That Familiar Burning Smell

          Agnes had never seen the city as a child. The countryside was nothing like it, there’d never been this many people within her eyesight at once, and what sort of people near her. Teeming, sick and few who might as well be dead, she’d started to feel much less bad about the hunger she and her father usually felt. Her father, John, held her close as they dodged the vagabonds filling up the alleys of London. “Your mother wouldn’t have liked this,” he muttered as they reached the mills. Her mother. Just him saying the word shot her back to the day. She choked up as he led her into a soot covered building, the scent of flaming charcoal barraging her memory further. That familiar burning smell, she could almost see the pyre in the middle of the room when John shook her.

“Agnes”

“Wha-”

“Listen to me, sweetie. They’ve got boilers back there, and the spaces where the waste fills are too small to be reached by a grown-up. You can scoop it out, and with my work at the docks, we can afford a little bread, maybe even a flat. Can you do that for me?”

 

She nodded instinctively, interpreting it more as an order than an ask. He kissed her on the cheek, himself glassy eyed at the thought of having to leave his little girl in this dungeon. She was led down the corridors by a supervisor, each turn producing smaller walls, hotter temperatures and a growing sense of claustrophobia. Finally, she reached a room, barely the size of two outhouses, filled with more kids, each digging out what looked like black rock and ashes. The ashes. The whole scene brought her to her knees. One kid, between scraping the slag out from underneath his fingernails, tried to help her up.

“You don’t want to be seen laying around when the foreman comes. Get up, you get used to the heat.”

But it wasn’t the heat that left Agnes paralyzed.

It was the smell.

Her mother’s name was Anna. She had been an Anabaptist, along with her father. Life was different back then, better. The village, numbering no more than four hundred souls, were all family. She grew up with them, lived with them and oftentimes saw them as nothing less than her own blood. Things started to change when the nearby lord bought out the entire town. She can only vaguely recall his reasoning, something to do with the efficiency of the town going to waste, the acres could feed thousands more if their homes were optimized for production. Whatever that meant, her kin sure as hell did not agree with that assessment, and acted accordingly. Her mother, strong as she always was, resisted most of all. Gathering the community, she drew a crowd to approach the buyer, and wouldn’t you know it the lord had a change of heart, or at least didn’t want the peasants to test their pitchforks on human flesh, and gave back the land. These were the good days. Even with the riots, there was a new spirit in the air, and Agnes watched in awe as Anna instructed the people on their abilities to resist the burgeoning English state. Anna, of course, was the logical leader of such a place, having delivered all of the children in the township.

These times, however, didn’t last long. Another lord, fresh off buying out the earlier one, decided to try again at Agnes’ village. This time, however, things were different. Troops were sent in, relentless in their agenda, not just that townspeople had no right to live on the Lordship’s newly minted private property without paying a rent, but that there was heresy among them. Her mother, a midwife, would normally have whipped up new protests, but the troops anticipated her types. Hammered on every hut in the village, their propaganda struck fear and anger into everyone’s hearts, infantry and villagers alike.

THE DEVIL RESTS HERE AND CASTS HER CURSES

IF SHE SPEAKS WITHOUT HUSBAND SHE MAY BE POSSESSED

SHE WILL CORRUPT THE YOUTH UPON THEIR BIRTH

Community members, once willing to risk their lives for one another, were suspicious now of her organizing. Why was she out at night knocking on doors? Where was John when she walked into town? What if she’d already damned their children as a midwife? The fear grew slowly, of her sorcery, her powers and abilities to manipulate others. It was alleged even that John was controlled, though maybe he was just one of the few men left willing to support his wife. Once the state got wind of these rumors, it was only a matter of time. Agnes watched as her friends, neighbors and loved ones, all already hungry from the loss of their collective farms, backed the charges of witchcraft from the soldiers and carry their pitchforks and torches to her own mother, their former comrade.

There she was. Tied to the cut branches and logs of the rapidly deforesting woods Agnes had known her whole life, was her own mother. To “exorcise” her, the villagers forced her to standby as the flames grew and curled around the wood, eventually making their way at last to Anna’s legs and torso. It wasn’t long after that Agnes and John left the town, not that there was much left besides a few pauperized farmers, and went looking for work and shelter in the city. She didn’t know it, but Agnes had learned something from the witch trial. She’d learned to not speak up. Don’t make a fuss, don’t comment on something best left to the men, don’t be anything but subservient. Even when faced with an industrial death trap like the one she was laying in now, the best protest she could mutter was to shut up. Why? Well, as she’d seen, that was her job now, and failing to do so would only wind her up on the pyre, her nose full of that familiar burning smell.