Alis

3
Two Rivers was a good deal larger than Freeborne, and Alis soon found that her mother had been right about it. The Minister was a gentle old man, and his wife, Mistress Elizabeth, welcomed Alis warmly when Thomas introduced her. For the most part, however, the people seemed to have forgotten how to smile. They scurried about their business, looking anxiously over their shoulders and avoiding each other’s eyes. At every prayer meeting, some shamefaced man or woman was singled out for public rebuke and obliged to declare penitence for sins that in Freeborne would have been dealt with privately. She remembered Minister Galin saying it was no sin to laugh, but here no one seemed to laugh. Even the children were like little adults, stiff and nervous in their tidy clothes.
The household was gloomy, too. Sarah’s misery hung in the air, infecting everything. She would hardly talk to Alis, and when she did venture a remark she seemed terrified that her husband would hear her and disapprove. She had few visitors, and those who did come were quickly defeated by her unresponsiveness. She and Alis spent their time in sewing, in silent reading of the Book, and in such of the domestic work as was not done by Lilith, who rebuffed all Alis’s attempts to be friendly. She had managed to avoid offending Thomas, who made a point of talking to her, but she saw that this was intended to distress his wife and knew he was not to be trusted. Not only was it a wearisome life, but Alis could not see that she was any nearer to finding her way to the city and her brother. If anything, she was worse off. How was she to get away from Two Rivers where she had less freedom than was allowed her at home?
One morning, she had gone to the kitchen to fetch the crock of butter that Lilith had forgotten to put on the table. As she reentered the dining room, she heard Sarah say, “Please, Thomas, I beg you. Do not make me watch. I cannot bear it.”
Her voice was low and desperate. Thomas’s face was red with anger.
“You must watch. This punishment is not one man’s will; it is ordained by the whole Community in the persons of the Elders. The whole Community must bear witness.”
“But everyone else will be there. No one will miss me. They look only for you.”
“You are a fool, Sarah, or worse, a liar. You know very well that to stay away is to show dissent. I cannot have it said that my wife does not support my view, when you know with what difficulty we have established a wholesome discipline in these matters.”
The early-spring sunlight fell on Sarah’s pale features as she sat before her uneaten breakfast. Behind her, on the wall, was a piece of tapestry showing the great circle of the Maker embroidered in two intertwining threads, red and green. Within the circle were two figures, a male and a female, one in each color. A marriage gift no doubt, stitched in love and hope by Sarah’s mother or Thomas’s. It was a common practice.
In the cool early-morning light Sarah’s skin seemed transparent, the veins blue under the surface, and the bones of cheek and jaw painfully prominent. She had grown even thinner in the weeks since her return home. It was not that she did not eat—sometimes, at least—for Thomas would not stand for that. But once, passing the privy, Alis had heard her retching and coughing. Sometimes, too, there was the sour smell of vomit. This morning she had not touched her food.
“I know, Thomas, how hard you have worked and that . . . that the man Samuel deserves his punishment, but can you not say I am ill? I was not brought up to this severity as you were. I am not used to it.”
Thomas’s fingers whitened around the tankard he was holding. “And you are not likely to become used to it if I allow you to hide yourself at home, instead of making you do your duty like a good wife of the Book.”
Sarah’s eyes filled with tears. “Please, Thomas. It will be of no credit to you if I faint. Better that you should say that I am sick. Indeed, it would be no lie, for I do not feel well at all.”
Thomas’s expression grew darker still.
“Sick! People will think that you would have the man excused and left to his filthy ways. No matter that he corrupts our young and defies our discipline. They will think that you have returned from your sister’s to preach the doctrine of Master Galin and his kind.”
Alis had been sitting quietly, hoping that Thomas’s anger would not be turned on her for her presence at this disagreement. At the mention of her pastor’s name she looked up, startled. The venom in Thomas’s voice was unmistakable.
Sarah’s tears were spilling over now and Thomas looked thunderous. An idea came to Alis. “Master Thomas . . .”
The room went still. He turned to look at her and her heart beat with sudden terror. What had she done? His face was a stone mask. When he spoke, his lips scarcely moved and the low voice hissed between them. “Do you dare to interrupt? A daughter of mine would taste the whip for less.”
Sarah gasped and cried out, “Thomas, no! Have a care.”
For a long moment he held Alis in his stare. She could not wrench her gaze from his face. At last his expression changed, the familiar sneer lifting his lip.
“You need have no fear, my dear Alis. I have no authority to punish you. What was it you wished to say?”
She was trembling. “Forgive me, Master Thomas. I should not have spoken.”
