Captivity (9 page)

The woman stared at Val in surprise while
Jana hushed him. Despite my notable lack of success so far, I
continued my policy of feigned politeness, not having an
alternative strategy. “Thank you,” I said, moving to take the dish.
“That is most welcome.”

“Welcome,” Val repeated. “Thank you.” He
recited the lessons he was being taught at home. “You’re
welcome.”

Michaela held the bowl close, guarding it
with her free arm, and backed away from me. “This is for the little
ones,” she said. “Not for you.”

I shook my head, uncomprehending, still
reaching for the food, but the woman jumped back to the doorway.
“We figured out how to tame you, ‘Gravina bitch. Take your dagger,
keep you in the dark. Give you water but no food. See how long you
can keep up your nasty sibyl’s tricks then.”

Literally, the word
sibyl
means a
seer
, the highest level of seminary-trained telepath, a
woman who, by virtue of superior education and training uses her
second sight at a level beyond that of other gifted people. To
Michaela and the others the word had a simpler connotation:
witch
. I felt faint with fear, beginning to see where such
thinking might lead. As in the old days, before seminary training
and marriage, my gift of
crypta
was proving to be more of a
curse.

Michaela turned from me in triumph, almost as
if she could read my thoughts, and clucked at the children again.
“Come on. Eat up while it’s hot.”

Jana held Val back from the food. “We don’t
want any,” she said. Her voice was higher than usual, more
childish. She was hungry and scared, with a pinched look about her
mouth. Val was beginning to whine.

The woman started out the door. “More for us
then,” she said. “You’ll be begging soon enough, but you’ll have to
wait till supper.”

“Stay, please,” I said. To Jana and Val I
said, “You must eat and not worry about me.”

Michaela turned slowly, grinning as she held
the dish toward the children. Jana stood irresolute, caught between
temptation and what she felt was right.

I nodded permission. “Papa would want you to
keep your strength up.”

With Dominic’s blessing bestowed, Jana
snatched the dish from Michaela’s hand and began cramming nut cakes
into her mouth, chewing and swallowing rapidly and efficiently. She
picked up a piece of mutton, a queasy expression on her face. Jana
loathes mutton fat, but she was famished and had taken to heart my
words about preserving her strength. Finally, gulping several times
as she fought her revulsion, she made a heroic effort and choked
down some of the meat, looking all the time as if she was going to
be sick.

“Let Val have a share,” I said.

Jana offered a piece of congealed fat to Val,
who looked at it in horror, cried and ran back to me.

“Jana,” I said. “Give Val a nut cake.”

Jana stiffened at my tone of voice. She found
the smallest, greasiest cake and held it at arm’s length between
thumb and index finger. “Here you are, brat,” she said, calling Val
by the same word Reynaldo had used. “Eat your breakfast, brat.”

Val shook his head and clutched at me. “I
want oatmeal!” he screamed. “I want oatmeal and berries.”

Michaela watched the scene through narrowed
eyes. “Listen to the spoiled little lord,” she said. “If he were
mine, I’d give him something to cry about.”

Stupidly I responded to this remark. “I’m
sure you would,” I said. “And how many of yours survived your
mothering?”

The question enraged the woman. She advanced
on me and Val, her arm raised. I stepped in front of Val to protect
him and pointed to my bruised face. “See that?” I said. “I can do
that to you from across the room.” To myself I thought,
I could
if I had slept and eaten, or had seen the eclipse
. For now I
could only bluff.

The woman stopped at my threat, laughing to
show she was not intimidated. “I’ve had worse than that on good
days,” she said. “That’s one of Reynaldo’s love pats, that is.” She
looked over her shoulder where Jana was staring thoughtfully at the
remaining food. Two small nut cakes and half the mutton lay on the
plate. Michaela sniffed. “Not hungry?” She bent over to take the
precious food away.

Jana had an inspiration. “I’m full now, thank
you,” she said, imitating my formal politeness. “But I would like
to save some to eat later.”

The woman saw through the childish ruse.
“Now, little lady,” she said, clearly admiring Jana’s spirit. “You
must eat it now or I’ll eat it myself.” She pretended to grab at
the food while Jana hesitated.

“Go ahead, love,” I said to Jana. “It’s all
right.” The woman stepped back, allowing Jana to finish the
remaining food. Jana rose to stand beside me when she had done.

