Raptor (10 page)

“You walk with too long a stride,” commented Sister Tilde, a young Alaman novice who worked in the abbey dairy. “Where were you brought up, Sister Thorn? In a swamp that you had to cross on stepping-stones?” And once, when she saw me chasing a pig that had escaped from the pen: “You run like a boy, Sister Thorn. You absolutely
lope
along.”

I stopped running and said, with some exasperation, “Then
you
go and catch the wretched beast.” And I peevishly threw a stone at it.

“You also throw just like a boy, with a wide sweep of your arm,” said Tilde. “You must have grown up among brothers, you imitate boys so well.”

She threw a stone herself, and then went chasing the pig, and I took note of how she did both those things. A girl throws with a constricted and ungainly movement of her arm, and she runs as if her legs were tied loosely together at the knees. And so did I, from then on.

On the rare occasions when we novices had some free time from the day’s many religious observances and the instruction classes and the jobs of work assigned to us—I should say, on the even rarer occasions when we were simultaneously free
and
unobserved by any of our elders—the girls sometimes played at “being city ladies.” They would variously arrange their hair, with strings and bone pins, into elaborate tortuosities that they believed, or pretended, were in perfect simulation of city-lady stylishness. With mixed soot and tallow they would darken and exaggerate their eyebrows and lashes. With crushed bilberries they would empurple their eyelids, or tinge them green with buckthorn berry juice. With raspberry juice they would paint their lips red and put a flush to their cheeks (unless Domina Aetherea had already done that with her hand).

They would stuff the upper part of their smocks or shifts with the tow from their spinning-wheel distaffs, to give themselves prominent bosoms. They would drape and swathe themselves in any handy length of cloth, pretending that they were wearing fashionable tunicae and dalmaticae of gold-threaded samite. They would put embroidery hoops around their necks, and hang nuts or berry clusters by thread loops from their ears, and twine candle wicks about their wrists and ankles, playing that they were wearing necklaces, earrings, bracelets and anklets of pearls and gems.

I closely watched those romps, and entered into them, and copied all those little artifices. Often the other girls insisted on doing the decorating of me, because, they said, I was the most beautiful of them and deserved to be made even more so. Sister Tilde, who was very plain, said wistfully, “You have those curly tresses of pale gold, Sister Thorn, and those immense and luminous gray eyes, and a mouth most tender-looking…” What I thus learned about painting and adorning myself and doing up my hair would in after years be most useful to me, though of course I later learned to do those things with more artistry and subtlety.

The other girls probably did not realize it, but I also was determinedly learning to copy their movements and mannerisms and the postures they assumed while they were making “city ladies” of themselves. For example, a woman’s deliberately slow way of bending her arm, so the biceps muscle does not bulge as it does when a man makes that movement more abruptly and tensely. The likewise deliberately slow way in which an arm is raised, and the shoulder put back at the same time, so the combined movement raises the breast (whether of flesh or padding) in a most sensuous manner. The way, when gesturing with one’s hand, of always keeping its middle and ring finger together, to give the hand its most fluid and willowy appearance. The way, when raising one’s head, of slightly tilting it at the same time, to give one’s neck and throat the most flowing line. The way of never looking at another person
quite
directly, but always just a trifle obliquely or, depending on the circumstances, looking haughtily down the nose or coyly from under the lashes…

I decided that, since I was henceforth to be female, I might as well aspire to being someday the finest of fine ladies. Even fine ladies, though, have no advantage over the lowliest slovens in some regards. As I was to learn, there are physical afflictions unknown to males but suffered by all females. Sister Tilde and I had one day been given the job of scrubbing the dorter floors, when we suddenly noticed strange noises coming from one of the cells. We crept close and peeked in. It was the cell of Sister Leoda, a novice of about our own age, and she was writhing on her pallet, whimpering and moaning, and the lower half of her shift was nearly sodden with blood.

“Gudisks Himins,” I muttered in horror. “Leoda has somehow injured herself.”

“Ne,” said Tilde, unperturbed. “It is only the menoths. The menstruum. Nonna Aetherea must have excused Leoda from her duties today.”

