by Nel Franks
It seemed that a tavern was a place where food and drink were served. We didn’t have anything comparable in the Female Enclave. If you wanted to eat with friends, you invited them to your home. or to the refectory in your dormitory hall, or to the communal dining room in a block of apartments. It seemed strange to me to have an eating establishment separate from where you lived. I turned to look over my shoulder and watched the crowd. Many were looking at our table, and Lord Dolphus often waved or smiled and bowed his head when they called out greetings. He commented about each of the men greeting him, explaining their trading power and politics. He seemed to relish the attention.
There were a number of young men who moved briskly around the room, each wearing a long black apron which, it seemed, designated them as tavern workers. They were delivering plates of food to each table or picking up emptied bowls. Lord Dolphus complained about not being able to get the attention of a server, so I assumed that’s what the aproned workers were called. They never stopped for food or drink themselves, although I heard men at the next table ask them ‘What’s good tonight?’ The aproned man replied that the venison stew was the cook’s speciality, so I assumed he must have eaten some out in the kitchen.
I noticed that Pan often raised her glass to drink but that the level of ale barely changed, so I also took very small sips. The ale wasn’t as good as the brew at home, but Anndri seemed to gulp it down happily.
‘The stew is good, Lord Dolphus, the cook is clever to have created such a fulfilling meal with so few of the season’s vegetables,’ Panddra commented.
Dolphus nodded. He sat back on his bench, stretching his arms out along the back, and spoke loudly. He seemed careless of the fact that others nearby might hear.
‘We’ve had a poor harvest for vegetables so far this year. We had frost when the shoots were young. It’s one of the reasons we traded with you for your summer abundance of vegetables. It will do much to improve the digestion and the temper of the townsfolk. The farmers bring little to market at the moment.’
I felt anxious that he would refer to our trade so openly. I glanced around, trying to look natural, trying to see if anyone was paying attention. Perhaps they would think we were from some other part of the Male Enclave.
As we finished the meal, Anndri spoke for the first time. His voice was deep, but somehow light in timbre, unfinished.
‘Father, it is getting near starting time.’
Dolphus frowned slightly at his son, then turned to us with a broad smile.
‘Come. Come with us, Pan, and we will show you some of our sport. Anndri plays for a kickball team and tonight is the semi-final. The match is short, only about half an hour, but very exciting. You’ll enjoy it, I think.’
Panddra looked uncomfortable, but at Dolphus’ braying persistence, quickly assented. She wanted him to stop drawing attention, I was sure.
‘Anndri will lead the way. You’ll be able to regale the Most with a description of the match; I know she always liked to hear about it when I played.’
Again, he spoke loudly and carelessly. I was just about cringing in anxiety. A man in the next booth flicked his head to stare at us. I turned so that my shoulder blocked his view, and then tried to keep between Dolphus and Anndri as we left.
On the way to the kickball arena, Anndri and I moved ahead, as Dolphus and Pan discussed some aspects of trade. I saw many young men out in the street, all playing various games, usually involving a ball of some sort. Some were kicking a small beanbag, keeping it off the dirt. There were loud yells of dismay and glee when one of them allowed it to fall. Others were hitting a small ball to each other with wooden bats, much the same as our game of Round the Ring.
‘Are you all required to join a team for your recreation time?’ I asked Anndri.
‘What is recreation time?’
‘Ah. Well, in the Fe... where I come from,’ I corrected hastily,’ our days are divided into seven types of activity. Recreation time is one of them. We get together and play sport mostly, although some people use it for other activities.’
He still looked puzzled. ‘I’ve never heard of this. We have only two or maybe three types of activity. We go to work, or we’re at home, and we have time off when we can do whatever we like.’
His father cleared his throat, and Anndri glanced over shoulder at him. ‘Well, mostly, we can do whatever our father approves. What else do you do?’
I explained briefly about work, worship, recreation, personal care, free time, sleep and community service. Again, he looked puzzled.
‘We have businesses to do those community service things. You pay to have them done, or if you are not wealthy you do them yourself. How do you fit everything into one day?’
‘We don’t usually, but we do try. If there’s a team involved, you have to negotiate for time away from work. But everyone has that right, so we all learn to do many tasks, so we can cover when someone’s away.’
He shook his head. ‘It’s so different here. We know exactly what our work will be in the family business from when we are children. There’s no set ‘recreation time’. If you can’t get free when your team is playing’, he glanced bitterly this time toward his father, ‘then you don’t get to play.’
I was silent for a while, thinking about how difficult it would be to live where one person could arbitrarily choose whether or not you got your rights.
