The Gate to Women's Country Read online

  "You little girls behave yourselves."

  "I am behaving myself," Stavia said, then more softly, "Beneda, you stop getting me in trouble." Beneda often said things or did things suddenly that got them both in trouble, though she never meant to. Stavia was more self-conscious. When Stavia got into trouble, it was generally over something she had thought about for a very long time.

  "I wasn't getting you in trouble. I was just laughing."

  "Well, it's not funny."

  "You look funny. Your face is all twisted up." Beneda mimicked Stavia, screwing up her eyes and mouth.

  "Your face would get twisted up, too, if you had to give your little brother away."

  "I don't have a little brother. Besides, everybody has to. It isn't just you."

  "Jerby's not everybody. Joshua will really miss him."

  "Joshua's nice." Beneda thought about this for half a block. "Joshua's nicer than Minsning. I wish our family had a servitor like Joshua. Joshua can find things when you lose them. He found my bracelet that Mother gave me. He found Jerby that time he was lost, too."

  Stavia remembered hysteria and weeping and Joshua calmly concentrating then going to the empty cistern and finding Jerby curled up in it asleep. "Maybe we can do something to make it up to him."

  "Maybe Mother will have another baby boy," said Myra, not looking back.

  "She's had three already," said Stavia. "She says that's enough."

  "I didn't know that," Beneda said, looking curiously at the women. "My mom only had one. And then there's me and Susan and Liza."

  "Mother had Myra first, then Habby, then Byram, then me, then Jerby," Stavia confided. "Myra's seventeen, and that means Habby and Byram are thirteen and twelve, because they're four years and five years younger than Myra, and that's how we keep track. How old is your brother? What's his name?"

  Beneda shook her head. "About the same age as your brothers, I think. His name is Chernon. He's the oldest. He went to the warriors when I was real little, but I don't think he's fifteen yet. Something happened and he doesn't visit us anymore. He goes to Aunt Erica's house. Mom doesn't talk about him."

  "Some families don't," Myra offered. "Some families just try to forget about them unless they come home."

  "I won't forget Jerby, " Stavia announced. "I won't." Despite all her good resolutions, she heard the tears in her voice and knew her eyes would spill over.

  Myra came back to them abruptly. "I didn't say you would," she said angrily. "Jerby will be home twice every year, for visits, during the carnival holidays. Nobody's going to forget him. I just said some families do, that's all. I didn't mean us." She turned and stamped back to her place ahead of them.

  "Besides, maybe he'll return when he's fifteen," comforted Beneda. "Then you can visit him, whatever house he's assigned to. You can even travel to visit him if he goes to some other town. Lots of boys do come back."

  "Some," amended Myra, turning to glare at them with a peculiar twist to her mouth. "Some do."

  They had walked all the way past the Market District to the Well of Surcease. Sylvia and Morgot each took a cup from the attendant and filled it, spilling some toward the Lady's Chapel for the Lady, then sipping at it, drawing the time out. Myra took their offering to the poor box outside the chapel door, then sat on the well coping, looking sulky. Stavia knew that Myra just wanted to get it over with. There was no necessity for stopping at the well. The water was purely symbolic, at least when drunk directly from the well like this, and offered no real consolation except a reminder that surcease would come if one didn't fight it. "Accept grief," the priestess said at services for the lost ones. "Accept grief, but do not nurse it. In time it will go." At the moment, that was hard to remember, much less understand.

  "We all have to do things we don't want to do," Morgot had said. "All of us here in Women's Country. Sometimes they are things that hurt us to do. We accept the hurt because the alternative would be worse. We have many reminders to keep us aware of that. The Council ceremonies. The play before summer carnival. The desolation's are there to remind us of pain, and the well is there to remind us that the pain will pass...."

  Stavia wasn't sure she could ever learn to find comfort in the thought, though Morgot said she would if she tried. Now she merely took off her boiled wool mittens and dabbled her fingers in the water, pretending there were fishes in the fountain. The water came from high up in the mountains where the snow lay deep almost all year long, and there were fishes up there, people said. The hatchers were putting more of them in every year. Trout fishes. And some other kind Stavia couldn't remember.

  "There could be fishes," she told Beneda.

  "There are fishes in the big marsh, too," said Beneda. "Teacher Linda told me."

  "Vain hope," sniffed Sylvia, overhearing her. "They've been telling us there are fishes in the marsh for twenty years now, but nobody's caught any. Still too contaminated."

  "It might take several more decades before they've multiplied enough to be harvestable," Morgot said. "But there are some new things living there. When I was by there last, I saw a crawfish."

  "A crawfish!"

  "I'm pretty sure it was a crawfish. I've seen them in some of the other marshes. With armor on the outside. With lots of legs and two bigger claws in front?"

  "A crawfish," Sylvia marveled. "My grandmother used to tell me a funny story about one of her grandmother line eating crawfishes."

  "The thing I saw didn't look good to eat," Morgot remarked, making a face. "Very hard on the outside, it was."

  "I think the meat's inside."

  Deliberately, Morgot rinsed the cup from the overflow spout and set it down. The fountain attendant came forward politely to take it, replacing it with a clean one. "Condolences, matron."

