Isobel

Isobel was exceptional in all of the metrics we use to measure a person.

She was exceptionally beautiful and had exceptional taste.

Her intelligence and guile were exceptional.

Her upbringing was tragic, but a relatively common occurrence around the time of her mortal existence. That being said, her response to the circumstances of her birth was anything but common. The life she would live in response to her circumstances was exceptional.

Both of her parents were taken by disease before she could walk. Her older brother took care of her until he wandered off, disguising himself as a Franciscan monk while making his living as a traveling conman. He left her behind when she was ten years old.

She was taken in as labor at the village mill and lived in a makeshift hovel on the outskirts of town. She loved her village. She loved working at the mill. Her being an orphan or alone never caused her any sadness or pause.

Isobel believed life was a lark, a one-time performance piece.

This personal philosophy allowed her to experience all she encountered with curious fervor. She was drawn like a moth to flame by things as simple as education and intellectual contradictions. This disposition did not endear her to everyone, but it enraptured others.

One of the challenges of being resilient and persistent, while also having remarkable skills and looks, is that these qualities tend to spark strong reactions in others. For Isobel, there was no blending into a crowd or getting through life unnoticed. Depending on the desires of such an exceptional person, the strong responses they elicit can frighten or amuse. Isobel and her carefree perspective on personhood were always amused by either end of the spectrum — love or hate.

She laughed at scorn and rumor as freely as she laughed at desire or adoration.

Isobel kept busy. They all told her the job at the mill was extremely important. The production of bread kept her whole village alive. Any economic movement also revolved around the grain that was being produced under her inquisitive eyes. She had a mocking sense of pride and passion toward her occupation, and despite her having to answer to a superior, she felt responsible for the well-being of certain people who depended on the mill.

For Isobel, responsible, delicate, and careful meant different things. Responsible, in her mind, had more of the traditional meaning to it. She had an obligation to do certain things and the power to control what those types of things were.

Outside of her labor, she was an avid reader and voracious accumulator of knowledge. She studied well beyond what she was allowed as a person of her station. She loved Plato, Plutarch, and the early Gnostics. She loved the mysticism of the desert mothers. She loved language. The church would not have liked that she could read and write Latin fluently, but the church was never so lucky as to be graced with Isobel’s presence. For a time, the church was ignorant of Isobel’s self-taught knowledge.

When it came to love and affection, Isobel had no interest.

She would allow people to believe she was an object of desire and felt no responsibility to correct their misconceptions. She also had no interest in any of the expectations thrust upon her, including marriage or reproduction.

When pressed by some deluded suitor, she would laugh at their words and scorn their heartbreak. She could be vicious, but only when pressed or pursued beyond her amusement. If one of the local men took it too far and attempted a more forceful romance, Isobel would release a fully demonic fury. It takes only a few people maimed by tooth and nail to establish an outcome likely to put off any future clumsy attempts. The visible results of such forceful insult to Isobel’s bemused virtue remained as walking reminders of how well her will was suited to respond to another person’s misguided intent.

Isobel knew her actions and beliefs caused some strife, and armed herself with a strange catchphrase she had stolen from one of her hidden texts. Once, while spitting a chunk of a delusional stranger’s neck back at him, she parted bloody lips, smiled widely, and said, “Caro tantum est; nullum mihi usum est.” Now, this despicable pig had no idea what that meant, but he reported a version of this phrase while having his wounds treated by the holy men of the village. They reported it as meaning “it is flesh only, and I have no use for it.”

Isobel was never officially implicated for her self-defense, but this phrase of hers became infamous around the village.

It became her mantra — so to speak.

She was henceforth known in whispers and warnings as the fleshless woman. Something was lost in the translation, but the moniker and its meaning sufficed to keep her free from romantic entanglement until such time as she had outlived the village’s concept of “the bloom of her youth.”

For some, the notion that love is reserved only for the young feels like a crushing loss, but for Isobel, it came as a welcome relief. The early arrival of age — gray streaking — a murder of crows leaving footprints over her eyes — was a deep and cleansing breath for Isobel. Although she was less than 30 autumnal harvests old, she could now be invisible and focus on the fun and entertainment she so craved.

Isobel’s newfound freedom happened to align with the rise of a council of religious elders. This gang was eager to increase its power, and anyone who didn’t fit in their circle of acceptable behavior became an easy victim.

Isobel’s penchant for leaving little Latin heresies on scraps of paper around the town, although often discarded as gibberish, drew the attention of this council. Once they saw “Divinus ignis in carne captus est” written on a crumbled piece of parchment that had been stuffed in a crack in a retaining wall, it did not take long for them to identify the culprit. Some in the town were quite pleased to point toward the joyful maiden Isobel and her attempts at fun.

