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26
Danny groaned and rolled over, feeling for Sally. Her side of the bed was cold. He opened one eye – the room was full of bright sunlight. He wondered how late it was. His head throbbed and his mouth was dry and sticky. He couldn’t remember coming to bed, or how much he had had to drink last night. Never again, he muttered to himself.
He had got home late in the afternoon. He had been away less than four weeks, but it felt like years, another life. Everything was the same, yet utterly changed. He supposed that was how Frank had felt when he came to see them after his long patrol at the beginning of the year. He was almost glad that the house was empty when he got back. He sat in the garden, drinking a beer, just breathing, letting the spirit of the place, his home, where his family lived, seep slowly back in to him. The tension of the last weeks began to drain out of him. He was exhausted, he had not really understood how deep down tired he was until he was suddenly no longer having to push himself, another klick, another hour, another day. He poured himself a second beer. He fell asleep before he’d taken a second sip from the glass.
He had no way of telling Sally where he was and when he expected to be allowed to come home. She had been told that both he and Johnny were back, and unhurt, a day or two earlier. She came back from work just after five, assuming the house was empty. As she walked into the hall, she saw Danny’s packs where he had dropped them on the floor. She wanted to scream out his name, but something stopped her. She walked through to the kitchen, and saw him lying in the deckchair, a glass of beer on the small table beside him. Still saying nothing, she quietly opened the back door and walked across the lawn. He lay in the chair almost as if dead, but for a barely audible snore, his head lolling on his shoulder. She started to weep, for joy and relief, at last able to believe what she had been hoping and praying for, and the great tide of dread that had surrounded her for weeks began to ebb. She bent over him, and kissed him on his forehead. She smelt his old familiar smell, mixed with something else, something acrid and bitter. She noticed his clothes – he was still in his uniform – dirty, torn in places, and his face, grey and covered with a film of dust. His hands were grimy, his nails black. He did not so much look older, although she could see the fatigue in his face and posture, as if he had lived a dozen lives, none of them good. She wept for grief and pity for him, and for her friends who had been told their men would not be coming home, or if they did, not as the men who had left them four weeks ago. She kissed him again.
Danny’s eyes opened, and crinkled, and he smiled up at her, like a little boy. He lifted up his arms and pulled her down to him, and hugged her until she thought she would burst, but she didn’t mind, she didn’t mind a bit. He was home, and alive, and they could live again.
For several minutes they said nothing to each other, just moaned and murmured and held each other. Then she broke away from him, got to her feet and smiled down at him. “I think you’d like a bath, wouldn’t you?”
He grinned. “That bad, eh. I’m sorry, I suppose I must be pretty smelly – haven’t had a chance to do more than splash water on my face for the last four weeks . . .”
“No, but you just look like a good hot bath is what you need right now. And a stiff drink.”
“Will you come up and scrub my back? Is there any hot water?”
“Oh yes, there should be plenty – the sun’s been shining all day, and I’ve been out since after breakfast so I haven’t used any. I’ll go and run it for you, shall I?”
“Please, Sal. I’ll get my kit off and leave it in the utility room – probably shouldn’t risk putting it in a wash with anything half decent. I think most of it’s only being held together with dirt and sweat.” Danny levered himself out of the chair, and picked up his beer, and followed Sally back into the house.
An hour later, feeling, if not like a new man, then very much better than when he had walked through the door, Danny lay on their bed, debating whether to get dressed, or just spend the evening in his pyjamas and dressing gown. Sally came in, naked but for a turban wrapped round her wet hair, towelling herself dry. He looked at her pale skin, pink from her bath, the soft roundness of her belly, her soft arms and strong straight legs. It seemed an eternity since they had last made love. She climbed onto the bed, kneeling beside him, bent over and kissed his belly, cupped his balls in her hand, her tongue travelling up his chest, taking his nipple in her teeth. He reached up, his hand on the nape of her neck, the fine hairs in his fingers. She kissed him long and slow, lying down half on him, half beside him, his cock in her hand. He reached between her thighs, pressing his hand against her mound, a finger feeling between her labia for the soft wetness of her. They were in no hurry, and then they were, searching each other’s body for their favourite haunts, crying and moaning and then coming, together, explosively. Sally fell off him, spooned up to him, pulling the covers over their still sweating bodies. They should have slept then, that delightful post-fuck sleep, but neither of them did. They just lay together, luxuriating in having each other back again.
