Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Mother Lauria said, “You, Camilla n’ha Kyria, Rafaella n’ha Doria, stand before me. This is no game; I ask you two for the last time if you are willing to join hands, exchange a kiss as sisters, and pledge to amend your quarrel before it is too late. You will have no other chance.”

  Camilla said, her hands clenched into hard fists, “I would rather you killed me, than apologize without fault and grovel before her!”

  Callista said, “Rafaella, will you apologize?”

  Rafaella had the craven thought, if I do, then perhaps they will only punish her . . . if I break down now and apologize, they will think I do so because I am afraid of punishment, and they will know I am more cowardly, that she is braver and more defiant than I am! Show myself cowardly before her? Never!

  She said, spitting the words out, “Beat me, then, or kill me if you will! Is this Amazon justice?”

  “Kill you?” Mother Callista laughed, not amused. “We are not Guardsmen, to challenge your defiance, and reward you for your stubbornness because you are able to disguise it as heroism. You stand here, then, ready to submit yourselves to punishment? Or will you apologize and pledge to live at peace?”

  Rafaella felt her stomach lurch, her knees almost too weak to hold her upright. What are they going to do to us? She wanted to cry out, beg for mercy, but before Camilla’s cold, defiant face she thought she would rather die there and then, than show herself afraid. Neither of them spoke, and at last Mother Lauria shrugged.

  “On your own heads, then, you silly, stupid girls! You have left us no choice. Go and fetch the chains.”

  Chains! Rafaella thought in horror. This is worse than I feared . . . .

  Camilla was deathly white; Rafaella wondered for a moment if she would faint. Mother Lauria said, “Make sure neither of them has any weapons.”

  They stood side by side, each trying to ignore the other’s presence as they were searched to the skin. Rafaella was shaking, but before Camilla’s iron control she resolved she would not betray any sign of her terror.

  Mother Callista stretched her hand out and one of the women handed her a pair of handcuffs, joined by a short length of chain, not more than three inches. She said, “You two have refused to keep your oath of your free will, and will not pledge to live together at peace. Now you will be chained together wrist to wrist; you will eat together, sleep together, work together and live together until you have learned to live in company as sisters must do. When you discover that neither of you can take so much as a single step without her sister’s cooperation, then you will learn a lesson that whatever we do of necessity involves another. Most of us learn this lesson less painfully. Camilla, are you left-handed?”

  “Yes,” said Camilla reluctantly.

  “Give me your right hand, then. Rafaella, are you left-handed?”

  “Right.”

  “That is good; otherwise you would have had to flip a coin, and abide by the lot.” Her mouth tight with angry distaste, she buckled the handcuffs on their wrists.

  Some of the women watching giggled a little, nervously. One of them intoned, “May you be forever one,” mocking the phrase of catenas marriage, and frowned at the Guild-mother’s angry look.

  “Leave them now,” Mother Callista said, “and go up to bed, all of you. This shameful episode is finished.”

  Camilla said nervously, “What do we do now?”

  Mother Callista said indifferently, “That is for you to decide. Together.” She rose without a backward glance and went out of the room. Kindra looked at them for a moment and seemed about to speak, then she, too, turned and went up to bed.

  One of the women who had witnessed the quarrel said, “Maybe now you silly brats will stop keeping us in an uproar night and day—and if you want to fight, you’ll have all the time you want to do it where it won’t bother anyone else!”

  Rafaella sat with tears rolling down her face. Unfair, cruel, humiliating! How could Kindra have let them do this to me? Why didn’t Kindra warn me what would happen? Doesn’t she love me at all? They all hate me, they’re all taking Camilla’s part . . . .

  She moved automatically to wipe away her tears and felt the metal cuff jerk hard on her hand, pulling Camilla’s wrist up toward her eyes. Camilla yanked hard on it and said, “Stop that, damn it!”

  Rafaella began to cry, sobbing helplessly, her free hand up to her face. Camilla said coldly, “Now you may weep, when it is too late to mend matters.”

  “And what did you do to mend them?” Rafaella demanded, snuffling.

  Camilla’s voice was icy. “Nothing. You need not remind me what a fool I am.”

