‘27… 28? Hssst, Godwin,’ Father Sparks whispered. ‘You still got that paper of yours? Then let me see it.’ A small huddle formed around him, also to inspect Father Gottfriedson’s tally of the townsfolk from the day prior – mostly to check that they themselves were named on it, they felt that much in need of confirmation, of reassurance. ‘Yup,’ said Father Sparks, stroking his stubbled chin. ‘Yup… 27 adults in all.’
‘He’s even got ol’ Bethal down,’ someone observed. ‘An’ she don’t leave her old carriage no more. Ever.’
‘Can’t say I blames her way things’re going.’
‘I helped with sorting it, too,’ Lily Gottfriedson asserted rather petulantly.
‘Cass’s real name is Cassandra? I never knew that.’
‘11… 11 children,’ Father Sparks continued to tabulate. ‘That doesn’t seem right,’ he said. ‘That’s too many.’
‘Let’s have it,’ said Father Cattrick, snatching the paper scrap from him.
‘Hey,’ said Sparks.
‘There you go, that’s what it is,’ Cattrick asserted. ‘Damn fool’s put my Briona and young Candy in the wrong column. They’re named, so they count as adults. That puts it at 29 adults and only 9 children, those still underage. But either way it’s 38 in total, and not 39 like Goodman had it.’
‘Just 38 of us remaining,’ said Mother Sparks gloomily, and reflexively she crossed herself. ‘God help us,’ she said.
‘You’re right,’ said Joe Cattrick, handing the Gottfriedsons back their list. ‘It doesn’t add up.’
“Woodsville persists. Woodsville survives.”
Day four. Four! The Warners recorded absent, in the glimmer of noon following a new dawn the Circle was rejoined, everybody dressed in their Sunday Best for the fourth trial day running. By special dispensation another of the town’s children had been permitted to attend. Bewildered, more than a little afraid, Grant Two took shelter, tucked in alongside big sister Candy, both huddled in a clump and held fast in the arms of their loving mother, Jumeira. By equal rights Chandler Two should have been there as well, occupying the empty seat next to big brother, Caleb. According to reports however he’d run off: no one knew exactly where but no one seemed all that surprised. And it suited certain people in the room just fine.
Despite tall raking windows at either extreme, the weak daylight sloping in from without barely illuminated the full extent of the broad chamber, the muted congregation within. They appeared frozen, held in stasis – a frosted bubble suspended in time and place: detail distinct only at its core. And at that core stood Thomas, Father Chandler.
‘I’m a fighter,’ he said, ‘I’ve always been a fighter. I’ve been a good father to my kids. A handyman, a forager, your best woodsman, hunter, warrior,’ he proposed, and no one dared gainsay him: Oldfather Warner was not there, for some reason, to dispute his reputation. ‘I’ve a strong arm,’ he said. ‘In just these last weeks I’ve cut enough wood to break any ordinary man’s back. Each and every day. By night I’ve willed it mended, just so’s I might start all over again the next morning, and all the mornings after that. The woodpiles I’ve chopped will see you through the hardpack months to come. They stand testament.’ Shame riddled his listeners through, their heads hanging low. He spoke true. Piled mightily behind each of their houses was a debt that every family owed him – firewood, neat, formed in solid stacks, taking the shapes of ancient pyramids, ziggurats, and other heaven-troubling temples of sacrifice. ‘All year round,’ Thomas Chandler said, ‘I bring you light, I supply you heat. The candles that I make. The wax, the soap. I cleanse you,’ he said. ‘An hour’s labour from me is worth any three of yours. By our terms of barter that’s been established. It is written,’ he said. ‘Jeffrey Grant, the same. Calculate your losses from there. Not such a good move, nor a wise one so much, is it? Not anymore.’
‘He speaks for me also,’ Father Grant confirmed. ‘I never was one for saying much.’
‘Amen,’ said Mother Grant.
‘Jumeira…’
‘Don’t,’ she said.
‘Somebody needs to address our rat problem,’ said Old Man Gottfried. ‘I was out earlier this morning over by the…’
‘Not now, Gottfried,’ said Father Sparks. Old Man Gottfried. Joke was, he was only 37: with their Oldfather, Godfrey, gone, the head now of their whole clan, and even before that a grandfather himself, twice over. At 37.
‘I’m smart,’ Thomas Chandler continued. ‘I’ve fathered five healthy children…’
“I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess,” the Magister intoned. ‘This is the self-justification of the Pharisee! Luke 18…’ Clasping the Holy Book firmly in his hand, he flipped it open. “Every one that exalteth himself shall be abased,” he quoted, “and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.”