Later, dressed, they ate supper in the kitchen, alone. The children were away for the night. Danny drank, steadily, with a kind of quiet desperation that Sally noticed, but did not refer to. She drank too, to keep him company, but guessed there were things Danny had not yet told her, that needed to be softened, blunted, left to drift away on a tide of alcohol, food, warmth, home, safe. It was only half past ten when she helped him up the stairs and into bed.
He couldn’t remember telling Sally very much of what had happened, and she didn’t ask. She felt if he wanted to talk, he would, in his own time. She had chattered about the children, and what little news they had had while the army was away. She asked him if he would have to go back on duty again, but he didn’t know; they had simply told him to go home.
* * *
The march back had been cruelly slow. Once the surrender had been negotiated, the renegades came out in groups of twenty or so to be searched and processed, secured and fed. The Pale army medics went in to the renegades’ last stronghold to assess the wounded and treat those that they could, and provide what relief they could to those too far gone to save. It took two days to assemble the columns for the return to the Pale. Most of the renegades’ horses had been killed or had run off, so the columns had to move at walking pace, and a slow walking pace at that, carrying the wounded as best they could. Without wagons they had to arrange crude stretchers carried between pairs of horses, and move them slowly so as not to panic the animals.
They were at least able to use the main road south, and so made better time than they would have done had they had to retrace their route across country, and they were travelling in daylight, but progress was still painfully slow. Patrols were still posted out to the front and rear and on the flanks – although the majority of the renegades had been caught in the encirclement there had been many small groups outside, who had been patrolling or foraging, and many of those at the renegade base at Ramsey had fled north and west during the battle. Most of the senior renegade commanders who had survived the battle had been captured, so it did not seem likely there would be any sort of coordinated attack or resistance as the columns marched slowly south. There wasn’t, but there were isolated actions where small groups of renegades trying to make their way home encountered patrols and put up a stiff fight. It took them eight days to reach Ely. The uninjured and walking wounded prisoners were then taken on to the old racecourse at Newmarket which had hurriedly been turned into a temporary prison camp. The stretcher cases along with the Pale’s own casualties were distributed among several large field hospitals that had been set up before and during the campaign.
In all, the Pale had taken four and half thousand renegades prisoner. What ordinance and other materiel and supplies that could not be carried back with the columns from the renegades’ last stand and the base at Ramsey was destroyed. So the renegades were disarmed, at least for now, but while no one in the Pale wanted to keep the prisoners locked up for any length of time, nor did they wish to simply release them, with the potential to cause fresh mayhem in the future.
After a few days at home, Danny was asked to join the commission, set up by the Council of the Pale, to decide on the best course of action for dealing with the prisoners. The commission began by interviewing the renegades. It soon became clear to them that these men (they were exclusively men) were very different from those that the Pale had fought in 2053. They were not bandits or outlaws, armed gangs roaming the countryside outside the Pale, attacking isolated farms and villages to take women, child recruits and supplies of food, and then moving on. Most of these renegades were more like the Boer voortrekkers of nineteenth century South Africa. Fiercely independent, they were deeply hostile to the Pale, whose long term intentions they feared were to expand and control more and more of the territory around it. The renegades came from all over the country – from the far south west, the area from Kent to Dorset south of the Thames, the Midlands and the north west and east. They existed independently of each other, controlling fiefdoms varying in size from a few square kilometres to the whole of the North Yorkshire moorland. They were almost exclusively farmers. There were no renegade towns as such. On the whole they lived peacefully enough alongside each other. There were occasional disputes over boundaries between neighbouring fiefs, and raids for cattle and so on. They were deeply suspicious and resentful of the Pale’s obviously superior technology. Some of the prisoners clearly thought some sort of witchcraft was involved. For many of them, their fathers and grandfathers had fought in the battles of 2053, and when they fled from the Pale’s armies they carried a folk memory with them of the iniquities of the Pale, however distorted that memory may have been by the bitterness of their defeat, their hatred of all the Pale stood for, and time.
