Chapter 9: Will I Hire Amina?

Part I Amina's Arrival

Los Carros 15th September 2001

The college girl was his seventh and final victim. It was believed Scott Pierrepoint, the man, now on death row, had espied her first of all as she worked as a server in one of her fathers' restaurants. The post-mortem revealed that most of the mutilation had occurred over a period of the five days she was trussed up.

Ten minutes before the arrival of the state troopers, the coup de grace had been administered. Blame the orchestra of two-tone horns that forecast their coming, and the vision of the cavalcade of red and blue flashing lights some fifteen minutes away, far down the Valley.

Yes, Amina's life ebbed away to the accompaniment of distant human klaxons and a roar from Thor, the God of Thunder. How is it that the heavens reacted in sympathy with such a violent end of life?

In the last few minutes the pretty little Asian gymnast was immune to the physical surroundings. By now she was well past the pain and humiliation and pleading, even the dullness of the agony of repeated rapes meant nothing more to her. In her mind she had already welcomed death with open arms. An overload of physical anguish had now deadened her nerves to further bloody torture. Her true hell was the replaying of incidents over the last few days and watching the death throes of the other corpse that had survived her arrival by one day. Her anguish was in her mind and it was her mind that wanted death and escape.

At first she was not interested in the voice offering compensation for her life. She believed the heartfelt message and proposal. In lucidity, she urged on the completion of the transaction so that she could escape the sight of the vile creature's twisted features and the two deformed and smelly bodies still next to her. All she wanted to do was to leave this place. That lucidity told her that, if she lived, she would be incarcerated in a mental institution for the rest of her days, her mind shattered and warped and now switching off to the revulsions. Never did she want be conscious again to allow even a fleeting visit of this hell to revisit her.

At the back of her mind she knew she would be malformed and crippled. What she was offered, was unbelievable. She accepted with alacrity, but her former strength of mind, imposed but one condition; under no circumstances was she ever wanting to have an image of this horror ever again. She wanted, needed to forget.

The voice gave her a chance to consider what the offer really meant and indicated that if she wanted to avoid the memories of these last horrific five days it would be better if her memory suffered almost total amnesia. There would be no nightmares, no weeping tears of leaving a close and supportive family.

"Yes," she thought to her unseen saviour, "I want to remember nothing of this, nothing at all."

'Death' came to her with relief. She was free from the terrors of the charnel house, free from recalling the lewd and horrendous acts she had experienced.

She had a gift from the gods, a gift, after an intense college study of the Northern sagas, that she attributed to the Nordic gods. Thank you, Thor, for welcoming me to a new home.

Part II Hartglade, Pionova on 1^st November, Year 504

It was the last tranche of the year to which Amina was allocated. It was as a twelve-year-old girl, unaware of her past, that she sat in the rickety wooden carriage that rocked from side to side as the train proceeded at a breakneck thirty miles an hour. The uncomfortable seats made up of cross pieces of wood did nothing to enhance the comfort. The lack of any suspension on this carriage made the journey more like an uncomfortable fairground ride.

Yet, for some reason, the young passenger buffered about still harboured a sense of gratitude. She wanted to forget, she knew that. All she had now were vague memories of her childhood as a starving ragamuffin in some busy town, bustling with farm carts of produce, shrieking street hawkers, ankle-deep in horse mire as she, the young beggar, reeled from the blows of intemperate men and women to whom she pleaded for a crust. These reminiscences she wanted to forget, she embraced a deep sense of feeling that her past life was now past and should never be revisited.

Having no idea that these 'memories' were implanted, her true past had been far more horrific.

Amina looked around the railway carriage. Granted there were some features of her good fortune in being accepted by her orphanage on the Frontier that she was not too keen on. The dress she wore was identical with that of the other girls, all of a similar age. The off-white pinafore dress, reaching down to below her knees, was the most easily identified item of their uniform. Underneath, she wore a black bodice and a similar dark shadowy charcoal grey pair of loose culottes that appeared to be a calf length skirt to any observer. A loose pair of bloomers and a modesty bandage wrapped twice around her torso completed her unseen ensemble.

