I Am Margaret (11 page)

Uncle Peter, dead.

Uncle Peter, slowly, agonizingly dead, a piece at a time.

There was no escaping the truth of what I’d seen with my own eyes.

I beat on the wall, blind to the pain, barely retaining the sense to stop before I laid my knuckles bare, for how would I explain that? The tears would not stop—hope had vanished from my soul like a forgotten dream.

Curled up with my hands over my head, I rocked to and fro, fighting with my helplessness, my loneliness, my terror. Uncle Peter was dead and my parents might be about to go the same way. They were unlikely to be sentenced to conscious execution, but dismantled they would be if Uncle Peter was traced back to them.

And—oh
Domine Deus
!—to my shame, a selfish thought, a selfish but oh so ghastly thought crept in amongst the rest. What would it be like to live out my two years here almost completely alone, knowing almost all those I loved were dead and even though Bane still lived, he was cut off from me, unreachable as the moon…

No, I was being foolish. If they took my parents, they would come for me too. They would take me before a judge and bid me speak the words of Divine denial; my refusal to Apostatize would condemn me for Personal Superstition and I would simply be dismantled immediately, instead of in two years.

My heartbeat steadied slightly and the chill eased its grip on me. Immediate and painless entrance into Our Lord’s company instead of two long years of lonely misery; that wasn’t so bad, then.

But
Mum and Dad
… where’d Uncle Peter been staying? He could’ve been staying at five or six different houses, he moved often—after all, even much-loved uncles or family friends didn’t visit all the time. Was it my own family or another that were about to share his fate?

His fate…
Uncle Peter
…

Tears. More tears. Ridiculous, I was going to dissolve. Don’t cry, Margo, just remember him... But the memories brought tears.
Receive the soul of your faithful servant, Lord
.
Take him to yourself...

Then Uncle Peter’s smiling face filled my mind, driving out the memory of that ruined one we’d left in the Lab.
Don’t cry, Margo,
he told me, just as if he’d surprised a childish tear on my cheek.
The Lord’s written you a letter, ‘specially for now.
I knew the ‘letter’ and words from it were suddenly whispering through my mind…

…Desiderat, languens concupiscit

anima mea atria Domini…

…
For the courts of the Lord’s house,

my soul faints with longing…

…Transeuntes per vallum aridam,

fontem facient eam…

…
As they go through the Bitter Valley,

they make it a place of springs…

…Vere melior est dies unus in

atriis tuis quam alii mille…

…
Willingly would I give a thousand of my days

for one spent in your courts…

…Domine exercituum, beautus

homo qui confidit in te…

…
Lord of hosts, blessed

is the man who trusts in you…

Those verses were like a light shining into that terrifying blackness and they left me a little calmer. Uncle Peter was in the courts of the Lord’s house, and the Lord was still with me.

A knock on the door and Watkins’ voice jerked me from my contemplations.

“It’s supper; you done in there, lass?”

“I’ll be right out.”

Getting up, I flushed the toilet and went to wash my hands, checking my face carefully in the mirror. My last tears had fallen long enough ago that my eyes weren’t too red, but I splashed a bit of cold water on them all the same and dried them carefully with toilet roll.

I shouldn’t have hidden in here for the last half hour. What if the Rats learned that a priest’s execution had made me behave like this? Suspicion was all it took, for the invitation to make the Divine denial provided the rest. Still... it’d been a choice between a breakdown in public or a breakdown in private, so... couldn’t be helped.

Right. Supper. I’d never felt less like eating. Everyone was coming down the passage; Watkins had unlocked the dorm. Supper and unhappy comrades in distress. I squared my shoulders and headed for the door.

There was no time to amend my letter after supper: my friends attached themselves to me and I hadn’t the heart to shed them again. I set my alarm early instead.

My night prayers flowed in my mind, comforting and very welcome, until the last one. I approached it rather warily and tried to recite it nice and steadily, hoping to just run through it, but when I reached ‘quodcumque mortis genus’ the words stuck in my throat and choked me.
Whatever kind of death
.

The very worst
mortis genus
had been revealed to me today, in all its stark agony. Had I ever really appreciated what this prayer said
at all?
Whatever
kind of death. Even Conscious Dismantlement. Even that. The ultimate Act of Acceptance of the Lord’s will. For His will was that all humanity should have Free Will, even judges and dismantlers…

The idea of me, there in Uncle Peter’s place, had me sweating in terror. I tried and tried to find the willingness in me, but still the words brought me to a halt, shaking with fear.

What are the odds of you ending up in that situation, Margo? Minuscule!
But still, I couldn’t speak. I could not. Finally, I gave up and just lay there, tears of shame drying on my cheeks.

***+***

7

THE LATTER YEARS OF PETER RABBIT

I did my best to eat something, lest my parents worry, but it was a waste. I didn’t seem to taste any of it.

“
Let’s go and dance,” I said after a while, and ignoring Mum’s dire warnings about catching cold, I slipped off my jacket and left it behind. Most girls my age weren’t wearing big coats, and I couldn’t afford anything distinctive. I did borrow Dad’s football cap, pulling it down over my face.