There had for a long time been an informal federation to which most of the different fiefdoms gave allegiance. Its influence was limited, its powers negligible. It regulated trade and occasionally arbitrated in disputes between separate groups. When a particularly vicious group started raiding neighbouring areas in the north west, the Federation raised a small army which was sent in to round up the gang, most of whom were summarily executed and their land and livestock distributed amongst their neighbours.
The renegades liked to assemble for festivals at key times of the year – the equinoxes, midwinter and midsummer. These were as much fairs and markets as celebrations and people would travel to these festivals from all over a large region. Often the fairs could trace their roots back to the old horse and goose fairs that had taken place around the country since medieval times. They did not,on the whole, appear to follow any kind of religious practice. They were concerned with the land, their livestock, the seasons. Most, if not all of them, were illiterate, although not innumerate. They were by no means ignorant, at least of practical skills – engineering, blacksmithing, veterinary knowledge, herbalism, basic astronomy for their calendars and travelling at night. In the west and south, many were accomplished sailors and fishermen, with sophisticated boat building and navigation skills. They had little or no wheeled transport. They were intensely socially conservative, patriarchal, misogynist and deeply homophobic. Justice was mostly of the might is right variety, and punishments for crimes were brutal and quick. They were accomplished horsemen, good shots, and mostly almost recklessly brave – there was an ethic of heroic sacrifice among them, that a life lived as a coward was worth less than nothing compared to the brave death of a man in a desperate fight.
The more Danny learned, the more impressed he was and came to admire them. It was as if they were re-creating a culture not much different to that of the Vikings, Saxons or Celts. Some of the Commission were horrified by their brutality and ignorant prejudices, their attitude to women and homosexuals and their utter contempt for the people of the Pale. After two months of investigation, the Commission met to consider how best to deal with the prisoners.
Danny argued strongly that they should be allowed to return to their homes, as quickly as possible. Many had left farms completely in the hands of their women and children and were desperately worried about their harvests and livestock. As Danny pointed out, if they were not allowed to go home, the Pale might well make its own situation even worse than it had been, if anarchy and chaos were to return to what appeared from the interviews to be on the whole relatively peaceful and stable communities, even if they were living lives that most in the Pale thought were little better than barbaric. He also pointed out that while the Federation had been defeated, it still existed, and could be negotiated with. Indeed many of the renegade commanders who were prisoners of the Pale were important and powerful figures in the Federation, with influence and status that extended far beyond their own areas. If the Pale allowed the Federation to weaken and eventually to collapse altogether the situation outside the Pale could become far more difficult to control.
The Commission voted by a small majority to accept a proposal put forward by Danny and a group of like minded members. It was the members who had spent the most time talking to and interviewing the prisoners who were the most sympathetic to Danny’s proposal. It was agreed that the prisoners would be asked to vote in a secret ballot for those among them that they would like to negotiate on their behalf with the Pale, to establish the conditions under which the prisoners could be released and what safeguards and guarantees could be offered to make sure the agreement was honoured by both sides.
