Reads
Updated July 29, 2008, 2008Terra Obscura

"Curiosity is a sin, and sinners burn in hell." Elder Parson's weak-voiced words are not a threat, or a promise, but a warning, wavering like notes from a reed flute on the winter wind.
I've been caught again, looking at the world beyond the wall. When I turn to face the old man, I press my back against the weathered, rough-hewn wood, and use my body to hide the place where I scraped out the filling of frozen mud between the logs.

The peephole is no larger than the circumference of my smallest finger, but it opens another world to my eye. It is like something I saw, an ocean and some years ago, before the war and the plague and the resulting wave of religious fervor that swept my countrymen by the thousands to this foreign shore.

The king-the old one, the heretic whose name we have since blacked from our books-allowed a group of natural philosophers to build a windowless room at the university. The room was shut of all light, save for a pinhole on the southern wall. And where the light from that small hole shone against the opposite wall, an observer could behold an image the world outside-but it was pale and upside down, a phantom of the truth.

A camera obscura, they called it. The darkened room.

I remember the camera obscura as I hide my sorry little peephole behind the limp sweep of my faded skirts. It may seem a silly, petty thing to keep secret and thus risk the stocks, or worse, but the chink I've made in the wall reveals a wider world than the one in which I've spent my days and nights for nine long months.

For me, there has been only the settlement, muddy and cold, colored with weathered browns and blacks and grays. Beyond the settlement, the land is vast and wide, an endless stretch of uncharted wilderness, the mysteries of which most maps only dare imply with a dark wash of ink and the scrawled legend: Here be monsters.

Within our wall, we are small and weak and safe. Our faces are whitened by short days, and even shorter rations. Our cheeks and hands have been made rough and red by wind and work. We wear dingy white linens and faded black clothes. We have nothing healthy, crisp or pristine, save our immortal souls.

Or so the elders tell us, at each morning's Meeting.

I do not know if I believe them now-or if I ever did. They say the world beyond the wall is wild, wicked and untamed. But their pronouncements seem as washed out and wrong-sided as an image wavering on a darkroom wall. Beyond our pale of weathered wood and dried mud stretch vast snow-covered fields, sparkling crystalline and perfect in the winter sun. At the fields' end, the forest looms dark green on the horizon, with the red sunset blazing above. And beyond the forest lies the bright blue sea that stands between here and Home.

There is no freedom here, save the freedom to repent, to toil, and to die. At Home, our packed and teeming capital had long ago outgrown its walls. It stank of sin and sewage; of death and life. It sprawled across the land like an algae bloom in a stagnant pond, consuming the countryside with the insatiable appetite of progress.
There was money to be made and rent to be paid; there were so many bodies, few people worried for their souls. So long as a man professed his loyalty to both God and king, none would question the beliefs he held in his heart.

I know I am too young to wax wistful for the world that used to be, except that I have seen a king killed at the order of his people. I have seen plague, fire, and war. And I have been brought across an ocean for the dubious privilege of helping construct God's kingdom on Earth.

"…God's kingdom here on earth!" Elder Parsons is shouting. Little flecks of spittle hit my cheeks, they have turned cold from an instant's travel through the chill, dry air.
"I pray one day you will find some measure of the penitence and peace your mother has found within these walls.

"You are but lately come to us." Parson's voice is fuller than the one he first used. He knows how little difference his lectures make to me, but he is speaking for the audience of black clad colonists who slow at their tasks to watch us from the corners of their eyes. "You do not know what hardships were suffered by those who built this wall to keep us safe within. You do not know what manner of beasts roam without."

"Wolves," I say, "I heard one howling a few nights past. It did not worry me. My father's mother lives at the edge of the woods, back in the Old Country. She told me wolves are skittish and wary with people."

"Wolves," Parson proclaims, drawing the word out, letting his tongue linger over the "l" and pressing his teeth deep into his lower lip to pronounce the "v". "They will hunt you in the night and pounce upon you when you tire of running. They will use their heavy paws to force you from your feet. They've sharp claws to rend your garments and bare your flesh for their hungry mouths."

