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deadpresidents · 4 years ago

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Unfinished: April 12, 1945

As March 1945 drew to a close, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was exhausted. At the beginning of February, Roosevelt had attended the Yalta Conference with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin -- a meeting which required the American President to undertake a physically punishing and extraordinarily dangerous trip halfway around the world to the Crimean Peninsula in the middle of a raging world war. At Yalta, Roosevelt’s appearance had shocked the foreign leaders and their aides. In his last face-to-face meeting with Churchill, on February 18, 1945, FDR was seen as a dead man walking. Churchill’s personal doctor, Lord Moran, told a friend that Roosevelt had “only a few months to live”.

Being President of the United States for just one term is taxing enough on a young man or a healthy man. Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been President for twelve years. He had campaigned for the Presidency and been victorious in four national elections. His Administration faced one of the greatest domestic crises in American History -- the Great Depression -- and the greatest crisis and bloodiest conflict in world history -- World War II. FDR had attacked these problems (and other issues that arose during his terms) with energy, creativity, and a relentless pursuit of victory.

A healthy and athletic man who stood nearly 6′2″ and weighed about 200 lbs. as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt had been stricken by polio in 1921. The disease robbed him of his ability to walk and, at the time, looked as if it had robbed him of a political future. He rebounded politically but physically he was never the same. Confined to a wheelchair, the muscles in his legs withered like the branches of a tree in winter. Although he could not walk under his own power, FDR taught himself to stand while wearing heavy steel braces around his shins. He needed the assistance of a muscular partner -- sometimes one of his sons, sometimes a military aide -- in order to feign the appearance of walking. Through sheer will, however, Roosevelt learned to take a few steps without anyone’s help -- a handy skill that he would show off at important campaign rallies. But as he began his unprecedented fourth term in the White House in the early months of 1945, FDR no longer had the energy to show off.

Roosevelt was as gravely ill as Lord Moran suggested. The successful 1944 Presidential campaign had severely drained his already tapped-out reservoirs of energy and stamina. His fourth inauguration was low-key, partly because it took place in the midst of war and partly due to the President’s failing health. Instead of the traditional inaugural ceremonies at the U.S. Capitol, Roosevelt took the Oath of Office at the White House and gave his brief fourth Inaugural Address from a balcony at the Executive Mansion. The famously verbose Roosevelt gave the second-shortest Inaugural Address in American History. By the time the crowd realized that he was talking he had already finished. Only George Washington’s four-sentence-long second Inaugural Address in 1793 was shorter than the address given by FDR on January 20, 1945.

FDR now looked entirely different than the man who had told the nation that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” in 1933. Dark circles surrounded his eyes, which seemed sunken into his skull. Since his first Inauguration, Roosevelt had lost 40-50 pounds. His hands shook so violently at times that some observers wondered how he was able to eat. He smoked constantly, but rarely finished his cigarettes. Most shocking of all, FDR no longer went to great lengths to conceal his disability. Frail and tired, he found it almost impossible to wear the heavy braces that he long wore on his crippled legs. On March 1, 1945, Roosevelt addressed a joint session of Congress on the results of his Yalta Conference with Churchill and Stalin. In an unprecedented move, the President sat in a chair on the floor of the House of Representatives and apologized to Congress, beginning his speech by saying, “I hope that you will pardon me for this unusual posture of sitting down during the presentation of what I want to say, but I know that you will realize it makes it a lot easier for me not to have to carry about ten pounds of steel around on the bottom of my legs.” It was the first time that President Roosevelt had ever publicly acknowledged his physical disability.

Twelve years of the Presidency, economic depression and war had strained Roosevelt’s health, but the 14,000-mile trip to the Yalta Conference on the Black Sea had pushed FDR to the limit. On March 30, 1945, Roosevelt arrived in Warm Springs, Georgia for a few weeks of relaxation and, hopefully, recuperation. Roosevelt loved Warm Springs. He had started visiting the small town in western Georgia in the 1920s, hoping that the warm waters from the natural mineral springs nearby would help him regain the use of his legs. When he was Governor of New York, FDR purchased a small house that he used when he visited Warm Springs. As President, the home was called the “Little White House” and although FDR only visited it sixteen times during his Presidency, many of those trips were for 2-3 weeks each. When his train pulled into Warm Springs at about 1:30 PM on March 30, 1945, many longtime residents said that things seemed different. Roosevelt looked terrible and while he waved to onlookers, it was with noticeable weakness.

The first few days in Georgia were tough. FDR was obviously ill and seemed to struggle making it through a church service on Easter Sunday. Roosevelt also avoided his beloved Warm Springs pools. Instead, the President rested, caught up on sleep, and visited with guests. The goal was for FDR to regain enough of his health to make a trip to San Francisco for the charter meeting of what would become the United Nations. At the Little White House with Roosevelt were some personal aides, military attaches, and cousins Daisy Suckley and Polly Delano. During his first week at Warm Springs, Roosevelt did very little work, dictating a few letters and reading briefings, stronger and more animated in the mornings and evenings but completely drained in the afternoon. Another goal for Roosevelt was to gain weight -- by the time he left Warm Springs, he hoped to be up to 170 lbs.

Still, there was no noticeable improvement in FDR’s health or spirits. Then, on April 9th, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd arrived. As President Wilson’s Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt had become involved in a passionate love affair with his wife’s social secretary, Lucy Mercer. It was 1918 when Eleanor Roosevelt discovered the affair between Franklin and Lucy and threatened to divorce him unless he promised never to see or speak to Lucy again. FDR agreed to the ultimatum -- an ultimatum that was strengthened by his mother’s threat to cut off his inheritance if he and Eleanor were divorced, as well as the fact that Franklin’s budding political career would be crushed if the affair was revealed. The relationship between FDR and Eleanor was never again passionate or loving after the discovery of the affair, but Eleanor kept her word and remained married to Franklin. Franklin, however, didn’t keep his word to Eleanor.

The Franklin-Lucy affair probably resumed shortly after Roosevelt’s first Inauguration in 1933. By that time, FDR and Eleanor had more of a professional relationship than a personal one. He respected the First Lady’s political viewpoints, supported her activism, used her as a sounding board, and tried to act on many of her suggestions. Personally, however, there was no passion or tenderness or intimacy between the First Couple. It was FDR and Eleanor’s daughter, Anna, who helped rekindle Franklin’s relationship with Lucy. She arranged for Lucy to visit the President in the White House when Eleanor was out of town. And on April 9, 1945, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd was in Warm Springs, Georgia visiting President Roosevelt due to Anna Roosevelt’s invitation.

FDR was so excited to see Lucy that he didn’t wait for Lucy to make the drive all the way from Aiken, South Carolina to Warm Springs. The President and his cousin Daisy decided to meet Lucy’s car en route. At Manchester, Georgia, 85 miles away from Warm Springs, the highway rendezvous took place. FDR looked happier than he had in months as Lucy got into FDR’s car along with her friend, painter Elizabeth Shoumatoff. Lucy had brought Shoumatoff along to paint a portrait of the President -- a portrait that she hoped would be an improvement on the recent photographs that had made Roosevelt look “ghastly”.

For the next two days, Roosevelt and Lucy enjoyed their time together, going on small drives, eating happy meals, and sitting together while Shoumatoff prepared to paint the President’s portrait, studying photographs and making preliminary drawings. Daisy Suckley had the opportunity to observe the unique relationship between FDR and Lucy Mercer and also had some private conversations with the President’s longtime mistress. In her diary, Daisy recorded her thoughts about the two after she accompanied them on an automobile drive that they took: “Lucy is so sweet with F(ranklin) -- No wonder he loves to have her around -- Toward the end of the drive, it began to be chilly and she put her sweater over his knees -- I can imagine just how she took care of her husband -- She would think of little things which make so much difference to a semi-invalid, or even a person who is just tired, like F(ranklin).”

On April 12th, President Roosevelt woke up and ate a light breakfast. He had a slight chill despite the warm, humid weather that day and wore his cape draped over his shoulders throughout the early afternoon. Roosevelt did a little bit of work, reading the Atlanta newspapers and dictating some correspondence. Elizabeth Shoumatoff had set up her easel in the living room where the President worked behind a card table that served as his makeshift desk. As Shoumatoff painted, FDR continued reading, and at about 1:00 PM, Roosevelt said, “We have got just about fifteen minutes more to work.”

In the quiet of the room, Daisy Suckley thought that the President had dropped his cigarette and was searching for it because his head slumped forward suddenly. Roosevelt could barely lift his head when Daisy asked what was wrong. He placed his left hand gently against the back of his head and, in a barely audible voice, told Daisy, “I have a terrific pain in the back of my head!”

Roosevelt quickly slipped into unconsciousness as the women in the room summoned help. They called for a doctor who was staying in a cottage close to the Little White House and they helped two of FDR’s valets carry the President into the bedroom. Roosevelt’s hands and feet were ice cold, but he was still breathing. Smelling salts were administered but FDR was unresponsive. As the doctor and aides tried to help the President, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd and Elizabeth Shoumatoff recognized the hopelessness of the situation. They also recognized the potential scandal that was possible if it was learned that the President collapsed in the presence of his longtime mistress.

Shoumatoff packed up all of her paints and the unfinished portrait she had been working on. Lucy Mercer grabbed her belongings and took one last look at her beloved Franklin. He was still alive when they left, but he was breathing laboriously and his eyes no longer recognized Lucy. Lucy and Elizabeth Shoumatoff had been on the highway back to Aiken, South Carolina for an hour when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died in Warm Springs at 3:35 PM. The official cause of death was a cerebral hemorrhage. FDR was 63 years old.

Eleanor Roosevelt was notified of her husband’s death a few minutes after 4:00 PM. She summoned Vice President Harry Truman to the White House while he was having a drink at the U.S. Capitol with House Speaker Sam Rayburn. Truman wasn’t told why he needed to hastily come to the White House, but he knew it sounded urgent. As Truman left the Capitol, he ran into a young Congressman who questioned the Vice President about his speedy exit -- a young Congressman named Lyndon Johnson.

At the White House at 5:30 PM, Eleanor Roosevelt broke the news to the Vice President simply a directly: “Harry, the President is dead.” Truman was stunned and asked what he could do for the widowed First Lady. Eleanor smiled sadly and asked, “Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trouble now.” At 7:00 PM, Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone administered the Oath of Office to Truman as the 33rd President of the United States.

By that time, Eleanor was on her way to Warm Springs to claim her husband’s body. At about midnight, she arrived at the Little White House in Georgia where she asked about her husband’s last hours. It was then that she learned news almost as shocking as the President’s death. Eleanor found out that FDR had been with his former mistress Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd when he was stricken. She spent 45 minutes alone with his body, picked out the clothing for his burial, but never lost her composure despite the shocks that she experienced that day.

A funeral train returned FDR’s body to Washington, D.C. the next day. Roosevelt was embalmed by morticians who found that the President’s arteries were so hardened that they could barely inject the embalming fluid into his body. FDR’s body laid in state in the East Room of the White House almost 80 years to the day that Abraham Lincoln’s body rested in the very same place following his assassination. On the 80th anniversary of Lincoln’s death -- April 15, 1945 -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt was buried in the garden of his beloved estate Hyde Park on the Hudson River in New York. Upon his death, the New York Times wrote of the deceased President:

“Men will thank God on their knees a hundred years from now that Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House. It was his hand, more than that of any other single man, that built the great coalition of the United Nations. It was his leadership which inspired free men in every part of the world to fight with greater hope and courage. Gone is the fresh and spontaneous interest which this man took, as naturally as he breathed air, in the troubled and the hardships and the disappointments and the hopes of little men and humble people.”

Elizabeth Shoumatoff’s Unfinished Portrait of President Roosevelt -- which she was working on when he died -- now hangs in the Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia.

#History #Franklin D. Roosevelt #FDR #President Roosevelt #Warm Springs #FDR Library #Death of Franklin D. Roosevelt #Presidents #Elizabeth Shoumatoff

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 years ago

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

August 1, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

August 1, 2021 (Sunday)

Last Sunday, educator and civil rights leader Dr. Robert Parris Moses died at 86.

Born in New York City in 1935, the son of a homemaker and a janitor, Moses was working on a PhD at Harvard when his parents’ health brought him back to New York City. There, he began to teach math in 1958.

In 1960, images of Black Americans in the South picketing for their rights “hit me powerfully, in the soul as well as the brain,” he later said. He moved to Mississippi and began to work with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced “snick”). In 1961, he began to direct SNCC’s Mississippi Project to promote voter registration in Mississippi, where, although about 40% of the state’s population was Black, most Black Americans had been frozen out of the polls through poll taxes, subjective literacy tests, and violence. In his quest to get people registered to vote, Moses endured attacks from thugs wielding knives, white supremacists wielding guns, and law enforcement officers wielding power. He earned a reputation for being quiet and calm in times that were anything but.

By 1964, Moses was one of the key leaders in the effort to register Black voters in Mississippi. In April, working with Fannie Lou Hamer and Ella Baker, he helped to found the integrated Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to challenge Mississippi’s all-white Democratic Party.

That summer, Moses led the Freedom Summer Project to bring together college students from northern schools to work together with Black people from Mississippi to educate and register Black voters. On June 21, just as the project was getting underway, Ku Klux Klan members working with local law enforcement officers murdered three organizers outside Philadelphia, Mississippi: James Chaney, from Mississippi, and Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner from New York. The white supremacists buried the bodies in an earthen dam that was under construction. When the men disappeared, Moses told the other organizers that no one would blame them for going home. His quiet leadership inspired most of them to stay.

On August 4, investigators found the bodies of the three missing men. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party met on August 6 and decided to challenge the Mississippi Democratic Party to represent the state at the Democratic National Convention. And yet, when the Democratic National Convention met, the Democratic National Committee leaders and President Lyndon B. Johnson chose to recognize the all-white Democratic Party rather than the integrated ticket of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.

At the end of 1964, Moses resigned from his leadership position in Mississippi, worried that his role had become "too strong, too central, so that people who did not need to, began to lean on me, to use me as a crutch." Key to Moses’s leadership was that he did not want to be out front; he wanted to empower others to take control of their own lives.

Civil rights historian Taylor Branch told reporter Julia Cass in a story Mother Jones published in 2002: “Moses pioneered an alternative style of leadership from the princely church leader that [the Reverend Martin Luther] King [Jr.] epitomized…. He was the thoughtful, self-effacing loner. He is really the father of grassroots organizing—not the Moses summoning his people on the mountaintop as King did, but, ironically, the anti-Moses, going door-to-door, listening to people, letting them lead.”

Moses was disillusioned when the Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party did not win the right to represent the state in the Democratic National Convention. For all the work that individual sharecroppers and hairdressers and housewives had done in Mississippi, national leaders had let them down. “You cannot trust the system,” he said in 1965. “I will have nothing to do with the political system any longer.”

Moses turned to protesting the Vietnam War. He and his wife, Janet, moved to Tanzania when he was drafted despite being five years over the cutoff age. After 8 years in Africa, the Moses family moved back to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Moses resumed his doctoral work in the philosophy of mathematics.

Back in America, Moses turned his philosophy of empowerment to the schools, advancing the idea that mathematical literacy is central to the ability of young people to participate in the twenty-first-century economy. In the 1980s, he launched The Algebra Project to give young Americans access to higher mathematics. “I believe that the absence of math literacy in urban and rural communities throughout this country is an issue as urgent as the lack of registered Black voters in Mississippi was in 1961,” he wrote. “In the 1960s, we opened up political access…. The most important social problem affecting people of color today is economic access, and this depends crucially on math and science literacy, because the American economy is now based on knowledge and technology, not labor.”

Moses’s focus on empowerment and self-determination was very much in keeping with the original concept of American democracy.

And yet, his efforts, along with those of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, to turn to national politicians to cement gains at the grass roots were not in vain. In 1965, Congress passed and Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, protecting the rights of Black Americans to vote, focusing on states with historical voter suppression.

Just fifteen years later, in 1980, Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan spoke at Philadelphia, Mississippi, where he defended state’s rights, and the unwinding of the civil rights advances of the post–World War II years began.

Now, in 2021, we seem to be headed back to the one-party society Moses fought. In response to record voter turnout in the 2020 election, 18 states have passed 30 new laws that make it harder to vote. At the same time, Republican-dominated legislatures are gathering into their own hands the power to override the voters.

In Louisiana on Friday, Republican House Speaker Clay Schexnayder removed three Democrats and one unaffiliated member from committee leadership positions in retaliation for their unwillingness to override the Democratic governor’s veto of a bill banning transgender girls from participating in school sports. They will be replaced by Republicans.