  For a long time neither of them moved. The fire burned low and the room was very dark. Rafaella saw out of the corner of her eyes that Camilla raised her hand to her face as if she was wiping away tears, but thought. Her crying? That emmasca? I don’t think she’s human enough to know how to cry! And indeed, Camilla made no sound or movement.

  Rafaella felt weary, incapable of coherent thought. She had never been so tired in her life. How would she stand this? How long would it last? Since the Guild-mother said they would eat together and work together and sleep together, she wondered if it would be many days. How could she possibly endure it, to have her enemy always at her elbow? She shuddered, and saw Camilla turn to stare angrily at her.

  She wished she was safely in her own room, her own bed. But how could she go to bed with Camilla chained to her wrist? This was worse than a beating! She would not make the first move, nor ask that they go upstairs.

  Although, soon or late, I must go up to the bathroom—sooner, rather than later, since I am pregnant—well, I will not ask her.

  And she felt that she had won a kind of victory when it was Camilla who finally muttered, “I suppose we cannot sit here all night. Shall we go upstairs, then?”

  “I don’t mind,” Rafaella said ungraciously, but it was hard to keep pace with Camilla’s long steps, and Rafaella stumbled and fell on the stairs, dragging Camilla down; Camilla swore.

  “Will you break my shins, too, damn you?”

  “Do you think I break my own leg to spite you, bitch?”

  “How do I know what you are likely to do?”

  Rafaella lapsed into furious silence. Even years later she remembered the angry humiliation of having to relieve herself with the other woman at her elbow, and the struggle she had not to cry. I won’t give her the satisfaction! Camilla herself behaved with complete, calm aloofness, as if she were completely alone. Rafaella wondered how she could accept it so calmly.

  (Years later Camilla said to her, “I wanted to scream, to cry for hours, to slap you. But you were so arrogant, so aloof, as if you didn’t know I was there. I felt I couldn’t behave worse than you did, I had to pretend to be calm . . . then, too, I had had more practice than you in enduring humiliations. You did not know, then, how much I had endured in the way of torment, that I could endure this, too . . . .”)

  Rafaella said coldly, “Well, are we to sleep on the floor in the hallway here?”

  “Where they can all jeer at us in the morning? Not likely!”

  Rafaella said reluctantly, “There is room in my bed.”

  “You would like to wake all your friends, then, to jeer at me?”

  Rafaella realized that the three other women who slept in her room knew nothing of what had happened.

  “Would you rather wake your friends?”

  “What friends?” Camilla asked, “I sleep alone—which I am sure you have never done in your life—and at least in my bed we will not be seen!”

  Discouraged, Rafaella muttered assent. In Camilla’s room she had to struggle one-handed to get off her boots. Camilla was already undressed, in the slashed, still-damp nightgown she had been wearing. Rafaella decided not to take off anything else.

  Rafaella slept badly, in her clothes, and on an unaccustomed side. Every time she stirred, the handcuffs jerked her awake again. When she woke, she felt abruptly the surging, uneasy nausea which she had f
elt only a few times before, but which the Guild-mothers had told her some women suffered in early pregnancy; she sat up, sick and retching, and Camilla grumbled, waking abruptly, “Lie down! What in the devil—”

  “I’m sick,” Rafaella mumbled miserably, and hurried off down the hall, Camilla angrily stumbling behind. She knelt over the basin, retching, sunk in hopeless misery. Devra, there early for kitchen-duty, came to wipe her face with a cold cloth.

  “Poor Rafi, I hoped you would escape this—” she broke off, staring in angry shock at Camilla.

  “What—”

  Rafaella was too sick and wretched to explain. Camilla said briefly, “We fought. This is how they punished us.”

  Devra stared in dismay. “But Rafi, this is terrible, when you are sick—does Kindra know? Can she do this to you now?” Rafaella could not answer; she could only think, I brought it on myself. Camilla was standing there, her face turned away in angry disgust. Stumbling to the room for her boots, Rafaella found that she was crying helplessly.

  “Oh, shut up,” Camilla shouted. “Is that all you can think to do, cry all the time?”

