Dangerous Women (80 page)

“Debbie is a good, hard worker who has struggled with the grief she feels for the loss of her husband and her family, who were all on the east coast. We have all liked and supported her.”

Juniper hesitated, suppressing a stab of anger; that support had been sadly lacking in some respects. She’d said they were to be as a Clan, and that meant that each protected the other.

No, that needs to be said; but later. Now Debbie needs to finish
.

She looked up. Peers was slouched, managing to look as insolent as a man could while gagged and standing under Sam Aylward’s hand. He turned his head, caught Debbie’s eyes, and moved his hips, slightly but unmistakably.

Juniper’s finger pointed. Sam Aylward carefully did
not
smile.

Crack.

Sam’s hand slapped across his face, with a sound like leather hitting a board and a speed that was deceptive because of the brisk unhurried casualness of the motion. The man’s head whipped around and he staggered. Blood showed around his lips and nose, and his eyes widened with shock.

“You will be respectful,” Juniper said flatly. Then: “Please continue, Debbie. Tell us what happened.”

Debbie bit her lip and met Juniper’s eyes. Her defensive posture straightened and her voice firmed up.

“Yesterday wasn’t where it started. Yesterday was where it ended. I’ve been here since August, last year. Billy Bob came in March or April …”

“April!” somebody called from the assembly.

Debbie nodded. “It started right away. He stood in line next to me at suppertime and rubbed himself on me. Cynthia saw him do it and reamed him out in front of everybody. He said that he was only trying to be friendly, and I was a cold bitch and Cynthia a buttinsky kid.”

Juniper felt her lips thin out; her eyes went to the Carson girl. Cynthia nodded, but didn’t speak.

“After that,” continued Debbie, “he was more careful about who’d see him. He followed me when he could, grabbed me, and would touch me every time he could. That hip thing he just did … he’d do it every time he could when we were all together. Ray caught him at it a couple of times and told him to stop and Brian backed him up … but it just made him a bit more careful.

“He tried to … He knocked on my door … I guess it was late April, late at night. I didn’t even think about the danger; I just opened it and he shoved it open and tried to get in. It hit me in the face and breast and hurt and I screamed and everybody poured out. He tried to say that I had invited him in, but nobody believed him.

“After that, I had to keep my door locked. In May, he tried to climb in the window and I slammed it on his fingers … After
that
I had to keep my window closed and just put up with the heat. Ray and Brian were pissed because he said I had slammed his fingers in a door, not the window, and he hadn’t done anything. But Tammy saw him fall that day and then they believed me. They kept him away from me by making sure he worked away from the house and I worked close. Sharon and Rebekah told me to be careful to not do anything more to excite him or provoke him. But I
wasn’t
doing anything. It was all him.

“Yesterday, we were harvesting and after dinner I went up to my room to change my shirt. I’m glad for the kilt. Pants would be brutal in this heat and I don’t like shorts, but I needed a lighter shirt; I was sweltering.

“He was hiding behind the door of my room and he punched me in the back and I stumbled—turned to scream and he punched me in the stomach, threw me on the floor, ripped off my panties …”

Juniper caught Judy’s eyes and she moved closer to the woman, who’d gone rigid, her voice flat, her face expressionless.

“… raped me … I couldn’t breath from the punch. Then he flipped me over and half on the bed and did it from behind and through the behind. He gagged me with my shirt and bit my breasts all over and then punched me again and left me there. Cynthia found me later.”

“Not much later,” said Cynthia. “When she didn’t come back down, I went upstairs. At most ten or fifteen minutes.”

Juniper nodded and pointed at Brian. “How did he evade your watchfulness?”

The man looked chagrined. “Well, he didn’t. He’s just such a slacker, I never thought of it. I just thought he’d gone off somewhere to have a nap. Ray wanted to go look for him, but I told him we were too busy. I shouldn’t have ignored him.”

“Some nap!” exclaimed Debbie, tears suddenly rolling down her flaming cheeks.

Judy led her away, a careful arm around her shoulders.

Juniper nodded, feeling the anger on her face and knowing it scared Brian Carson.