She had no idea that her memories of being a street urchin, and an understanding of the vague customs of this society, had all been learned in the laboratories of her rescuers. Things were as they should be.

Life here would not be as free as in the parks and alleys of her previous town. Accepted into the orphanage, it had been impressed upon her that she would have to maintain certain standards of decorum, and she vowed to herself that her behaviour would give no cause for concern to anyone. Having just awoken, she looked at the girl sitting next to her. Her immediate reaction was to introduce herself, but running through her mind were the words of the representative from the orphanage, "Nobody wants to sit in a carriage full of chattering little females."

She held her tongue and exchanged looks and a smile with her companion. Typically, the three children were crushed together on an uncomfortable seat designed for two. But her discomfort was allayed by the fact that she had a memory of fresh baked bread and cheese, and a sense of fulfilment in her stomach.

With a whistle the small locomotive started to reduce speed and the buffers at each end of the carriage clanked against the other rolling stock, almost pushing the girls off their seats. One or two of them screamed. Amina exchanged looks with her companion, and the pair of them silently decried the attitude of their childish companions.

She was not to know it, but in the following year the wooden trestle bridge would have a weight limit imposed upon it, and most passenger cars would be taken across individually pulled by a horse. Today, in November 504, they clanked over slowly with deep resonance.

As the iron wheels painfully negotiated a series of switches at the station throat, it was all they could do to hold on tightly and not be shaken off. Finally jerking to an uncomfortable stop, they experienced a terrific lurch. It was exacerbated as the rearmost carriages continued their drive forward and clashed into their carriage before all came to a rest.

The dour faced woman in her black dress rose to her feet, glowered at two females who were yapping and she tapped a little cane over the back of their seat threateningly. "If I give you a number, you will remember that number. You will rise to your feet and line up at the door to your rear. This is the town of Hartglade, and some of you are fortunate enough to be accepted into the orphanage here."

She had done this before, and would do it again each of the subsequent years on the first of March, July and November until the rejuvenation of orphans dried up.

She proceeded down the aisle and tapped, seemingly randomly, various girls on the shoulder, counting as she did so, " ... sixty, sixty-one, sixty-two, sixty-three..." Amina was number eighty-three and for the next three years that would be her identification. Dutifully she stood up and squeezed in with the others forming a queue along the narrow aisle.

Reaching the open carriage door, she was given no time to clamber down, but a large man in uniform grabbed her by one hand swung her twelve year-old body out from the side of the carriage and dropped her. As her feet landed on the gravel ballast next to the track, she staggered to regain her balance. Dour Face was already lining up her charges in pairs waiting for the last dozen to tag onto the end of the column.

There was no pavement, though the exit to the tiny station consisted of a raised boardwalk. Thank goodness, otherwise she would have been knee-deep in mud. It was getting dusk as the double crocodile wound its way past roughly built huts and shacks. Some were undoubtedly dwelling houses, others tiny storehouses or places of business. She recognised the penetrating and unpleasant smell of the tiny tannery, and they all stepped away from the residue outside the rear of the butcher's workshop where already the following day's livestock was lowing and bleating in smelly pens.

They emerged into the Main Street, turned left, and glanced at the larger timber built structures that looked as if they had all been constructed within the last few years. The town was growing.

They quickly cut off from Main Street and passed down an alley behind. Dour Woman indicated one building called the clinic. "There are plans to open up the crèche there," she indicated a patch of space next to the clapperboard building.

The features did not appear to be in keeping with all she knew of the Frontier's towns. These were, as far as she knew, a man's town with rough Frontiersmen who traditionally cared nothing for female company. Oh, and certainly not intimate male company, Heavens forbid!