The prisoners were given three weeks to elect their representatives. They had been asked how many they would like to negotiate for them and they overwhelmingly agreed that seven was the appropriate number. Danny was surprised and a bit concerned that such a small group would not be large enough to represent fairly the views of over four thousand men from all over the country. But when he talked to prisoners about this they were practically unanimous. A larger number would be unwieldy and would find it hard to arrive at a clear decision and even harder to negotiate effectively with the Commission. Also, they liked the number seven. It was agreed that the Commission would field a negotiating team of the same size. Danny got the strong impression that the renegade fiefdoms were well used to and experienced in this kind of discussion and negotiation over sensitive subjects, between widely separated and disparate areas. The more he learned about the informal organisation of the Federation the more impressed he became. Although the renegades did not really subscribe to the idea of democracy (and had in fact initially been quite suspicious of a secret ballot to elect their representatives) they appeared to have a sophisticated and well practised understanding of the art of achieving a consensus and of coming to agreements which everyone would stick to. He began to think, if a satisfactory agreement with the renegades could be reached, that he would like to travel outside the Pale with his social physics colleagues to learn more about the renegades’ social organisation and way of life.
The elections passed off without incident. The surprising element was that for the seven positions on the negotiating team, only eight nominations were received and Danny suspected that one of those was only put up to make sure that an election was held. The prisoners seemed to have decided before the election was held who they wanted to speak for them and only went through the motions of a secret ballot to satisfy the Pale. Danny and his colleagues had seen no obvious signs of coercion or attempts to stop anyone being nominated. And in fact, of the seven elected, Danny would only have described one as a senior commander or someone of influence in the Federation. The team seemed to have been chosen for their negotiating skills and at least two seemed very odd indeed. Danny just hoped that whatever the team agreed with the Pale would be accepted by the prisoners.
The Commission chose a more or less representative cross section of its members for its team, which included Danny, but also one or two of the virulently anti-renegade faction on the Commission. Danny’s heart sank when he saw their names. He need not have worried. It quickly became apparent after the first meeting why the seven renegade delegates had been chosen. They were without exception intelligent and diplomatic, seemingly adept at making proposals, defending positions or critiquing the Commission’s proposals without giving offence. Generally they had much less to say than the Commission members, but when they spoke, it was clear, to the point, quiet, calm and effective. They very quickly completely disarmed the one Commission delegate Danny had been most concerned about. It was if the renegades had seen immediately that this was the person they really had to win around and they went about the job remarkably astutely. The delegate in question hardly seemed to notice what had happened; in fact he left the meeting convinced that the proposals that had been tabled and accepted by the negotiators had been made by him.
At the start of the first meeting, when procedural matters about the conduct of the sessions were being discussed, Danny asked the renegades if they would mind if the meetings began with a keying session. The renegades were aware of keying because they had seen guards and others holding sessions around the camp when on duty, but they were curious about what was involved. Danny gave them a brief explanation.
Danny had in fact brought up the subject with the Commission delegates before the meeting. They had suggested that they keyed before going in to the meeting with the renegades, but Danny thought it might be useful and interesting to propose having it as part of the meeting itself.
One of the renegades said “That seems fair enough, good idea in fact. Do you mind if we join in?”
“Not at all” Danny said “would you be happy with ten minutes?”
“We thought you liked to do it for at least half an hour – what’s wrong with that?”
“Well nothing, it just didn’t seem fair on you” said Danny.
“I think we can sit still and quiet for a lot longer than half an hour if we want to” the renegade responded, looking around at his companions, all of whom nodded.
“Good, well that’s settled then. Shall we start?”
“If you don’t mind, before we do, would you mind if we did our thing as well?” another renegade asked.
“No, no, of course not” Danny said quickly. “Would you like to start then?” he continued, curious now about what they would do.
“OK”. The renegade who had been speaking looked at his companions. Nothing was said, but some sort of agreement seemed to have been reached. One of the other renegades cleared his throat and stood up and proceeded to tell what appeared to be a long and very involved joke. When he got to what Danny assumed was the punch line, the other renegades smiled and the speaker sat down. Danny assumed they’d heard the joke before. He could not make head or tail of it. But bits of the story kept popping into his head at odd moments during the discussion that followed and, oddest of all, the last thing that one of the renegades said at the end of the meeting was the punch line from the joke, and it seemed oddly appropriate to the discussion that had just ended.
