Thendara House

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “Doria would never have struck a defenseless man who had surrendered his weapon,” Rafaella began angrily, but Mother Lauria motioned her to quiet.

  “What Doria would have done is not at issue. But you have raised a fair question; if Margali has learned nothing among us in her time here—”

  “But,” said Magda, pulling away from Jaelle’s restraining hands, “I have learned—truly! I know what I did was wrong—”

  “Margali,” said Mother Lauria, “you will be silent until you are spoken to.”

  Magda sank back, biting her lip, and Mother Lauria continued, “Margali’s oath has been formally called into question; and therefore three of you, other than her oath-mother, must speak for her; and they must be from those who have been oath-bound for at least five years.”

  Magda felt curious calm settling over her. At least, this was the end. She had done her best; but mentally she was already returning the borrowed clothing to the sewing room, gathering her few possessions, and walking out into the ice-glazed streets of Thendara, wholly alone for the first time in her life. I have done the best I can. But Cholayna will have her triumph; she refused to accept my resignation. Did she know I would fail?

  But Camilla said angrily, “If you are going to call Margali’s Oath into question, question mine too! I was angry, yes, furious enough to beat her senseless, but what she did was my fault, and not her own; I put her beside me to defend the House, because I knew she was a skilled fighter—and I thought, in the haste of the moment, that this was enough. I had forgotten that her skill with a knife outstripped her training; I forgot that, facing men for the first time in many moons, she might well go berserk with all the repressed rage we have been systematically raking up inside her mind in the training sessions.”

  She turned to Rafaella and said seriously, “Few of us come here with any knowledge of fighting; we learn it here, only AFTER we have learned to discipline our emotions. If I had had to face men in the middle of my own training here—I who had lived among men as a mercenary soldier—I would have killed them all, I think. I don’t know where Margali came by her skill at fighting, but she has much to teach us as well as to learn from us—you yourself have seen that, Rafi, this very day you had her helping you to teach unarmed combat! She has many skills, though she is not yet fit to use them anywhere outside our training hall. I forgot how she had come to us and how she had behaved outside; it is my business to know such things, and when I had gotten over being angry with her, I realized it was my fault and not hers, and I will take full personal responsibility—” she used the formal phrase—“for the mistake which exposed her weakness.”

  She came and stood beside Magda; then dropped down behind her on the floor, and Magda saw the stern pride in her face. At that moment, any resentment she had ever felt against the old emmasca for her harshness, her threatened beatings, dissolved, never to return. The word “personal responsibility” was the one used in the most serious matters of honor, and Camilla had engaged hers in this matter.

  She is my oath-sister, and she takes that sisterhood seriously— more seriously than I do myself! Madga said spontaneously, “Camilla, no! My hand struck the blow of disgrace! I should have known better, I take responsibility for it—”

  “You will be silent, Margali,” Mother Lauria said harshly, “I will not say this again. One more word without leave, and I will send you from the room to await the decision elsewhere! One has spoken. Two more are required.”

  Marisela said in her sweet reedy voice, “I will speak for Margali. Have you not heard from this how much Margali has learned? She does not shirk responsibility, even when another has offered to assume it for her—even if she spoke out of turn, her intentions were good. Margali cannot be held to blame that she failed a test which should never have been laid on her. Yet we have, all of us, silently been holding her to blame for a tenday and more—and which of us could withstand so much disapproval from her sisters for so long, in the midst of her housebound time and thrust, evening after evening, into the training sessions and all their weight of distress—and still come down among us, composed and quiet, and ready to shoulder all blame?”

  She looked earnestly round the circle. “Sisters, we have all been where Margali is now—feeling like fumbling children, all our old certainties lost, and with nothing yet to put in their place. Look at her—she sits there not knowing whether we will throw her into the street to fend for herself, or make her way alone back wherever she came from—yet this is the woman who, laboring under all we have laid on her in these last days, still found it in her heart to go, unasked, to comfort Byrna. None of us here—not one, not even those of us who have borne children and had to give them up—could find a moment for our sister, because she is from another House. I speak for Margali, sisters; this woman is truly one of us and I, for one, do not challenge her oath.”