His beady eyes shine with a zealot's relish. He spares no detail in his description of the indignities I will suffer as I am eaten alive. He'd the same happy look at Meeting yesterday when he described the agonies of witches on the pyre, and a week before that when he told us tales of sinners burning naked in the pits of hell.
Parson says his soul is bound for heaven, but I think he loves his tales of hell too much to leave them behind. In this heaven, Parson once told me, man shall know no suffering, nor appetites of any sort. He shall be cleansed of every imperfection; he shall shed every memory of his life on Earth.

I do not think Parson will enjoy his heaven when he gets there. It will seem cold, indeed, without his tales of Hell to keep him warm.

After some minutes he concludes his ecstatic diatribe. "You may now ask me for the Lord's forgiveness, child."
I recite the words I'm meant to say. I denounce myself for a sinner. I am prideful and iniquitous, headstrong and hell-bound. Oh, yes. I implore the Elder to devise some act of contrition that will punish my body and purify my soul.

"You must take up the dying," he tells me. "Four weeks of work, from sunrise to sunset, pausing only for Meetings and meals. Begin immediately."

 

 

The dyehouse is downwind of every other building, but its location does little to diffuse its smell. The building is squat and dark and windowless. Its roof is pierced with chimneys, like arrows sticking out of Saint Sebastian's chest. The air around it is soaked in the moist, acrid stench of dyestuff, lye and urine. After a day's work, I'll carry that same stench, and everyone who walks within ten feet of me will know I have again incurred an Elder's wrath.
The work is hard, the hours are long; the dying is no easy task. Pilgrims, still wan and weak-legged from their voyage across the ocean, must bring their garments to be dyed black before they can become citizens of God's kingdom here on Earth. In so doing, the Elders say, they obliterate the sin of pride, and come into the kingdom humble as penitents.

In the dyehouse, we submerge the aristocrat's bright velvets and the pauper's faded woolens into the same steaming, stinking tub of boiling water and ammonia which we have distilled from urine and some other sources. We stew the garments longer than a tough cut of meat, until the threads are weak enough to accept the dye. The dying takes time, but we will wait. Here in God's Kingdom on Earth, time is something we do not lack.

Once the garments have been soaked and softened, we submerge them in a vat of black dyestuff laced with arsenic to help the color stick. We stir this pot for hours before it is time to remove the sodden mass of black clothes. The dye makes our hands rough and gray. The arsenic makes our skin pale and our bodies weak.
There is no punishment worse than the dyehouse, save the tannery and the distillery where our chemicals are made. But that work is heavy and hard-the men labor with their coats removed and sleeves rolled back. I have been told that the sight of men working at such labors would be not purify my soul, but cast me deeper into sin. We women are weak, and must be protected from such sights. Thank goodness.

This is not to say the dying is an easy task. The color fades fast in clean water and bright sunlight, and must be renewed every year or so. The dye does not take to fabric so well here, as it does at Home. The plant we use to make our black is called Miser's Heart. And like its namesake, Miser's Heart thrives on cold air and sparse nourishment. It is overfed and overwhelmed by fecund soil. It withers in the warm summers of this foreign clime.

Our plants, like our people, are used to stingy seasons and stony ground. We mistrust abundance. We fear ease. We despise pleasure. Comfort is a snare the devil sets to steal our souls away.

Or so the Elders say.

I believe I would enjoy a few comforts-or, at the least, an easier chore. There is no shortage of dyestuff in this new world, and all of it is a great deal easier to refine that the stingy black of Miser's Heart. In spring a host of flowers rise in brilliant shades of gold and red and blue, filling the fields beyond the wall like an army bent on conquest.
We could easily attire ourselves in royal blues, imperial purples, or reds as rich as spilled blood. We could be paupers clad in the colors of kings, but we are a modest people; we must work hard so that all who see us will know it. We must attire our bodies in black and never look upon our naked skin. We must hide our hair, lest, tempted by its shine or rich color, we give in to the sin of pride. We must never enjoy softness or beauty, for these are but signposts on the Primrose Path that leads unwary souls to Hell.

This is what the Elders tell me, though nine months of punishment and repetition have not yet cowed me enough to believe it. But I can feel myself weakening. My body slows, my mind grows tired. I soften. One day I will soak up the Elders' words the way boiled cloth soaks up the dye. It may take time, but in God's Kingdom Here on Earth, time is something we do not lack.

