Crispin's Army

“No, Josie,” Crispin stormed. “The answer is no.”

“Crispin, I want to go home.”

Crispin stared at Josie blankly. “You are home,” he said, his voice soaring in pitch as he wrestled with his incredulity. He spun on the balls of his feet, arm outstretched, taking in the close confines of the cottage. “This is your home. Isn’t it?”

“Sssh!” Josie hissed. “You’ll wake the baby. No. This isn’t my home. Urbis is my home. It’s the place I was born, it’s the place I know and love. There are so many things I miss about it, I can’t begin to tell you about them. Try to understand, Crispin. Try.”

“It’s irrelevant,” said Crispin flatly, reining in his anger. “Whatever there was about the place that you loved before, it’s gone now. Haven’t you been listening to what recent refugees have been saying? There’s all out war going on. Huge areas deserted, devastation and destruction, rats running about on the surface in plague proportions, disease going unchecked...”

“But it won’t always be like that,” Josie interrupted. “The war will be won, ultimately, democracy will prevail, and the city will be rebuilt. It will be made better. Less dehumanising. And I want to be there when it happens.”

“Have you considered the possibility,” said Crispin slowly, “that it might not be like that? It might well be that the other side wins, and things will get worse rather than better.”

“I don’t think for one minute that that is what will happen,” Josie replied. “I have faith in the ultimate victory of the Underground. And so should you.”

“Josie, what’s wrong with living here?” said Crispin, ignoring her last jibe. “Have the village people made you feel unwelcome?”

“No,” Josie sighed. “Everyone’s been fine.”

“Well, what is it, then?” Crispin was feeling at the end of his tether.

“It’s Karl,” said Josie, glancing meaningfully towards the cot where their son lay sleeping, his tiny claw gripping a fold of the blanket covering him. “Back in the city, medical science could probably do something for him. But if he remains here, he will always be like that.”

She turned back to Crispin, her face as wry and miserable as he had ever seen it. He felt his heart being wrenched within him, and he looked with profound sadness at the pitiable mite.

It was Crispin’s turn to sigh, deeply and wearily. The situation seemed impossible. “That’s true,” he conceded. “But still nothing can be done until the war is over. And in any case, how do you propose to get him across the mountains?”

Josie did not reply. She was standing over the cot, gently stroking the swollen head.

Crispin gathered his things in readiness to depart for the hunt. Hunting was still an essential source of food for the village, but game was now immeasurably harder to find, as the country round about had received a huge influx of refugees from the city, all desperate for food. Crispin might be away now for three or four weeks.

“Don’t let’s argue,” he said softly as he paused in the doorway, silhouetted against the early light. The plea seemed a little belated. Josie came to him and kissed him passionately. “Take care, won’t you?”

He gave her a hug. “I will.”

“I’ll miss you terribly.”

“No you won’t,” he smiled, nodding towards the cot. “You’ll be either too busy or too tired.”

And then he was gone. She watched his back as he walked away, and reflected on how this strange man had become first her lover and then, in a brief and simple ceremony in which the village had put its seal of approval on their relationship, her husband. It all seemed so unreal to her that she sometimes felt as if she were viewing a movie of the life of someone else.

Karl awoke, and Josie held him to her breast as she watched the sun rise and listened to the sounds of another day beginning in Vale.

She looked down at the baby. “I suppose you’re going to grow up to be as stubborn as your father,” she murmured. “How am I ever going to cope with the two of you?”

Josie was not the only exile from Urbis itching to return there. , too, was becoming daily more impatient to move back to the city and legitimise her claim as Leader. She had heard various conflicting rumours about the state of the conflict, and was fearful, lest some usurper should gain sufficient support in her absence to put himself on the throne. She had acquired the habit of clutching at the pendant around her neck - the symbol of her status as Leader - as a talisman, the possession of which guaranteed that her wishes would be fulfilled.

She was now permitted to roam freely within the confines of the village, and had expressed no desire to wander further afield. The decision to give her this circumscribed liberty had been reached some weeks after her arrival in Vale.

Refugees from Urbis had casually asked of the villagers why they were keeping an Urbian woman prisoner, and the villagers had let slip that she was the Leader of the Presidium. Seeing her as the cause of all their ills, a mob of enraged city-dwellers had attacked the prison, fully intent on putting Elizabeth to death, and had only been persuaded to desist when several of their number had been stunned with laser weapons from behind, as Crispin, Charlie and the rest of the Underground group rushed to her aid.

The rioting refugees had been ejected from the village, and Crispin had admonished his neighbours for revealing Elizabeth’s status. was granted the freedom of the village on the understanding that she was on no account to tell strangers that she was the Leader, and she reluctantly accepted.

She socialised chiefly with Tana, to whom she felt closest, and had at first sought to convert her to her own ideology, but Tana had remained firm. Brawling over politics had seemed pointless, and the discussions between the two women had remained amicable, for the most part, becoming only occasionally heated.