In Georgia, legislators have begun the process of transferring control of the elections in Fulton County, one of the most reliably Democratic counties in the nation, from county officials to Republican state officials.

Public schools are also under attack, with Republicans threatening to cut funding to schools that require masks to stop the spread of coronavirus or that teach “divisive concepts” that make students uncomfortable, usually topics that involve race.

Republican lawmakers have proposed attaching funding to students rather than to schools, enabling parents to use tax dollars to enroll their children in private schools. This sounds like a revival of the all-white “segregation academies” that sprang up in the South after the Supreme Court required desegregation of public schools. Those academies, funded with public money, were so successful that, according to Professor Noliwe Rooks, an Americanist who specializes in issues of race and education and who chairs the Africana Studies department at Brown University, in 1974, 3,500 academies in the South enrolled 750,000 white children. As white students left the public schools, funds available to educate the many Black and few white children left behind fell drastically.

Unequal educational options were hallmarks of the one-party state systems Moses worked to undermine. When he explained The Algebra Project, Moses called the historically limited educational opportunities for Black children in America “sharecropper schooling.” “[Y]ou went through it, but your options were you were going to chop and pick cotton or do domestic work….”

In 1965, Congress and the president finally recognized that all the organizing in the world couldn’t overcome the apparatus of a rigged system. They used the power of the federal government to turn the work of individuals like Bob Moses, scholar and visionary, organizer and teacher, into the law of the land.

But watching the turbulence in American life last year, Moses warned that the nation “can lurch backward as quickly as it can lurch forward.”

—-

Notes:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2002/05/moses-factor/

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/25/us/bob-moses-dead.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/17/us/george-floyd-protests.html

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-july-2021

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/08/trump-schools-reopening-federal-funding-352311

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/28/opinion/cindy-hyde-smith-mike-espy-senate-mississippi.html

https://apnews.com/article/louisiana-8eaa96bcc646a118a70b95a06994c2d3

https://www.ajc.com/politics/capitol-recap-georgia-moves-closer-to-takeover-of-fulton-elections/O2ZVJZ3NKRD7HP5QHTSBIXUQ34/

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#political #biography #Civil Rights #history #Heather Cox Richardson #Letters From An American #corrupt GOP #criminal GOP

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newstfionline · 4 years ago

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Monday, January 18, 2021

Post Trump, Republicans Are Headed for a Bitter Internal Showdown (NYT) As President Trump prepares to leave office with his party in disarray, Republican leaders including Senator Mitch McConnell are maneuvering to thwart his grip on the G.O.P. in future elections, while forces aligned with Mr. Trump are looking to punish Republican lawmakers and governors who have broken with him. The friction is already escalating in several key swing states. They include Arizona, where Trump-aligned activists are seeking to censure the Republican governor they deem insufficiently loyal to the president, and Georgia, where a hard-right faction wants to defeat the current governor in a primary election.

The wrong ID (Washington Post) As a violent mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, retired Chicago firefighter David Quintavalle was about 700 miles away, shopping at an Aldi grocery store for the final ingredients for his wife’s birthday dinner. The 63-year-old’s mind was on the menu—filet mignon and lobster—and not insurrection. But a man resembling Quintavalle with salt-and-pepper hair and a “CFD”-labeled beanie was among the rioters. In a video, the man pelted police with a fire extinguisher, striking at least one officer. In the days following the attack, Internet sleuths who have hunted down those who participated in the Jan. 6 riot mistook the man for Quintavalle. Soon, people were calling Quintavalle’s cell and home phone, harassing his son, a Chicago police officer with the same name, and lurking outside Quintavalle’s home. Online amateur investigators have identified and shared information on social media about people in photos and videos at the Capitol, leading to a portion of the more than 100,000 tips submitted to the FBI. The hurried pace of new information has also increased the dissemination of incorrect names and targeting the wrong people. The victims of such false accusations include martial artist and actor Chuck Norris. A photo circulated online of his doppelganger among those storming the Capitol. The baseless speculation was shot down by his manager. Federal authorities allege the man who threw the fire extinguisher is Robert Lee Sanford Jr., 55, a recently retired firefighter from Chester, Pa. But Quintavalle still receives hateful calls and messages calling him a “murder” and “terrorist.” A police officer is stationed outside Quintavalle’s home for his safety.

Pre-inauguration jitters (Washington Post) The nation is holding its breath as state capitals around the country brace for possible violence in the coming days. State officials are activating National Guard troops and closing off Capitol grounds in response to F.B.I. warnings that armed protesters and far-right groups are preparing to act in the days leading up to President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration on Wednesday. Law enforcement officials are vetting hundreds of potential airplane passengers and beefing up airport security. Federal officials say a militarized “green zone” in downtown Washington is necessary to prevent an attack from domestic extremists. Because of security concerns and the pandemic, Inauguration Day will be more subdued than usual.

U.S. pundits keep comparing Washington to a war zone. People who know war disagree. (Washington Post) A massive security operation is underway in Washington ahead of President-elect Biden’s inauguration on Wednesday, two weeks after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol. As images of National Guard troops circulate online, some in the United States have compared the capital to a war zone. The commentary has drawn pushback from people who have lived or worked in areas actually beset by conflict, who say such remarks are misleading and trivializes the reality of war. “It’s extremely degrading to people who have actually lived through war and foreign occupation and have actually seen tanks rolling down their streets and foreign soldiers occupying their land or their own soldiers deployed against them,” said Jasmine el-Gamal, a former Pentagon adviser who worked in Iraq as a translator following the U.S. invasion in 2003. “That’s a conflict situation. That’s a war zone.” Faysal Itani, an adjunct professor of Middle East politics at George Washington University, called conditions in Washington “qualitatively different” from conflicts in places like Lebanon, where he is from, and elsewhere in the Middle East. Americans, Itani said, often view their country in one of two modes: “It’s either a pristine place … that somehow functions according to different rules” than the rest of the world, “or it turns out it’s imperfect and we’re back in Baghdad.”

Biden Seeks Quick Start With Executive Actions and Aggressive Legislation (NYT) President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., inheriting a collection of crises unlike any in generations, plans to open his administration with dozens of executive directives on top of expansive legislative proposals in a 10-day blitz. Mr. Biden’s team has developed a raft of decrees that he can issue on his own authority after the inauguration on Wednesday to begin reversing some of President Trump’s most hotly disputed policies. On his first day in office alone, Mr. Biden intends a flurry of executive orders that will be partly substantive and partly symbolic. They include rescinding the travel ban on several predominantly Muslim countries, rejoining the Paris climate change accord, extending pandemic-related limits on evictions and student loan payments, issuing a mask mandate for federal property and interstate travel and ordering agencies to figure out how to reunite children separated from families after crossing the border. The blueprint of executive action comes after Mr. Biden announced that he will push Congress to pass a $1.9 trillion package of economic stimulus and pandemic relief, signaling a willingness to be aggressive on policy issues.

Leaders in Mexico and Poland look to curb power of social media giants after Trump bans (Washington Post) In the aftermath of President Trump’s banishment from social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter, a handful of world leaders have expressed alarm over the power of private companies to decide if and when to ban elected leaders from key parts of the public arena. At least two ruling governments—on the left wing in Mexico and the right in Poland—have since suggested pursuing policies to prevent what happened to Trump. In Mexico, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Thursday in a daily briefing shared on social media that his government would reach out to other G-20 nations to seek a joint proposal on such bans, which he compared to the “Spanish Inquisition.” In Poland, meanwhile, the conservative-led government is pushing a draft “Freedom of Speech” law, first announced last month, that would regulate speech restrictions on social media. Without mentioning Trump, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki likened the power of the social media companies to state control in the country during the Communist era. Sebastian Kaleta, Poland’s deputy minister of justice, said in an interview this week that the Trump bans “could even be called censorship.”

Mexico’s female vigilantes (NY Post) The Michoacan area of Mexico has gotten so lawless, a band of female vigilantes are taking it upon themselves to protect their friends and family. The state, which is the world’s largest supplier of avocados and limes, has recently been overrun by the violent Jalisco drug cartel that hail from the neighboring state and so the women are fighting back, according to The Associated Press. The women carry assault rifles and post roadblocks, often while pregnant or carrying small children with them, to combat the growing homicide levels, which have skyrocketed since 2013. The majority of the women have lost family members to the cartel, like Blanco Nava who told the AP her son Freddy Barrios, a 29-year old lime picker, was kidnapped by presumed Jalisco cartel gunmen in pickup trucks; she has never heard from him since. “We are going to defend those we have left, the children we have left, with our lives. We women are tired of seeing our children, our families disappear. They take our sons, they take our daughters, our relatives, our husbands.” It is left to the women to fight as most men are being carted away to work for the cartels (willingly or not). The vigilantes say they have to resort to these tactics as the government and police fail to do so.

Guatemala cracks down on migrant caravan bound for United States (Reuters) Guatemalan authorities on Saturday escalated efforts to stop thousands of Hondurans, many of them families with children, traveling in a migrant caravan bound for the United States just as a new administration is about to enter the White House. Between 7,000 and 8,000 migrants have entered Guatemala since Friday, according to Guatemala’s immigration authority, fleeing poverty and violence in a region battered by the pandemic and back-to-back hurricanes in November. Videos seen by Reuters showed Guatemalan security forces clashing with a group of hundreds of migrants who managed to break through a police blockade at the village of Vado Hondo, near Chiquimula in eastern Guatemala. Between Friday and Saturday, Guatemala had sent back almost 1,000 migrants entering from Honduras, the government said, as the caravan moved towards Mexico.

England Isn’t Listening to Johnson’s Lockdown Orders Any More (Bloomberg) People across England are about to be hit with a deluge of new government adverts on television, radio and social media containing one blunt demand: Stay at home. It’s a familiar message—and that may be why the public seems to be shrugging it off. The data shows Britons are far more active during the current third national lockdown than when the first emergency “stay at home” order was given last spring. There’s more traffic on the roads, more people on trains and more shoppers making trips out. The picture is not unique to the U.K. Elsewhere in Europe, people have grown tired of wave after wave of restrictions. What makes England different is that even from the start, the messaging was mixed from a government that was reluctant to curb people’s liberties. In Spain and Italy, which imposed harsh lockdowns from the beginning, entire families became accustomed to living with life-altering restrictions. In Madrid and Milan, everyone wears a mask outside, and children must wear them at school. In London, face coverings outdoors are still optional. But in recent surveys people insist they are still following the rules. Stephen Reicher, a U.K. government adviser and professor of social psychology at the University of St Andrews, dismissed the concept of lockdown “fatigue” as a way for the authorities to shift the blame onto the public.

Switzerland to Hold Referendum on Covid-19 Lockdown (WSJ) Switzerland’s system of direct democracy will be put to the test again later this year, this time with a referendum on whether to roll back the government’s powers to impose lockdowns and other measures to slow the Covid-19 pandemic. The landlocked Alpine nation of 8.5 million people is unusual in providing its people a say on important policy moves by offering referendums if enough people sign a petition for a vote. Last year, Swiss voted on increasing the stock of low-cost housing, tax allowances for children and hunting wolves. The idea is to provide citizens a check on the power of the federal government, and it is a throwback to the fiercely independent patchwork of cantons, or districts, that were meshed in the medieval period. Now, the country is set for a referendum on whether to remove the government’s legal authority to order lockdowns and other pandemic restrictions after campaigners submitted a petition of some 86,000 signatures this week—higher than the 50,000 required—triggering a nationwide vote to repeal last year’s Covid-19 Act. The ballot could come as soon as June, and it appears set to mirror disputes in the U.S. and elsewhere over how far governments should go to limit social interactions in a pandemic—or whether to lock down at all.

Gunmen kill two female Supreme Court judges in Afghanistan (Reuters) Unidentified gunmen killed two female judges from Afghanistan’s Supreme Court on Sunday morning, police said, adding to a wave of assassinations in Kabul and other cities while government and Taliban representatives have been holding peace talks in Qatar. Government officials, journalists, and activists have been targeted in recent months, stoking fear particularly in the capital Kabul. The Taliban has denied involvement in some of the attacks, but has said its fighters would continue to “eliminate” important government figures, though not journalists or civil society members.

Israel OKs hundreds of settlement homes in last-minute push (AP) Israeli authorities on Sunday advanced plans to build an additional 780 homes in West Bank settlements, an anti-settlement monitoring group said, in a last-minute surge of approvals before the friendly Trump administration leaves office later this week. Peace Now said that over 90% of the homes lay deep inside the West Bank, which the Palestinians seek as the heartland of a future independent state, and over 200 homes were located in unauthorized outposts that the government had decided to legalize. Israel has stepped up settlement construction during President Donald Trump’s term. According to Peace Now, Israel approved or advanced construction of over 12,000 settlement homes in 2020, the highest number in a single year since it began recording statistics in 2012.

Starvation haunts Ethiopia’s Tigray (AP) From “emaciated” refugees to crops burned on the brink of harvest, starvation threatens the survivors of more than two months of fighting in Ethiopia’s Tigray region. The first humanitarian workers to arrive after pleading with the Ethiopian government for access describe weakened children dying from diarrhea after drinking from rivers. Shops were looted or depleted weeks ago. A local official told a Jan. 1 crisis meeting of government and aid workers that hungry people had asked for “a single biscuit.” More than 4.5 million people, nearly the region’s entire population, need emergency food, participants say. At their next meeting on Jan. 8, a Tigray administrator warned that without aid, “hundreds of thousands might starve to death” and some already had, according to minutes obtained by The Associated Press. “There is an extreme urgent need—I don’t know what more words in English to use—to rapidly scale up the humanitarian response because the population is dying every day as we speak,” Mari Carmen Vinoles, head of the emergency unit for Doctors Without Borders, told the AP.

Children’s Screen Time Has Soared in the Pandemic, Alarming Parents and Researchers (NYT) Nearly a year into the coronavirus pandemic, parents across the country—and the world—are watching their children slide down an increasingly slippery path into an all-consuming digital life. When the outbreak hit, many parents relaxed restrictions on screens as a stopgap way to keep frustrated, restless children entertained and engaged. But, often, remaining limits have vaporized as computers, tablets and phones became the centerpiece of school and social life, and weeks of stay-at-home rules bled into nearly a year. The situation is alarming parents, and scientists too. “There will be a period of epic withdrawal,” said Keith Humphreys, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, an addiction expert and a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama on drug policy. It will, he said, require young people to “sustain attention in normal interactions without getting a reward hit every few seconds.” Scientists say that children’s brains, well through adolescence, are considered “plastic,” meaning they can adapt and shift to changing circumstances. That could help younger people again find satisfaction in an offline world but it becomes harder the longer they immerse in rapid-fire digital stimulation.

#headlines #news

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phroyd · 4 years ago

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WASHINGTON — President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. prepared on Sunday to start building his administration, even as Republican leaders and scores of party lawmakers refrained from acknowledging his victory out of apparent deference to President Trump, who continued to refuse to concede.

With Mr. Biden out of the public eye as he received congratulations from leaders around the world, his team turned its attention to a transition that will swing into action on Monday, with the launch of a coronavirus task force and swift moves to begin assembling his team.

But more than 24 hours after his election had been declared, the vast majority of Republicans declined to offer the customary statements of good will for the victor that have been standard after American presidential contests, as Mr. Trump defied the results and vowed to forge ahead with long-shot lawsuits to try to overturn them.

While some prominent Republican figures, including the party’s only living former president, George W. Bush, called Mr. Biden to wish him well, most elected officials stayed silent in the face of Mr. Trump’s baseless claims that the election was stolen from him.

Mr. Biden did not respond to Mr. Trump’s attacks on the result, but he also was not waiting for a concession. On Sunday, he unveiled his official transition website as he prepared a series of executive actions for his first day in the Oval Office — including rejoining the Paris climate accord, moving aggressively to confront the coronavirus pandemic and restoring labor organizing rights for government workers — aimed at unwinding Mr. Trump’s domestic agenda and repairing the United States’ image in the world.

But Republicans’ silence suggested that even in defeat, Mr. Trump maintained a powerful grip on his party and its elected leaders, who have spent four years tightly embracing him or quietly working to avoid offending him or his loyal base. For many prominent Republicans, the president’s reluctance to accept the election results created a dilemma, making even the most cursory expression of support for Mr. Biden seem like a conspicuous break with Mr. Trump.

Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri was the most senior Republican to suggest that Mr. Trump had most likely lost and cast doubt on his allegations of a stolen election, but he stopped short of referring to Mr. Biden as the president-elect in an exceedingly careful television interview.

