Fear

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Decameron (1353)

  In his new role, he met with far more success than he had encountered in his trading activities. Within the space of about a year, he raided and seized so many Turkish ships that, quite apart from having regained what he had lost in trading, he discovered that he was considerably more than twice as wealthy as before. He thus had enough, he now realized, to avoid the risk of repeating his former mistake, and once he had persuaded himself to rest content with what he had, he made up his mind to call it a day and return home with the loot. Being wary of commercial ventures, he did not bother to invest his money, but simply steered a homeward course, at breakneck speed, in the tiny ship with which he had collected his spoils. He had come as far as the Archipelago,3 when he found himself sailing one evening directly into the teeth of a southerly gale, and his frail craft was barely able to cope with the mountainous seas. So he put into a cove on the leeward side of a small island, with the intention of waiting for more favourable winds. He had not been there long, however, when two large Genoese carracks,4 homeward-bound from Constantinople, struggled into the bay to escape the same storm from which Landolfo had taken shelter. The crews of the Genoese ships recognized Landolfo’s vessel, which they already knew from various rumours to be loaded with booty. And being by nature a rapacious, money-grubbing set of people, they blocked his way of escape and made their preparations for seizing the prize. First they put ashore a party of well-armed men with crossbows, who were strategically placed so that no one was able to leave Landolfo’s vessel without running into a barrage of arrows. Then they launched cutters, by means of which, aided by the current, they drew themselves towards Landolfo’s little ship. This they captured without losing a man, after a brief and half-hearted struggle, and they took her crew prisoner. Landolfo was left wearing nothing but a threadbare old doublet and taken aboard one of their ships, and after everything of value had been removed from his vessel, they sent it to the bottom.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  I had the chills, and for a moment the chatter of my teeth distracted me. They made a rhythm. The rhythm pleased me. My father carried me to the car to take me to the hospital. Polio was epidemic in the country. It caused paralysis and killed. My parents, the doctor, and the neighbor were frightened. I had entered a world in which everyone spoke softly, with trepidation, as if the sound of the word polio would call it into the house. In my parents’ tribal traditions, the word, if spoken with intent, could call it here. The hospital was a house of strangers. I was undressed and put in a gown, a diaper, and a crib. Not only was I sick, my status had dropped from girl to baby. My parents watched helplessly from a distance. The transfer of power confused me. In this realm my parents were no longer the presiding gods. A nurse in white carried me to a bare room for a spinal tap. I knew it was going to be bad when three people in uniforms came into the room to hold me down. I screamed as a needle went in. The spinal column carries personal essence back and forth between earth and sky. The spine is powerful and vulnerable. The procedure was excruciating. I flailed as much with the fear as with the pain. Worse, I saw my mother’s face across the room as it broke apart with my suffering. I didn’t see my father there. He was standing out in the hallway, smoking a Lucky Strike cigarette. I can still hear the kind voice of a nurse attempting to reassure me by lying to me. “It won’t hurt too much. It will be over soon.” My parents gave me a white stuffed cat, then reluctantly left at the end of visiting hours. I was bereft. The toy didn’t replace my parents, but I needed that token of their love. And I liked cats. My father was of the Tiger clan through his mother. This gave us a special connection with cats. Some of our family understand and speak cat language. Aunt Lois said her father had a black cat he fed special treats from the table. She said she told her father that he loved the cat more than her. Yet her father was of the Wind clan. At four years old, when your parents are gone, they are gone forever. I mourned. I did not speak to the staff who came to check my vital signs or change me. My parents arrived the next morning to take me home. The test results were negative. I did not have polio.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘You will then go to Rinuccio Palermini and say to him: “Madonna Francesca says she is ready to grant your every wish, provided you do her a great favour, namely that just before midnight tonight you go to the tomb where Scannadio was buried this morning, and without saying a word about anything you may see or hear, fetch his body gently forth and take it to her house. There you will discover why she wants you to do her this service, and you will have all you desire of her. But if you should refuse to do it, she charges you here and now never to send her any further messages or entreaties” The maidservant called on each of the men in turn and delivered the two messages exactly as instructed, in each case receiving the same answer, namely that they would venture into Hell itself, let alone a tomb, if she wanted them to do so. So the maid conveyed this answer to her mistress, who waited to see whether they were mad enough to carry out her request. After dark, having waited until most people were asleep, Alessandro Chiarmontesi stripped down to his doublet and set forth from his house in order to take Scannadio’s place in the tomb. But as he was on his way to the graveyard, he began to feel very frightened, and to say to himself: ‘Why should I be such a fool? Where do I think I’m going? For all I know, her kinsfolk may have discovered I’m in love with her. Perhaps they think I’ve seduced her, and have forced her into this so that they can murder me inside the tomb. If that’s the case, I shan’t stand a dog’s chance, nobody will be any the wiser, and they’ll escape scot free. Or possibly, for all I know, it’s a trap prepared for me by some enemy of mine, who persuaded her to do him this favour because she’s in love with him.’

