She had said: “Be very sure, Jaelle; very sure. This is no game, it is your whole life. Don’t throw it away like this!” And then she had begged: “Jaelle, will you give me three years, more time, as you gave Kindra, to prove to you that my life is no less happy than hers?”
She knew Jaelle was remembering, too (Or did the girl’s awakening laran share her thoughts?), when Jaelle said softly, “Three years seemed a lifetime then; longer than I could bear to wait. And-forgive me, Rohana-you wanted to prove your life was happy; and yet I knew you were not happy. So it seemed-hypocrisy.” Rohana bowed her head. No, she had not been happy then, but she thought she had concealed it more carefully from Jaelle. She had felt harried then, trapped by the life she led, after her brief taste of freedom. She had been much beset with her adolescent children, and with the three-year-old Valentine, who was at the most active and troublesome age. And at that time she had been pregnant again with a fourth child she did not want; that had been the price she paid for Gabriel’s final forgiveness. And though she had not wanted the child, Rohana was too much a woman to bear a child for most of a year and see it die without anguish. So when it had been stillborn, she had grieved as bitterly as if she had longed for it. But she had carried the child, that year, in anger and desperate rebellion, feeling that perhaps she had paid too high a price for Gabriel’s goodwill and peace in her home. Now, before Jaelle grown to womanhood, she bowed her head and said, almost inaudibly, “You were right; I was not happy then. Now I feel more guilty than ever that because of my unhappiness you rushed to take the Amazon oath.”
Jaelle laid her cheek against Rohana’s hand. “Don’t blame yourself; I don’t think it would have made any difference. Even Kindra said I was stubborn and headstrong; she, too, urged me to delay a little. Perhaps”-she smiled fleetingly-“I am my father’s daughter, too, though I do not like to think so.”
Never before this day had Jaelle spoken her father’s name in Rohana’s hearing. She had some idea of what it had cost Jaelle to say this. She was silent, asking after a long time, “Then you will stay with your Terran lover?”
“I-I think so.”
But she is not sure. “Is it fair to any man, Jaelle, to give him so little of yourself as a freemate gives?”
“Rohana, I give him what he wants of me! The Terrans do not make their women slaves to their will!”
“Just the same-don’t be angry, Jaelle-it seems to me that a freemate gives little more than a prostitute.” She used the coarse word grezalis, knowing that on her decorous lips it would shock Jaelle into listening. “It seems to me that it is no marriage unless you commit yourself to a man for all times: good and bad, in happiness or misery. You know that when I was wed, Gabriel was nothing to me but a burden I had to bear, because I had been born Comyn, and the laws of my caste required me to marry within my clan and bear him children with laran.”
“And you can call me whore? When you were sold like a slave for your family’s pride of position, and I-choose to give myself freely to the man I love and desire?”
Rohana put out a hand to stop her. “Jaelle, Jaelle darling, I did not call you a whore, or anything like it! I said: this was how my marriage seemed at the beginning, a grave burden I must bear for my family’s sake. Yet now Gabriel is the very center of the world we have built together. A freemate says to her lover, because of this storm of desire, I will remain with you while it suits my pleasure; but if we lose our happiness I will leave you, sacrificing the happiness we have had and the good times that may come in the future, all because of the unhappiness of a year or two. There is no obligation to remain together and work to turn the evil times into good again.”
“How can you do that? Do you not live with constant regret for the years of unhappiness you had to share, with no possibility of escape?”
“Not really,” Rohana said. “It has taken us a long time to outlive unhappiness, but we have forged a bond that will last till death. And beyond,” she added, smiling, “if there is anything beyond.”
“You say this bravely,” said Jaelle, “but I think … oh, Rohana, I do not want to make you angry.”
“The truth could not make me angry, Jaelle. Only remember, darling, that it is your truth, and not necessarily my truth.”
“Then I think,” said Jaelle, “that because it is too late for regrets, you tell yourself you have never had them. I think you simply would not give up your power and position as wife to the lord of the Domain of Ardais.”
