Tabitha
Tabitha awoke before her younger sisters and dressed quickly in the dark, expertly lacing up the white slip and slithering into the cold stiffness of the cotton dress. She pulled a comb through her hair and then tied it securely inside the white bonnet.
She collected one of the oil lamps from the wooden shelf at the top of the stairs and hurried down the staircase, pulled on her clogs and woollen shawl, and ran out into the cold morning. She drew a deep warming breath in through her nose as she prepared for the purification of the ablutions sacrament,but then raced through the ritual and hurried back to the house. It was too cold to stay in the Sanctification House for too long.
Her older sister Rachel was tending the range in the kitchen. Already its wonderful warmth caressed her skin, and her cleansed soul soared with it. “Blessings upon you,” she greeted her.
Rachel frowned at the wet fringes on her shawl. “Ablutions, Tabitha?”
“No,” Tabitha said indignantly. “Just the bathroom.”
A little light was filtering through the curtains, and Tabitha pulled them back to make the most of the rising sun as she busied herself preparing the family breakfast. Their mother was still lying-in following the birth of little Elijah, but their father and brothers joined them just as the sun burst fully free of its earthly bonds.
A traditional Solecite breakfast was enjoyed in silent contemplation, and followed by the expounding of the scriptures their father. Family council followed. “Tabitha,” Her father said after the main business of the day was done, “Balaam seems to be lame. Eve will run a message to Mr Colebrook. Please keep Balaam off the soft ground today, and prepare him for the vet’s visit.”
Tabitha’s breathing stuttered and she flushed red. She hastily said, “Will you take Nimrod instead?”
Her father replied, “Have Nimrod and Isachar ready as soon as you can.”
Hannah and Tabitha donned their long aprons to clean up after breakfast. Wearing white dresses all the time had its drawbacks, and their long skirts were always edged with mud by the end of the day. Tabitha loved to wear white to remind her of the purity she sought, but it could be impractical.
As Clara and Miriam collected the eggs and made a half-hearted effort to clear out the chicken coop, Tabitha hurried to the stable to ready the horses. Joshua would be along soon to claim Nimrod and Isachar, and the two horses had yet to be fed, rubbed down and harnessed.
Balaam was her favourite. He loved attention, and would follow Tabitha around as she went about her daily chores, milking the goats and turning the churn, and nuzzle up to her at every opportunity. She stooped down to examine his hooves, and he lifted them patiently. She had picked his hooves, filed and trimmed them, cared for them exactly as she should. Why, then, should he have a problem?
Maybe, some voice told her, because Will needed to come.
But that thought would not do. Will Colebrook, as handsome, clever and kind as he was, was not a Solecite.
There wasn’t time for Tabitha to do much more than glance quickly at Balaam before she had to manoeuvre headcollars, straps and harnesses onto Nimrod and Isachar and lead them outside to where Joshua would collect them. And even when they were on their way to the fields, there was the yard to sweep before she could find any spare time to care for my favourite horse.
Will came when Tabitha was grooming Balaam, singing her favourite hymn gently to him as she did so. As ever, Will did not interrupt her. As though he had all the time in the world he stood leaning against the stable doorframe as though enraptured by the sweetness of her voice.
“I could listen to you all day,” he commented when she finally saw him and stopped singing. “Don’t worry, I won’t come in. I know the rules.”
She blushed, and left the stable so that he could enter it.
He spoke to her as he examined the horse, his voice as melodic and beguiling as she remembered.
“I’m so glad I could see you today. Have you thought any more about what I said?”
Tabitha had thought of little else, but it was forbidden for her to speak in front of a non-Solecite so she merely nodded.
“This is killing me. I need to be with you. And I think you want to be with me, too.”
She did not shake her head in denial, and he understood it as confirmation.
“Will you come away with me?”
She paused long enough for him to know that it was a difficult decision. That she wanted, oh, so much, to leave with him now. She wanted it more than she had ever wanted anything. But she would not bring shame and sorrow on her family. She would not make herself impure. She closed her eyes and shook her head. No. She could not be with him. She could not leave her life.
They stared into each other’s eyes for many minutes, the clean and faithful Solecite girl and the gentile vet, the horse forgotten. They communicated the way they always had – through silence, through gentleness, through perfect understanding.
“Balaam has laminitis,” Will said finally. “He needs his feet iced, and I’ll prescribe an anti-inflammatory.”