Michaela looked from me to my daughter and
back again, searching in vain for a resemblance. Something about my
appearance revived her earlier resentment. “You and your soft
life,” she said, as if accusing me of murder. “You won’t be so
pretty when you leave here.”

She studied my dress, a well-made, sturdy
garment for travel and riding, now creased from being slept in, and
stained with my vomit from yesterday, Val’s dirt, and milk from my
leaking breasts. But none of that concerned her. She was fascinated
by the distinctive ‘Graven sleeve. It was the fashion for married
noblewomen to wear gowns and shifts with the left sleeve
constructed of two pieces, one attached at the shoulder that ran to
mid-biceps like a T-shirt, the other piece loose, covering from
wrist to above the elbow. The pieces were held together by a few
thin laces, leaving a strip of skin showing to display the marriage
brand.

Michaela came closer and touched a fingertip
to the bare skin of the scar. “That must have hurt,” she said, a
note of respect in her voice.

I jerked my arm away. In my petulance, my
fury at being outwitted and humiliated by a bandit’s whore, I would
not lower myself to accept her admiration for something beyond her
comprehension. “It is the ‘Graven Rite of Marriage,” I said,
tilting my head back so I could look down my nose at her the way
Dominic could look at everybody. “In the communion of husband and
wife, we do not feel pain.”

The woman shrugged, her attempt at kindness
rebuffed. “I’ll have the dress, then, before it’s ruined.”

I stared in confusion. Michaela was a big
woman, strong and muscular, easily several Terran sizes larger than
me. The dress, that fit me like a glove, was useless to her. “Why?”
I asked. “You can’t wear it, and there’s no one here to sell it
to.” As if it mattered. I was dazed with all that had happened, one
deprivation after another.

“Never you mind why,” Michaela said. “Take it
off, and your shift, and be quick about it.” When I hesitated she
jerked her head at the overflowing chamber pot. “Give me the dress,
or you can shit on the floor, you and your spoiled little
lord.”

I took off the dress and my shift, handed
them over. Michaela, like the men, treated the riding knickers as a
big joke. “Not so tough, despite your breeches,” she said, eyeing
me with contempt. She stuck two fingers in the waistband to judge
the quality of the cloth. “That linen should be good for
something.” She snapped her fingers for me to take them off.

In my nakedness I glanced nervously from Val
to Jana, afraid the woman might demand their clothes as well.
Michaela saw my expression, guessed my concern. “No,” she said in a
tone of high moral indignation, “we don’t waste good clothes on
children.”

Her words were disingenuous, since bandits of
any age rarely waste good clothes by wearing them. They use the
best items of loot as currency, to trade for food or weapons.
Michaela was worried that Reynaldo would discover her disobedience
in tampering with his prize. It was my clothes she wanted, not the
children’s—wanted them so badly that she was willing to risk
provoking Reynaldo’s telepathic punishment.

The woman’s forceful emotions pulled me in
against my will to share her thoughts. Already thinking up excuses
to placate Reynaldo, Michaela reasoned that a wife was often
considered damaged by the fact of the abduction alone. Margrave
Aranyi, like many another robbed husband, could come to believe I
had been defiled and refuse to have me back, with or without my
clothes. Why not take the clothes now, Michaela thought, since
Dominic might neither know nor care what became of them? It is a
wager all kidnappers make, prepared to absorb the loss on the wife,
staking everything on the hope of ransom for the heir.

Michaela would not dream of jeopardizing her
chances of wealth by mistreating the children, much as her hands
itched to slap what she saw as the overindulged, ill-mannered
future Margrave Aranyi who badly needed to be taught a lesson. For
Jana, the most unusual child she had ever met, she was developing a
grudging affection. Turning her eyes away from Val’s tantrum, she
allowed herself a brief smile of approval at Jana’s more adult
demeanor.

Jana had watched, helpless and seething, as I
was forced to undress. Michaela’s greasy, matted hair with its new
adornment caught her attention. “You stole my mama’s comb,” Jana
said. “I saw you.”

Michaela stared in shock, as everybody seemed
to, at Jana’s ferocious look and voice. The woman decided to tough
things out. “Did you, you spying little whore?”