“It’s time for the president’s lawyers to present the facts, and it’s time for those facts to speak for themselves,” Mr. Blunt, the chairman of the Rules Committee, said on ABC’s “This Week.” “It seems unlikely that any changes could be big enough to make a difference, but this is a close election, and we need to acknowledge that.”

“I look forward,” Mr. Blunt added, “to the president dealing with this however he needs to deal with it.”

At the White House, there was little indication that Mr. Trump was dealing with it at all. As he played a second consecutive day of golf at his private club outside Washington, the president recirculated a groundless claim by Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House, who told Fox News, “I think that it is a corrupt, stolen election.”

Privately, the president’s advisers, several of whom have quietly been candid with Mr. Trump that the chances of success in any challenge to the election outcome were not high, had concluded they had little option other than to allow the president to keep fighting until he was ready to bow to the reality of his loss.

On Friday, a large group of them met with the president in the Oval Office to discuss the way forward, giving him a brutally honest assessment of his likelihood of prevailing. After another meeting at Mr. Trump’s campaign headquarters on Saturday, where political aides again laid out the small chances of changing the outcome of the race, Jared Kushner, the president’s senior adviser and son-in-law, asked the group to go to the White House to outline it for Mr. Trump, according to people briefed on the meeting.

Campaign officials continued to discuss their legal strategy for challenging the election results on Sunday and named Representative Doug Collins of Georgia, who lost his bid for a Senate seat on Tuesday, to lead their recount effort in the state.

On his first full day as president-elect, Mr. Biden kept a low profile, emerging publicly only to attend Mass, as he does most Sundays. Afterward, he visited the cemetery where his son Beau; his first wife, Neilia; and their daughter, Naomi, are buried. In a sign of one specific stylistic change coming to the White House, he also stayed quiet in another way: Aside from circulating a video posted by his presidential transition, he had not sent a single tweet by Sunday evening.

Leaders around the world sent their congratulations to Mr. Biden, underscoring the international community’s acceptance of the results, even by those who had cultivated close personal ties with Mr. Trump, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Boris Johnson of Britain. A few refrained, including the leaders of Russia and China, Vladimir V. Putin and Xi Jinping.

There were signs that Mr. Trump would come under increasing pressure to accept the election results. The nonpartisan Center for Presidential Transition, a nonprofit that assists in transfers of power between administrations, called on his team to “immediately begin the postelection transition process.”

“While there will be legal disputes requiring adjudication, the outcome is sufficiently clear that the transition process must now begin,” members of the group’s advisory board — including Mike Leavitt, the former Republican governor of Utah, and Josh Bolten, the White House chief of staff under Mr. Bush — wrote in a letter reported earlier by Politico.

“This was a hard-fought campaign, but history is replete with examples of presidents who emerged from such campaigns to graciously assist their successors,” they wrote.

Mr. Bush extended his congratulations to Mr. Biden in a statement issued after the two men spoke on Sunday.

“Though we have political differences, I know Joe Biden to be a good man, who has won his opportunity to lead and unify our country,” Mr. Bush said in a statement.

And a former member of Mr. Trump’s cabinet, Gary Cohn, also acknowledged Mr. Biden’s victory, tweeting his “congrats” to “President-elect @joebiden and Vice President-elect @kamalaharris.”

“With over 145M votes cast,” he continued, “both campaigns should be applauded for getting an unprecedented number of citizens engaged in the democratic process.”

The silence from most other leading Republicans cut both ways for the president. While it allowed Mr. Trump to continue the fiction that he had not lost, it also left him to battle against the election results without the full, vocal support of his party behind him.

Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, has declined to say anything since Friday, before the election results were known, when he released a generic statement encouraging officials to “count all the votes.” No member of his leadership team has either, apart from Mr. Blunt’s carefully worded statements on Sunday.

In a brief interview later Sunday, Mr. Blunt said a public vetting of the Trump campaign’s claims of fraud could help reassure voters on both sides of the election’s legitimacy.

“I think it is best for both the president and Biden to have as much information out as is possible,” he said.

At the same time, just two Republican senators — Mitt Romney of Utah and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — and a handful of House members had acknowledged Mr. Biden’s win by Sunday evening, while others were trying to cast doubt on the results.

“Every legal challenge should be heard,” said Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House minority leader. “Then and only then will America decide who won the race.”

Speaking on Fox News, Mr. McCarthy questioned why news media outlets had called the presidential race for Mr. Biden, who was leading by tens of thousands of votes in key battleground states, before learning the final results of contests in competitive House districts — many of those in deep-blue California and New York — where thousands of mail-in ballots remain uncounted.

“Why would you call the presidential race first?” he asked.

News outlets call races after analyzing returns and concluding the outcome is certain, and the results in the congressional races in which ballots are still being tabulated — all but a handful of them in states that Mr. Biden easily won — have no bearing on the presidential race.

Still, some Republicans were grasping for evidence of wrongdoing. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina urged Mr. Trump to refuse to concede and fight on. He acknowledged, though, that a claim he circulated over the weekend that a postal worker was said to have overheard talk of what he believed was corruption taking place at a facility in Erie, Pa., remained unverified.

“Do not accept the media’s declaration of Biden,” Mr. Graham, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said on Fox News on Sunday morning. He called the election “contested” and urged: “Do not concede, Mr. President. Fight hard.”

Those comments reflected the advice of some of Mr. Trump’s top advisers, chiefly Rudolph W. Giuliani, his personal lawyer, who were urging him on Sunday to continue to fight the results.

A remarkably small number of Republicans called for the country to move on and acknowledged Mr. Biden’s victory. Among them were three governors of blue states — Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, Larry Hogan of Maryland and Phil Scott of Vermont — and fewer than a dozen House Republicans.

They included the centrist Representatives Tom Reed of New York and Fred Upton of Michigan; Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who has been an outspoken critic of Mr. Trump; and four lawmakers who will not be returning to Congress next year: Representatives Paul Mitchell of Michigan, Will Hurd of Texas and Francis Rooney of Florida, who are retiring, and Representative Denver Riggleman of Virginia, who lost his primary this year.

Representative Don Young of Alaska, whose race remains undecided after a re-election bid that was more difficult than expected, said he wished “the president-elect well in what will no doubt be the most challenging chapter of his political career.”

“It is time to put the election behind us, and come together to work for a better tomorrow for our nation,” Mr. Young said in a statement.

On “Fox News Sunday,” Mr. Romney provided a contrast to many of his Republican colleagues. He said that he believed it was “appropriate” for Mr. Trump to pursue recounts and legal challenges in certain battleground states, but cautioned against widespread condemnations of the American system of elections.

“It’s important for the cause of democracy and freedom that we don’t allege fraud and theft and so forth, unless there’s very clear evidence of that,” Mr. Romney said. “To date, that evidence has not been produced.”

Mr. Romney noted that he had had a legal team ready to challenge the results of the 2012 election when he was the Republican nominee, but decided not to go forward once he saw such efforts would be futile.

“At some point, truth, freedom and democracy have to ascend,” he said, “and you step aside.”

Phroyd

#trump #biden #transition

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latristereina · 5 years ago

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UNDERRATED RELATIONSHIP/PARTNERSHIP/FRIENDSHIP MEME 7/?: my pick: Juana Enríquez & Juan II of Aragon

The marriage of Juana Enríquez and don Juan of Aragon and Navarre was a political union, derived from a simple political expedience: the necessity to tight the bond between the adversaries of powerful don Álvaro de Luna (who, in fact, ruled in Castile), since he had gotten back in John II of Castile’s good graces. Don Diego Gómez de Sandoval, count of Castro, acted as a go-between between the admiral of Castile (Fadrique Enríquez) and the king of Navarre (Juan of Aragon). Having arranged the marriage and having obtained the consent of Alfonso V of Aragon (Juan’s older brother whom he would eventually succeed), the future spouses got betrothed – they took each other’s hands – at Torrelobatón, on 1 September 1444, in the presence of the king and queen of Castile and the prince of Asturias (future Henry IV). The bridegroom was 46, the bride 19 years old. The age difference emphasized the political nature of the union. The wedding did not take place until 1447. There were two reasons behind this delay: firstly, Rome had to be approached for the dispensation, for there existed the fourth degree of consanguinity between the betrothed, and then, the disaster of the Battle of Olmedo (1445) happened, forcing don Juan of Aragon and don Fadrique to run off to Navarre. The bride, who was already known as queen consort of Navarre, found herself in the custody of John II of Castile, who had taken over Medina de Rioseco. She recovered her liberty on 1 May 1446, thanks to the intercession of future Henry IV, but on an express condition that the wedding with her betrothed would not be celebrated without the consent of the king of Castile. The fire in the village of Atienza, which was supposed to be a part of doña Juana’s dowry, caused another delay of the admiral's matchmaking plans. Finally, John II of Castile gave the desired permission, and the young Castilian woman could receive the wedding ring from the hands of her mature, Aragonese suitor, on 13 July 1447, at Calatayud. Then, the passionate affection stirred in the heart of the Aragonese infante that he bestowed upon his second wife during their married life. According to her contemporaries, doña Juana was a beautiful, intrepid and intelligent woman. She was "charming", according to her adversary, don Pedro of Portugal, although in the pejorative sense of this word: not a charming woman but a deceitful one. It was enough to win the love of her husband. He also showed her paternal affection, for she well could be his daughter. For don Juan she always was his 'little girl’, in the moments of intimate tenderness and in those of political drama.

- Jaime Vicens Vives, Historia crítica de la vida y reinado de Fernando II de Aragón

Although he relied on his lieutenants—Carles, his wife Juana Enríquez, and later their son Fernando—he was discerning and cautious. A complex and contradictory man who was loathe to share power, Juan was infamous both for his reluctance to work with the Catalan ruling elites and his shabby treatment of his son. Carles and Juan had a deeply problematic relationship owing to the father’s unwillingness to relinquish his claim to Navarre in favor of his son, and then disinheriting him in favor of his daughter Leonor, wife of Gaston de Foix. Tensions between father and son worsened when Juan married Juana in 1444, and many of the later political problems in the Crown of Aragon can be traced to personal problems in the royal family. Juan’s miserly attitude toward the Catalans and his son did not, however, extend to his second wife. He endowed Juana with similar powers to those possessed by Maria of Castile, and in many ways she was truly co-ruler with Juan. Throughout her marriage to Juan she was one of his closest advisers and most valuable allies, traveling with him throughout Navarre and the Aragonese realms. Juan relied on her intelligence and discretion, her prodigious familial, financial, and political connections in Castile, and her tenacious and formidable negotiating skills. In 1451 he appointed her Governor of Navarre with Carles, and the next year she gave birth to Fernando, both of which further deteriorated an already troublesome relationship. In 1458 Juan appointed Carles, then thirty-three years old, as Lieutenant General in Catalunya, where he proved to be enormously popular. Juan imprisoned him on trumped up charges of treason, and when he died of tuberculosis in September 1461, accusations of foul play surfaced, accusing not only Juan but also Juana of plotting against Carles in favor of her son, Fernando (1452-1514, later Fernando II of Aragón). But Juana was nothing if not intrepid and, no newcomer to politics, she shrugged off the personal attacks and succeeded Carles as Lieutenant General. She maintained an extensive court with separate chancery and treasurer, but without the judicial and legislative offices that Maria of Castile possessed in parallel with Alfonso’s Neapolitan court. Amid the turbulence and widespread civil unrest that erupted in the wake of Carles’s death, she suppressed opposition in the towns and countryside and secured support for her husband and Fernando. In June 1461, she negotiated on behalf of the Crown to moderate the anti-royalist Capitulations of Vilafranca del Penedés. Like her sister-in-law before her, Juana sided with the remenees, a position that made her highly unpopular with the city magistrates of Barcelona and the landlords. Unlike the six Aragonese queen-lieutenants who preceded her, Juana is noted for her active involvement in military actions, notably the early campaigns of the ten-year civil war. In June 1462, she and Fernando fled from forces led by the rebellious Count of Pallars and took refuge in a royal castle in Girona only to find themselves besieged for a month. She organized the defense of the castle and held the rebels at bay until Juan and Louis XI of France arrived with military support. Although not personally at the head of an army, she was a tough negotiator who rallied and helped organize and provision an array of forces in defense of the Crown in the Ampurdán, accompanied forces to Barcelona and into Aragón. She was a key negotiator in the treaties of Sauveterre and Bayonne in May 1462 that settled the succession of Navarre and allowed the French to occupy the territories of Rousillon and Cerdanya to France in return for military support. She was virtually prisoner, with her daughter Juana, in the castle of Lárraga in 1463. Hostilities worsened, the French, Castilians, and Portuguese intervened, and periodically the Catalans ‘deposed’ (most notably in 1462) Juan, Fernando (occasionally), and Juana. Her inclusion in this list, although a dubious honor, is a clear indication of her power and importance in the political sphere. After her release from Lárraga and as the civil war intensified, she turned her attentions to governing Crown realms as Lieutenant General from 1464 until her death in 1468. With Fernando at her side, and seeking to pacify the warring factions, she presided over the Cortes of Aragón that met in Zaragoza from 1466 to 1468. During this period, she traveled extensively throughout the realms in the midst of civil war, gathering troops and supplies, negotiating with military leaders while personally attending to the business of governing—collecting taxes, holding courts of justice, dealing with the church, managing Crown lands and her own patrimony. The war outlived her by four years, but it is fitting that her indefatigable work as co-ruler with her husband and as tutor to her son mark her as the last queen-lieutenant of the Crown of Aragon.

- Theresa Earenfight, Queenship and Political Power in Medieval and Early Modern Spain

#UNDERRATED RELATIONSHIP/PARTNERSHIP/FRIENDSHIP MEME #perioddramaedit #historyedit #women in history #men in history #juana enríquez #john ii of aragon #charlize theron #robert pugh

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blueishfood · 4 years ago

Text

Wind In Our Sails (Chapter 6)

Fandom/Ship: Maraudrer era in a Pirates of the Caribbean au! Jily, Dobby x Winky, Alice x Frank,

Summary:

James pondered at her question for a few seconds, he walked back to Remus and they whispered among each other while glancing up at Lily. She had just hooked a hand though the ladder and sat down on one of the ropes when James shouted back up to her; “You can have Sirius!”

“Me?”

Warning(s): a knife

Words: 2,1 K

A/N: A bit of backstory info

Chapter 5

It was Alice who had told the truth, Lily realized. Their eyes locked, Alice shrugged.

“How did you-?” Alice looked at Winky promptly, who in turn had the audacity to seem embarrassed. “Damn it,” -Lily stomped her foot to the deck with a thud- “you pirates can’t keep a secret for shit.”

In a split second of surprise James had loosened his grip on her, and Lily shoved her knee to his abdomen, a threatened look crossing her face.

Her secret was out.

She was cornered, and this, she realized, had just turned into a very dangerous situation.

As James stumbled back in recoil, Lily ran for the railing. The crew stumbled out of the way, no one thinking of stopping her. She climbed up the Jacob’s ladder, fear pulsating inside her. There was no way to go, nowhere to hide, and now he would kill her.

Her hat was gripped by the wind, she grabbed a hold of it, but it was already off. Lily placed the hat in her belt. Potter looked shell shocked, but now less angry than before.

“Come down Lily!” the Captain commanded firmly, “We need to talk about this.”

“I hold no value, my parents won’t pay you any bail and neither will he, so why don’t we just let this go and I can get off at the next stop.” Her voice broke at the end of the shout. Lily swallowed the embarrassment and hoped they didn't see her red cheeks.

“We can negotiate terms in my cabin.” Potter shouted up to her, waving for her to come down.

Lily laughed loudly and angrily.

“How do I know you won’t just kill me?” She tried to keep the fright out of her voice, but she knew that she couldn't stay in the ladder all week, and from the way he looked at her Lily figured she hadn't been entirely successful.

“Me?”

“You know he is dear to me. You will have him at your mercy while we negotiate.”

Lily blinked. That was not a smart move, but if he were so sure in his negotiation abilities, she would not stop him. She watched as Sirius was discarded of all weapons and pointed out the small knife by his waist which he reluctantly removed. With a sharp nod that she was certain they would not be able to see, she slowly climbed back down to the deck, hooking her arm over his shoulder, and placing her knife calmly against his throat.

“I thought I liked you, runt.” Sirius muttered, clearly upset with the deal his Captain had made.

“You do.” Lily said simply and smiled a bit at his chuckle.

Potter’s office was a mess, the charts and maps that last time she was there had been gathered on his desk, was now scattered all around the room.

“We don’t have to make this harder than it is,” Lily watched, calculating her words as James turned away from her. “All I want is to get off at the next port,” she paused, and clarified; “safely.”

“Impossible.” Lily turned her head slightly to the right where Remus stood and gave him a death glare. He had uttered the word like it was obvious.