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  stay with the children and me that night for protection. We locked the doors and windows, visited around the kitchen table while we waited. He showed up a few hours after the bars closed. We heard his footsteps kick gravel in the yard. He tried the front door handle, then attempted to force it open. He knocked, calling my name softly, familiarly, asking me to let him in. Then he kicked the door, yelling, “I’m going to kill you!” He walked around to the back. He called out that he was pulling down the telephone wires so we couldn’t call the police. The house went dark. We lost electricity. He kicked in the back window. The glass shattered and he began attempting to crawl in. He was drunk and awkward. My friend’s husband entreated him in their tribal language to stop. The police came just as he got into the house. I watched, pained and relieved, as they shackled him. The electric cables crackled with power on the dirt lawn. The police had never seen anything like it. Anyone else would have been killed with all those volts of electricity. He appeared unhurt by the voltage and called out drunkenly to me from the back seat of the police car, “I love you, Joy. I love you.” I did not get him out of jail that time. I did not take him back. My dreams had warned me. I had taken him back many times, when he showed up freshly showered, smelling sweet, with sorry, charm, and flowers. I understood why women went back to their abusers. The monster wasn’t your real husband. He was a bad dream, an alien of sorts who took over the spirit of your beloved one. He entered and left your husband. It was your real love you welcomed back in. During that period my house became the safe house for many of my Indian women friends whose husbands and boyfriends were beating them. One night there were three or four of us camped out together. We listened to music, laughed, and cooked dinner. Our children ran around in the yard and played. After the children were put down to sleep, we sat in a circle and told our stories. One friend’s husband had broken her ribs. The last time he had beat her she was in the hospital with her jaw wired together. Because she was hospitalized for so long she lost a semester of credits. Yet he was affectionate. He came to pick her up from school once with their pet goat in the back of the truck. I watched

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  neck in a chokehold and told her that he would kill her if she didn’t get in there and take care of the baby. She moved slowly and quietly, in shock, to pick me up. While he passed out in the bedroom she held and rocked me and sobbed quietly through the night. The next morning he had no recollection of his threat. As he begged my mother’s forgiveness, he held us both in his arms. She stayed with him and would stay with him until I was eight years old because she loved him, though that night he broke her heart. The heavy promise of snow wet the air, and my brother and I were jittery with anticipation. We wanted it to snow. We wanted our father to make it home with the Christmas tree. The house smelled of gingerbread, and we’d eaten everything: the scraps of dough, raisin eyes, and fresh cookie shapes taken from the oven. We ran back and forth to the front window to watch for our father. Our baby sister stirred in her wrappings from her winter newborn nap. Every passing car and we were at the window again. It was Saturday night, and our father had left late morning to pick up the Christmas tree. My brother kept asking our mother, “When’s Daddy coming home?” And she always answered the same: “He’ll be home any minute.” She anxiously paced the kitchen, checking the baking sheets of cookies and chopping and frying the potatoes and meat. It was long past time for dinner, and we were hungry and cranky. I set the table with plates and glasses while my brother seriously set the forks. At two years old, he was already our mother’s “little man.” He shadowed her, and usually she didn’t mind, but tonight the baby was restless and there was no sign of our father. Since the baby had been born, my brother had been clingy and whiny. That night he was an outright nuisance. I had to keep shooing him from the coffee table covered with ornaments we’d unpacked for the Christmas tree. He’d already broken one of the glass soldiers, and I had cut my finger while sweeping up the slivers. My brother asked yet again about our dad. I elbowed him a sharp one in the ribs. He cried, the baby cried, and I was in trouble for hitting again. “As the older sister, you’re to take care of your little brother. That’s your responsibility.” My mother shamed me. The sniffling boy nestled his head against her skirt as she soothed the sobbing infant and heated up the bottle of

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Friendship! He marvelled now at his folly, at his blindness, his coldness of body and spirit. He had offered this girl the cold husks of his friendship, insulting her youth, her womanhood, her beauty—for he saw her now with the eyes of a lover. To a man such as he was, sensitive, restrained, love came as a blinding revelation. He knew little about women, and the little he did know was restricted to episodes that he thought best forgotten. On the whole he had led a fairly chaste life—less from scruple than because he was fastidious by nature. But now he was very deeply in love, and those years of restraint took their toll of poor Martin, so that he trembled before his own passion, amazed at its strength, not a little disconcerted. And being by habit a quiet, reserved creature, he must quite lose his head and become the reverse. So impatient was he that he rushed off to Morton very early one morning to look for Stephen, tracking her down in the end at the stables, where he found her talking to Williams and Raftery. He said: ‘Never mind about Raftery, Stephen—let’s go into the garden, I’ve got something to tell you.’ And she thought that he must have had bad news from home, because of his voice and his curious pallor. She went with him and they walked on in silence for a while, then Martin stood still, and began to talk quickly; he was saying amazing, incredible things: ‘Stephen, my dear—I do utterly love you.’ He was holding out his arms, while she shrank back bewildered: ‘I love you, I’m deeply in love with you, Stephen—look at me, don’t you understand me, belovèd? I want you to marry me—you do love me, don’t you?’ And then, as though she had suddenly struck him, he flinched: ‘Good God! What’s the matter, Stephen?’ She was staring at him in a kind of dumb horror, staring at his eyes that were clouded by desire, while gradually over her colourless face there was spreading an expression of the deepest repulsion—terror and repulsion he saw on her face, and something else too, a look as of outrage. He could not believe this thing that he saw, this insult to all that he felt to be sacred; for a moment he in his turn, must stare, then he came a step nearer, still unable to believe. But at that she wheeled round and fled from him wildly, fled back to the house that had always protected; without so much as a word she left him, nor did she once pause in her flight to look back. Yet even in this moment of headlong panic, the girl was conscious of something like amazement, amazement at herself, and she gasped as she ran: ‘It’s Martin—Martin—’ And again: ‘It’s Martin!’

