The High Priestess
CW: domestic abuse, baby loss
Kingdom of Fleura, 1796
The thorns scraped her arms as she ran through the forest, panting heavily. She slipped and fell, a bloody handprint marring the soil briefly before the rain from the storm washed it clean. She untangled her skirts and got back to her feet. She had to find the secadualist chapel, the old one, from the nameless hamlet which now lay empty, abandoned in the forest which was growing back into the space as the houses crumbled. The haunted one, supposedly. The one which was the subject of rumours she dearly hoped were true.
She burst out at last into the edge of the hamlet, now peppered with saplings as the forest began to reclaim it. She paused to grasp a crumbling stone wall, catching her breath as she looked around. There. The old chapel, in the centre of the circle of stone buildings which once had held a fledgling community of woodsmen. She approached the chapel, warily now, slower. She attempted to wipe some of the blood on her hands off on her skirts, though the pouring rain had helped clean her skin somewhat.
A light. A candle flickered in each of the windows to the sides of the door, just one each, so the light was only noticeable as one approached nearer. She paused before the door, her heart racing a little. Please, Feminea, let it be true. I need it to be true, for if it is otherwise I have damned myself in both lives, she prayed. And then she pushed the door open, just a crack.
There was not much light as she first entered the porch, but she could see a crack under the second door, whose stained glass windows had been boarded up. For damage, or for secrecy? She wondered. She tentatively knocked on the interior doors.
She had thought it quiet before, but somehow an even greater hush descended. Perhaps the rain had stopped. Perhaps what she had taken for wind had been some subtle chant in a heretofore unknown language that had now ceased. A pause. And then the door was opened from the inside, slowly.
“Who seeks sanctuary here, in this hour of darkness, far from the comforts of hearth and home?” Came a voice out of the interior. The light level had increased, and she could tell that many candles burned in the room beyond, though she could not yet see inside, for the door had been held halfway. It was a booming voice, but a feminine one. Uncommon, unusual. Her heart lifted slightly. Perhaps.
“Please,” she said, her voice coming out shakily as she held herself between caution and hope. “I… I have nowhere to go after this night. I have heard tale… I have heard that a woman may come here if she has… even if she has done…”
Her voice trailed off. She could not voice her crime, even though she did not in full regret it. His blood still stained her clothing and was dripping, mixed with the rain, to the floor of the porch as she stood. But she did not regret it, only its consequences. Unless she received help.
Suddenly the door was opened in full and she came face to face with a circle of women. There were seven of them in total, ranging in age from one barely out of her youth to a crone of advanced years. Each dressed differently, magnificently, but in ways that would not have been allowed in polite society.
The youngest was clothed as if she were a man of modest means, but her hair fell down in unmistakeable long ringlets. Beside her, a woman of middle age wore a dress of fashionable cut, but the fabric was in patchwork, repaired in a way that was purposely visible such that she wore many colours of the rainbow. Another’s neckline was scandalously cut, while the crone was dressed funereally, and yet wore a startling rouge on her lips.
“Welcome,” said the crone, whose voice was miraculously the booming one she had heard earlier. The tone of challenge had gone, replaced with a friendly warmth and a gentleness that made the rest of her anxiety wash away. She swooned, but immediately the youngest was there, leading her to a pew of the old chapel and helping her take a seat. In the light, the bloodstains on her skirt were all the more startling, but none of the women blanched or seemed to react in any way. She was handed a glass, and she downed the liquid, tasting something alcoholic; stronger than she had heretofore been permitted.
The crone sat across from her, waiting as she gathered her breath. “You are safe here,” the crone told her. “You may tell us what of your story you wish, as you wish.”
She breathed, still hesitant, still debating if she could tell them all; but the stains on her clothing told half of it already; and if they would report her to the authorities it would happen regardless. So she began.
“My name is Henrietta. I live - lived - with my husband in a house on the river to the south of here. He is - was - a merchant. He… he’s dead. I killed him.”
