The Constable, the Inquisitor and the Witch
Hi, my name is Ansel and I am a constable, not a town guard, but a constable, more professional, in service to the Kingdom of Yor.
In the capital city of Ram… new offices! New departments! Modernization! Centralization! Bureaucracy and tape! Like rats, they sprang from the shadows. When news of these new offices ran through the villages, I was one of the first who answered the call for new government workers.
See, our new queen, Aya, wanted to modernize. Word is, the then princess who had much time on her hands to parade through our lands really liked what we peons were doing.
“Wow! I like how they have a person who delivers mail! Wow! I like how they have a village watch to punish criminals! Wow! I really like how this church investigates heresy! What if we had all the things I liked about these villages, but for the whole kingdom!” Don’t know why the capital city never had these things. Don’t know if she really said that, but she only quit being a princess a year ago when the whole royal family and every heir except for her died. Way I heard, they had one fine meal in the royal banqueting house of some delicate moldy cheese from the East. Next thing you knew, everyone died, except for the dog, but the dog couldn’t be an heir. Yeah, not so sure if the story we got was a coverup, but Aya became Queen, and she was still a young girl, so praise God for leading the state through teenage rulers. Perhaps to distract her mind off her family’s death, Aya put to mind the thought that a national government, one manned from the capital of Yor, the polis of Ram, her home, could do what we peasants were doing but better. So, she created three new offices: The Kingdom Postal Service, The Kingdom Constable, and The Inquisition (of which already existed, but now received higher indulgences from Aya’s personal account).
Now, I joined the Kingdom Guard for these reasons. One, my Christian faith first pointed me to the Inquisition office, but I couldn’t read, write, nor speak Latin, nor did I ever go to college for a degree in divinity, so when I visited one of the recruitment offices for the Inquisition, the pastor at the desk kindly told me, “No, but hear this instead.” He prophesized that I would get married… someday. Why, that was a good reminder because, why, he was right. Between those two duties of making sermons and making kids, yea, perhaps it would have been better if I made kids. So, I left that recruitment office by the kind wisdom of God. Now, for reason number two up next was the postal service. I thought, “How hard can delivering mail be? I’m going to be the best postal worker in the kingdom!” Very optimistic was I. Then I saw the face of a working postal worker. It was about five in the morning, and I was on the road to their office for an interview when I first saw her. The streets were empty, save for me, and draped in that sort of bluish-grey light present in the early dawn.
It was from an alleyway ahead, when I saw this twizz-haired vagrant walk out to join me on the cobble street. It was a woman, short and pale. Her dress, I guess she couldn’t afford a dress, she wore a blue shirt and brown trousers. Pieces of her long black hair stuck out like porcupine pins. Believe it or it or not, she punched the air before walking down the street in my direction. As she passed, I noticed her sunken eyes, black and without hope. An aura of hatred surrounded her as she mumbled aloud “This address doesn’t exist!” again and again. She spoke as if speaking in a witch-like tongue. In short, she scared me away for it appeared as if she hated the whole world.
So, I signed up for the Guard, the best work a young man could do to send money home back to his family’s farm. I walked through the door of their head office and told the big man with a scar at the front desk that I wanted a job. The man introduced himself as “Sir Mauricio, Commissioner.” I told him I had no experience with weapons, but that I had experience with bar fighting. He told me to follow him to a yard. From that day onward I found myself in training with a hundred other recruits in a company led by a man called Captain Carden. I later learned that Mauricio was a former mercenary leader quite renowned in the land, who later appointed his company, and all his captains (which would include Carden), in official service to the Kingdom for reasons undisclosed (rumors tell of a debt to the late king). In the years before Queen Aya’s current reign, they worked in the High District, at the academy high in the mountain called Saint Basil’s Monastery. They tutored nobles in the military arts for a time before they were asked to head the Kingdom Guard by our Queen. They graciously accepted the commission as part of their service. Guess one could say that the drills the guard received were an experiment in training conscripts. Though, I must admit I am quite grateful to have learned from what were some of the land’s greatest working soldiers in recent memory.
I received their training for six months, sparring daily with my comrades, and then graduated as part of the 9th Company of Constables. Then Mauricio paired me with an older partner for patrols from where I proved myself well after two months of service through combat and diligence in my training. The club felt light in my hand, and I found great pride in securing order over large groups of public peace offenders which some unlearned people called “protesters.” Praise be to God and my earthly father, turns out that whacking wheat on the field translated very well to whacking people in bars and streets. Having worked long hours on the farm, I found little issue fighting for long periods in my guard uniform: chain armor, an iron helmet with closed visor (for intimidation as my Captain put it), and a draped blue surcoat with the red dragon emblem of Yor knitted over the front. I wear it proudly.
