“It doesn’t matter if their beliefs are logical or divinely inspired.
The belief is what empowers them. Rituals matter. Hate these
beliefs all you wish, but what we think makes us what we are.”
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Lady Graves is my NaNoWriMo novel in progress.
Chapter One begins here: Lady Graves - ch. 1 - NaNoWriMo 2018 - freewritemadness: Day One
CHAPTER TWENTY
Coloring her hair with henna
was one thing, but waxing her eyebrows was quite another. Helga was a Foltermeister, a master of the art of torture. Evelyn squawked and tried to flee but Stangler held her down and even threatened to sit on her, which, of course, was so tempting, Evelyn squirmed, and Stangler straddled her on a bench in the late-April sun while the witch known as Helga thinned her victim’s eyebrows. The hot wax was bearable; it was the pulling up that stung like a thousand hornets. Helga did not impose on her any suffering that she herself would not endure, and so, with absolute calm, she submitted to a brow waxing at Stangler’s expert hand.
“You see how one can learn to endure pain in silence and utter stillness,” Stangler chided her. “The Cherokee and other indigenous people of the Americas, of course, have elevated it to such an art form, they are punished, abominably, for this virtue.”
“I would roll my eyes at you,” Evelyn said, “but I’m afraid it will hurt.”
“Tell her the consequences of their stoicism,” Helga urged him. “I have not wearied of this story.”
He gave her a ferocious look, then assumed his professorial air. “These redskins treasure the martial arts, as I’ve told you.”
“Ad nauseum,” Evelyn threw in.
“They also treasure the ability to endure pain without outward sign of hurting. This has caused European men to imagine they do not feel pain as we do, and so the tortures they inflict--”
“I do not want to hear another story of virtue being punished.”
Stangler shrugged. “I will spare you that one for now, but you should know that your low tolerance for pain is making English ladies look bad. European noblewomen already look bad, dying in childbirth all the time, while so-called barbarian women can work all nine months, push out a baby, and go back to work in the field minutes later.”
Evelyn shook her head as if she could shake off unpleasant words the way a dog sheds water.
“You do know my expectations of you are not that high. They can’t be, or I might in turn have to live up to the rigors of barbarian men.”
That got her to laugh. “Oh, do tell! How weak is Herr Doktor, by comparison?”
“Oh, they have taken the art of manliness to insane levels. When a boy of Maasai is circumcised, friends and family members will taunt him--if you flinch, we will disown you--that sort of thing. It can take three months for the circumcision to heal, and--”
“That’ll do, Herr Doktor.”
“Very well. Take the Mandan--”
“No! I will not take it! I stand here watching you strip hairs from Helga’s face and as if that is not torment enough, you want me to listen to tales of human brutality? I will not.”
Stangler smiled. She had not made a move to go.
“Before the Mandan boy’s rite of passage,” he said, his deep green eyes curiously lacking their old sadness, “he must fast for three days. This cleanses the body of impurities. On the day of the ritual, elders of the tribe pierce the boy’s chest, shoulder, and back muscles.”
He paused to yank up a strip of wax, and Helga managed not to flinch even a little bit.
“With large wooden splints,” he continued without missing a beat. “The boy is pierced with giant splinters. Nex, ropes are stretched from the roof of a hut and attached to the splints. The young man is winched up into the air, his whole body weight suspended from the ropes.”
“Stop!” Evelyn covered her ears. Emil, who’d been leaning into her side, boinged up and down until she stopped to let him lick her face.
“Despite the pain,” Stangler persisted, “the boy will not cry out in pain. And as he hangs in the air, more splints are hammered through his arms and legs.”
Evelyn hummed a happy melody, her eyes closed, pretending she couldn’t hear, or wishing
“Next, the skulls of his dead grandfather and other ancestors are placed on the ends of the splints.”
“Gott in Himmel, why?” she shouted, eyes wide open, hands at her hips.
“So that the young man will faint from blood loss and pain. And reminders of his forefathers who endured the same.” Stangler was smiling far too much now. “When the boy is finally unconscious, they cut the ropes and lower him to the ground, but the splints are left in place. When he awakens, he offers a sacrifice--”
“Halt den Rand!” Evelyn cried out. Helga, clearly familiar with this tale, glanced from the one to the other, grinning, as if it were great sport to shock and horrify an ignorant young lady.
“The boy will now sacrifice his left little finger. He places it, calmly, mind you, not squawking and flapping like a certain chicken girl, on a chopping block and watches as it is swiftly lopped off. This gift to the gods will ensure that the young man to becomes großer und mächtiger--great and powerful. Finally, the young man--”
“I hate you!” Evelyn exclaimed.
“So you say. The villagers stand in a ring, and as the young man runs through, they reach out and grab the splints, which are not to be pulled out the way they were hammered in, but must be torn out in the opposite direction.”
He yanked up the last of Helga’s waxed eyebrows.
Evelyn winced. “Warum! Why, in God’s name, do these ignorant savages believe this rot?”
“It doesn’t matter if their beliefs are logical or divinely inspired. The belief is what empowers them. Rituals matter. Hate these beliefs all you wish, but what we think makes us what we are.”
Helga sat up, her eyebrows inflamed but thinned to delicate arches. Evelyn gently touched her own, realizing she must look just as dreadful.
