The Gate to Women's Country (31 page)

“Where might this person want to go?”

“South. Almost to the sheep camp you mentioned to me before. There should be no trouble taking him there. The roads that far should be quite safe. It would be very helpful to me.”

Septemius didn't say anything.

Tonia, who had overheard this with a pang of apprehension, came in from the neighboring room. “Do you believe in fortune-telling?” she asked Stavia.

Stavia looked up abstractedly. “Fortune-telling?”

“Kostia and I are very good at it. We'd like to lay the cards for you, Stavia. Would you mind?”

Stavia gave Septemius a suspicious look.

“Let them,” he sighed. “They are good at it, and it won't hurt anything.”

Bonelessly, Tonia sank to the rug before the stove, pulling over the bench that stood beside it. The deck was in
her right hand, and she passed it to Kostia who shuffled the cards before passing them on to Stavia. “Shuffle,” she said. “Any way you like.”

Almost angrily, Stavia shuffled the deck, knocking it into alignment with a sharp tap. “So?”

“Cut it.”

She split the deck into two.

“Now choose which half is your future, Stavia.”

Still angrily, she tapped the left-hand stack. Tonia picked it up, turning it in her hands.

“How old were you when your trouble began?”

“What trouble?!” Stavia demanded, now really angry.

“Oh shhh,” urged Septemius. “Let us have no hypocrisy. You are in some difficulty, Stavia, or you would not be asking our help. How old were you when it began?”

“Ten,” she said sulkily. “I was ten.”

Tonia counted cards onto the bench, turning the tenth one faceup. A black-cloaked woman spread her cape across the chill stars on a field of snow. “The Winter Queen,” she said. “Lady of Darkness. Bringer of cold. Nothing will grow begun under this sign, Stavia. How old were you when he sent you away?”

“How did you know he sent me away?”

“We know things. How old?”

“Thirteen.”

Tonia counted three more cards, turning the third one faceup. A man in motley leaned against a tree, his head turned to one side. On the back of his head, he wore a mask so that a face looked in each direction. One side of the tree was alight with blossoms. On the other, snow covered the branches. “The Spring Magician,” she said. “The two-faced one. Who says yes and means no, or t'other way round. How old are you now, Stavia?”

“Twenty-two.”

Nine more cards. And the one turned faceup was of a warrior standing over his recumbent foe, leaning on the sword that had killed him. “The Autumn Warrior,” Kostia said. “Death, Stavia. Not for you, though. For someone else.”

“What are you telling me?” she demanded.

It was Septemius who answered. “This journey will not profit you, Stavia. It will be full of lies or misdirection. And it may be full of death, as well.”

“But not mine?”

“Not necessarily. Someone's.”

“You're refusing to do me the favor I've asked?”

He shook his head, sighing. “No. Why should I? What business is it of mine? Are we family that I should thrust unwanted advice upon you? Are we friends? I am only an itinerant performer, an oldish sort of man, with an ancient father and two weird nieces, four donkeys, and five dancing dogs. If I am reluctant, it
is
only out of memory of my sister. She, also, heard the blandishments of a warrior….”

“She went with him,” said Kostia.

“She got pregnant with us,” said Tonia.

“He was typical of his class. He wanted sons. And then, when he saw we were girls, he left her,” said Kostia.

“And she died,” said Septemius. “I always thought it was from a broken heart, though the midwife said not.”

“Unlikely,” Stavia commented, dryly. “Broken hearts are more common in romances than in life.” She had told herself this for several years and had not yet had any evidence to the contrary.

“And yet you are listening to the blandishments of a warrior….”

“Not exactly,” she said, trying for the hundredth time to explain herself to herself. “And not blandishments. I made someone unhappy, without meaning to. Perhaps I tried to buy his affection by doing something I knew was wrong. Even if I was not wholly responsible for his un-happiness, I still contributed to his misery. It's my responsibility. I must do whatever I can to set it right. Perhaps to give him something else in place of what I cannot give him. Even though it may cost me a great deal.”

Septemius said nothing more, although he shook his head at intervals all through the evening and spent the night turning restlessly upon his bed.

S
TAVIA SLEPT SOUNDLY
, though not so soundly she did not hear her door open in the night and the voice that spoke her name.

“What is it?” she asked him, not yet quite awake.

“A dream I had,” Corrig said, sounding disturbed. “A dream I had, Stavia.”

“Is it part of normal servitor's behavior, Corrig, to walk
about the house involving the women of it in his dreams?”

“It was about you. No, it was partly about you.”

“Ah.”

“Don't do it. Whatever it is you plan, don't do it. There's trouble there. Danger and pain. I've seen it.”

“You sound like Kostia and Tonia, Corrig! Do you see the Winter Queen in my future? Or the Spring Magician or the Autumn Warrior?”

“I see pain.”

“Again, I ask, is this normal servitor behavior?” She was awake enough now to be slightly angry, though she was more interested than annoyed.

“It is… it is servitor behavior to see things, Stavia. I have seen, and I've told you. Don't do it.” He turned and left the room.

She lay back on her pillow, thinking she might have dreamed the exchange. She didn't believe him, any more than she had believed the twins. Perhaps it was better not to believe.

“Perhaps it's better not, if all you see is blood and splintered bone,” she quoted to herself, her mind running on among the lines of the old play.

How strange of him to have come to her in that way. Evidently he shared Joshua's strange gift. “It is servitor behavior to see things.” To see what things, in what way? Was he claiming some extrasensory ability? Clairvoyance, perhaps?

She snorted. It was a subject for fairy tales. Still, he had sounded very sure.

Suddenly she remembered the trip made years ago with Morgot and Joshua. Joshua, too, had been very sure. Afterward, Stavia had wondered who he was, what he was.

