She slept for hours, until she was jolted awake by a screen, falling over near her bed. Earthquake, again? She heard small children crying out, and flung on a garment to run downstairs; but evidently the fallen screens were the only damage, and Cendri went back up to dress. It was near evening. Dal was nowhere in the suite. Feeling faintly guilty at the memory of her harsh words, she resolved to hunt him up, tell him as much as he wanted to know about the festival, compound their differences somehow. But he was nowhere in the house, either.
It was too late, in any case, to do anything in the Ruins that day; everyone in Vaniya's household was engaged in clearing up after the festival. It had been silly of her not to share everything with him. He was a scientist, not a man of the Pioneer of five generations ago! He might be distressed that she had gotten herself into the situation without fully understanding it, but he would certainly understand why she could not have withdrawn, once committed.
Anyway, if he was angry, he was angry; what was done could not be changed, and she didn't have to fear his anger. Then she began to worry. Just before she had silenced him, sent him away in anger, he had been trying to communicate with her, to tell her something. Her own nervous guilt, based on his questions about the festival had not recognized until now that he had left that topic and had been trying to tell her something else. But what? Had she really begun thinking like these women of Isis, that whatever a man had to say, it could not be important to her? In any case, anger or no, misunderstanding or no, they must talk seriously about what he was doing among the men. It might be personally dangerous, and she had a duty to share whatever risks were involved.
If she had listened, encouraged Dal to tell her more, from the beginning.. .Cendri grew more and more troubled as Dal did not return. He was nowhere in the house; he was not on the shore with the men servants who were clearing away the wood ashes from the dead fires, he was not in the Ruins, for one of Vaniya's women told her that no one had entered We-were-guided that day. He was not at dinner either, and Vaniya smiled when she inquired if anyone had seen him.
"No doubt it has run away to sulk, my dear; but did you not give it permission to leave the grounds? Our Punishment House is at your disposal if you wish to discipline it," Vaniya remarked. But where Vaniya saw only a question of discipline, Cendri was deeply troubled for Dai's safety. Had he been detected in his plotting? Was he somewhere encouraging revolt or riot among the men, and what would they do to him if it was discovered?
Or—worse—had he run away to confer with Mahala, to join her party? Were she and Dal actually to line up on opposing sides of the political situation on Isis? The thought sent a shudder of horror through her. As a scientist of University she—and Dal—were supposed to be above local politics. Dal had already violated that regulation. Must she do it too? Or—Cendri had been trained into rigid intellectual honesty—had she already violated it, or seemed to do so, out of her deep personal affection for Vaniya and Miranda? Had Dal mistaken this for a kind of political commitment? She must make it clear that it was personal____
Miranda was not at dinner, either. Lialla told her that Miranda was in bed, with the midwife nearby... ."But I think it is only another false alarm," Lialla said, resigned. "Her first child was many, many days past the proper time; almost all of those who became pregnant from last winter-festival have already borne their babes, but Miranda is always slow. Some women simply do this."
It was a silent and, generally, a glum meal, the women mostly tired and suffering from lack of sleep. Vaniya, irritable at the silences, asked Rhu to sing, and he said sullenly that his throat was sore and his lyrik out of tune. "However," he said, making an effort to be pleasant, "I shall apply myself to composing a song as birth-gift for the Lady Miranda, since she takes pleasure in my poor songs."
Cendri, watching him, thought, why, he really cares about Miranda, he's worried about her, as worried as if he were the father of her child. Or is it just that anything to do with Miranda involves him, emotionally, and he knows he must conceal it? If romantic love is a perversion for women in this world, how much more for men! Pitying Rhu, she knew she pitied herself.
Dal did not return all that night. Cendri slept poorly, rousing again and again, thinking she heard his step in the suite, every small sound anywhere in the house of women, a restless child crying, anyone moving about on the lower floors, disturbing her light sleep. Where was Dal? What had become of him? Was he somewhere in a Punishment House, having broken all unknowing one of the many rules for men on this world?
Long before dawn, sleep deserted her entirely; she sat by the window, looking down into the ruins of We-were-guided, deeply troubled. Her growing insensitivity to Dai's needs had driven him away from her, and now where was he?