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The lady, who had heard it much better than he, made a show of awaking and said, 'Eh? How sayst thou?' 'I say,' answered Gianni, 'that meseemeth there is a knocking at our door.' 'Knocking!' cried she. 'Alack, Gianni mine, knowst thou not what it is? It is a phantom, that hath these last few nights given me the greatest fright that ever was, insomuch that, whenas I hear it, I put my head under the clothes and dare not bring it out again until it is broad day.' Quoth Gianni, 'Go to, wife; have no fear, if it be so; for I said the _Te Lucis_ and the _Intemerata_ and such and such other pious orisons, before we lay down, and crossed the bed from side to side, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, so that we have no need to fear, for that, what power soever it have, it cannot avail to harm us.' The lady, fearing lest Federigo should perchance suspect otherwhat and be angered with her, determined at all hazards to arise and let him know that Gianni was there; wherefore quoth she to her husband, 'That is all very well; thou sayst thy words, thou; but, for my part, I shall never hold myself safe nor secure, except we exorcise it, since thou art here.' 'And how is it to be exorcised?' asked he; and she, 'I know full well how to exorcise it; for, the other day, when I went to the Pardon at Fiesole, a certain anchoress (the very holiest of creatures, Gianni mine, God only can say how holy she is,) seeing me thus fearful, taught me a pious and effectual orison and told me that she had made trial of it several times, ere she became a recluse, and that it had always availed her. God knoweth I should never have dared go alone to make proof of it; but, now that thou art here, I would have us go exorcise the phantom.'

• From The Decameron (1353)

  [Footnote 425: _Scannadio_ signifies "Murder-God" and was no doubt a nickname bestowed upon the dead man, on account of his wicked and reprobate way of life.] The maid betook herself to the two lovers and did her errand punctually to each, saying as it had been enjoined her; whereto each made answer that, an it pleased her, they would go, not only into a tomb, but into hell itself. The maid carried their reply to the lady and she waited to see if they would be mad enough to do it. The night come, whenas it was the season of the first sleep, Alessandro Chiarmontesi, having stripped himself to his doublet, went forth of his house to take Scannadio's place in the tomb; but, by the way, there came a very frightful thought into his head and he fell a-saying in himself, 'Good lack, what a fool I am! Whither go I? How know I but yonder woman's kinsfolk, having maybe perceived that I love her and believing that which is not, have caused me do this, so they may slaughter me in yonder tomb? An it should happen thus, I should suffer for it nor would aught in the world be ever known thereof to their detriment. Or what know I but maybe some enemy of mine hath procured me this, whom she belike loveth and seeketh to oblige therein?' Then said he, 'But, grant that neither of these things be and that her kinsfolk are e'en for carrying me to her house, I must believe that they want not Scannadio's body to hold it in their arms or to put it in hers; nay, it is rather to be conceived that they mean to do it some mischief, as the body of one who maybe disobliged them in somewhat aforetime. She saith that I am not to say a word for aught that I may feel. But, should they put out mine eyes or draw my teeth or lop off my hands or play me any other such trick, how shall I do? How could I abide quiet? And if I speak, they will know me and mayhap do me a mischief, or, though they do me no hurt, yet shall I have accomplished nothing, for that they will not leave me with the lady; whereupon she will say that I have broken her commandment and will never do aught to pleasure me.' So saying, he had well nigh returned home; but, nevertheless, his great love urged him on with counter arguments of such potency that they brought him to the tomb, which he opened and entering therein, stripped Scannadio of his clothes; then, donning them and shutting the tomb upon himself, he laid himself in the dead man's place. Thereupon he began to call to mind what manner of man the latter had been and remembering him of all the things whereof he had aforetime heard tell as having befallen by night, not to say in the sepulchres of the dead, but even otherwhere, his every hair began to stand on end and himseemed each moment as if Scannadio should rise upright and butcher him then and there. However, aided by his ardent love, he got the better of these and the other fearful thoughts that beset him and abiding as he were the dead man, he fell to awaiting that which should betide him.