The Harlot of Hadrian's Wood

The lovers danced gaily through the forest as if it was Arden, or as if they were sprites of Greek myth, pale-limbed and without care. She wore a pale pink halter top and denim cutoffs that showed off her thick, rounded thighs. She was large and pink-cheeked but packed with a ruddy vigour and Rubenesque sturdiness that appealed to some men. In what would once have been called the first flower of her womanhood, she'd grown from a homely girl picked first for hockey sticks but last for dances to a confident, flame-haired young adult.  
   
He was skinny and gangling and with a few broken teeth, but again not without physical charm for some tastes. The pronounced pelvic "V" that came up through the jeans, the wiry muscles and the compact buttocks. The girl had stopped by a fallen tree in a clearing. She sat on the stump. The boy peeked through the nearest line of trees like Actaeon espying Artemis as she bathed on Mount Cithaeron. He grinned, clinging to a tree as if affecting concealment, and she grinned back.  
   
She leaned back and undid the top button of her shorts. 'Are you just gonna stand there and watch?' she said. He stepped into the clearing, pulling down his trousers and pants as much out of need as desire, the excitement becoming painful. Exposing himself in this natural place carried its own erotic charge. She stood up and turned around as if preparing to brace herself against the supine trunk, a slit down the middle of which exposed its insides to the baking sun.  
   
She put her hands to her face and started screaming. The boy hastily pulled up his trousers. 'What?! What is it?' he said, taking her by the shoulders. She gestured at the trunk. He walked over to it and looked inside. He had a weekend job killing chickens at a farm, with a broomstick he placed on their throats. But what he saw in the elm caused his stomach to lurch.  
   
It was a woman. Nude and with full breasts, cradled tightly in the elm like a Satanic mockery of a newborn babe in a crib. Her long blonde hair flowed about her head and mounded on her shoulders, one hand draped carelessly across her vulva. Her eyes were wide open and there was a Mona Lisa smile on her face. Rigour mortis and rot had set in, but only just.  
   
***  
   
Chief Inspector Rawlings of Arrowfield Police stood with Detective Mitchell where the lovers once had. The body had been removed from the tree and placed on plastic sheeting. The clearing was cordoned off. 'Recognise her?' said Rawlings.  
   
'No' Mitchell replied, wondering if he was making a joke about their shared sex and hair colour. The woman could have been Rebecca Mitchell's older, fuller-figured sister. And Dan Rawlings had a weird sense of humour. 'I doubt she's local' he said. 'Might be connected with organised crime. These woods have been used as a dumping ground by gangs up the city way.' He crouched beside her, holding his tie so that it didn't make contact. 'She doesn't look the type, though. And according to that pathologist, we've no clue yet how she died. So the question remains: who put Bella in the witch elm?'  
   
'Sir?'  
   
'Old case, from WWII. In Worcestershire, they found the skeletal remains of a woman in a wych elm.'  
   
'Well, this one's not a skeleton.'  
   
'No...' said Rawlings. He stood up suddenly and scanned the perimeter for officers ensuring that the public couldn't stumble in. 'Supposedly she died about 1941' he continued. 'This Bella, I mean. The case was never solved and many theories have been put forward, from a Dutch woman killed by a German spy ring to an occult ritual by Romani gypsies.'  
   
Mitchell snorted. 'I hope it's not the second one this time' she said. 'The last thing we need is more trouble with that caravan park.'  
   
Rawlings waved a hand. 'They're no more trouble than anyone else' he said. 'Besides, Bella was missing a hand, in accordance with a supposed Hand of Glory ritual; so goes the witchcraft theory.' He looked at the woman, her open eyes and enigmatic expression, her hair fanned out about her head, her unblemished body without obvious signs of violence or misuse besides a few track marks down one arm. (The pathologist speculated that she might have been a burgeoning heroin addict.)    
   
'There doesn't seem to be anything missing from this one' he said.  
   
***  
   
Much like Bella in the witch elm, the case of the Harlot of Hadrian's Wood (the rather distasteful name given it due to her beauty, nudity, and location) would never be solved in Rawlings' lifetime, the chief impediment being a failure to identify her.  
   
Two incidents from very different places in time shed some unusual light on it, however.  
   
A magistrate's journal from the late 1600s records peasant superstitions about Hadrian's Wood. Translated to modern English, it describes the trials and execution of an accused witch fifty years prior:    
   
'They walked her, naked, until she was dead on her feet. She was thirty-two, unmarried, and beautiful still, much past her first flower. Though frigid, according to the wags of the town.    
   
'The lads started saying that she must be getting her satisfaction somewhere, and it was not long after when the first accusation was made. The accuser claimed that he'd seen her lighting fires in the woods, where the Devil was said to take his Whores to sign the Book.  
   
'Her father, who'd protected her, was dead by this time. She was pricked with a needle at several points down her arms, and after being walked was pricked again. This time she made no reaction, her body exhausted of soul and response beyond a persistent low moaning.    
   
'They hung her right there in the woods, there being no friends or family to demand a proper hearing. A thunderstorm roiled that night, and in the morning when the witchfinder returned he found the tree where they'd hung her struck down, her body crushed underneath it. Ever since then, it's been said that she walks the woods at night, and few will go near them today.'  
   
Many years after the Harlot was found, a businessman was telling a group of men down the pub about when he housed a European immigrant during a refugee crisis. He regaled his quietly disgusted audience with tales of what she was willing to do in exchange for her room and board. 'What happened to her?' someone asked.  
   
He shrugged. 'Last I heard, she was living with a gypsy up at Arrowfield.'