Thendara House

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “Margali, this is Irmelin—she is our housekeeper this half-year; we take turns helping her in the kitchen, but there are enough of us living here that no one needs to do kitchen duty more than once in a tenday. Irmelin, this is our new sister, Margali n’ha—what was it, Margali?”

  “Ysabet,” Magda said.

  “I saw you last night,” Irmelin said. “You came in with Jaelle—are you her lover?”

  Mother Lauria had asked her this too. Reminding herself not to be angry—she was in another world now—she shook her head. “No—her oath-daughter, no more.”

  “Really?” Irmelin asked, obviously skeptical, but she only looked at the bread dough. “It won’t have risen enough to knead for another hour—shall I help you show her around the house?”

  “Mother Lauria told me to do it—you can stay in the kitchen and keep warm,” Doria laughed. “We all know that is why you volunteered to keep house this term, so you could sit by the fire like a cat.” Irmelin only chuckled, and Doria added, “Do you need anything from the greenhouse for supper, fresh vegetables, anything? Margali has no duties yet, she can help me fetch it.”

  “You might ask if there are any melons ripe,” Irmelin said. “I think we are all tired of stewed fruit and want something fresh.” Irmelin yawned and looked drowsily at the bread dough again, and Doria went out, fanning herself vigorously with her apron, pulling Magda after her.

  “Phew, I hate the kitchen on baking days, it’s too hot to breathe! But Irmelin makes good bread—it’s surprising how many women can’t make bread that’s fit to eat. Remind me to tell you sometime about the time when Jaelle took her turn as housekeeper, and Gwennis and Rafaella threatened to dump her out naked in the next blizzard if she didn’t get someone else to make the bread—” Doria chattered on, still fanning herself. It was certainly not too hot in the drafty corridor between kitchen and the long dining room where she had sat last night, a stranger, hiding in Jaelle’s shadow. And now it was her home for half a year, at least. There were long tables which would, Magda supposed, seat forty or fifty women, piled at one end, stacks of plates and bowls, covered with towels, awaiting the evening. Behind the dining hall was a greenhouse—the inevitable feature of most homes in Thendara—with solar collectors, and a woman wearing a huge overall wrap, kneeling in the dirt and patting soil around the roots of some plant Magda did not recognize. She was a big woman, with curly, almost frizzy straw-colored hair, her fingers grubby with soil.

  “Rezi, this is Margali n’ha Ysabet, Jaelle’s oath-daughter. Irmelin asked me if there was any fresh fruit for tonight.”

  “Not tonight or tomorrow,” said Rezi, “but perhaps after that; I have a few berries for Byrna—”

  “Why should Byrna have them when there are not enough for us all?” demanded Doria, and Rezi chuckled. Her accent was coarse and country; she looked like one of the peasant women Magda had seen in the Kilghard hills, working in field or byre.

  “Marisela ordered it; when you’re pregnant you’ll get the first berries too,” Rezi said, laughing.

  Doria giggled and said, “I’ll make do with stewed fruit!”

  They went on through the greenhouse, into the stable where half a dozen horses were kept with several empty stalls; a barn behind, clean and whitewashed with a pleasant smell of hay, held about half a dozen milk animals, and a small dairy where, Doria informed her, they made all their own butter and cheese. Shining wooden molds, well-scrubbed, hung on the wall, but again, the place was deserted. A winter garden, with scattered straw banking some buried root vegetables, looked bleak and chilly. Magda was shivering; Doria said, surprised, “Are you cold?” She herself had not even bothered to pull her shawl about her shoulders. “I thought you were from Caer Donn; it doesn’t seem cold at all, not to me. But we can go inside,” she agreed, and led the way through a huge room which she called the armory—there were weapons hanging on the walls—but which looked to Magda more like a gymnasium, with mats on the floors and a sign reading, in very evenly printed casta: Leave your shoes neatly at the side; someone could fall over them. There was a small changing room at the side, with towels and odd garments hanging on hooks, which reminded Magda of the Recreation Building in Unmarried Women’s Headquarters. Behind it was a larger room filled, to Magda’s amazement, with steam, and hidden in the steam, a pool of apparently hot water. She had heard that there were many private houses in Thendara located over hot springs, but this was the first time she had seen it. Another sign read Please be courteous to other women; wash your feet before entering pool.

