Thendara House

  Yet the emotion was there and she could neither identify nor restrain it. As for rebuffing it, it would have been as unthinkable to slap Camilla when she proffered her love and devotion. Magda lowered her head so that Choiayna would not see the tears in her eyes and said ungraciously, fighting whatever it was that was making her want to cry, “Well, I will do that, of course, I don’t want to leave any loose ends. Mother Lauria is waiting for us.”

  In Mother Lauria’s office the older woman had sent for breakfast; there was a platter of hot bread, smoking and sliced, another plate of the cold sliced Festival cake, raisins studded all through it, left over from the day before; and a huge steaming pitcher of the roasted-grain drink the Amazons drank in lieu of wine or beer. There was also a bowl of hard-boiled eggs and a dish of soft curd cheese. Impelled by a feeling she would never have considered until this morning, Magda said quickly, “You will not want to eat the eggs, Cholayna, since they once had life, but everything else you can eat freely.”

  “Thank you for warning me, Magda,” said Cholayna imper-turbably. “I do not expect the world to be arranged for my convenience; I have, perhaps, become too dependent on man-made foods. Perhaps the Alphan scruples are foolish anyway. It was a wise sage who said that it is not what goes into our mouths that defiles us, but what comes forth from them; lies and cruelty and hatred…” She helped herself to the cheese, and took a piece of the cake, and Magda saw her turning it thoughtfully in her mouth.

  “Have your people such a saying?” Mother Lauria asked. “Some women in this house make a point of eating only grains and fruits; yet their sage wrote that everything which shares this world with us has life, even to the rocks; and all things prey and feed upon one another and come at last to feed the lowest life of all. So that we should eat reverently of whatever comes to us, bearing in mind that some life was sacrificed that we might live and that one day we will feed life in our turn. Ah, well, another philosopher has written that the morning after Festival makes every drunkard a philosopher!”

  She laughed and passed a jar of fruit conserve to Magda, who spread some on her bread, wishing she could explain her feelings in terms of a simple hangover!

  “Well, we must decide,” said Lauria briskly, finishing the tea in her mug. “I feel that Marisela should be the first.”

  “I agree, and I doubt not she will teach the Terrans as much as she learns from them,”said Cholayna, “but can she be spared here?”

  “Probably not, but she must have this chance all the same,” said Mother Lauria. “Keitha can do her work, and later have her turn. I would like to send Janetta—Margali, are you as sleepy as that? Should I send you back to bed?”

  “Oh, no,” Magda said quickly. It had seemed to her for a moment that Marisela was standing in a corner of the office listening to their deliberations and at the same time she knew Marisela was upstairs in her bed, still half asleep, wondering how long she could enjoy this delicious sleep before someone came in search of a midwife and roused her. She was not alone in bed, and Magda recoiled, not wanting to know this about Marisela either. She said hastily, “Janetta is too rigid, she could not, I think, accept Terran ways.”

  “She is more intelligent than you think her,” Mother Lauria said. “There is little here to challenge her mind; I had hoped to send her to Arilinn, but she would never make a midwife, she’s not sympathetic enough to women. She herself has decided she wishes for no children, having a certain distaste for the preliminaries. Yet there is no other training available to her; Nevarsin will not train female healer-priests. She is extremely clever, too clever for most of the things ordinary women, even Amazons, are able to do. She has no interest in soldiering, nor has she the physical strength for it. I think she would be very valuable to you; and what she learns would be priceless to us as well.”

  Magda still felt skeptical, and Mother Lauria continued “You do not know Janni’s story. She came from a village where her mother was left widowed with seven children, and had no other skills to keep them, so she became a harlot. She tried to train Janetta to her trade before the girl was twelve. For a year or two Janni was too young and timid to resist; then she ran away to us.”

  Camilla had said it once; every Renunciate has her own story and every story is a tragedy. How have I earned my place among them?