“Perhaps,” said Rohana, unoffended, “a marriage is spun of many small threads. Gabriel is only a part of my life, but not a part I would willingly renounce now. I did not love him when we were wed, but it would rend my heart into a thousand fragments to be parted from him now.”
Jaelle, remembering Rohana’s face as she knelt beside the unconscious man, knew dimly that this was true; but it seemed to her that this was only slavery to an ideal, and nothing like the overwhelming passion that had caught her up, almost unwillingly, into Peter’s life. She said, trembling, “That is not what I call love!”
“No, I suppose not, dear,” said Rohana, taking the small cold hands in hers, “but it is real, and it has lasted.”
“Then you think love-love as I know it-means nothing? It seems to me you think marriage can be made by any two, however they feel about one another, as if-for the first time in a dozen years, Jaelle spoke her mother’s name-“as if Melora and Jalak … as if my mother, even in rape and captivity, could have built lasting happiness.”
“Even that, under some circumstances, darling. But I went consenting to my marriage, with my family’s support and blessing; Melora was torn by force from all her kin. But even then; had Jalak and Melora chosen one another, had she run away with him of her own will, or even, afterward, had he loved and cherished her for herself, and not as a pawn to his evil pride, and a memento to his hatred of her folk of the Domains-even then, perhaps, she could have found some peace; not happiness, perhaps, but content.”
“Even in chains?”
“Even so, my darling. Had Melora loved Jalak, and willed to please him, she would have known that the chains were a game he played for his pride before all men, and she would have worn them to play the game with him, willingly … Jaelle, if your Amazons made up an army and marched to free the women of the Dry Towns from their chains, no doubt there are some who would hail you as their saviors; but there are others, I am sure, who would bid you turn around and march home again, and not meddle in their affairs. Would you not wear chains to please your lover, Jaelle?”
She said, “He would never ask,” but dropped her eyes, remembering her play with the ribbon; the fantasy game she had played as a little girl in the Dry Towns. She said, angry at the memory, “Had you no pity for my mother?”
“Only the Gods know how much,” Rohana said. “I risked the anger of Hastur, and came near to destroying what happiness I had found with Gabriel, to bring her away before she bore Jalak a son; and to set you free, because she said she would kill you rather than leave you chained in Jalak’s Great House. Do you not remember that?” Her eyes flamed with the beginning of anger.
Jaelle took her hand, and after a moment kissed it. Rohana said quietly, “Jaelle, many women wear their chains as I wear the catenas.” She thrust out her arm, showing her the ceremonial marriage-bracelet, whose twin was locked on Gabriel’s arm. “A token of something that would be locked upon my heart forever, even if I refused, as you will refuse, to wear the outward symbol.”
Jaelle said softly, “The Amazon oath binds me not to marry di catenas. I never thought I would want to,” and her head went down on Rohana’s knees, the slender shoulders shaking with the violence of her sobs. “I don’t, Rohana! I don’t!”
Rohana thought, Then why are you crying so? But she did not say so, sensing, through the feel of the girl’s head against her knees, the very real heartbreak. She only stroked Jaelle’s soft hair, tenderly. At last she asked, “Are you pregnant, darling?”
?
??No-no. He has spared me that.”
“And do you really want to be spared, my precious?”
Jaelle couldn’t answer; she was unable to speak. At last Rohana asked, very gently, “Will you stay with him in sorrow as in joy, Jaelle?”
Jaelle raised her flushed face. “I feel now that I would,” she said in anguish, “but how can I be sure? How can I know he will love me in the evil times that come to everyone? How can I even know what I will be then? And yet-it seems that it is worth even this. Did you never love anyone, Rohana? Did you never want to give up everything-everything, your pledged way of life, your honor, everything because you could not-could not part from-” She put her head down on Rohana’s knees, and cried desperately again.
Rohana’s heart ached for her, and for a long-healed wound that Jaelle’s words had torn. Yes, there was a time when I would have given up everything: my children, the life I had made for myself, Gabriel-yet the price seemed all too heavy to pay. At last she said, faltering, “There is nothing in this world that is not bought for a price. Even Kindra; she never regretted her oath, but she grieved to the day of her death for the children she had abandoned. It seems to me that is the one flaw in the Amazon oath; you women who take it guard yourselves from the risks all women take willingly. Perhaps it is only that every woman must choose what risks she will bear.”
