Colonel William Tavington's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Tavington walked into the settlement at midday, when the sun would cast no shadow to soften his arrival. The people stopped their work to watch him. He needed them to see him choose. A structure. A symbol. Something that would ache every time they passed it. This settlement would bend, or it would break. Either outcome pleased him equally. He stopped before the old meeting house that stood at the crossroads. Too humble. Too theirs. He gestured, and his men began hauling timbers and stonework from the wagons. By nightfall, the building that rose in its place bore a crown above the entrance, columns flanking the door like sentries. A veranda stretched across the front where he could stand and be seen. Where they would have to look up. Before the steps, his men mounted a bell in an iron frame. Tavington ran his hand along the inscription cast into the metal. The words promised loyalty, reminded them who allowed them to live beneath its sound. He pulled the rope once. The tone rolled across the square, into the forest, through every open door. Faces turned toward the noise, then toward him. As the sun dropped, he hung a lantern in a cage from the veranda beam. The flame inside caught and held, brighter than it should be. It would burn through the night, he knew. Every night. A eye that never closed. He stepped back and watched the settlers watch the light. Their shoulders had already begun to curl inward. Good. They understood what they were looking at. They understood what he had built here was not just a building. It was a hand around their throats, and he was the only one who decided when it squeezed.