She waited, expecting outrage, expecting fear, or an attack; for them to recoil from her. Instead, they all sat, patiently, without reaction, waiting for her to continue.
“I gave him two sons, but only one was born living. The other; the birth was difficult, and he did not survive. It was then that it began. ‘Would that you had died in his place!’ My husband told me, as he shunned me, punished me. He began to hurt me then, but it was always limited, such that our boy, William, then but two years old, did not see. And thus it continued for three years. But this weather, this fell autumn of relentless rain… it has brought sickness.
William fell ill. And my husband blamed me, for I had taken William with me to the market while my husband was away. I was not supposed to visit the market; I ought to stay home and leave such tasks to the servants. But I felt trapped, isolated, and wished for company. I should not have gone. The town was full of ill humours; and within days of our return William had fallen ill. There he lay for seven days; my husband returned on the fourth.
And this morning, William succumbed to his illness. The doctor called it pneumonia, but my husband called it me. This evening, as the sun departed, he came on me with a madness I had not seen before. He held a knife in his hand and I could tell he meant to send my soul to the Other Realm. I fought him then, though I had little hope of victory. But providence, or perhaps the hand of Feminea, caused him to trip on my skirts in the struggle, allowing me to get ahold of the knife.
Before he could turn and resume his attack, I, unthinking, sliced his throat as if butchering a pig, and, Divine Two, the blood poured out. His eyes widened, taking me in, as his soul departed to the Realm of the Divine for judgement. And I, knowing I could not remain, fled.
For in my furtive market trips, taken more than on that occasion, I had heard tell of a new body of worship forming. Well, not all words on the topic were such. Some cried witches; or restless ghosts; but among the women of… the working women, primarily, came tales of a church that worshipped Feminea in the primary, and that they gathered in the hamlet in the woods, the one where plague destroyed all, and where men fear to tread lest they also succumb.
I heard that this congregation was only women, who reject the world as is. Who have helped women in situations unfavourable; situations which would cause great scandal in society; situations that could result in gallows or gaol. And that should a woman find herself in such a situation, or alone in a world where women may not participate alone, that such a woman could seek them out.
And so I came here. For if you are witches, perhaps you can magic me away. And if you are ghosts, I will soon join you when I hang from the gallows. But if you are worshippers of Feminea alone or in primary, and if you would assist a woman who had no choice but to take a life lest her own be taken, at a time of great grief, then I beg you to assist me now.”
The youngest of the women sat beside Henrietta, reaching out to rub her back gently, as one would soothe a child. The crone looked at her with an expression of deep sadness. “We are sorry for the loss of your sons; and your situation. But idle words may give you no comfort - so I will at first tackle the practical. Yes, we can help you. And we will. We will do as we can to keep you from the gallows, though you may need to cast aside your name and your history. But we will help you.”
“Thank you,” Henrietta gasped, the tears now flowing freely once more. “I thank you most deeply!”
“We have helped many women. The tales you speak of are true; we have arranged their spread ourselves to grow our numbers. For it is also true that most fear to set foot in this hamlet, lest the plague return. We allow those stories of curse and death to spread too. For we are the Singularists - we worship a Singular Goddess in Feminea and reject all worship of Mascalin. For he is evil; he has cursed women to suffering and pain for his own weakness and jealousy of Feminea. He is no god to be worshipped; he is akin to the devil of the Christians that have spread in the south. And we reject him in entirety.
For I am the High Priestess of Feminea, and I welcome you to our congregation.”
Historical note: the origins of what is now called Kerlian Singularist Secadualism were indeed a small group in the north of the Kingdom of Fleura in the 1790s, then united. Small, secretive groups began to worship Feminea exclusively in this time and continued to do so in secret until the foundation of Kerlile, when the formal Church of the Goddess was founded by the Hart family in 1927, bringing the Singularist sect of Secadualism into the open and into the mainstream of the fledgling Kerlian society.
LIDUN President 2024 | she/her | Puppets: Kerlile, Glanainn, Yesteria, Zongongia, Zargothrax
