Tag: adventuresofradicalprovocateurs

1520 06-41 Channah’s Thuggees in Karnata Vijayanagara kneel to their goddess^
1522 06-41 Channah’s Ninja in Sengoku Japan kneel to their goddess^
1524 06-41 Channah’s Hashshashin in Safavid Tabriz kneel to their goddess^
1526 06-41 Channah’s Osirian Mamlukes in Ottoman Cairo kneel to their goddess^
1528 06-41 Channah’s Desecrated in Ottoman Athens kneel before their goddess^
1528 06-41 Channah’s Mamluk cadre in Tudor Cambridge kneel before their goddess^

The Queen and Her Operatives

Always, she chose her orphans from among the most vulnerable, although the vulnerabilities she valued, like their strengths, varied depending on the purposes she had in mind for them.  The most sensitive, the most brutal, the most brutalized, the most desperate, the most desperate to please, the most isolated, the most social, the most insecure, the most self-confident, the most angry, the most calm, the most self-aware, the least self-aware.  Every human was endowed with some free will, some bit of conscience, some sliver of the holy ghost that could never be extinguished but only banished from this world by death. 

Some of those she chose—bullies and lizards like Cutter, Martin, Isaac, and Eleanor—were already far down the path to hell, as close to being destined for her Queendom as they could be on Earth because they felt nothing for others, couldn’t bear the successes of others, wanted to hurt others, or even wanted to obliterate everything.  But such people could only help her so far, with some things. 

Many tasks could only be accomplished with empathy, reason, wisdom, and self-awareness.  Those possessing such traits, the hothouse flowers, were the most difficult ones to raise successfully to their purposes.  It had taken centuries for the demons of hell to fully appreciate that no matter how much fun it was to wind up and unleash raging, violent sadists, narcissists, lunatics, and golems on the world, they could only advance the cause of reaping souls so far.  Faced with obvious threats to their communities, most people tended to come together, care for and protect one another, even sacrifice themselves for others.   Bringing out the best in people was the last thing they wanted to do!  Those were outcomes that hindered, rather than helped, the demons in their ultimate aims; however much fun it was to cause chaos.  What the demons needed were more insidious threats to humanity.  They needed threats that people could rationalize away or ignore, until it was too late and they were already being gobbled up by voracious hell. 

Rather than creating the savages who worked so well as their kapos in hell, and trying in vain to rely only on them in the more nuanced environment of Earth, the demons realized they would be better served by investing the significant time and empathy required on the front end to raise operatives with the abilities they needed.  No matter how challenging a skill it was for a demon to learn.  No matter how much patience they had to find.  It was something not every demon was capable of.  In all the demon realms of hell, it tended to absorb their brightest and most capable, those from their higher ranks.  But there were also individual differences within demon castes.  So the members of every Court charged with wrangling the hothouse flowers included a mix—a handful of the lower demons, a larger share of the middle, and a heavy dose of the highest ranks. 

And so it was that Queen Channah herself was involved with this project, especially when—as in England, in the 1520s—the succubae were establishing a new colony.   Partly because founding the cadre that would establish and give the colony its start was a particularly crucial step in setting it on the right path, but also because new colonies were only created when there was a particularly pressing reason for doing so.  Cambridgeshire had become her operating base, for now; joining the ancient colonies in Constantinople and Rome, and the medieval colonies in Vienna and Madrid, as the fifth in Europe.  Like most colonies, this one began at the outside and worked its way in to the heart of the Kingdom.  When it was time, when her agents were deeply embedded, their covers and legends secure, its focal point would move slowly, agent by agent, from Cambridge to the Royal Court in London.  But for now, they had only a limited, secondary presence there, which relied on Cambridge for its roots and legend; and behind that, vague stories about coming from the West.

