body, with Arne hunched over it, sobbing. “She lost her fingers to frostbite,” he added. “A little before we found her. She directed us here. She made it here on willpower. Nothing but willpower.”

“Come and have some broth,” said Crispin.

The human stream continued to pass through Vale for weeks. Crispin and Josie had both lost much of their hair, and had suffered from aching throats and bleeding gums. Charlie and the others in his group had also suffered from vomiting and diarrhea, but all except Keith seemed to be on the mend.

On a clear morning in the latter part of September, Crispin was at work in front of his cottage, hewing firewood in readiness for the coming winter, when a solitary woman came along the track and entered the village. She had a rucksack on her back, as well as two formidable laser weapons, and was carrying a bundle in her arms. When she saw Crispin, she stopped to observe him for a moment.

He saw her standing looking at him and put down his axe. Without taking her eyes off him, the woman approached. She put her hand up and ruffled the piebald tufts of his hair and smiled.

“You must be Crispin,” she said.

“That’s right,” said Crispin. He saw that the bundle in the crook of the woman’s arm was a sleeping baby with a hood drawn over most of its head to protect it from the elements.

“My name’s Cath Vernon,” she said, sweeping back the baby’s hood to reveal a fine mop of reddish hair, “and this is your daughter, Frances.”

Crispin gazed in wonder at the sleeping child. Cath gave her into his arms.

Josie emerged from the cottage.

“This is Cath,” Crispin said in amazement. “And this is my child.”

Josie swallowed. “Tana’s at the longhouse,” she said. “I’ll go and get her.”

Tana, who had regained much of her strength, and was doing her share of the continuous work of caring for the transients, came running, frantic with delight, Josie following close behind her. As soon as she saw Cath, Tana let out a yelp. The two women ran to meet each other, and hugged and kissed and laughed and cried, while Crispin and Josie cooed over .

Following the hostile reception they had given Crispin on his homecoming, the people of Vale appeared to be suffering from collective guilt, and did everything they could to make amends. One day, Crispin got word that his presence was desired at a meeting being held around the fire that was still tended in the middle of the longhouse, even though the longhouse was now a ruin.

He arrived, stepping across the charred remains of the wall instead of coming through the entrance, an act which brought on a mixture of smiles and raised eyebrows among the villagers, and the crowd around the fire parted to let him through.

In front of the fire was what appeared to be a small table covered by a blanket.

Arne, who had been encouraged to take the role of de facto village head until matters could be dealt with more formally, stepped forward. “Crispin, my friend, welcome.” He was passed a mug of ale which he pressed into Crispin’s hand. “It is good to see you back among us, even if the circumstances are a bit unusual.” Crispin was astonished. Arne was not normally given to such verbosity.

“Since you lost your crossbow on your journey to the great city,” Arne continued, “and you are, after all, the finest hunter in all the valley, we would like you to accept this gift.”

With a flourish, he whisked the blanket off the table, and Crispin beheld a beautiful new crossbow. Arne picked it up and placed it in his hands.

In all his adult life in Vale, his crossbow had been as much a part of him as an arm or a leg. But after his arrival in Urbis, he had scarcely missed it, because it had no relevance to his life in the city. It was as if Crispin the hunter had been his identity in some previous existence. Now he was back, and by giving him a new weapon, his friends were saying to him in no uncertain terms that they wanted him to stay, and to resume his former role as a provider of meat for the community. And a part of him was tempted to do just that, to slip back into his old life as if Urbis did not exist. But he knew that was not the case, he had his new friends all around him to remind him of that, and he was far from sure that he had finished with the city.

He held the crossbow in his hands, familiarising himself with its curves, its shape and feel. Hhe rested the stock - called the tiller by some - on the table, and as he inspected it, the memories came flooding back. Dirk, his father, had given him his old one, and had patiently taught him the names of all the parts. The back of the bow, the part that bent outward, was covered with special ligaments from the backbone of a mammoth to keep the splinters of wood from springing loose under tension. The belly of the bow, the side which bent inwards, suffered from the opposite problem, namely compression, which produced crinkles that some called frets and others called crystals, a problem which was solved by the application of ram’s horn. Even the glue used to hold the whole bow together was special, as it was made from the skin on the roof of the mouth of a sturgeon. The trigger, meanwhile, was a testament to the metalsmith’s consummate skill: in ancient models, the archer’s pull on a long trigger had tended to deflect the aim, so an intricate system of intermediate levers had been devised to make the pull shorter and lighter, until now it was a joy to use, and its accuracy was unsurpassed.

“I am deeply honoured,” he said, abashed by his friends’ generosity.

“There is something else,” said Arne. “We are going to hold a banquet in your honour.”