Elizabeth was well aware that she could not regain power unaided, and gradually floated the proposition of an alliance with the Underground, tentatively sounding Tana out, cautious never to alienate her entirely. She was still determined not to be a puppet of the Underground, but was pragmatic enough to see that if the only way to gain power was by conceding to some of their less ludicrous demands, well, so be it. She allowed herself to be perceived as having progressively more sympathy for the ideals Tana and the others had espoused.

The other members of the sector three Underground made themselves useful in whatever ways they could in Vale and the surrounding area, mostly as manual labour in building work. The sudden arrival of a flood of people into a previously sparsely populated region had put a great strain on resources. The existing villages had swollen, and whole new settlements had arisen. The demand for extra help constructing houses, longhouses, store sheds and the like was never ending.

Simone was particularly highly valued, as she was able to introduce some simple new ideas to make life easier. One of her ideas which was most highly valued was a large bread oven which used polished metal to focus the heat of the sun. During the summer months, one such oven could bake the bread for a whole village without using a stick of firewood: this was no minor consideration, for the increase in population had put pressure on woodlands, and fuel gathering expeditions had to travel further and further afield.

Inevitably, fights broke out as groups competed for food and firewood. There were more than a few fatalities, and bitterness and mistrust became more entrenched. The four Underground men in Vale, Charlie, Ralph, Nick and Keith, and occasionally Mina, when she could prevail upon Charlie to let her accompany them, acted when they could as mediators in disputes, as they were generally trusted by both villagers and refugees. They drew up maps of the whole region, divided up territories and allocated to each village, as best they could, a resource of either firewood or peat. It was a rough and ready rationing system, which was not to everyone’s liking. Thefts of both food and fuel continued, and there were few sanctions that could be imposed against offenders, other than mutilation or death, as there were certainly no building materials spare with which to build any more prisons, and it was impossible to fine people who had no money and few possessions.

In spite of this prevailing air of suspicion, bonds of friendship were also forged between villagers and `foreigners’, as they came to be termed, as each side tried to understand the ways of the other. Village people showed the foreigners how they lived in what seemed at first to the city people to be a harsh and unforgiving land, and the city people, for their part, applied their generally greater understanding of machines to try to make life easier.

Among her other creations, Simone introduced a variant of the Archimedes screw to raise water out of lakes and waterways. This device, manufactured with ease by village blacksmiths and carpenters working together, soon appeared in large numbers all across the countryside. Gangs of workers dug ditches to bring supplies of water to some of the newer settlements, freeing the inhabitants from the daily chore of walking kilometres with buckets to fetch water.

Not all of the people who fled from Urbis settled in communities. Some took up a wandering existence, travelling far and wide over the countryside. Some expressed a need to search for some undefined something that they felt they might find over the next hill, round the next bend in the river. Others seemed to be wandering simply for the sake of wandering. All would be expected to lend a hand in some labour or other in any community they visited, in return for which they would be given bed and board. They were welcomed as a source of news from far away, as the majority of village dwellers seldom travelled very far beyond the bounds of the village, and newcomers could always be assured of eager listeners in the longhouse over a flask or two of ale.

Arne came into the village at sunset one day after harvesting from his field strips their crop of barley, accompanied by just such a traveller.

“Welcome, stranger,” said Gunnar, who revelled in his role as elder of Vale. He ushered the newcomer into the longhouse. “What is your name?”

“My name,” said the man, “is Augustus Trencher, but my acquaintances usually call me simply Gus.”

Gus Trencher was a tall lean man in his forties, with a professorial air about him. He had thinning hair - due more to natural causes than to radiation - a slight stoop, and a benign smile that he offered to everyone he met. He had left Urbis in the spring, when the fallout had ceased to be a major hazard, and when the warmer weather had made the crossing of the mountains a less formidable prospect for a less-than-fit academic. Having achieved the crossing with a mixed bag of other refugees, he had been wandering the countryside all summer, and in order to become accepted by hostile villagers, had learned as much as he could of their ways, including their aversion to the abbreviation of names.

Gunnar led the newcomer closer to the fire, and pressed a flask of ale into his hand. “Supper will be ready shortly,” he explained. “In the meantime, please be seated.”

Footsore, Gus happily settled into a chair and pulled the stopper from his ale.

“Will you be stopping long in Vale?” Gunnar enquired.

“I don’t exactly know,” Gus replied. “But tell me, is this the village where the man called Crispin and the woman called Tana live?”

“It is indeed,” said Gunnar. “Crispin is absent at the moment on a hunting trip, but is expected back within the week. You have doubtless heard something of his exploits?”

“Something, yes,” said Gus. “I have heard about him. I would like to meet him.”

“His fame has travelled far and wide,” said Gunnar proudly. “Would you like to meet his wife? And Tana?”

“I would,” said Gus with enthusiasm. “I would indeed.”

A minute later, Josie entered the longhouse, Karl in her arms, closely followed by Tana carrying the robust Frances, now nineteen months old, and Cath, bringing up the rear.

“Hello,” said Josie. “I’m Josie, Crispin’s wife. And this is his son, Karl.”

Gus immediately noted Karl’s hands and his head. The tiny hand with its fused digits closed around his forefinger. “Interesting,” he murmured. “Very, very interesting.”