“No, it’s not.” Potter was looking out the window, hands behind his back, but Lily knew he was listening. “You just sail me to port and drop me off.”

“That is not what he meant,” Sirius muttered. Lily placed her knife against his throat so he could feel the cold metal. Sirius shut up.

“I would do that.” Potters words threw her off, and he turned around quickly enough to catch her surprised stare. As fast as her hope had risen, Lily realized that the words implied something else entirely. “But I can’t ensure your safety.”

Lily scoffed, “Just tell your crew to back off.” Mostly she figured she could take care of herself. She was not afraid of the crewmembers, but if someone managed to corner her… Lily almost shuttered at the idea.

“I’m not talking about my crew.” He rubbed his chin and swiftly turned back to his charts, “Have you heard of the prophecy?”

“What does a prophecy have to do with this?” Lily asked, clearly unimpressed at the change of topic. James looked at her for a while before he sighed.

“There is a rumored prophecy going around.” He gestured for Remus who in turn dug through some papers. He pulled out a particularly worn one and started reciting the words.

“A commander of the sea shall arise,

to banish the darkness, they must pay the price,

Gold or silver will never measure

to the power of the sea, the greatest treasure

Crucial it is to know the lore,

the ancient goddess, holder of the seashore.

The briny deep, never owned by any man,

As a deity they shall rule beyond one lifespan.”

The two men looked at her expectantly. Lily lifted her eyebrows at them, wondering what they were expecting, “You believe that this commander is, what? You?” Lily saw the corner of Potters mouth raise in a smirk.

“No. Voldemort believes that this commander the prophecy speaks about is predestined to be him.”

Lily was more confused than ever. She figured the Captain was after some kind of ransom, or at least information on which ships to attack. Lily did not doubt that she unconsciously had taken notes of the ships coming in and out of town, she would know valuable information. It was the only reasons she could think of as to why he had not killed her by now. He could have shot her down from the Jacob’s ladder, but here he was talking about a prophecy and the cruel island king?

“What the hell are you on about?” Lily knew she was not in the position to talk like that. Remus were standing behind her; he could have his gun a centimetre from her cranium at this moment. But the Captain was getting on her nerves.

“He believes that you are the key to the power of the sea.” Potter was leaning back against his desk, watching her reaction. Lily blinked

“Me?” Lily’s train of thought stopped short.

“Yes, you.”

“That makes no sense.”

“You are aware that you were born out of wedlock?”

“No – I.” Lily tried to go through every conversation she ever had with her parents. Never had any unfaithfulness come up. She was the lady of El Puerto del Rey by blood. “That’s a lie.”

“It’s not.” Lily was startled to hear that Mad eye had slipped inside the Captains cabin. How he had managed to be so silent with that limp of his was beyond her. His staff went ‘thump, thump’ as he got close to her, and put a firm hand on her elbow. The message was clear.

To Potter’s great surprise, Lily reluctantly lowered her knife. Sirius stumbled away from her, not willing to spend another second near the fire headed woman.

“I knew your father once.” Mad eye hobbled to Potters desk, apparently taking it for granted that he could look at the papers. “A lady’s man, that one.” Lily shook her head, tears meekly springing to her eyes as her existence tumbled down around her. “Young, handsome..” Moody slumped down in a chair and took in Lily’s rattled appearance. “It never took anyone by a surprise when he claimed a child.” The old man gave a chuckle, and Lily was about to break down crying. “I figure you’ve got quite a few half siblings out there.” Wealthy men having mistresses had never been uncomon, but Lily could not have imagined her father…

“Enough, Moody.” Potter’s commanding voice sounded a little uncomfortable and more than a little angry. “Get to the point.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he waved at the air, as if swatting away a fly, “One day he left alone and came home with a baby girl.” Mad Eye gave her a long stare, and Lily understood that the baby was her. “That did take us by surprise.” He shrugged slightly, bending slightly to pick up a paper from the desk, “He claimed some, but never had he taken any home.”

“After many loud fights, his wife adopted her. The port was forbidden from speaking of her as anything but the daughter of the governor.” The chair made a groaning sound as he leaned back into it, gazing at the paper he had found. “But there was a curious little detail that few thought of.” Mad Eye tipped his head to the right as his eyes bore into her.

“Your father left with his ship and crew, they were gone for about a week, he came back with a child.”

“So what?” Lily huffed, annoyed that he was dragging out her messed up backstory, “He met up with the whore he had been seeing and she had birthed me in his absence. It’s not that much of a mystery.”

“The ship never docked.” Potter said, gesturing to a yellow tinted sheet that was pinned up on the wall by his desk. When Lily walked closer, she saw that it was written by her father’s first mate. “They hit a ferocious storm a few days after leaving and had to turn back. The whole crew swore upon it.”

“Some believed the tale of a sea goddess’s daughter that started appearing along the coastline.” Moody's ominous voice stated.

“Others,” Remus started while rolling his eyes, “figured he bribed the crew.” He lifted his eyebrows in Moody’s direction, his exasperation clear as day, but the older man did not bat an eyelash.

“Either way,” Mad Eye said, clearly ignoring Remus, “The prophecy popped up a few months later, and now the people of Slytherin Island believe that Miss Evans is the key to ruling the seas. What is true or false does is of no matter.” Mad Eye’s indifferent attitude itched Lily the wrong way, but she forced her irritation down.

“You don’t really believe this crap, do you?” Lily looked at Remus. The lean man tilted his chin upwards, choosing not to answer. Lily turned towards Potter instead, who was scowling a little at Mad Eye. “The tale is false. You clearly do not believe it, so why would you even care what happens to me?”

“I don’t” Lily wondered if it was her imagination that convinced her he answered too fast. “But if Voldemort gets hold of you, the whole island will follow him to battle.”

“Who are they even going to fight?” Lily asked. Even the British kept away from the island.

“He hates the Brits, but he hates us more.” Potter seemed uncomfortable even talking about it. “What was it he said when you were there, Wormtail?”

Once again, a man had managed to sneak inside the room without Lily noticing. The man was short and plump in a homely way. His hair was a light mousy brown, and he ruffled it as his eyes regarded her with careful consideration. She had heard some call him Peter.

“He’ll rid the sea of scum and rule the islands with a steady hand. He believes it is what Spain needs.”

“It’s weird how he hates pirates, considering he is one himself.” Sirius said, looking for a second like he wanted to laugh. Then he turned his eyes to the sea and his laughter died before it reached his lips.

“He is not.” Wormtail said, eyes flickering to the ground in between looking at Sirius, “They are merchants.”

“I think you’ve been spending too much time with those snakes, Wormy,” Sirius looked back at Potter and they seemed to exchange silent information, “I need some air.” While Peter followed Sirius out, Lily tried to go over her options. She did not have many.

“The easiest way to make sure he does not get to me would be to…” She did not finish the sentence, but they all knew what she was implying. Potter frowned by his window, and Lily remembered suddenly the drawing of her younger self. She glanced over to Moody, who was still holding the paper and she thought for a second that she glimpsed a face in white and grey.

“That is not our way.” He said ‘our’, but Lily felt the ‘my’ vibrate in her bones. It was not solid, the answer Potter gave, and where she wanted rock foundation she was rewarded with glass. Easily broken if she slipped. But death had not yet gripped her, even if she could have sworn she felt him breathing down her neck. Lily did not know if the answer made her feel safer.

“What would you have me do?” She asked, as Moody and Remus left the room as well. Potter was pacing, he did not look entirely sure.

“We are visiting our wizard at the next port,” he says finally, “he will know.” And he seemed so sure, it was hard to doubt him, had it not been for the words he uttered.

Lily almost laughed at the bizarre idea. “You have a wizard?” She snorted, looking at the Captain she might have feared once.

Potter chuckled, “It’s more like the wizard has a pirate crew.”

#jily fanfiction #jily #Harry Potter #harry potter au #jily pirate fanfic #marauders era #marauders fanfiction

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greetthedawn · 5 years ago

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AN:

I set out with the intention to write 6 chapters over 6 weeks. It turned into 16 chapters over 6 years.

I got Black Flag on my 17th birthday, and now at 23 it remains my favorite story, full stop. I'm ready to move onto other projects, but I know I'll come back to these characters in time. Never at this length or with this attention to detail, probably, but I'm pleased with what I've accomplished here.

At the risk of sounding Oscars speech-y, I want to thank you all for giving this story the support that kept me coming back to it time and time again. I'd also like to thank my college roomie who has been beta-reading and cheer-leading for me these past two years. I never would have finished this story in a vacuum.

I hope you enjoy this last chapter of Come With Me Now!

___________________________________________________

So give me hope in the darkness that I will see the light

‘cause oh that gave me such a fright

but I will hold as long as you like

just promise me we’ll be all right

___________________________________________________

Edward's final act as governor of his own little cove was to finally affix a proper headstone to his late wife's false grave.

He had delayed the task longer than he had originally intended when he had buried the box of her letters just over a year earlier. This was in part because he had grown rather fond of the grave marker Mary had fashioned from an old stool seat. The carvings had held up quite well in that time and it had individuality to it. The time had come, however, to leave Caroline with a memorial that would last in the absence of his care.

The date was October 1723. Edward and Mary had tied up their loose threads in the West Indies. The Assassins had finished shifting their base of operations to Great Inagua. There were no longer any pressing matters keeping them tied to the Americas, and their agreed-upon year had come to an end. The day had come to sail for England.

Edward had truly pushed off this task until the last available moment. Their crew – what men who had chosen to leave with them – were at the docks preparing the Jackdaw for the departure. Mary was in the manor giving each room a last comb-over to ensure they hadn't forgotten any necessary or treasured belongings in their packing. Meanwhile, Kenway was elbow-deep in the dirt with a trowel.

When the hole was reasonably deep enough to hold it firm, Edward shifted the tablet stone away from the tree where it had been propped up and lowered the bottom third into the earth. With a huff, he sat back on his knees to admire his work.

He reached out to brush his fingers across the engraving and muttered, "Two years, I promised you. It turned into eleven, but I'm leaving now. I'm coming back, and I'll come to visit you when I get there. That's a promise I'll keep. I do that these days… I'll find your real resting place, and I'll sit with you whenever I'm in Bristol, just as I have here beneath this tree the past year." He pulled his fingers back from the lines that traced out her name. "I'll see you so soon."

When he had finished repacking the earth around the new headstone, he rose, dusted himself off, and tucked the stool seat under his arm. He made for the house, taking in his lovely garden for the last time as he went. He was satisfied, on Ah Tabai's word, that the false grave would remain in place for as long as the Brotherhood held the cove.

He entered the main hall of the manor and was struck, as he always was, by the grandeur. His eyes fell over every painting and trinket he and his men had won on their travels and brought back there to adorn the walls of their base with. Every trophy, every scuff on the woodwork, every empty bottle told a story of a sailor truly living. He had built something out of this room, something he was proud of. Each of his finest deeds had come together in some way to scaffold what this cove had become.

Beyond the memories he shared with his crew in that house, it had been the cradle where his relationship with Mary had found its legs. She had been at his side when they'd taken the cove, had led him to the manor through the tunnel she'd found in its bowels. It had been in the office where she'd first urged him to the aid of the Assassins, at the docks where she'd invited him to Tulum, and on the patio where they'd finally torn down their defenses and begun to stitch their hearts into one.

He imagined, perhaps, that giving over guardianship of this cove and all its memories to his Assassin brothers would be a small glimpse of what he might one day feel when Jennifer was grown and married and starting a new life with a partner of her own. I cared for her. I watched her grow. I gave her what I had, and she turned it into something greater than myself. She has been my life's great joy, and now I trust you to treasure her the same.

He gave a bittersweet sigh, trailing his fingers over the rough, paint-chipped grain of the back of his usual chair at the head of the long banquet table. He allowed himself five long breaths to imprint the room in his mind's eye. Then, he left through the door opposite the one he had come in.

His heart smiled when his eyes fell on his wife. Mary sat at a small, round table in the sunshine just outside the door. On its surface rested two cups, a bottle of rum, and the journal that held her research and communications on Precursor artifacts. Her hair was tied up in her disguise as James Kidd, but she held herself as Mary. She had an easy set to her shoulders and mouth that told him she was relaxed, present in the moment, unconcerned about who was looking or how she was perceived.

"You didn't nearly forget that was locked in my desk, did you?" he asked, pulling out a chair for himself and gesturing to her notebook.

She offered him a warm smile and poured a drink into the empty cup, sliding it across the table. "I rather had a mind to keep it under lock and key 'til we were ready to sail." She shrugged. "It's too valuable to leave unattended on deck. It's a good job it didn't slip my mind though." She nodded toward the wooden grave marker he'd leaned against the leg of the table. "You bringing that along?" Her tone was amused.

He nodded with a humble grin. "I found it strangely difficult to part with," he answered around the rim of his cup. "Much like this here cove." He gestured generally with his gaze at the grandeur of their surroundings. He imagined their accommodations in London, once they'd settled, would be spectacular. There, however, in Great Inagua, he was a king, and a beloved one at that. He wondered if his heart would ever be graced by that feeling again, to be a leader among men alike in mind and purpose. He hoped he would, in some capacity or another. For all he knew though, he was leaving it behind on the docks.

Mary thumbed the handle of her mug thoughtfully. "I feel like I'm parting with Nassau all over again, though I didn't know that's what I was doing the last time I was there. I didn't know that was a final goodbye, the way I do now."

Edward nodded in mournful agreement. "I think I did. When Vane and I broke through that blockade with his fireship, there was something final about it. Perhaps I might return to the island, I had thought at the time, but our Republic, the community we had built with Thatch and Hornigold and all the rest, that had died the very day Rogers brought the King's Navy to our shores."

She reached across the table to give a reassuring touch to his hand that was picking at the grain of the wood. "At least we know this community here will stand long after we've left it to our stern."

He gripped her hand tightly in return and cast his gaze out over the valley below. From where he sat, he could just barely see the crosstrees of the Jackdaw and the rooftops of the trim shanties and huts of the village. The air buzzed with life and opportunity. The morning was late, and the sun shone high over the liveliness of his dominion. Its warmth was reflected in the pride he carried in his heart; no longer pride for who he was, but rather for what he had helped create.

A short distance down the patio, Assassins and pirates drank together at a large table by the banister. Smiles and friendly jests seemed to waft among them like a gentle breeze. For an endless moment, the scene shifted in Edward's eyes to one he had always dreamed of making a reality, but which had never borne fruit: his fellow devils of the sea, all gathered amicably at his manor, sharing a bottle with not a care in mind.

He saw Stede Bonnet, all draped in merchant's finery and smiles. The portly old chap had carried such a heart for adventure and contempt for domesticity, though perhaps piracy had not been the optimal way for him to explore those sentiments. Such a kind-hearted man had not deserved to meet his maker at the hangman's noose. Edward prayed, wherever his widow and children were, that they were well and remembered Stede fondly.

At Bonnet's side sat Vane. As brash and uncorked as he'd always been, Edward had truly liked Charles and counted him as a friend. The man had had a clever eye for mischief and malfeasance that he expected would not find its parallel in their lifetimes. That was how he wanted to remember Vane, and that was how he envisioned him at that table. His eventual madness and betrayal were long forgiven and forgotten.

The counterbalance to Vane's cockiness that had thrown Edward's life expertly askew was Jack Rackham's wildness. A true beast with a bottle, he'd been, and there was little love lost between them. So many evils of past years had been set in motion by that catalyst of a man. Edward could forgive him for all but that which had cost Anne and Mary so dearly. That grudge was not yet ready to die. Despite it all, Calico Jack had been an influential figure in Nassau and Kenway's youth all the same, and they'd shared more than a few jovial pints in the golden days of their pirate republic. He appeared at the table in Edward's mind's eye with the rest, his cheek propped on his fist and a tipsy, peaceful grin on his face.

His feelings about Hornigold, seated across the table, were perhaps the most complicated he held for any of his old friends. None of the men he'd killed before or since had cursed him with as many sleepless nights. He respected Ben, truly, in spite of how things had ended up. The mentor to his mentor, he'd been a man of true esteem and poise. He'd always been searching for something bigger, something more meaningful than even Nassau could provide. They'd had that in common. Regrettably, however, Hornigold had found it in the Templars. Edward knew his friend believed he'd found the answer to poverty, disease, oppression, all of it, and that Torres had held the key to prosperity for every man. Perhaps there was some kernel, some seed of goodness to the world their Order sought to bring forth, but Kenway was equally convinced that no mortal man could hold such a powerful key and not be corrupted by it. It was that corruption that had led Benjamin to his end on Edward's blade, but as the Assassin reflected on the days the old man had spent carefully training him to command the respect of his crew and fear of his victims, he knew he would only remember Hornigold in fond terms.

