The Gate to Women's Country

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "I'll give you the end room nearest the plaza, first day of carnival, at six in the morning. That's an hour before we open for the lovers, so you'll have a chance for a quiet chat." She had a different expression now, a yearning, as though she had had a brother once, or a dear friend, she had wanted a quiet time with. "I wish you luck, child. Bring him home if you can."

  Stavia flushed. It was a secret they all shared. Someone to be brought home; someone who could not come.

  As it seemed he could not.

  "You have to give me the book, Chernon." They were sitting side by side on the wide couch, not touching, embarrassed by the place, by the time.

  "In exchange for one, Stavia. Just like always," he said stubbornly, lower lip clenched and angry. He had truly expected her to come to him before now, offering to put everything back as it had been before she refused him. Michael had thought she would.

  "Not in exchange for anything. Oh, Chernon, don't you care about me at all? Or yourself?"

  What was this? He was shifty, biting his cheeks, eyes darting this way and that as though she were trying to trap him. "Yes. You're my friend."

  "Then don't risk our lives, Chernon."

  His jaw sagged. "What do you mean?"

  "If I don't get it back, I must tell the Council, Chernon. I broke the ordinances. Now that you're really going to be a warrior, I can't go on breaking them. If you won't give it back, I'll have to...."

  "Don't," he said hastily, too hastily. Michael wouldn't want that. Michael wouldn't want the Council knowing anything about Chernon at all, about Chernon and Stavia!

  "Besides, you should be worried about what the warriors might do to you."

  He had to detour her, distract her. He put out his hand to touch her face, the soft tips of his fingers making gentle trails down her cheeks to her jaw, his mouth like one on a tragic mask, drooping. "You were really worried about me. I didn't know. I thought you were just being... trying...."

  She had been being, trying. She was still trying, but none of that got through to him at all.

  "I'll... I'll bring it back to you this afternoon," he said. "I'll put it through the hole." They had widened the hole. It was almost a window, now, suitable for the passage of books. When she leaned tight into the wall on the inside, and he on the outside, they could touch hands in the dark depth of the stone while the tree sifted the light onto his face. He could never see her, but she could see him. She felt he was closer to her then, separated by all that thickness of wall, than he was now.

  Now he started to go and she stopped him. "Stay, Chernon. We have this room for an hour."

  "No, no," he said, sounding trapped again. "I can't. Can't stay. Oh, Stavia...."

  And then he was kneeling before her, his head in her lap, weeping while she tried frantically to comfort him.

  "I don't know what to do!" he wept, surprising himself by this flood of honest, uncalculated tears. "I think I've got it picked, and then I'm not sure, and then I think I'll do something else, but that's worse. I couldn't do anything that would make them hate me, Stavvy. I want him to, Michael to.... I just couldn't. You know that. I shouldn't have to. There should be something else I can do...."

  She held him. She didn't ask what he meant. There was nothing she could say. If she told him she loved him, it would only trap him more! She couldn't beg him to come home to her, she had already done that. It was all in the ordinances, ordinances she had already broken. All she could hear, inside her head, were Myra's words when she saw Barten's body. "So they've killed him, too!" It was as though she had killed Chernon, too. If she had not given him the first book, perhaps he would not be weeping now. She had wronged him, hurt him. She was guilty. Somehow, she would have to make it up to him. She swore to herself she would make it up to him. Somehow.

  She held him, rocking back and forth, her face frozen They stayed there until the attendant knocked on the door, telling them their time was up.

  Joshua was waiting for her at home. He saw her face and his own changed. "Do you have the book?"

  "He said he'll probably bring it. This afternoon." She was numb from emotion, pain, guilt.

  "Tell me, Stavia!"

  She temporized. "He's confused, Joshua, that's all. I don't think he knew how much danger he was in."

  "I'll come with you this afternoon."

  "You're not supposed...."

  "By the Lady, Stavia, you've already got me in over my head."

  All his willingness to bend the customs did no good. When they went to the hole in the wall, the book was there, but Chernon was not. Joshua, after a long, calculating look at Stavia's stricken face, decided that something drastic had to be done.

  REHEARSAL of Iphigenia at Ilium: Councilwoman Stavia in the part of Iphigenia. _______

  CASSANDRA I have seen blood....

  HECUBA Cassandra, do sit down. (To Polyxena) Odysseus had Andromache's child thrown to his death from high atop the walls.

  POLYXENA A pity, though no more than one might guess would happen with these disputatious Greeks.

  IPHIGENIA For all the joy they take in getting sons, they take as great a joy in killing them. There's not a warrior but would have his sons be warriors in their time. (To Andromache) If Hector lived would he not teach this baby how to kill and how to die?

  ANDROMACHE He would have, yes, if he'd lived long enough. He would have felt dishonored if his son had not espoused the sword.

  IPHIGENIA (Jiggling the baby) It's just as well, then, that he didn't live.

  ANDROMACHE Do you speak of my husband or my child?

  IPHIGENIA What difference? I speak of either one.