Tabitha nodded understanding, and Will left the stable, Here, under the open sky, they could stand closer.
“I’m going to speak to your father,” Will said.
Tabitha frowned. About what? She looked over at Balaam. About the horse?
“About what I have to do to become a Solecite,” Will Colebrook replied as he picked up his vet’s bag. “About what lengths I have to go to to marry you.”
She stared at him, eyes wide, seeing her happy tears reflected in his moist eyes. And then, heart bursting with gratitude she reached out her hand to him, and he grasped it tenderly, lovingly, expressing all his passion with nothing more than the touch of his fingers on hers. And then he headed across the field to seek the Solecite Patriarch.
Touched by an outsider, Tabitha would have to perform the ritual cleansing ablutions in the morning again. But after that, maybe no more.
Hostage
with Hellen Riebold
When Adam came to his head was throbbing, everything ached, and nothing worked. When he tried to open his eyes his eyelids fluttered feebly against something sticky and thick. When he tried to wipe away the mucus with his hands he discovered that his wrists were firmly bound to the arms of the chair in which he sat. When he tried to call for help his voice was feeble and rasping and he was overcome by a fit of dry coughing.
Panicking seemed to be his first, and most sensible, option, but through the murky heaviness in his mind he somehow reasoned that he should try to figure out what was going on before he resorted to that.
He appeared to be sitting in a cheap garden chair. Naked. When he moved slightly he could feel the skin of his buttocks sticking to the slightly damp plastic and the discomfort in his thighs told him that his flesh had moulded into the decorative grooves of the seat.
He tried to remember what he had been wearing when he went out last night. It seemed an age ago, in happier, more carefree times, but he remembered taking a long time to choose before dressing in his smartest grey trousers and a designer burgundy silk shirt. It was the middle of summer so he’d had no jacket. His keys, wallet and precious iPhone had been in various pockets. His heart sank at the realisation that he wouldn’t see any of those again. The thugs who had drugged him, mugged him, beaten him up and tied him to a chair could at least have left him his underpants.
His left eye started to flutter slightly. He could just make out strong daylight. It hurt his eye so he pressed it shut again.
He sniffed. Straw, excrement, wood and hair allergens. A barn, he surmised. His feet weren’t tied up, and he could feel sticky straw-strewn concrete beneath them when he moved them around.
Clearly he’d looked like an easy target. Town on a Friday night was not a good place to be. He struggled to remember the incident which had left him a helpless victim, but it must have been so traumatic that his mind had blotted it out. He remembered almost nothing since he had left his house that evening, smartly
dressed and with a pleasant sense of confident anticipation.
He had little option, he realised, but to wait to be found and rescued. He tried standing up but he was unsteady on his feet and the chair, still lashed to his wrists with smooth leather straps, needed to come too which didn’t make for a comfortable standing posture.
Why had they bothered to go to these lengths? Most gangs which mugged people for their phones just threatened them, maybe beat them up lightly, and then legged it. Why had they drugged him and dragged him to some farm building miles from anywhere? Thinking was making his head spin. He collapsed back onto the chair and groaned in pain and despair.
“Blimey,” someone said with gruff amusement. “You’ve had better days.”
Adam’s embarrassment at being discovered bound and naked was overshadowed almost entirely by his relief. Rescue! He tentatively cracked open his left eye again so that he could look upon the face of his liberator, a nondescript hero in blue polo shirt with greying hair who was unravelling the brown leather belt which had been wrapped round Adam’s right wrist.
“Thank you,” he croaked. He wondered whether the man had seen anything last night, or whether the perpetrators of this heinous crime had left behind any clues by which they might be caught and arrested.
“Third one this year,” the man said conversationally, turning his attention to Adam’s other wrist. “They like my barn, for some reason. I can lend you some clothes to go home in.”
“They?”
“Stags,” the man said, as though it were obvious.
Adam shook out his freed hands and then pressed them to his painful head feeling for crisp blood or tender bruises where they had assaulted him. Nothing.
“So when’s your wedding, then? Hope it’s not today. Most guys aren’t stupid enough to have their stag do the night before the wedding, but looking at you…”
Wedding! Tracey!
And without waiting for the clothes the farmer had offered him, or even pausing to say thank you, Adam ran out of the barn and across the field of tall, ripe corn.