She was laughing hysterically when they took her to a cell for questioning. She spat and raved, she screeched “sanguis non redimit” in between bawdy gestures and hissing faux-flirtations. The council, although certain in their dogma, was ill-equipped for something like Isobel. Their questioning and accusations were met with rhetorical responses and the circular logic of a master. When they dared to use a hot iron, Isobel roared in joy at the new experience and could barely contain the sundering “Caro tantum est; nullum mihi usum est.”

When left alone, she would call to the constable incessantly; she would call him Mathew as if she knew him, but his name was Ivan. She attempted to lure Mathew close on multiple occasions, but he was frightened and confused. He did not understand her behavior or her psychology. He was also afraid of the council and the church they pretended to represent.

One evening after several weeks of watching Isobel in her stalwart confinement, Ivan was weakened enough by her calls to forget the church.

She had been whispering the name Mathew to him for hours. Frustrated and curious, he approached her bars and said plainly, with defeat, ‘Miss, my Christian name is Ivan.’

Isobel solemnly shook her head slowly and sweetly,

“No, it is Mathew, Mathew 5:38,” and with these words, she plunged her index finger into his right eye. Laughing hysterically and yelling, “An Ivan for an Ivan.”

Isobel nearly fainted from her cackles, not so much at the pun but because of the discipline required for such a paltry punchline.

This was the last night Isobel was allowed to remain in the village. The council had convinced a traveling troop of warrior priests to take her away.

Three wandering crusaders arrived to retrieve Isobel.

Two of them were church-sanctioned brutes, their brawn sufficient only to cow the peasantry. They were draped in symbols of the church and armor of the empire. They carried large halberds on broad shoulders and attempted to remain as stoic as their station demanded.

The third in this gaggle was different in almost every way. He was a monk in tattered gray robes. His hood shrouded his slender neck and sunken face. He carried a large oaken staff with a Franciscan cross, made of a darker, richer wood, positioned at the top.

The entire town was gathered to watch these men take Isobel away in chains, and they were heartened to see traces of fear and concern stitch themselves across her usually joyful or serene countenance. Isobel, always the consummate performer, spared none of her repertoire and delivered curses in every language she knew. She added violent lashes of claw and spit, rantings and expulsions of all varieties. The crusading brutes had their hands full, and the monk watched on in quiet admiration for the woman his sister had become.

Isobel was not so lost in her performance that she failed to flash a grin toward her brother mid-show.

The crowd and the council were delighted at the spectacle, as well as assuming themselves victorious before the first volley was even fired in earnest. Isobel was delighted as her parting words echoed through the town square.

Something from Genesis, of course, in the Vulgate.

“Num ego servus fratris mei sum?” The town and the council, all being good churchgoing folks, recognized and translated this into the common language — roughly, “Am I my brother’s servant?” — but they could never quite parse her meaning. They believed she was just another devil quoting verse.

The brutish halberd men never had the chance to learn of the siblings’ clever ruse, and Brother Roch and Isobel used the sticks and stones of the woods to feed these hulking frames into a nearby river basin. The armor and religious garb of the men help to weigh the corpses down deep into the sediment below.

The Sibling reunion was a joyful bluster of cackles and guffaws, but lacked any real connection; they shared in the belief that all this world was a stage and they performed their roles with traditional gnostic disembodyment. The niceties of reunion complete, they began to concoct a plan to continue their engagement with the people of the town. Revenge was never paramount, but the pair was driven by an earnest desire to evoke or invoke their mirth.

Isobel had direct knowledge of the grain mill and its schedules. She also knew the complete layout, including entry points. Another piece of knowledge she had obtained in her studies was about a little red cap toadstool that, when ingested, released a mind and spirit-opening force into the ingestor. This toadstool could be dried in the sun and ground into a fine, potent powder. Isobel and her brother Roch were very curious to see how the town would react when their frumenty was seasoned with this red cap.

Brother Roch shed his robes and wore a basic horsehair tunic and leather belt; this, combined with his ascetic nature, made him appear quite thin; It added to an already strangely monstrous visage. Isobel kept her simple yellow robe, but she was more adventurous with her appearance. She added a deer antler headdress and indigo ink facial drawings.

The pair of them enacted their toadstool plan with great success. The mind-altering effects of the redcap toadstool eventually drove the church out of the town completely, and the population dwindled to only those too elderly and infirm to leave. The siblings lost interest once the people had left. After they lived carefree in the woods and foraged for sustenance. The siblings stopped being Isobel and Roch, becoming legends and murmurs instead.

One day, they discovered an odd book in an old tree stump. They gleaned what they could from this book and now had other ways of keeping themselves entertained. Occasionally, strange runes would appear on the abandoned church,

But this was done more to practice some of what they had newly learned and less for the laughs.

Regardless of the serious nature of some of their new studies, the siblings still found a lot of joy in their lives. They also found exceptional joy in other not-so-clearly defined modes of existence.

Divinus ignis in carne captus est would occasionally echo through those woods, old and indifferent, the trees would translate it in their own tongue —Divine fire is trapped in flesh.