After a fifteen year hiatus, Aunt Elizabeth suddenly resumes her chronicles. Why? Because despite Aunt Lydia long-since consolidating her 'position' within both Ardua Hall, as well as within Gilead, Aunt Elizabeth senses that something is not right with her peer.

FIFTEEN-YEAR HIATUS

Everywhere around me, I see indecision. I see people calculating. Gilead should be more straightforward than this. It once was. We have precepts. We have the Bible. We have righteous Commanders who lead. We have the Eyes of God who root out infection. Our Republic has the God-given mandate to combat world-wide infertility. Still. We Aunts are key - we Founder Aunts steer the Aunts'-ship. The whole world recognizes the peril facing mankind. Gilead is the only sovereign State doing anything about it.

I see recalcitrance all around me. Especially in the mirror.

I've never liked her, not really, but I've always respected Aunt Lydia. At times, she has scared me. If I'd enjoined the same sort of patronage within The Eyes of God, that she obviously has, I'd have moved against her. (Vidala has tried to undermine her, but Vidala is such a klutz about it!) Be that as it may, with Lydia in control you never once doubted her iron-clad commitment to Gilead.

Until maybe now. So it is after fifteen years, I write.

I very much preferred the early days. Things were so much clearer. If a girl had come to an Aunt with a story of being sexually assaulted, then that girl would be the one facing 'accountability'. It must have been she who'd been the slut. Even Lydia had said that that way of looking at it had benefits - it made for fewer complaints. It made Gilead look freer from sin than as advertised. It made the men look better.

But these are modern days. A full decade and a half later. Me, it's been fifteen years since chronicling my life as an Aunt. In these pages, I do not know why I quit. All this time, not just an Aunt, but a senior Aunt - me a Founder Aunt. Still. Imagine what I could have written about. Me, I have a statue of my much-younger self outside of Ardua Hall. I have 'status', or so you might think in your confusion. Junior Aunts give me a wide berth in the hall.

Through all the intrigues involving Commanders - all the deportations to the Colonies, through it all we Aunts have endured. Me, I dropped the ball. I could have chronicled it all. Could have chronicled why Commanders came and went, but we four Founder Aunts, we have endured.

What has made me put pen to paper again? Not just suspicions about Lydia. You can thank a dentist. Dr. Grove. Who was rumoured to have been an 'Angel' - someone more than a Guardian but not quite a Commander himself.

I'm hoping I don't have to write too much about who Agnes Mackenzie is. She is now Aunt Victoria, plucked from the ranks of Commander's daughters to serve here in Ardua Hall. A particular favourite of Aunt Lydia - for some reason.

It's been rumoured that Aunt Victoria and Aunt Lydia are now conspiring - I don't mind using that word. They are conspiring through their own writing - perhaps much like what I am doing here. They are calling what they're doing, "The Testaments". Lydia quite vaguely called that project something to give people like Dr. Grove their comeuppance.

"People like"? That's a vague way of putting, that he's an Angel and he's sinning against the very core of Gilead. A man is sinning, so claims Aunt Lydia. That's a dangerous thing to say. About an Angel, no less. Lydia seems to now finally have had enough. Man or no man, he's getting away with it. She's going to do something about it.

I fear that me not providing context here - at least for the last fifteen years - will further obscure why Lydia (and by extension Ardua Hall) has changed so. Why Lydia feels a remit, a dangerous one, to oppose men.

And now for a diversion, an aside. I hope I can be brief.

FREDERICK JUDD

Commander Judd. "Look the other way" Judd, as far as we in Ardua Hall knew him. And why not? As an original Sons of Jacob, he'd been the one embedded in the old US Government - positioned to provide maximum impact after the President's Day Massacre. My old Senator only knew of him vaguely, and her stock in trade was to know everyone. He'd been hiding in plain sight. In ridding Gilead of immigrants and foreigners, he had quipped, "our biggest mistake was to teach them how to read."

Except for we Aunts, that is. Judd created the Aunts' order. We read. And write. That's what I call, ironic. He'd brought in Vidala, herself an original Sons of Jacob. But Vidala was a ditz. Lydia, Helena and me were brought in through the "Thank Tank" process. As a result, we were un-ditzed. As you know, Lydia quite quickly eclipsed Vidala in leadership here - becoming what Judd called, 'first among equals'.