Jaelle listened, and the words fell heavy on her heart. I came too young to the Amazon oath; most women make these renunciations in grief, knowing that they are real privations. To me it seemed only that I renounced slavery and embraced freedom. I did not weep when I took the oath. I could never truly understand why so many women made the oath only with tears …
“You love Piedro. Will you stay with him?”
“I-I must, I cannot leave him now.”
“Will you bear his children, darling?”
“If he-if he wants them.”
“But your oath binds you to bear them only if you want them,” Rohana said. “You must choose, and perhaps it is that which I feel so wrong; that you women claim the right to choose.”
“I will never believe that,” Jaelle flared at her. “A woman not free to choose is truly a slave.”
“But even the freedom to choose does not always guarantee happiness,” Rohana said, capturing the cold hands again and caressing them. “I have heard old Amazons lamenting their childlessness, when it was too late to change their minds. And I-“She swallowed hard, for she had never said this to any living being; not to Gabriel, not to Melora, not to Kindra, who for so long had shared her innermost thoughts. “I did not want children, Jaelle. Every time I knew myself pregnant, I wept and raged. You weep because you are not to bear a child, but I cried more when I knew I was. Once I flung a silver bowl at Gabriel’s head, and I hit him, too, and I shrieked at him that I wished I had killed him and he could never do this to me again. I hated being pregnant, I hated having little children around to trouble me, I feared childbirth worse, I think, than you feared the sword that gave you this.” With light fingers she traced the still-crimson scar across Jaelle’s smooth cheek. “Had I been free to choose, I would never have borne a child. And yet now that the children are grown, and I see that they are a part of Gabriel and myself which will survive when we are gone-now, when it would have been too late to change my mind, I find I am glad that the laws of my caste forced me to bear them, and after all these years, I have forgotten-or forgiven-all the unhappiness.”
Jaelle said hoarsely, not wanting to show how much this had moved her, “I think, again, that you know it is too late for regrets; so you tell yourself that you have none.”
“I did not say that I had no regrets, Jaelle,” said Rohana, very low, “only that everything in this world has its price, even such serenity as I have found after so many years of suffering.”
“You truly believe that you have paid a price? I thought you told me now that you had everything a woman could desire!”
Rohana lowered her eyes. She swallowed hard, and for a moment she remembered a day, years ago, when she had looked into Kindra’s gray eyes and known the price she would pay. She could not face Jaelle; she did not want to cry. She said, “Everything but freedom, Jaelle. I think that would have been too dearly bought. But I am not sure.” Her voice broke. “Nothing in this world is sure but death and next winter’s snow. Maybe I do not want to be sure. The price I have paid is my freedom. You have your freedom; you are oath-bound to take it even now when you no longer want it. But at what price, Jaelle?”
Chapter
SEVENTEEN
Magda woke at twilight, to see Jaelle sitting on the foot of her bed. She looked pale, as if she had been crying; but she was calm.
“Sister,” she said, “I know that you took our oath unwillingly; in a sense it was forced from you. Normally that would not matter; but you are a Terran, and you took it without the knowledge of what it truly implied. Do you want to petition for release from your oath, Margali? If you do, I will speak for you before the Guild-mothers.”
Magda knew that this would solve some of her deep inner conflicts; more, it would free her from the fear of Terran retribution, not directed toward herself alone, but toward those who had aided her to desert her original loyalties. She considered it for a moment, but then she was seized by revulsion. Go back to her life in the Terran Zone, and the narrow, sterile world she had lived there, circumscribed by the little work of importance that a woman could do? She realized now that even through her tears and terror when she had taken the oath, it had still seemed a major decision in her life; and more, a genuine decision. Here is a way I can follow. This is what I want, whatever the price I must pay.
