The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1773 by Angharad Copyright © 2012 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

“This place seems to feel much happier, doesn’t it?” Mary said as we prepared to leave for home.

“Yes it does,” I agreed.

“Because it’s had a child here, she’s lifted the gloom and given me an insight I so badly needed.”

“Don’t tell Trish that, I won’t be able to get her head through the car door.”

“You’re wicked to that poor girl some times, just remember she’ll be the source of your grandchildren.”

I didn’t have the heart to correct her so I agreed with her. Mary hugged us both and off we went in my Jaguar. Once I’d negotiated our way back to the motorway, I thought I’d have a little conversation with Trish.

“How much d’you recall of last night?”

“Everything, why, Mummy?”

“Tell me about the boy again.”

“His name was Nevo and I think he was about five years old.”

Five years old and they’d killed him to sanctify a piece of ground–what did his parents think of that? I know we live in different times and it’s difficult to appreciate how they felt back in those days, but surely, mothers loved their children just as much as we do nowadays?

I know life was short and probably brutal–they indulged in cannibalism–I saw evidence of that in Cheddar–they used the skulls to boil or bake the brains of the victims. I wonder if they had spongiform encephalopathy in those days or did they die before it developed? Nowadays we call it Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, but it was endemic amongst some of the Polynesian tribes, especially those who practiced cannibalism, because eating the brains of an esteemed opponent in battle, gave you his qualities as well–it sure did, and almost certainly CJD if he had it. I also believed it was poor logic–if you beat or killed your opponent, then he’s a loser and why absorb his qualities if you’re a winner? Oh well, they didn’t have universities available there then. I think it was extant until the colonial powers and missionaries stamped it out. See the Bible is powerful–or would that be the carbines the troops carried to back up the baptisers?

“Mummy, I was talking,” protested Trish tapping my arm.

“Sorry, sweetheart, I was distracted, please tell me again.”

“Nevo was a slave, his family was captured after a raid on his village by the tribe who lived where Cambridge is now. He knew he was going to die but his father had been killed in the raid and his mother was killed in front of him because she wouldn’t go to bed with the tribe’s chieftain.

They looked after him quite well for a few days along with Urda, the girl they killed as well. Then on the day, he was given some food and drink which made him sleepy and they put a string round his neck and put a piece of stick in the back of it and twisted it. He said it was horrid.”

“It was a horrible thing to do, sweetheart, but they believed different things in those days.”

“Did all that stop when Jesus came?”

“I’m afraid not, my darling, people still do horrible things to each other, a lot of it done supposedly in the name of Jesus and other prophets or gods.”

“Jesus would be really upset, wouldn’t he, Mummy?”

“I expect he would, sweetheart,” but not necessarily in the way you think.

“They ate Nevo and Urda after they killed them, and their skulls were buried to make the place sacred. That’s awful isn’t it, Mummy?”

“To us it is, darling, but things were different then and we don’t think people lived very long lives, probably dying anytime in their twenties or thirties from war, disease and accident.”

“What sort of diseases, Mummy?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart, but a rotten tooth could kill them, or an in-growing toenail; remember they didn’t have the drugs we have now or the hospitals to cope with illness or injuries. So, if your constitution wasn’t strong enough–you died.”

“We were talking about constitutions in school just before the hols, we don’t have one in this country, so does that mean I could die if I get an in-growing toe nail?”

“That’s a different sort of constitution, sweetheart, the one I was meaning is your overall health and immune system. They’d have died from diseases like measles and diptheria which still kill people in the third world, but only very rarely in this country.”

“Why, don’t they have constitutions either?”

“They possibly don’t, but primarily because they’re malnourished and haven’t had the immunisations we give our children here.”

“Wossan imnisation?”

“A vaccination to help your body develop a defence against a particular germ or group of germs. Lots of people with susceptibility to things like chest infections get a flu vaccination every winter to try and stop them getting a bad dose of influenza.”

“Septiblity?” she looked puzzled and I constantly dug a pit for myself by using terms she didn’t know. In a few years the boot will be on the other foot.

“Susceptibility–it means some people have a natural or acquired weakness to get certain types of illness: for instance, someone who’s had chemotherapy for cancer might have a damaged immune system and they might be susceptible to catch certain infections. People with HIV or AIDS might also have a similar problem, although modern drugs have helped things a lot there.”

She was looking out the window obviously bored with my long winded explanations. I let her just sit for a while then asked her, “Darling, how did you know the language to talk with Nevo, last night?”

“Eh?” she blinked at me. “I just talked to him like I’m talking to you.”

“Oh did you? It was so quiet I didn’t hear it properly, that must have been it.”

She looked at me, rolled her eyes and went back to looking at the countryside as we hammered down the motorway. She obviously thought I was going a bit strange–perhaps I am, because I heard her talk in the strangest dialect I’ve ever heard.

Assuming that the spirit of the boy survived for five thousand years, would it have learned modern English? I suppose it might, but it also might not. So did the energy convert what Trish said into a form he would understand and also the reverse for her. There is so much I don’t know about it and part of me doesn’t want to know any more.

“I think you were very brave last night, young lady.”

She looked round at me, “Not really, he was smaller than I was and he was already dead, so I think I’d have been alright if he wanted to start something–but he didn’t, he seemed more scared of me than I was of him.”

“See, your reputation goes before you.”

“Is that why we were sent to Cambridge to let him free?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart, but it seems as good a reason as any, don’t you think?”

“Yeah; can we stop soon, I need a wee?”