Had she really, as Dal had accused, been corrupted by the society of the women of Isis? No, she realized; not really. The Matriarchate had only given a form and expression to a hostility which had—she now knew—begun long before they came here. A resentment, that she had given up her own ambitions to be Scholar Dame, fearing Dai's jealousy; that she had taken time off, after her marriage. But Dal had never asked it of her. It had been her own idea. If Dal had wanted a submissive woman, all the women of Pioneer, trained to it for centuries, and not yet taking full advantage of their freedom, had been at his disposal. He had chosen her instead.
And when he forgot, when he fell into old habits from Pioneer, it was for me to protest; not to submit, stifling resentment, until the inevitable explosion. I was not honest with him. Have we lost each other now, forever?
When the sun rose, red and dripping with sea-fog, peering through the cloudbank over the shore like a weeping eye, Cendri was exhausted and frightened. Laurina came early, ready to accompany Cendri to the ruins; but by then Cendri knew what she must do.
She told Laurina of Dai's disappearance. "I am afraid that he, unused to the laws of Isis, has somehow gotten into trouble," she told the younger woman, "and that he is somewhere in a Punishment
House. You have been around Mahala's faction____ she has some connection with your college, does she not?" Laurina nodded, and Cendri said, "Can you find out what has become of him?"
"I would do more than that for you, Cendri, but why is it so important to you?" Laurina actually seemed a little jealous, "I am here to give you what help you need."
For a moment Cendri desperately wanted to pour out the truth. She was so tired of this imposture, so weary of the pretense that she was the Scholar Dame archaeologist who knew all, and Dal her unregarded assistant—but tardy caution prevailed; the words, once spoken, could not be recalled. Would these women of Isis despise her if she was only some man's assistant? She said slowly, "Dai's aid is indispensable to me; his special training on University makes it impossible for me to work efficiently without—it—at my side."
Laurina grimaced slightly and said, "It must be hard for the women of University, but after all it is one of the maleworlds. Well, Cendri, I will go and inquire in Mahala's faction. But what makes you think it might have gone to them?"
"One of Mahala's men—anyhow, marked with her tattoo of ownership—came to speak with Dal, secretly," Cendri confessed. "I warned Dal about conspiring with men, but he may not have understood how serious this was." Half-truths; she knew Laurina did not understand, but the woman was content with the explanation and set off for the city.
Cendri was too distraught to work; she even absented herself from Vaniya's dinner-table that night, sending the excuse that she was not feeling well. She spent the evening looking through her notes from the ruins, and writing, in the undecipherable-to-outsiders script of her homeworld, all that she could remember of the ceremony of visiting the sea, knowing she must do so before the memory blurred in her mind. She found it was an exercise in self-control and discipline, but she did not spare herself, even writing down the shaming memory of how she had reacted sexually to Laurina's embraces when the ceremony was ended, firmly forcing herself to make a note of the fact that she had felt ashamed. She realiz
ed that her intellectual awareness, that sexual moralities were purely a cultural imprint, did nothing to minimize them for her personally. Afterward she noted, with wry amusement, that the attempt to force herself into clinical detachment from the reaction had given her a very real headache, and in the end she took a sleeping pill, for the first time since she had come to Isis, willing to face the danger of sleeping through an earthquake, or being hard to wake if there was news of Dal, rather than lie awake for hours juggling guilt and fear and the attempt at a scientist's discipline.
The next morning Miranda was still abed, and Laurina came to tell Cendri that as far as she could discover, none of Mahala's people had seen Dal there. "It is not in their Punishment House, nor hidden in their Men's House," she said, "A schoolmate of mine is in charge of their Men's House and I asked her to make an excuse to call a search of the Men's House for concealed contraband, things men are not allowed to keep. So it is not concealed there."
But then where was Dal? Cendri was beginning to be seriously frightened. Late that morning, knowing that it was a minor breach of Matriarchal etiquette but by now too troubled to care, she went up to Rhu's quarters. She found the Companion, barefoot and wearing an old and rumpled kilt, his face for once unpainted, bending over his Jyrik, searching for chords. Was he working on Miranda's song? His face was sullen, but he bowed to her with respect.