The fact that this town had an orphanage she found surprising. It was certainly a new departure for the male-orientated society that, in a hundred and fifty years, had transformed the virgin territory of trappers and prospectors into a series of towns right throughout the length of the Deer Valley.

The double crocodile of obedient young teenagers found it difficult to keep in step as they gazed about at the evening activities. This was probably one of the most busy times of the day in the town of Hartglade.

Leaving the last huts and shacks behind, a trip down a rutted road or rather boggy field made her think that Dour Woman had lost her way, catching sight of the railway track on which they had passed some thirty minutes earlier. As they then stumbled over piles of gravel and larger stones she recognised that they still processed upon a roadway of sorts.

It was dusk when they arrived at a conglomeration of wooden structures. They made their way through into a courtyard surrounded by stables, barns, cowsheds and other farm buildings. The largest structure was on one side, a long thatched barn, obviously renovated with a new lick of lime whitewash on the walls. It proved to be their destination.

As far as the youngsters were concerned, their welcome was not what was wanted. Dourface together with two other spinsters, insisted upon each and every one of the arrivals stripping off under a pump. Two girls would force the flow of cold water out of the ground and over the recipient. The unfortunate girl, already stripped of her outer clothing, was given a bath in the cooling evening air. Yet the peculiar culture of female modesty on the Frontier ensured that even during their ablutions no girl removed her pair of billowing bloomers or chest bandages that tightly disguised any hint of pubescence.

Once each bedraggled creature's cleanliness satisfied Dourface, she hustled them inside and wet underwear was exchanged for dry clothing. Quickly they each redressed completely with black bodice and culottes as well as their off-white or grey pinafore, a uniform that, in time, they grew to hate.

Supper consisted of a bowl of thick gruel filled with tiny strands of meat, pearl barley and a mush of vegetable residue. It was most welcome to each and every one of the new arrivals, all of whom had some vague memories of surviving on stale crusts, the residue from discarded food, and even animal swill. They now regarded themselves as more than fortunate.

Shown upstairs to the loft, not one of them regarded the straw filled palliasses* on the rough boarded floor as anything but a welcome comfort. Even the freshly filled mattress bags smelt of fresh hay, sweet hay, now that was a luxury! They would not yet have been infested with bugs or nests of vermin.

Orphanage life promised to be good. Amina quietly exchanged a hopeful word or two with two nearest companions before Dourface insisted on silence and sleep.

"I'd be better off scrounging and stealing than working all hours here."

It was some three months later, as Amina tried to shut her ears to the moaning of Sharon, the 'orphan' who shared the small alcove with her under the dormer window. Few orphans complained of their lot, but the girl next to her harked back to the vagrant life she truly believed she had followed up to twelve weeks previously. In reality, Sharon had moved into a commune at the age of seventeen, and now craved again for the free life and the great outdoors. Her demise in that existence occurred in 1997 when her canoe just below Swallow Falls had jammed upside down in a fissure of rock on the stream bed of a tributary, in spate, of the Green Mud River.

"Life's not bad here," responded Amina, grateful for her three square meals a day.

"Not bad! Getting up at five in the morning to milk the cows, mucking out the stables, and that's before breaking our fast."

"Yes, but we have good food, bacon, grits and eggs every morning."

"And there's the damn barn."

"The orphanage has a duty to keep us fit and healthy," defended Amina, not daring to announce to anybody that the physical exercise was her favourite part of the day.

"But ninety minutes in the morning and Dance every evening, it's too much after a hard day. And those exercises!"

Amina appeared to sympathise but said nothing, finally breaking her silence to defend the practice, "Those workouts are designed for young women like ourselves, particularly the suppleness of pelvis and..."

"It's the stupid leg contortions I hate. My muscles complain every time we do the splits, on our backs, standing up, while doing handstands, it's unreal. And those squats..."

"But you like the dance?"

