Trappings

Written for Round 2 of the NYC Midnight 2024 Short Story Challenge. Didn’t make it to Round 3, but I’d like to share it anyway. I think I had an interesting take on the prompt, which was:

Genre: Historical Fiction \\ Subject: A lost cause \\ Character: a grifter

I’d say one of the main weaknesses of the piece are my ambiguous “lost cause” — the men’s attempts to punish my protagonist, Letty — and the lack of an obvious time in history — which is meant to be medieval Britain. I’ve edited the piece based on feedback received before publishing here.

Content Warning: suggested sexual assault, alcohol abuse, religious abuse

Letty sat on the stone floor of the chapel with three men standing over her: a priest, an acolyte, and the farmer who carted her here. She had awoken not long ago, her back and hips aching against the unforgiving stone. Weak beams of light came in through the trinity of narrow, arched windows above the altar. The priest stood, imperious, hands clenching over and over as if he longed to grip the neck of a bottle. The acolyte stood near the priest, staring raptly at him.

“Explain why a half-dressed woman is in this house of God,” said the priest to the farmer, who wrung his cloth cap in his hands until it became a limply twisted worm.

“Yes, sir. I brought her here from the edge of my farm. I found her sprawled on the ground. Her eyes were pure white. I didn’t see anyone, but it something unseemly may have happened to her.”

“Rape?” asked the priest, blunt as mason’s maul. The old farmer shuddered and bowed his head to his chest. Letty heard shuffling and weeping behind her, the sounds of women who had trickled in along with the light. She looked over her shoulder to watch them sway in the dark like a field of shadowed, pious flowers.

“God help us, but I think so,” wept the farmer. He wept into his scraggly beard. Letty did not remember him before her fainting.

The last moment Letty recalled was being with a man from the city, doing her work. She had not expected to faint during her work, but predicting her swooning spells had always difficult. She blinked, vignetting the chapel to try to remember.

“Privacy,” the man had said when first approaching her. He held a heavy coin purse in his hand. Plain as his clothes were, his voice and manner betrayed higher station. Letty knew would not wish to be seen on the street where she worked, or any street designated for her kind of service. She knew these kinds of things without people — her clients — needing to explain. She was not lettered, but she watched and listened and remembered. Men like him desired discretion.

“I know of a place suited for your needs, sir.” Just after daybreak, Letty met him outside the city on a farm she knew to be overgrown in places. A farmer tended the acreage, but was not so thorough near the edge of his feudal lord’s land. In the grasses soft and yellow as angel’s hair, she went to work with the man —

“Did you hear me, girl?” asked the priest, bringing her back to moment, to the sensation of the cold floor against her bare legs and buttocks. He glared with rheumy eyes, his gaze drifting constantly down to her grass-stained knees. She tugged at the edge of her dress to cover herself. She widened and watered her eyes, presenting the innocence of an angel.

“Forgive me, sir, but I don’t remember a thing. I feel strong enough to return home, now, though, if this kind sir would not mind giving me another ride in his cart?” She blinked her tear-stained lashes up at the farmer.

“Oh, I…” the man sputtered, but the priest held up a stalling hand.

“I think not. You have been found in a sinful state on this man’s farm.”

“Maybe it is a blessing she does not remember,” said the acolyte, his voice soft and gentle as a dove’s.

“Silence,” hissed the priest. “We must not readily assume innocence in this… carnal act.”

“Oh, sir,” sighed the farmer with saintly sorrow. “Her dress was raised, her skin all pimpled with the cold. She’s only — ” His words were lost to weeping, again. The acolyte moved to him and held his arm with a wifely tenderness.

“It seems,” said the priest to the farmer. “That this creature’s beauty has confounded you.” He licked at his dried lips, his tongue an odd shade of purple. “Leave us, now, and return to your good, Christian life.” The farmer sighed and cast one final look at Letty. His gaze held not pity or sorrow, but disappointment.

“God help you, miss,” he said. The acolyte smiled sadly as the old man turned to leave. Letty’s heart pounded in her chest. Her means of getting home was making way toward the door, toward the open road. The feeling of fear rose in her chest — no, not fear. That feeling of fainting. Her left leg and arm began to jerk.

“What’s happening?” cried the acolyte, suddenly, voice ringing like a bell of alarm through the nave.

Letty came to in the cold stone chapel for a second time. She shakily lifted her head and saw the priest and acolyte staring at her, fearful and dumb as beasts. They held dearly onto one other. She looked behind her and saw the farmer had not fled, but stood by the door with knees knocking together. The shadowed women murmured among themselves.

“Did you see that shaking?” asked the acolyte. “Her eyes! Oh, God!”