  There was a long silence. At last Mother Lauria said in that curiously ritual way, “Two have spoken, but a third is wanted.”

  And the silence was prolonged, until Magda felt her legs gather under her to take her from the room as sentence was pronounced. Whether or not they threw her out, she would not stay under this roof to Midsummer if all of them felt her dishonored.

  Rafaella stirred, and Magda braced herself to listen to Rafaella’s gloating, her accusations. Instead Rafaella said, slowly, “In simple justice—I must speak for her myself.”

  For a moment Magda did not understand the words, as if the words had been in the alien language of the song Rafaella had sung.

  “She fought to defend us; not wisely, perhaps, but without hesitation; she took up the sword knowing she could have died here on our doorstep, and who will fight for an oath she does not, in fact, believe and honor? She fought, perhaps, with hatred when she should have fought with discipline, but I do not think she is incapable of learning discipline, in time. More than this, I know that Byrna would have spoken for Margali if she were able to be here—I call Marisela to witness for that. Margali has given generously to all of us, including my daughter, in training hall—in a time when she needs all her strength for her own learning. Not many of us could have done this during our own training time—I know I could not.”

  “Nor I,” said Camilla roughly.

  “It is usually not required of us. We have required of Margali more than most of us have to give; perhaps instead of blaming her because she has not done perfectly, we should give her credit that she has not done worse under such heavy demands. And more than this. She has made me see something to which I have been blind—” Rafaella stared at the floor, her slender musician’s hands,twisting restlessly. She said at last, “She has made me see that I have been unfair to Doria, as well as to her. I am not Kindra; she managed to foster Jaelle in this house and still put her through her housebound time here without favoritism—and without demanding more of her than Jaelle could give. Margali has made me see that I cannot do this with Doria. I think Doria should be sent to another Guild House for her housebound training and for her Oath.” Madga saw her swallow hard, and she dashed her hand across her eyes, but then she raised her head and stared fearlessly at Mother Lauria. “I speak for Margali, and I ask, when you have considered this, that you send Doria away. I am not fit to train her; I am too eager that she should—should honor my pride, rather than her own good.”

  Mother Lauria looked up at Magda. She said quietly, “Three have spoken. Margali’s oath shall stand. As for Doria—I have thought of this myself, Rafaella, but I had hoped it could be avoided. She is a child of this house—”

  “I don’t want to go away,” Doria cried. “This is my home, and Rafi is my mother—”

  “But I am not,” Rafaella said harshly, “You were born to my sister; so I thought I could be—impersonal with you. But I cannot; I—in my pride, I have asked too much of you. You know that an Amazon who has a birth-daughter in her own House must sent her elsewhere for her training—”

  Mother Lauria held up her hand. “One thing at
a time! Doria, you know you must be silent here unless asked to speak! Rafi, we will talk of this later; for the moment, we have not done with Margali. Three have spoken for her, and by the laws of the Renunciates, her oath must stand. But we cannot have the house torn with dissension. I will have no more gossip and silent slander; if there is anything to be said against Margali, say it here and now, and thereafter be silent, or say it before her face.”

  Mother Millea said, “I have no objection to allowing Margali to stay among us. I do not dislike her. But the truth is, she did bring indemnity and disgrace upon us, and I do not think she fully understands all the laws of our Charter. If Jaelle were living here, it would be Jaelle’s responsibility to instruct her oath-daughter in these things. Since she is not, we might consider extending the housebound time, so that she may complete her training—‘’

  Oh, no, Magda thought, I couldn’t take it…

  Mother Lauria said, “There is precedent for that, too; the housebound period may be extended another half year if a woman has not sufficiently learned our ways to be trusted in the outside world. Still, I am reluctant to do this with a woman Margali’s age. If she were a girl of fifteen, I would certainly demand it, but surely there is a better way than this.”