“Answer my question, if you please.”
She could think of nothing to tell him but the truth, though surely it would serve only to reignite his wrath. “I . . . I wondered if . . . if I might accompany you?”
She did not dare complete what she had intended to say. What folly it seemed now. He was looking at her still, as if he knew she had not said all. When she did not continue he said, “You are offering to come with us? To support my wife in her distress at seeing a sinner punished as he deserves?”
Alis nodded, hoping he would not press her further. She had intended to offer herself in Sarah’s place. How could she have been so presumptuous?
“Or perhaps”—he spoke softly—“you were thinking of yourself as her substitute.” It was not a question. He knew.
There was a long silence. Sarah was watching her husband with a scared expression on her face. At length he said coldly his wife, “I will say that you are sick. Let them think you are with child again.”
Sarah flinched and two patches of red stood out on her pale cheeks. “Do not be so hard on me, Thomas. It is not my fault that our babes do not live. I long to be a mother. It is my dearest wish.”
He stood up suddenly, pushing back his chair so violently that it clattered to the floor.
“Not your fault? Not your fault? My children wither in your womb and you say that it is not your fault! What sin have you committed that the Maker punishes you thus?”
Sarah was on her feet now, crying out in a wild voice, “Why should it not be your sin? Why must it be mine? You are cruel, Thomas, cruel and unjust.”
At once he was standing over her, his fingers in her hair, wrenching her head back so that her eyes bulged and she choked. He was hissing again.
“My sin! Mine? The children are conceived, are they not? It is in your belly that they shrivel and die. And you dare to accuse me!”
He let her go so suddenly that she almost fell.
“Get out! Take to your bed! Be grateful that I do not insist on your presence at my side today. But know this. The time will come, and soon, when such disobedience will not be endured, when a man’s authority in his own house will be absolute, and then you will not be able to trust to such indulgence.”
Clutching at her throat, her hair coming loose from its pins, Sarah stumbled from the room.
Alis sat motionless with horror. Thomas was still standing, white-faced with fury, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. At last he seated himself again at the table and looked at her.
When he spoke, it was in a voice held steady by effort. “I must join the others. If you will accompany me, fetch your shawl.”
Submissively, for she could hardly refuse now, she said, “I will, Master Thomas.”


Clouds had already hidden the sun as they crossed the empty square to the prayer house where the Elders were to gather. The air felt cold. The wooden platform with its great post dominated the scene. Alis had no need, now, to ask what it was for. Around the sides of the square, the shuttered houses were silent. The people had been told to remain indoors until the prayer-house bell was rung, and no one, it seemed, was inclined to disobey.
Leaving Alis in the vestibule of the prayer house to wait for him, Thomas disappeared within. In ones and twos the Elders arrived. There were some women among them but not, Alis noticed, nearly as many as in her own Community. It had come as a shock to her to find that Thomas was an Elder. Surely the people here knew how he treated his wife. Sarah’s tearful disposition was no longer a mystery; Alis was afraid of him herself, especially when she thought of what he might do if he knew she planned to defy her parents and Minister to run away to the city. And yet he hated Galin. For a moment she longed to be back at home with her mother and father, before that dreadful day when her world had changed forever, before she had lost faith in her parents’ love for her. The tears rose in her eyes, but she wiped them away hurriedly. It was no good wishing for the past. She must face the future as well as she could. The world was a harder place than she had known, and she must harden herself to deal with it.
The Elders were emerging now through the double doors from the meeting hall into the vestibule. Among them was the Minister—an old man, tall but a little bent, with a mild face and white hair thin on top and long behind. It was a style Alis had not seen among the other men, most of whom wore their hair short like Thomas or even cropped. He was looking at her with his rather faded blue eyes.
“Thomas”—the voice had lost its firmness as old men’s sometimes do—“surely it is not needful for your young guest to be here today.”
Thomas, a little behind him, raised his eyebrows at this but he said courteously enough, “Alis herself offered her presence in place of my wife who is sick.”
The Minister looked distressed. “Ah, my dear Thomas, the women do not like this business. They do not like it at all. And neither do I, if truth be told. I wish we might do things in the old way. My wife refuses to be there. She calls it barbarism. Your Sarah thinks the same, I daresay.”
Alis held her breath as Thomas’s lips tightened ominously, but he only said, “My wife is of my view in all things, Minister, but as I say she is much sick of late. And you know that we have debated these matters and are agreed that the man must be punished. He denies the Maker. He has tried to spread his poison among our young. And the half-witted woman who became his servant is with child by him.”