"How may I serve the Scholar Dame?"
She said straightforwardly, "My Companion has disappeared. I do not believe he has gone willingly; I am afraid he may have broken some law unwittingly and is being held somewhere, in trouble. Can you help me?"
Rhu's face was closed and unrevealing. He said, "This much I will tell you; he went willingly. Beyond that, you cannot expect me to betray a fellow male. I know that our customs are strange to you, Scholar Dame, and I am not offended that you ask, but I cannot answer further."
She stared at him in shock and dismay. Somehow, knowing his secret and Miranda's, she had not expected he would draw this barrier down between them. She said, in distress, "Rhu—can't I talk to you simply as a fellow human being, as an equal? Can't you understand that my concern is for Dal, and he is your friend?"
Rhu's mouth tightened, bitterly. He said, "No master can talk as an equal to a slave. I know you are concerned to protect him, you want him back mostly for your own concerns; to be the kind of man I am. If he has escaped into freedom, even though I cannot, I will rejoice for him and never betray him."
Shocked, Cendri said, "He was free on University; he is free here; he will be free again—"
Rhu made a wry face, "Would you really have taken him back there, Scholar Dame, knowing now the pleasure of having him a thing and a toy for your sport? At first I thought there was a different kind of relationship between you. Now—" his narrow shoulders lifted in a shrug. He said, "I am only a man; I know nothing more. Will you have me tortured, to tell what little I might know more than this? It would be useless. Perhaps he has told you; my heart is weak, I would die under the lash. Will you have my life, Scholar Dame?"
Cendri, shocked, put out her hand in an appeasing gesture, and
Rhu recoiled, an instinctive movement that shocked her more than
anything Rhu had said. If was exactly as if he feared I would strike
him___
She said, swallowing hard, "No, Rhu. Forgive me. I am afraid some such fate may have befallen Dal—if you decide I might help save him from such fate, I beg you, come to me—" but his face was closed, and she went away, feeling tears rise and choke her.
What could she do? What could she do?
Later in the morning, Vaniya's older daughter, Lialla, sought her out. She said, "Scholar Dame—"she had never come to the informal terms Miranda and Vaniya used with the stranger—"my sister is abed and ill; she has asked you to pay her a visit."
Cendri was still so distressed over Dai's continuing absence that she felt she would be no fit company for the sick; but she knew Lialla would never consider worry over a mere male anything to interfere with the friendly duties between women, so she dismissed her annoyance at the interruption—in any case, it isn't helping Dai any for me to sit and stew about it—and went to Miranda's room.
Miranda was lying down, her pregnant body looking enormously humped between blankets. She greeted Cendri warmly, gesturing with amusement to a pallet on the floor.
"Vaniya has insisted that I sleep with the midwife in my room, so I have not even privacy any more, at night. I have missed you, Cendri, but I really feel too heavy and tired to get about. They keep telling me it would be better for me to take lots of exercise and jolt my lazy baby loose from her snug nest, but I am too heavy of foot to think of it without at least a dozen shudders. Listen, Cendri—we are alone, I sent the woman to make me a hot drink—has your Companion been found?"
Cendri said, "No," and wondered whether Rhu had told Miranda what he refused to tell her.
"You know I have not been at the family dinner table for days, I have been taking my meals here in my bed—last night Lialla came and kept me company while I ate, taking her dinner at my bedside so I would not fret—so she said, but I think it was for fear I should go into labor if left alone for a few minutes. When Zamila came up to her from the dinner table she began to gossip with her about what was happening, and—you were not at dinner either, Cendri?" "No, I had a headache—"
"I hope you have recovered," Miranda said, with kind anxiety, "but they seemed to feel it concerned you in some way; a man, a messenger, came to Vaniya. She would have sent it away, saying this was not the hour for receiving petitions, but it insisted almost with rudeness, and spoke with her for a long time, insisting that the women of the household go out of earshot. My mother even sent Rhu away—but when the man was done speaking, she called out in great anger for her guards, and sent the man to the Punishment House. And after, she told Lialla to say nothing of this to the Scholar Dame, since she did not want you worried by trifles. Cendri—I had a strange feeling it might have been something to do with Dai's disappearance. My mother does not know—" she laid her hand over Cendri's, "that your Companion is your life-partner as well, and such a thought would never enter her mind. But I know a little, I think, of what your—your Companion means to you, and I think you have a right to know, if this man truly brought a message concerning him."