At Ben's side, he pictured Anne. Sweet, sweet Anne, with flowers in her hair and a confidence in her manner that the most lush and arrogant man in their ranks could never hope to rival. She'd been a perplexing blend of crass and elegant that had brought joy to all who were blessed to have known her. In truth, her death had rattled him to his core because he had truly thought her invincible against all the particular evils these islands had to bear. She'd been an angel in a hellhole and had not earned her fate. Her loss had been the final, great failing of Edward's greed and hubris. If he was cursed to live in a world where her absence echoed so loudly, he would do his very best to honor her with his life.

Bernard Kenway had been an outstanding father, as they come, but Edward had been a less than exemplary son. For the boy that he had been when he'd reached the West Indies, however, Thatch had been the father he'd needed. He saw him then, sitting at the head of the table where he belonged, just as he had sat at the head of Nassau. Edward still felt his absence in every room of important people. When decisions were being made, plans being laid, he often found himself pausing to give space for the gruff words of wisdom that would never again come. Fuck this world and fuck its gold, Edward thought, remembering his mentor's final words. You were always a hero to your men, Thatch. He and everyone he'd known and loved in the past decade would be forgotten by history as scoundrels and traitors, he knew that, but Jenny and any siblings she might have would be raised on bedtime stories of Blackbeard, the most fearsome and admirable pirate who ever lived. If his descendants knew the name, that would be enough. Edward Thatch deserved a legacy.

Mary squeezed his hand lightly, jarring him out of his reverie. She gave him a sad, knowing smile. "The ghosts haunt you too, do they?"

He nodded, blinking against the stinging in his eyes. The men at the table morphed back into their brothers and crewmen. "In every tavern. At every party."

Her gaze was sorrowful and understanding. "Any place where men are drunk and merry." She raised her glass a little higher before bringing it to her lips, a small, private toast to those lost. "London society could never appreciate the pleasures of frivolity as they did."

He tapped his mug to hers. "Of the things we're leaving behind, I think I'll miss them most of all."

"You don't think they'll follow us to England?" Her tone was sad, but unsurprised.

"They belong here. If we'd died a handful of years back, we'd belong here too. Our memories will go where we do, but their spirits will remain in these jungles." He paused for a moment. "Perhaps one day we'll join them." He was almost hopeful they might.

Mary smirked. "If we live long enough to come back here, I doubt I'll want to live long enough to leave twice." She stood, pulling him to his feet by their linked hands. "But until then, we're needed a long way from here. Come on now. It's time we're off."

Edward picked up Caroline's makeshift headstone and Mary pocketed her not notebook. Leaving the bottle on the table behind, they descended the steps toward the gate that led to town. He stopped them there to turn back toward the manor for a final time. He pictured the ghosts at the table once more, imagining himself almost able to hear Anne's singsong voice and Thatch's wheezing laughter on the wind. It would have been a privilege to sail away with any one of them, but he was taking the one friend he truly had to have at his side. That would have to be enough for this lifetime.

He turned and kissed his wife, long and gentle. "The only place I'm needed is wherever you happen to be."

___________________________________________________

So lead me back

Turn south from that place

And close my eyes from my recent disgrace

‘Cause you know my call

We’ll share my all

Now children come

And they will hear me roar

___________________________________________________

A small crowd had gathered on the docks for their departure. Their crewmen were saying goodbye to their loved ones, having a last cup of rum with their friends, pleading with their favorite dancers to stay in their arms just a moment longer and cry a little when they left port. A number of them, Edward knew, had intent to return after a year or two, but none seemed to be able to resist the sentimentality and celebrity of such a departure.

He and Mary made a point to stop and shake the hand of each captain in their fleet as they pushed toward the Jackdaw. At the gangplank of their vessel, Ikal and Glenna were helping load the last crates of supplies. Glenna gave them polite smiles but moved out of their way without a word. It was as warm of farewell as Kenway had hoped to receive. Ikal, in contrast, passed off the crate in his arms to another sailor in order to address them. Edward placed the stool seat on top of it as the man passed him to board the ship, intending to collect it later once he had his crew settled on the open sea.

"I wouldn't worry about her, were I you," he said with a touch of affection and a smirk about his partner. "She bears you no ill will anymore, though I doubt your absence will be greatly noted."

"I would expect nothing more," Mary laughed. She pulled him into an amicable embrace. "I'm glad to part as friends, truly."

"I am, as well," he agreed, releasing her.

Edward offered his hand, which Ikal took without hesitation. "I can never repay you for the service you did our family in helping to find Jennifer."

Ikal smiled pleasantly. "No, I don't suppose you can." With a last nod to Mary, he followed Glenna down the docks.

Edward and Mary exchanged an amused glance and boarded their ship. He greatly doubted they'd ever hear from that pair again.

The deck was all a bustle of activity as final preparations were made for departure. Massey darted in front of them, doing his best to chase the black and white cat that hunted their rats down below deck where it would not get under foot. Jenny toddled over to them, awkwardly carrying the fluffy gray tabby that loved Mary so well. The animal was nearly as long as the girl was tall, and it hung limply with its forelegs stuck straight out ahead. Its expression was unsettled but it didn't make any effort to wriggle free of her grasp. Edward had never met such a tolerant animal, though he'd still rather have a dog. Cats might be better mousers on ships, but wouldn't do much in the way of protecting an estate, he expected.

"What a wonderful helper you are! Thank you for catching that kitty!" he praised his daughter. Mary scooped the cat up and Edward bundled Jenny into his arms.

"Uncle Muh-see not help!" she pointed out, clearly amused by her babysitter's lack of success. She was all smiles that morning.

"No, he's no help at all, is he?" he encouraged, nuzzling his nose against hers, making her scrunch up her face and giggle.

A frazzled Massey worked his way back toward them after securing the first cat below deck. Mary passed the other off to him and it leaned into his embrace eagerly. "I don't suppose you'd stay on as our governess when once we've established ourselves in England?" Mary chided warmly.

The lad gave a playful huff. "As it happens, I've secured employment already." The news clearly excited him. "Bell's sister was recently married to an horologist's son in the city, and the family was gracious enough to offer us positions at the shop. We'll mostly be running errands, delivering clocks and the like, but I'm hopeful the old man will teach us the trade one day." He cast their daughter an affectionate grin. "We'll cross paths at the London bureau though, I'm sure, and I imagine I'll call on you often. Any chance to see the little Lady Jenny." The girl clapped at the sound of her name. She reached out her arms for him and Edward passed her over.

"Well, we're glad you're coming with us all the same," Edward patted Massey on the back as he and Jenny made their way to the upper deck. The young sailor nodded to Adéwalé and Ah Tabai as they passed on the stairs.

"It's hard to believe you won't be here tomorrow," Adé greeted his old captain with a firm hug.

"I'm in as much disbelief about it as you are, mate," Edward breathed.

"Have you decided on a heading?" his friend asked.

"Bristol!" he declared. "I've got some business I need to settle there before I can truly begin my life anew. Once we've finished, we'll find somewhere to settle for good."

"If the wind ever carries you to England, you'll have a warm bed and a seat at our table," Mary assured him as they hugged as well. "You need only ask. Both of you."

"I do not think our kind would be welcomed in such a corner of the world," Ah Tabai sighed. "but there will always be a home for you and your family in these waters if you find yourselves dissatisfied with the stillness of high society."

She smiled warmly. "I doubt either of us will ever be truly still. We'll keep that close in mind, though." She turned to Adé again and procured the small notebook from her coat. She pressed it into his hands. "These are all the notes I have from my communications with our brothers in the colonies. I've written ahead for you, so they'll know of my departure by now. They're chasing some fascinating leads on Precursor sites at the moment. I expect you'll enjoy the work."

He took the notes with a grateful nod. "Perhaps we're due for a meeting, too. I would like to see more of the Americas before my days are done." He clasped Mary and Edward by the shoulders, like he had when marrying them. "My dear friends, you'll write when you've safely landed. Understood?"

They smiled and nodded, hugging him together once more.

Edward turned to Ah Tabai and they clasped forearms in farewell. "Mentor," he started. "I must thank you. You gave me a final chance to prove myself, and I hope I've done justice to the faith you placed in me."

Ah Tabai laughed and held up his hands. "I cannot accept your thanks. In truth, I had given up on you, Edward Kenway. It was Mary who forced my hand, and I cannot say I am sad to see that her instinct continues to prove fruitful." He bowed his head. "Safe travels. May you honor the Creed, and may it bring you honor." He left them then, and Adéwalé followed him off the ship.

Mary and Edward waved them off. "I must say, I'll dearly miss his gravitas," he laughed. She rolled her eyes with a small smile.

Around them, the bustle was beginning to quiet. Preparations were largely finished and those who were not leaving with them began to disembark. The two of them moved toward the starboard side so as not to stand in the way. Men said their fond goodbyes as they passed. Edward knew each by name and did his best to etch their faces into his memory. He glanced over at Mary and could see by the set of her face that the weight of their departure was setting in for her.

Her hand went to her belt, settling on the ruby hilt of the dagger he'd gifted her so long ago, Venganza. Revenge. She pulled it free, balancing the weight between her palms, and looked at him. After a quiet moment, she said, "I don't need this anymore…" The words lingered on her tongue, like she was coming to grips with them in that very moment.

He laid his hand over hers. The steel between their fingers chilled his skin. "Then don't bring it with you."

She nodded and pulled back. Her fingers wrapped naturally around the well-worn leather grip and she paused, indulging in the sensation of its weight in her hand for a moment. Then she turned on her heel and pitched the dagger over the side of the ship, far out into cove. It sliced quietly through the gentle waves and sank, taking pains of the past along with it.

He set a hand on her shoulder and she sighed, seeming to release a weight off her heart. She looked back at him and there was new light in her eyes. "I'm ready now."

He smiled and led the way to the helm.

Jenny had settled to the right of the wheel with a toy. Looking at her then, Edward could scarcely believe he'd ever worried he might not love her. She had so much Mary in her, and a spirit uniquely her own. Every small thing she did or said was a marvel to him.

He was, for a moment, plagued by self-doubt, as he was more occasionally than he would have liked. The Atlantic crossing was not an easy journey. The life that waited for them on the other side was hardly safe, either. His mind went back to his argument with Mary on the evening of their marriage. A choice, he reminded himself, that was their agreement. In spite of his concerns, he could never quite bring himself to feel guilty for taking her away from the safety of the family that had once adopted her. He knew that, had she stayed with them and grown up as Maria Reyes, she would have known nothing but the easy and proper life he wished for her. A small part of him did mourn that loss for her. At his core, though, he must admit that he was still too selfish to truly regret taking it away from her. She belonged with her mother, and with him. In that sense, paired against that alternative, a choice was a blessing. A choice was enough. He couldn't wait to see what she would someday do with it.

"Captain!" Bell called, interrupting Edward's thoughts. The young sailor came to join them, Massey on his tail. "The men are ready to depart. Would you like to take the helm today, or shall I?"

Edward waved him off. "If this is the last time we'll steer the Jack out of this port, I would prefer to do it myself."

"You two go help at the mainmast," Mary suggested. 'We'll handle things up here.

"As you command, Master Kidd," Bell nodded. The set of his mouth was eager, excited. "We'll wait for your call." The two lads descended to their posts.

Edward huffed and tentatively curled his fingers around the underside of one handle on the wheel. He glanced down to his right palm and the long, white scar that ran across the skin there. It was the one Mary had given him when he had attacked her in his desperate panic at the Assassin graveyard, thinking her a ghost. The memory seemed so far away, though the mark was among the more recent that adorned his body. He pulled his gaze away from the thin, pale line and onto his wife at his side as she lifted their daughter to her hip. Jenny grabbed at the beads in Mary's hair – twins to those he still wore on his necklace – making her smile and shake her head to toss them around for the toddler's amusement. She noticed his stare as she did so and paused, giving him a puzzled look. He smiled back at her and touched his hand to her shoulder in their familiar gesture of trust and reassurance.

"I'm ready now too."

With a grin, she clasped his shoulder in return and glanced out over the deck. "Ready, lads!" she called out. "Loose all! Let's catch the wind!"

___________________________________________________

And the ghosts that we knew will

Flicker from view

And we’ll live a long life

___________________________________________________

Song: Ghosts That We Knew - Mumford & Sons

#CWMN Full Chapters #kiddway #edward kenway #mary read #james kidd

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unpeumacabre · 4 years ago

Text

my kingdom for a horse: chapter 5

the year is 1601, a messenger has been sent to dongnae, and he has not returned. lord cho-hak-ju advises the joseon king to send crown prince lee chang to dongnae to investigate, but the plot he unravels there threatens the safety of the entire kingdom, and the stability of the dynasty.

a rewriting of kingdom, and lee chang finds love.

Rating: Mature

Relationships: Lee Chang/Yeong-shin

Read on AO3 (bc tumblr might mess up the formatting + more extensive author’s notes on the story)

Count: 5k

<-- previous next -->

The people of Jecheon fall like wisps of paper before a firestorm. Lee Chang finds that for every monster hacked down by his blade, there are three more to take its place, and soon he feels his arms failing him and his hope fading fast. Beside him, Yeong-shin fights like a whirlwind unleashed; an unfailingly-fierce presence by his side, slashing and hacking at the monsters when his gunpowder had run out, and he hews down every monster who passes Lee Chang’s guard – but it is not enough. They are not enough.

Despite his dying hopes, still Lee Chang fights on. He remembers his promise to the herbalist, and he will carry it through to the best of ability, as long as there is breath left in his body.

“We must go to the magistrate’s court!” Yeong-shin calls to him. “To the magistrate’s court!” he roars, to the guards fighting alongside them. Lee Chang spies a mother advancing on her two daughters, cowering behind the pillar of their home, the door torn off his hinges and completely wrecked. He yanks the children to him and covers their eyes before severing the neck of their mother.

“Follow me,” he calls to the children, his voice rough as he steers them away from the corpse of their mother, so they do not see her body fall. The younger of the two sobs, and grips at his coat, smearing it with blood. Thankfully, they appear not to have been bitten, but the older has a large gash on her arm embedded with splinters, which requires looking at. Lee Chang grits his teeth and rips off the hem of his coat to use as a bandage.

“Your Highness,” snarls Yeong-shin from beside him, slicing off the head of a monster who lurches too close, “there are too many of them. We must make for the magistrate’s court, now!”

They sprint to the building, fending off monsters and rescuing whatever people they can. As the court comes into view, Lee Chang utters a yell of fury – the gates are blocked and barred.

“That coward of a magistrate,” he curses. “I’ll have his head – I’ll have their heads, the lot of them!”

Yeong-shin glances around, and wrenches a ladder sticking out from a nearby hut. He presses it against the walls and gestures frantically at it. Lee Chang scales the ladder. Suddenly a dozen arrows are pointed at him.

“You dare shoot the heir to the Phoenix Throne?” he bellows. “You do not fear divine retribution, or the annihilation of your entire family?”

The soldiers glance at each other, and back down despite the magistrate’s panicked shouting. Lee Chang glances at the gate; the men have shoved countless objects against it, and it will be a waste of time to attempt to dismantle the structure. He turns back to look down at Yeong-shin.

“The gate cannot be opened,” he cries. “Bring more ladders!” Yeong-shin’s eyes burn furiously into his, then he nods and darts away. Lee Chang hops down the ladder and grasps the two girls in his arms.

“Up you go,” he says quietly to them, and boosts them up the ladder. They disappear over the wall.

More people come to him, either citizens driven from their homes or guards who had been on watch. He fends off the monsters howling at their backs, while they scramble up the ladder. Similar scenes play out beside him, as more ladders are found and the remaining people of Jecheon who have not managed to wrestle themselves onto the rooftops, hurl themselves into the court of the magistrate’s offices.

In the middle of the fray, Lee Chang starts as he grasps hold of a familiar calloused palm, and he spins around to look into Seo-bi’s dear, beautiful face. He almost cries in relief, for in her other hand, she grasps Mu-yeong’s.

“I thank the gods you are here,” he says, feelingly, and grasps Mu-yeong’s shoulder in a moment of camaraderie. Mu-yeong gives him an answering grin, a flash of teeth - then back into the chaos and panic they go.

Finally, when it appears all the remaining people of Jecheon have successfully escaped – and, miraculously, none of them have been bitten – they hop over the wall and into the magistrate’s court. As Lee Chang’s feet hit the sand, his knees buckle, and he almost plants face-first into the ground.