  "Thank you, servitor. We can always hope, can't we?"

  "Certainly one can, matron. I will pray to the Lady for your son." The man turned away and busied himself with his cups. He was very old, perhaps seventy or more, a grandsir with white hair and a little tuft of beard. He winked at Stavia, and she smiled at him. Stavia liked grandsirs. They had interesting stories to tell about garrison country and warrior sagas and how the warriors lived.

  "Best get along," said Morgot, looking at the sun. The dial above the fountain said almost noon. She picked Jerby up once more.

  "I want to walk!" he announced, struggling in her arms. "I'm not a baby."

  "Of course you aren't," she said lamely, putting him down once more. "You're a big boy going to join his warrior father."

  His thickly clad little form led them down the long hill and into the ceremonial plaza. Once there, Morgot knelt to wipe Jerby's face with a handkerchief and set the earflaps of his hat straight. She gave Myra a look, then Stavia. "Stavia, don't disgrace me," she said.

  Stavia shivered. It felt as though Morgot had slapped her, even though she knew that wasn't what her mother meant. Disgrace Mother? On an occasion like this? Of course not! Never! She wouldn't be able to stand the shame of doing something like that. She reached down inside herself and gave herself a shake, waking up that other part of her, making it come forward to take over, that other Stavia who could remember lines and get up on stage without dying of embarrassment. Real Stavia, observer Stavia, who was often embarrassed and stuttery and worried about appearing wicked or stupid, watched the whole thing as from a shocked dream state, feeling it all, but not making a single move. It was the first time she could remember purposely making her everyday self step aside, though it had happened occasionally before, in emergencies, all by itself.

  "Morgot! What an unkind thing to say to the child!" Sylvia objected. "Even now!"

  "Stavia knows what I mean," Morgot replied. "She knows I want no tantrums."

  Observer Stavia reflected gloomily that she hadn't had a tantrum for at least a year. Well, part of a year. She had been so guiltily miserable after the last one, she might never have one again, even though sometimes she desperately felt like screaming and rolling around and sayi
ng, no, she wouldn't do whatever it was they expected her to do because they were always expecting her to do something more or be something more until it didn't feel like there was enough of her left to go around. Still, it wasn't really fair of Mother to bring that up now, and she longed to say so.

  Actor Stavia, however, kept her role in mind and merely held her face still as she moved at Morgot's side. Myra was on the other side, holding one of Jerby's hands as the little boy stalked sturdily along, taking two steps to Myra's one. They stopped before the Gate of Warriors' Sons, and Morgot went forward to strike its swollen surface with the flat of her hand to make a drum-gong sound, a flat, ugly thum-hump.

  A trumpet blew somewhere beyond the gate. Morgot swept Jerby up into her arms and retreated to the center of the plaza as the gate swung open, Myra and Stavia running at either side. Then there were drums and banners and the crash of hundreds of feet hitting the stones all at the same time, blimmety blam, blam, blam. Stavia blinked but held her place. Warriors. Lines of them. High plumes on their helmets and bright woolen skirts coming almost to their knees. Bronze plates over their chests, and more glistening metal covering their legs. To either side, groups of boys in white tunics and leggings, short-hooded cloaks flapping. One tall man out in front. Tall. And big, with shoulders and arms like great, stout tree branches.

  Everything became still. Only the plumes whipping in the wind made any sound at all. Mother walked forward, Jerby's hand in hers. "Warrior," she said, so softly Stavia could barely hear her.

  "Madarn," he thundered.

  His name was Michael, and he was one of the Vice-Commanders of the Marthatown garrison. First came Commander Sandom, and under him were Jander and Thales, then came Michael, Stephen, and Patras commanding the centuries. Stavia had met Michael two or three times during carnivals. He was one of the handsomest men she had ever seen, just as Morgot was one of the most beautiful women. When Stavia's older brothers, Habby and Byram, had been five years old, each of them, too, had been brought to Michael. Beneda had said once that this meant Michael was probably Stavia's father also, but Stavia had never asked Morgot about it. It wasn't a thing one asked about. It wasn't a thing one was even supposed to think about.

  "Warrior, I bring you your son," Morgot said, pushing Jerby a step or two in front of her. Jerby stood there with his legs apart and his lower lip protruding, the way he did when he wanted to cry but wouldn't. His little coat was bright with embroidered panels down the front. His boots were worked with beads of shell and turquoise. Morgot had spent evening after evening on those boots, working away in the candlelight, with Joshua threading the beads on the needle for her and saying soft words to comfort her.

  The warrior stared down at Jerby and Jerby stared back, his mouth open. The warrior knelt down, put his finger to the flask of honey at his waist and then to Jerby's lips. "I offer you the sweetness of honor," he whispered, even his whisper penetrating the silence of the plaza like a sword, so sharp it did not hurt, even as it cut you to pieces.

  Jerby licked his lips, then grinned, and Michael laid his hand on the little boy's shoulder.

  "I give him into your keeping until his fifteenth year," Morgot went on. "Except that he shall return to his home in Women's Country during the carnival holidays, twice each year until that time."

