Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Novel 19 (37 page)

 
          
"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?"

 
          
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.

 
          
"Here
is the Punishment House; I, as Vaniya's heir, have authority to admit you
here."

 
          
She
spoke briefly with the hefty, sun-tanned woman at the doorway, and the woman
went away, letting Cendri and Miranda inside.

 
          
In
the course of her studies Cendri had visited many places of confinement on many
different worlds; the Punishment House of the Residence of the Pro-Matriarch contained
four identical small barred rooms, cells, weathertight and immaculately
clean
. The inhabitants—there were two at present—looked
clean and well-fed, warmly clad against the chill and provided with blankets;
nevertheless Cendri shrank in distaste from the display, on the wall where
every inhabitant of the Punishment House could see them, of a variety of
increasingly unpleasant instruments of restraint or punishment, including a
variety of long, brutal whips. She also remembered what she had been told upon
first landing on
Isis
; the penalty for any male who attacked a
citizen was immediate death, meaning that males being punished could not even
resist without incurring immediate destruction like any wild or dangerous
animal. She shuddered in horror, thinking of Dal in such a place as this.

 
          
Miranda
pressed her hand. She whispered, "I know, I feel that way too. It is
horrible. And yet most males cannot be controlled any other way; you cannot
judge them all by the kind of men whom we know; they are exceptional, you
know."

           
Cendri thought of the boy who had
wept in her arms at the seaside, of the gentleness of every man there, of the
genuineness of the communication. Not for sex alone, but for some kind of
togetherness, some way of re-uniting the sundered halves of the society—she
found herself wanting to cry, because even Miranda did not understand.

 
          
Miranda
said, gesturing, "This is the messenger. He was interrogated by the lash;
but Lialla told me he said nothing and at last they were convinced he knew
nothing worth telling, more than was in his message. But you should ask him
about it, since the message—the message Vaniya did not give him leave to
deliver—was for you. Yal," she said, to the man who lay huddled on the
bare floor, shivering under his blankets, "I have brought the Scholar Dame
from University to you. If your message concerns her, you are now free to give
it."

 
          
The
man Yal slowly, dragged himself upright. Cendri saw with horror that the back
of his thick coarse shirt was flecked with blood, and that he moved as if every
motion cost him excruciating pain.

 
          
He
said, "You are indeed the Scholar Dame from University? The Mother Vaniya
said that you would have no interest in the message I bear—she said, what is a
male to the Scholar Dame?"

 
          
Cendri
said quietly, "Vaniya was mistaken, Yal. If you bear a message from my
beloved Companion, let me hear it."

 
          
"Respect,
Scholar Dame, the message is not from your Companion, but concerning him,"
Yal said. "I was to say that your Companion, the Master Scholar Dallard
Malocq, is being held in the work-settlement of the men at the great dam, and
that there he will remain until men of the Unity are sent here, to learn of the
conditions under which men of Isis must live and suffer all their lives without
freedom. We demand that the Unity shall require the women of
Isis
to grant us the rights of free citizens,
and until the Unity has answered us we shall hold the worthy Scholar Male among
us."

 
          
Cendri
gasped. So this was the end of Dai's work among the men of
Isis
—to be held as their prisoner, to force
action from Vaniya!

 
          
It
might have worked, with Mahala
..
.she wants
Isis
a part of the Unity, but on
their own
terms. But Vaniya! Cendri's blood ran cold. Dearly
as she had come to love the Pro-Matriarch, she knew that the woman would never
compromise with the men.

 
          
Miranda
said sharply, "That is not the way things are done on Isis, Yal. I can
assure you, as daughter of the Pro-Matriarch, that if you return the Scholar
Dame's Companion to us, and return to your duties, my mother Vaniya will be
ready and more than ready to listen to any reasonable request."

 
 
          
Yal
said, "We have done with reasonable requests, Lady; all reason has done
for us is to keep every male on
Isis
in chains."

 
          
Cendri
begged, "Where is my—where is the Master Scholar from the Unity being
held?"

 
          
Yal's
bruised face moved in a smile. His lips were swollen and darkened with dried
blood. He said, "Ah, Respected Dame, that would be telling, now, wouldn't
it? And you can see they asked me, and they knew how to persuade me; if I'd
known—" he shuddered, "I'd surely have told, wouldn't I? I told them
before they sent me, don't tell me anything. What I don't know, they can't make
me tell, see, not even if they kill me."

 
          
Cendri
shuddered; he spoke so matter-of-factly of torture and death. Was this what Dal
would suffer for the fate of their messenger? This brave, and stupid, volunteer
would die for his cause; but would it do him any good?

 
          
Miranda
said sharply, "Is it worth it to you to be beaten and tortured for this
folly, man?"

 
          
Yal
smiled again. His smile, in his tortured face, was very terrible. He said,
"But there are not enough women on
Isis
to beat us all to death one by one,
woman." He used, not the term of respect, but the simple female noun.
"I came here knowing I would be questioned as all men are questioned, by
the whip, and then put in chains, as all men on
Isis
live chained by the will of women.
But—" he held out his right hand; made the slow unloosing gesture Cendri
had seen before, "we were not born in chains! And we will not die in
them!"