  Camilla said, “It is pure chance that it was Jaelle and not I who took her oath; we were both present. I will volunteer to instruct her myself, as Jaelle might do.”

  “And I,” said Marisela, and Mother Lauria nodded. She said “If any of you has an unspoken grudge against Margali, speak it now, or be silent hereafter for all time.”

  Magda, glancing hesitantly around the circle, seemed to hear unspoken fragments of thought. Marisela said quietly, “I can tell that your grudges are too petty to speak, in the light of this—is it true? I think Margali is an extraordinary woman, and one day we will all be proud to claim her as one of us.”

  Janetta, one of the younger women who had not been allowed to speak for Margali—and Magda had not expected it, for Janetta was the lover of Cloris, who had created the crisis over the leftover dish at supper—said thoughtfully, “I think some of us have forgotten what it was like to go through training. Rafi is right; I couldn’t have done it, but it wasn’t asked of me. But I think maybe we expected too much of her, because she was Jaelle’s oath-daughter.”

  The third of the Guild Mothers, who had sat silent through the entire proceeding—Magda remembered hearing that she was a judge in the Court of Arbitration, and wondered if that was why she had taken no part in the affair—said in her rusty old voice, “I think there is a lesson for all of us in the way we have been behaving; none of us is more than flesh and blood, and we must not ask more of a sister than we would be willing to endure for ourselves. That is true of Rafaella and Doria as well as Margali.”

  Rafaella had been leaning against Jaelle’s shoulder; she turned around and held out her hand to Magda. She said, “Janetta is right; I had forgotten, and I was angry with you this afternoon because you made me see what I was doing to Doria. I—I don’t want to lose her. But for her own good, I see now that I must leave her training to others. Will you forgive me?”

  Magda took the hand Rafaella gave her, feeling embarrassed. “I ought to have put it more tactfully. I was rude—”

  “We were both rude,” said Rafaella, smiling. “Ask Camilla sometime what I am capable of—” she raised her face, laughing, to the old emmasca. “When we were both in training together, we drew our knives on one another! We could both have been sent away for that!”

  “What did they do to you?” Magda asked, and Camilla chuckled, pressing Rafaella’s shoulder.

  “Handcuffed us together for ten days. For the first days we did nothing but fight and scream at each other—then we discovered we could do nothing without the other’s help, and so we became friends. They do not do that any more, not in this House—”

  “But then, we have not had any two trainees draw knives on one another since then,” Mother Lauria said, smiling as she overheard them. “But we have not yet learned all we can from this affair. It is still painful to speak of it; but we must speak of it because it is painful. Keitha, your oath has not been called into question, you are not here on trial, but tell us, Keitha, why, after Margali had wounded the surrendered swordsman, you were heard to declare that we should have killed them all?”

  Magda had to admire the old woman’s skill as a psychologist. She felt the pressure lifted from her shoulders, yet she did not feel Keitha was being attacked in her stead; only challenged, as usual during training sessions.

  Keitha took time to frame a reply, knowing it would be torn to shreds before the words were well out of her mouth. Finally she said, “He had no right to follow me here—he would have killed some of you, killed Camilla certainly, dragged me back unwilling, raped me—by the Goddess,” she burst out, and Magda could see that she was trembling, “I wished then that I had Margali’s skill with a sword, so that I could have killed him myself and not put my oath-sisters to the trouble!”

  “But,” Camilla said gently, “the men with him were only hired swords, and they followed the code of the sword; when he was himself felled, they surrendered at once. What is your quarrel with them, oath-daughter?”

  “A man who hires out his sword to such an immoral purpose— does he not then forfeit protection? If not of men’s laws, at least of ours?”

  Rezl said angrily, “I think Keitha is right! Those men who fought alongside her husband agreed to what he was doing, they would have served their own wives the same—how do they deserve to be treated better than he?”