“He is right,” Helga said. “If you see yourself as a helpless victim with nothing, that is what you shall be. If you see yourself as a newborn woman stripped of all her earthly entanglements, you shall be free.”
It wasn’t just history lessons; it was civics, philosophy, ethics, and human horror stories that these people would inflict on her.
“If you think I will suffer these stories in stoic silence,” Evelyn said, “think again. I cannot hear these things and know them to be true and yet go on with my life as if this suffering never happens just because I am not there to witness it.”
“You get used to it,” Stanler said. “Atrocities are what the human species do best.”
“At this very moment,” Helga said, “some girl is being raped, some peasant is being whipped by his lord, some soldier is being gutted on a distant battlefield, some woman is being burned at the stake as a witch because she uses herbal remedies to heal the sick, and some newborn baby is dying slowly in the meadow or the forest of exposure, because the parents imagine there is no blood on their hands if something else kills an unwanted baby, be it the elements, cold and lack of food, or an animal who takes the baby’s life.”
Sick. Sick. Sick! None of these things had troubled her world when she was Lady Evelyn, highborn daughter of the Lord of Everleigh.
“I haven’t even begun to describe to you the city of Berlin,” Stangler continued. “A city, mind you, a supposedly civilized conglomeration of people living in close quarters. A metropolis that has yet to emerge from barbarism and join civilization as you Londoners know it.”
“You do realize that not talking about this is an option? That my ignorance of these affairs may be something to treasure?”
He laughed. “I am a dragon who delights in stealing such treasure from your stores.”
Evelyn sighed, and Helga cackled with laughter as she began putting away the implements of torture for the day.
"In Berlin,” Stangler persisted, “waste water tossed from houses accumulates in the gutters that run alongside the dirty streets. The odor is truly shocking, an affront to all your sensibilities, even if you are insensible. You will find no public toilets in the streets of Berlin. The sanitary facilities are unbelievably primitive, and visitors to the city find themselves in a state of despair when nature calls.”
“Thank you for enlightening me. I hope Lindenstein is more civilized than Berlin.”
With the waxings completed, the coloring of the hair commenced. Helga mixed powdered henna with indigo to darken Evelyn’s hair to a rich chestnut hue, while her own would be more of a flaming red.
“You’re getting a little gray at the temples,” Helga observed to Klaus. “With a little henna and a kilt, we might pass you off as a Jacobite!”
“My English is good, but faking a Scottish accent is more than I could manage, and wearing a kilt is out of the question, Helga.”
“And I know why,” Evelyn jumped in. “I’ve visited my cousins in Edinburgh; I know a little of Scotland! It was King George the Second who did away with men in kilts. His opponents were threatening to replace him, and in a panic, he banned the kilt from Highland armies so that he readily see who was supporting the Jacobite position and eliminate them.” She cast a mischievous smile at Stangler. “A pity. You might have been duly miserable wearing a plaid skirt.”
“Not if they wore nothing under these kilts around lovely Highland lassies like you.”
In the sunny warmth of late April, with wild plum blossoms waning and lilacs bursting into full fragrance, a greening meadow and fleecy white clouds gamboling across a pure blue sky, no one could be irritated or miserable for long. Emil took off running after one invisible invader after another, yipping at things no human sense could discern. The goat brooked no nonsense from him, and he knew to steer clear of her unless it was milk time.
Even with Helga in their midst, the afternoon was splendid--replete--with what? Something unnamed, something elusive disturbed the surface of her awareness, like a fish rising to nip the unseen mosquito and making the pond ripple. The feeling poked her, and spread, and spread again, whenever the doctor stood so near she could feel him without touching him. The sad, serious stranger who found her on the 18th of March was a laughing, familiar friend now as April waned and May drew near.
Like a tulip rising from the earth, Helga emerged as a vibrant lady with glorious red hair that dried to a youthful sheen in the sun. Dressed only in her white shift, Evelyn ran barefoot through the meadow with long chestnut waves rippling behind her. No pond offered itself as a looking glass near the cottage, but in places the stream held still and reflected the faces peering into it.
“Look.” Stangler knelt beside her, much as he’d held her in place at the edge of the ravine that terrible day when Reginald was found. “Look at you!” he cried. “Gott in Himmel, one of Botticelli’s angels has come to life.”
She gazed in amazement at the ethereal face that looked back at her, shattering when something would disturb the water, then reforming into a face she hardly recognized as her own.
“By Jove, I doubt if me own mum would know me now,” she said with her best Scottish accent. “In the commotion of May Day festivities, Vee and Hannah should fail to know me even if we came face to face It is high time we put that to the test.”
“Ach.” The familiar sadness that was Stangler was coming back. “Now you punish me for the lurid visions I inflicted on you. To think of seeing them fills my heart with dread, and my hands ache to take vengeance upon those foul women.”
Helga fluffed her hair, winked at her handsome reflection, then stood. “I hear they have some copies of Goethe that rightly belong to our Evelyn. I wouldn’t kill for the Shakespeare and Shelly, nor for pearls and ball gowns, but for Goethe, yes, I might pluck out the thief’s eyeballs.”
Emil ceased his tirade at the squirrel in the oak and came running, as if those words were an invitation to a new Search and Destroy mission that he would lead.
"You, little Emil, will stay home safe," Stangler said.
EOC (end of chapter), wc 2,091
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Help!
Free writing is dangerous!!
I have now set myself up to have my protagonists captured and tortured but stoically holding firm...