  POLYXENA Who are you to have cared for Hector's son?

  IPHIGENIA Iphigenia, Agamemnon's child. I came to Ilium to avenge myself on him who murdered me.

  CASSANDRA I have seen blood.

  HECUBA Hush, dear, please.

  CASSANDRA Blood and bodies broken.

  HECUBA Shh, Cassandra. We know, dear. We have seen blood enough to last our lives. Blood and dead children and the bones of men. I cannot understand how warriors live among so many slain. They seem to take their strength from dying men as do the Holy Gods from sacrifice!

  CASSANDRA White altars red with blood. With heart's blood shed. With blood and bodies broken.

  HECUBA Shh.

  FOR FIFTY DAYS after the war with Susantown, Casimur, warrior of the thirty-one, had waited on death's landing for death to open the door, waited and stank and screamed until everyone in the Old Warriors' Home stuffed wool in their ears and drank themselves into insensibility. It would have been a courtesy to kill him, a courtesy for him to take the Well Water the women offered him, but he wouldn't. Even now that he was sure he was dying, Casimur was very set on his honor. He screamed about it again and again, until his throat was raw from screaming and he could only make a hoarse, ratcheting sound, like a ladle rattling in an empty wooden bucket.

  Chernon sat beside Casimur to serve him. He had to wait by Casimur's bed, ready to receive the last words or the spirit or the instructions or whatever it was Casimur might want to give him. There was always a boy set beside a dying man, a boy to carry on the honor. Fifty days he had been there, changing bandages and cleaning up when Casimur dirtied himself and trying to spoon soup down his throat.

  When Casimur was not screaming, Chernon tried to sleep. In the deep of night, Chernon struggled with his pillow, searching for a way out, away from wherever he was in the dream country. Where he was bloody. He walked in gore, lifting clotted hands, gagging at the smell of it. He waded through the swamps of the sleep country, bellowing into the very mouth of the black cave he had tracked his dream guide into. "Is the way out through there?" No matter how sweetly he had called, it was never sweetly enough to evoke an answer. Sometimes in the dream he was horned and mighty. Sometimes in the dream, no walls or chains could hold him, and yet he could not find the way out. No maps were drawn in his dark dreaming, or, if they were, they were no
t written on his pillow when he awoke.

  He turned in sleep, sweating, peering behind the pillars of the cave, hoping to see a road, a signpost, a pointing finger, but everywhere was only Casimur's agonized face, Casimur's voice screaming about honor.

  Chernon believed in honor, as he understood it, as Michael and the others had explained it to him. It was honorable to protect women because warriors needed them to breed sons and so dogma had it, they were incapable of protecting themselves, though there might be some doubt about that now, with this rumored weapon or power of theirs. Michael said women weren't strong enough to trust with power or weapons and that if it turned out they had any such thing, it would be perfectly honorable to conquer them and take the power away from them. Women didn't have the right kind of minds to use such things properly, so it would be most honorable to remove the danger from them. Michael had explained about Besset, too. How sometimes it was necessary to do unpleasant things for the greater good. Like turning Besset loose to join a bandit pack so he could bring back information. Even though the bandits sometimes killed people, the information was more important than worrying about their lives.

  Everyone agreed that it was dishonorable to return through the Gate to Women's Country. Only cowards did it. Cowards and physical weaklings, though even they could be put to work in the garrison kitchens or doing maintenance of some kind if they confessed their weakness to the Commander. Beyond being the butt of a bit of rough teasing or donkey play, they got on well enough.

  It was dishonorable to make a Gypsy of a young girl as it unfitted her for breeding, or to make a whore of a boy as it unfitted him for a warrior's life. Everyone agreed it was dishonorable, but sometimes the men did it anyhow. It was dishonorable, but it wasn't hateful. Going back through the gate, that was hateful. Getting some girl out to the camps, well, nobody would hiss you for that.

  It was dishonorable to drink so much during carnival that you couldn't remember what women you'd been with, though most of the men had been guilty of that. More than one man had received a printed card from the assignation mistress after carnival, signed by some woman the warrior couldn't really remember. The cards always said the same thing. "If it is a boy, I will bring him to his warrior father when he is five." The cards went into the men's files at headquarters. A man might not exactly remember, but no man with a card filed for the proper date would care to say the son wasn't his when it showed up almost six years later. It would be the same as admitting lack of manhood! Of course, some warriors had grown too old for sex and some simply preferred the Gypsies as less trouble, and said so, and there was nothing held against them for that.

  The conventional wisdom in the garrison was that it didn't matter if a man remembered clearly or not. Even though everybody knew that women cheated about other things, it was generally agreed that they were honest and sensible about warriors' sons because it was in their own best interest to do so. Women knew the warriors protected them only because women bore them sons, so it was in the women's interest to see that sons were produced and brought to the appropriate father. Though Chernon had serious doubts about this, it was true that almost every warrior had at least one son. Very few warriors got slighted during carnival. Very few of the men who wanted sex did without, even though some of them didn't remember much about it afterward. Sons were the single most important thing in life to a warrior, and the women knew that. "In bearing a son for a warrior, a woman earns her life." That's the way the indoctrination for boys went. "Your mother earned her life so." Another saying was, "There's no use or excuse for a childless woman." Though, of course, everyone realized there really were many excuses. Without all the old women doing the weaving and preserving fish and shearing sheep, food and fabric would both be scarce. Everyone really knew that. When the centurions nicked off part of the grain allotment to make beer, someone always toasted "the grandmas" who grew the grain.