It was the Star of Bethlehem that had decided Channah in favor of England, prioritizing it over Amsterdam, Paris, Lisbon, Stockholm, and the other rising cities of Northern Europe, an area which had never been worthy of organized demonic focus before.  Gemstones, like certain other objects, held energy because they focused so much human passion, ambition, interest, and naked greed.  Their interaction with people, tending to draw out the worst of humanity, cursed them to become fell instruments of power.  The largest, which could become the focus of terrible violence and every kind of sin, were often legendary.  Like the Star of Bethlehem, the largest sapphire in the world, that had been “lost” at Bosworth Field in 1485. 

Any object could become a magical fetish if humans imbued it with enough of their hopes, fears, ambitions, wants, needs, and desires.  But almost none were more likely to do so that large gemstones.  Such naturally-occurring fetishes could be the most powerful substrate for deliberate ensorcelling, because if the sorcerer endowed them with a purpose congruent with their energy, it would add to or even—in the case of a deeply-cursed stone like the Star of Bethlehem—multiply the power imparted to it by the caster’s spell.

Revelation and Reckoning

To build their cadre, and later grow their colonies, the Succubae divided—or, they would claim, allowed their operatives to sort themselves by their choices and actions in response to tests (the most-critical of which they never realized they were being given) into two groups, which became formalized into assigned social roles upon their eighteenth birthday when they left childhood behind.  The rough boys—including all of the pathological future kapos the demons loved so much, and about half of the hothouse flowers—joined a class that would be identifiable across many human cultures, although only formalized and systematically sanctioned in a few:  Mamluks—slave-soldiers groomed for loyalty, command, and the exercise of power on behalf of their masters.  Depending on the cultures in which they were raised and operated, they might be called, or call themselves, local terms that were not a close match, but that captured at least some of the more-distinctive features of their caste or at least their skills, like ninja in Japan, Thuggees in India, and Hashshashin in Iran.

The flowers chosen as mamluks (never called “flowers” in front of humans) as cadres to establish Channah’s English bureau included Roger and Eleanor.  On their 18th birthday they either washed out or proved themselves and graduated into their adult role by the ultimate test of violence:  homicide.  The pathogens, like Martin and Cutter, took the same test, of course; but for them it wasn’t much of a test.  The real question was often whether they could contain themselves until they were ordered to kill, or whether—like Isaac—they would distinguish themselves by killing on their own, before anyone suggested them to do so.

PART 4 OF STORY RECAP

Literature Section “06-41 Grimm Transformations IV:  Master Killers”—Accompanying Images:  1520, 1522, 1524, 1526, 1528, 1530.  1162 words—©2025 The Remainderman.  This is a work of fiction, not a book of suggestions.  It’s filled with fantasies, idiots, and criminals. Don’t believe them or imitate them.

06-36 1514 This one! (the adoption of Charles)^
06-36 1515 The boy is mine now. (The purchase of Penny)^
06-36 1516 You’re perfect! (the finding of Roger)^
06-36 1517 We’ve got you (the escape of Isaac [Esmeray])^
06-36 1518 Tricking the guards (Sindonie’s escape)^
06-36 1519 Buying in Bulk^

The Countess of Warwick

When the Countess married the Earl, and moved to Fensmere, she had brought her own entourage with her.  These included those she called nieces (Eleanor, Frances, Jane, Chas, and Penny), nephews (Roger, Cutter, Isaac, and Martin), and staff including her Lady’s Maids (Mary and Rebecca), carpenter Big George, and the children’s governess Sindonie.

Years later, came the day—Penny’s eighteenth birthday—when the Countess found out:  That the Defalais sisters knew her nieces were transgendered.  That Penny was teaching the girls even when they were being punished.  That in addition to Latin and religion, she had been continuing to teach them the subjects their mother had wanted them to learn, but Anne had forbidden to them, like grammar, Greek, Hebrew, rhetoric, philosophy, math, geometry, astronomy, and heretical ideas from Germany about the Church.  And that she had even let them dabble in some of the secret subjects Anne Batonnoir taught all her lost boys and girls, like fighting, spy craft, and the principles of magic.