"I suppose that's OK, but throwing your chest forwards, sticking your bum out and wiggling your tummy, it's not natural. It's most immodest," complained Sharon, already imbibed with the strictures of decency in their society.

"It may be, but that's why only females are allowed in the barn. No one else ever comes in. Even then," added Amina with a touch more confidence, "there's nothing anyone can find inappropriate. All the exercises are done wearing bloomers and double chest bandages." Though, if pressed, she would consider the clothing restrictive.

Amina went on, "You can't complain about the education we are being given."

"What need do we women have for writing letters and words and adding numbers?" her grousing friend grumbled.

"Don't be silly, today's English lesson was really valuable. It was all about things any grown-up woman would need to know. Just because you couldn't spell 'molasses' and didn't know the difference between flour and flower, you think it was useless. When we leave here, if we're lucky, you might get the job as someone's housekeeper. If it's a wealthy pioneer we might not even go to the town on our own, but have to write out shopping lists for one of our employer's workers to fetch. You'd look a right idiot getting all ready to bake bread or biscuits and ending up with a bunch of daffodils or roses!"

"Yes, but you can't say that any of us will need the arithmetic that we were doing today."

"Get real, Sharon. You will need to know your numbers if you end up living in some labourer's shack who has no money. You heard what Sister Cruddy said, when we leave here, the orphanage prides itself on placing all of us girls.

"Employers are given details of all our records, including arithmetic quiz results from the day we arrived. The wealthiest men, wanting someone to run their house, will be looking for somebody who can add her numbers and know how many credits or cents she has to spend each day on food, and still have a few cents left over at the end of the week."

"I still say that I hate it here."

"Don't be silly. You just dislike mucking out the stables. If you hadn't been so stupid you would have joined the rest of us learning how to harness and rubdown the horses." Every afternoon there were practical lessons called 'Homestead'.

"That's not women's work."

"In a Pioneer's household his housekeeper will be expected to look after his mount. And if it's a larger household, a housekeeper or assistant housekeeper will be expected to be able to harness anything from a two wheeled gig to a buggy."

Part III Second Yea a Hartglade Orphanage, Pionova - Year 505.

"Stop moaning, Sharon, at least, now we're in the second year we leave the orphanage grounds most days. That's one thing we have to thank Mister Piopifac for. We're no longer Freshers, having to stay in the classroom or weeding the vegetable plots all year round. We get out every afternoon."

"Get out! I was given the grocer's shop as my first work experience placement. I had to weigh out sugar and flour all day long. Then a cart of vegetables came in from a farmer and I was unloading carrots, potatoes and onions, all of it on my own. It took over an hour and a half and then I had to wash it out. You know, they arrange all the deliveries in the afternoon while we girls are there. 'Pimple Face' doesn't like me. What were you doing? I got the grocers. I didn't get an easy work placement."

"Don't call him that. You know he'll have your guts for garters if he heard you use that word. Anybody could poke their nose in this room and report us."

"What? And complain that I'm calling him Pimple Face? I heard the two dragons talking about him and what they said was ten times worse. They said..."

"That's enough, Sharon, I don't think I want to know. Anyhow, working in the Emporium wasn't that easy, we had a delivery too. It came from the railway yard. That old carter brought it, heavy bales of cloth. You know the most popular sellers? Black for women's clothes and unbleached calico for our pinafores, surprise, surprise!"

"Typical! The men have the patterned shirts and blue jeans, leather pants and fancy stuff."

"They're the workers, if it were not for them, we wouldn't be here. We can't begrudge them that. They hardly spend anything on clothes. What they spend their money on are the guns, and useful things from the hardware department and ironmonger's store? Have you seen them there? They spend hours studying the different tools. You know, they stock EIGHT different shovels and spades."

"I wish they didn't stock the mucking-out forks, they're far too heavy when it's our turn to do the stables."

