It was a hot summer's afternoon, warm enough to stain the white cotton of his shirt across the back and under the armpits. The cornfield stretched out in front of them, fifty hectares of dark-green leaves, the lighter green of stalks and the green-gold of tassels just turning; there were streaks and patterns through the rows, marking the outlines of the tiny plots this riverside had been divided into before the conquest. The chest-high maize rustled and creaked, nodding in the slow humid breeze; the air felt silky-soapy on his skin, nothing like the moisture-sucking dryness of the south Mediterranean weather he had been raised in. Above the sky was different, too, always a little hazy, a tinge of white in the blue, with little clouds like puffballs.
Always thought those French paintings were innacurate, he thought. Quite close, really. He glanced aside at Mohammed, idly wondering if the man missed the old estate; the heavy-featured olive face was impassive, a polite mask. Probably not, he concluded. The man had volunteered, after all. Fieldboss was about as high as a buck could go, and on Chateau Retour he had reached it far younger than he could have in the Police Zone. A bigger cottage, two wives, the deference of others… hard to really tell, though. It had been nearly a century and a half since the Draka conquered the Beylik of Tunis and made it their Province of Nova Cartago; six generations under the Yoke tended to teach discretion.
A pair of two-row horse-drawn cultivators was plodding through the last quarter of the field, tiny against the distant line of hedgerows and trees. The work-gangs were following, catching any weeds the skimmer-blades of the cultivators missed; Edward could see the heads of the hoes rising and falling over the bent backs of the workers in a steady ragged thrashing. Step-back-and-chop, the sshk sound of iron in sandy earth, breaking through the surface crust and turning up the damper reddish-gray layer below. Bossboys walked behind, one to each group of twenty, waving their long willow-switches with an occasional shout.
It was a scene familiar enough to be nostalgic, but Edward missed the rhythmic chanting of the field-songs. They made the work more efficient, too: these French were not yet accustomed to gang-labor under supervision. There was a thwack of stick on cloth and a yelp from the nearest gang, as if to counterpoint his thought.
Long day, they're tired, the Draka thought. Close enough to see individuals now, men in the French peasants' traditional beret and blue overalls, women in cheap mass-produced cotton blouses, skirts, straw hats of their own weaving. Sweat ran down their dust-caked faces, impassive with fatigue; he could see them darting an occasional glance his way, then bending back to their task. A healthy degree of fear, a realization that the master could do anything to anyone, anything at all. There had to be a degree of regularity, though…
Mohammed stiffened beside him. " 'Scuse me, mastah," he said, and spurred his horse forward to halt beside the nearest bossboy.
"Give me't' switch, Erast," he said. Edward had bought foreigners for his foremen, Germans mostly, with a few Greeks and this solitary Ukrainian; it made for a better start. Just as the workers were a scattered grouping from anywhere within a hundred kilometers.
The bossboy handed the two-meter length of willow up to the fieldboss. He flexed it with an expert flick of his wrist, and it split the air with a sound like ripping silk. "Claudine, y' useless cunt, get over heah!" he barked. "Rest, keep workin'."
The hoes faltered and resumed; the woman the bossboy had switched turned and walked back to the foreman and the mounted fieldboss.
Mohammed waved the tip of the switch toward her. "Erast, y'shoulda touched her up ten minutes ago." The stick pointed back down the row. "Some a' them weeds is knee-high!" This was the last cultivation before the field was laid-by; the maize would shade out new weeds but not established ones.
To Claudine: "Shuck an' bend, wench."
Edward could see her eyes twitch slightly to either side in an unconscious search for escape, then droop as she put her crossed arms down to pull the blouse over her head. An unremarkable face and an unremarkable body, sweat and dirt above, wet-glistening white below the U shape of the garment's neck. She leaned over, eyes squeezed shut and hands on her knees; would have been invisible if Edward had not been at the head of the row looking down along its length. Mohammed heeled his horse a few steps closer, stood in the stirrups and slapped the willow-switch down fast enough to blurr.
Whack. The serfs eyes and mouth flew open in surprise. A sound escaped her, something between a grunt and a cat-mew, not very loud. The limber wood rebounded instantly, a red stripe springing out across her shoulders as if by magic, a horizontal line neatly bisected by her spine. Mohammed waited a slow thirty seconds for the first blaze of pain to subside into the ache that would last for weeks, then struck again.