A hand on his elbow stays him, and he returns to his feet with muttered thanks. Yeong-shin stays close to him, the tendrils of his hair escaping from his messy topknot, and his clothes flecked with fresh gore. Lee Chang knows he himself looks no better.

The gates buckle under the weight of the monsters as they attempt to break their way in.

“The gates!” a man shouts, and Lee Chang looks over at him. He bears the insignia of the captain of the guard. “We must hold the gates!” Lee Chang follows him as he sprints forward, along with many of the guards, and they brace themselves against the carts and furnitures and various other heavy items stacked against the gates.

“Oh, woe!” shrieks the governor of Jecheon faintly from somewhere behind them. “Jecheon is finished!”

“Jecheon is far from finished,” Lee Chang hisses, from between gritted teeth. “As long as there is still one man upright – one child alive – one home still standing – the spirit of Jecheon will never die. And neither will we, if we keep hope still in our hearts. Keep pushing!”

The barrier creaks and moans, and Lee Chang feels his body being pushed back. His every muscle screams at him in protest, and he feels his arms and legs begin to shake violently – yet still, he pushes on. The desperate cries of men and women and children alike echo around him, and the grunts of the soldiers frenziedly pushing alongside him, spur him on.

He feels a shoulder shove up against his, steadying him; a calm and stable presence. Yeong-shin stares determinedly forward, his palms braced against one of the carts, and his body as unmoving as a mountain. The strong lines of his profile are set aglow by the rising sun.

“We are saved!” one of the men shrieks. “The sun – it is rising!”

Cheers erupt from the company, as light streams into the city – cheers that are echoed by the people outside the compound. A smile is torn from Lee Chang, and he drops his head, feeling his heart burn with relief.

But the weight against the gates does not falter. And slowly, he begins to realise that there is something very wrong.

“The plant grows only in the coldest of valleys, and holds the key to undying life.”

The murmur comes from behind him, and it is in Seo-bi’s voice. As Lee Chang watches her, she turns her face to the sun, and the expression that forms there is one of utter terror.

“It was not the sun they feared,” she whispers, aghast. “It was the heat.”

At that moment, the gate gives an alarming creak, and there is a loud crash as one of the monsters’ heads bashes through the wood. It snarls and froths, its fangs an inch from Lee Chang’s face, and he freezes.

“This is untenable,” he hisses. “Without the sun to drive them away, we cannot hold out waiting for a false hope. We cannot hold the gate forever.”

“Then what else can we do,” Mu-yeong huffs next to him. “There is nothing else we can do!” And it is the panic in Mu-yeong’s voice – steady, fearless, brave Mu-yeong – which causes Lee Chang, truly, to fear.

“I regret not saying goodbye to my wife,” Mu-yeong says, and his voice breaks on the last word. “I told her I would not bid her goodbye, for I would soon be back – and I regret not being able to hold my son.”

“You will hold him in your arms yet,” Lee Chang cries. “I give you my word – you will see your son when we return to Hanyang. Do not lose hope, Mu-yeong – we will live through this!” Frantically, he tosses his head about, searching for a way to lead them through this madness. The unearthly groans and grunts of the monsters fill the air, and the cloying scent of rotting flesh rouses his gorge, but still he presses on. How can he not, when the lives of so many depend on him?

“Your Highness!” Seo-bi calls, and suddenly she is by his side, a torch in her hands. Their eyes spark with the light of the same idea, at the same time.

“Hold the fort,” he murmurs to Yeong-shin, “and keep Mu-yeong sane.” Yeong-shin answers with a grim nod.

“Magistrate Han!” Lee Chang bellows, as he turns from the barricade back to the cowering officials hiding behind him. The man in question shoots up like a frightened rabbit. Lee Chang looks with disgust at the tear tracks running down his face, and the snot that has smeared his expensive robes.

“Bring out your gunpowder and alcohol,” he commands sternly, and the governor blinks owlishly up at him, his mouth open.

“Now!” Lee Chang roars, and the man’s entire body shudders violently.

“Yes, Your Highness!” he squeaks, and looks desperately at the nobles gathered round him. “Well, what are you waiting for!” he shrieks. “Stand up, you lazy fools! Follow me!”

It takes them far too long to retrieve gunpowder and alcohol from their stores, and by the time they have heaved the barrels out, the barricade is creaking and groaning in protest. The men are kept busy slicing off various heads which have popped through gaps in the barrier, and stuffing the bodies back to plug the holes, but there are simply too many of them.

“Your Highness,” says the captain of the guard, with a quick bow. Lee Chang turns to look at him. “We must distract the monsters, for you to carry out your plan.”

“They are attracted to blood,” Lee Chang replies calmly. “The scent of blood will draw them off.”

The man’s mouth twists, and he nods shortly. He gathers some of the guards, and they ascend unsteadily to the top of the walls, over to the right. In tandem, they lift their blades and slice deep cuts into their arms. The blood drips steadily down onto the ground, and the monsters are driven into a frenzy. They congregate at the area of the wall stained with blood, tumbling over one another and gnashing their teeth at the men out of their reach.

Lee Chang grasps hold of the ladder on the other side of the wall, and readies himself to jump over. A soldier stands beside him at the ready, with a barrel of gunpowder.

As he is about to leap onto the ladder, a hand takes hold of him, and yanks him away.

“Are you mad???” Yeong-shin thunders, his eyes full of rage, and his nails cut into the skin of Lee Chang’s wrist.

“Someone must encircle them, so we may set them on fire,” Lee Chang says coldly, “and I would not ask any of these men to do something that I myself would not dare.”

“You are mad,” Yeong-shin says, in disbelief. “You are the Crown Prince – you must not die!”

“I do not deserve to live, more than any other man here!” Lee Chang roars. “What does my title mean here, when it is a matter of life and death? I will not sacrifice someone else’s life to carry out a plan which may result in death – a plan that I myself have advanced!”

Yeong-shin stares at him, for a moment, his eyes hard. Then Lee Chang stumbles and falls with the force of his movement as he jerks Lee Chang backwards, and bounds onto the ladder himself.

“Mu-yeong, protect him,” he says coolly, “and cover me.” And with that, he is gone. Lee Chang stares in horror up at the ladder.

The soldier tosses the barrel of gunpowder over, and there is a renewed chorus of groans and moans as the monsters become aware of a human on the ground with them. Lee Chang can hear them shifting, shuffling away from the blood on the walls to the right, and making their way towards the left, where Yeong-shin is.

The sound galvanises him into action, and he seizes the bow and arrow from a neighbouring soldier. Mu-yeong is already up on the walls delivering arrow after arrow into the heads of the monsters, and so Lee Chang scrambles hastily up an adjacent ladder. He sees Yeong-shin dragging the barrel, pouring gunpowder in a circle around the monsters, as they grumble in confusion, torn between the fresh blood dripping from the right walls, and the scent of human rushing round them.

One monster decides the latter to be more attractive to him, and makes a headlong rush for Yeong-shin. Lee Chang buries an arrow in its neck before it has a chance to attack, and the distraction buys Yeong-shin enough time to finish pouring the gunpowder, and toss the empty barrel at the monster. It hits the creature in the face, and bowls it backwards. Yeong-shin leaps towards the nearest ladder, and is pulled to safety by the soldiers.

Before Lee Chang even realises what he is doing, he has sprung off his own ladder, and his feet are carrying him towards where Yeong-shin is calmly reloading his rifle.

“Do that again,” Lee Chang hisses, “and I’ll kill you myself.”

“You’re welcome,” Yeong-shin replies, unfazed, and stalks away back to the wall. He aims, and fires, and even without looking, Lee Chang knows his shot would have found its mark. There is the boom of an explosion, and flames spring up and lick the air. A cheer erupts from the men inside the compound, and faintly from the people outside, on the rooftops.

“The alcohol!” Lee Chang calls, grabbing onto one of the barrels himself. “We must feed the flames!”

The soldiers answer his call, and they toss the alcohol over the monsters. It is soju, imported from Japan, high-quality wine with high alcohol content, and so it takes to the flame easily. The sounds the monsters make as they shrivel and burn to death are strangely anticlimactic – almost akin to that of a firework fizzling out in the rain.

And just as this thought comes to him, it does begin to rain. A light drizzle at first, then it comes down in droves. The streets run pale pink, the blood washed away by the rain, and the air turns crisp and clean. There is silence from below the walls as the monsters stir no more. Lee Chang closes his eyes, and the scent of burned flesh leaves his senses.

It is the beginning of a new day, and while the cold rain stings his skin, he is glad to be alive.

“Your lip is bleeding,” Yeong-shin murmurs, and the closeness of his voice startles Lee Chang; he spins around. Yeong-shin is standing behind him, his expression unreadable, but his eyes as intense as ever.

Lee Chang recalls his words, and wipes carelessly at his mouth. His hand comes off stained with red; he looks at it with a sort of detached surprise.

“You must have bitten into it,” Yeong-shin says, quietly, and makes an abortive movement towards him, before retracting his hand, and turning it into a sort of vague gesture.

“Thank you,” Lee Chang says, but he does not move to wipe the rest of the blood off. The wound smarts, but it is a reminder that he can hurt, he can feel pain – a reminder that he is alive. That they are both alive.

“I apologise for touching you, earlier,” Yeong-shin continues, and Lee Chang glances down to where there is a red ring round his wrist. He cannot even recall the pain from Yeong-shin’s grip.

He looks up, and catches Yeong-shin’s face tightening, before the man recalls himself, and his face is a mask once more.

“I did not mean to grip as tightly as I did,” Yeong-shin murmurs. “I apologise for my forwardness.”

“An apology is the last thing I need from you,” Lee Chang replies softly. “You saved my – our lives last night. This morning. A thousand times you have put yourself in harm’s way for me, and it would take me a thousand lives to repay you.”

A dull flush rises in Yeong-shin’s cheeks, and he turns his head away with no reply. Lee Chang looks for Mu-yeong and Seo-bi, and finds them huddled away with the wounded, tending to their injuries. Mu-yeong is nursing a large gash on his arm, but from the lack of haste in his demeanour, it is not from a bite, and so Lee Chang exhales a sign of relief as he realises that it is the sole injury marking either of their bodies.

Lee Chang stalks up to the magistrate, who is sitting in the corner of the court and greedily stuffing his face with mandu.

“You are not the first to bar your door to me, in the face of the monsters,” he says, and the man shrieks in surprise and cowers, the mandu falling to the ground and staining his pristine white shoes. Lee Chang looks at the blood staining the soles of his own, and Mu-yeong’s, and those of the guards who had held the barricade along with them.

“And the more I see of you cowardly officials, the more I realise that you will not be the last,” he ends, coldly. “Consider yourself dismissed from your position. I will deal with you when we are finished with the problem of the plague. You,” and he turns to the captain of the guard. “By the divine right invested in me as Crown Prince,” he says, imperiously, “I grant you the position of magistrate of Jecheon. Carry out your role well – and do not make the mistake of falling into the same company as this man.” His knuckles itch to bury themselves into the ex-magistrate’s face, but he clenches his fist, and restrains himself. The worm is not even worth the honour of his discipline.

“Your Highness,” Seo-bi murmurs from behind him, and she bows as he turns. “I have something urgent to tell you.”

“What is it?” he asks softly, taking her arm and guiding her away from the magistrate, who is now curling up into a fetal position and sobbing hysterically into the ground.

Seo-bi hesitates, then says, haltingly, “I saw Physician Lee Seung-hui earlier – he was hurrying out from one of the huts near the herbalist, and he left on horseback. I wanted to call out to him, but I was caught up in the confusion – night fell, then – and I didn’t manage to follow him. But how – Your Highness, do you know - ”

“I do not,” Lee Chang says, truthfully, “but he must be connected to the spread of the plague. It is too much of a coincidence that one of the few men who knows about the workings of the resurrection plant, was here when the disease was first spread. You must bring me to the hut from which he exited.”

“He – no, he couldn’t be connected to his matter,” Seo-bi says, the bewilderment clear in her voice. “He was an honest, selfless man – no, it is impossible for him to be the one behind the plague!”

“Dishonest, selfish acts may be committed by honest, selfless men,” Lee Chang says quietly, “for reasons they themselves deem honest and selfless. But I do not know enough on the matter, yet. We must hurry to this hut you speak of.”

Yeong-shin and Mu-yeong join them as they stride from the courtyard and head into the city. All around them, the sparse survivors descend from the rooftops, one-by-one. There are far too few of them left, and it is a bitter pill to swallow.

“This is the hospital the herbalist spoke of,” Yeong-shin says, as Seo-bi stops in front of a house with the roof partially-caved in. Half of the word ‘hospital’ can still be seen in the wooden sign hanging lopsidedly off the rafters.

“We were here just earlier, yesterday afternoon,” Lee Chang says, the realisation startling him. “I tripped over an old man in a straw hat. He was buying crockery at one of the stalls here. Could it have been - ” He looks at Seo-bi for confirmation, and she nods, her face grim.

Mu-yeong takes the lead, and walks cautiously into the house, sword unsheathed. It is empty and messy, and pallets are strewn over the ground, stained with blood. There is no one in the room.

They search the hut for traces of Lee Seung-hui, but there are none, other than a few bandages and medical supplies next to the pallets which have been knocked over.

“These are sanjoin, the seeds of wild jujubes.” She holds the reddish-brown pellets up to the light. “They are used to induce sleep, and cure insomnia. They are commonly found in any clinic – they tell us nothing.”

“Then this is another dead end,” Mu-yeong says, in despair. “What other leads do we have? It will be impossible to track down this person who is spreading the plague! We have no proof he is Physician Lee, and furthermore, he seems to always be one step ahead of us.”

“Not so,” Yeong-shin says suddenly. “The gates are staffed all hours of the day, and furthermore, they were barred yesterday after Your Highness ordered the guards mobilised. Both entry and exit was forbidden. If we check with the guards, we will know who entered and exited before the gates were closed.”

“And to spread the plague to so many cities in so short a time requires great expenditure of effort,” continues Lee Chang, looking at Yeong-shin. Yeong-shin answers with a short nod. “If it is indeed Physician Lee, he is an old man, and would not be able to ride as hard and as fast to the next city by now.”

“Then we must hurry!” Mu-yeong exclaims, and they rush out of the house. Seo-bi hurries after them.

“Your Highness!” she says, desperately. Lee Chang stops and turns to look at her. She wrings her hands anxiously, and her eyes are frantic. “My master would never do such a thing. He is selfless, and he would never willingly do anything to harm a hair on anyone’s head. He must – he must be searching for a cure. I am quite sure that he is not the kind of man to perpetrate such heinous crimes.”

“Even so,” Lee Chang says quietly, “He knows something about these incidents, and we must find him. You are right – it is too early to assume that he is the perpetrator, but still, we must find out what he knows.”

Seo-bi nods, her mouth twisting unhappily, but she accepts, and they catch up to the rest of the group.

They hear what they need to hear from the guards at the gate. An old man had indeed left right before the order had come in to shut the gates, and one of the guards remembered him quite well – he had been riding a grey horse which had looked worn and tired, and he himself had been hunched over as if in great fatigue. The guard had stopped him and asked after his health, but the man had assured him that he was alright, and had left in the direction of Wonju.

“We can still catch him,” Mu-yeong says excitedly. Lee Chang looks over at Yeong-shin. “You can track him?” he asks, and the tiger hunter nods in assent.

Before they leave, Lee Chang sends one last order to the new magistrate of Jecheon – to burn every single last body, and cut off their heads, then to bury them far away from any farm or water source to prevent contamination. Then they ride out immediately, following tracks that Yeong-shin finds.

It is not long before they track the horse’s hoofprints to the nearby forest. While it is merely the first day of winter, the snowfall is still deep, and the snow crunches under their feet. There is a small hut in the woods, dilapidated and rotting, but still sturdy.

“He must be in there,” Yeong-shin murmurs. “There is smoke from the chimney, and the tracks lead directly to its door.”

Lee Chang nods in acknowledgement, and they alight from their horses. Carefully, they make their way up to the front door, and Lee Chang knocks.

There is a hurried scrambling from inside, and the sound of bottles being knocked over. Not hearing any other sound, Lee Chang knocks again.

“Physician Lee,” he calls. “We must speak to you.”

There is no answer, and Mu-yeong sighs. Lee Chang steps aside, and Mu-yeong shoves his shoulder roughly against the door. It gives way, the wood creaking and shattering in protest, and Mu-yeong strides in, sword extended before him.

There is an old man crouching on the ground, arms wrapped around his knees and his body rocking back and forth. Mu-yeong sheathes his sword.

“Physician Lee,” Lee Chang says quietly. “Lee Seung-hui?”