  All of these things had something to do with honor, but nowhere in all that tangle of honor and dishonor, as Chernon understood it, was there anything about rotting away on a bed for fifty days before you finally died. Casimur should have taken the Well Water. Morgot herself had come to him and offered it three times. Each time, Chernon had hidden himself, not wanting to see her, not wanting to think about her or her family. Not wanting to think about Stavia.

  It had all gone wrong with Stavia. He had done exactly what Michael told him to do, but it had gone wrong. Instead of becoming Chernon's willing informant, Stavia had gone away. One afternoon she was there, holding him in her lap while he cried, inexcusable, babyish tears. Five days later when he tried to find her to tell her the tears hadn't meant anything, she was gone. She had been sent to Abbyville to the Medical Institute, Beneda told him. Gone two years earlier than expected. Gone for nine years, and she would only be able to come home to visit once or twice, if at all. It made him angry, not so much that she had gone but that she had never said a word to him about the fact that she might go. It did not occur to him that she might not have mentioned it because she hadn't wanted to go.

  No, he told himself, he had simply been wrong to think Stavia would behave differently from other women. All women cheated. His mother cheated, and Beneda, and so Stavia did, as well.

  There had been the time that crazy Vinsas had been alive. Vinsas had told Chernon to go home at carnival time and say these things to Chernon's mother, not nice things exactly, but interesting things. "I cut her with my knife at the tip of her breast," Vinsas had said. When he talked like this, his lips wobbled loosely and the spit ran out onto his chin. "It made a scar. I bit her in a certain place. I left my teeth marks on her. Make her show you...." Chernon found it interesting to imagine what she would say when he quoted Vinsas to her. That very first time she could have told him she wouldn't discuss it, but instead she'd tried to explain about Vinsas. If she hadn't intended to talk about it, she should have said so the first time. But she did say some things. Things about women and how men looked at women and what some men wanted. He didn't really want her to cry, but it was interesting that she did. Having her talk to him that way made him feel older and stronger. He had wanted to talk about it again, but after the second time she hadn't let him talk about it at all. Instead, she had sent him away, to his Aunt Erica's house.

  And Stavia. It was the same with Stavia. "You've got to get them to break the rules, boy," Michael had said. "They think they're safe so long as they keep the rules. It's like their silly ordinances are a kind of protection for them. You get them to break the rules, all of a sudden they don't have that protection anymore. Then the only protection they've got is you, and they have to please you to get it, right?"

  So he got Stavia to break the rules, but she had twisted on him. She had threatened to go to the Council.

  "Give her the book back," Stephen had said. "Keep her quiet. Wait a few months and we'll try her again."

  But there had been no opportunity to try again. She had gone. Would be gone. For years.

  You couldn't trust them. That's what Michael said. You couldn't trust them. He was right. Even Beneda. Sometimes when he used to visit at home during carnival she'd ask him what he wanted to eat and fix it for him, then the next time she'd say she was too busy. Women had no right to do a thing and then not do it, to say yes and then no. The warriors said sometimes a woman would be with them at one carnival and the next carnival she'd say, no, she wanted to be with someone else! Even Barten had said that once about some girl. How she had said she'd stay at the Gypsy camp for him, but she didn't. Women had no right to do that. Once a woman consented to something, that was it, no saying no later or running away.

  The worst part of Stavia's being gone was that Chernon's usefulness to Michael seemed to be over. Now there was only this waiting! Waiting until Stavia came back, if she came back. Waiting until Michael found something else exciting for him to do. Which would not be soon. Michael had decided that now was not the time to do anything.

  "I've got this philosophy," Michael had said
in his smooth, lazy voice. "You can plan all you want to. Plan and plan, and maybe something will happen and maybe it won't. Life's like the city. There's a wall around it with a gate in it. A Warriors' Gate. Once in a while that gate is going to open, and if you're ready, you can get through it before it shuts again. The thing we have to do is be ready. Someday the gate is going to open for us, for you, too, Chernon. If you're ready when it does, then you go through and there's all kinds of glory on the other side. Pushing that gate before it's ready to open,that's just stupid. Pushing that gate before it's ready can give you a hernia." He laughed then, throwing his head back, showing his strong white teeth. "I'll get in, but I won't strain myself!"

  Stephen growled in his impatience to be doing something, but Michael just laughed at him.

  "You're too itchy, Steph. Too itchy. Go on out to the Gypsy camp and get it out of your system. Just be ready, that's all. It doesn't matter whether it's now or later. Just be ready."

  So they waited.