Monsters (12 page)

The bees were the size of his palm. If they got beneath his heavy clothing, a sting could ache for weeks. Depending on the health of the colony, Jane would have him bring back honeycomb with immature larvae as a special treat, but Bruce didn't like to weaken the hive. Jane thought they should have more hives but for Bruce, honey was secondary produce. There was more money in wheat, if he could keep the locusts at bay.

If a mild winter passed, Bruce would switch tactics, planting only a thin crop, knowing the locusts would come in strength and decimate the fields. Instead of focusing on wheat that year, he'd plant just enough wheat to draw the locusts in to the area and would use the empty silo as a trap. The smell lured them in. One year, before his father passed away, Bruce caught thirty tons of locusts in a single season. Unfortunately, some of the capture spoiled before he could prep it for the markets, but he still made more that year than he did from both wheat and barely the previous year.

Although the southern markets were almost thirty miles from his farm, Bruce and Jane made the journey down to the village of Amersham several times a year, if only as an excuse to follow up on Jane's father.

After a couple of years, Bruce was starting to read some of the classics, but his interest lay with the newspapers and the fleeting glimpses they provided of the Fall. Life had never been so good, at least from his perspective.

Jane was melancholy. As spring bloomed and color returned to the landscape, with wild flowers dotting the fields and birds singing to fill the days, Jane remained moody. Bruce knew something was wrong.

“What's troubling you, Honey?” he asked, as they sat outside their log cabin in the early evening. Streaks of pink sat high in the stratosphere. Sunset cast long shadows on the ground, lighting up the sky in golden hues.

She turned to him rather absently, still processing what he'd said. Jane paused before speaking, and he could see she was weighing her words.

“I can't lie to you, can I?”

“Nope,” Bruce replied, smiling. “You're a terrible liar anyway.”

“I'm too slow off the mark,” she confessed.

“You think too much. You over complicate things.”

Jane sighed, leaning against him as he put his arm around her.

“What could be bothering you on such a beautiful evening?”

“I'm not with child.” It was an awkward sentence, which surprised him. That alone spoke volumes, revealing a glimpse of her inner torment. For someone so eloquent, with such an appreciation of English literature, it was a guttural, coarse statement, baring her soul.

Bruce pulled her in a little, giving her arm a rub. He didn't know what to say. What could he say? A lump formed in his throat. He tried to swallow, wanting to push the emotion away. Looking at her, there were tears in her eyes. They rolled down her cheeks, leaving glistening tracks in their wake. She was looking for him to say something that would make this better, but there was nothing to be said. Words couldn't console her, and he knew it. The cry of a newborn babe was all she wanted to hear.

“Well,” he said, forcing his voice to sound upbeat. “We'll just have to try harder.”

“Oh, you'd love that, wouldn't you?” she replied, tickling him.

“Hey,” he called out in his defense. “It was your idea. We should double our efforts and get started right away.”

Jane laughed.

They didn't talk about children after that evening. Bruce was tender, considerate, but it became an unspoken barrier between them. As much as Jane tried, it seemed she couldn't put this behind her, and he felt her anguish.

Months passed, seasons came and went, and still she remained barren. Bruce could see she put on a brave face, not wanting to trouble him, but in the quiet moments he could see beyond her facade and longed to see her with child.

After a particularly harsh winter in which the prevailing winds shifted, causing the drifts to bury the countryside for months on end, Bruce and Jane were anxious to visit Amersham.

Spring brought the Sparkles in the early evening. For the villagers, the annual flickering flashes of light high in the sky were unnerving. Bruce had read about them in the newspapers. He understood they were nothing more than grains of sand, tiny specks of dust striking the upper atmosphere, but he couldn't say that. To explain what the Sparkles actually were would be to dispel superstitions. Showing he understood would raise questions about how he could be so sure. If tradition said the Sparkles were the spirits of the dead returning each year, if folklore spoke of streaks of light carrying evil intent, who was he to argue? Bruce hated that. Jane kept him in his place, making sure he understood how dangerous intolerance was when fueled by fear. For Bruce, the Sparkles were fascinating.