  “I—I can’t help it—”

  “It’s bad enough to be kept awake all night with you jerking around, and wake up with you throwing up all over everything, do I have to listen to you bawling all day, too? Shut up or I’ll slap you soft-headed!”

  “Just you try it!”

  Camilla raised her hand for a blow, but discovered that the force of the slap threw her off balance. They fell together in a tangle on the bed. Camilla, swearing, hauled herself upright.

  “Where are you going now?” Rafaella demanded.

  “To wash myself, dirty pig, and dress, or don’t you wash? And am I to go to breakfast in my dirty nightgear?”

  Rafaella said shakily, “I’m not hungry.” She felt she could not face the room full of women.

  But Camilla said coldly, “I am. I’m not pregnant,” and Rafaella had no choice but to trail along awkwardly to the bath where Camilla awkwardly washed herself with one hand. She turned her face stubbornly away while Camilla dressed. The room was full of women who stared or giggled or whispered to one another. Rafaella supposed every woman in the Guild House knew the story by now. In the dining room they had to argue again about where they would sit; finally they balanced awkwardly on the end of the bench. Rafaella could not eat, though she drank a little hot milk. Kindra, at a nearby table, turned and looked at them, but, though it seemed to Rafaella that her glance was sympathetic, she did not speak.

  “Ah,” someone jeered, “so you have wedded di catenas, you two?”

  “Camilla is a Dry Towner, to put her woman in chains!”

  Rafaella began to realize what she had never recognized before; Camilla was not particularly well liked. Most of the taunts were aimed at her; what few expressions of sympathy were spoken, came to Rafaella. But most of the women seemed to avoid them, embarrassed.

  It was a miserable day, punctuated with insults and occasional slaps, jerking at the cuffs that bound them, hobbling awkwardly around the house to their assigned tasks. After a time they began to be able to walk without pulling one another off balance, but they still argued angrily over almost every step and when, toward evening, Rafaella began to cry with exhaustion, Camilla slapped her again, and Rafaella turned and grabbed at her throat. They went down together, fighting, clawing, gripping at any part of each other they could reach, sobbing with rage and humiliation . . . they could not, with their hands chained together, even get a good grip on one another’s hair!

  Abruptly, Rafaella began to laugh. She lay back, released Camilla, and lay laughing helplessly on the rug.

  “What’s so damned funny?”

  “You are,” Rafaella gurgled, “and I am. We are. Can’t you see how idiotic we are? Here we are fighting this way and we can’t even get at each other—any more than we can get away from each other!”

  Camilla began slowly to chuckle. She said, “And I can’t even run away without taking you along.” They laughed together till the tears ran down their faces, Rafaella holding her sides with pain.

  “My shoulder,” Camilla groaned. “I think it’s broken—”

  “Did I do that? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—oh, this is ridiculous—”

  “It isn’t hurt, I guess. Just pulled. Did I hurt you?” Camilla asked, “I didn’t want—” she helped the other girl to her feet. Rafaella stumbled on the stairs and Camilla reached out and steadied her. Surprised, Rafaella thanked her.

  “Don’t thank me,” Camilla grumbled. “If you fall, I am sure to break my knee!”

  In the bathroom, Rafaella looked wistfully at one of the tubs.

  “I wish I could have a bath. But I don’t see how—”

  Camilla began to laugh. “I don’t think there is a tub big enough to hold us both.”

  For some reason that struck them both as funny, too. Camilla said, roughly, “If you will wash my face, I will wash yours.”

  Weakly, tears of laughter dripping down their faces, they washed one another. As they went down to dinner, Rafaella said shyly, “Before we go in—let us agree where to sit so we don’t have to haul on one another before the rest of them—”

  Camilla shrugged. “As you will. Where we sat this morning, then?”

  When they had found a seat, Camilla said harshly to the serving-woman, “Here, you, we can’t chew our meat like dogs. They have not given us back our knives; we must have something to cut our meat with!”

  Kindra heard them. She said, “Here,” and handed her own knife to Camilla, watching while they cut up the meat into bites. When Camilla had finished, Kindra sheathed it again without comment and walked to her own seat. Rafaella watched her walk away, wondering, Is she gloating over us?