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The next day, the wind changed quarter, and the two ships hoisted their sails and set a westerly course. For the whole of that day they made good progress, but in the evening a gale began to blow, producing very heavy seas and separating the two carracks from each other. By a stroke of ill-luck, the ship in which the wretched, destitute Landolfo was travelling was driven by the force of the gale on to the coast of the island of Cephalonia, where she ran aground with a tremendous crash, split wide open, and like a piece of glass being flung against a wall, was smashed to smithereens. As is usually the case when this happens, the sea was rapidly littered with an assortment of floating planks, chests and merchandise. And although it was pitch dark and there was a heavy swell, the poor wretches who had survived the wreck, or those of them who could swim, began to cling to whatever object happened to float across their path. One of their number was poor Landolfo, who had in fact been calling out all day for death to come and take him, for he felt he would rather die than return home poverty-stricken. But now that he was staring death in the face, he was frightened by the prospect, and like the others he too clung to the first spar that came within his reach, in the hope that by remaining afloat for a little longer, God might somehow come to his rescue. Settling himself astride the spar as best he could, he clung on till daybreak, meanwhile being tossed hither and thither by sea and wind. When dawn came, he cast his eyes around him, but all he could see was clouds and water, and a chest floating on the sea’s surface. To his great consternation, this chest floated every so often into his vicinity, causing him to fear lest it should collide into him and do him an injury. So whenever it came too near, he summoned up the meagre strength he still possessed, and pushed it away as best he could with his hands.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘A good idea!’ said the judge, and he ordered several of them to be summoned. One of them claimed that his purse had been stolen a week before, another said six days, another four, and some of them said they had been robbed that very day. Whereupon Martellino retorted: ‘Sir, they are all a lot of bare-faced liars, and I can prove it to you, because I only arrived in this city for the first time a couple of hours ago. I wish to God I had never set foot in it at all! As soon as I arrived, I went to have a look at the body of this Saint, where I had the ill-luck to be given a good drubbing, as you can see for yourself. Ask the customs officer at the city gates, consult his register, ask my landlord, and they will all bear out what I have told you. And if you find I am telling the truth, I beg you to listen no further to these vicious perjurers. Please don’t let me be tortured and put to death.’ Meanwhile, with the matter proceeding along these lines, word had reached Marchese and Stecchi that the judge was giving him a rough handling and had already put him on the strappado. ‘We have made a fine mess of things,’ they said, shaking with fright. ‘We have taken him out of the frying-pan, and dropped him straight in the fire.’3 Being determined to leave no stone unturned, they tracked down their landlord, and explained to him what had happened. The landlord, who was highly amused at their tale, took them to see a man called Sandro Agolanti, a Florentine living in Treviso who had considerable influence with the ruler of the city. Having acquainted him with all the facts, the landlord joined the other two in pleading with him to intervene on Martellino’s behalf.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Thereafter, with very discreet and secret ordinance, they foregathered again and again in the same place, to the great contentment of them both, and the work went on so briskly that the young lady became with child, which was sore unwelcome both to the one and the other; wherefore she used many arts to rid herself, contrary to the course of nature, of her burden, but could nowise avail to accomplish it. Therewithal, Pietro, fearing for his life, bethought himself to flee and told her, to which she answered, 'An thou depart, I will without fail kill myself.' Whereupon quoth Pietro, who loved her exceedingly, 'Lady mine, how wilt thou have me abide here? Thy pregnancy will discover our default and it will lightly be pardoned unto thee; but I, poor wretch, it will be must needs bear the penalty of thy sin and mine own.' 'Pietro,' replied she, 'my sin must indeed be discovered; but be assured that thine will never be known, an thou tell not thyself.' Then said he, 'Since thou promisest me this, I will remain; but look thou keep thy promise to me.' After awhile, the young lady, who had as most she might, concealed her being with child, seeing that, for the waxing of her body, she might no longer dissemble it, one day discovered her case to her mother, beseeching her with many tears to save her; whereupon the lady, beyond measure woeful, gave her hard words galore and would know of her how the thing had come about. Violante, in order that no harm might come to Pietro, told her a story of her own devising, disguising the truth in other forms. The lady believed it and to conceal her daughter's default, sent her away to a country house of theirs. There, the time of her delivery coming and the girl crying out, as women use to do, what while her mother never dreamed that Messer Amerigo, who was well nigh never wont to do so, should come thither, it chanced that he passed, on his return from hawking, by the chamber where his daughter lay and marvelling at the outcry she made, suddenly entered the chamber and demanded what was to do. The lady, seeing her husband come unawares, started up all woebegone and told him that which had befallen the girl. But he, less easy of belief than his wife had been, declared that it could not be true that she knew not by whom she was with child and would altogether know who he was, adding that, by confessing it, she might regain his favour; else must she make ready to die without mercy.