Judd and Lydia Clements were quite the team, all these years. But something has changed.

Given that Judd was Lydia's chief benefactor - her statue was larger than mine! - the 'bridge too far' for her with him was probably his treatment of his own series of child-brides. As keeper of the Bloodlines Genealogical Archives, Lydia had a front-row seat that even I did not have. A front-row seat to men's misconduct. Unfettered misconduct. Us three-founders kept quiet because we only knew the smallest part of it. Lydia, though, was hell bent in doing something…..

….… about even Judd. All this, dear reader, is a long way of me getting to the point. (This endeth my diversion.)

So when Aunt Victoria (when she was Agnes Mackenzie) first came to Lydia with a complaint about Dr. Grove - yet another man who'd mistreated women - Lydia came to me with her best "Margaret Hamilton" voice. Me, I even remember who Margaret Hamilton was. Lydia had said in the Wicked Witch of The West's voice, "These things need to be handled dell….." she lingered on the 'dell', "dell-icately."

Me, even I got it. It's why I am writing again after all these years. Because Lydia's plan, as you will see, involved me. If I don't write it down now, there might not have been another chance. The way Lydia had worked it - the only danger in her plan was towards me. Great.

Stay with me on it, because it was brilliant. It was the reason why Lydia had quickly eclipsed Vidala - and why she's remained firmly in control all these years.

Even against the likes of Commander Judd.

RETURNING TO DR. GROVE

It turned out that Dr. Grove had not only molested Aunt Victoria in her younger days, the pervert had molested his own daughter, Becka. His own daughter.

Lydia's rendition of Margaret Hamilton was with me sitting right there. Lydia was not going to keep what Dr. Grove did secret - but she was going to insulate herself. Exposing men's secrets in Gilead meant short life spans. Even these days.

How? Classic Lydia. It was me, I was going to accuse Dr. Grove of molesting me - which of course he had not. Me, I would have killed him where he stood. And as Lydia knew, I would have got away with it, too. I was a Founder Aunt. Well, maybe. That would have been a roll of the dice.

Me, I want to scream this from the rooftops to Gilead's detractors. Their claim that Gilead is anti-woman. No one in Canada, or in the remnant of the United States, nor among those fake British 'relief agencies' speaks of what happened next.

I had accused Dr. Grove. And it was him who'd ended up particicuted. Not me. He was the first man to be brought down - perhaps since Commander Putnam of old had lost an arm for his own transgressions.

At his trial, Grove'd been pitiful. He'd quoted from Genesis 39, about Potiphar's wife - the Egyptian who'd falsely accused Joseph of attempted rape, landing Joseph in an Egyptian prison. Therefore, he reasoned, it was me falsely accusing him. (Don't let what you're thinking stop this narrative.) At closing, the prosecutor said that merely quoting from the Bible did not by itself prove any parallel with my accusation. Grove, defending himself, did not bother addressing that to the tribunal.

Because I had been the complainant, I oversaw the particicution, along with a black-market lemon trader. His last breath's plea, "I didn't do it", while technically correct, did not save him for his disgusting behaviour towards a future Aunt as well as his own daughter.

Me? Resuming my writing after all these years. Perhaps it is only to say…..

….. Lydia's still got it. Me? Sure I'd been in harms' way, but only briefly. And consider this all you Gilead critics - if this had been the first few years of our Republic, it would have been me offered up as a 'slut' for accusing Dr. Grove so.

JUST WHO HAS GIVEN UP ON GILEAD, ANYWAY?

Gilead has learned. Gilead has changed. You don't hear that these days from our Republic's critics around the world.

Yet there is one thing bothering me, something I'm not sure I want to touch.

Has Lydia given up on Gilead? Has she given up on Gilead's men? How far will Lydia go? This is dangerous stuff.

There's something not right with Aunt Lydia. Nor with Aunt Victoria, aka. Agnes Mackenzie. They are up to something. They will either succeed or the wrath of our righteous Republic will descend like a sword of God - on all of us. Either way, one does not wish to be collateral damage, does one?