She burst into Hellinore’s closet, finding Mary, Catherine, Beatrice, and Hellinore there.

“Hiding.” she growled. 

“With boys!” she raged. 

“Of… lower… station,” she spat in contempt.

“Aunt Anne!  I’m not a boy!” Chas began, looking stricken and betrayed, almost crying, and completely missing the point, bless her heart.

Penny looked guilty, ashamed, scared, a little relieved, and almost… almost, the tiniest bit proud, apologizing profusely and trying to explain she hadn’t meant to sleight her guardian, but only to help the girls, and pleaded to be allowed to continue.  It was a pronouncement as honest, and in its own way as misplaced, as Chas’s.

The sisters mainly looked terrified, as well they might have, although Hellinore, now 11, stoutly volunteered that when she found out Penny was transgender she had threatened to tell the Countess what they knew if Penny wouldn’t keep teaching.  It was a quarter-truth, at best, but strayed from the truth for loyalty’s sake, and would have been dead on-point if the Countess had been interested.

The Countess’s retribution was terrible and swift.  The five girls were birched in the Great Chamber, out of line of sight from the upstairs kitchen but in hearing range of half the house proper, to humiliate them as much as possible without allowing any of the servants ideas or feelings above their stations.  Of course, every decent or sensible servant but one fled the house the instant the birchings began, but the point was made, the girls embarrassed, and the stories spread.  Only the Countess’s carpenter, Big George, remained in the house, installing locks on all the girls’ closet doors, securing them against escape even while imperiling them from any fire or other calamity should one overtake the manor.  Then she locked her stepdaughters in their closets for days, having her lady’s maids supervise the servants who brought them food and water and changed out their chamber pots, to prevent them from showing the girls any additional or emotional kindnesses.

While the Countess herself, focused on attending to those she regarded as her own.  As always, the lowest in rank suffered the worst.  Even though, in this case, “lowest” was a relative term—at least as importantly, the three remaining offenders were from the Countess’s household, utterly beholden to her, with no other sources of support or care, nothing else to turn to, nowhere else to go.  They were all members of the gentry, the lowest rank of the English nobility, as far below the Defalaises as they were above the rest of the population.  But she had facilitated Sindonie’s escape, kept Chas from the orphanage, and bought Penny outright.

From the sisters’ perspective, they disappeared for days; and when they finally reappeared, the girls, at least, were subdued, almost timid, and in some kind of shock, more distant from everyone and everything around them, than they had been before.  If it had been secretly suspected in certain quarters on the manor estate before, that Penny and Chas were not quite what they appeared, it now became more or less an open secret that Penny and the tutor occasionally seen slipping to and from the manor to Cambridge—which did not allow women—were one and the same person.

Around the same time, the residents of the manor learned the King was planning to visit, a fairly rare event this far East.  Perhaps it was the stories of the progressive home built by three generations of Defalaises that attracted him.  But more likely, according to rumors that eventually even reached the older sisters’ ears, were that something else might have lured him here.  The same thing that had so impressed and befuddled the Earl and most of the young men in the county.

The Queen of Lust

Chas and Penny had been carefully selected for their respective adoption and purchase by Channah, the Succubus Queen of the Hell of Lust, who in her human guise had lately adopted the name Anne Batonnoir, married the Earl of Warwick, and now was slowly draining his wits and life away.  Since acquiring her wards, she and her vassals and collaborators and minions had worked together, like an orchestra, to mold and condition and train the boys—now girls—for the special purpose for which they had been recruited.  It was the same with all the thousands of the Queen’s wards, nephews and nieces alike, here in Cambridge today, and in innumerable other cities and villages and campsites scattered across the world since humanity had begun.

