The Resuurection Fields (11 page)

Bea, Albigen and Manachee looked at each other.

“For a long time our neighbors in Tavor have cast jealous eyes upon our noble country. They have looked upon our well-organized society, our prosperous citizens, our safe and pleasant streets, and they have envied us. Now their envy has boiled over, and they have sent their agents into Gehenna to undermine everything we have worked so hard to build.”

“Shame on them!” shouted the security guards.

“Shame on them!” the audience echoed.

“Why is he blaming Tavor?” Bea asked herself. “Does he really not know that the smoke bombs were the work of the Púca?”

“But there is worse to come,” the officer continued. “Much worse. For these treacherous agents are not content with disrupting the funeral of our former Leader. No, that was only the beginning. We have it on good authority that they want to take over our country and have been busy recruiting collaborators from within Gehenna itself. Yes, my friends, there are traitors amongst us.”

There was a collective gasp as he said this.

“While our new Leader has been busy picking up the reins of
power, these vile scum have spread their contamination into every town in Gehenna. But do not fear, my friends! Sigmundus the Second knows what the people of Gehenna are made of! He knows that we are prepared to fight and to win—come what may. Am I right?”

“Yes!” they shouted back.

“Sigmundus the Second knows that he can rely upon the loyalty of the people of Gehenna. And he has given each and every one of you a unique chance to prove yourselves. Today, ladies and gentlemen, I can announce the formation of a new force in our country that will tackle the enemies of Gehenna. This force is to be called the Faithful.”

Bea gasped. Hadn’t her father said he would be working with the Faithful?

“At the end of our meeting today,” the officer went on, “my officers will be taking the names and details of all those brave men and women, all those patriotic individuals, who want to volunteer to help save their country in its time of greatest need. I know that every one of you will want to be the first in line. But before that happens, there is something else that must be taken care of. An unpleasant duty, ladies and gentlemen, but one that I will not shirk. As I told you, there are traitors all over Gehenna. Even here in Podmyn itself. Well, it is time we showed them how we intend to repay such treachery.”

He turned to his men. “You know what you have to do,” he told them.

The security guards pushed their way through the bewildered onlookers, roughly elbowing aside anyone who got in their way. There was a shriek as they seized a woman from the midst of the crowd.

“Stop! You’re making a mistake!” the woman cried.

“I know that voice!” Bea said to herself.

As the guards emerged from the crowd, Bea saw that their prisoner was the woman she had sat next to on the bus when she had traveled to the funeral of Dr. Sigmundus.

“I don’t believe this for a moment,” Bea said quietly. “She’s not clever enough to be a traitor!”

“Keep your voice down!” Albigen hissed.

The guards dragged their victim over towards the corn exchange and forced her to stand on a wooden chair on the pavement outside. Meanwhile, another guard was busy on the balcony above, lowering a rope with a noose on the end.

“I can’t watch this!” Bea muttered.

“Stay where you are!” Albigen whispered back.

“We know all about you,” the guard told the sobbing woman, placing the noose around her neck and pulling it tight. “We’ve been watching your every move.”

“It isn’t true!” she protested. “I haven’t done anything. I love my country. I would never do anything to harm—”

But she did not finish her sentence. The chair on which she was standing was kicked away beneath her.

Bea shut her eyes.

“Death to all traitors!” the security guards shouted.

This time there was no echoing cry from the crowd, only shocked silence.

The security guards left the woman hanging there. Then they crossed the square and smashed the windows of the shop in which she had worked and lived. They kicked open the door and turned everything upside down.

When the guards had finished, the officer on the wooden platform began speaking once more. “That is how we deal with traitors,” he declared. “We show them no mercy because to show
mercy is to show weakness. And now, ladies and gentlemen, I invite you all to do your duty to your Leader and your country. Step up to the front and sign up for the Faithful.”

Crowds of people began pushing their way to the front, eager to display their loyalty lest they, too, be considered potential traitors.

“Let’s get out of here,” Albigen said.

“There’s something I have to do first,” Bea replied.

She made her way through the crowd towards the baker’s shop with Albigen and Manachee following behind her. The townsfolk of Podmyn had already taken advantage of its owner’s disgrace by helping themselves to the produce on the shelves.

“You’re too late. There’s nothing left!” an old woman with no front teeth told them.

But Bea had not come for bread. She stepped inside the front door, then quickly made her way behind the counter to the room at the back where the bread was baked. From there, a corridor led to the backyard and here, as she had expected, she found the woman’s dog wagging his tail and looking expectantly at her.

He was little more than a puppy, friendly and inquisitive. Bea had no trouble convincing him that he ought to come with her. Next to the door was a leash, which she attached to his collar. Then she led him back through the house into the square, where Albigen and Manachee were waiting for her.

“What are you doing with that dog?” Albigen asked incredulously.

“He belongs to the woman who was hanged,” Bea explained. “I couldn’t just leave him there. She told me the neighbors didn’t like him barking. They’d probably have him killed, too.”

Albigen looked around anxiously. “Bea, please—we’ve got enough problems feeding ourselves without adding another hungry mouth.”

“Let her keep him,” Manachee said gently.

They both looked at him in surprise. Manachee did not often come down firmly on one side or the other.

“Well then, you’re completely responsible for looking after him!” Albigen told Bea.

“Of course I am,” Bea said, bending down and stroking the dog, who immediately turned his head and licked her hand with his big, sloppy tongue. “See, he already knows that.”