“But the girl is in pain! She is bleeding! We must do something to help!”

“There is nothing to do, Sister Thorn. It is a normal occurrence. All of us must endure that for a few days every month.”

I said, “But you do not. Or not that I know of. And certainly I do not.”

“You and I will, though, in time. We are of the northern peoples. Sister Leoda is from Massilia in the south. Girls of the warmer lands mature at a younger age.”

“That is
maturity?!”
I exclaimed, appalled, looking in again at Leoda, who was paying no attention to us or to anything else but her private and lonely torment.

“Maturity, ja,” said Tilde. “It is the curse we inherited from Eve. When a girl becomes a woman—of an age to conceive and bear children—she suffers her first menstruum. Then it recurs every month, unless she does get pregnant. The misery lasts for some days each time, and it goes on happening, every month of a woman’s life, until she can no longer conceive, until all her juices dry up, and she is an old woman of forty years or so.”

“Liufs Guth,” I muttered. “Then I should think every woman would wish and strive to
get
pregnant, if that brings surcease.”

“Akh, ne, say not so! Be happy that we of St. Pelagia’s have renounced men and marriage and childbirth. The menstruum may be a curse, but it is as nothing compared to the agonies of giving birth. Remember what the Lord said to Eve, ‘In sorrow shall you bring forth children.’ Ne, ne, Sister Thorn, be glad that we are to be forever virgins.”

“If you say so,” I sighed. “I will not eagerly look forward to my maturity, but I shall resign myself to it.”

Although I had to exert constant and painstaking effort in learning how to
behave
like a female, I was pleased to find that I had little trouble in coming to
feel
like one. I have already told how, before I ever knew of my physical peculiarity, I seemed to be manifesting various feminine traits—uncertainty, doubt, suspicion, even the extremely unmasculine sense of guilt.

Once I had accepted my femaleness, it appeared that all my emotions came closer to the surface of me, so to speak, and were more easily indulged, expressed and influenced. Where once, boylike, I might only have admired Christ’s manly fortitude on the cross, I could now reflect almost maternally on the pain he had suffered, and could unashamedly let tears come to my eyes. And I could be femininely mercurial in my moods. Like my sister novices, I could take joy in such frivolous things as dressing up and feeling pretty. Like them, I could just as readily get sullen at some real or fancied slight, and sulk about it.

I came to realize that, like them, I was acutely sensitive to odors, whether appealing or repellent—and later in life, when I encountered perfumes and incenses, I would find that they could profoundly affect my mood or emotion or disposition. Like my sisters, I could discern when another female was having her monthly indisposition, from the look of her face, as well as from the subtle blood-scent she gave off—and in the outside world, I would still be able to do so, even when a woman tried to conceal her condition with a veil or a cloud of perfume. Like my sisters, I somehow knew—what no male ever has learned to do very well—how to dissemble my most tempestuous or deepest feelings, when I wanted to, behind a mask of impassivity. That is to say, the mask would have been inscrutable to a male, but was transparent to any other female. Like every one of my sisters, I could tell when another was being happy or sad, forthright or guileful.

Furthermore, my attitudes had changed. I could now appreciate my feminine deftness of touch and aptitude for sympathy as much as I had formerly gloried in my masculine strength and coolheadedness. I could take as much pride in sewing a fine seam, or comforting a homesick younger sister, as I formerly had done when I singlehandedly slew that wild glutton. Where before I had seen things in terms of their substance and function, I now looked at things more keenly, noticing in them gradations of palpability, pattern, color, texture, even sounds. Where before a tree had been to me a solid object to be climbed, I now could discern its intricacies—rough bark below, supple and tender extremities, no two leaves of exactly the same shape or the same green, and the whole tree forever making
some
sound, from the merest whisper to the fiercest thrashing complaint. When the nuns of St. Pelagia’s chanted a canticle, any dullard male could have remarked that their voices were infinitely more dulcet than those of St. Damian’s monks—but my own hearing was now acute enough to detect the gentleness in Sister Ursula’s voice even when she was scolding, and to detect the rancor in Domina Aetherea’s even when she spoke most unctuously.