‘No,’ said Father Chandler. ‘Why not then Psalm 37?’ he said. “Blessed is he, who takes your little ones, and dashes them against the rock!”… Absolutely anything might be justified in this way.’
‘Weren’t you just…?’ stuttered Father Goodman. ‘Only yesterday…’
‘One nation,’ sneered Brandon, Father Sparks. ‘Divisible, by God.’
‘There is no nation anymore,’ said Nicholas Else. ‘There’s just us.’
‘Five children I’ve fathered,’ Thomas Chandler said. ‘I’ve said that, haven’t I. Two of them surviving. And, God help us, should the requirement ever arise again, I can father more. Can you say as much, Magister? “O wise and upright judge!” In your advancing years, is your seed still abundant, still healthy?’ His bitter taunts met with nervous titters from the audience, only for Father Chandler to round on them in turn. ‘These are my contributions!’ he growled. ‘From before my fall from grace. Who can match me and count their efforts worth the same?’
‘We till the hard soil!’ asserted Mother Cattrick. Sundry others grunted in accord.
‘I am your baker,’ said Father Sparks. ‘We make the most excellent bread.’
‘Depends how much you like the taste of dust…’ said Father Cattrick.
‘I do my best,’ said Sparks, ‘with what’s given me.’
‘We… We till the soil,’ Mother Cattrick said again.
‘Then don’t tell me my job,’ Sparks chided.
‘Take a joke, why don’t you.’
‘I am physick?’ said the widow Cass, uncertain.
‘Pretty fancy title for a herbalist,’ Bachelor Barnet noted. ‘We could do with a qualified doctor,’ he said, before reconsidering, in light of their dilemma. ‘Or… maybe not,’ he said.
‘Oh good grief!’
They fell perhaps too readily into outlining all of their multifarious qualifications, their vocations and duties, each in search of a defensible haven. Running off at the mouth, fearing risk to their own lives – the Circle turning in on itself, consumed from the inside.
Whether or not it could be taken as any kind of advance or else backsliding, it had taken so very much for them to get to this point – ekeing out their existence in not so very quaint archaism, as theme park versions of their former selves. The level of honesty required and only just reclaimed for them leant nothing other than a semblance of control, of their having any great choice in the matter: but now its gravitational pull was proving that of silt, settled in a slow-moving river – once committed, and their feet firmly planted – thick, turbid, and inescapable.
At the margins of the crowd an ashen spectre lingered, as yet unnoticed.
‘Listen to me,’ said Thomas, Father Chandler.
‘That’s what we do,’ said Father Sparks. ‘That’s all we ever seem to do!’
‘How long is it,’ Chandler asked, ‘since most of us stopped sharing skills, our tools even? Hanging desperately onto what’s ours we’ve become polarized, is what it is,’ he said. ‘Hiding, indoors or out. Keeping ourselves to ourselves… Hanging on,’ he said, ‘like grim death.’
‘What else would you have us do?’ said Father Goodman, genuinely curious.
‘Live,’ said Father Chandler. ‘Live again, truly. Because we live out the consequences of our not talking,’ he said. ‘And I tell you, we’d better talk,’ he said. ‘Because we have some hard choices to make.’ Not looking up, Mother Grant spurned the consoling touch of Evelyn, Mother Chandler. She gathered her children in closer. ‘Let’s open up the bids, shall we?’ Thomas Chandler said.
Without even looking to Magister Spenser, Father Goodman signalled assent. Their pale satellite mistook this as their cue and stepped forward. ‘Muh, Mother Warner,’ it blurted, taking on the form of Goodman One. ‘She’s huh, hung herself in the barn.’
So inured, so beaten and tempered were they, it took them barely a minute to come to terms. ‘Death comes to us all,’ said Mother Goodman. ‘It’s only a matter of when.’
‘When and where matters to me,’ Father Cattrick said. ‘How,’ he said. ‘And who!’
‘I don’t doubt it did Sally,’ Oldmother Medem insisted.
‘Probably she saw just which way this was going,’ Mother Chandler muttered.
‘Our problem’s partway resolved, at least,’ said Bachelor Barnet, brightly. ‘Now we only need to find one more! … What? Too soon?’
‘We shan’t bear this any longer,’ snapped Magister Spenser. ‘You see for yourselves very well where it leads.’ Indeed. These last few passing days his overweening sentiments had seemed ever yet more false – immaterial, and utterly disposable: fake snowflakes in a shaken trinket.