Someone then brought out a small gong and signalled the start of the keying session. The renegades sat perfectly still for the half hour, without so much as a cough or a throat being cleared. Danny was impressed – most novice keyers found silence and stillness for a half hour such a strain they seemed unable to get through it without an occasional fidget or cough.
Subsequent meetings followed the same pattern. The renegades began. Sometimes it was another joke, or a sort of parable (at times they reminded Danny of Zen koans) or one of them might sing a short song, or recite a poem. Whatever it was it seemed either to reflect the previous discussion or, in some subtle way, to foreshadow the discussion they were about to start. It seemed to Danny the renegades were deliberately using whatever they did either to remind themselves where they had got to, or to set out where they were to go, but whatever was delivered, and by whom, always appeared to be spontaneous and unrehearsed.
As the first discussion was about to start one of the renegades raised his hand. Danny nodded at him.
“You keep referring to us as renegades. Why is that? We call ourselves the Free Peoples – if you don’t mind, we’d prefer it if you would too.”
Danny looked at the other members of the Commission team. John Jackson nodded to him and answered “No, I don’t think we’d mind at all. To be honest we’ve referred to pretty much anyone outside the Pale as renegades for so long no one even thinks about it now. I suppose it’s pretty offensive, now you mention it.” Danny looked at everyone but no one dissented. “Right, the Free Peoples it is. Can we shorten it to the Frees?”
The renegades looked at each other and one on the right said “That’s fine by us.”
They began by each side stating their opening position. The Frees kept it very simple – they simply wished to be allowed to return to their homes and farms as soon as possible, ideally before winter really set in when travelling would start to get difficult. The Commission’s position was a little more complicated. They did not want to keep the Frees imprisoned any longer than they had to but equally, if the Frees were to be released, the Pale needed guarantees from the Federation that no attempt would be made in the future to re-arm and attack the Pale again.
“What guarantee do we have that you won’t attack us?” asked one of the Frees.
“Well, we never have” George Lutter replied, heatedly – he was one of the anti-Free faction – “the Pale has only ever defended itself against unprovoked attacks from outside.” Danny was glad that George hadn’t said “from you” which would have seemed deliberately provocative, and was in any case untrue.
“That’s as maybe, but until this last campaign, you barely knew we existed. Now, you might well decide to come and finish us off, ’specially as we now have no weapons to speak of.” This last was stated in a quiet firm voice.
“I think that’s a fair point” Danny intervened. “Any guarantee asked for by one side should be matched by a corresponding guarantee from the other.”
The discussion moved on to discuss what form the guarantees should take, and how they could be enforced and checked. By the end of the first session they had agreed that a delegation should be sent to the Federation, including senior representatives of the Frees in the prison camp, to try and set up some kind of permanent diplomatic channel, with guarantees of free and safe passage to Free and Pale representatives between the Pale and the seat of the Federation. This, was apparently somewhere west of Birmingham. It was also agreed that Pale representatives should be allowed to move freely throughout the area of the Federation, to confirm that there had been no build-up of substantial military capacity, over and above that needed by individual fiefs to protect their own territory. Corresponding rights of free passage throughout the Pale would be granted to representatives of the Federation.
Subsequent sessions covered trade agreements and customs charges between the Pale and the Federation, the protection of traders from extortionate tolls and charges by individual fiefs and within the Pale, the issuing of passports and documents of safe passage by both sides, and agreements about acceptable means of exchange. The Pale issued its own coin and notes but these were of little use in the Federation where practically all trade was either a form of barter, or used precious metals as a means of payment.
By the final session, the delegation to the Federation had returned with the Federation’s firm promise to back anything agreed by the prisoners’ negotiating team with the Commission. A corresponding undertaking had been received from the Pale. It only remained for the negotiators to agree the exact terms of the agreement to allow all the Free prisoners to return safely to their homes.