  After dinner some of the women gathered in the music room to hear Kindra and Devra sing ballads; Rafaella and Camilla sat on a cushion to listen, but the novelty of the sight was wearing off and no one paid any attention to them. When they separated to go upstairs, Rezi stopped beside Rafaella and nudged her.

  “I thought you boasted of never sharing your bed with a woman, Rafi!”

  Rafaella felt hot crimson suffusing her face. She knew Kindra was watching them. Camilla snapped “Let her alone!”

  “Why, Camilla, gallantry? And after only one night in her bed? Tell me, what is this magic which a woman of her kind can cast on you, so that already you guard her like a lover—”

  “Shut up, damn you,” Camilla said, her voice dangerously quiet. “I will not always be chained.”

  “So now the sworn foes are bredhin’y,” someone else jeered. “Like bride and groom, strangers before, and afterward—”

  Camilla said in an undertone “Let’s get out of here. We don’t have to stay here and listen to that.”

  They got out of the room hurriedly, to a chorus of jeers, catcalls, and ribald jokes. On the stairs, looking at the tears in Rafaella’s eyes, Camilla said quietly, “I am sorry about that, Rafaella. I would not willingly have exposed you to that kind of joke. I know they do not like me, but I had thought they were your friends—”

  Rafaella swallowed hard. She said, “I thought so, too.”

  “But they take it out on me because I have brought this on you,” Camilla said bitterly, and was silent. “I am older than you, and I first drew my dagger. You should have told Kindra that. Why did you not?”

  Rafaella bent her head. She mumbled, “I don’t know.”

  She had thought of it. And then she thought, if they send me away, even in disgrace, I have kinsmen and kinswomen, I will not be wholly alone. But Camilla is emmasca and I once heard Kindra say that her kin had cast her off. She has nowhere else to go.

  She said instead, “I must have clean clothes for tomorrow. Will you come to my room while I fetch them?”

  “Of course. Though I hope your roommates are not there . . .” Camilla said, stiffly. “I am afraid of them . . . they all dislike me, and you are so popular—”

  R
afaella said, really shocked, “Why, everyone in the house likes you!”

  “No,” said Camilla, bitterly, “they are carefully polite to me because I am emmasca, mutilata . . . no one truly likes me save Kindra, and now she will hate me, too, because I have brought trouble and disgrace upon you, her pet and darling . . . .”

  “Kindra does not love me at all,” Rafaella said, and began to cry. Camilla looked at her in dismay. “She took your part against me, Camilla . . . and I thought she loved me . . .” and all the old hurt surged over her again. Trying to keep back her sobs, she went to her chest and took out a fresh tunic and under-tunic, clean breeches and stockings. She said “I do not want to sleep in my clothes again . . . .”

  “You need not,” Camilla said, and then, bitterness breaking through, “unless you are afraid to undress in my presence, knowing I am a lover of women . . . .”

  “Don’t be silly,” Rafaella said. “That never occurred to me; do you think I even listened to their rude jokes?” Then she realized, suddenly, that Camilla was not joking “But you are serious! Truly, I never thought it!”

  “If you did not, it is sure you are the only one who did not,” Camilla said. Rafaella stopped and stood very still, looking at the taut face, the thin mouth. It seemed that she was seeing Camilla for the first time, and something that had been no more than a word, an insult suddenly became real to her. She thought; perhaps she was even Kindra’s lover, perhaps it was for her sake that Kindra would not pledge to me . . . but she was afraid and ashamed to say the words. Finally she said, feeling the words awkward on her lips, “That was not—not necessary, Camilla. I do not care what they say.”

  What can I say to her? I loved Kindra and I never really understood, and now I do not know what to say to her. I feel like a fool.

  And Kindra loved me, too. But if she loved me as she said, why did she drive me into the arms of a man? Shaking, suddenly aware of a thousand things beyond her knowledge, feeling suddenly very young and childlike, she turned her eyes away from Camilla. She said “Will you unfasten my cuffs, please? I cannot reach the buttons on that wrist.”

  They helped each other undress; but although Camilla did not remove her under-tunic, as she turned to get out of her trousers, Rafaella saw what she had not seen that morning when the other woman dressed, the terrible scars all along Camilla’s shoulders and back. She drew a long breath of consternation.