Having read about the exploration of space, Bruce longed to know what it was like to fly so high in the sky. He'd read about the re-entry of the Apollo capsules and how they glowed like the surface of the sun, lighting up the daytime sky like a comet, just as the Sparkles did at night. Bruce tried to imagine what it must be like to enter the atmosphere in a ball of fire and survive unscathed. Such thoughts were incredible to his mind, schooled by images of metal forged in a blacksmith's fire. How could the astronauts survive when their capsule glowed red hot? Jane told him their heat shields were made from a special kind of glass that vaporized into a gas under intense heat, slowly peeling away behind the plummeting spacecraft. Whenever Bruce watched Jane's father at work in the heat of the forge his mind would wander to visions of space capsules blazing through the sky, glowing red-hot.

While staying at the forge, word came that a reader had been caught to the east. The village chief announced that an audit was being conducted and that the reader would be brought to trial in the market square.

Jane was beside herself. Bruce understood her anguish. Visions of Helena burning at the stake still marred her mind. It was something he'd never seen, but Jane's description was as vivid as anything he'd ever read. Even before he met Jane, he couldn't understand how people could be so cruel.

Jane wanted to leave, to head back to the farm. Bruce was firm. He wouldn't run. To leave suddenly, when they'd intended to be there for a month, would have aroused suspicion. Besides, it was a trial, it was a public debate, a chance to air concerns. Jane pleaded with him not to get involved, but Bruce couldn't help himself. The injustice ate away at his soul.

When the day of the trial arrived Bruce took his place on the bench seats arranged in the market square. Under a blazing sun, the circuit judge called out the charges.

“Hugo Travers, you are accused of fomenting subversion by dabbling with knowledge beyond your ken. Through these dark arts, you have brought famine and pestilence on the villages of the east, a curse upon our crops and animals. How say you?”

Hugo had suffered enough already, that was clear. The trial, if it could be called that, had already been staged in three other villages. At the conclusion of each, Hugo had been beaten to the verge of death, the fearful animosity of an ignorant people having been exacted on his body.

Sitting there slumped in the judgment seat, Hugo was but a shadow. His hair was matted with dried blood. Scabs seamed his face. Dark blue bruises lined his neck and shoulders. Boils and blisters marred the skin on his bare chest, weeping yellow pus. He'd lost his left eye. A deep, dark recess was visible where his eyelid had been cauterized and sealed. Hugo's other eyeball was hideously swollen and deformed. He looked like a monster, but Bruce understood the real monsters were those that did this to him.

In the time he sat on trial, Hugo's one, remaining eye never moved, staring blindly ahead.

Looking at him, Bruce knew Hugo had suffered more than any man should for any crime, and yet he'd been kept alive as long as possible as a show to others, a freak to be paraded as far and wide as possible, a vivid warning against the supposed evil of reading.

Hugo winced under the heavy metal collar around his throat. The rusting metal bit into his neck, drawing blood. A chain led from the collar to the troop of six guards escorting the judges.

The villagers feared him, that was obvious. Hugo looked more like a beast than a man—a wounded, crippled animal. The look on his face spoke to Bruce. He'd seen that expression only once before, sitting in the mud on Bracken Ridge. Hugo had the resigned, sunken features of a man whose life was waning. Through swollen lips, Hugo answered.

“Guilty.”

Although this one, incriminating word was spoken in a whisper it carried on the wind, haunting the market.

A scribe noted Hugo's response with a quill, writing in the Book of Judgment. The oversized, leather-bound book acted as both the register of laws and a ledger of prosecution.

“There is a natural order for mankind,” the judge cried, his voice bellowing out through the marketplace. “There is a natural place for man. We have neither wings with which to fly in the sky, nor gills with which to breathe under water. We have our place in nature. To usurp this, to steal the fire of knowledge from the gods, is folly.

“Reading unsanctioned books is evil. But it is the nature of man to become intoxicated with knowledge, to become drunk on his own ego, to think he can ascend into the heights like a bird or to have mastery of the deep like a whale. It is knowledge that brought the Fall upon man. Knowledge is a tree laden with forbidden fruit, poisonous and noxious.