January 508

Amina never knew how it was all arranged. No one understood the mechanism of being paired with a guardian. All her tranche had graduated over two months earlier in the November, well, October the 31^st. to be precise. Sharon had managed to get a guardian the first week in November, Sharon of all people!

It was three months after Amina's birthday, and all but two of her tranche was allocated, Amina had heard nothing.

These three fifteen year olds were merged into the younger class coming up to graduate. One moment she felt superior to the younger girls, the next she started to get worried because she was still at the orphanage. Why?

Had Mr Piopifac got something against her? Over the last two years, she had felt increasingly uncomfortable in his company or whenever he looked in her direction. It was no secret that Mr Piopifac hated young women but he still 'looked' at them all. The word, 'leered', came to mind.

At least the beady-eyed man didn't watch them at their exercises as he had done when they first arrived. He hated seeing them half-dressed and in a fit of dudgeon always made himself scarce, disappearing to do some paperwork about which he was always complaining.

Amina hated Pimple Face.

Amina was not unintelligent and she recognised, before many of the others did, that the relationship between a penguin and her guardian was far more involved than the younger girls realised.

Now she had finished her three-year course of lessons, she had been allocated more work experience than usual. This was during the time the other orphanage girls were doing their classroom studies.

Her extra experience took place from early morning until before noon. It was the same time, before midday, that the ex-orphans, the previous year's students, now fully fledged housekeepers, were expected to be up and around town, doing their shopping. Shopping of course had to be a daily event to purchase things fresh. There were few items of foodstuffs that could be kept for a long time apart from flour, rice and the like. In the Emporium was a new line in 'beef cooked in gravy' these were sold in two pound tins and for the life of her, Amina could never work out how to get at what was inside.

Within two days of starting her morning shifts, she saw girls, eight months older than she was, walking around with papooses on their back or held to their chests. She was not slow to realise they no longer acted just as housekeepers for their employer. Theirs was a closer relationship.

It was one morning she met her friend Sharon again. Now separated for three months, Amina remarked upon the pregnancies of the older ex-orphans.

Sharon responded without any hint of the resentment she had exhibited before, proudly pushing out her own belly she boasted, "Although I'm not showing yet, I soon will be. Isn't it wonderful to be able to please your man by bearing his progeny? When it's born I'll be the equal of his other woman."

"Other woman?" This was the girl who had decried the idea of macho men of the Frontier for their attitudes towards females. She now had a man and accepted his having a second intimate relationship! This was not like the Sharon she had thought she had known for three years. Furthermore, Sharon had no idea why Amina was so concerned!

Oblivious to the confusion she was causing, Sharon continued. "Graunt's such a great man, I was thinking, how would you like it if I suggested your name?"

"My name?"

"I know he isn't ready yet to engage a third housekeeper, but you'll love him, and I just know he'd think you were so sexy. Think of it, we could look after each other's babies. I know he was considering a minimum of three babymakers. If I told him about you, he'd just have to bring his plans forward by a few years, you would breed some lovely babies for the three of us."

Almost scared at the suggestion, Amina had pondered the information she had learnt, but hadn't told the other girls back at the orphanage. She was concerned at how her news would be taken. Would the other students be upset or would they turn on Amina in anger?

More observant now in studying the pre-noon shoppers, she was amazed at the number of students of past years who now wheeled home-made perambulators. Even four of her own class were obviously pregnant despite the covering of clothes. How long did it take to show?

Yes, Amina certainly wanted a choice into which specialist's house she went to work. Few, if any girls, appeared to be satisfied with simply a man/employee relationship with their guardian. Would she be automatically expected to jump into bed with her specialist Frontiersman?

She had never been interested in men before, but recently she had studied them with growing interest and assessing their potential, one particular one held her interest. It was he who was always clambering over the roof.

If only that quiet busy labourer were a specialist. Unfortunately, he could be no potential guardian. One day he was on the roof, the next he was putting pipes together, and then the next she saw him was when he built the thunder box shed. He was probably in cahoots with Pimple Face. He was always around. Was he a specialist? Obviously not, judging by the filthy clothing he wore.