“As I have told the Lord Bishop time and again,” said the priest. “This wicked country needs more discipline. See how this woman of the street has been forsaken? Given over to demons?” The acolyte squeezed his eyes shut and dipped his head to utter a prayer of protection. The priest strode forward to Letty, the crucifix draped about his neck thumping against his swollen belly.

“Girl. What is your name?” Letty, exhausted, sighed deeply and stared past the priest to the three windows glaring with light. She saw, now, the center window depicted a young child flanked by a man and woman with kindly faces. She named the faces in her mind. Jesus. Mary…

“Joseph,” she croaked. Her throat stung and she longed for a drink. The low pitch of her voice seemed to startle the priest enough that he stumbled backward. The corners of her mouth twitched upward.

“What did you say?” hissed the priest. Letty remembered, in that moment, another priest from another time. This one had been a customer. Laughing naked in her arms after her work, he told her a story. A husband and wife thought their young boy had been possessed by the spirit of John the Baptist. He had followed and examined the boy for a week, and eventually explained to the parents that the boy was no reborn Saint. He had merely developed a taste for crickets and tree sap. The parents, he recalled, were as relieved as they were disappointed — “My dear, people are so eager to see when there is naught to behold.”

“What did you say?” repeated the priest.

“Joseph,” she repeated, staring directly into those rheumy eyes. The acolyte gasped. The women in the shadows trilled.

“Saint Joseph?” sputtered the acolyte. The young man stumbled back to the altar and leaned against it. The priest whipped his head toward the altar, watching the wooden goblet rattle, and licked his lips.

“Silence, you fool!” he snapped. He turned back to Letty. “Vain and foolish girl! Confess your lies, of which there are many, and suffer the punishment only men can mete out. Continue with this treachery and even our Lord Jesus Christ, our Mediator, could not bargain for your soul!”

“But my boy loves to watch me work,” said Letty, swaying back and forth. The women in the nave echoed her movement like ripples over dark water. “My boy will make beautiful things one day. Things the whole world will see.” The priest slapped her across the face. The women moaned in the dark.

“Blasphemy!” cried the priest. Letty stiffened, determined to continue on though her face stung.

“I am Joseph,” she said. “This girl you see? She trembles when I enter her.” The priest’s face reddened.

“Lechery!” the priest raised a shaking fist into the air. “Do you not care for the state of your soul?”

“My soul is accounted for. But what of yours?”

“What?”

“Does the blood taste so divine you cannot keep it from your lips? The Blood of my Boy? Is that what causes you to hunger after your flock?” asked Letty, turning her head toward the wooden cup on the altar. Her eyes flit between it and the acolyte who shuddered and squirmed against the altar. The priest fell to his knees, shocked. His hands clenched over and over for that phantom bottleneck. The acolyte rushed to priest and hugged his arms around his shoulders.

“Silence, monster!” cried the young man.

“Your arms take them in so easily, do they not?” asked Letty. The acolyte clawed into the priest’s robes. “These men who are above you? You love them and they love what you give them. Are you so ashamed of this loving that you must torture those who do the same?” Letty traced lines over her legs, from her knees to her hips. The acolyte shook with terror. With a yelp, he ran for the open threshold. He shoved past the farmer, toppling him to the cold ground. The women did not stoop to help him. They merely continued their gloomy dance.

Letty stood up. She kept her eyes on the priest, watching for any move he might make to subdue her. He remained on his knees, shocked, spittle shining on his chin. He swayed as the women did, slowly back and forth, in awe of her. Letty then walked away as she imagined one sent from Heaven might. She stopped at the quivering form of the old man, who had curled in on himself like a louse. He looked up with eyes full of terrible wonder.

“Your face. Like my daughter’s,” he said. Pity stirred in Letty’s heart.

“Kind man,” she said, kneeling down into a crouch. She touched his trembling shoulder. “She has not forgotten you. Do not fret over the state of her soul.” His mouth gaped as tears streamed anew.

“I h-hurt her,” he sobbed. “I ruined her. Then on man would have her. And then she… she… ” Letty pulled her hand back. She stood up to look down on the weeping farmer; this twisted and mangled worm of a man. She longed to crush his throat with her foot. She stood tall, stealing the imperiousness of the priest with a mind bent on condemnation.

“Then may you suffer as much as she did, if not ten times more.” The farmer cried out, again, but this sound was mournfully triumphant — a horn signaling a long-deserved defeat. Letty stepped over him as a soldier does over a freshly slain foe. The women in the shadows did not stop her as she exited the chapel. They watched Letty walk into the light and back to herself.