The man lifts his face, and it is a haggard, emaciated one, the flesh worn off his bones, dark blotches under his eyes. It was a face that would seem as horrific as one of the monsters, were it not for the clarity in his pupils and the paleness of his skin. And yet his expression is placid, almost calm.

“I knew you would come,” he whispers, and his voice creaks and scrapes like worn wood. “I cannot bear this any longer. Oh, the things I have done…”

“Master,” Seo-bi says quietly, coming up behind Lee Chang, and at the sound of her voice and the sight of her face, the man’s tepid eyes widen, and his pupils dilate.

“Master,” Seo-bi says again, and she approaches him carefully, as one would a wild animal in a trap. She kneels down by him, and places a gentle hand on his shoulder.

“You know what has been happening with the monsters – who has been spreading the plague, or, at least, wherein the cure lies,” she murmurs. “Please, tell us. Many lives have been taken, and many more lives will be taken still, if you do not tell us what you know.”

Under Seo-bi’s hand, a subtle tremor arises in his limbs, and spreads through his limbs. His head drops, and the untidy strands of his hair fall forward to cover his face.

“I did it,” he whispers, and the admission echoes loudly in the silence of the room.

To her credit, Seo-bi does not flinch or show any reaction to his words, other than the pinching of her brows, and her hand stays gentle and steady on the physician’s shoulder.

“Why did you do it, Master?” she asks, and her voice has gone high and thin from her shock and bewilderment. “You swore an oath to protect and preserve human life. Why would you – to spread the plague – how - ”

“I – I had no choice,” he says quietly. “I was forced into this. I was given no other option.”

“Forced into this by who?” Lee Chang asks, his voice hard. Physician Lee slowly lifts his head, and they lock gazes. His eyes are haunted and full of shadows.

“I – I cannot say,” he replies haltingly, but the tone of his voice gives no doubt that he will remain firm on the matter.

Lee Chang exhales explosively. “Then what is the cure?” he says, and this time he can no longer hold himself back. His voice trembles from the strength of his fury. “Do you know how many hundreds have died from the plague – by your hand, for it was your hand that sowed the seed! Do you know how many bodies lie dead in Dongnae and Jecheon as a result of your actions?! What of the promise you made, the oath your swore, to the people under your care?”

Physician Lee’s mouth twists agonisingly, but still he makes no response, and can only shake his head mutely. Seo-bi jerks her hand back from his shoulder and stumbles to her feet. She looks down on him, and while her mouth forms no words, the anger and disappointment are plain on her face.

“Fine,” Lee Chang says, softly. “Fine. We will bring you back to the capital, and we will see if the Royal Commandery cannot extract some answers from you. Mu-yeong, restrain him.” Mu-yeong nods, and moves forward with rope to tie him up. Physician Lee does not make any move to resist, his body lying limpid in Mu-yeong’s arms, and his eyes empty and resigned.

“We ride back to Hanyang via the fastest route,” Lee Chang orders, striding out of the hut. “We will not stop at Wonju, since we have the man we need. We must reach the capital as soon as possible.”

***

The journey will take them two days. They ride as hard and fast as they dare to, on their weary steeds, and make camp in a secluded clearing. Mu-yeong brings back two pheasants for dinner, for they are running low on supplies, and Yeong-shin tends to the horses’ feet and pelts. The poor beasts stand with their heads drooped and ears down in their exhaustion.

After dinner, Yeong-shin takes first watch, as usual, and the others make themselves as comfortable as possible in their pallets. Lee Chang tosses and turns. Every sound is as poison to his ears, and keeps sleep far from his reach.

After a while, he can bear it no longer, and he sits up, careful not to make too much noise. He looks around. Even Mu-yeong, ever-alert, has succumbed to his fatigue, and is snoring with gentle snuffles into his arm. Seo-bi lies placidly in her pallet, while Physician Lee is curled up into a ball on his side, eyeballs twitching and fingers clutching at nothing, in his slumber. Yeong-shin sits by the fire, his back to them, and his silhouette lit up by the flames. He exhales, and mist pours from his mouth like smoke from a roaring bonfire.

Lee Chang shivers. He pulls aside his blanket and steps from his bed. With unsteady feet, he pads towards the fire with soundless footsteps, and settles on a rock next to Yeong-shin. Yeong-shin turns his head slightly at his arrival, but otherwise, he makes no sound of acknowledgement.

Lee Chang is acutely aware that his own face is now no longer masked by his bonnet, for he had taken it off to sleep.

Even now he is unsure of his trust in Yeong-shin – for trust in the man he does, but he does not know if it is warranted, or not. Since his days in the palace – and how long ago they now seem! – he had always been slow to trust, and quick to doubt, for who knew which courtiers or nobles were in the Haewon Cho clan’s pay, and which were not? And although Yeong-shin made for an untrustworthy figure on first glance, their days together had brought a faith in him that was difficult to dispel.

While he recognises the logic of Mu-yeong’s words, and knows that Mu-yeong’s instincts are often to be trusted, he cannot bring himself to believe in those instincts now, not when the four of them have been through so much together already. His trust in all three of his companions feels new, but unshakeable.

To his surprise, he does not need to say anything, for Yeong-shin makes the first move.

“I had a brother, once,” Yeong-shin says, and his voice is hushed. The fire flickers in the wind.

Lee Chang does not say anything; in fact, he knows not what to say.

“He was young and carefree. He wished to accompany me on my hunts, but I could not let him. He was all the family I had.”

“Where is he now?” Lee Chang asks gently.

“He is dead,” Yeong-shin says harshly. His body is strangely still, but his fingers clench tight around the barrel of his musket, which he holds close to his body. “He was killed in the war. He did not fight, and yet he is dead. Many years after his death I sought the man who was responsible, and I found him in Hanyang.” He looks directly at Lee Chang, then.

“You have a suspicion as to who is responsible for this,” he says, directly. “I know who you suspect. And I also know that the man you think to be responsible for this is also the man who killed my brother.”

Lee Chang exhales sharply, and inclines his head. Yeong-shin has so far told no lie, and so he chooses to believe him in this matter.

“I am sorry for your loss,” Lee Chang says, and his voice is very soft. Yeong-shin does not reply, but his grip loosens on his musket, and he turns his head aside.

They exchange no more words, but sit and contemplate the fire, and somehow, Lee Chang feels at peace.

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 4 years ago

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 18, 2020 (Sunday)

Heather Cox Richardson

Today reinforced some of the developing storylines of the 2020 election.

Last night, at a rally in Michigan, Trump once again attacked Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer for locking down her state in the early days of the pandemic. When the crowd started to chant “Lock her up!” Trump responded: “Lock them all up!” Just ten days ago, the FBI arrested eight men plotting to kidnap Whitmer and put her on trial for “treason.” Whitmer called Trump out for “inspiring and incentivizing and inciting this kind of domestic terrorism.” She told NBC, “It is wrong. It’s got to end. It is dangerous, not just for me and my family, but for public servants everywhere who are doing their jobs and trying to protect their fellow Americans. People of goodwill on both sides of the aisle need to step up and call this out and bring the heat down.”

Lara Trump, who is married to Eric Trump and is a senior advisor to the Trump campaign, disagreed. She told CNN’s Jake Tapper, “Well, look, he wasn’t doing anything, I don’t think, to provoke people to threaten this woman at all…. He was having fun at a Trump rally.” The Trump campaign then insisted that a small “8645” emblem on a table beside Whitmer during her television interview was “encouraging assassination attempts” against Trump. (To “86” something is slang for getting rid of it.) While observers have noted Trump’s use of gaslighting—making someone believe something that is not true—another abusive pattern is “DARVO,” which stands for “Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender.”

Today, Dr. Anthony Fauci said that political officials in the Trump administration have restricted his media appearances. He also explained that he now has federal protection because of threats to his life, and to his wife and children. “That’s sad,” he told Jonathan Lapook of CBS’s “60 Minutes,” “The very fact that a public health message to save lives triggers such venom and animosity to me that it results in real and credible threats to my life and my safety.”

The editorial board of the New York Times today ran a special section of the Sunday Review to explain to readers in thirteen essays why Trump “is unfit to lead the nation.” The essays cover his corruption, incompetent statesmanship, attacks on women and minorities, rejection of science, and so on. The editorial introducing the issue begins: “Donald Trump’s re-election campaign poses the greatest threat to American democracy since World War II.” What follows is a blistering litany of the actions of the man who is “without any real rivals as the worst American president in modern history,” the editors say. He is conducting “an intolerable assault on the very foundations of the American experiment in government by the people.” The editorial concludes: “Mr. Trump is a man of no integrity. He has repeatedly violated his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States…. Now, in this moment of peril, it falls to the American people — even those who would prefer a Republican president — to preserve, protect and defend the United States by voting.”

More Republicans who have appeared to move in lockstep with the president are distancing themselves from him. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) needs independents to swing his way in a tight race with Democrat MJ Hegar, a retired Air Force combat pilot. On Friday, Cornyn told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Editorial Board that his relationship with Trump was “maybe like a lot of women who get married and think they’re going to change their spouse, and that doesn’t usually work out very well.” Cornyn claims to have stood up to Trump, but privately.

In all this there is nothing really new.

But there is a story that might have new information in it.

Last Wednesday morning, October 14, the tabloid New York Post ran a complicated and unbelievable story about Hunter Biden dropping off three laptops at a repair store and never going back for them, the FBI subpoenaing hard drives, and the repair shop owner making copies before turning them over and then giving the copies to Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who gave them to the New York Post. Allegedly, the material on the laptops was incriminating.

The story was pretty transparently bogus from the start, especially since Giuliani has been hanging around with Andrii Derkach, a Ukrainian lawmaker who, according to the Treasury Department, is a longtime Russian agent. According to the Treasury, Derkach has been working to promote “false and unsubstantiated narratives concerning U.S. officials in the upcoming 2020 election.” Giuliani was an eager listener.

Today, Katie Robertson at the New York Times reported that the New York Post article was so suspect that its lead author refused to put his name on it. The two main sources for the story were Stephen Bannon, Trump’s former advisor who is under federal indictment for fraud, and Giuliani. Giuliani said he took the story to the Post because “either nobody else would take it, or if they took it, they would spend all the time they could to try to contradict it before they put it out.” One woman whose name finally appeared on the story is a former associate producer for Sean Hannity’s show and has been at the newspaper only since April. The other did not work on the story and only discovered her name was on it after it was published. The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal have all said they could not verify the story.

The startling new “revelations” about Hunter Biden mirror classic disinformation campaigns in Russia, and look a great deal like the last-minute “revelations” about Hillary Clinton’s emails “discovered” on a laptop in Fall 2016, all of which later came to nothing. Former CIA officer Evan McMullin tweeted: “For weeks, there’s been awareness in intel circles of Russian plans to return (with Trump) to their bogus Biden-Burisma narrative and, as I’ve warned, their plan to expand that to include bonkers pedophilia and human trafficking allegations against the Bidens. Don’t fall for it!”

And yet, certain Republican lawmakers are running with the story. Republican Representative Lee Zeldin of New York tweeted that “Joe Needs to answer some questions ASAP about this dirty $ setup.” Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) went onto the Fox News Channel to suggest that the computer at the center of this story, allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden, had child pornography on it. This prompted intelligence specialist Malcolm Nance to tweet: “Whoa. The Republicans tried to tie Hunter Biden to child pornography. This is a 100% FSB [Russian Intelligence Agency] tactic. The FSB ALWAYS claims/plants Child porn on their opponents.”

For at least a year now, intelligence officers have warned us that Russia is interfering in this election, trying to swing it to Trump. Despite the fact that Trump’s polling numbers are abysmal, our Electoral College system means that the swing of relatively few voters in key states could enable him to eke out a victory, just as he did in 2016. It is worth remembering that Trump’s plan in 2020 has never been to win a majority; it has been to win by gaming the system. It seems to me also worth remembering that Trump has consistently refused either to criticize Russia or to acknowledge that Putin’s agents are working to help him get reelected.

While many Trump campaign officials are already trying to blame each other for their candidate’s apparent weakness, Trump and his loyalists remain adamant that he is going to win. They are allegedly taking names of those whom he considers insufficiently supportive. He is mad at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who has rejected the president’s plans for a coronavirus relief bill and who publicly criticized the White House approach to the pandemic. He has gone after Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) for her coolness toward Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, and Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) for his condemnation of the president in a phone call with constituents. Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT), who has made his dislike for Trump clear in recent statements, is also on the outs.

Tim Murtaugh, communications director for the Trump campaign, says, “President Trump won in 2016 without the vocal support of the political insider crowd, and he’s going to do it again. The President enjoys the support of over 90 percent of Republicans….”

It is certainly possible that the Trump campaign is putting a brave face on the terrible polls, but the ham-handed attempt to dump disinformation about the Bidens is an excellent reminder that foreign operatives have been trying to influence our elections since 2016, and they have not gone away.

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

Heather Cox Richardson

#Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #politics #political #election 2020 #dirty tricks #corrupt GOP

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loretranscripts · 5 years ago

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Lore Episode 33: A Dead End (Transcript) - 2nd May, 2016

tw: gore

Disclaimer: This transcript is entirely non-profit and fan-made. All credit for this content goes to Aaron Mahnke, creator of Lore podcast. It is by a fan, for fans, and meant to make the content of the podcast more accessible to all. Also, there may be mistakes, despite rigorous re-reading on my part. Feel free to point them out, but please be nice!

When the trucker pulled up to the toll booth on Route 895 in Virginia, it was the middle of the night, and the look on his face was one of confusion and fear. The toll booth attendant listened to the man’s story and then sent him on his way. The state highway there is referred to as the Pocahontas Parkway, so maybe the man’s story was just a play on the name’s motif, but when the highway department received more than few phone calls that night from distressed motorists, each telling essentially the same story, the authorities began to take notice. What the trucker saw, what all of them claimed to have seen, was a small group of Native Americans standing in the grass between the east- and west-bound lanes of traffic near Mill Road. The trucker described them as standing motionless in the grass, each one holding a burning torch. He assumed they were picketing, of course – after all, the parkway is rumoured to cut through land that’s sacred to local Native American tribes – but the middle of the night didn’t seem like the right time for a peaceful protest. So, it didn’t sit well with him, or the others who claimed to see the very same thing. The Times Dispatch caught wind of the story and soon people were flocking to the Mill Street overpass to see if they, too, could catch a glimpse of the ghosts. And that’s what it all comes down to, isn’t it? We all want to see the ghosts, to witness history press it’s face against the glass of the present, to cheat reality, in a sense. Each year, thousands of people around the world claim that they, too, have seen a ghost. They tell their stories and pass along their goose-bumps like some communicable disease. But the reality is that, for most of us, we never see a thing. History is often nothing more than a distant memory. In some places, though, that history floats a bit closer to the surface. I’m Aaron Mahnke, and this is Lore.

When the English arrived in what is now Virginia way back in 1607, they found the land heavily populated by the original inhabitants of the region. The English called them the Powhatan, although that was just the name of their leader. If you don’t recognise his name that’s understandable, but everyone certainly remembers his daughter, Pocahontas. Before Richmond was… Richmond, the land where it now stands was an important Powhatan settlement. In 1607, a party from Jamestown travelled inland and claimed the location as their own. Possession of the land bounced back and forth between the Native Americans and the English for years, but it was finally in 1737 that the tribes lost, and Richmond was born.

Early on, Richmond played host to important figures in the American Revolution against England. Patrick Henry, the man who shouted: “Give me liberty, or give me death”, did so from St. John’s Church, right there in Richmond. And in the middle of the Revolutionary War, Thomas Jefferson served as the governor of Virginia out of the city. Less than a century later, Richmond became a key city in the Confederacy, as the American Civil War tore the country apart. From its munitions factory and railroad system to the seat of the new government under Jefferson Davis, it was a powerful city, and rightly so – and at the centre of it all is Belle Isle. It sits right there in the James River, between Hollywood Cemetery to the north and Forest Hill to the south. It’s easy to overlook on a map, but far from being an afterthought, Belle Isle is actually home to some of the most painful memories in the history of the city.

Before the English arrived and Captain John Smith stood atop the rocks there, Belle Isle belonged to the Powhatan. Shortly after the English took control of it late in the early 1700s it was a fishery, and then, in 1814, the Old Dominion Iron and Nail Company built a factory there. Positioned on the river with the strong current never tiring, it was the perfect location to harness the power of the water. As the ironworks grew, so did its footprint. The factory expanded, a village was built around it, and even a general store popped up to serve the hundreds of people who called the island home. But they wouldn’t be the only ones to live there. In 1862, Confederate forces moved onto the island and began to fortify it. Their plan was to use the isolated island as a prison camp and began to transport Union captives there by the thousands. Over the three years it was in operation, the prison played host to over 30,000 Union soldiers, sometimes over 10,000 at a time. The crowded space and resentful feelings between Confederate and Union ideals led to deplorable conditions.