“And why would a man partake of that which is evil, of that which will only ever bring misery? Once man thought he could have mastery of this world and billions died because of his arrogance. The hubris and presumption of man has brought nothing but suffering.”

Jane held Bruce's arm, her fingernails dug into his skin. He went to move, to stand and say something but she held him back, growling at him under her breath. The villagers around them murmured.

“Let this be a lesson,” the judge continued. “We cannot abide such egotism, such delusions of grandeur that cause a man to forsake the common good, to think he is above the rest of us, that he can determine for himself right or wrong.

“And there are others. This man, this Socrates as he called himself, he told us of several others, of Shakespeare and Sherlock, and of a woman, Elizabeth Bennet. If you know who these people are, save them from themselves, save them from the blindness of arrogance that compels a man to seek the deceit of forbidden wisdom.”

The villagers spoke among themselves in hushed whispers. Jane spoke softly in Bruce's ear.

“Please, don't. Don't do anything foolish. There's nothing we can do for him.”

Bruce shifted in his seat, anger welling up within him.

“He knows,” Jane whispered. “He's taken the oath. He's part of the pact. If any of us are caught, we know we're on our own.”

“This isn't right,” Bruce replied, struggling to keep his voice down. Around them, villagers stared, their beady eyes picking the two of them out of the crowd.

“It's too dangerous,” Jane said, her words barely audible. “Not for us. For the books. If they find the library they'll burn the books. We have to preserve that knowledge for future generations, even if it costs us our lives. Hugo knows that. He accepts that. There's nothing we can do.”

Bruce stood, pulling against her, rising above the sea of heads seated around him.

“Hasn't he suffered enough?” he asked aloud, his voice carrying through the market.

Bruce couldn't contain himself. How could any of these people live with themselves? He had to speak up, and would have spoken up regardless of whether he'd learned to read or not. It was not right.

Bruce hoped his few words were tactful enough to make the point without undermining judiciary authority. It was a good question, or at least he thought so. It needed to be said.

“No,” Jane whispered. “Don't you understand? This is what they want. They are trying to goad you. It's a trap.”

Bruce spoke under his breath, saying, “Reading is not a crime.”

The villagers around them stared, catching their words and murmuring among themselves.

The judge took his time before addressing Bruce.

“You disagree with our ruling?”

“I am nothing but a lowly farmer,” Bruce replied. “I mean no disrespect. I see here a man punished beyond anything I have ever seen before, even in the bitter heart of war.”

The judge was silent, as was the crowd, and Bruce felt as though he were slipping a noose around his own neck.

“If a man steals from me, I would seek recompense from the court. If a man were to argue and fight, I would want a fair trial, that justice may be done. If he were to kill one of my kin, I would not exact my own revenge, I would seek a judge to rule and mete out judgment as appropriate.”

A murmur of agreement rippled through the crowd. Bruce was stalling, trying to gain agreement from both the judge and the villagers as to what was appropriate, hoping they would see how barbaric they were. For him, this wasn't about reading or any other crime, imagined or real, this was about rousing slumbering morals. Such brutality was not seen among beasts. These people were worse than monsters. Bruce didn't dare say what he was thinking. He tried to appeal to reason.

“In my ignorance, it seems this man has neither stolen from me, nor hurt my family, nor struck down my kin, and yet he has suffered intensely for his crime.”

Looking at the judge, Bruce could see the old man's eyes narrowing as he listened intently. Whether it was to trap him in his words, or whether he was genuinely considering his arguments, he wasn't sure, but it was out of character for a justice to let a commoner talk so freely in a public forum. By seeming to acknowledge Hugo as a criminal, Bruce hoped he was addressing his grievance without attacking the judgment.

Jane sat beside him, rocking back and forth slightly, saying, “Sit down. For the love of all that is sacred, please sit down.”

“And what would you have us do with this man?” the judge asked. “Would you have us set him free?”

“If he has murdered a man or raped a woman, we would execute him,” Bruce replied.