For a while I almost forgot our little enterprise, since it was hard to think about much else when dancing with Bane. He swung me and spun me until we were both draped dizzily over each other for balance, laughing hysterically.

When they were almost ready to start, we slipped quietly away. We’d not be the only young couple sneaking off into the night, fence or no fence. Bane scaled the thing again in that dark corner while I rolled my skirt up by a couple of feet, the chill night air raising goosebumps on my bared legs.

“
Uh... what are you doing?”

“
Avoiding distinguishing features. And if it keeps the guards’ eyes off my face, so much the better. It seems to be working on
you
.”

Bane’s blush was almost, but not quite, invisible in the darkness and he dragged his eyes back to my face at once.

“
Okay, well,” he said hastily, “I looked at a program. The Minister for the British Department just has a very short bit tonight introducing the Chairman, so when he gets up, you draw the guards away. Just after the Chairman starts his speech is about when I’m aiming for the things to start going off. That should upstage him nicely, don’t you think?”

“
Just slightly! But for goodness’ sake be careful.”

“
Yeah, ‘course I will,” and with an oh-so-reassuring flip of his hand, Bane disappeared between the huts.

Previous experience at Annual Summits left me in little doubt that even after the speeches had started—or perhaps especially then—there’d be plenty of people hanging around the edges of the sports ground. So I headed along the fence until I was only a short walk from the gardeners’ hut, but far enough away that I wouldn’t be visible to the guards.

Now came the waiting, the ridiculous hype of the High Committee’s arrival, the extremely lengthy descriptions of how honored little Salperton-under-Fell was this night, and the tedious introductions on stage. It barely penetrated my brain as I pictured Bane creeping slowly through the undergrowth, circling behind that little shed. I should’ve asked him how
exactly
he planned to get in...

“
And now, it gives me great pleasure to welcome to Salperton-under-Fell, this night, Donald Grisforth, our honored Minister for the British Department…”

My cue at last.

Jerked from my half-conscious state by my alarm, I got up reluctantly and dressed. Taking my letter to the table, I found a nice wide margin along the side of an inner page and set to work.

P. S.

You know you made me promise to tell you how my story ‘The Latter Years of Peter Rabbit’ ended? Well, I can hardly bear to do so, the ending has turned out so sad.

Dear old Peter Rabbit goes to Grandma Jemima Puddle Duck’s pond to visit, because she’s sick, but since he’s such an old rabbit by then he gets caught by a human, who takes him home and chops him up to make a stew. Only, then the human realizes there’s not really enough of him to make a stew, so he goes out and starts hunting for the warren, so he can eat all Peter’s little bunny children as well.

So you see, it’s terribly sad and I’m so very sorry to have to tell you about it. Anyway, let me know if you would like me to send you a copy, it’s only short, but I imagine you perhaps won’t, with the ending having finished up like that!

Love, M xxx

I read the postscript critically. I couldn’t do much better than that. Since they knew nothing of any ‘The Latter Years of Peter Rabbit’, let alone a promise about it, surely they would understand what I was telling them? So might a priestcatcher, but that I would have to risk.

Breakfast wasn’t for another fifteen minutes; my little addition hadn’t taken as long as I’d feared. I fetched my notebook and headed a fresh page:

The Latter Years of Peter Rabbit

Margaret Verrall

Just in case I found pursuivants crawling out of the woodwork—concrete—here.

We posted our letters at breakfast, those of us who could write well enough to send them and had someone to send them to. There were some blessings to count. I finished the story then, before our gym session. It extended to only five sides, was far from the most inspiring thing I’d ever written, and I was glad to be finished with it. But it existed. That was enough.

“Margy! Story, story!” Sarah tugged at the pad eagerly, seeing I’d finished.

“I don’t think you’ll enjoy that one.” I detached her hands gently and flicked back to the beginning of the pad. “How about ‘The Diary of a Fellest Ewe: Part One’?”

“Ewe, ram, lamb,” recited Sarah. “All sheep.”

“Yes, I think that will be right up your street.” Which was why I’d started this Facility pad with something so pleasant. “Are you sitting comfortably?”

Sarah plunked down in a chair and Caroline and Harriet looked our way and brightened.

Jane got there first, though.

“Piss off, Sarah, I want to talk to Margaret.”

Sarah jumped up hastily, but I caught her wrist.

“You don’t have to go anywhere, Sarah. If you want to speak to me, Jane, wait ‘til I’m unoccupied or ask me nicely, don’t just boss my friends around.”

Jane huffed impatiently.

“
Fine
, can I speak to you?”

“I was about to read Sarah a story, actually…”

But Sarah had had enough of prickly Jane and she slipped off to see what Bethan was doing. I sighed.

“Fine, Jane, looks like I’m all yours.”

“Good. So. I’ve been watching you. I think you’re probably the smartest person in this room, after me. Possibly including me. Way smarter than Rebecca. And tough. Tougher than those mild manners of yours let on. And everyone comes to you with their problems.”