 

 

I do not faint until my third day in the dyehouse. I am relatively new to these shores, and possessed of a stronger constitution than those who have toiled here a year or more. I feel it coming on before it happens, and step back from the fire and the steam before falling to my knees upon the packed dirt floor.

My sight becomes as black as the swirling liquid in the dye vat, and when next it clears, I am in a cooler place, resting upon a pile of undyed garments as Matron Jarvis leans over me.

"Do not breathe the steam," she says as I squint up at her wrinkled, spotted face. Her eyes are overhung by sagging lids of papery skin and I can barely see them for the folds.Her mouth is a grim line of thin, pale lips with deep wrinkles all around, like cracks in a field of dried mud. There is nothing kind about her-she is as obtuse and unyielding as the wall outside, and has only allowed me this respite so that she may wring more work from me before the bell sounds for evening Meeting.

"You shall return to the vat tomorrow, but for today you may remove buttons and gewgaws from the finer garments so that the dyestuff does not tarnish them." She points to a rough-hewn bench in the corner beside a garish pile of cloth, and beneath a smoking oil lamp.

I tell myself I should faint more often. It would not be a difficult thing to pretend a weak constitution, a delicate sensibility. I could groan and moan in all my tasks, but continue bravely on, grimacing like a martyr keeping silent on the pyre. I could pretend weakness, and these people would love me for it. In this place, there is no better standard of a pure soul than a suffering body.

I settle on the bench, and start to pick gilt threads from the hem of a brown satin doublet. I am slow at the task, savoring the soft feel of the fabric between my fingers. No, I do not have it in me to enjoy suffering, nor even the appearance of it.

I finish the doublet and retrieve another garment from the pile. This one is a hooded velvet cloak, as deep red as the last drops of wine poured from the bottle. The buttons are carved of bone. The hood is lined with sable. The fabric warms in my hand, soft and soothing as a pleasant memory.

The back hem falls longer than the front, making the cloak's purpose apparent. Like all the garments of the wealthy, this hooded cloak was designed for a single activity and is quite impractical for any other. It was not meant for walking but for riding. I will have to cut the extra fabric from the hem before it will be suitable for the muddy streets and endless work here within the wall.

The Elders would rail at the vanity of such a garment, but I can only smile as I imagine myself wearing the cloak. The sable lining of the hood caresses my cheek, catching the warmth of my skin and keeping it close. The long rear hem of the red cloak trails out behind me, spilling over my horse's withers as we travel across the snowy white fields and through the dark forest toward the cold blue sea and a ship that might carry us Home.

Reluctantly, I think of the woman to whom the cloak belonged. She is small-roughly my size. She arrived last week. Last night at meeting I watched her raise red stripes upon her back with the flagellant's whip as she confessed her sins. By her confession, her life was a litany of lust, greed, pride and curiosity. Her tale stretched from birth until the moment she decided to leave the Old World for the new; to trade her red hood and cloak for a shredded back and bloodstained shift.

Here be monsters.

I cannot rend this garment. It is too beautiful; too soft and warm. I can no more cover its brilliant hue to make it seem humble and holy, than I can blot out my hatred of this settlement and my longing for a place where my thoughts and beliefs are my own concern.

This cloak and I, we are the products of an other place; of an other, less humble people. My mother feels safe within the wall. She finds comfort in confession, peace in penitence, and ease beneath the Elders' ever-watchful eyes. But for me this place is as poisonous and penetrating as the steaming liquid in the vats. I will die if I stay here.

The moment is so ordinary, so natural. Like a door opening in a dark room, the thought of leaving illuminates my mind. All of my silent complaints and petty rebellions were useless stumblings in the dark. I must find my own path. I must leave the darkened room to walk blind and blinking into the light.

This is not the faith the Elders want for me, but it is the faith I have found. I do not want the wall, or the dyeing, or the cold comfort of their pure, white Heaven. I want the world outside the chamber; the unknown places on the map.

The Elders say the land beyond the wall is wicked and untamed, but what good is protection from the world without if it comes at the cost of conformity, penitence and pain?
My red cloak and I, we will keep our colors and our character. We will forgo the certainty of salvation and take our chances with the wolves.

end.