“Judy?” she asked.

Judy Barstow came forward again: everyone knew she’d been a registered nurse and midwife before the Change, and in overall charge of the Clan’s health care since. She wasn’t as popular as Juniper—her brisk, no-nonsense personality was a little more abrasive—but nobody doubted her competence.

“I conducted the examination yesterday evening. Debbie has been hit. There is a bruise on her back, between the shoulder blades. There is a wound, made by a ring from the placement. She was, indeed, struck in her solar plexus. Soft belly tissue doesn’t show bruises as easily, but there are two marks similar to the ring mark on her back. By tomorrow, I believe she’ll have serious bruising on her front. I also believe there is internal damage, probably to her spleen. I hope it will heal, but for now, she’s on light duty, mostly off her feet.

“She was clearly raped, vaginally and anally. There is considerable trauma and damage to the surrounding structures as well as rips and tears from fingernails. Sperm was present in both places.”

Juniper nodded, her stomach roiling.
I wish Eilir didn’t need to hear this! Or any of the Clan’s children. Unfortunately they all need to hear it, loud and clear.

“One last item, then, before I speak as Ollam and Brithem. Brian compiled a set of weregeld statements for Billy Bob and Debbie.”

She looked down and made a moue at them.

“Billy Bob’s will not surprise many people. He arrived empty-handed except for a belt knife and an ax, but not hungry, on a bicycle in late April of this year, claiming to have come from Hood River where the Portland Protective Association, in the person of one Conrad Renfew … now calling himself
Count
Conrad Renfew … took over. He was accepted into Dun Carson. His record since then has been that of a slacker and troublemaker. Brian considers that he hasn’t actually done enough work day to day to cover his room and board. He also shorted, cheated, or went absent on sentry go twice before being removed from the sentry rolls altogether.

“I am going to send out an advisory to all the Duns. We now have intelligence about Hood River. Though the Portland Protective Association took it over, for once the people of Hood River are actually
grateful
to them for this.”

That brought another murmur, this time of surprise. The PPA’s Lord Protector was, at the very least, a psychopath, though a very able and surprisingly farsighted one; his followers ranged from extremely hard men to outright thugs. But there were times when people would accept the hardest hand if it meant life and peace enough to sow and reap, and the Association was trying very hard indeed to get agriculture going again in its territories. Nor did they tolerate outlaw raiders …

If only because it’s competition,
she thought mordantly, and went on:

“They had a homegrown bandit problem, a very bad one. Any Dun that took in Hood River people over the period from March through late April will need to look carefully at them. They may be the bandits themselves, the ones Renfrew didn’t hang or behead. I suspect that is the case here.

“To continue. Debbie’s weregeld sheet states that she arrived with the titles to seventy acres outside of Lebanon and another hundred acres up by Silverton. This she handed over to the Clan in November when the Kyklos asked for free title to the lands they took possession of in September. We received a large consignment of goods in return for that and several other property titles. Debbie is credited with a proportional value of that shipment. Debbie is a hard worker, very community minded, and easy to get along with. She has been learning a number of skills for our Changed world, caring for dairy cattle, butter-making and cheese-making, and sewing and preserving food as well as the standard tasks.”

Juniper folded her hands over the papers and looked into the insolent hazel eyes of the gagged man before her.

“Before I say anything about this particular case, I have something to say that will be sent to all the Clan territories.
Dun Carson failed to protect Debbie Meijer
.”

She paused, to allow Eilir to catch up and to control herself. She caught Brian and then Rebekah’s eyes. They dropped theirs and flushed with shame.

“Harassment, bullying, tormenting, destructive teasing … none of these are acceptable behaviors in a world where everybody depends on everybody else and nobody can move away. Children are taught by admonishment and example because they know no better. But adults are expected to listen and understand and conform. Chronic problems must not be allowed to fester. We of the Clan
must
be able to trust each other; our
lives
depend upon it.”

Juniper drummed her fingers on the table and scowled into the sneering face of the gagged man. “Billy Bob brought up the legality of our actions. I will address this point first.”