  “This was built only four or five years ago,” said Doria. “One of our rich patrons had it built in the house; before that, we had only the tubs on the dormitory floors! It’s very good after unarmed-combat lessons, to soak out the bruises! Rafi and Camilla are wonderful teachers, but they are rough on anyone they suspect of slacking! I’ve had lessons since I was eight years old, but Rafi is my oath-mother and my foster-mother, and she doesn’t like to teach me. Come, let’s go upstairs,” she added, and they went along another corridor to the stairs. “Here is the nursery at the top of the landing—there is no one in it now except Felicia’s little boy, and he will leave us in another moon; no male child over five may live in the Guild House. But Byrna will have a baby in another month,” she said, opening the door to the room, where a small boy was playing with some toy horses on a rug before the fire, and a young woman, sewing on something, sat in an armchair.

  “How are you today, Byrna? This is Margali n’ha Ysabet, she is new—”

  “I saw her last night at supper,” Byrna said, while Magda wondered if every woman in the house had noticed her. She rose restlessly, pacing the room. “I’m tired of dragging around like this, but Mansela said it would be at least another tenday, perhaps a whole moon. Where is Jaelle? I had hardly a minute to speak with her last night!”

  Magda realized again how popular her friend must be. “She is working in the Terran Trade City.”

  Byrna made a face. “Among the Terranan? I thought that was against the Guild House laws!” The tone of her voice made Magda realize how wise she had been to conceal her identity. She knew in general terms of the prejudice against Terrans but had never encountered it at close range before. Byrna asked, “What is your House, sister?” and Magda replied, “This one, I suppose—I am here for half a year training—

  “Well, I hope you will be happy here,” Byrna said. “I’ll try to help make you welcome when this is over—” she patted her bulging belly.

  Doria jeered. “Maybe next Midsummer you’ll sleep alone!”

  “Damn right,” said Byrna, and Magda mentally filed that away with what Mother Lauria had told her about contraceptives. “Where is she going to sleep, Doria? In your room?”

  Doria giggled. “There are five of us in there already. Mother Lauria said she’s to have Sherna’s room while Shema’s in Nevarsin.” She led Magda along the hallway, pushing open the door of a room with half a dozen beds. She said “We got permission this year for all of us to share—Mother Millea said we could all room together if we promised to be quiet so others could have their sleep. We have a lot of fun. Here are the baths—” she pushed a door, showing a room with tubs and sinks, “and here is where you put your laundry, and here is the sewing room, if anything needs mending and you can’t do it yourself. And this is Sherna’s room—yours now; she and Gwennis shared it for two years, then Gwennis moved in with her friend—” She gave the word the inflection which made it also mean lover. Well, that must be commonplace enough, Irmelin had asked it about her, casually, and gone on to make a comment about the bread dough!

  Doria pointed to a bundle on the bed. “Mother Lauria arranged with the sewing room to find you some spare clothes— nightgowns, undertunics, and a set of work clothes if you have to work in the garden or stable. I think most of them were Byrna’s—she is so pregnant now that she can’t wear any of her clothes, but by the time she has her baby and needs them back, you’ll have made your own.” />
  Well, thought Magda, looking at the clothes on the bed, they were sparing no pains to make her feel welcome; they had even included a comb and hairbrush, and some extra wool socks, as well as a warm fleecy thing she presumed was a bathrobe; it was fur-lined and looked luxurious. The room was simply furnished with a narrow bed, a small carved-wood chest, and a low bench with a bootjack.

  Doria stood watching her. “You know that you and I are to take training together? But you are so much older than I—how did you come to the Amazons?”

  Magda told as much of the truth as she could. She said “A kinsman of mine was held to ransom by the bandit Rumal di Scarp; there was no one but I to ransom him, so I went alone, and wore Amazon dress to protect myself on the road; when I met with Jaelle’s band on the road I was discovered and forced to take the oath.‘’

  Dona’s eyes widened. “But I heard—was that you? It is like a romance! But I heard that Jaelle’s oath-daughter had been sent to Neskaya! Camilla told us, when she came back after escorting Sherna and Devra to Nevarsin, and bringing Maruca and Viviana home—that must be why Irmelin thought you were Jaelle’s lover, that you had come here on purpose to be with Jaelle! But Jaelle is working now in the Terran Zone, isn’t she?”