Whack. Another stripe, a handspan lower and as parallel as if laid out by a ruler.
"My god!" Louder this time.
Whack. Joining die points of die shoulderblades.
"Please, God, please, no!"
"Stop," Edward said. His voice was not loud, but the fieldboss's arm halted at the top of its stroke. "Mohammed, how many were yo' plannin'?"
"Twice six, Mastuh."
The Draka heeled his horse over to the site of punishment. He could see the surface of the serfs back twitching like the skin of a horse trying to cast off flies.
"Up, wench," He said.
Claudine reached for her hat where it lay in the dirt, fumbled it, picked it up again with hands that shook so that it seemed she was fanning herself. She straightened slowly, face wet with tears and the mucus running from her nose as well as sweat, and dressed with slow, cautious gestures and a continous low huh-huh sound as she struggled not to sob aloud, lips puckered in.
"Bit excessive, Mohammed." To the serf. "Claudine, look at me." Hazel eyes, still leaking moisture. Edward smiled and leaned forward, resting his hands on the pommel of his saddle. "Yo' work wasn't satisfactory, was it?" he asked softly.
"Non, monsieur mon maître," the field-serf mumbled.
"Yo" don't like bein' switched, do yo'? Well?" A mute shake of the head. "I don't like seein' it, and Mohammed don't like doin' it."
"Oui, monsieur mon maître." A darting glance at the fieldboss, who was tapping the switch in the palm of his free hand.Good, the Draka thought. A traditional principle, that the bossboys should be thought harsher than the master; you had to use honey and vinegar both to get optimum results.
"So work bettah, and we'll all be happier. Is that sensible?"
"Oui, monsieur mon maître."
"I'm speakin' to yo' rational-like, wench. Yo' can listen to words, or to Mohammed's switch." A nod to the fieldboss. "Carry on, Mohammed."
The Tunisian used his switch to swivel the woman's head around; she shuddered at the soft touch of the willow-wand. He pointed down the row. "Now, git yaz useless ass back theah, clean up whut y'shoulda done the first time, an' catch up with't' othahs. Unnerstan? Comprend?"
"Oui, Monsieur Mohammed."
"Then git to it."
The fieldboss nodded, then twisted in the saddle and backhanded the Ukrainian bossboy across the cheek. The Slav stumbled back, crying out in shock and clutching at his face; a thin dark man, wiry and tough.
"Erast, y' wantsta shovel shit instead of bein' bossboy, it can happen, buck!" He tossed the switch back to the other man. "Do-yaz-job!" he bit out. "Unnerstan?"
"Da, gospodin," he said, bracing to attention.
Shaking his head in disgust, the fieldboss turned his horse and trotted back to the gate with the master, ignoring the flinch of the gang as he rode through the one-woman gap in their line. Edward von Shrakenberg opened his mouth to speak, then looked sharply down at the fieldhands; one of them was staring at him, there was no mistaking the prickling under-observation feeling. A Citizen knew it from earliest childhood, and a recon-commando even more: he had felt it just before the grenade that took his left eye landed; it had sent him turning and snatching before he was conscious of a threat.
The scar across the left side of his
face throbbed: he stared blankly for a moment, seeing the smooth steel egg, the desperate speed of his catch-and-throw. The surge of exultation as it left his fingers on the arc that would have taken it safely far away, then a flash and blackness. He shook his head, shook himself back to the present with a stab of pain inward from his temples that settled behind his brow. One of the hoe-gang met his gaze; a man, round stubbled face under the beret. Nondescript hazel eyes, quickly shuttered and dropping back to the ground under his hoe.
Not old enough to be the wench's father, he thought. The familiar swelling ache brought a fresh itching of sweat across his forehead and scalp, clammy even in the summer heat, and his lips skinned back in a grin that made the long cords in his neck stand out.
Husband or brother. That's right, buck, attend to your work. His hand fell unconsciously to the coiled sjambok at his saddlebow, then dropped away. Punishment was an example to others as much as to the one the whip landed on; if you made it too arbitrary, the deterrent power was lost. Still… He focused his mind on the serf, memorizing the face and letting him feel it, watching as the man's movements became slightly jerky and he pulled at the hoe with unnecessary force.