It was a spectacular sight. Under a glorious indigo sky, with the stars emerging one by one, Crispin and Josie stepped out of the cottage hand in hand to behold an enormous long table that had been constructed along the river bank in front of the longhouse ruins. Already, many of the guests had gathered, and as he walked the length of the table, Crispin could see in the light of the torches many familiar faces: city people and Vale people rubbing shoulders, talking about their extraordinarily different lives and building bonds of friendship, and there appeared to be even a handful of couples forming, elementary attraction building bridges across the vast cultural gulf that divided them. Crispin clasped Josie’s hand even tighter.

Crispin and Josie sat together at the head of the table. Crispin felt quite strange, for he had partaken of many feasts - though none he could remember that was as grand as this one - but always as a simple guest, one among many. Now, he caught himself looking around expectantly for the guest of honour, unable to comprehend that it was himself.

There was much merry banter and a sense of deepening cameraderie as the wine and the ale took their effect. Arne sat to Crispin’s right, while Tana sat to Josie’s left, content with her own life and well disposed towards Crispin’s new love. Although the mood was light, ever and anon the conversation would return to the future and what it held. Crispin had the impression that he was approaching a crossroads that would loom out of the fog without warning, and would have to choose his direction without much idea of what awaited him down any particular road.

This line of thought was interrupted by the arrival of the servers with the main course of the banquet. A fine mammoth had been slaughtered and butchered and cooked for long hours, its aroma filling the air all over the village.

Crispin was served first. A platter was placed in front of him, piled high with slices of meat. With the smell so strong in his nostrils, he suddenly felt nauseous. He had grown up a meat-eater, eating roasted mammoth was one of the joys of his life. And then he had gone to Urbis, and that had all changed. He had eaten vegetables and spun protein made to look like meat, and he had hankered, for a while, for the real thing. But that had swiftly changed, and meat-eating had become as much a part of his past as his crossbow. In the city, he had become comfortable without either. And on his return to the village, he had mostly eaten in his cottage, and had continued with a vegetarian diet.

He became aware of a hush that had descended over the table. All the guests were watching eagerly to see him take the first bite. It was customary.

He mustered a cheerful smile and picked up his knife. He cut off a piece of meat and speared it. He gave a little wave, carried it to his mouth and began to cheer. Vale folk clapped, cheered and slapped the table, and the city people quickly fell in with them.

The taste was disgusting to him now. Endeavouring to look as cheerful as he could, he chewed. It seemed to take forever. He had not remembered eating being such hard work. He swallowed.

His stomach treated it as something alien and responded accordingly. With his hands covering his mouth, he stood up and bolted to the water’s edge, crouching and vomiting, hoping he couldn’t be heard.

Josie, Arne, Tana and a few of the others gathered around solicitously.

“It’s the sickness from the city,” Josie announced. “He still isn’t over it. But it is nothing to be alarmed about. It will pass. Please, enjoy your meal.”

She squatted beside him as he cupped his hands to take a drink of water, and put a comforting arm round his broad shoulders.

“I can’t understand it,” Crispin said softly. “I used to love mammoth.”

“Things have changed,” Josie replied. “I think this proves a point.”

“What point?”

“That, like it or not, you are a migrant now, and migrants can never truly go back to the place they came from.”

Crispin looked up at her. Her eyes were shining, and he could see the glint of torchlight reflected there. “Perhaps you’re right,” he said at last.

They had spent another long night, this time in Medda’s house, while Cath had told the frightening tale of her weeks spent in a bunker in the heart of sector one, and then of her perilous journey by night across a city being torn to shreds by civil war. Accompanied by others seeking an escape from the madness, she had braved the mountains, warding off more than one advance from a male fellow traveller with a blast from her zapper. Like all the others, she had wandered blindly until she had come to a settlement, but then, unlike the others, she had known what to do next. She had asked for directions to Vale-By-The-Waters.

Crispin lay in his own bed unable to sleep. He could not remember when he had last passed a night untroubled by the complex tangle of conflicting ideas which his whole situation had brought to him. His mind was turning over the whole situation, trying to puzzle it all out. Josie gently stroked his brow, trying to find a way to bring solace to this tormented man.

“I feel very strange,” he declared, baring his soul to her with a profound sigh. “I was an outsider in the city, but I learned to adapt in order to survive there. I always preserved an image in my head of Vale as the home I would one day return to. But having returned, I find I don’t belong here any more either. I am really as much a `foreigner’ as any of these other city-dwellers arriving here. Somehow, in the midst of it all, I have to find out just where it is that I belong. But I am sure of one thing. The answer is not to be found here. The answer is in Urbis.”