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  Nephi at first resists the commandment: “I said in my heart, never at any time have I shed the blood of man, and I shrunk and would that I might not slay him.” But then God speaks to Nephi again: “Behold the Lord slayeth the wicked to bring forth His righteous purposes: It is better that one man should perish, than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief.” Thus reassured, Nephi says in The Book of Mormon, “I did obey the voice of the Spirit, and took Laban by the hair of the head, and I smote off his head with his own sword.” * Thanks to a revelation Ron had received back on February 28, the story of Nephi slaying Laban was imbued with special significance for Dan. In this revelation, God had commanded: Thus saith the Lord unto My servant Dan. . . . Thou art like unto Nephi of old for never since the beginning of time have I had a more obedient son. And for this I will greatly bless thee and multiply thy seed, for have I not said if ye do what I say I am bound[?] Continue in My word for I have great responsibility and great blessings in store for thee. That is all for now. Even so Amen. This revelation had a tremendous impact on Dan: after God had declared that he was like Nephi, according to Mark Lafferty, Dan “was willing to do anything that the Lord commanded him.” In the fundamentalist worldview, a sharp dividing line runs through all of creation, demarcating good from evil, and everybody falls on one side of that line or the other. After much praying, Ron and Dan decided that the four individuals God had commanded them to remove must, a priori, be wicked—they were “children of perdition,” as Dan phrased it—and therefore deserved to be murdered. Having determined that the so-called removal revelation was true and valid, the Lafferty brothers further concluded that “it would be wise to act on the things it suggested.” Whenever a member of the School of the Prophets received a revelation, it was standard procedure for the commandment to be presented to the other members for evaluation. On March 22, just before the school’s weekly meeting at Claudine Lafferty’s home, Ron took Bernard Brady into a side room and handed him the removal revelation. “He asked me to look it over,” says Brady, “and then he left the room. As I read it, my hands began to shake. I got cold all over. I couldn’t believe what I was reading.” When Ron returned a few minutes later, Brady told him, “This scares me to death. I don’t want to have anything to do with anything like that. I think it is wrong.” When the meeting commenced a few minutes later, neither Ron nor Brady said anything to the other members about the revelation.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The king gone, there fell many upon the two lovers and not only awakened them, but forthright without any pity took them and bound them; which when they saw, it may lightly be conceived if they were woeful and feared for their lives and wept and made moan. According to the king's commandment, they were carried to Palermo and bound to a stake in the public place, whilst the faggots and the fire were made ready before their eyes, to burn them at the hour appointed. Thither straightway flocked all the townsfolk, both men and women, to see the two lovers; the men all pressed to look upon the damsel and like as they praised her for fair and well made in every part of her body, even so, on the other hand, the women, who all ran to gaze upon the young man, supremely commended him for handsome and well shapen. But the wretched lovers, both sore ashamed, stood with bowed heads and bewailed their sorry fortune, hourly expecting the cruel death by fire. Whilst they were thus kept against the appointed hour, the default of them committed, being bruited about everywhere, came to the ears of Ruggieri dell' Oria, a man of inestimable worth and then the king's admiral, whereupon he repaired to the place where they were bound and considering first the girl, commended her amain for beauty, then, turning to look upon the young man, knew him without much difficulty and drawing nearer to him, asked him if he were not Gianni di Procida. The youth, raising his eyes and recognizing the admiral, answered, 'My lord, I was indeed he of whom you ask; but I am about to be no more.' The admiral then asked him what had brought him to that pass, and he answered, 'Love and the king's anger.' The admiral caused him tell his story more at large and having heard everything from him as it had happened, was about to depart, when Gianni called him back and said to him, 'For God's sake, my lord, an it may be, get me one favour of him who maketh me to abide thus.' 'What is that?' asked Ruggieri; and Gianni said, 'I see I must die, and that speedily, and I ask, therefore, by way of favour,--as I am bound with my back to this damsel, whom I have loved more than my life, even as she hath loved me, and she with her back to me,--that we may be turned about with our faces one to the other, so that, dying, I may look upon her face and get me gone, comforted.' 'With all my heart,' answered Ruggieri, laughing; 'I will do on such wise that thou shalt yet see her till thou grow weary of her sight.'

