The Saga of the Renunciates (70 page)

So she told Marisela, making a good, funny story of it, all about the Terran Medic machinery which had inspected her inside and out, and Marisela laughed with her.

“I think we can all agree that you do not need such care as that. You are young and healthy; only if you should begin vomiting, or show any sign of bleeding. Take care what you eat, drink much milk or beer but little wine, get as much fruit and fresh food as you can, and tell the Terrans, if they should ask, that you have seen your own medical adviser. You should come back to the House to bear your child, but the Terrans may not allow it—they think what we know of medical practice is limited and barbarian, and I must admit that to a certain extent they are right and I am not altogether sorry for it. Just the same, two days ago I lost a mother and her child and I would have given all I own for some access to your Terrans’ skills—”

“Well,” Jaelle said, “Cholayna is in there arranging ways for you to have such help,” but Marisela shook her head.

“Ah, no, my dear, it is not as simple as that. It sounds like a perfectly simple thing, and a thing that is all good, that I should be able to save mothers alive to care for their children, and save their children alive so that no mother may weep because half the little children she bears do not live past weaning. But it is not such a good thing as all that.”

“Do you dare to say it is a bad thing?”

“Aye, and I do say so,” Marisela said, and at Jaelle’s indignant stare, she said, “I want to speak with your friend anyway. Shall we go and talk with Mother Lauria? Finish your tea, it is good for you.”

Jaelle had grown up thinking of Mother Lauria’s office as a sacrosanct place, not to be breached except in emergencies, but Marisela simply knocked and went in, and Mother Lauria smiled at her.

“I was going to send for you, Marisela. Cholayna—” she struggled a little with the name. “Is that how you say it?”

“Near enough,” said Cholayna and nodded in a friendly way to Marisela. “So you are the house Medic, as we would say it. It is you who should choose women to be instructed in Medical techniques, or you yourself may come and learn them with the younger women—”

“I should be interested,” Marisela said, “and knowledge is always a good thing, but will you teach them only to use their medical sciences or will you teach them when they should not use them?”

“I do not understand,” Cholayna said. “The business of a Medic is to save lives, and Mother Lauria was just telling me how you had had to let a woman die because you could not save her or her child. We can teach you ways to save most of them…”

“So that every mother will have a dozen living children?” said Marisela, “and then, how shall they be fed?”

“I am sure you know that we have knowledge of contraceptive techniques,” Cholayna said. “So that a woman can put her strength into bearing only one or two children and not spend all her life in bearing them and watching them die.”

Marisela nodded. “If the two she does bear are the strongest and best, and we could be sure of that,” she said, “but suppose the two who survive are the weakest, and so their children will be weaker yet? Ten, twenty generations down the road, we will be a people of weaklings, kept alive only by sophisticated medical techniques and thus dependent on your technology. If a woman is saved alive when her pelvis is too small, then perhaps her daughters will live to bear more children with this defect, and once again, we are dependent upon more and more medical help to keep them alive in childbirth. Believe me, it hurts my heart to watch women and children die. But when a child is born, for instance, blue and unable to breathe because he has a hole inside his heart…”

“That can be repaired,” Cholayna said. “Many of our people are living who would have died here at birth…”

“And his children will multiply those defects,” said Marisela. “Oh, believe me, on the cases where something has gone wrong in the womb and the child is lacking strength, perhaps we should save that child alive, but if it is a defect he will pass to his own sons? Better that one should die now than that a hundred weaklings should sap the strength of our people. And it is like a lottery—the first two children are not always the brightest, the strongest, the best; so often a great leader or genius will be born seventh, or tenth, or even twentieth among the children of his family.”

Cholayna said stiffly, “I am afraid I do not like playing God and deciding that women must suffer that way.”

“Is it not playing God to decree that they shall
not
so suffer?” Marisela asked. “We once had a breeding program here where we chose to tinker with our genes, to create the perfect people and the perfect race. We bred
laran
into our people and we are still suffering for it. Perhaps when the Goddess decrees that some must die at birth, She is being cruel to be kind.”

“I still feel we should not reject the gift of the Terrans when they wish to teach our people their arts,” Mother Lauria said, and Marisela nodded.

“Oh, I am sure you are right. But I pray all the Gods that we have the wisdom to know where to end it. There is no virtue in saving some lives which will be a burden to everyone in the household, everyone in the village, everyone in the world. I—I do not want to play God in deciding who must live and who must die, so I leave it to the mercy of the Goddess. If I in my small self have the power to decide that this one must live and this one must die, I can only say, my business is saving lives, I will save alive all I can. That way lies chaos. Perhaps it is better not to have that power.”