Jana ignored my head-shakings and my
whispers. “Yes,” she said. “You let Captain Reynaldo put his penis
in your mouth. But Mama says that’s not how you make babies.”

The woman shrieked with raucous laughter.
“Your mama’s right about that. Now ask her what she did with your
papa to get the comb herself.”

As Jana turned a hurt face back to me,
Michaela’s mood improved dramatically. She had my priceless glass
comb, my well-made dress of soft wool, my shift of fine linen. She
had sown discord between mother and daughter and had successfully
kept me from eating. She saw she had missed one thing. “Boots,” she
said.

I was grateful for the lack of light as I sat
down in the straw and took off the boots, but the cold and the dirt
and the pricking of the straw against my skin frightened me.
“Please,” I said. “I can’t go naked.”

“And why not?” Michaela said.

“Think of what my lord husband will do,” I
said, disgusted at my pathetic words, unable to stop myself, “when
he finds that I have been so insulted.”

“Your lord can strip me naked ten times
over,” Michaela said with a laugh, apparently relishing the idea.
“It won’t hurt me any.” Reynaldo must have repeated Dominic’s words
to her, his threat to avenge tenfold whatever was done to me. I
could see she was playing with me, that the idea of keeping me
naked had not occurred to her, that it outraged even a bandit’s
sense of propriety. I sat and waited in silence.

Michaela slung my clothes over one brawny
arm, picked up the dish in the same hand, the empty water skin from
yesterday in the other. “Stay here,” she said, “unless you’d like
to show yourself off to the men.” She left the door unlocked,
returning soon with the dirtiest, most ragged dress I had ever
seen. “There you are. You won’t go naked.”

The thing was the remains of a girl’s dress,
what had once been a plain homespun garment of rough wool. Years of
wear had reduced it to little more than a patchwork of threads,
barely holding together in one piece. There was no underwear.
Michaela saw me searching through the bundle of rags and said that
women here were not so soft as to coddle themselves with linen.

Shivering I took the stinking material, found
the largest hole and put my head through. The dress bunched up at
my waist, stuck at my stomach and hips, until Michaela tugged it
down, snapping a few more threads in the process. “You’ll fit into
it soon enough,” Michaela said. “In a day or two that plump little
belly of yours will be nice and flat.”

Her words reminded me of my biggest trouble.
“Please,” I said. “I need to eat. I’m still nursing my son. If you
don’t feed me, my milk will dry up. Then you’ll have to feed us
both anyway.”

My words brought back Michaela’s bad temper.
“Tell that load of crap to a man,” she said. “Not to me. I’ve seen
it many times, been through it myself—a starving woman with a
healthy baby at the tit.” She frowned at the memory. “I raised my
share,” she added, still resentful from my earlier remark implying
that her children had died under her rough treatment.

I understood then. She had taken my dress and
clothes for her own daughter. I even caught a glimpse of the girl
from her mother’s thoughts: small and thin, maybe thirteen. It was
her old dress I was wearing. Michaela had seized this opportunity
to get some decent clothes for her daughter, and had thereby,
deliberately or not, transformed the child into an adult. Despite
everything I felt a twinge of pity. Imagine having to raise a
daughter here. I wished the girl well of the dress. She’d have
little else to comfort her.

Michaela was still lost in her memories. “I
raised my share,” she repeated. She studied Val in his little
breeches with the dark stain where he had wet them yesterday.
“Strong children, not a puny runt like that one.” A bad thought
struck her. “What’s the matter with him? Why’s he need diapers at
his age? Why’s he so small?” Val’s verbal ability had confused her
into thinking he was older, maybe three or even four. She was
worried that this seemingly undersized and incontinent child was
defective, that Dominic wouldn’t pay for him.

“Nothing’s wrong with him!” I said, fierce
with maternal anger. “He’s not yet two.”

The woman looked from me to Val and back.
“Not yet two? But he talks like—”

“Yes,” I said, “he talks. But he needs a
diaper at night, and food, more than just milk.”

My matter-of-fact manner convinced the woman
I was telling the truth. She laughed, shaking her head. “Not yet
two, and talks like a spoiled ‘Graven lord.” Her fears allayed, she
hefted the chamber pot and picked up the soiled diaper, leaving us
again to return with a blackened wad of putrid cloth. “You can use
this tonight.”