In 1882, after living with memories of the prison camp for nearly two decades, New York cavalry officer William H. Wood wrote to the editor of the National Tribune with his observations. “Many froze to death during the winter,” he wrote, “others were tortured in the most barbarous manner. I’ve seen men put astride a wooden horse such as masons use, say, 5ft high, with their feet tied to stakes in the ground, and left there for an hour or more on a cold, winter morning. Often their feet would freeze and burst open.” He also wrote of their lack of food. “A lieutenant’s dog,” he wrote, “was once enticed over the bank and taken into an old tent, where it was killed and eaten raw. Your humble servant had a piece of it. For this act of hungry men, the entire camp was kept out of rations all day.” There were only a few wooden shacks to house the prisoners, so they lived out their days completely exposed to the elements – blistering heat, freezing cold, rain and frost, and all of it contributed to the suffering of the men who were held there. Estimates vary depending on the source, but it’s thought that nearly half of those that were brought to the camp – that’s close to 15,000 – never left alive.

Today, Belle Isle is a public park, but it’s haunted by a dark past, and by those who lived and died there long ago. You can’t see their ghosts, but you can certainly feel them. It’s a heavy place. Those who visit the island claim to have felt its dark past in the air like the stifling heat of an iron forge. But there are other places in Richmond that are said to be haunted. Unlike Belle Isle, though, these locations aren’t in ruins, or nearly forgotten by the living. They’re right in the middle of everyday life, and each one has a unique story to tell. They have their own past, and according to those who have been there, it can still be seen.

Technically, Wrexham Hall is in Chesterfield County, just south of Richmond, but when you speak to people about the city’s deep, haunting past, it’s always brought up as a perfect example of local lore, and while it doesn’t have a large number of stories to tell, what it does offer is chilling enough. The house was built at the end of the 18th century by Archibald Walthall, who left the home to his daughters, Polly and Susannah. It was Susannah who later sold her childhood home, but because there was always risk that the property might be used for future construction, she required that the new owners at least preserve the family graveyard. Time and the elements, though, have allowed the site of the burial ground to slip from memory, and according to some, that’s why Susannah has returned to Wrexham Hall, perhaps in an effort to make sure some piece of the past is still remembered.

Many years after her death, the home was owned by a man named Stanley Hague. He and a handful of other men had been working in the field near the house when they looked up to see a woman in a red dress sitting on the front porch. They all saw her, and even commented to each other about it. It was hard to miss that bright red against the white home. Later, when Stanley headed home from work, he asked his wife if her mother had been on the porch that day. No, she told him, she’d been away all day in Richmond.

In Hollywood Cemetery, just north of Belle Isle, there are other stories afoot. The graveyard was established in 1849 and is the final resting place of a number of important figures – former US presidents James Monroe and John Tyler, along with Confederate president Jefferson Davis. There are also two Supreme Court Justices buried there, along with 22 confederate generals and over 18,000 troops. The soldiers are honoured with an enormous stone pyramid that reaches up beyond the tree tops, and even though no one is buried beneath it, there have been several reports of moans heard coming from the stones. Others have claimed to have felt cold spots near the base. But it’s really a grave nearby that’s the site of the most activity there. This grave belongs to a little girl who died at the age of three from a childhood illness, and standing beside her tombstone is a large, cast iron dog. According to the local legend, the dog once stood outside her father’s grocery store, but when she passed away in 1862, it was moved to her grave to look after her. That might not be completely accurate, though. In the early 1860s, many iron objects were melted down to be used for military purposes, so the dog was most likely moved to the cemetery as a way of protecting it, but that hasn’t stopped the stories – stories that include visions of a little girl playing near the grave, or the sound of barking in the middle of the night.

Nearby, on Cary Street, is the old, historic Byrd Theatre. It was built in 1928 and named after the founder of Richmond himself, William Byrd. The space inside is enormous – it can seat over 900 on the lower level and another 400 or so in the balcony, and it’s up there that some of the oddest experiences have taken place. When the theatre opened its doors in December of 1928, Robert Coulter was the manager, and he continued to serve in that role all the way up until 1971, when he passed away. For over four decades, he was a permanent fixture in the theatre, often found sitting in his favourite seat up to one side of the balcony, and if we believe the stories, Robert never left. The current manager has been told by a number of people that they’ve all seen a tall man in a suit, sitting in the balcony at times when no one else was up there. Others have physically felt someone pass by them while operating the projector. The former manager has even been seen on more than one occasion by employees locking the front doors at night, as if he were coming out to help them. The stories that are whispered about places like Byrd Theatre aren’t alone. There are dozens of locations across the city that claim unusual activity and equally eerie stories, but none can claim to have played host to a flesh and blood monster. None, that is, except for one.

In 1875, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Company was looking to connect some track in Richmond to another spur 75 miles to the south. Newport News was down that way, and that meant ocean and shipping. It was a gamble to make their railroad more profitable in the wake of the Industrial Revolution and its increasing demand for things like coal, something mined in western Virginia. Part of the new railway line would cut through Richmond, near Jefferson Park, and it was decided that a tunnel would be constructed for the track to pass through. Trains would enter on 18th Street and then exit 4000ft later on the eastern end, near 31st Street. It was one of those ideas that sounded perfect on paper. Reality, though, had a few complications to throw at them. Richmond sits on a geological foundation of clay, as opposed to the bedrock found in other parts of the state. It’s the kind of soil that changes consistency depending on the season and weather. Rainy months lead to more ground water, and that swells the clay. Dry months cause the opposite. As you can imagine, it’s difficult to build on ground that constantly changes density. Even during construction, there were a number of cave-ins. Between the project’s inception in 1875 and its completion six years later, at least ten men died while working in the tunnel. Even after it was open, water had a tendency to seep in and cause problems, something that went on for decades.

Around 1901, though, alternative routes were created, and the Church Hill Tunnel was used less and less. But when the railroad wanted to increase capacity in 1925, they remembered the old tunnel, and began work to bring it up to modern standards. Maybe now, they thought, they could do it right. By the autumn of 1925, the tunnel was playing host to a crew of brave men, supported by a work train powered by steam. They were slowly making their way along the length of the tunnel, making repairs, improving the engineering and hopefully making the tunnel safe for future use. But even after claiming so many lives decades before, the tunnel didn’t seem to be done just yet.

On October 2nd, while doing what they’d been doing for weeks, dozens of men were working inside the tunnel when the ceiling collapsed. Most escaped, but five men were trapped inside, buried alive. And to make matters worse, the steam engine exploded from the weight of the debris pressed down on it, filling the tunnel with steam and dust, eventually contributing to even further collapse. According to the story as it’s told today, something did, in fact, walk out of the tunnel – but it wasn’t human. They say it was a hulking creature, covered in strips of decaying flesh, with sharp teeth and a crazed look in its eye. And because witnesses reported that blood was flowing from its mouth, many have since referred to it as the Richmond Vampire. No one could explain why the creature was there. Some suggested that it had been attracted to the carnage and had come to feed. They say that’s why the early rescue attempts only found one of the five missing men, still seated at the control of the work train. There was no other sign of the other victims of the tragedy, though, so some suggest that perhaps the vampire had something to do with that. Witnesses say that the creature fled out the eastern end of the tunnel, past the gathering crowd of workers, and then made its way south to Hollywood Cemetery. Some of the workmen who had managed to escape the collapse and witnessed the creature’s getaway were able to make chase, following it through the graveyard for a distance. Then, they claimed, it slipped into one of the tombs, the final resting place of a man named W. W. Pool.

Pool, it turns out, was a relatively unknown accountant who had died just three years prior. According to the local legend, this made sense – the blood on the mouth, the jagged teeth, the return to the mausoleum. All of it pointed to one, undeniable fact that quickly spread across the city as one of the premier legends of Richmond. Pool was, of course, a vampire. It’s said that people returned to the cemetery for many nights, each one eagerly waiting to see if the vampire would emerge from its hiding place once more, but there were no other stories to tell us what happened next. If the Richmond Vampire had been active before the Church Hill tunnel incident, it seems he had gone into retirement immediately after it. Like many tales of local lore, this story ends on an unsatisfying note. Just as the mysterious creature’s trail from the collapsed tunnel finally ended in the shadowy doorway of a cold mausoleum, the story of what happened seems to end in shadows as well. Much like the tunnel itself, it was now nothing more than a dead end.

A funny thing happens somewhere between real life events in the past and the stories we tell each other around the campfire or dining room table. Much like the true and tried telephone game, where the message is passed from person to person through a long chain of possession, these old stories shift and change. The change is never visible. They adapt to a new culture, or take on elements that are only relevant to a particular generation, but after decades, sometimes even centuries, these stories stand before us transformed, which is the difference between history and folklore, after all. History, there’s a paper trail, a clear image of the original that time and distance has more difficult time eroding. Folklore is like water, forever shifting to fit the crevice as the rock breaks down. Richmond is an old city by the standards of most Americans. Yes, there are older places on the east coast, but it has a storied history that makes it feel almost timeless – Jamestown, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and the Confederacy. American history would be lacking something essential without the role Richmond has played through it all. Some of that history is unchanged, but some, it seems, has undergone deep transformation over the years, and a prime example of that is the story of the Richmond Vampire.

The collapsed tunnel and the train inside are all fact. There have even been modern day efforts to rescue the train car inside and clear the rubble, but the tunnel is now flooded with the same ground water that made it unstable in the first place. The events that happened on that dark, October day in 1925 were real, though – at least to a degree. A lone survivor did crawl from the wreckage, as the story tells us. His teeth were sharp and his mouth was bloody. Even his skin, hanging from his body like wet linen bandages, is documented fact. But the survivor had a name – Benjamin Mosby. He was a 28-year-old employee of the railroad and was described as big and strong. At the moment of the accident, he’d been standing in front of the train’s open coal door, shirt off, covered in sweat, and shovelling fuel into the fire. When the tunnel collapsed, the boiler burst under the pressure, washing Mosby in a flood of scalding water. But he somehow survived, crawled free from the rock and twisted metal, and walked to safety. He died the following day at the local hospital, and it was his appearance, with bloody, broken teeth and skin boiled from his body in ribbons, that fuelled the story we still whisper today. It’s almost cliché to say it, but it’s true – sometimes the real-life events that birth the legend turn out to be more frightening and horrific than any folktale could ever be.

[Closing Statements]

#lore podcast #aaron mahnke #podcast transcripts #richmond #richmond vampire #virginia #33 #transcripts

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gotham-ruaidh · 6 years ago

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Uitlander

Previously…

Chapter 26

Freedom

Monday, August 14, 1826

Years later, when Claire looked back on her visit to the fort, she couldn’t remember any specific part of the long journey to the end of the cell block. Murtagh was there, of course, to help fill in the details. Mostly she remembered the scents (dampness, moldy hay, stale urine), the sounds (men coughing, men shouting, rats skittering), the lack of proper light that resulted in an uneasy half-darkness in the cells.

But she could – and would always – remember Jamie.

Face darkened with dirt and dried blood, hair dulled with sweat and grime. Clutching his left hand protectively against his chest. Huddled in the corner of a dark, dank, filthy cell.

“Fraser?” Sir Fletcher squinted through the bars.

“What do you want?” Jamie sighed. “Leave me be.”

“Jamie.” Why did her voice sound so strong? “Jamie. It’s me – Claire.”

A rustle – then Jamie groaned as he stood upright, staggering toward the bars.

“C-Claire?” His right hand gripped the bars, his left hand still curled against his filthy shirt. Greedily Claire reached through the bars and twined her fingers through his. Immediately his thumb found and circled her wedding ring.

“Claire?” His voice rough, his hand clammy. “Why are you here?”

“I had to see you.” She couldn’t quite find his eyes in the half-light of the cell block; she didn’t want him to see her welling tears.

“You must leave,” he rasped. “Now. It’s not safe for you here.”

“I’m trying to get you out of here.”

“What do you mean?”

Sir Fletcher cleared his throat. “There seems to have been a mistake – you’re to be moved to a different area of the prison. Your wife brought it to my attention.”

Then he stepped forward, keys clanging in the long hallway. Almost as if on cue, the prisoners locked in the adjoining cells murmured – then approached the bars like sleepwalkers, one by one.

Sir Fletcher opened the door to Jamie’s cell and stepped in to grab Jamie by the arm. Blocked by Sir Fletcher’s body, Claire couldn’t see what caused the soldier to gasp.

“Mister Fraser – whatever happened to your hand?”

“You can ask Captain Randall,” Jamie growled, “the next time you see him.”

Murtagh tried to keep Claire back – but she darted around Sir Fletcher’s scarlet coat to see for herself.

Her heart sank.

Jamie’s left hand had been smashed, or crushed – the fingers lay curled all against each other at unnatural angles, one nail was missing, and the entire hand was swollen and black with old and new blood.

Instantly at his side, Claire cradled her husband’s hand – feeling the tension so strong in his body.

“Did Randall do this to you?” she demanded.

Finally she could see his eyes – tired, but strong. Locked with hers.

“Captain Jonathan Randall held my hand under his wagon and ordered the soldier driving the wagon to move forward.” Jamie’s voice echoed off the damp stones in the cell – confident. Strong. True. “My hand was crushed. As a citizen of the Crown, I wish to lodge a formal complaint.”

Sir Fletcher, to his credit, gaped.

Claire squeezed Jamie’s right hand, swiftly bringing it to rest on her belly – showing him that she and the bokkie were safe, infusing her – their – strength into him.

“Did you hear him, Sir Fletcher?” Still holding Jamie’s hand, Claire turned to face the officer straight on. “It is unacceptable that this awful event occurred four days ago and not one word has made its way from the cells to your office. Do you know that our family has ties to the Governor?”

“We do indeed.” Now Murtagh stepped around Sir Fletcher as well, resting one hand on Jamie and the other on Claire. “Ye ken what that means, aye? If we lodge a complaint wi’ him, then it canna be ignored. It will go all the way back to London.”

“Yes,” Jamie chimed in. “Won’t that go on your permanent record, Sir Fletcher?”

“You know what the right decision is,” Claire added. “Immediately release my husband into our care. He needs medical attention – you can see that yourself. We promise to bring him back for his appointment with the magistrate.”

A prisoner in the cell directly to the left of Sir Fletcher banged on his bars. “Let ‘im out, mate! ‘E’s a good man.”

“Aye,” another piped up, somewhere beside Claire. “He stood up to that mad bastard Randall. Don’t tell me ye don’t know what that bugger is capable of.”

Sir Fletcher straightened, then hustled Jamie – and by extension, Claire and Murtagh – down the corridor, turning left, pushing through a door – and then out into the blinding mid-day sun.

Jamie blinked, like the newborn foal Claire had helped him deliver a few weeks before. He was even filthier than she had thought – but he was whole. Standing on his own two legs. Gripping her hand so tight.

Sir Fletcher raised his chin, mopped the sweat dripping from his brow. “Go.” His voice was low, angry. “Go away from here. Go back to your farm. I’ll figure out what to tell the Captain when he returns. But go. Be back in five days.”

“Thank you, Sir Fletcher.” Claire bowed in the soldier’s direction, but Murtagh was already pushing her and Jamie toward the fort’s entry gate.

She didn’t look back.

Five minutes later Murtagh helped her into the wagon that Rupert and Angus had been minding, sitting under the shade of an acacia tree across the street from the fort. Then Murtagh and his sons helped Jamie climb in, beside his wife. Rupert slapped the reins on the horses’ backs, easing them into a quick trot through the Cape Town’s quiet streets.

In the back of the wagon, Jamie and Claire held each other close. He stole kisses, she used her handkerchief to mop the dirt and dried blood from his brow and cheeks and chin. Stunned with love and admiration for each other.

“You saved me,” he whispered.

“It’s not over yet,” she replied.

“It doesn’t matter. You saved me. All on your own.” With his good hand he wiped her tears away; she had wrapped his injured hand in Angus’ shirt, the boy preferring to go cold during the ride back so that Jamie’s hand could be protected.

“I had help.”

“You saved me,” Jamie repeated. “You did it on your own. I owe you my life. You are so, so brave, Nebhongo. How can I ever repay you?”

She kissed the tip of his nose. “You’ve given me this most amazing life. That’s all I will ever need. All that we will ever need.”

He darted in for a long, long kiss.

For a moment the midday sun hid behind a thick cloud – but then returned, blazing bright and joyous as the wagon rumbled up the path to their farm, to their future.

#uitlander #outlander #outlander fanfic #jamie and claire

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