“I cannot agree that anything which diminishes a woman’s power can be right,” said Cholayna, and Marisela sighed.

“In theory surely you are right. But sometimes it is a terrible temptation to take the short view and do the immediately humane thing, instead of what might be best for all of humankind over the centuries.”

Jaelle asked angrily, “Do you mean you would let people die if you could possibly save them?”

“Alas, no,” said Marisela. “I would not, and perhaps that is why I fear that power so much. I hunger for all your knowledge, so that I need never see a woman bleed and die, or a baby struggle to breathe; I hate to lose the fight with that Dark Lady who stands beside every woman at this hour, contending with me for Her due. But my business is to save life when I can, as I said, and I will, I suppose, in the end, stick to my business of saving lives. The Dark Lady is a very ancient and friendly adversary, and she can care for her own.”

Cholayna looked at her with interest. She said, “That is a point of view often debated at Head Center. I had not expected to hear it in this House—”

“From a native midwife, or would you call me a witch doctor or sorceress?” asked Marisela, and they smiled at each other in the friendliest way.

But Jaelle was restless as the conversation went far afield into complicated matters of ethics, and was relieved when Cholayna rose to go. Cholayna said, “You may stay as long as you wish, Jaelle, you are certainly entitled to a holiday,” but she went for her cloak, telling the older women that she had some work to do. She could surely find some work in Monty’s office, since he, and Aleki, had left so much undone when they went to the fire lines.

But, restless and alone that night in the Quarters which seemed so much too big for her, with Peter away, she could not rest. The Guild House now seemed as unfriendly as the Terran Zone. And her main reason in going there had failed; she had wanted to see Magda, and Magda had been away on the fire lines, and Marisela and Mother Lauria, friendly as they were, were not really involved in her problems. There was no reason they should be.

She had wanted, no, needed to see Magda and make friends again with her. Would it be better to pretend that nothing had happened, or to insist that they talk frankly about it? Perhaps it meant nothing. After all, Magda had had a tremendous load on mind and spirit; all the pressures of the housebound time, hostility because of the fight and the indemnity, the fear of being dismissed from the Guild House, the pressures of the training sessions and the endless nightmares… was it any wonder Magda had no extra strength to deal with Jaelle’s troubles?

Yet it was more than that. Jaelle searched in her mind and found only a confused image of herself picking Kyril’s hand off her arm as if it were a crawling bug; intrusive, unplesantly suggestive of an unwanted intimacy. Yes, and before supper when she had hugged and kissed Magda, the other woman had drawn away uneasily.
Everyone already thinks I am your lover
. We should talk about that; between oath-sisters there should be no such barrier.

It was taken for granted in the Guild House, but after the usual adolescent experiments, she had never thought about it. For a time when she had first set up the business with Rafaella—they had been lovers, for a time, but it had seemed no more than a way of cementing deep friendship, and Rafaella was at heart far more interested in men; after a few weeks it had simmered down into affection, had in fact never been much more. She had taken it for granted as part of their bonding; had, she now realized, felt that she and Magda should have shared this gesture of trust, of love and openness to one another. But if it was not the custom among Magda’s people, as it certainly was not among, for instance, the
cristoforos
, why did she feel so rejected? Was she afraid Magda would come to despise her, and if she could lose Magda’s friendship over a thing as simple as that, was her friendship worth having?

She held endless conversations inside her own mind, but once or twice when it seemed she could almost see Magda’s face…
I shall be reaching her with
laran
if I do not take care
… she tried, in a panic, to slam her mind shut. Now she regretted she had never accepted Rohana’s offer, no, her plea, that she should go, even briefly, to a Tower to have her
laran
trained. Now it was too late. Was it too late? And then she would find herself crying again.

She had completely ceased to use the corticator tapes; but she realized that the Language department did not know it, they were complimenting her daily about her growing command of the language.

One evening, when she came into her rooms, she found Peter there, stripping off mud-crusted shirt and trousers.

“No, don’t kiss me yet, sweetheart, for God’s sake wait until I get out of these things and shower; to put it bluntly, I stink,” he said. She sniffed. He certainly did. She supposed her senses had been sharpened by constant access to the level of sanitation in the Terran Zone, where the slightest stain was instantly scrubbed away and disposable clothing was the norm. He thrust his toward the disposal, then wrinkled his nose, bagged them and shoved them into a closet.

“I guess I’d better take them down to be cleaned; they’re field clothes and a little grime will make them more authentic,” he said, with a wry grin. “How’s junior?” He patted her still-flat tummy as he headed for the shower, and she heard his voice trailing off, mostly something about how good it was to be back where he could get hot water and civilization.

