Justice McBride

They say that if you stand and wait three steps out on the rock at the far Eastern edge of the island, then the devil will come to trade with you – anything you may desire in return for your soul.

 

The widow Justice McBride waited there all night the day her twins died, but he never came.

For the rest of her days, Justice would curse the devil’s unreliability.

 

Unable to make a deal with the devil, Justice turned to the church. The island she inhabited was too small for their own church, comprising a mere handful of inhabitants. Situated off the coast near the border of North Mainland and South Mainland, the islanders had kept away from both North and South churches, fearful as they were of losing their independence.

 

But to save the twins Justice would do anything so she sent her fellow islanders, Billy and Ahab, to fetch a preacher from each church.

 

“You want your twins buried by separate churches?” asked Billy, confused.

 

“No, I want them to come and raise my children from the dead.”

 

“I don’t think they’d come for that,” Billy said, honestly.

 

“Then tell the preacher from the South Church that the preacher from the North Church has already agreed.”

“And what shall I tell the preacher from the North Church?” asked Ahab.

 

“Tell him the same.”

 

“What, that he’s already agreed to come?”

 

“No, that the south church preacher has agreed to come.”

 

And so the two locals set off with their messages. Both churchmen immediately dismissed the requests, then, on hearing that their rival had agreed to attend, called for a servant to fetch his boots and coat and set off in haste.

“So you came then,” the two preachers said to each other, both full of contempt.

 

“Here’s the deal,” Justice explained. “If either of you should succeed in raising one of the twins from the dead then this island shall convert to your church.”

 

It was not a great deal. Both churches had survived hundreds of years without taking the remotest interest in the island, it was scant reward for a miracle. And yet wars have been started over lesser things, and both churchmen were cautious.

 

“What will happen if we both succeed in raising the dead?” both preachers asked, simultaneously.

 

“If you save both of my boys I will reward you by uniting your two churches.”

 

Both preachers rapidly agreed to the deal. It was a promise she could never deliver on, which meant that both churches would be free to seize whatever goods, money and land they wanted in lieu.

 

Now the preacher from the northern church was something of a healer and, upon examining the body of his twin, he immediately realised that the boy was not dead, he was in fact suffering from the same mystery disease that had inflicted many people in the northern mainland recently, which left victims frozen and comatose, but still alive. The boy was in a coma, barely breathing, barely alive, but the preacher had healed many in a similar condition and knew exactly which medicines to apply. He brewed a broth made from a mix of herb and root known to he alone. For a long time he held the broth under the boy’s nose, letting him breathe in the nutritious steam, for he was breathing in spite of appearances. Next he slowly fed small spoonlets of broth into the boy’s mouth, holding the boy’s head back to encourage him to swallow.

 

Suddenly the boy lurched back to life, vomiting up several days’ worth of bile, along with the small spoonlets of broth.

 

‘An easy win for the northern church’, the preacher thought to himself.

 

Alongside the other twin preacher from the southern church was shouting prayers and occasionally poking the boy with his godly finger, ignorant that the child was alive, let alone of how to cure him. The northern preacher was about to offer his services, when suddenly, for no reason that anyone could determine, the second twin too lurched back to life, vomiting bile.

 

For a long time everyone was too overwhelmed with joy to care about anything else, the widow McBride had witnessed two minutes in as many minutes.

 

It was the northern preacher who was first to remembered the deal.

 

“I hate to raise this now, Mrs McBride,” he said, “but there is the matter of the deal we made.”

 

“Ah yes,” the southern preacher remembered, “a little matter of uniting our two churches. Of course, should it prove impossible I’m sure we could come to another arrangement.”

 

“No need,” Justice said. To Billy and Ahab she said “Seize them,” and, to their surprise, the young men found themselves obeying her, and within no time the two churchmen were bound and imprisoned.

“I hope you don’t think this is uniting the two churches,” the northern preacher said. “If you don’t release us now you will find yourself in serious trouble.”

 

“I will release you,” Justice said, “when you tell me all of your church’s secrets.”

 

“Our secrets?” the preacher said, incredulous.

 

“I know enough of the church’s doings to know how much you leach the poor and hoard the tithes and taxes you take from them. Tell me everything, where the money is hidden, in your church, and those nearby.”

 

“And if I refuse? If I deny that the church has any such hidden riches?”

 

Justice took a lobster knife from her belt. “Then I shall make you tell me. Have you ever heard the screams a lobster makes if you remove it from its shell whilst it is still alive? I have grown to enjoy such screams.”

 

Alas, Justice was deprived of any delicious screams, as so credible was her threat that the preacher consented and told on every stolen mainland pound. The southern preacher too divulged all of his church’s secrets.

 

Armed with the information from the preachers, Justice and her fellow islanders set off to the mainland.

 

It was a time of great austerity. Consecutive poor harvests had left the land devastated, and plague and famine was rife. Heading first to north mainland, the posse reached the town where the preacher’s church was based. Calling an emergency meeting in the local bar Justice explained what she had discovered, the fortune the church had hidden away while the townsmen lived in direst poverty.

 

Justice’s words awoke latent anger in the townsmen. They marched upon the church and searched the hidden orifice in the church walls where, secreted secretly, was a hoard of gold coin that would whet the appetite of a greedy dragon, let alone feed the need of a famished town.

 

The gold was divided equally between each resident of the town, making every man, woman and child rich overnight. Justice declared that the church was now a New Church, one run according to the rule of god, not through the greed of man. She selected a local man, learned in the good book and godly to the core, to take over the running of the church at a third of the wage previously paid to the preacher.

 

Her mission thus accomplished, her posse set off for the southern church, where events were repeated almost exactly as they had been in the north. Within a matter of days both churches had been deprived of their gold and become New Churches.

 

Justice’s mission to unite the southern and northern churches had thus begun in earnest.

 

Slowly Justice and her fellow islander’s headed westwards across the border region, visiting towns in both southern and northern mainland, making the preacher confess where the wealth was hidden and dividing it up amongst the town’s residence.

 

Justice would have been happy to have spent the next thirty years of her life wandering across the mainland in this way, but it was not to be.

 

Word of her mission soon spread, and the people on both sides of the border rose up as one, sacked their local churches, redistributed the hoarded gold and proclaimed the church as a Justice Church.

 

Thus within a matter of months, Justice proved true to her word, the mainland churches were united and greed and gold banished to the realms of business and politics.