This latest in a series of small tragedies surely served to galvanize them into action. ‘Time,’ the Magister said, ‘to decide.’
The child messenger Goodman One was hurriedly compelled to leave. The widow Cass, plus Mothers Goodman and Gottfried elected to depart with them. The hearts and hopes of the remaining womenfolk sank. Father Goodman solemnly pronounced one more time each of the four named candidates, no longer simply the accused. ‘Thomas, Father Chandler. Evelyn, Mother Chandler. Jeffrey, Father Grant. Jumeira, Mother Grant.’
‘Put it to the vote,’ instructed Magister Spenser.
‘Holy Father?’ said Goodman. ‘Magister, you have first say.’
‘Grant,’ the Magister said, without hesitation. Jeffery Grant speared Thomas Chandler with the sharpest look.
‘Magister?’ said Goodman.
Magister Spenser had, all along, intended to make certain Jeffrey Grant be condemned, chiefly out of spite. But with the Circle coming apart, and now with so many Mothers having lately quit the room… ‘Jumeira Grant,’ Magister Spenser said. A surprise, even to himself.
Collapsible chairs folded like dominoes, the crowd forcibly parted. Thomas Chandler’s bullish figure charged to the front before being tackled to the ground right at the foot of the stage. Almost as he’d predicted it took three other men to hold him down – and it would have taken four had he not been weakened by a week’s captivity. In cold fury he glared up at the figure of the Magister, towering above. ‘Fathers, Mothers, sons, daughters!’ Chandler spat. Wrestling against his captors he spoke out with renewed urgency. ‘Farmers, croppers, beekeepers, we produce. Hunters, trackers, homemakers, we provide. Warriors, muscle, the herbalist even, we protect,’ he said. He flung many of Spenser’s own magisterial sentiments back in his face. He’d had these past nights in the dark of his cell to prepare, to rehearse, and he meant to seize his moment – at the very least. ‘In all good conscience,’ Thomas Chandler said, more calmly, feeling his opposition ease a little, ‘what value is it, we should assign the poet, the artist,’ and louder again now, ‘a living avatar of our best intent?’ Seeing as how he did not struggle in the least to wrench himself free, Fathers Cattrick, Sparks, and Else relaxed their grip on Father Chandler, whilst still ringed close in about him, not yet letting go. ‘Jumeira Grant has,’ Chandler said, ‘over the years, crafted quilts that have helped decorate most of our humble homes. Quilts she’s thought to thread through, to line, with messages of hope, of love and succour… spidery heartfelt… her unique and uniquely personal human touch. How can this, her contribution, her very great contribution to our mental wellbeing, which is our true survival, be deemed less? Any less, than that of priest, or preacher… Our Father confessor, the thinker and the schemer?’ Thomas Chandler thrust out one splayed hand to indicate, above and behind him, the shrinking figure of Magister Spenser. ‘He… He can dress it up in any way that he likes,’ Chandler said, ‘in holy robes and selective writ, but he has never been ordained as any genuine sort of a minister. And we are most assuredly not his flock!’
The Magister, Father Spenser, only now saw how it was a mistake to have held himself so separate, elevated, up on the stage, while leaving the accused on a level thick with the crowd.
‘I’ve told you a little of what we all know to be true, about Mother Grant,’ said Father Chandler. ‘So let me tell you now a bit of what I know about Herb Spenser…’ The other men parted, allowing Thomas Chandler to stand up straight and tall, by himself once more and, aside from his manacles and chains, unencumbered. ‘Herb used to be the town’s accountant,’ Chandler said, his voice, rich, deep, and always authoritative, winning him new measures of respect. ‘It’s only accountant. Not even over at the bank, mind you now. No, he operated out of the back of VILLAGE PIZZA, the old pizza place out on what was Route 51… Massaged the figures and made a pretty profit at it too, right up until he owned the whole franchise. A chain of restaurants, right across the state… built hisself a mansion on the back of it. The Dream, right?’ said Chandler. ‘But here’s the kicker, that’s all he knows. Still. A system of checks and balances, ticks in the far column. He’s got us all playing at his fixed game of numbers, and in spite of the results achieved… ever-diminishing returns. Well,’ Thomas Chandler said, ‘I’m not going to settle for that. For bad accounting. I’m not going to be that. One, I’m worth more. Two, so is Jeffrey Grant. Three, so’s Jumeira. So are you. Each and every one of us. Every last man, woman, or child… worthwhile… right until you arrive at the one who’s the very least.’ Robyn, Mother Else, jolted in her seat. Reaching out, she wanted to grab hold of her husband’s arm, but he stood with Thomas Chandler. ‘And so I ask you, one last time,’ Chandler said. ‘Who is that? Who’s worth the least? When I put that question to you earlier many of you stepped up and testified the value of your individual gifts, your endowments.’ Thomas Chandler turned to Magister Spenser. Face to face with their accuser. ‘So let me put it to you, Herb Spenser. Same question,’ he said. ‘What exactly is it that you do?’