That's right, remember what you are, Edward thought. Otherwise you may lose what you have left, the skin on your back or your balls or your life, buck.
"Mastah, they's like wild donkeys," Mohammed was saying as he reined in beside his owner on the grass strip at the field's edge. Edward's horse raised its head to the other with a flutter of lips, then resumed its steady crunch-crop at the long stems. "Prophet a' God, I—" He stopped at the sound of hooves on the laneway beyond the hedge, dismounted and ran to open the gate.
Tanya rode through, twisting in the saddle to call something over her shoulder. She was wearing much the same working-clothes as he, black chamois breeches, boots, gunbelt, floppy-brimmed leather hat with a leopard-skin band, cotton shirt. A grin divided the dark tan of her face as she saw him, and she brought the big crop-maned hunter to a gallop with a shift of balance and thighs. It covered the ten meters between them in three loping strides, and he had only the warning in her eyes as she flung herself off her mount and onto his; his arms caught the solid weight of her out of the air with an impact that rocked him back in the high-cantled Moorish saddle.
Edward's mount plunged, neighed and buck-jumped sideways in a series of twisting leaps that nearly sent them both into the waiting thorns of the hedge. She was laughing inches from his face as he cursed and wrestled the tall gelding into a nervous foot-stamping standstill; her hunter dashed half the length of the field with the empty stirrups drumming at its flanks and divots of turf flying. Her laughter turned to a slow lazy smile as the horse quieted and he freed an arm to encircle her waist. The muscles of his wife's back moved smoothly under his touch, like living shapes of hard indiarubber. The scent of her was around him, clean sweat-musk, leather and horse and the warm summery flower-scent of her sunstreaked bronze hair; the fingers that dug into the sloping wedges of his neck were strong as slender steel rods.
They kissed, and he felt the old familiar fire at the pit of his stomach, a wanting that a hundred soft serf wenches could not still. Tanya smiled again with that taunting grin as their lips parted, and spoke in a husky whisper, wiggling her eyebrows in a parody of seduction:
"Hi, handsome stranger. Wanna fuck?"
Edward snorted laughter. "Wotan damn it, you only use that line 'cause it worked the first time!" he said, kissing her again. "Besides, it's seven; dinner's in half an hour."
"Well, no law says I can't torment yo' with a two-hour wait," she replied, shifting to a more comfortable position sideways to the horse with a leg curled up around the low mound that served as a saddlehorn. "That first time your flight was leavin' in twenty minutes, yo'd had a whole week an' hadn't done mo' than blush at me, I had to rush," she continued reasonably. "An" it did work. Remembah the closet?"
He threw back his head to shout laughter, and halted with a wince. Concern darkened her smile, and she rubbed at his neck, kneading and frowning at the tension-knots.
"Eye again?" she said. "Want one of the painkillers?"
"Started with it," he shrugged. "Then the head. Nevah no mind, Loki take it iff'n I'm goin' to end up serf to a pillbottle."
"Yo' needs a soak an' a rub," she said, giving him a final squeeze and dropping to the ground. Mohammed had caught her mount; she took a half-step and vaulted into the saddle as he led it past, nodded thanks and caught the reins he tossed.
"Finished up here, anyways," Edward said. "This was the last field I was overlookin' today. Arable crops turnin' out fine this year, but we're dead lucky the namin'-day holiday starts tomorrow. Goin' be locked-in fo' a while, next hay-cuttin' an' then the wheat harvest."
"Vines lookin' good too," Tanya replied, shrugging her gunbelt back into place; the niello-and-silver inlays on the hilt winked in the afternoon sunlight. The vineyards along the northern edge of the estate were her special care. "An" the tunnage is all lookin' sound. Tested the stemmer-crusher an' the temperature control; we won't have to turn any grapes into raisins this year."
"Praise Frigg," Edward said, running a palm down the neck of his horse and slapping it reassuringly. It snorted and rolled an eye and ear back at him, mumbling the bit and tossing its head in a quick up-and-down gesture of doubt. "We goin' need the wine, an' prices look like they're headed back up. Plus the League says they may have an export contract fo' our Bourgeuil if we can equal pre-War quality." The pain had retreated, a dull presence that seemed to sharpen vision with an edge of nausea. He wanted food in the stomach, hot water, then darkness and sleep.