She felt an angry satisfaction to see how he hated that she spoke of him by the nicknames he’d used back when he’d arrived in Clan Mackenzie territory.

“Clan Mackenzie is a sovereign state. We are neither bound by nor follow the legal system of the old United States of America, which is utterly unsuited to this world we find ourselves in. Therefore, Mr. Peers, you are not in Kansas anymore, and we will not allow you to try legal quibbles or time-wasting efforts to negotiate yourself out of your just deserts, no, that we will not!

“Now is the time when you will speak. When I tell you to not speak anymore, you will close your mouth and not speak anymore. When I ask you a question, you will answer it directly. You will not speak other than to answer the questions I put to you until I give you leave to speak freely.

“Do you understand?”

She saw the sly look in his eyes as he nodded and nodded herself in turn.

“Do you agree to only answer the questions put to you and to be silent when ordered?”

The way his teeth showed reassured her that she was reading the situation well. He nodded, slowly, as if he were forcing his head to move against rigid sinews.

“The gag will be used, if necessary. Be warned that attempts to blame your victim will be met with gagging. Rape is an offense against the Goddess Herself and an insult to the Horned Lord, Her consort and lover. It is a vile mockery of the Great Rite by which They made and maintain the world and to let it go unpunished would be to risk Their anger.

“We have religious freedom here; you are being punished for your crime against Debbie Meijer, not against the Powers who make and shape the world, whatever else we mean by it. However, insulting our morals is blasphemy and will be met with severe penalties. And you … well, you
are
a rapist.”

She nodded to Alex, who unstrapped the gag device. Billy Bob spit out the tongue depressor and drew in a breath … and froze as his eyes met hers. She held them until he let go of the breath and slumped slightly.

“Better,” she approved. “Did you rape Debbie Meijer?”

Once again he drew in a breath and met her eyes … and hesitated.

“You can’t prove it!” he challenged.

“Why not? Are you sure nobody saw you?”

“Of course … nobody saw me. I wasn’t there!” Juniper grimaced wryly.

Good recovery,
she thought.
Not going to get him on a
Perry Mason.

Juniper nodded. “We do not depend on people seeing you. Proof, as you call it, is a matter of belief. Everybody in the Dun’s Óenach believes you did what you are accused of, based on observations and tracking of movements and knowledge of who and what you are. Your guilt has been established to the satisfaction of the Dun, and I have accepted it.

“Debbie’s unsupported word and the state of her body are enough to prove to us she has been raped. Her struggle with your continual harassment is enough to condemn you in the eyes of the community. The mark of your ring on her body in three places is also very telling. Keep in mind that I was not asked to come and decide if you were guilty. That was established yesterday afternoon when you were locked up and Judy Barstow Mackenzie made her examination of Debbie. You are the man who raped her. My task is to determine what to do with you.

“In Clan Mackenzie our guiding principle is the weregeld principal, of compensation. For injury to property or failure to do your share you may be fined labor or goods for the waste you caused. For repeated offenses, expulsion by the vote of the community.

“For injury—which can cover malicious gossip, physical assault, and damage to a persons’ property or animals—the only question is how dangerous the perpetrator is. We have a responsibility. We cannot turn a dangerous person out to the world if we reasonably believe that he or she will injure another person.

“For murder. The circumstances of the cause of death must be reviewed by a coroner appointed by the Dun’s Ollam and the decision will rest upon those findings and the conclusion with the Ollam and the Óenach.”

She could see that Billy Bob was relaxing. He shrugged. After a few seconds’ thought, she nodded at him. “I have reached my decision. Do you have any final words to say?”

“Sure!” he said, sitting up again. “Gimme my bike, load the saddlebags with enough food, and I’ll be gone north before the door hits the back wheel!”

The members of Dun Carson stirred, anger on many faces; a few shouted wordlessly in rage or denial. Juniper let them settle down; Billy Bob started to twist, but Sam was still holding his shoulder and he could no more break that hold than he could the steel grip of a vise.

“As far as the Dun is concerned, you have not managed to work enough to justify your keep in the four months you have been here. You came with nothing but an old bike, which has been, since, broken up for repair parts.”