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  After telling Elizabeth to put on some shoes, Mitchell hustled her past the bedroom where the Smart parents were sleeping soundly, and exited the house. Mitchell marched Elizabeth at knifepoint four miles into the foothills west of her home. Upon reaching a secluded campsite in Dry Creek Canyon, he and Barzee conducted a weird, self-styled wedding ritual to “seal” the girl to Mitchell in “the new and everlasting covenant”—a Mormon euphemism for polygamous marriage. Barzee then demanded that Elizabeth remove her red pajamas. When the girl balked, Barzee explained that if she refused to cooperate, Mitchell would forcibly disrobe her. Faced with this prospect, Elizabeth complied, whereupon Mitchell consummated the marriage by raping his fourteen-year-old bride. Back in the Smart household, sister Mary Katherine had remained in her bed, too terrified by what she’d witnessed to get up and alert her parents. At least two hours passed before she finally summoned the courage to go to their bedroom and wake them. Horrified and trying to comprehend how his eldest daughter could have been snatched from her own bed, Ed Smart, even before he called the police, phoned the president of his local LDS stake, who in turn mobilized a search party of trusted Saints. Searchers immediately began combing the neighborhood for Elizabeth, but found no sign of her. For at least two months after her abduction, Elizabeth was held at a series of campsites hidden in a labyrinth of scrub-choked ravines above her home, close enough to hear would-be rescuers calling her name. Sometimes she was kept in a subterranean hollow covered with a lean-to; on other occasions her ankle was chained to a tree. Using his gift for fundamentalist rhetoric and adroitly manipulating the religious indoctrination Elizabeth had received since she was old enough to talk, Mitchell cowed the girl into becoming an utterly submissive polygamous concubine—buttressing his powers of theological persuasion with threats to kill her and her family. Raised to obey figures of Mormon authority unquestioningly, and to believe that LDS doctrine is the law of God, she would have been particularly susceptible to the dexterous fundamentalist spin Mitchell applied to familiar Mormon scripture. The white robes Mitchell and Barzee wore, and forced Elizabeth to wear, resembled the sacred robes she had donned with her family when they entered the Mormon temple. When Mitchell bullied Elizabeth into submitting to his carnal demands, he used the words of Joseph Smith—words she had been taught were handed down by God Himself—to phrase those demands. “Being brought up as she was made her especially vulnerable,” says Debbie Palmer, who is intimately acquainted with the coercive power of fundamentalist culture from her own upbringing in Bountiful.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  In a field on the right worked three very old women; they were hoeing with a diligent and fatalistic patience. At any moment a stray shell might burst and then, presto! little left of the very old women. But what will you? There is war—there has been war so long—one must eat, even under the noses of the Germans; the bon Dieu knows this, He alone can protect—so meanwhile one just goes on diligently hoeing. A blackbird was singing to himself in a tree, the tree was horribly maimed and blasted; all the same he had known it the previous spring and so now, in spite of its wounds, he had found it. Came a sudden lull when they heard him distinctly. And Mary saw him: ‘Look,’ she said, ‘there’s a blackbird!’ Just for a moment she forgot about war. Yet Stephen could now very seldom forget, and this was because of the girl at her side. A queer, tight feeling would come round her heart, she would know the fear that can go hand in hand with personal courage, the fear for another. But now she looked down for a moment and smiled: ‘Bless that blackbird for letting you see him, Mary.’ She knew that Mary loved little, wild birds, that indeed she loved all the humbler creatures. They turned into a lane and were comparatively safe, but the roar of the guns had grown much more insistent. They must be nearing the Poste de Secours, so they spoke very little because of those guns, and after a while because of the wounded. 3The Poste de Secours was a ruined auberge at the cross-roads, about fifty yards behind the trenches. From what had once been its spacious cellar, they were hurriedly carrying up the wounded, maimed and mangled creatures who, a few hours ago, had been young and vigorous men. None too gently the stretchers were lowered to the ground beside the two waiting ambulances—none too gently because there were so many of them, and because there must come a time in all wars when custom stales even compassion.

• From Trash (1988)

  Sane, I don’t understand her at all.” “What do you think happens after death?” Mama asked me. She and I were sitting alone waiting for the doctor to come back. They were giving her IV fluids and oral medicines to help her with the nausea, but she was sick to her stomach all the time and trying hard not to show it. “Come on, tell me,” she said. I looked at Mama’s temples where the skin had begun to sink in. A fine gray shadow was slowly widening and deepening. Her closed eyes were like marbles under a sheet. I rubbed my neck. I was too tired to lie to her. “You close your eyes,” I said. “Then you open them, start over.” “God!” Mama shuddered. “I hope not.” Jo was a breeder, Ridgebacks and Rottweilers. A third of every litter had to be put down. Jo always had it done at the vet’s office, while she held them in her arms and sobbed. She kept their birth dates and names in lists under the glass top of her coffee table, christening them all for rock-and-rollers, even the ones she had to kill. “Axl is getting kind of old,” she told me on the phone before I came last spring. “But you should see Bon Jovi the Third. We’re gonna get a dynasty out of her.” After her daughter Beth was born, Jo had her own tubes tied. Still she hated to fix her bitches, and found homes for every dog born on her place. “Only humans should be stopped from breeding,” she told me once. “Dogs know when to eat their runts. Humans don’t know shit.” Four years ago Jo was arrested for breaking into a greyhound puppy farm up near Apopka. Mama was healthy back then, but didn’t have a dime to spare. Jaybird called me to help them find a lawyer and get Jo out on bail. It was expensive. Jo had blown up the incinerator at the farm. The police insisted she had used stolen dynamite, but Jo refused to talk about that. What she wanted to talk about was what she had heard, that hundreds of dogs had been burned in that cinder-block firepit. “Alive. Alive,” she told the judge. “Three different people told me. Those monsters get drunk, stoke up the fire, and throw in all the puppies they can’t sell. Alive, the sonsabitches! Don’t even care if anyone hears them scream.” From the back of the court-room, I could hear the hysteria in her voice. “Imagine it. Little puppies, starved in cages and then caught up and tossed in the fire.” Jo shook her head. Gray streaks shone against the black. The judge grimaced. I wondered if she was getting to him. “And then”—she glared across the courtroom—“they sell the ash and bone for fertilizer.” Beside me Jaybird wiggled uncomfortably.