For my diligence, the Commissioner found me well enough to perform assignments on my own. So despite my low rank, I was a reliable soldier, a useful thing in an office so understaffed. We rank 1000 strong, with 100 captains, and 900 constables. One thousand people to oversee a capital of 40,000 people, which would be fine if Queen Aya only wanted to guard the capital. But no, our great Queen wants us to guard the whole kingdom. Because of that, since the day us recruits graduated, our HQ in the High District has been flooded with requests from all of Yor. They often start with “Dear Guard, if you can help the neighbor has been doing unholy things to his chickens and…” before being thrown into the backlog of our list of things to do. In short, we are understaffed and the Commissioner’s drafting plans for a propaganda campaign to make constables look good to the public by depicting us as a jolly group rather than the serious one we actually who clubs drunks in bars. Towards this effort, he also commissioned a “female model” named Dove and a painter named Loom to advertise a connection between dames and military service. I… I don’t know if it’s a part of God’s will to invoke feelings of vanity or lust to inspire the youth to war. I will say that on my part, if there really was a true guarantee that there’d be a full woman like Dove waiting for me at the end of my service, I’d probably be much more inspired to more things than just serve. She’d just have to be… I am getting off track. In the end, I am grateful to be employed towards a great purpose under God.
It's because of our short staff that I was “promoted” one month ago to a new rank and a new unit. I was called into Captain Carden’s office along with nine others. He explained that we were no longer just Constables, we were Marshals, ten who held the “well-being of the nation in our hands.” He gave a long speech, but in short, we were simply just constables with the additional duty of being sent outside the capital on short notice to solve problems the villages and cities outside of Ram were having.
On the day of my promotion, he assigned me to a lumber village Southeast of the capital called Shirland near the border, but not quite into the territory of settlements and colonies between the territory of the desert kingdoms and ours. Immediately, I took a horse and traveled there. Now, Shirland was a cozy village with some cottages, a lumberyard, and a few farms that brought harvests of grain and meat from cattle. However, it was but a speck of civilization in a grotto compared to the vast woodlands surrounding it. The villagers gave it a name, The Black Forests, for the dark-green color and density of its leaves which leave almost no room for the sun to shine through. I admit, that three days of my journey were spent navigating through those woods. Upon arrival, I made myself acquainted with the mayor. I knocked on the door of his house and met him on the porch where I introduced myself and the purpose of my visit.
“Greetings Mayor Linus, I am Ansel, a marshal from the Kingdom Guard. Here is the letter of summons we received. Tell me more about this witch in the forest.” Yes, I was supposed to hunt a witch. The mayor then sent me to a church where I met a man, a skinny one in red robes and a pointed hat, also red who looked to be about my age. He wore the office of the Inquisition and a Bible in hand when we met him in the parish. I told him he looked much too young for a Bishop. He punched me in the face, apparently as a joke, but he sprained his wrist for I wore my helmet at the time. He introduced himself then as Father Cirrus, who was sent at an earlier date and had been holed up in Shirland for many weeks, having no luck at finding the reported witch or convincing the local watch to help him search. He also confessed that he hoped for more than “one man” from the capital to which I assured him “one man is enough.” We split the work. I’d search the woods, and he’d search the village.
For nineteen days I searched. Let it be said that witch-hunting’s a troublesome business. Generally, during my tenure in Shirland, I had more success settling bar disputes than finding old hags in the woods. But God awarded my diligence on the twentieth day. I got lost in the forest and couldn’t find my way back to the village. Then, by providence, I smelled the faint fragrance of gingerbread among the trees. Yes, I knew the stories. Gingerbread in the woods leads to witches! I ran through the dark forest towards the smell’s direction and came upon a small meadow where the sun shined pleasant and warm on tender yellow grass. In the meadow, there was a camp, a triangular tent with a fire burning in a stone pit outside. By the pit was a woman. She wore a brown shirt and a brown dress in the fashion of pilgrims, but most noticeably, the thing that most marked her for her heretical magic, she wore an elk skull on her head that completely covered her face, but allowed curtains of long black hair to leak out. She spotted me at the forest’s edge, and the bone nose of the elk pointing straight at me with hallowed eyes brandished a demonic view. I froze for two seconds and said a prayer after remembering some old advice Father Cirrus gave me: “Most witches are false alarms. Though if you do meet one, a real one. Don’t sweat, have faith in the Lord, sign the cross, offer a Hail Mary, and… these instructions are getting too complicated. Look, just trust in God and He will protect you from all their magic. Most witches comply easily for arrest.”