This proved remarkably straightforward – the negotiators by now were acting more or less as a single body and presented a simple set of proposals for the return of the prisoners and the guarantees of future good behaviour by both Pale and Federation. These were submitted to the Council of the Pale and the Federation for their formal acceptance and approval, which was given almost immediately.
Within days, small groups of released Free prisoners began to set off in all directions. What was surprising, however, to Danny, was how many of the Frees asked if they could remain in the Pale, and bring their families to join them. All the more so, since for most of the Frees, the social and moral attitudes of people in the Pale were utterly repugnant. Clearly not all Frees were as narrow minded as they appeared, or perhaps their time in the Pale had had some subtle effect on their attitudes. Of the seven Free delegates on the negotiating team, two decided they would prefer to stay, and all of the remainder expressed what seemed to Danny the sincere wish to return at some point and get to know better the people of the Pale and their ways.
In the years that followed, contact between the Free Peoples and the Pale grew steadily deeper and more extensive. The Federation fiercely defended its independence and resisted any encroachment on its territory by the Pale and the Pale for its part respected the independence of the Free Peoples and their right to continue to live as they chose. Only when the Pale was specifically asked by a fiefdom that it be incorporated into the Pale, and even then, only when the Federation agreed to it, was the formal authority of the Pale extended. In fact, of course, the writ of the Federation by no means ran everywhere. Large parts of Wales, the Lake District and the Highlands and Islands of Scotland had no truck with the Federation and in the course of time some parts of these areas formally became part of the Pale.
2075 – 2087
With the agreement with the Federation in place, the Pale Council began to consider ways of reaching out to the rest of Britain. They knew from their negotiations with the Federation that there was an independent community based around Totnes and Dartington in the South West, the survivors of the Transition Town movement that had begun in the early years of the century, before the collapse. There were also groups in the interior of Wales, descendants of hippy colonies that had set out to be self sustaining late in the previous century. Another community was centred on Findhorn, in the north of Scotland, east of Inverness, and there were small enclaves in the Hebrides, on Mull and Iona, Harris and Lewis. The Federation had been happy to co-exist with these communities, as it did not see them as a threat, unlike the much larger and more developed Pale, about which the Federation had known very little apart from rumour until the peace negotiations in 2075 and after.
Alongside the development of the flutter aircraft, the Pale had designed and built several airships in the years leading up to 2075. They were now sent out to make contact with these communities. Each community had preserved and extended traditions and practices that they had used since they were founded – meditation, shamanistic and dance rituals, exercises designed to break down the ego, and the use of natural hallucinogens – as part of their strategy for maintaining and preserving their community ethos, much as the Pale had done with keying. Although initially suspicious of the Pale’s overtures (what information they had about the Pale was almost entirely negative, fed to them as it had been through the hostile filter of the Federation), over time, although in some cases it took several years, they began to recognise how much they had in common, and eventually most of the communities affiliated themselves, more or less closely, with the Pale.
Contacts began to be made with Europe, beginning with Norway which had remained in contact with the Pale throughout the century using the surviving undersea cable internet connection. The Norwegians had developed sophisticated multi-modal ships, using a combination of advanced aerofoil sails and solar power, and these in combination with the Pale’s airships were now able to explore the greater part of western and central Europe and into the Mediterranean as far east as the Aegean. The largest communities they found were on the larger islands - Naxos and Crete, which being virtually self sufficient in food at the time of the crisis and protected by their distance from the mainland, were able to survive and even prosper. Other islands, such as Corfu, on the Adriatic coast, had by the time of the crisis become so dependent on tourism that their traditional agricultural sectors had almost completely disappeared. They were very close to Albania and mainland Greece, and soon succumbed to the maelstrom of the global collapse and the constant raids from the gangs of pirates based on the Dalmatian coast. By the time the Norwegians reached the shores of North Africa and the Levant very few, if any, of the original populations had survived.
* * *