  "A warrior chooses his way at fifteen." Michael was thundering once more. He had a voice that would bellow across a noisy battlefield.

  "In that year he shall choose," said Morgot, stepping back and leaving Jerby there all alone.

  The little boy started to turn, started to say, "Mommy," but Michael had seized him up, lifted him high, high above his head, high above his dark eyes and laughing mouth, high above his white gleaming teeth and cruelly curving lips as he cried, "Warriors! Behold my son!"

  Then there was a wild outcry from the warriors, a hullabaloo of shouts and cries, slowing at last into a steady, bottomless chant, "Telemachus, Telemachus, Telemachus," so deep it made your teeth shiver. Telemachus was the ancient one, the ideal son, who defended the honor of his father, or so Joshua said. The warriors always invoked Telemachus on occasions like this.

  Stavia scarcely noticed the uproar. One of the tunic-clad boys was watching her, a boy about thirteen years old. It was an eager, impatiently sulky look with something in it that stirred her, making her feel uncertain and uncomfortable. Somehow the boy looked familiar to her, as though she had seen him before, but she couldn't remember where. Modestly, as befitted anyone under fifteen, she dropped her eyes. When she peeked at him from beneath her brows, however, he was still looking at her.

  There was another rat-a-blam from the drums and a rattle of shouted commands. The warriors moved. Suddenly the white-tunicked boy was beside her, staring intently into her face as the plaza filled with wheeling warriors, plumes high, guidons flapping in the breeze, feet hammering on the stones.

  "What's your name?" he asked.

  "Stavia," she murmured.

  "Is Morgot your mother?"

  She nodded, wondering at this.

  "I'm her friend Sylvia's son," he said. "Chernon."

  Then someone took him by the arm, he was pulled back into the general melee, and the marching men hammered their way through the gate, drowning out Jerby's cries. Stavia could see her brother's tearful little face over Michael's shoulder. The white-clad boys boiled through the opening like surf, and the Gate of Warriors' Sons closed behind them with a ring of finality.

  Chernon had eyes the color of honey, she thought. And hair that matched, only a little darker. He had looked familiar because he looked like Beneda, except around the mouth. The mouth looked swollen, somehow. Pouty. As though someone had hurt him. His hair and eyes just like Beneda's, though. And his jaw line, too. This was the brother Beneda had mentioned! Why did he never visit his family during carnival? Why had Stavia never seen him before?

  Morgot and Sylvia had turned away from the plaza to move up the stairs that led to the top of the wall. Stavia climbed behind them to find a low place where she could look over the parapet into the parade ground outside the city. The ceremony of the Warrior's Son was continuing there.

  Michael's century came marching out through the armory doors, Jerby high on Michael's shoulder while the men cheered. As they came through, the trumpets began a long series of fanfares and flourishes, the drums thundered, the great bells near the parade ground monument began to peal. At the foot of the monument was a statue of two warriors in armor, large and small, father and son. Before this monument Michael went down on one knee, pushing Jerby down before him so that the little boy knelt also. There was a moment's silence, all the warriors pulling off their helms and bowing their heads, then the drums and trumpets and bells began once more as the procession swept away toward the barracks.

  From the tail of the procession, one of the white-clad boys looked back and raised a hand toward Stavia.

  "Who are those statues?" asked Beneda.

  "Ulysses and Telemachus," said Sylvia abstractedly.

  "Who's Ulysses?"

  "Odysseus," murmured Morgot. "It's just another name for Odysseus. Telemachus was his son."

  "Oh," said Beneda. "The same Odysseus that Iphigenia talks about in our play? The one at Troy?"

  "The same one."

  The women went down the stairs, across the plaza to the street, the way they had come. Myra was walking beside them now, her arm around her mother's waist. Both Morgot and Sylvia were weeping. Beneda ran to catch up, but Stavia dawdled, looking back over her shoulder. Chernon. She would remember the name.

  SITTING IN THE FIRE LIT ROOM with Corrig and the others, thirty-seven-year-old Stavia reflected that she might have been better off now if she had not remembered Chernon's name then. Better for everyone if she hadn't remembered him or seen him again. She caught Corrig's gaze upon her and flushed. He went on staring at her and she said, "I was remembering the day we took Jerby down. It was the first time I saw Chernon. That day." He gripped her arm for a moment, then went to
get more tea as she gazed around the room. It was a combination of common room and kitchen. Everything in it had memories attached to it. The thick rag rug before the stove was where Dawid had curled up while she read him bedtime stories. When he was home at carnival time. Before he grew up. His napkin ring was still in the cupboard. Joshua had carved it for him. Every shadowed corner of the place was full of things that said Dawid, or Habby, or Byram, or Jerby.

  Corrig came back with the teapot. He put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed, very gently, as he filled her cup.

  Beneda looked up, saying, "What did you say, Stavvy?"

  "Nothing, Beneda. I was just thanking Corrig for the tea." "Well, no more for me, thanks. I've got to be getting back to the children. Mother has an early morning meeting with the weavers' guild over the linen quota, so she needs to get to bed."