by Judith Tarr
It was his last night in the Mother’s house, though he had not spoken of that, yet, to Catin. The house above the horses’ house was ready, cleaned and repaired, with ample wood to burn on the hearth through winter’s cold, and foodstuffs laid away, and comforts brought as gifts by people who just happened by: thick soft coverlets for the bed, rugs for the floor, a chest to keep his clothing in, and a table and a pair of stools and even, from the Mother herself, a little image of the goddess to preside from her niche above the hearth.
Catin had seen it all today, admired it and seemed delighted by it. “They do it for you,” she said in the warm aftermath of loving, running fingers through the curly hairs of his chest. “They like you, man of Three Birds.”
He shrugged past the weight of her head on his shoulder. “I like them. Your people are good people. They don’t laugh as much or as often as mine do—is that the shadow of the wood on them?—but they have a bright spirit.”
“You aren’t given to meaningless laughter, I’ve noticed,” Catin said a little dryly.
“Well,” he said. “No.”
“Then do you hunger for your own people? Do you hate it here?”
“No,” he said again, but with rather more feeling in it. “No, I don’t hate this place. My people . . . I’ll go back to them when the Lady calls me. I’m happy enough. I’ve more to do than I could have thought, and some of it very . . . interesting, too.”
Catin looked up into his face. A smile quirked her lips. It made her look much younger than she was, and delightfully wicked. “Isn’t she, now? Has she learned a word of sensible speech yet?”
Not likely, he had been going to say, but something made him say instead, “She’s learning.”
Catin’s face fell slightly. He did not know why that should annoy him; he could well understand how she felt.
“Ah,” she said. “Well. The other stranger, the man, learned rather quickly. He never spoke well, but he could make himself understood.”
“Was he very like this one?” Danu asked, in part to distract her from his prevarication, but also because he truly wanted to know.
Cadn thought about it for a while. He watched the play of thoughts in her eyes, like fishes in a deep pool.
At length she said, “He looked like her, a little. Narrow and tall—very tall, much taller than this woman. Hair the color of straw, but his beard was red: yes, like tarnished copper. His eyes were brown. Not like hers—green; what color is that for a woman’s eyes? He had terrible manners, almost as bad as hers. He was always trying to coax a woman into his bed. He seemed to think that a man can demand it and be proper, instead of waiting for a woman to ask.”
For some reason Danu remembered just then how Sarama had been on that first waking, the way she had recoiled from him. Was that why? Did she think that he had come to be importunate?
He shook himself slightly, almost a shudder. No. Of course not. That was a preposterous thing to be thinking. It did her no honor, nor him, either.
She was rude, that was all. She did not know how to be polite.
Catin could not have followed his maunderings. He was glad of that. She said, “You must make this woman learn our language. The Mother has great need to talk to her.”
Danu nodded. He did not want to compound a lie, but neither could he bring himself to confess it.
Catin fell asleep soon after, to his relief. He had not yet told her that on the morrow he would be moving his belongings to the house by the river. He was a coward in every respect.
24
As Danu prepared to depart the Mother’s house for the house by the river, the Mother herself came to him and stood watching him knot the last of his bundles. He would have risen and done reverence, but her hand stopped him. After a slight hesitation, he went back to his packing.
She actually, with her own hands, helped him knot the bundle and fashion a carrying strap from the loose corners of it. He murmured thanks.
“Don’t be too submissive, boy,” she said. “It looks false.”
His head snapped up. He stared in flat astonishment.
She laughed at his expression. He had never seen a Mother like this. Not even this one, who had always observed a proper and Motherly gravity.
Here where there was no one else to see, she was as brisk and acerbic as her daughter could be, and as little tolerant of what she considered nonsense. “You are a beautiful creature,” she said, “and well you know it. You should strut a little more, and creep about a little less.”
He did not know at all what to say to that.