The succubae and their incubi had started the game with… certain advantages.  Reading and manipulating humans wasn’t just something they did, it was what they were.   And with every round of the game, every human soul they worked on, every human lifetime of experience they gained, they had continued to pull further ahead of their human prospects.  They could, literally, seduce and drain humans of their very life without even waking up.  How much more were they capable of wide awake in the flesh? 

Before they even set hands on the children—or occasionally adults—they wanted, the ancient, eldritch Queen and her Court had used their powers to discern things in their hearts and minds that neither the children nor any adult caretakers understood.  She did not adopt babies, but young children.  They were not just raw material like clay, indifferently mined from acres of the same ore to be given form by the succubae.  They were raw puppets, picked out from shelves stuffed to the brim with the world’s unfortunates, already animated by birth, already endowed by early childhood with the basic shapes Hell required.  All she and her servants had to do was to finish them, polish them, and set them on their paths.

PART 3 OF STORY RECAP

Literature Section “06-36 Grimm Transformations III:  The Evil Plan”—Accompanying Images:  1514-1519.  1115 words—©2025 The Remainderman.  This is a work of fiction, not a book of suggestions.  It’s filled with fantasies, idiots, and criminals. Don’t believe them or imitate them.

adventuresofradicalprovocateurs tudor england renaissance venice operative spy espionage succubus orphan adoption prisoner escape rescue fugitive escape smuggling street troll guardian ward olivertwist dickensian

06-35 1508 Mary Defalais, A.D. 1524^
06-35 1509 Catherine Defalais, A.D. 1524^
06-35 1510 Adelais Defalais, A.D. 1524^
06-35 1511 Beatrice Defalais, A.D. 1524^
06-35 1512 Hellinore Defalais, A.D. 1524^

The Earl’s daughters were already starving for love and support after losing their mother.  But as sometimes happened, fascination with their stepmother seemed to eclipse Lord Robert’s interest in his own children.  The new Countess, famous for her work with orphans, was as interested in the girls as their father was disinterested.  But her interest—contrary to her reputation—was punitive and vindictive.  She seemed to go out of her way to magnify the disruptions in their life, communicating as forcefully as possible how unwelcome they were in their own home.  Although she could be a harsh, even vindictive disciplinarian to her own nieces and nephews, she also showed a warmth and fondness toward them completely at odds with her unrelenting, frosty hostility towards her stepchildren.

Talk of the remaining Defalais girls’ weddings, and even betrothals, soon sputtered into silence, replaced with dark hints and suggestions of futures in the nunnery.  It was decided that unlike their stepmother and stepsisters, the girls already had plenty of dresses and gowns to last them indefinitely, however they might compare with debutantes of lower standing—or even girls of lower classes.  Their education—something their mother had fought for and encouraged them in, something that made them identify with her even as it helped define their identities—was deemed wasteful for girls.

The girls’ governess—a close friend of their mother’s, who had been governess of all the sisters since Margaret the Younger had outgrown her nanny—was sacked for laxness, literally chased off across the front lawn with a broom by the Countess, huffing and gasping and staggering away as fast as she could while her former charges wept and pleaded uselessly on her behalf.  She was summarily replaced by Sindonie Manning, the longtime governess of her own wards, who at least showed them the same kindness she showed their stepsiblings.

The prestigious tutors also disappeared, their duties to be fulfilled as well as possible by Penance, one of their new stepsisters.  Not only had their stepmother decided she would be perfectly adequate to cover the subjects she considered appropriate for young ladies, but she thought it inappropriate for young ladies of their social standard to be socializing with men, especially younger men born into more vulgar classes of society.  Since a young student from Cambridge was seen visiting the house, even after the tutors were fired, the girls—and their governess—suspected he was teaching Penny what she was supposed to teach them. 

Fortunately for the sisters, Penny was as dedicated to her students as she was conscientious about her duties.  Although she was the same age as Catherine, the middlemost of the seven sisters, Penny became a bright spot in their lives, a way for them to feel connected with their mother, and a source of encouragement and support in the face of their father’s lack of interest and their stepmother’s unremitting hostility.

