My first novel (untitled) - chapter 2
Chapter 1 :: https://steemit.com/writing/@richardjuckes/history-is-a-nightmare-01
I woke in the pre-dawn chill, and lay without moving, listening, looking for signs of danger. The chances that they - "they", already - knew of or had found the King's Steps was small, non-existent, but deep fear again filled me. It was seductive, the urge to walk down from the hills, into the city and soothing certainty of the annihilation they offered. So as I lay I also looked for signs of danger in my mind, anything that might slow me and make me careless.
After a few minutes I slowly lifted my head and looked around me. A fox stepped from a patch of undergrowth forty or so metres away, stopping to read the air. All that it found was me, but it did not seem overly startled, just quietly withdrawing. As the daylight grew the birds began calling and flying ... it was all very normal, apart from the presence of a naked young man.
Relaxing a bit, I unwrapped the small bundle I had kept with me: why had I thrown away my clothes? Fool! No, it was too dangerous to keep them, the material would have stood out and even if I had refashioned them into beggars rags, it would not have taken long for someone to have linked me to the palace guard.
I had kept a long cloth belt, which although of similar material would see me through the next few days, the leather strappings from my boots, the small dagger, and the enamelled clasp that Phillipa had given me when we had first, first met, shall we say. I had not left this at the bottom of the lake for two reasons: firstly the lake was relatively shallow and who knew what fisherman the fates might drag along in the years to come, and secondly I wished to hide it somewhere where I might find it again, in the future, when they had finished and gone away.
It was late summer and I had no difficulty filling my belly with berries and woodland fungi. This was to be my new life, until I could think of something different, some way of becoming part of a safer and saner community than the one I had left. But first I had to disappear. I would stay hidden until the following spring, when my hair and beard might suggest that I was a longtime inhabitant of the wilds, a holy fool or a harmless madman. I would cross the hills to the valleys of the big river and slowly let myself become known to some isolated village. Then one winter, perhaps in a storm, I would vanish, and they would think that the wolves had taken me, but I would have crossed the high mountains to the south. That was my plan.
Towards the middle of the day, I was drawn to the heights, a lookout. It was not wise, as it could well overwhelm me with sadness. Far away over my city I could see a dozen or more columns of black smoke rising into the air, and although the distance was too great for this to be reality, I clearly heard the screams and the cries of the carrion birds that circled above. It did not fill me with sadness, but with anger, and it is that anger, now after all these years when those devils in black who seized power and destroyed so much that was precious and beautiful, so cruelly took so many lives, when they are now dead and even forgotten, it is that anger fuels my telling of this tale, when it would easier to also forget and to enjoy the luxuries that now surround me.
We had met at one with summer ceremonies. I was standing just inside the main doorway when Phillipa had entered with the other ladies of rank. She had not been looking in my direction, but stopped and turned, took a step towards me:
"Would you like to come with me?" It seems strange to say so now, but at that time this was not considered brazen of her. She had the right to chose, and she had chosen.
"I would like that very much." And I took an equal step towards her.
She led me through the building to the canopied areas at its rear. Music and incense filled the air as we secluded ourselves among hanging tapestries, in a small area equipped with generous piles of cushions.
"You know that there is more than just the pleasure?" she asked me.
"I have heard, but I am yet to learn."
"I will teach you, if you consent."
And consent I quickly did, and she taught me through busy evening and the long night, when the music had dwindled to gentle murmurs and soft trilling, so that in the morning I do not think that I walked back to my dwelling, but rather flew. I found myself tired beyond anything I had thought possible and threw myself on my bed to sleep, only to immediately jump up and pace about the narrow chamber.
I climbed back down from the lookout and suddenly became aware of my nakedness. The memories of Phillipa and the strangeness of the air caressing my body were confusing me. I found somewhere to sit and tried to find a way through to Phillipa, through the clouds of danger that now separated us.
When I found her she was at first full of warmth and happiness, but this quickly turned to cold anger:
"It's all very well for you, sitting on your butt under a tree with nothing to bother you but ants crawling up your shithole, but I'm surrounded by ... So just fuck right off and don't bother me until I call for you. Over and fucking out!" And so I have waited and waited and waited, and all these years later still I wait.