  Magda decided she had answered enough questions. “How did you come to the Amazons so young, Doria?”

  “I was fostered here,” Doria answered. “Rafaella’s sister is my mother—you know Rafaella, don’t you? Jaelle’s partner—”

  “I have not yet met her; but Jaelle has told me about her.”

  “Rafaella is a kinswoman of Jaelle’s foster-mother Kindra. Rafi bore three children, but they were all boys The third time, she and her sister were pregnant at the same time—and the father of Rafi’s child was my father, you see? So when Rafi had another boy, my mother wanted a son, so they traded the children for fosterage; Rafaella’s baby was brought up as my mother’s son and my father’s—which of course he is—and Rafaella took me, when I was not three days old, and nursed me and everything, here in the Guild House. I am really Doria n’ha Graciela, but I call myself Doria n’ha Rafaella, because Rafi is the only mother I ever really knew.”

  Magda was furiously making mental notes. She knew that sisters frequently shared a lover or even a husband, and that fosterage was common, but this arrangement still seemed bizarre to her.

  “But I am standing here chattering instead of telling you what you ought to know. Some years we each look after our own rooms, but this year in House meeting we chose to have two women from our corridor sweep the floors every day and mop them every tenday. You must keep your boots and sandals in your chest, it is hard on the sweepers to have to sweep around and over them, so anything lying on the floor, they will pick up and throw in a big barrel in the hall and you will have to hunt for them. Do you play the harp or the ryll or the lute? Too bad; Rafi has been wishing for another musician in the house. Byrna sings well, but now she is short of breath all the time—I thought when I grew up to have no ear for music that Rafi would disown me! She has—” Doria broke off as a bell in the lower part of the house began to ring.

  “Oh, merciful Goddess!”

  “What is that, Doria? Not the dinner-bell already?”

  “No” whispered Doria, “That bell is rung only when some woman comes to take refuge with us; sometimes it does not ring twice in a year, and now we have two newcomers in one day? Come, we must go down at once!”

  She pulled Magda hastily toward the stairs and they ran down together. Magda, hurrying behind her, felt a curious little prickle which she had come to know as premonition; this is something very important to me… but dismissed it, as anxiety born of Doria’s excitement, and the stress of so many new things happening to her. Irmelin stood in the hallway, with Mother Lauria, and between them a frail-looking woman, bundled in heavy shawls and cumbered with heavy skirts. She stood swaying, clutching at the railing as if she were about to faint.

  Mother Lauria looked about the women gathering quickly in the hall; many of the women Magda had seen last night at dinner, but she did not know their names. Then she turned to the fainting newcomer. “What do you ask here?” Somehow, Magda felt, the words had the force of ritual. “Have you come to seek refuge?‘’

  The woman whispered faintly “Yes.”

  “Do you ask only shelter, my sister? Or is your will to take the oath of a Renunciate?”

  “The oath—” the woman whispered. She swayed, and Mother Lauria gestured to her to sit down.

  “You are ill; you need answer no questions at present, my sister.” She looked around at the women in the hallway, and her glance singled out Magda and Doria where they stood at the foot of the stairs.

  “You two are new-come among us; you three will be together in training, should this woman take oath, so I choose you as her oath-sisters, and—” She looked around, evidently searching for someone. At last she beckoned.

  “Camilla n’ha Kyria,” she said, and Magda saw, with a curious sense of inevitability, the tall, thin emmasca who had witnessed her oath to Jaelle. “Camilla, you three take her away, cut her hair, make her ready to take the oath if she is able.”