Nor, it seemed, did she expect him to. She shook her head and sighed. “Sometimes I wonder if we do well to teach our boys soft manners. They’d run rampant else, the wise women say, like stags in rut, or bulls in the spring. And yet a little cockiness is not at all an ill thing.”
“I’m told I have rather too much,” Danu said—softly, he could not help it; he was trained to it.
“You should have more,” the Mother said. She prodded him with a hard finger, and laughed when he jumped. “There, there. I horrify you, I can see it. And I only came to see you off, and to ask somewhat of you.”
“No,” he said quickly. “She has not learned any useful speech.”
The Mother’s brow lifted. “Did I ask you that?” In the face of his abashed silence she said, “I would like to ask that you take her with you.”
“Take—” He bit off the rest. “Take her where I’m going? Keep her there?”
“Keep her there,” the Mother agreed. “Teach her what she will learn. Learn from her as much as you may about horses, and about these people who ride horses.”
Danu nodded, swallowing protests. Of course that was the wise thing to do, and simpler than requiring him to come back every day to the Mother’s house, fetch the stranger, and coax her to follow him about as he performed the rest of his duties.
Nevertheless he did not look forward to keeping house for that of all women. He had seen how she was in this house, how she must be taught every smallest thing. Whatever she knew, it did not encompass the ways of a Mother’s house in the Lady’s country.
Still, this was laid on him. He too was a stranger here, and he seemed to understand the language of horses. Maybe time would teach him to understand the language of the horse people, too, whether or not Sarama would deign to teach him.
One of the youngest daughters and one or two of the sons brought Sarama’s belongings, such as they were, to the house that Danu found himself thinking of as his own. Strange thought, to have a house and not to keep it for a Mother, or for a woman who had chosen him.
He could hardly count Sarama in such company. She was his duty, as the Mother’s house had been in Three Birds.
oOo
She was at the house already, as he had expected, doing somewhat with the Mare. The colt, who had been watching, threw up his head and called to Danu, and came on at the canter.
Danu stopped and waited. He heard a muted squawk behind him, and a scramble as the children fought to make him a wall between themselves and the charging beast.
They were in no danger at all, no more than Danu. The colt danced to a halt in front of him, half-reared, met his glare, came down and stood and set his nose in Danu’s palm. Danu let him draw in the scent, then stroked his neck where the coat was thickening with winter’s coming.
When they had exchanged a full and proper greeting, the colt returned to his scrutiny of the Mare and her puzzling servant. Danu led his little company of retainers past them, up to the house.
He had not made space for Sarama. On the way to this place he had decided that she would have the bed, and he would spread a pallet on the floor. She was not a proper or civilized person, but he, after all, was; and that was as proper as anyone could ask for.
For the rest of it, she could share the chest, and he would see that she was fed and looked after, as he had done for his Mother and sisters in Three Birds. Certainly it was nothing new to him, and nothing that he c
ould not do.
He refused, even briefly, to regret the loss of his solitude. Solitude was not a natural state. He should be glad to be relieved of it.
Once the children had set down their burdens where Danu directed, the eldest, the daughter, said, “We’re supposed to stay and do what you need us to do.”
“For now I need nothing,” Danu said, “but I thank you.”
She frowned slightly, very like her sister Catin. “We’re to come back every day. This is our duty, Mother said.”
“That’s well,” Danu said, and meant it, too. “Come back tomorrow, then.”
She hesitated, as if she might protest; but she was no fool. She gathered her brothers and ran off whooping.
Danu laughed. With a lighter spirit and the remains of a smile, he finished setting the house in order.
oOo
As the day grew old, clouds crept over the sun’s face. A chill wind began to blow. Danu, stepping out to test the air, caught the scent of rain.
Sarama was still outside, still together with the Mare. She must have ridden: the Mare’s back showed the marks of a rider, though Danu had seen her saddle-fleece and her bridle hung neatly in their places inside the house. It should not have surprised him that Sarama could dispense with such things.