She became particularly important as an anchor for the youngest daughter, Hellinore.  Hellinore, although studious and accomplished, had tried even her parents’ patience, earning the nickname “the Hellion.”  With the Countess… from practically the moment the two were introduced, sparks had more than flown—they had exploded!  Anne Batonnoir didn’t spare anyone under her control the fury of her punishments; and the daughters had to suffer their detentions in their closets.  Hellinore, in particular, seemed to spend half her existence with a bottom nearly as angry as she was, memorizing every little detail of her closet, until Penny, feeling sorry for her and guilty, started bringing her books and candles and even teaching classes there instead of the nearby schoolroom, so that she could be included. Her sisters took the change in venue with remarkably little complaining, knowing all of them shared a common enemy, and the only difference among their punishments was of degree.  In truth, her older sisters might secretly have been relieved Hellinore acted as such a lightning rod for their evil stepmother’s attentions. 

She seemed to be able to take it, for one thing—unlike Adelais, who wilted and shattered when she drew the Countess’s ire.  One night, Adelais never came to bed, caught in the clutches of their stepmother.  Whatever Adelais had experienced, she refused to say; but she was never quite as bright or gay as she had been before.  While Adelais curled up and shrank, Mary became careful and neutral; Beatrice insistently cheerful and helpful; Catherine sneaky and resentful; and Hellinore… Hellinore became a terror to anyone small enough or—a category encompassing most everyone on the Manor—lower-ranking and weak enough she could bully.

Like his daughters, the Earl failed to thrive and bloom in his new wife’s garden.  Instead, he appeared increasingly listless and withdrawn; even prematurely aged.  Some joked, carefully, that it was his new wife’s energy; but most attributed it to vinegar and tragedy.  In some corners, surely far from Fensmere, jokes were made about someone called the “Earl of Quickjack,” but this one, at least, didn’t show the same signs of vigor that had been so loudly proclaimed at his wedding.

PART 2 OF STORY RECAP

Literature Section “06-35 Grimm Transformations II:  The Long Fall”—Accompanying Images:  1508-1512.  846 words—©2025 The Remainderman.  This is a work of fiction, not a book of suggestions.  It’s filled with fantasies, idiots, and criminals. Don’t believe them or imitate them.

1501 06-34i Robert and Margaret’s Fairytale Wedding^
1502 06-34 Robert and Margaret’s Fairy Tale Life^
1503 06-34 Stormfall colon Hell in a Red Dress^
1504 06-34 The Earl’s Second Wedding, to Lady Anne^
1505 06-34 Mortified sisters at the second wedding^

Everything began the autumn of the haunting.

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, fortune beamed on the Defalais family with a generous light reserved only for the luckiest.  Lord Robert, the Earl of Warwick, was one of the most powerful and prominent men in England, politically astute and well-esteemed by King Henry VIII.  Lady Margaret Mordaunt’s grace, charm, and beauty had been celebrated even before her debut at court, and even before tragedy and piety had cleared a path through her six older sisters to her marriage.  Her family’s title had gone to her younger half-brother; but she had brought estates of her own to join those of her husband’s.  Both families had joined the Tudor pretender at the Battle of Bosworth Field, and been richly rewarded with the plunder despoiled from those who had kept their oath. 

The couple’s courtship had been the talk of the court; their wedding, the event of the season; and their affection manifest, in the form of seven accomplished and (mostly) proper daughters:  Margaret, Elizabeth, Mary, Catherine, Adelais, Beatrice, and Hellinore.  The eldest were well-wed, the middle children hopeful, and the youngest naïve.  They enjoyed the best tutors their mother could arrange from among the faculty of nearby Cambridge University.

The family dwelt in splendor at Fensmere Manor, a newly-built seat ahead of its time, more luxurious and pleasant country estate, than drafty fortress for hiding in.  Blessed with health, wealth, education, position, strength, and even family, which all considered their birthright, their destiny was to blossom and grow, crowding out the needs and ambitions of lesser bloods.