Now she wondered about Corrig, again taking a line from the play to ask herself, “But if they do not hear him when he speaks… then who is he?”

F
ROM THE DEEP-WELL, WHICH WAS AT THE BEND OF
the valley, Thirdwife Susannah Brome could look both south, to the slope where Elder Jepson had established his family manor, and northeast, to the grassy hill where Elder Brome's wife-houses surrounded the Father-house in a similar clutter of sun-faded wood. Susannah's own house was there, a small, peak-roofed cottage half hidden behind the hay barn. The dozen or so other elders were established farther south or over the passes in the adjacent valleys of the Holyland, and except in times when All Father punished his sons with desperate drought, their womenfolk did not frequent the deep-well. The shallower wells of the upper valley were quite sufficient at most times, and the bachelors made do with water from the intermittent spring behind their quarters down at the mouth of the valley, toward the north. Thus there was little excuse for Susannah to linger at the deep-well, since the best she might hope for would be a quick word exchanged with one of Elder Jepson's wives, and them so terrified of him they hardly dared say boo.

“Mama?” whispered Chastity, tugging at Susannah's sleeve. “Oughtn't we be getting back? Papa'll be angry with us if we're not diligent.”

“I thought we might see Charity or Hope,” Susannah said, honestly enough. “Charity wasn't feeling well last time I saw her, and I wanted to inquire after her health.” Which was a perfectly sound reason for lingering, having no lack of diligence connected with it. Womenfolk were expected to take care of one another since no man would
lower himself to do it, and it was well recognized that some women, Susannah among them, had more nursing skills than others.

“Besides,” Susannah went on, “you know Papa pays very little attention to us when we're unclean.”

“He still watches,” the girl said, her voice shaking a little. “He might not say anything today, but he will later.”

Poor chick, Susannah thought, reaching out to pat her daughter's face after a quick look to see no one was watching this unseemly expression of affection. Chastity took everything so hard, so much to heart, as though any amount of diligence or duty could prevent Father bellowing at her if he felt like it.

“We'll get ourselves back, then,” she said, raising the yoke and settling it onto her shoulder pads. Chastity raised her own yoke and buckets, only slightly smaller. At thirteen, she was just come to her uncleanliness and not yet to her full growth. No use praying to All Father to let her have a year or two yet before setting her to breed. Someone would be after Chastity before fall, even though it was hard on the very young ones, and there was just no excuse for it but black lechery, no matter what the elders said about it. She remembered her own initiation at fourteen, and no one could convince her that all that puffing and grunting had been divine duty. She'd never seen a man doing his duty so outlandish pleased with himself and so eager to do it all over again.

Susannah led the way back up the hill, taking each turn of the path in one surge of effort, then resting before going on to the next. While it was meritorious of her to have had three sons before spawning a girl, she sometimes wished for the help another older daughter or two might have given. Preferably plain ones, with crooked teeth and crossed eyes, like Charity's daughter Perseverance. Maybe they'd let Perseverance stay home and be a help to her mother until they both died of old age. At least none of the elders had made an offer for her yet.

Chastity, though—well, Chastity Brome wouldn't last long. That pale yellow hair and that sweet skin, like a baby's bottom, drew men's eyes like honey drew ants. If Elder Jepson didn't make her his sixth, then Elder Demoin, over in the next valley, would make her his
fourth. And meantime all the boys down in the bachelor's house would keep on hiding behind the bushes to have a look at her, every time she went down for water.

The worst thing about it, if Chastity went to Elder Jepson, likely she'd be a widow before she got much older. He was only seventy, but he was a tottery seventy. If Chastity had a baby by the time he died or soon after, they'd send her back to Susannah to live out her life, and there were worse things than that. If she hadn't been pregnant or had miscarried, though, they'd say there hadn't been any true marriage and give her to some boy just starting out who'd work her to death before she was thirty. None of the old men would take her after another had had her. It was like the older a man was, the surer he had to be that a woman couldn't compare him to anybody else.

“There's Elder Jepson,” Chastity whispered from behind Susannah on the trail. “Just coming out of Papa's house.”

“Take no notice,” Susannah murmured. “Remember we're unclean and just keep on right into our own place.” She trudged up the last few feet of the trail to the path which led to her own wife-house, its tiny, sun-grayed porch facing away from Papa Brome's house with Chastity's faded red kerchief hanging on the latch to show there was a menstruating woman in the place. They set the buckets on the splintery floor of the porch, wiped their feet on the braided rag mat, then took the buckets into the kitchen to fill the reservoir. Early that morning, Susannah had made the daily extra trip needed to bring water to Papa's house. First trip in the morning was always to Papa's house for Papa and the little boys who studied there.

A thready wail greeted them as they poured the last bucket into the wooden tank, turning into a full-fledged howl as Baby heard their voices.

“Faith?” Susannah called, then again. At her third call, an answering voice came from outside.

“Mama. Sorry. I had to go to the privy, and I thought Baby was asleep.” The eight-year-old who came in had obviously been crying and her bodice was soaked and smelly.

“Honey, love. What
is
it?”

“Elder Jepson told me I was a slovenly slut.”

“You're not. Of course you're not. Why would he say such a thing?”

“Baby threw up all over me. I wouldn't have gone out where he could see me if I'd known he was there, but I didn't.”

“Shh, now. Never mind. You didn't talk back, did you?”

The little girl only wept, shaking her head.

“Chastity, you help her clean herself up. I'll see to Baby.” She took off her headscarf, scratched her bald scalp where the hair was beginning to sprout in an itchy silver brush after the last shaving, then moved into the room where Baby slept.