It did surprise him that she was still there; that she had not simply ridden away. He had brought with him a bit of bread new from the baking and dripping with honey. He offered it to Sarama where she sat on the sere grass, watching the Mare graze.
She stared at him as if she had never seen him before. He held up the bread. “Bread,” he said. “Honey.” And mimed the word as he said it: “Eat.”
She never had refused to eat what was set in front of her. She devoured the bread without a word. Her eyes had returned to the Marc. She seemed determined to ignore his existence.
He sighed. But for the rain and the threat of early dark, he would have left her there. But it would not be kind to let her find her way back to the Mother’s house, only to find her belongings gone and her place filled.
He touched her shoulder. She started. He drew back quickly lest she strike; but she only turned again to stare, and in no friendly fashion, either.
“Come,” he said.
She did not move.
“Come,” he said again. “More food. Eat.”
That roused her, though she took her time about it. When at last she deigned to rise, the first drops of rain began to fall.
oOo
The house was warm, a fire burning on the hearth, the air rich with the scents of bread, sweet cakes, roasting meat, honey and spices. Danu had blessed house and hearth before he lit the fire, walked the four corners and cleansed them with the smoke of sacred herbs. Their scent lingered beneath the rest, a memory of benediction. The Lady was here, watching over the house, blessing it with her presence.
Sarama seemed oblivious. She ignored the Lady’s image in its niche, even after Danu had done reverence to it; looked about in some surprise, as if she had not expected that bare and empty space to be made so inviting.
Danu left her standing beside the opening to the room below and busied himself about the hearth and the oven and the table. There was a surprising pleasure in it, in doing things that he had done so often in Three Birds, but not at all in Larchwood. He had been happy as keeper of his Mother’s house. He had not known how much he missed it here.
Down below he heard the thudding of hooves on packed earth, and a squeal as the Mare let the colt know which heap of cut fodder was hers. The horses had found their way in as he had hoped, safe out of the rain.
Danu spread the table as he had been used to do in Three Birds, with grace that met with a flat stare from Sarama. “In your country, I suppose,” he said with a touch of acidity, “one simply heaves the whole ox off the fire and hurls it in front of the guest.”
She did not understand him, of course. He found he could not care. “Come,” he said. “Eat. Ignore me if you like. I’ll teach you in spite of yourself. I’ll talk you dizzy. You’ll speak our language for the pure pleasure of hearing it from someone else besides me.”
She came, at least, and sat at the table. He served her as if she had been a Mother, with a flourish that was lost on her.
Or perhaps not. She did know how to accept service. He was mildly astonished. For all her sullenness and her difficult manners, she had, in that, a native grace.
When he had done all that he judged proper, he sat opposite her and fell hungrily on his own portion. She, having blunted the edge of her own hunger, watched him in—surprise? dismay?
“Yes, I eat,” he said. “I, too.”
“You,” she said. “You—” She gestured, flick of wrist, dart of fingers: miming cooking, carving, serving.
She mimed it very well. He smiled at that; nodded. “Yes. I cook. I serve.”
“You,” she said. “Man. Man not—cook. Serve.”
His brows went up, and not only at the proof that, after all, she had been listening to his days of chatter. “No? Then what does a man do?”
Her frown had in it less of incomprehension, and more of bafflement. “Man—horse. Man—” She spoke words then that he did not know, but committed to memory: hunt, fight. He thought he knew what they meant: drawn bow, hand raised to strike.
But as to that last: “Why would a man want to . . . fight?”
“Fight,” she said. “Hunt. Not—cook. Serve. Woman cook. Woman serve.”
He nodded. “Yes. Woman cook, serve, too. And hunt. But not fight. Fights are not proper.”