Or so it appeared, until a tragic fall robbed the Countess of her life, the family of its joy, and England of one of its most precious gems.  The daughters lost their role model, their most ardent advocate, their fiercest defender, and their loving, attentive mother.  The Earl was distraught, distant, and thoughtless in his own grief, practically a second parent lost to them even as he lost his own way, leaving his daughters in the capable but uninspired hands of his servants.

Then SHE appeared:  Anne Batonnoir, a Lady of obscure family origins but great charity somewhere far to the West—Devon, Cornwall, or even the Pale.  Her brother Jerome was a Herald of Arms in service to the King, and she was well-respected throughout the English clergy as a charitable woman who helped them care for orphans of quality and piety.  Jerome had slowly achieved some minor influence at the royal court, and now she quickly achieved even greater influence at the Earl’s. 

None could deny her extraordinary beauty, magnetic charisma, or easy self-assurance.  Her spirit, body, and manner were indisputable evidence of her gentle birth and high prospects.  And men not inclined towards the counsel of their mothers pursued her with as much focus and intensity as their mothers displayed in trying to steer them towards more-eligible, less-interesting women like the Earl’s daughters.

Her first appearance in Cambridgeshire, like Lady Margaret’s final tragedy, coincided with an autumn of ill winds, momentous storms, and inexplicable losses.  As the weather grew colder, crops wilted; cattle were mutilated; people disappeared; and rumors spread, of fires spied and chants heard deep in the woods.  Of remote dances and orgies on the darkest nights, and unholy ceremonies when the full moon was in zenith.  Tales of demons and witchcraft rattled the unsteady and inflamed the superstitious.  And some—among them, it must be said, the most jealous and least charitable of women—whispered that Robert’s alacritous courtship of Anne was more than unseemly:  it was unnatural.

Still, less-suspicious women, and virtually all men, took one look at Lady Batonnoir and dismissed supernatural explanations.  Not that the men were likely to share those thoughts with their wives, but they did with one another.

If Lord Robert’s first wedding was a fairy tale, his second was a delicious scandal; and definitely the subject of as much gossip as his first.  Soon after they took their leave of the celebration, the guests near the stairs to the Great Chamber became excited, drawing other guests to them.

From above came the unmistakable sounds of a very passionate woman, being aroused and then, in turn, bitterly disappointed by her groom.  Within ten minutes the gentry of the whole county, and those few of their peers from elsewhere who had been able to attend the quick ceremony, learned not only that the new Countess was as expressive and hard-working as she was attractive, but also that the Earl was a quickjack who had already been accommodated twice today by his energetic new wife before their marriage was thirty minutes’ old.

As best the attentive crowd could gather, he had attempted to defile her just before the ceremony, only sparing her wedding dress by ruining his own breeches before he could get them off.  Even so, he had just barely and technically managed to consummate the marriage by penetrating her (ineptly and painfully, it seemed) before spending himself.  The guests, embarrassed, scattered to report their news to everyone they might come across, carefully avoiding the Earl’s mortified older daughters who were struggling to maintain their dignity in the presence of their father’s vassals.

In 1496, the Bishop of Ely converted a derelict nunnery on the eastern edge of Cambridge, the 12th-century Benedictine nunnery of St. Mary and St. Radegund, into a community for graduate priests studying in the University of Cambridge, with a free grammar school for the choristers serving in the College’s Chapel and other locals.  Its full name is “The College of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint John the Evangelist and the glorious Virgin Saint Radegund, near Cambridge.”  The name “Jesus” was actually derived from its Chapel. In the 1520s it was still a new, struggling, and tiny school with only six or seven priests and very rarely, other students, who were unlikely to obtain degrees, since degrees were only required for clergymen, church lawyers, and schoolmasters.