  “There is a young woman called Gwennis,” Mother Lauria said. “She is at Nevarsin now, working with some scrolls in the keeping of the brothers—you do not know her, Margali—”

  “I do not know her well enough to recommend her for this,” Magda said, “but she is my oath-sister, after all—she was in the band led by Jaelle.”

  “I think she would be a good choice,” Mother Lauria said. “The very fact that she volunteered for that work would perhaps make her good at this. And perhaps Byrna; she has an inquiring mind—not to mention that she is still pining tor her child and this would be a blessing, give her something new to think about. Cholayna—” she used the Terran woman’s name hesitantly, “have you any particular ideas about what age these women should be?”

  “I do not think it matters,” Cholayna said. “They should, perhaps, not be too young. Your people, I have heard, are trusted with responsibility at an earlier age than ours; but if the Empire people thought them mere children, they might not take them seriously enough, as independent adults. Not younger than twenty, I should think.”

  “So old?” Mother Lauria asked. Magda was remembering that Irmelin was one of the most bookish women in the House, spending most of her leisure hours in reading or sometimes in writing for Mother Lauria in her office, and suggested her name.

  “I think she is too lazy, perhaps, too content with things as they are,” Mother Lauria said. “Three years ago, perhaps, but not now. Though if she wishes it, once it is made clear to her how much work it is, she might be given a chance. Certainly she is intelligent enough, and does not shrink from hard work.”

  “What I would like,” Cholayna said, “would be a chance to administer one of the specific intelligence tests to all of your women… we have some very good ones which are not culturally biased, measuring only the ability to think abstractly and to learn.”

  “That might be valuable to us as well,” said Mother Lauria. “Certainly there are stupid women, just as there stupid men, but the most intelligent of women can be taught as a girl that seeming stupid is her most useful skill when she is among men, and most of them are clever enough to learn to do that! The ones who cannot learn that, or will not learn it, are often the ones who come to us. But sometimes we have women who are even afraid to try to learn to read, because they have been taught so well that it is beyond their skills! How, in Evanda’s name, anyone can think that a woman who spins and weaves and grows food in her own greenhouse and supervises her servants, teaches her children, and manages all of a family’s resources, can be called stupid, I will never know! It is as if we should call a farmer, who can manage crops and animals at all seasons of the year, stupid because he knows nothing of the philosophy of the ancient sages! Women come here thinking themselves stupid, and I do not know how to convince them otherwise. But perhaps, if your tests were presented as games, and I could convince them that there are different kinds of learning…”

  “Well, certainly we have enough tests, and people to administer them,” said Cholayna. “I am thinking of one of the technicians in the Psych department. She might be a good one to send here, not only for your sake but for her own—I think she could learn much from you. She is—” Cholayna hesitated; “I am not sure of your word—Magda, help me? One who has no sexual interest in men—”

  “Menhiédris,” said Magda, using the politest of many words; ruder ones were used every day in the Guild House but she was feeling sensitive on that subject just now.

  “She would welcome knowing that there was a place in this culture which would not despise her,” Cholayna said. “A good many of our cultures are—shall we say far from perfect? It would interest her to know how your socie
ty structures such things. She might feel at home among you, more than some others, if you think they could accept anyone from another world. As, perhaps, you have accepted Magda—Margali?”

  Mother Lauria said rather stiffly, “I am glad you think there is something where we can teach as well as learn from you,” and Cholayna smiled at her with disarming friendliness.

  “Oh, you must not judge us by our worst and narrowest, Lauria. It is unfortunate that our Coordinator is a narrow-minded man, the worst rather than the best, a political appointee who has never wished to be here at all. But we have those among us who truly love the worlds where we are assigned, and wish to share them. Magda, for instance—”

  Mother Lauria’s face softened.

  “Margali has been truly one of us,” she said, “and if there are others of your people who are like her—or like yourself, Cholayna—we would welcome them as friends. And to be just, there are enough of our people who are narrow-minded, who judge your people by the men in the spaceport bars, not your scientists and your wiser men. There are even some who still think your people sky-devils… For their sake, I think, Margali, it is time to reveal the truth; who you are and where you came from, so that when they speak disparagingly of Terrans, those who know better may say to them, ‘but look, Margali is one of them, and she has lived as a sister to us in this house for a whole year,’ and show them that their prejudices are foolish… what do you say to that, Margali?”