Perhaps it is because women, through all the generations since Eve, have mainly done close and delicate work that their girl-children by now are born with such refined senses and abilities. Or maybe it is the other way about: their inborn subtle talents make them excel at work of minute precision. I do not know. But I was then—and still am—very happy that I, like other females, had been endowed with those attributes of sensitiveness and discernment.

However, not then—and not since—did I ever lose or outgrow or slough off any of the less refined but still valuable faculties and proficiencies inherent in the male half of my nature. Because the independent boy-child part of me found the atmosphere inside St. Pelagia’s to be so oppressive and inhibiting, I contrived to spend as much time as possible outdoors, volunteering to take on those chores that the nuns and novices most disliked: the care of the cattle and swine, for instance.

I had another reason, a more personal and even more boyish reason, for spending time in the outbuildings and barnyard. For that same secret reason, I managed fairly frequently, after dark, to steal away from the nunnery grounds entirely. I was able to do that simply because it was inconceivable to our elders that a girl
would
play truant, especially in the dark, for all the girls and women considered the night the time when demons were oftenest abroad. Nevertheless, I always took the precaution of waiting until after Domina Aetherea had made her head count of all the nuns and novices retiring to their cells at nightfall, before I slipped out of my own cell and out of the building and out of the grounds.

What took me outdoors whenever I could go there—besides my getting away from the convent’s dour discipline, and besides my desire for an occasional all-over bath in the sparkling water of the cascades—was the need to care for and continue the training of my juika-bloth.

Here at St. Pelagia’s, as soon as I could, I had established myself as “that girl who does most of the dirty work outdoors.” Then, at my earliest opportunity, I sneaked out one night, ran all the way across the Balsan Hrinkhen to St. Damian’s, climbed unobserved into the pigeon loft, retrieved my bird and ran back to the convent. Part of the way, the juika-bloth seemed to enjoy being carried on my shoulder, jouncing lightly to my stride. The rest of the way, it took wing and flew just ahead of me, as if encouraging me in my hard-breathing haste. Back at the convent barnyard, I installed the bird in the cows’ hayloft, in a wicker cage I had woven myself, and made it feel at home by giving it a hearty meal of live mice I had trapped and saved for the occasion.

Thereafter, I managed to keep the presence of the juika-bloth secret from everyone else at St. Pelagia’s, and also managed to keep it adequately fed and watered, and—usually at night—I let it exercise by flying free. Now and then a milk snake would come stealthily slithering about the cows’ byre in hope of drinking a meal from an unguarded milk pail. I would catch it and keep it until I had a chance to rehearse my eagle in swooping down on that lure at my command of “Sláit!” As soon as I was sure that the juika-bloth was still obedient, and had forgotten nothing of what I had taught it, I commenced to teach it a new accomplishment that I had devised.

But it was at about this time that, on a balmy autumn day, I was startled to be suddenly and intimately caressed by a small hand, and to hear a sweet voice saying, “Oo-ooh…” That was when Sister Deidamia came into my life.

I have told of my first encounter with Deidamia at St. Pelagia’s, and of my last. There were many in between, during which, as I have said, we taught one another numerous things. Since Deidamia never ceased to fret about her not being “a complete and developed woman”—because the “little nub” between her legs spurted no juice, as mine did—I was continually trying to console her, and even tried to help her remedy that lack that bothered her so.

I said guardedly, “I once overheard a
man…
talking of his own, er, thing… and he said
its
growth could be much enhanced, although his was already quite sizable.”

“Say you so?” Deidamia exclaimed hopefully. “Do you suppose my thing could similarly benefit? How did this man say it could be done?”

“Well… in his case… by a female’s taking it in her mouth from time to time… and, uh, massaging it vigorously with her lips and tongue.”

“That would make it grow?”

“So he said.”

“Did he say whether it actually
did?”

“I am sorry, big sister, but I overheard no more.” I was being most circumspect in the telling, so as not to risk Deidamia’s suspecting that I had not
heard
of that but had
done
that. I was sure it would disgust her, as the recollection of it had ever since disgusted me.