“Oh, it will not,” said Delinda. “Which is where phase two comes in.”
“Phase two?”
“Breeding,” said Delinda, and smiled.
Oh, no, not this subject again, thought Jeryl, but he had decided to play along and, besides, he found he was really enjoying her animation when discussing her plan, which was obviously a subject near and dear to her heart. “All right. Tell me what breeding has to do with it.”
“You see, breeding has become rather a problem, especially in this sector,” said Delinda seriously. “When men are exposed to the dark rahnta for long periods of time, it becomes difficult for them to carry out their part. Even if they are still physically capable, they are usually terrified of the women who want to breed with them. As a result, few women are able to get pregnant.”
“I can see how that would happen,” said Jeryl. He found he was once again fighting the urge to laugh, and he could tell by her earnest expression that she did not find the topic at all amusing.
“Yes,” she said, pleased at his understanding. “But I think if the men are not treated harshly, and no one uses the dark rahnta on them, they will regain their virility. Some of them may even want to breed!”
“That seems, er, possible,” said Jeryl, taking shallow breaths. What was it he used to do to keep a straight face when Granna lectured him as a boy? He bit the inside of his cheek, hoping the pain would help. It did—barely.
“So then I will start hiring some young women from the village to come work on the estate,” she continued. “There are plenty of women who have no power and cannot afford to pay Bloduewedd to share the rahnta, nor could they really afford to go to a breeding house, and even if they could, they probably would not get pregnant on the first try—”
“A b-breeding house?” asked Jeryl. This idea was actually so novel that it stopped his urge to laugh. “Do you mean a brothel?”
“I do not know that word,” said Delinda, sounding a little impatient at being interrupted. “It is a place where women who cannot afford to buy their own slaves can go to get pregnant, or just for pleasure. Do you not have such places where you live?”
“Well, yes,” said Jeryl. “But they house women, not men. Men are customers.”
This seemed to stop Delinda cold. When she continued, her voice held incredulity. “So, where you are from, men like to breed so much they will pay to do it?”
“Er, well, sometimes, yes.” Why does this conversation keep turning around so I must answer difficult questions? “But please, go on with your plan.”
“This is encouraging,” she said as if to herself. “Perhaps later, you can tell me about some of your own sexual experiences.” Before Jeryl could respond to this alarming statement, she continued, and he breathed a sigh of relief. “As I was saying, there are many young women who would be well suited to work for me, and I believe if the men are no longer afraid of women, and have had some time for the effects of the dark rahnta to subside, the women will stand an excellent chance of becoming pregnant.”
Jeryl thought she was probably right, but did not understand why she had pronounced the last word with such significance. “And that would be a good thing?” he ventured.
“A very good thing,” she agreed enthusiastically. “Most women in town want nothing more than a baby or two, and many of them have been trying for years with no success. If several of the girls working for me were to turn up pregnant at the same time, it would be the biggest thing that has happened in the sector since…since the dark rahnta. Everyone will want to know how they did it.”
“And you will be happy to tell them,” finished Jeryl.
“Yes.” A fire lit her eyes, and Jeryl knew she was no longer seeing the view from the carriage window. “And I will be able to convince some of them to stop using the dark rahnta. Not all of them, but a few. Then they will start getting pregnant, and others will join. And then…” She stopped.
“And then what?” said Jeryl, caught up in her fantasy.
“And then I will be ready for phase three,” said Delinda, a steely determination in her eyes.
“Which is?” asked Jeryl, fascinated.
Delinda blinked, seeming to return to the present. “I am sorry, but I’m not quite ready to tell you about phase three. It’s a long way off in any case,” she sighed. “So, you see why I believe you will be of great help to me?”
“How is that?” asked Jeryl, cautiously.
“Well, you have never been a slave, you have led men and your family is in the farming business,” she said reasonably. “You can help me educate them. But most important, these men have never before seen a free man, and do not know how one should behave. You could be an example. Tell me, how much personal experience do you have with breeding?”
“Me? Well, um, ah…”
At that moment, the carriage took a rather hard jolt, causing Delinda to turn her attention to where they were. “Here we are,” she said, sighing happily. “Home.”
Chapter Seven
Jeryl lay in the dark and listened to the sounds that carried on the still night air. He was alone in the room, which had two beds. This wing of the estate’s main building was meant to house less important guests, not slaves, but as he and Ostyn currently comprised her entire staff, Delinda said it made better sense for them to stay in the main house. She had also indicated the old slave quarters needed significant improvements before she would consider them appropriate for her “employees”.
Jeryl had wondered if her true motives had more to do with keeping an eye on him than his convenience, but when she headed to the opposite side of the house to seek her own bedchamber, saying he should choose his own room from any on this floor of the wing, he had been able to select one separated from Ostyn’s by two rooms. It had glass-windowed doors opening to a balcony, and there was nothing to prevent him from slipping out without disturbing anyone.
He was very tired but did not want to risk falling asleep. If he did not actually leave tonight, he wanted to at least explore the exterior of the main house and back entrance to the stables, and to learn if there were any problems such as barking dogs or other nearby farms that would need to be avoided. He sat up and looked out the window and thought about the odd evening the three of them had just spent.