The Empire people think civilization and plumbing are the same thing. They are neurotic about smells and dirt, she thought. He should have kissed me, at least! She lay down on the bed, feeling bruised. He hadn’t asked about her, only the baby. She felt angry at herself for feeling that way; he was tired, just off the trail, and she was certainly being too sensitive, but like Rohana, once she was pregnant she was not herself, only a sort of walking nest for the damned baby! She buried her face in the pillow. Not an honest feather in it, some damned synthetic stuff. She took a long breath and she smelled again the aseptic, the
Terran
smell of it. It was only the smell. She would not cry. She
would
not.

She could go now, she didn’t have to stay here. In half an hour’s walk she could be in the Guild House. But she was sworn; she was legitimately employed to fill Magda’s place in the Terran HQ. Magda had not violated her pledge to the Guild House, under stresses far worse than this; she must at least match Magda’s courage.

Would they even
want
her in the Guild House, swelling daily with a Terran’s baby like any drab from the spaceport bars? She could tell herself it was different as much as she wished, but she had wanted Peter, she had wanted to lie with him and now there was a child coming, a child who would never be at home in either world. She was crying now, she did not hear Peter come out of the shower, and when he tried to embrace her she fought and cried hysterically until in the end he had to call a Medic. She spent the rest of the night down on the Hospital floor, drugged into unconscious sleep. There was nowhere else to go.

Although Magda’s household time would not end till forty days after Midsummer, custom freed the Renunciate novices for the day itself, and Magda came down to breakfast to hear the women discussing their plans for the holiday. Keitha and Magda had been told they might go where they wished during day and the night following; but must be back within the House by dawn.

“What are your plans, Keitha?”

“A midwife cannot make many plans. But before Doria left for Neskaya, she asked me to go this day and see her birth-mother. The woman will not come and see her daughter here, but Rafi says she often asks if Doria is well and content.”

“That she does,” Rafaella said, sliding down her bowl for porridge. “I think she is afraid Doria will try and make Amazons of her other daughters, but I do not think any of Graciela’s other girls have sense enough to take the Oath. She has not seen Doria ten times in the five years before this, but the day Doria was fifteen she began plying her with gifts and offering to find her a husband. Nothing would please her more than to have Dori repudiate her fosterage here and marry the first oaf who offered for her. I do not think she will be glad to see either of us, but whether or no, we will take her Doria’s gifts and greetings. And I shall see my youngest son, whom I have not seen in half a year.”

Magda remembered that Doria’s mother had given her up when she was born, in return for Rafaella’s son.

“I too was promised I might see my son,” Felicia said, “but I do not know if I can bear it yet, or whether it might be cruel to him…”

“Rafi, you are wanted in the stable,” said Janetta, poking her head into the dining hall.

“Well, what is it?” said Rafaella impatiently, “Does one of the horses wish to give me Midsummer greetings?”

“A man who says it is business,” Janetta told her, and Rafaella grumbled, threw down her fork and, still munching on a piece of the excellent nut cake which had made its appearance on the table in lieu of ordinary bread and butter, went off toward the stable. Two minutes later Janetta came back and said, “Margali, Rafi wants you too.”

Magda had not finished her breakfast, but she was pleased enough at the disappearance of Rafaella’s hostility that she went at once; she had tried enough to reassure Rafaella that she would fill Jaelle’s place in their business as much as she could, and it was worth being disturbed even at the holiday breakfast. She said, “Save me a piece—” she hesitated; she could hardly call it coffee cake, which would have been the Terran word, and no one had mentioned what they called it; she pointed and Keitha laughed. “I’ll guard it with my life!”

Rafaella was talking to a tall man shrouded in a thick cape; he was at the head of a string of horses, among them a few of the fine Armida-bred blacks. Several, too, were the shaggy ponies of the Hellers.

“Margali, I am sorry to ask you to work at Festival, but I did not expect these ponies for another tenday—

“I too am sorry to disturb you on holiday,
mestra
, but I was in the City now,” said the man, and Margali suddenly recognized his voice; he was the big fair-haired man who had carried her out of the fire lines,
Dom
Ann’dra.
The Terran
! But he was talking about the ponies in an accent better than her own.

“I could not find the ten you wanted, but I have seven here; they are strong and already immune to the hoof-rot, and all have been broken to halter and pack.”

Rafaella was going to one after another, examining teeth, patting soft muzzles. “They are good ones,” she said, “but why are you in the City so late in the season,
Dom
Ann’dra? Is your lady traveling with you? And the Lord Damon, will he be in the City for Council Season?”