  Camilla came and put her arm around the strange woman, supporting the frail, swaying body. “Come with me, sister,” she said, “Here, lean on me—” she spoke in the impersonal inflection, but her voice was kind. She suddenly saw Magda, and her face lighted. “Margali! Oath-sister, is it you? I thought you had gone to Neskaya! You must tell me all about it,” she said, “but later; for now we must help this woman. Here—” she gestured, “put your arm under hers; she cannot walk—”

  Magda put her arm around the apparently fainting woman, but the woman flinched and cried out, in a weak voice, drawing away from the touch. Camilla led her into a little room near Mother Lauria’s office, and lowered her into a soft chair.

  “Have you been ill-used?” she asked, and took away the shawl, then cried out in dismay.

  The woman’s dress—expensively cut, of richly dyed woolen cloth trimmed in fur—was cut to ribbons, and the blood had soaked through, turning the cloth to clotted black through which crimson still oozed.

  Camilla whispered, “Avarra protect us! Who has done this to you?” But she did not wait for an answer. “Doria, run to the kitchen, bring wine and hot water and fresh towels! Then see if Marisela is in the house, or if she has gone out into the city to deliver a child somewhere. Margali, come here, help me get these things off her!”

  Magda came, helping Camilla get off the cut and slashed tunic, gown, underlinen; they were all finely cut and embroidered with copper threads; she wore an expensive copper-filigree butterfly clasp in her fair hair. Magda stood by, helping and holding things, as Camilla bared the woman to the waist, sponged the dreadful cuts; what could possibly have inflicted them? The woman endured their ministrations without crying out, though they must have been hurting terribly; when they had done, Camilla put a light shift on her, tying the drawstrings loosely around her neck, and covered her with a warm robe. Doria came back, troubled, reporting that Marisela was not in the house.

  “Then find Mother Millea,” Camilla ordered, “and Domna Fiona. She is a judge in the City Court, and we must make a sworn statement about this woman’s condition, so that we may legally give her shelter. She is not strong enough to take the oath; we must put her to bed, and have her nursed—

  The woman struggled upright. “No,” she whispered, “I want to take the oath—to be here by right, not by charity—”

  Magda whispered, more to herself than to anyone else, “But what has happened to her! What could have inflicted such wounds—‘

  Camilla’s face was like stone. “She has been beaten like an animal,” the emmasca said. “I have scars much like those. Child—” she bent over the woman lying in the chair, “I know what it is to be ill-used. Margali—you will find scissors in the drawer of the table.” And as Magda put them into her hand, Camilla asked, “What is your name?”

  “Keitha�
��” the word was only a whisper.

  “Keitha, the laws require that you must show your intent by cutting a single lock of your hair; if you have the strength to do this, I will do the rest for you.”

  “Give me—the scissors.” She sounded resolute, but her fingers hardly had strength to grasp them. She struggled to get them into her hands. She grabbed a lock of her hair, which had been arranged in two braids, and fumbled to cut it; struggled hard with the scissors, but had not the strength to cut through the braid. She gestured, whispering “Please—”

  At the gesture Camilla unraveled the braid, and Keitha snipped fiercely, chopping off two ragged handfuls of hair. “There!” she said wildly, tears starting from her eyes. “Now—let me take the oath—”

  Camilla held a cup of wine to her lips. “As soon as you are strong enough, sister.”

  “No! Now …” Keitha insisted; then her hands released the scissors, which slithered softly to the floor, and she fell back, unconscious, into Camilla’s arms.

  Mother Lauria said quietly, “Take her upstairs,” and Magda, following Camilla’s soft command, helped Camilla to carry the unconscious woman up the stairway and into an empty room.

  * * *

  CHAPTER FOUR

  « ^ »

  The waterhole lay dark, oozing black mud and darker shadows; but behind the rocks, the crimson sun was rising. She was old enough to know what was happening on the other side of the fire, she was twelve years old, and in Shainsa a girl of twelve was old enough to be chained, old enough to be near at hand in the birthing rooms. But these women with unchained hands, these Amazons, they had sent her away as if she was only a child herself. Beyond the fire, in the growing sunrise, she could hear her mother’s voice, feel the pain thrusting through her own body like knives, see the carrion birds circling lower and lower as the sun rose; and now the sunlight was like the blood poured out on the sands, like the stabbing feel of knives and her mother’s anguish, pouring through her body and her mind…