There had been a bath, and a meal of sorts. Delinda had apologetically explained it had been her intention to buy a former kitchen slave who could be put in charge of meals and the ordering of food. She had always had servants who prepared meals for her, and Ostyn’s primary experience was with livestock. Ostyn had volunteered that once they had pigs, he could slaughter them, but what happened to the meat after he passed it to the cook was a mystery to him.
They had managed to put together a cold meal from the supplies Delinda had purchased in town the day before. Jeryl, accustomed to a diet of food that could be preserved for long sea voyages, had been less concerned with the lack of variety than Delinda, who promised there would be improvements as soon as possible.
After the meal, she had brought out a stack of papers, which turned out to be several years’ worth of notes on phase one of her plan. She had been developing it since she was not yet a woman. Jeryl had found himself fascinated with the idea of a young girl from a privileged household impassioned with the plight of slaves. She was certainly nothing like the meek, submissive women his grandmother paraded before him, or the empty-headed daughters of aristocrats his father favored.
Jeryl sighed now, thinking about her face, lit by the firelight as the night had wore on, sharing her plans with him. How happy she had been to discover he could write and do figures. Jeryl had found himself getting drawn into her plans, even making suggestions about how he could assist in teaching others. He frowned. It was not her fault he planned to leave, and he was sorry about having to disappoint her. Her plan was, of course, ridiculous. Oh, it made a bizarre kind of sense. He supposed it was plausible that men who were not being treated as slaves might be happy enough with their new co
nditions to be more productive. He could even agree with the idea that childless women might be happier if they were able to have babies. But the notion that these things would bring support flocking to Delinda for the purpose of ending a well-entrenched system seemed like an idealistic fantasy to him.
As the moon rose higher, Jeryl decided it would be safe to slip out of the house. He opened the glass doors, wincing when they squeaked loudly. He held his breath, but heard no sounds of Ostyn stirring. He stepped out onto the balcony and looked over the edge to judge the best route down. Some kind of vine, the leaves still small at this time of year, climbed up the column that supported the floor on which he stood. In the moonlight it looked thorny, and he considered his bare feet.
Better stick with the inside route. He went back into the room and closed the doors behind him. Opening the door to the hall, he peered into the darkness. Quiet as a cat on his bare feet, he crept to the staircase. He had noticed a creak when he and Ostyn had climbed it earlier, and cursed inwardly because he could not remember which stair was the noisy one. Descending, he guessed incorrectly, resulting in a screech he was sure would wake Ostyn. After freezing for a full two minutes, he resumed his way to the front door—he had not yet located another exit—and slipped quietly out.
Once outside, he could smell the ocean. He had glimpsed it from the front steps of the estate’s main building, winking through the trees on the opposite side of the road. Now the direction of the wind had changed, and filled his nostrils with the clean scent of brine and sea air. He inhaled deeply, and any thoughts of delaying his departure flew from his mind. His aches and pains seemed as lessened by exposure to this familiar breeze as by any magic Delinda could offer.
He felt a brief pang of regret—guilt?—at the thought of her waking up to find him gone, but dismissed it as absurd. True, she had saved him from execution, but she had done so by buying him, and even though she insisted on referring to him as an employee, he knew that according to what passed as law here, he was her property. Also, Delinda had only rescued him to achieve her own ends. As noble as her cause might be, it was not Jeryl’s own. He had no reason to feel guilty.
If he was going to leave tonight, he might as well take some provisions. He circled the building, which seemed even larger from the outside, to where he thought the outside entrance to the kitchen must be. When he thought he had found the right section of the house, he opened a door and found a small room containing a bench and some cleaning implements. He passed through a doorway at the back of the room to find himself in a scullery. The next archway led into a kitchen. He located the pantry and took down all the bread, cheese and dried fruit he could find. He felt bad that Delinda and Ostyn would have nothing for breakfast, but reasoned they would have had to make another trip to town in any case, as this bread would all be stale in a day or two and there was no one to bake any fresh. He wrapped his booty in a tablecloth and retraced his steps to the back door, closing it carefully behind him.
His injured foot scraped a flagstone, reminding him he was in no condition for a long walk over unknown terrain. He changed direction, heading toward the stables. Once there, he eased in and set his burden down near the door. Rows of stalls lined the sides of the long building, and the carriage they had arrived in faced large doors at the back. Ostyn must have driven it there before unhitching the horses and bringing them around to their stalls.
Most of the stalls lay empty—Delinda’s notes included plans to buy breeding stock to fill them—but there were still more horses than the two needed to draw the carriage. Jeryl wondered which of these horses were broken to saddle, if any, or if all were farm horses accustomed to pulling rather than bearing their burdens. He was not a confident enough horseman to manage an unwilling or spirited horse.
He approached the last two stalls on his left and thought he recognized the two bays that had pulled the carriage. He decided to leave them alone for now—even if they were trained to carry a rider they were probably too tired from their journey. Cautiously, he peered into the stall opposite.