“As to that, Thomas”—the old man looked keenly at him—“whether the child is his or not, he would have married the woman if you had not angered him with your sermonizing, that is certain.”
Thomas opened his mouth to speak again, but suddenly the great bell began to ring, and the Elders moved in a group into the square to take up positions beside the platform. From the houses around the square, and from the streets and lanes leading to it, the people came, some speaking in low voices, some grimly silent. Soon the whole Community was assembled, from the bent and aged leaning on sticks to children as young as eight. Because she was with Thomas, Alis found herself right at the front.
Suddenly the murmur of the crowd ceased. From the north corner of the square, four black-clad men approached, enclosing as they walked, a fifth figure in something white. The people parted to let them through. As they came closer, Alis could see that the prisoner’s hands were behind his back, tied presumably, and that two of his captors held him firmly by the arms. He was a large man with golden-reddish hair that hung down in tangles. A blue-eyed man, not handsome with his large fleshy nose and pouchy cheeks, but appealing. Alis thought his was a face made for laughter, though he was not laughing now. He was unshaven, too. He had on a pair of corduroy farm breeches and a loose white smock. Among the black-clothed, crop-haired men of the Community he looked wild. He passed so close to Alis that she could have touched him; she smelled the heat of his body and knew he was afraid.
A set of steps had been placed against the side of the platform, and he was pushed up them until he was standing above the crowd with his attendants at his side. One of them stepped forward, thin-faced and stiff—the Senior Elder. The silence deepened. When he spoke, his voice in the cold air was like a fingernail scraping glass.
“Good people of this Community, you know why you are here today. To bear witness to the proper punishment of one who has denied his Maker and corrupted your young. One who fornicates and would have spread his foul ways among the innocent.”
Here the prisoner made a movement as if he would have protested, but the man on his left jerked him by the arm and he subsided. The voice began again.
“Punishment is ordained as follows:
“For fornication with a servant woman: ten strokes of the lash.
“For publicly declaring, in the presence of young people, that fornication is not against the will of the Maker: ten strokes of the lash.
“For denying the Maker, in public, and in defiance of admonition: twenty-five strokes of the lash.”
As they registered the total, there was a shocked murmur from the crowd. Alis felt her head spin. How could she watch this? Surely the man would die. Why had she not stayed with Sarah instead of putting herself forward so foolishly?
Now the two captors who had been holding the prisoner were untying his hands and pulling him over to the whipping post, turning him round so that he had his back to the crowd. One of them ripped open the white smock and tore it away so that the skin of his back was exposed. Then they bound him to the post. When it was done, they all descended, leaving him there alone.
For a long moment nothing happened; then there was a movement in the crowd as it parted to give passage to someone else—a bull-necked, shaven-headed monster of a man in a sleeveless leather jerkin that showed the great muscles of his arms. He was carrying a whip. Although her parents had never beaten her, Alis had seen implements of punishment in the houses of her acquaintances: thick sticks, thin canes, or leather horse whips. But she had never seen anything like this. From the handle emerged a dozen long leather thongs. In the gray light she could see clearly that they were studded with glinting points of metal.
The whip carrier was on the platform now and had shed his jerkin. He looked down and received a nod from the Senior Elder. Grasping the handle in both hands, he swung round and raised the whip. The muscles of his torso and shoulders moved under his skin like living things; the thongs whistled in the thin air as they descended. They met the victim’s back with a spattering sound like sudden hail on dry ground. The prisoner cried out, and at once spots of blood bloomed on his white skin. Again the whip was raised. Again the lashes fell. Again the prisoner cried out. Again. Again. Again.
Alis longed to shut her eyes, but she could not. She was hypnotized by the terrible rise and fall of the whip. The blows fell in a steady rhythm, and now each one elicited a high-pitched scream from the victim. His back was crisscrossed with bloody lines. There was not a sound from the crowd.
By the time he paused to refresh himself from the tankard passed up to him, the man wielding the whip was breathing heavily. Blood flecked his shaven head and mingled with the sweat running down his face and chest. The whipped man had sagged as far as the ropes binding him would allow; his back was raw meat. At some point he had turned his head so that his face was now toward where Alis stood. His lips were bloody where he had bitten them in his agony, and his eyes were shut. He must, however, have been aware of what was happening, for when his tormentor put down the tankard and took up the whip again, he shrieked aloud. At this, Alis’s resolve broke. She had lost count of the number of lashes delivered, but however few were left she could bear it no more. She turned, pushing her way blindly through the crowd, and fled out of the square, thinking only to escape the dreadful sounds that pursued her as the punishment began again.