What sort of man could she hope for in the next round of allocations? One not too full of himself, she hoped.

She laughed at herself. Her attention continually returned to the man who had cleaned out their septic tank. Perhaps that was it, yes. Typical! The most undeserving of orphans matched up with a sewage labourer! What a joke!

Again, she couldn't get him out of her mind, yet he never looked at her once. She'd seen him, not a week ago, he had been clambering down from the roof and almost fell off when he saw that they were on the second stage of the exercises. 'I wonder if he noticed that I was teasing him?' she said to herself, suddenly very shocked. She had been making some very expressive moves. What would he have thought of her? Thank goodness he had not been on top of the roof then. He would have caught sight of the more vulgar dance steps she had been making, those that were expressly forbidden from being performed in front of any visitor's presence.

She smiled to herself. She was always smiling to herself for some reason. Amina was so happy being here.

She was aware that some of the girls kept a secret of their life before coming to the orphanage. She'd never been upset that she had been a beggar, so were most of them. Even so, she respected their silence and had never made them feel uncomfortable by disclosing anything of her own past to these girls. To do such a thing was regarded as being in the worst possible taste.

Now, she began to understand; no guardian would want it broadcast that the mother of one of his babies had been a sneak thief and beggar.

++++

Part IV Amina stands out

CHUCK

When I reached eighteen I could get a housekeeper of my own. The homestead log cabin was being tidied up and a small stove installed. I visited it a couple of times a week, but today I could give it a miss. Only a few days until I reached the magic age and I wanted to take matters in hand now. I didn't really want to waste any more time.

My first priority was the fact that I had two building sites on the go, one in the town centre and another on Bridge Avenue. Both slate quarry and brickworks were working slowly, producing their building materials with four or five workers at either site. That is, as long as I dropped in again every few days to see production was being kept up, that was all the input needed. The quarry would require my attention only when more explosives were needed to drop a couple more huge slabs of slate for another month's processing.

The only real problem was sourcing the different colours of clay at the brickworks. The grey mud turned out dark and unpopular blue bricks.

Rising early, carrying out the remaining routine exercises I had done almost every day since I had reached the age of fourteen, I was at the first site by seven o'clock, ensuring that they got a good start to their work. They were in no need of extra materials for a couple of days. Two labourers, and a carpenter who had almost reached his Freedman status, knew exactly what they were doing. The second site was only a small job, and two labourers were digging out the top surface on which to lay solid floors and digging trenches for the wall foundations. It was tough clay with stone. A backbreaking job, it would take a week in all. That was the type of site where I would have to drop in regularly to keep up the spirits of the workers.

I was at the orphanage by ten to eight. At this time I knew the girls would have been up and about their farmyard chores, milking the cows and the like for an hour and a half before breakfast. Breakfast finished at eight o'clock, and then I knew they had half an hour's preparation before they started their first morning's study sessions.

Weaselly, Pimple Face, the overseer in charge would soon go to his office. That's why I had to be there early. One end of the barn was divided up into offices and storage areas again with the mezzanine over the top. If I reached that mezzanine, I should be able to identify which of the girls I wanted to take on as my own housekeeper.

You may call it being a peeping tom or voyeur. For cripes sake, how can you choose a housekeeper who's wearing a burka and otherwise is covered head to toe?

Well, Pimple Face had raised no objection when I admitted my inadvertently spying from, the rooftop opposite. This time I should have a better vantage point, but knew that I'd have to wait until eleven o'clock when the session of the oldest girls started.

I knew one simple fact from working on roofs, people very rarely look up. The large transverse beams across the lower part of the roof from one side of the barn to the other were enormous one foot square blocks of sheer oak. They were so heavy that wherever their weight rested, they were supported by added buttresses and another central post of similar size.