I was not forced to abandon Peter to death. Jaelle saved me from paying this price. But sooner or later I knew there would be a day of reckoning; and now I will meet it, whatever it may be.
She used the formal Amazon phrase. “Oath-mother,” she said, “I told you: I chose of my free will to honor my oath, and I will keep it, until death take me or the world end.”
“Even if it makes trouble for you with your own people, Margali?”
She said what she had said to Darrill on the journey: “I am not so sure they are my own people anymore.” Her voice was not quite steady. “I have renounced allegiance to-to family, clan, warden or liege lord.”
Jaelle took her hands; suddenly she leaned forward and kissed her, as she had done when she accepted her oath. She said, “Allegiance for allegiance, my sister. We are sworn. But I think you must face the fact-we must face it together-that it may make grave trouble for you.”
“I know that,” said Magda, and could not keep from trembling a little. “If it had not been for Lady Rohana, I think Peter would have insisted on taking me to the Terran Headquarters, even if he had to do so by force, and under arrest.”
“A beautiful reward for your loyalty to him,” Jaelle said angrily, “But for you, he would be dead in Sain Scarp this moment!”
Magda felt compelled to defend Peter’s point of view. “He is a Terran agent,” she said. “To him, I think, loyalty to the Empire transcends any loyalty to persons.”
“That is not right,” Jaelle said, troubled.
Magda thought, It’s not a point of view any Darkovan can understand; so in many ways Peter is worse off than I. He is Darkovan in so many ways, he can never live at peace within the Empire; but he will never be free to renounce those very things which would prevent him from being wholly at home in Darkover … and he will always be torn, an exile. …
“Jaelle,” she said, “you told me once that the Free Amazons were allowed to accept any lawful work. If the Terran authorities would give me a leave of absence to honor my obligation to the Guild-house for their training, then when I had completed it, would I be allowed to continue the work I have been doing for the Terrans?”
“Do you mean that you would spy on us?”
“No, of course not,” Magda said; the very idea was repellent. “But to build a bridge between our worlds; t
o help my people better understand all the small ways of your society, your language, your laws and customs-even if I did nothing more than my old work, to keep our translators from unwittingly offending against your customs; and I think I could do more, much, much more.”
“That would not violate your oath,” Jaelle said. “By our Charter you may accept any lawful work anywhere. That means that as a sworn Amazon you may work for the Terrans-” She broke off, as if she had seen a blazing light, and said almost in a whisper, “And so can I.”
“How would that be arranged, Jaelle?”
“However you wish,” Jaelle said. “By our Charter’s laws, you must pay a portion of your earnings to the Guild. We renounce family and home, but this means that we have the protection of home and family always. Whenever you are sick, pregnant, unable to work or in a strange city, you can always turn to the Guild-house or to any Amazons there, and find a home where you can be cared for. Your tithes go to maintain the Guild-houses, and you have always sisters and friends there, and you have a lawful right to them. You need never live within a Guild-house unless you choose, although if you choose to live there you are expected to help with the maintenance of the house, to take your turn at housekeeping or gardening or whatever needs to be done. But it is our true home, where we come as others come to their family homes, wherever else we may go.”
Magda had known no family life since her father’s death; she and Peter had never seriously tried to make a home together. The thought of having a true home, a Darkovan home, to which she could go not as a stranger or a guest, but as of right, gave her a sense of warmth she had not known for years.
Jaelle said, “We can go there in old age when we are past work, or have our children fostered there.”
“You bear children, then?”
“If we wish,” Jaelle said, and the memory of Rohana’s words brought a fleeting sadness to her face. “Did you think we took Keeper’s vows? Our daughters can be fostered in the Guild-house till they are grown, when they can choose for themselves whether to join the Guild or to marry. Our sons are usually given to their fathers to rear, after they are weaned, but if your child’s father is unwilling, or you think him unfit to raise your child, or if you do not know who fathered your child-then you can arrange to have him fostered as you wish; though no boy over five years old may live in the Guild-house.” She was thinking out loud; suddenly she came back to the present. “Well, you will learn all that during your Guild-house training, sister.”