• From Trash (1988)

  My stepfather was a truck driver—a little man with a big rig and a bigger rage. He kept losing jobs when he lost his temper. Somebody would say something, some joke, some little thing, and my little stepfather would pick up something half again his weight and try to murder whoever had dared to say that thing. “Don’t make him angry,” people always said about him. “Don’t make him angry,” my mama was always saying to us. I tried not to make him angry. I ran his errands. I listened to him talk, standing still on one leg and then the other, keeping my face empty, impartial. He always wanted me to wait on him. When we heard him yell, my sister’s face would break like a pool of water struck with a handful of stones. Her glance would fly to mine. I would stare at her, hate her, hate myself. She would stare at me, hate me, and hate herself. After a moment, I would sigh—five, six, seven, eight years old, sighing like an old old lady—tell her to stay there, get up and go to him. Go to stand still for him, his hands, his big hands on his little body. I would imagine those hands cut off by marauders sweeping down on great black horses, swords like lightning bolts in the hands of armored women who wouldn’t even know my name but would kill him anyway. Imagine boils and blisters and wasting diseases; sudden overturned cars and spreading gasoline. Imagine vengeance. Imagine justice. What is the difference anyway when both are only stories in your head? In the everyday reality you stand still. I stood still. Bent over. Lay down. “Yes, Daddy.” “No, Daddy.” “I’m sorry, Daddy.” “Don’t do that, Daddy.” “Please, Daddy.” Push it down. Don’t show it. Don’t tell anyone what is really going on. We are not safe. There are people in the world who are, but they are not us. Don’t show your fear to anyone. The things that would happen are too terrible to name. Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night to the call of my name shouted in my mama’s voice, rising from silence like an echo caught in the folds of my brain. It is her hard voice I hear, not the soft one she used when she held me tight, the hard voice she used on bill collectors and process servers. Sometimes her laugh comes too, that sad laugh, thin and foreshadowing a cough, with her angry laugh following. I hate that laugh; hate the sound of it in the night following on my name like shame. When I hear myself laugh like that, I always start to curse; to echo what I know was the stronger force in my mama’s life.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Anna felt doubtful regarding this new purchase. She was one of those women who, having passed forty, were content to go on placidly driving in their broughams, or, in summer, in their charming little French victorias. She detested the look of herself in large goggles, detested being forced to tie on her hat, detested the heavy, mannish coat of rough tweed that Sir Philip insisted she must wear when motoring. Such things were not of her; they offended her sense of the seemly, her preference for soft, clinging garments, her instinct for quiet, rather slow, gentle movements, her love of the feminine and comely. For Anna at forty-four was still slender, and her dark hair, as yet, was untouched with grey, and her blue Irish eyes were as clear and candid as when she had come as a bride to Morton. She was beautiful still, and this fact rejoiced her in secret, because of her husband. Yet Anna did not ignore middle age; she met it half-way with dignity and courage; and now her soft dresses were of reticent colours, and her movements a little more careful than they had been, and her mind more severely disciplined and guarded—too much guarded these days, she was gradually growing less tolerant as her interests narrowed. And the motor, an unimportant thing in itself, served nevertheless to crystallize in Anna a certain tendency towards retrogression, a certain instinctive dislike of the unusual, a certain deep-rooted fear of the unknown. Old Williams was openly disgusted and hostile; he considered the car to be an outrage to his stables—those immaculate stables with their spacious coach-houses, their wide plaits of straw neatly interwoven with yards of red and blue saddler’s tape, and their fine stable-yard hitherto kept so spotless. Came the Panhard, and behold, pools of oil on the flagstones, greenish, bad-smelling oil that defied even scouring; and a medley of odd-looking tools in the coach-house, all greasy, all soiling your hands when you touched them; and large tins of what looked like black vaseline; and spare tyres for which nails had been knocked into the woodwork; and a bench with a vice for the motor’s insides which were frequently being dissected. From this coach-house the dog-cart had been ruthlessly expelled, and now it must stand chock-a-block with the phaeton, so that room might be made for the garish intruder together with its young bodyservant. The young bodyservant was known as a chauffeur—he had come down from London and wore clothes made of leather. He talked Cockney, and openly spat before Williams in the coach-house, then rubbed his foot over the spittle. ‘I’ll ’ave none of yer expectoration ’ere in me coach-house, I tells ee!’ bawled Williams, apoplectic with temper. ‘Oh, come orf it, do, Grandpa; we’re not in the ark!’ was how the new blood answered Williams. There was war to the knife between Williams and Burton—Burton who expressed large disdain of the horses.