  Camilla’s soft voice—so feminine, Magda suddenly realized, in spite of her lean angular body and abrupt manners—came quietly out of the dimness in the shadow of the room. “Surely, if men see that we women cannot abide by civilized rules of behavior, they will turn all the more quickly against us?”

  “Civilized rules! Their rules!” Janetta sounded furious, but Mother Lauria ignored her.

  “Keitha, was it those men you hated? Or was it all men you wished to see punished in them?”

  “It is Shann I hate,” she said in a low voice, “I want to see him dead before me—I wake from dreams of killing him! Is there no one here who has ever hated a man?”

  “I think there is no one here who has not,” said Rafaella, but Mother Lauria went on as if she had not heard. “Hate can be a shackle stronger than love. While you hate, you are still bound to him.”

  Camilla said quietly, “Hate can lead you, if you cannot harm the one yourself, to turn upon yourself. I sacrificed my very womanhood so that no man could ever desire me again. It was hate cost me this.”

  Magda remembered the grim story Camilla had told, and wondered how the old woman’s voice could sound so calm. Keitha flared, “And is that such a price? You don’t know what you have been spared!”

  Camilla’s voice was hard. “And you don’t know what you are talking about, oath-daughter.”

  “Is that not why you became a mercenary? To kill men in revenge for the choice they cost you?” Keitha asked.

  Jaelle said into the silence, “I have known Camilla since my twelfth year; never have I known her to kill any man needless, or for revenge.”

  “I fight often at the sides of men,” Camilla said, “and I have learned to call them comrades and companions. I hate no man living; I have learned to blame no man for the evil done by another. I have fought, yes, and killed, but I can admire, and respect, and even, yes, sometimes, love where love is due.”

  “But, you,” Keitha said, “you are not a woman anymore.”

  Camilla shrugged slightly. “You think not?” she said, and Magda wondered if she only fancied the pain in the woman’s eyes.

  And behind her it seemed that Jaelle had spoken aloud, then Magda realized with dismay that somehow she was reading Jaelle’s thoughts, that no one except herself could hear; Camilla was no less foster mother to me than Kindra—perhaps more, since she had no child and knew she would have none. I l
ove Camilla, but it is so different from the way I love Piedro. I love him… sometimes… at other times I cannot imagine why I ever even liked him. Never, never could I turn against one of my sisters that way…

  And Magda was thinking, in a desperate attempt to distance the subject by intellectualizing it, they talked a lot about the differences between men and women, but none of their answers ever satisfied her. She could get pregnant and Peter could not, that was the only difference she could see in the world of the Terrans, they did not share the most dangerous of vulnerabilities. And then somehow she felt as if her whole sense of values had done a flipflop, he had been dependent on her, and now on Jaelle, to give him the son he so desperately desired… before, she had always seen herself as taking all the risks, but now Jaelle could bear him a son, if she would, if she would… now he was at Jaelle’s mercy as he had been at hers; she saw it almost with a flash of pity. Poor Peter. And then, in a flash, was Jaelle pregnant? Then the sudden linkage broke and slammed shut and Magda was alone in her mind again, confused, not knowing which were her thoughts and which came from elsewhere. She had missed some of what Camilla was saying.

  “I have gone to some lengths to prove myself the equal, or more, of any man, but I am past that now; I can admit my own womanhood and I need not prove it to you. Why does it distress you to think of me as a woman, Keitha?”

  Keitha cried out, “I cannot understand you! You are free of the burden none of us can endure, and yet you choose to be woman, you insist upon it… does not even neutering free you?”

  Camilla’s face was very serious now. “It is not the freedom you think it, oath-daughter,” she said, holding out her hand to Keitha, but Keitha ignored it.

  “It is easy for you to be sentimental about womanhood,” Keitha cried, tears running angrily down her face, “You have nothing more to lose, you are free from the desire of men and from their cruelty, you can be a man among men or a woman among women as you choose, and have it all your own way—”