  Magda felt dismayed; surely not yet, surely she could not yet face the sudden shock and hostility with which at least a few would greet her… and even as the thought crossed her mind it seemed she could almost see the hostile faces, the rejection where there had been friendship, the awkwardness when they knew she had won friendship under false pretenses…

  Again Cholayna was taking it for granted that she would again agree to put herself on the line between the two cultures, that again she would choose to be in the vulnerable spot of liaison of her two worlds. How they would despise her when they knew! And Camilla, Camilla would surely hate her…

  I never allowed myself to be vulnerable to any man as I have been to Camilla; always before I have been guarded, trying always to be strong and in perfect possession of myself. With Camilla it is different, and I cannot bear that she should judge me harshly, it would be worse than when I lost Peter. One of the reasons he left me, she thought, was because I was too independent and could not surrender myself and my judgment, and now…

  “Margali?” And suddenly Magda knew that she had lost track of the conversation, that both Mother Lauria and Cholayna were looking at her. She said at random, “What was that you said about Camilla? I am sorry, my mind was wandering,” and then she was frightened. How had she known they were speaking about Camilla?

  “Are you ill, Margali? You are as white as a shroud,” Mother Lauria said, and Cholayna asked, smiling, if she had danced too late last night.

  “No one is good for anything on the day after Festival,” Lauria said “This was the wrong time for this visit, perhaps, but you could not know that. All we said, Margali, was that Camilla is in the house and she probably knows the women better than I; when you have trained a girl in swordplay and self-defense, you know all her weaknesses. The same is true of Rafaella, but she slept out last night, Camilla said. Would you run upstairs and ask her to come down to us? Your legs are younger than mine.”

  Magda was glad to get out of the room, and on the stairs she stopped, gasping, holding herself together by sheer force of will. It was happening again, once again it seemed as if she were like a spider at the center of the web, twitching everywhere and feeling the threads move, upstairs to where Marisela was awake and singing as she splashed her face with the icy water… someone is on the steps seeking a midwife, but how had Marisela known that? The same way that I know it? Lady Rohana called it laran… but she also said I had learned to barrier it, what has happened to my control? She could feel Irmelin downstairs in the kitchen, she could hear Rezi and two other women cursing as they struggled with barn-shovels; the very dairy-animals sensed the disturbances of midsummer, or was it only that after dancing till very late the inflexible routine of caring for the animals did not fit well with a hangover? Keitha… Keitha is more prejudiced even than I about lovers of women, I was not the only women to succumb to someone I loved at Midsummer…

  “In Evanda’s name, why are you blocking the staircase?” demanded a cross voice behind her, and Magda, shaking, drew herself upright to face Rafaella. She was still wearing her holiday gown, which looked strange in the morning glare, and her hair was mussed, her eyes reddened. It was obvious even to Magda how she had spent the night… or am I reading minds again?

  She moved to one side, with a murmur of apology, but Rafaella stopped and looked at her, taking her brusquely by the arm.

  “What in hell ails you? You look as if you were going into labor or something like that!”

  “No, no, I’m quite well—Mother Lauria sent me on an errand—”

  “Then go and do it,” Rafaella said, not unkindly, “but you look as if you, not I, were the one who had spent a sleepless night and drunk too much. Well, I don’t suppose we are the only ones; when you have done your errand, you had better spend the rest of the day in bed—preferably alone!” She laughed and went on up the stairs, and Magda, feeling her face flush with heat, managed to recover herself and go on up to Camilla’s room. The older woman was awake and half dressed; she heard Rafaella on the stairs and put her head out into the hall.

  “So you woke the dawn-birds, Rafi love—was it worth it?”

  Rafaella rolled her eyes expressively, then chuckled. “How would you know if I told you? But oh, yes—for once in the year! Now I shall go and sleep!” She disappeared into her room, and Camilla chuckled softly as she turned to Magda.