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The persecution of Protestants began at the Diet of Worms in 1521. Charles V. issued from that city the first of a series of cruel enactments, or "placards," for the extermination of the Lutheran heresy in his hereditary dominion of the Netherlands. In 1523 two Augustinian monks, Henry Voes and John Esch, were publicly burnt, as adherents of Luther, at the, stake in Brussels. After the fires were kindled, they repeated the Apostles’ Creed, sang the "Te Deum laudamus," and prayed in the flames, "Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy upon us." The heroic death of these Protestant proto-martyrs inspired Luther’s first poem, which begins, — "Ein neues Lied wir heben an."808 The prior of their convents Lampert Thorn, was suffocated in prison. The martyrdom of Henry of Zütphen has already been noticed.809 Adolph Klarenbach and Peter Flysteden suffered at the stake in Cologne with constancy and triumphant joy, Sept. 28, 1529.810 George Winkler, a preacher in Halle, was cited by the Archbishop of Cologne to Aschaffenburg for distributing the communion in both kinds, and released, but murdered by unknown hands on his return, May, 1527.811 Duke George of Saxony persecuted the Lutherans, not by death, but by imprisonment and exile. John Herrgott, a traveling book-peddler, was beheaded (1527) for revolutionary political opinions, rather than for selling Lutheran books.812 In Southern Germany the Edict of Worms was more rigidly executed. Many executions by fire and sword, accompanied by barbarous mutilations, took place in Austria and Bavaria. In Vienna a citizen, Caspar Tauber, was beheaded and burnt, because he denied purgatory and transubstantiation, Sept. 17, 1524.813 In Salzburg a priest was secretly beheaded without a trial, by order of the archbishop, for Lutheran heresy.814 George Wagner, a minister at Munich, was burnt Feb. 8, 1527. Leonard Käser (or Kaiser) shared the same fate, Aug. 18, 1527, by order of the bishop of Passau. Luther wrote him, while in prison, a letter of comfort.815 But the Anabaptists had their martyrs as well, and they died with the same heroic faith. Hätzer was burnt in Constance, Hübmaier in Vienna. In Passau thirty perished in prison. In Salzburg some were mutilated, others beheaded, others drowned, still others burnt alive.816 Unfortunately, the Anabaptists were not much better treated by Protestant governments; even in Zürich several were drowned in the river under the eyes of Zwingli. The darkest blot on Protestantism is the burning of Servetus for heresy and blasphemy, at Geneva, with the approval of Calvin and all the surviving Reformers, including Melanchthon (1553). He had been previously condemned, and burnt in effigy, by a Roman-Catholic tribunal in France. Now such a tragedy would be impossible in any church. The same human passions exist, but the ideas and circumstances have changed. CHAPTER VII.THE SACRAMENTARIAN CONTROVERSIES.§ 101. Sacerdotalism and Sacramentalism.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  This is the infamous "Valtellina Massacre (Veltliner Mord) of July, 1620. It may be called an imitation of the Sicilian Vespers, and of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. It was the fiendish work of religious fanaticism combined with political discontent. The tragedy began in the silence of the night, from July 18th to 19th, by the murder of sixty defenceless adult Protestants of Tirano; the Podesta Enderlin was shot down in the street, mutilated, and thrown into the Adda; Anton von Salis took refuge in the house of a Catholic friend, but was sought out and killed; the head of the Protestant minister, Anton Bassa of Poschiavo, was posted on the pulpit of the church. The murderers proceeded to Teglio, and shot down about the same number of persons in the church, together with the minister, who was wounded in the pulpit, and exhorted the hearers to persevere; a number of women and children, who had taken refuge in the tower of the church, were burnt. The priest of Teglio took part in the bloody business, carrying the cross in the left, and the sword in the right hand. At Sondrio, the massacre raged for three days. Seventy-one Protestants, by their determined stand, were permitted to escape to the Engadin, but one hundred and forty fell victims to the bandits; a butcher boasted of having murdered eighteen persons. Not even the dead were spared; their bodies were exhumed, burnt, thrown into the water, or exposed to wild beasts. Paula Baretta, a noble Venetian lady of eighty years, who had left a nunnery for her religious conviction, was shamefully maltreated and delivered to the Inquisition at Milan, where a year afterward she suffered death at the stake. Anna of Libo fled with a child of two years in her arms; she was overtaken and promised release on condition of abjuring her faith. She refused, saying, "You may kill the body, but not the soul;" she pressed her child to her bosom, and received the death-blow. When the people saw the stream of blood on the market-place before the chief church, they exclaimed: "This is the revenge for our murdered arch-priest Rusca!" He was henceforth revered as a holy martyr. At Morbegno the Catholics behaved well, and aided the Protestants in making their escape. The fugitives were kindly received in the Grisons and other parts of Switzerland. From the Valtellina Robustelli proceeded to Poschiavo, burnt the town of Brusio, and continued there the butchery of Protestants till he was checked.246 The Valtellina declared itself independent and elected the Knight Robustelli military chief. The canons of the Council of Trent were proclaimed, papal indulgences introduced, the evangelical churches and cemeteries reconsecrated for Catholic use, the corpses of Protestants dug up, burnt, and cast into the river. Addresses were sent to the Pope and the kings of Spain and France, explaining and excusing the foul deeds by which the rebels claimed to have saved the Roman religion and achieved political freedom from intolerable tyranny.