“No, I am traveling all but alone this year; but since I was coming this way, I was able to escort Ferrika to you.” He held out his hand to help down a woman in a heavy traveling mantle who was seated on one of the horses. Over Rafaella’s shoulder, as he turned, he recognized Magda and said, “Oh, it is you—I was concerned about you,
mestra
, did your feet heal properly?”

“Oh, yes, quite well,” Magda said. “Only my boots were burnt beyond repair: my feet are fine.”

Rafaella and Ferrika hugged one another and Rafaella said, “I had hoped you could come earlier in the season, Ferrika—”

The small snub-nosed woman smiled and said, “I too wished to come; but there was need of my services at Armida.”

“More children on the estates? Or one of your ladies?”

Ferrika shook her head. She looked grieved. “The Lady Ellemir miscarried a child earlier this year; and her sister stayed to nurse her,—Lady Callista will not take her seat in Council this season—”

“I wonder, then, that you would leave your lady,” Rafaella said, but Ann’dra interrupted. “Ferrika is not servant to us, but friend; and Ellemir is well again. But none of us have any heart for merrymaking this year, and there is little to be accomplished at Midsummer, so I came to do what business I must and pay my respects to the Lords of the Council; then I shall be off home again, probably at dawn. I was sorry to disturb your festival, but I did not wish to stable the beasts in a public compound when they could be in their new home.”

“I am grateful to you,” Rafaella said. “It takes a tenday or so to quiet them after the long trip; they are far better here in their own stable. Ferrika,
breda
, don’t stand out here, go inside and greet your sisters, breakfast is on the table!”

“And holiday nut cake? Marvelous,” Ferrika said, and went into the house. Rafaella handed a pony’s lead to Magda and said, “Will you take this one into that box-stall down there?”

When she came back Rafaella was writing, propped against the wall. She handed the paper to
Dom
Ann’dra.

“Take this to my patron,
Dom
Ann’dra, and she will arrange to have you paid; the horses are for her, I understand. May the Goddess grant that Lady Ellemir is well again soon.”

“Amen to that. Shall I bring the other ponies when I come again?”

“Or sooner, if you have a messenger you can trust,” said Rafaella. “And I need a good saddle-horse for an oath-gift to my daughter at Neskaya Guild House; is one available?”

“Not a good hand-broken horse for a lady, no; we always have too many orders for those,”
Dom
Ann’dra said. “I could not promise you one of those for more than two years. But I can let you have a good halter-broken filly if you would like to train it yourself.”

“I will not have the time; but Doria should break her own horse anyhow,” Rafaella said. “Send it to Neskaya Guild House for Doria n’ha Rafaella.”

Dom
Ann’dra scribbled something on the papers he held. “I’ll send a man there with it within a tenday,” he said. He looked past Rafaella again at Magda curiously, and she almost heard,
What is she doing here
? Well, she thought, I certainly would like to know what
he
is doing here! No doubt he was on field assignment, had probably been so for years; if she went to the Terran Zone she might be able to look him up in Records; Cholayna or Kadarin would certainly know. She helped Rafaella stable and feed the new ponies. When she went back to the hall the porridge was cold, but Irmelin had brought fresh bread and opened a new jar of some kind of conserve, and a second nut-cake which vanished as swiftly as the first.

Ferrika was sitting at Marisela’s feet, her head in the woman’s lap.

“…so tragic… so many of the noble ladies do not really want children and cannot wait to turn them over to wet nurse and foster mother. But the Lady Ellemir is one of those who, as soon as their arms are empty, already hungers for another babe at her breast. Four years ago, when the Lady Callista could not suckle her child—though I think myself it was more that she did not wish to—Ellemir nursed Hilary along with her own Domenic.”

“Was she long in labor this time?”

“Not long, they had hardly time to summon me from the steward’s wife,” Ferrika said, “but all the more tragic because this time it was almost a matter of a few more days; if she could have carried the child even another tenday it might have lived. A girl, and born alive too, but we could not get her to breathe, her poor little lungs would not open, for all we could do. It was just a little too early. Once I really thought she would breathe and cry… a little mewing sound…” Ferrika buried her head in Marisela’s lap and the older woman patted her hair.

“Perhaps it is just as well; once or twice I have done what seemed a miracle and saved one alive when it seemed hopeless, but then they grow up crippled or partly paralyzed and cannot speak—it was the mercy of the Goddess.”

“Tell that to Lady Ellemir!” retorted Ferrika, blinking back her tears. “A girl, it was, perfectly formed, with red hair, and she had
laran
too, she had been real to them for three times forty days… I thought they would all go mad with grief. Lord Damon has not left my lady alone for a moment, day or night.”