There was a quiet nicker—the horse had caught his scent. Jeryl was alarmed, afraid the horse would whinny loudly and send Ostyn or Delinda running to make sure no one was stealing a horse. Of course, that was precisely what Jeryl was doing, but he could probably come up with some other explanation for being in the stables, if not for the bundle of purloined food.
Jeryl’s older brothers, accomplished riders all, usually spoke gently to their horses and brought them treats. Carrots, thought Jeryl. Horses like carrots. Sadly, he had none. He wondered about the dried fruit in his contrived knapsack. Would a horse like some of that?
He retrieved some of the fruit and returned to the front of the stall from which he had previously heard the sound. He wondered what one said to a horse. Hopefully, the tone of voice was all that mattered. He crept closer to the open top of the stall door and said, feeling ridiculous, “Hello?” Almost instantly, an enormous shape moved toward him from the gloom and a large gray head stuck out over the top of the stall door. He stepped back, stumbling and landing on his butt, hard. The horse nickered again, looking at him expectantly.
Jeryl got to his feet, retrieved the dried fruit from where it had fallen and gingerly extended it toward the creature’s mouth. “Sorry about that, but you startled me.” The horse’s nostrils quivered and the nose came forward, hovering over Jeryl’s trembling hand. As delicately as a lady sampling a treat at a society gathering, the soft lips plucked the fruit from his palm without so much as brushing Jeryl’s skin. Jeryl offered another piece with the same result.
Jeryl located a bridle hanging on the outside of the stall and hoped that meant it was already adjusted to fit this horse. He slipped it over the horse’s head, meeting no resistance. He looked around for a saddle and did not see one at first, but was relieved to locate one in an area shadowed by the carriage. He could not recall ever saddling a horse by himself, and was uncertain as to whether he should do it before of after leading the horse out of the stall. He decided on the latter, and was relieved when the horse stood placidly and allowed him to fumble with the myriad buckles until he thought the saddle was on correctly. There were fastenings behind the place where the rider would be seated— Jeryl went back to where he had found the saddle and located some sacks that could be attached. He gratefully transferred his stolen food from the tablecloth to these bags.
Using a stool which seemed to be designed for the purpose, he mounted the horse and slipped around the carriage and out into the moonlight.
* * * * *
Delinda was not having a restful night. She had been so exhausted by the time she climbed the stairs to her bedchamber that she had thought she would be sound asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow, but it was not to be. Her bed, usually so comfortable, seemed to be full of hills and valleys tonight. Whenever she started to drift off, she began to dream about Jeryl. All the talk about breeding and pregnancies, along with her startling glimpse of his impressive equipment, had combined to create a series of strange images that kept repeating in her mind. Images of Jeryl, dressed in the silky pants he had been wearing that morning, chasing her through a breeding house full of female slaves, wielding an enormous erection like a sword. Sometimes it was a real sword and sometimes Bloduewedd or Grenda or both accompanied him. After being startled awake for the fifth or sixth time, she gave up and got out of the bed.
Moonlight streaming through the window made a candle unnecessary, and Delinda wrapped herself in a warm robe and stepped out onto her balcony to enjoy the moon. She stood a few moments in the silvery light then thought she heard a noise. She realized someone was coming out of the back door. Stepping back into the shadows, she watched until she saw a figure emerge into the moonlight, carrying a bundle over one shoulder. It was clearly Jeryl—she knew of no one else in the sector that approached his size, and the light of the moon glinted on his golden hair.
Disappointment surged through her like the tide. He had been so att
entive in the carriage and then in the great old library as she shared her plans with him. He had seemed agreeable, even enthusiastic. But now it was clear he had only been waiting for her to sleep so he could escape.
Delinda considered calling out, but hesitated. What good would it do? She would probably not be able to overtake him, as she would have to go through the house and he already had a head start. She saw, however, he was not heading toward the trees, as she had expected. Instead he was going toward the stables, no doubt intending to steal a horse. She sighed heavily. If he really wanted to go, she could not stop him. She could report his escape to the authorities, but that would mean going to Grenda, who would be delighted to track Jeryl down—and make some excuse to kill him. Eventually, she would have to explain his absence. If he had a better chance of evading capture with a horse, she would let him take one. She could afford more horses.
Hoping she was mistaken, she sat in a chair hidden by deep shadows and waited, praying silently to the Goddess there was some other reason for his trip to the stables and she would see him returning to the house instead of galloping away. After an interminable wait, the sound of a horse’s hooves striking mossy ground confirmed her fears. She stood to see the shadow of a gray horse ridden by a tall man vanish into the trees. Sighing again, she returned to bed and, eventually, her unquiet sleep.
* * * * *
Jeryl had no idea where he was going, but until daylight he must risk open space, as it was too dark under the trees to prevent his horse from tripping and hurting them both. Moreover, he was drawn to the scent of the sea like a moth to a flame. After only minutes of riding, he could hear breaking waves and was shortly leading his horse out of the trees and onto a wide, glistening expanse of sand.
He tried to estimate where he was in relation to the rocky shore where he had first awakened. The shoreline was gentler here, and there was no sign of the cliffs he had climbed with such agonizing slowness only—could it really be less than two days ago? Jeryl’s head spun at the number of things that had happened to him in so short a time.
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