Nyro and Osman made their way silently along the tunnel. The right-hand fork sloped steeply downwards, but it was broad and high-ceilinged, with plenty of room for them to walk upright. Soon Nyro forgot about the Chief Justice and found himself thinking instead of the terrible fate that had befallen his friend Luther. He described what he had seen to Osman, including Luther’s warning about the bridge that was being built between the Nakara and the Resurrection Fields.

A little later they rounded another bend and emerged at the other end of the tunnel. Stepping out into the light, they found themselves in a clearing beyond which stretched a dense forest. A tall, striking-looking woman dressed all in black was standing beside a crude wooden hut. She stood very upright, and the impression of height was increased by how her hair was piled on the top of her head in an elaborate coiffure. Around her neck she wore a rope of pearls, and diamonds glittered at her ears. To Nyro she looked like a duchess. However, despite this air of nobility, the woman seemed to be in distinctly reduced circumstances, for she was standing beside an open fire over which there hung a large cooking pot. From time to time she stirred the pot with a wooden spoon, and the smell that arose from it was quite delicious.

“Perhaps we can get directions from this woman,” Nyro said.

“We could ask her for something to eat first,” Osman suggested.

Nyro was about to protest that they had no time to waste when he realized that he was actually very hungry. After all, he had eaten nothing for twenty-four hours.

The woman nodded and smiled as they drew closer, as if she had been expecting them. “You’re just in time,” she announced. She gestured towards a wooden table and benches nearby. “I take it you would like some soup.”

“That’s very kind of you, madam,” Osman said.

Beside the fire, on a large flat rock, there were three earthenware bowls into which the woman now began to ladle soup.

“We were wondering whether you had heard of the Resurrection Fields?” Nyro said when they were sitting down at the table.

“Of course, serving soup is not the sort of thing I’m used to,” continued the duchess, as if she had not noticed his question at all. “When my dear husband was alive, we never kept fewer than thirty servants, you know.” She sighed deeply.

“May I offer you our commiserations on your bereavement, madam,” Osman said.

“Thank you, sir. You are very kind. Very kind indeed. But all the kindness in the world cannot make up for what I have lost. My husband was a truly remarkable person. A man of power and a man of vision. How seldom we find these two qualities together nowadays.” She paused in her ladling, apparently lost in recollections of her late husband’s virtues.

Nyro decided to try again. “We were looking for the Resurrection Fields,” he said. “Do you know where we can find them?”

“We had our enemies, of course,” the duchess went on, still oblivious to his inquiry. “No one who finds himself in a position of authority can avoid making enemies. There were plots and rebellions all the time. And so we had to take the necessary measures, painful though they may have been. It was for the greater good. You must see that?”

She looked eagerly at them both.

“Of course, madam,” Osman said.

“Absolutely,” Nyro agreed. “The Resurrection—” he began.

But she was not to be deterred. “None of them was innocent,” she announced angrily, “whatever you may have heard to the contrary.”

“I can assure you, madam, we have heard nothing whatsoever on this subject,” Osman told her.

She frowned sternly in his direction. “Propaganda spreads like cancer,” she replied. Then she seemed to relent a little. “However, I am happy to learn that you have been unaffected.” She dipped the ladle into the cooking pot once more, then paused again. “There is such a thing as a necessary evil,” she declared. “You understand, don’t you?”

They both nodded. By now Nyro had given up the idea of asking her about the Resurrection Fields, at least until they had eaten their meal. The smell of the soup was driving him crazy.

“That is exactly what the camps were,” the duchess declared.

“The camps?” Osman asked.

“Yes, the camps. A necessary evil. People had to be kept somewhere while they were waiting to be processed. We spent as much as we could afford under the circumstances. Conditions were a little difficult sometimes, but these were conspirators, assassins, terrorists. I know what you will say,” she added sharply. “You will bring up the children.”

“I had no intention—” Osman began, but she cut him off.

“Those children were as bad as the adults,” she told him. “Worse, in many cases. We could not afford to show mercy merely on account of their age. It was a matter of survival. Theirs or ours.”

The woman looked for a moment as if she might strike Osman with the ladle instead of serve him soup, but then she seemed to pull herself together. “I am forgetting the rules of hospitality,” she said. “My poor husband would not have approved. You know, he used to say that whatever went on outside the walls of the palace, we should always treat our guests with courtesy.”

Despite this declaration, she made no further move to serve the soup. At last, deciding that she had forgotten it altogether, Nyro got to his feet and made his way over towards the cooking pot, intent on completing the job himself.

The duchess looked appalled at this sudden act of decisiveness. “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded. “Sit down immediately!”

But it was already too late. Nyro had gone near enough to glimpse the contents of the cooking pot, and what he saw made him stop in his tracks and nearly gag. A man’s head was floating on the surface of the pot, its two eyes staring glassily upwards.

“Osman!” Nyro said. “We have to go!”

Osman frowned at him. “Not before we have some soup,” he said.

“Now, Osman!” Nyro said.

Osman sprang to his feet.

The woman glanced from one of them to the other. “So you are part of the conspiracy, too,” she angrily declared. “I should have known!” Bending down, she pulled an iron poker from the fire. The end was glowing red-hot. “I know how to deal with conspirators!” she said. “I’ve had plenty of experience.”

Osman began backing away as she moved towards him, holding the poker in front of her. Nyro picked up one of the soup bowls.

“Have some soup!” he shouted.

She turned, and he threw the contents in her face. “Run!” he shouted to Osman.

The two of them raced into the forest, leaving the woman screaming as she clutched at her scalded skin.

Kidu did not want to stay near the beehive huts just so that Dante could keep an eye on Bea.