“But think; even with
laran
, if the poor babe had grown up sickly… better an easy death and a return to the Goddess, who may send her forth again when the appointed time comes for her to live…”

“I know that, really,” Ferrika said, “but it was so hard to endure their grief. They had already named her…”

“I know,
breda
. But you are here with us, and you must stay until you are refreshed and cheerful again. You have had no holiday for a year and this has been hard on you, too, hasn’t it,
chiya
? Come, you must meet our sister Keitha, she works with me, and next year we will send her to the Arilinn College of Midwives. Also she will have Terran training, which will help her perhaps to save some of the ones who might die for no good reason. I want you two to know and love each other as sisters.”

As Ferrika embraced Keitha, behind them Camilla said, “How will you spend your holiday, Margali?”

But before she could answer, Rezi, who was on hall-duty, pushed her way quickly through to the fireside.

“Marisela, Rimal the Harp-maker is at the door, his wife is in labor—”

“Oh, no!” Magda said, “On your holiday, Marisela,” but the midwife was rising with a good-natured smile. Keitha asked “Will you need me,
breda
?”

“I think so; it is twins and her first confinement,” she said, and Keitha made a rueful face and went for her cloak. Marisela chuckled. “Like the beast-surgeon and the farmer, we have chosen a profession where we know no holidays except that the Goddess sends. Finish your breakfast, Keitha, there is no such hurry as all that! Rezi, fetch him some tea and cake in the Strangers Room and tell him we will be with him as soon as we can.” Nevertheless she was heading for the supply cabinet where she kept her midwife’s bag, and shortly afterward they heard the door shut behind her. Camilla chuckled.

“Who would be a midwife!”

“Not I,” said Magda, reflecting that this was one thing which did not change from Terran to Darkovan; no Medic could ever count on a free holiday, especially in maternity work!

“And what will you do with your holiday, since by good fortune you have not chosen to become a midwife?”

“I am still not sure. Go to the market, certainly, and buy some new boots,” Magda said, regarding the ancient and tattered sandals.

“And I,” said Mother Lauria, “will stay in the house and write up the year’s records, and enjoy an empty house with no one to trouble me! Perhaps I will go to the public dance in Thendara tonight, to listen to the musicians.”

“I will certainly go,” said Rafaella, “for they have asked me to be there to take a turn at playing for the dancers. And you, Margali?”

“I think so.” She had always wanted to attend the public Festival dances in Thendara’s main square, but she had not felt she could go alone, and Peter had never been willing to take her.

She knew they became rowdy at times, but, as a Renunciate she could take care of herself.

Rezi came in from the hall again, bearing a basket of flowers.

“For you, Rafi,” she said, and the women began to laugh and cheer.

“You have a lover so tenacious, Rafi?”

Rezi said, “The lad who brought them is not fifteen, and he asked for his mother,” and Rafaella, laughing, hurried out to the hall, snatching up a piece of the festival cake.

“Boys that age are always hungry! Just like girls,” she added over her shoulder, laughing.

Magda found herself remembering Midsummer, a year ago. She and Peter had still been married then. She had already known that the marriage was ending, but he had sent her the customary basket of fruit and flowers. It had been the final reconciliation before the quarrel that had smashed the marriage beyond repair. She wondered if he had sent Jaelle flowers this morning. She missed Peter. She was so tired of spending all her time with women!

“And what will you do today?” Camilla asked.

“I think I shall simply walk in the city and enjoy the knowledge that I am free to go wherever I wish,” she said, realizing suddenly that she really had no place she wished to go. “But I will certainly buy new boots. And you?”

Camilla shrugged. “There is a Festival supper in the House for everyone who has no place else to dine; I have promised to help cook it, since Irmelin wishes to spend the day with her mother—she is old and blind now and Irmi fears every time she sees her may be the last. But you young ones always want to go out; enjoy yourself,
breda
. And there is a women’s dance tonight; I may go to that, for I love to dance and I do not like dancing with men.”

Magda thought she might return to the Terran zone for a visit. But she really had no friends there now. No doubt Peter and Jaelle had plans for this holiday already.

She was coming down with her jacket and the remnants of the burnt boots—it might shorten the wait for a new pair—when Camilla called.

“Margali, a man came asking for you; I sent him into the Stranger’s Room. He has a strange accent—perhaps he is one of your kin from beyond the Hellers?”

A slight, dark man, faintly familiar, rose from a chair as she entered. He spoke her Darkovan name with a good accent, though it was not the accent of Thendara. The Terran. Montray’s son—what was his name—