Her frown deepened. “You are man. You do—woman do—”
“I do what a woman does.” By the Lady; this creature thought him improper. He must not laugh; laughter would be perilous, just now. “No, no. I am a man, I am proper, but when a Mother tells me—”
She did not understand. He hissed in frustration. As simply, as clearly as he could, he said, “Man, yes. Mother say, Do this. I do this. Woman cook, serve, yes. Sometimes man may cook. For Mother. If Mother say.”
He felt like a fool, and no doubt sounded like one, too. But she understood him. “For Mother?” He nodded. She tossed her head in a broad mime of outrage. “Tell Mother no! Woman do this. You man.”
He would not grow angry. He would not. That she should demand a woman—as if a man were not good enough. As if his presence diminished her.
In some cities, he had heard, such things were considered, if not proper, then at least acceptable. But not in this part of the Lady’s country.
He swallowed his temper, and held it down until he could speak calmly. “In the morning,” he said, “I will tell the Mother. Tonight, you stay here. Do you understand? Stay here.”
“Stay?” She looked about. “Here?”
“Here,” he said.
He braced for further resistance. But one of the horses whickered below, a soft contented sound.
She stiffened at it, then eased abruptly. “Here,” she said, a little grudgingly, but that did not trouble him. She took the bed with an air that dared him to argue.
She stared when he spread his pallet. Had she expected him to be that importunate?
He did not linger to discover the answer. He was tired, and he was out of patience. He turned his back on her and went to sleep.
oOo
“No,” the Mother said.
Danu had expected that. “My presence to her is an insult. Mother—”
“Let her learn to behave properly,” said the Mother. “If she will not suffer a man to wait on her, then let her learn. We have our own ways here. She will accept them.”
“Even,” Danu asked, “though she is a guest?”
“A guest who is proper accepts the ways of her hosts.” The Mother’s voice and manner were immovable. “No, my child. The Lady asks that you do this. She is quite firm on the subject.”
“So is Sarama,” said Danu, but he could not resist further. Not once the Mother had invoked the Lady.
The Mother, w
ho must know that very well, brushed his hair with her hand, as his own Mother might have done. “Child,” she said, “remember what I told you of permitting yourself to be proud. Never let anyone scorn you. This is a child herself, rude and untutored, with dreadful manners. Let her learn to serve the Lady as a woman should.”
Humility would not suit Sarama well, Danu thought but forbore to say. The Mother kept him for a while, for the apparent pleasure of his company; then sent him back to his less than pleasant duty.
25
“Mother says,” said Danu, “no. You stay. I serve.”
He sounded conspicuously calm about it. Sarama was learning to read him, or so she hoped. He was not happy. He yielded to his king as a man should, and did his king’s bidding, but he was much too carefully obedient.
Sarama tried to imagine her brother Agni doing the will of a king who was a woman. The thought was too preposterous. Agni had no such compliance in him as this man seemed to have.
That he was a prince she had no doubt. She had seen how the king was with him. He had position here, and a place of respect. There must be council or gathering of the men apart from the women; if there was, he must be high in it.
And yet the king had him playing nursemaid to a stranger. Was he being punished? Or was she?
He seemed happy while he did women’s work. That was most puzzling of all. He was adept at it. He did it well. He managed somehow to keep the house clean, the two of them fed, the horses tended, and himself in good order, without the slightest show of difficulty. The king sent him on errands, too, and the plain-faced young woman who seemed to be the king’s daughter seemed often to be demanding service of him.
She was an odd one. Her name was Catin; she was called the Mother’s heir-like, Sarama thought, a king’s chosen son, who would be king after him. It did not seem to be as uncertain a thing as it could be among the tribes. Catin was settled in it, as solidly as Sarama had been in her place as Old Woman’s successor.
It seemed to Sarama that Catin was more to Danu than simple friend or kin. That they were not blood kin she had gathered. He was, it seemed, from another city—though why or how he had come here, she did not understand. He did not act as a husband should act, even a husband of a lesser tribe who had married into the king’s tent. And yet there was something between them, something other than mere amity.