This seemed to confirm Cendri's worst fears. She said, shakily, "I must speak with the messenger, Miranda. Where is he?"
"In the Punishment House, Cendri, and I fear it was beaten. No," she added quickly, "you cannot go to the Punishment House alone, no woman may except Vaniya's appointed guards, and I do not think they would give you, alone, access to the prisoner; but I will go with you."
Cendri was grateful, but still felt some compunction. "Oh. Miranda, you are ill, suppose you go into labor—"
"Believe me," Miranda said, with heartfelt sincerity, "nothing on this world could please me more! If it has that effect, I shall bless the effort I make!" The midwife returned with Miranda's drink; she motioned it away.
"I will walk a little with my friend, the Scholar Dame from University—" she silenced the woman's protest, saying gaily, "You have been telling me for three days that I should bestir myself and take exercise, and now when I am willing, you would prevent me! Cendri will make certain I do not fall on the stairs, will you not, my friend?"
Cendri supported Miranda carefully on the long flight of steps, feeling intensely protective. Isis has changed me in one way, she realized; my relationships with women will never again be quite the same. The awareness that she could actually relate to another woman as to a lover, she knew, was going to make some permanent difference in her self-image, but she was not yet sure what form it would take. At the moment, she realized, she felt as close to Miranda as if the woman were her own sister.
It seemed for a moment that Miranda was reading her thoughts when she said, "So now you have visited the sea with us—tell me, Cendri, what do you think of our festival?"
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br /> Cendri said honestly, "I don't know yet what I think; I was surprised and—and a little confused. And I suppose, then, there will be an enormous number of births two hundred and eighty days or so from now?"
Miranda shook her head. "No, not really; that will be an unpleasant time to bear a child, in the worst of the summer heat. Most women who want children arrange it, as I did, to try and become pregnant at winter-festival, so that the children will be born at this season of the Long Year, and some others, women who work on farms, try to conceive at the harvest so that their children will be born before sowing-time. Although there are always some women so eager for children that they do not care when they conceive—my sister Lialla, who seems barren, though she has gone unprotected to every festival for years now. Cendri!" She looked at her in dismay. "Do your women in the maleworlds have no way to avoid conception except to keep apart from men? One of us should have warned you, told you—did you expose yourself, unprotected, to the sea-coming? It can still be remedied, but the process is—is unpleasant—"
Her concern was so sincere, so contrite, that Cendri quickly hugged her as she reassured, "No, no, we have such ways, I am in no danger of pregnancy, whatever I should do, but I was not sure your people did—"
Miranda laughed. "Believe me, it was the first thing to which the Matriarchate gave priority in research! Not many women wish for more than two or three children, if so many, and there are some who wish for none at all, although I must say that seems strange to me— if I could not bear children, I think I would almost as soon have been born male! But then there are also some women who wish for children eagerly, and no sooner wean one child from their breasts than they are eager for another, and of course we are all grateful to them. But did it seem to you that our festival had no meaning but that, Cendri, for the giving of children?" She looked up anxiously at Cendri, and Cendri said, "I have not been among you long enough to know what meaning it might have."
Miranda said slowly, "One of our priestesses could explain it to you better than I. These festivals—Three times in our Long Year we visit the sea; it is our way of remembering, of commemorating that both men and women are the children of the Goddess, whom once we named Persephone and here we call Isis, that all of life including our own comes from the sea; that men, too, have their needs and goals and desires, and that we must join to give them what they need, too, and keep them happy and contented." And now Cendri was more confused than ever, but Miranda did not explain further.
Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Novel 19 Page 25