  “Did you come to find me? I supposed that Mother Lauria and the Terran woman would send for me sooner or later…”

  Is she doing it too? Magda felt brittle, raw-edged as if she would fly into pieces; one part of her was seized by Rafaella’s much too clear surface memories of the night just past, he must have been quite a man, a memory of excitement, pleasant athletic competence, and she was furious with herself because the shared memory sent a flood of sexual heat through her own body, and now Camilla was reading her message before she delivered it. Did they all do it? It had never happened before, Camilla was red-haired, it was not impossible she had some Comyn blood; faded now, gingery sand-colored, but when she was a young girl she must have been bright redhead, Tallo, they said here, like Jaelle, but as she looked at Camilla it seemed that the gaunt scarred face slid off and what she saw was a lovely child, fourteen or fifteen, shining dark-red curls, a delicate arrogance, a sheltered child treated like a princess…

  …a lovely child, yes. small good it did me, then a flood of confused memories tumbling one over the other, a delicate child suddenly torn away from home into the hands of bandits, the roughest of men, repeated brutal violation, a plaything for the cruellest of them, from hand to hand like a whore, no, worse than a whore, not even a human being, beaten like an animal when I tried to escape… lashes ripping flesh from the bones… Magda had seen the scars on face and body… I cannot be reading all this, but her own body was racked with the same, horror, pain… and then a flood of denial, dread…

  “No,” she managed to gasp, “Camilla, don’t—” and again shame washed over her, how could she refuse even to remember when her friend had had to endure all this, when the memory alone was enough to make Magda retch…

  “Margali! Bredhiya …” Camilla caught her as she swayed, and the touch brought another flood of the unendurable, intolerable memories…

  Then, abruptly like a slamming door, they were cut off, and it was only the familiar Camilla again, saying gently, “I am sorry, I did not know you were—vulnerable to that.”

  “I think—I am going mad—” Magda choked. “I am—I keep reading people’s minds—”

  Camilla si
ghed. “I suppose—Jaelle has the Ardais Gift, a little; she is a catalyst telepath, and you are so close, she has perhaps awakened your own laran. And of course she does not know how strong it is; she has managed to barricade herself so well, she hardly knows she has laran at all. And of course I learned long ago to remain barriered, for months at a time I never even think of it; living among the head-blind, one does learn to keep barriers up. I promise you, my dear, I have never tried to read you, never—violated your privacy. A long time ago I made the decision to set all that aside. I have never turned back. This does not happen twice in five years. Forgive me, sister.”

  “I think—perhaps you should forgive me,” Magda managed to murmur. The world was slowly coming back into normal focus, but it seemed that only the thinnest of veils guarded her from that unendurable wide-openness to everybody and everything.

  “You have had no training,” the older woman said, “and I when I was a girl—after—” she moved her hand, unwilling to speak, and Magda knew what she meant, after the ordeal of which Camilla had spoken only once, after what she had read… how can she live with such memories?

  “My family could never manage to forget,” Camilla said quietly. “I had to learn, or die. But enough of that, love—now we must go down to Mother Lauria. Margali, are you all right?”

  Magda managed to nod. Once again she felt a desperate wish to lean on the strength of the older woman. She could not endure what was happening to her, and despite Camilla’s words she was not ready to admit that it was, in fact, happening.

  She could hear excited voices at the door as she came downstairs, and Marisela’s gentle voice soothing the tumult.

  “Yes, yes, I understand, my little ones—no, truly, your Mammy isn’t going to die, she is going to birth your little brother or sister, that is all. Yes, yes, I will hurry. Irmelin, take our little friends here into the kitchen and give them some bread and honey—things were too confused at home for breakfast this morning, were they not, girls? And you can look into the Guild House kitchen and see what it is like, you would like to have a look, wouldn’t you?” She made a laughing gesture at the women on the staircase, then her eyes met Magda’s and her face changed as abruptly as if she had been slapped.