Free The Vorrh by B. Catling Page A

showed the couple beneath a tree. She, seated on the rocks with her back to the reader, he before her, pointing further into the picture, where the angelic presence had appeared and was walking towards them. Nearby, and balancing the scene, were two deer, one lying down with a docile, but watchful, lion. The landscape was lushly grown over; the grass and plants in the foreground giving it a vivid, scratchy reality.
    Its effect on the native woman had been violent and overpowering. She immediately lost her air of casual involvement, becoming rigid and sitting bolt upright. Her whole body had begun to shake, wide eyes staring from her head, as though racked by tortures of extreme terror. She started to pull at her clothing, moaning and tearing at the fabric until she was naked and alarming, giving off a pungent odour of sweat; her voice had become deeper, sending out a wave of shared fear. Then she started to bleed. The priest had become afraid and embarrassed at the same time. She caught his eye intermittently, lashing her turned-in focus out, like a whip, until he was finally overcome with fear and embarrassment. Repelled by every element of the scene, he had fled the church.
    Returning from the jungle, the atmosphere in the camp had been appalling. Williams’ arrival caused an almost visible ripple of energy; the locals had stopped instantly, then averted their faces, staring at the ground or at whatever happened to be in their hands. One of the moreobsequious recruits had run for the officers’ mess; others followed behind to see what might happen.
    De Trafford, the commanding officer, standing squarely on the veranda with a white-faced subordinate, had indicated to the door. They filed into the officers’ mess without a word. The short spell of quiet soon gave way to thunderous shouting and even louder silences.
    Williams’ anger was fastened tight by the rigours of command. He had locked his expression in stone as De Trafford spat out his accusations of the breakdown of obedience among the natives, blaming him directly for ‘that Savage bitch’s unprovoked attack’. He’d demanded to know what he had been doing to her to cause this outrage, and said he was seriously thinking about ‘having the bitch put down’. Williams had nothing to say, and gated his rage behind clenched muscles and gritted teeth. He did feel responsible for the girl, but not in a way De Trafford would ever understand. A deep, aching attachment had blistered at the edges of the sweetness he felt in her presence. All of this had taken place while he was away, but he knew he was implicit in it all, in a way he could not explain, especially to himself. The chain of impossible events had occurred, and he had been left outside of all.
    He left them and returned, via the wary looks of the lingering villagers, to the sanctum of the hut that had been designated the armoury. He found solace in unpacking the guns, while the priest crept back into the church to cleanse it of any abnormalities that might have been shed there. But when Williams opened the heavy, book-shaped wooden box, his day changed for the better. Lifting the Mars Fairfax from the velvet of its snug containment and feeling the commanding density in his fist, he looked to heaven and, cocking the massive breech with a resounding, bell-like clang, gave a grinning nod of comprehension.
    * * *
    Ghertrude Eloise Tulp was an only child. She was ‘only’ in a great manner of ways: in the way that a single child is given all; in the way that it is received and understood as a sign of natural superiority, growing into unquestionable rightness; in her luscious delight in solitude and satisfaction without a trace of loneliness.
    She was the pride, construct and admiration of her father, the third generation owner of the city’s second-largest timber merchant, who had long since left the basic details of his inherited empire to his servants, and turned his razor-keen appetites to politics and the