"Pa!"
More horses were coming throught the gate; his children. My older children, he corrected himself. He looked aside at his wife, remembering the exhausted triumph on her face when the midwife laid the two yelling red forms on her stomach, his own wondering touch on the delicate black birth-fuzz of heads smaller than his hands.
Edward von Shrakenberg pushed the consciousness of pain aside with a practiced effort of the will to wave and grin at his son and daughter. Ten already, he thought. There was so little time, they were away at their schools for so much of the year, which was only right, of course, but… and then the War, robbing even more.
Tim in the lead, naked to the waist and nut-brown with summer, his hair a faded white-blond, a fishing rod bobbing over one shoulder and a dramatic-looking cleaning knife at his belt, bare toes showing through the stirrups. He opened a basket at his saddlebow and proudly held up a string of Loire pike, threaded together with a strip of osier through their gills. Gudrun followed, massively freckled with the late-season sun and wearing a huge-brimmed hat, her body still shimmering with river-water from her last plunge. Drying clothes lay across the saddle before her, and a bucket of javelins swayed behind, the honed points glittering. She waved to him, then turned back to talk to the young serf-girl beside her; Fleur, he remembered, the one his daughter had "bought" with her allowance money. The young wench was awkwardly perched on an ambling pony, strapped around with picnic baskets and bundles, smiling and chattering as she clung to the saddle with both hands.
Edward frowned slightly, then relaxed as Tom followed; the ex-Janissary rode with the easy competence of a man who had spent a good decade as a mounted infantryman, the butt of his T-5 resting on one thigh. No need to worry with Tom about, the Draka thought. The Loire was treacherous with riptides, which he could rely on Tim and Gudrun to ignore if left to themselves, but the old soldier was someone they would heed.
"Want me to send fo' a car?" Tanya asked. There was a military-issue handset on her saddle, but he shook his head.
"Thanks, love, but no. Jus' pain, is all." Leaning over to admire his son's fish: "Mighty fine; we can have 'em done up as guenelles de brocket, with dinner tonight."
Tanya was staring pointedly down at the boy's feet. "Yo've got just enough time to scrub down an' get dressed, too," she said.
"Ah, Ma, I spent half the day in
the water, n'est-ce pas suffisant?" he said, giving each of his parents the kiss of greeting on their cheek.
"No, it isn't. An' save the francey fo' the serfs, young man." She returned the kiss and twisted in the saddle to lift Gudrun's hat and inspect her skin. "Child, despite the fact that yo' appears to be tumin' into a giant freckle, yo' just goin' have to face the fact that yo' don't tan. Clothes on. Now."
Gudrun sighed, tossed the hat to her maid and began to struggle into her shirt as the von Shrakenbergs turned their horses toward the gate. Edward nodded to the fieldboss, then fell behind the children and servants to ride side-by-side with Tanya as they walked their mounts through the gate and north on the laneway that led toward the manor. They transferred the reins to their off-hands and linked inside fingers, exchanging a smile as they watched their children ride ahead; Tim waited until Gudrun was helpless with the pull-over shirt imprisoning her arms before reaching over to poke her in the ribs and spur to a gallop. She yelled, struggled free of the cloth and heeled her horse after his, snatching back her hat to thrash at him as he crouched jockey-style with his face in the windblown mane of his horse.
"Hellions," he said as they disappeared around a bend in the farm-road.
"But they ride like leopards," Tanya replied.
Edward nodded. The knots in his back and neck had relaxed a little, and he rolled his head to further the process. The cornfield lay to their left; to the right was a stretch of sunflowers, nodding orange and gold almost too bright to watch, seeming to turn their heads in homage to the masters of Chateau Retour. The sun's in this direction, he reminded himself dryly, but smiled at the thought as he took a deep breath. There was an intense spicy smell of vegetation, of dusty cultivated earth, wildflowers, the hint of wet from the river at their backs. Trees cast streaks of shadow over the sunflowers, where established growth had been left in the midst of the new field; young poplars trembled their leaves by the side of the lane. Muscles moved between his thighs, and hooves went crunch-pop in gravel.
Under the Yoke Page 29