The Magister hesitated. This was preposterous. ‘I lead,’ he said.
‘By our good graces you lead,’ said Chandler. ‘And by virtue of same, we follow. Were you ever elected, though? Except by yourself, of course.’
‘I am Magister,’ said the Magister. ‘It, it was Godfrey that…’
‘You are Magister,’ Chandler agreed, ‘yes. And yet by design this Circle is intended a democracy, as a community of equals. By rights you can’t give orders, only your “recommendations”, or whatever else it is that you yet expect us to follow so blindly. But answer my question,’ Chandler said again, with all of the vigour of comparative youth. ‘Throw some light on it for us, if you will. What is it that you actually do? What do you do? To con-tri-bute.’ He staggered out the syllables emphatically. ‘Aside from acting as a figurehead. And one of your own devising. Answer the question!’
‘I, I keep chickens,’ said the Magister.
‘As do we,’ said Father Sparks.
‘Me too.’
‘And I.’
‘As far as I can make out, Magister,’ Thomas Chandler said, ‘we all do. Keeping poultry is not at all anything special or worthy.’
Magister Spenser, who had held ever so tightly on to one end of their tether, found himself suddenly dangling at the other. ‘But, I’m the Magister!’ he said. ‘I’m a founding father… This is my, I originated the system. With Godfrey. The rules, the laws, the codes of conduct by which we live…’
‘Then live by them,’ said Chandler. ‘And die by them, damn you.’ He held out his chains in front of him, on a level. ‘The fish rots from the head,’ Thomas, Father Chandler said. ‘I propose Magister Spenser.’
Father Goodman agreed: ‘Put it to the vote.’
Returned to the town square as the meeting at the Hall let out, Else Two and Chandler Two found themselves to be in a very different place to that which they had left behind, early that same morning. Although everything about Woodsville still looked pretty much the same – the same buildings, in the same disorder – something else fundamental had altered. The people themselves were changed. Their first inkling came when Fathers Cattrick and Sparks ran toward them, on sight, shouting out a profusion of excitable greetings. They then hoisted a punch-drunk Chandler Two aloft, onto their broad shoulders, balancing them between.
Else Two, who had anyway been keeping their distance some twenty or so paces behind, simply looked on and pondered.
‘You lacked the courage for my conviction,’ said the black silhouette, stood in front of and partially obscuring the single lit torch that reduced it to a stark outline. ‘I am Magister now,’ it said, taking a step backwards, revealed as – no surprise – Thomas, Father Chandler. ‘They pledged allegiance to the fag,’ he said. ‘Forgive me if I crow a bit.’
He closed the cell door and turned the key.
‘But, if it helps you any to know this,’ he said, ‘you were right all along. Your system works. Just it’s come to your turn. Don’t worry, you only have ‘til tonight to sweat it out… reflecting on your sins. And mine. Then, before you know it, it will be time to stand up for the Bastard. Its teeth,’ he said. ‘I can still picture you, one of those hot summer nights when I witnessed you taking a file to them. Do you recall? Wasn’t the first time you’d done it. Wouldn’t be the last. The last, heh…’ Magister Chandler ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth. ‘And those teeth, they’re much sharper now. You know by how much,’ he said. ‘Or, you will.’
Firebrand retrieved from the wall, Chandler, straddling the high threshold, stepped partway over and out into the antechamber.
“The Lord is my shepherd,” quailed Father Spenser, his voice quavering, thick with snot. “I shall not want…”
‘Herb,’ said Chandler, ‘you Hebe. Grief, over one’s own guilt. How sickening.’ He put his hand to the outer hatch. ‘Each of us, as you know, no matter how much the villain, is a hero in his… or her… own story,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t take an upstart crow to know that.’ The estranged voice carried, even as it receded into the outer dark. ‘All that we want,’ it said, ‘is for ourselves.’
The door slamming shut extinguished all light.
END OF PART TWO.