Calmly, I walked with the sun to my back, across the grass, and took a seat across from her. The flames crackled between us. The woman stared at me while rolling a ball of dough in her hands. On a pan, the dough, cut into shapes of stars and stubby-toed creatures which resembled people, baked over the flames. I ignored the sweetness of the cookies scent. This witch had to be stopped as soon as possible. I introduced myself and said, “My name is Ansel, and I am a Marshal from the Kingdom Guard. I am investigating a rumor of a witch in the woods. Are you a witch?” She answered, “No,” in a pleasant voice that I did not expect. Then I said, “Then why wear an elk skull?” to which she answered, “I think it’s fashionable.” It clicked in my mind that she was under demonic influence. Elk skulls? Fashionable? Fashionable for a pagan maybe! I ran around the fire to grapple her. She had light hands and tried to resist, but I wrestled her, easily, to the ground so that she lay on her back with my foot on her stomach and my shadow cast over her. She kicked and squirmed in the grass right until my heavy club touched the tip of her elk skull’s nose. Giving the verdict of justice. I said, “No, elk skulls are not fashionable. You are wrong, and for that I shall confiscate it. Also, you bake gingerbread cookies in the woods. Yes, you are a witch. Now, if you don’t take off your mask, I’ll smash it. Let yourself be freed from the devil’s grip.” The witch complied. Trembling, with shaking hands, she twisted the accursed helmet off held it over her face as if to shield herself.
Upon seeing her face, I had confirmation she was not only a witch. She was a siren! Her eyes were terrified but beautiful, shaped like almonds, and blue. Her raven hair was messy but gorgeous in how it lay on the grass. Her skin was white like marble, and her lips were full and likely of good taste. A strange feeling struck me. It struck me so hard and so suddenly that I stepped back in surprise. My boot was taken off her stomach. The damage was done. The girl in her fright clambered back and ran toward the woods with the elk skull carried in hand. I watched her run and saw her put the skull back on at the forest’s edge. She looked back once, then she was gone, away from the meadow and into the woods.
Ten long seconds passed. Listlessly, I sat by the campfire with my legs flat on the ground. I took my helmet off and wiped the sweat off my brow. Then I took the tray off the fire and grabbed myself a star-shaped cookie. I took a crumbly bite. It was a sweet and delicious cookie, so I ate the rest. Then I looked at the sky slowly dimming to an evening sun and said to myself, “Wow, that really was some spell. Why couldn’t she have been an old witch like from the tales? I would have got her then.”
After consuming the witch’s cookies, I waited around the camp for a night, hiding at the edge between the forest and meadow. She didn’t come back and I thought to wait for a second day. On the morning of the day after, I realized that I didn’t know the way back to Shirland. There was a real chance that I could eat through my provisions and starve if I didn’t go back to town. I only found food because of the smell of gingerbread. After some thought, I made camp at the witch’s tent, keeping my helmet off and my club out of my hand on the floor of her tent as a sort of olive branch. She did not return that day, so I ate the food that she had for that day. With my armor on, I slept inside her tent. When I woke up, I was on a road in the middle of the day. I looked around and noticed it to be very familiar. It led to Shirland.
I walked back into the village and met Father Cirrus at the church, who naturally had no luck finding the witch. I gave him a report of the witch I found in the woods who wore an elk skull. He took a stick from his pocket and smacked the floor. Then he yelled, “Ansel, you f—bleh! That was not a witch casting a spell! That was a girl being be-witching! Shame on you!”
“Then what about the elk skull? Is that not suspicious?” I asked.
“She said the skull was fashionable. Either way, no matter how ridiculous, the skull itself, nor gingerbread cookies, pin her out as a witch. There’s been no famine in this village or unexplainable deaths. There’s no spell here.”
“So, we can conclude that there’s no witch then?”
With his freed hand, Cirrus grabbed the brim of his hat. After some thought, he said, “No, there is no witch. Some villagers probably saw her shadow by the road once and got the whole town scared. Everyone was accusing each other, and I had to come in to disprove all their nonsense superstitions. Did you know someone called the innkeeper’s soup a potion brew? It was just rice soup I tell you. They also tried to lynch a maid because she went out late at night. Never mind what the maid was actually trying to do, why if I weren’t here on vigil, I’m sure there’d have been… never mind that, that’s pride speaking. God help us. God does the work. These people, the town’s running fine. The crops are fine. There is no witch.”
“Then can we go home?” I asked, hopefully.
“I’m afraid not Marshal Ansel. It’s not a good look on either of our departments to leave people abandoned in the woods. Repeat, how did you find her again?”
I answered him plainly. “Inquisitor Cirrus, I got lost in the woods and smelled gingerbread cookies. The smell led me to her camp. I don’t know where the girl’s camp is.”
Father Cirrus responded by cracking his stick against the floor.