‘Your father is the most Senior Lord; will you also be Senior Lord?’
He grinned. ‘It’s not quite like that. I will certainly be head of our Trading House, and I will eventually sit on the Council of Lords. But the Senior Lord is elected from the Council, so it would depend whether I wanted to stand for election and whether anyone wanted to vote for me.’ He looked somewhat doubtful about that.
‘Is it what you want, to be a Lord and a businessman?’ We were some paces ahead of Panddra and Dolphus by now, and he looked quickly over his shoulder.
‘Actually, no. But don’t ever say anything to my father.’
‘I Say True: I won’t tell your father.’
He looked puzzled again. ‘Is that an oath?’
I nodded.
‘What do you want to do?’ I asked.
He took a deep breath as he pushed open the door to the kickball arena. Then he looked down at me and said quickly,
‘I want to travel. I want to learn to dance. I want to be a glass blower of art pieces. I want to play sport all the time!’ I nodded at that; I’d love to be able to do such a range of activities too. ‘I want to live in the Expelled,’ he went on, ‘and see what it’s like. I want everything except to be shut up in my father’s office.’
He looked at me defiantly for a moment, and my heart pounded. He wanted exactly what I longed for, too! I stared at him as he held the door open. How strange! I might have more in common with a young man I had never met before, than with my sisters. He might be someone I could talk to. He stepped back a little as Panddra and his father entered.
Kickball turned out to be played indoors on a small rectangular wooden floor, polished to a high shine. The hall was lit by many lamps, and the temperature was rising rapidly. There were rising benches on all four sides of the court. The court was divided into two halves and had wide, low, netted goals at each end. Each team had five players on the court, and it seemed an unlimited number of reserves. They all wore short-sleeved shirts in team colours, and short-legged trousers and soft leather shoes. Anndri’s team wore shirts with orange and light blue vertical panels, while the other team had horizontally striped shirts in dark blue and red. Everyone stood in front of their goals, and the ball was kicked from one end to the other in rapid turnovers which I couldn’t predict. It was ferocious, with many penalties for touching the leather ball with the hands, although any other part of the body seemed permissible. Players were rotated frequently, with a lot of injuries from throwing themselves in front of their opponents as they tried to kick a goal.
The crowd yelled furiously, abused the fatherhood of the two
referees, shook their fists, and bet what looked like huge numbers of metal tokens. Anndri’s team appeared to be winning. He came off the court nursing an injured knee from a spectacular fall and grinning delightedly. His team was doing well, although apparently the injury meant he couldn’t play again in this match. He went out of the playing area to change into his ordinary clothes, as his father looked resigned, and complained loudly about more time off work for injury.
We were standing in a reserved area near a corner of the court. Lord Dolphus was trying to explain some of the rules of the game, shouting into Panddra’s ear, but I could hardly hear him over the roar of the crowd. Suddenly out of a tangle of players the ball came flying straight for Lord Dolphus’s bent head. Instinctively I caught it, to the cheers of nearby onlookers.
‘Throw it back!’ ‘Toss it!’ ‘Quickly!’ the calls came from all around me.
I stepped forward and threw the ball two handed over my head back into the melee. My hat nearly came off, and I felt strands of hair falling from it. I quickly stuffed them back in. There were cheers from around the court, and I heard some nearby shouts about Lord Dolphus’s guests. I caught sight of the staring man from the restaurant and saw him lean over to talk to the man next to him, gesturing towards us. The second man spoke to a third and soon a whole section of the crowd was looking at us and pointing. I turned towards Panddra as normally as I could manage.
‘Pan, the man from the restaurant is over there, talking about us. There are a lot of men looking.’
‘Yes, I saw,’ she muttered.
As soon as the game was finished, she bowed to Lord Dolphus.
‘We thank you for your hospitality, Senior Lord. However, with your permission, we must return.’
Lord Dolphus assented with a nod and directed Anndri to lead us again. We left the arena by a reserved entrance and began to walk briskly back through the town. I looked over my shoulder and saw several men had followed the staring man out of the arena and were beginning to stream after us.
Pan said urgently, ‘Anndri, please go quickly, and let’s try to lose them.’
Anddri glanced over his shoulder, nodded and turned down a side street. The men soon followed, and we could hear them beginning to call out to us to stop.
‘Hurry, Anndri, I don’t want this to turn into a riot!’ Panddra urged.
Anndri began to run. We turned three quick corners, and out of sight of the following men, he ducked into the shadowed portico of a large building. The crowd streamed past, and I heard snatches of ‘... women with Lord ...’, and ‘... yes, real females, he said.’
Anndri quietly unlocked a door, and we slipped into the darkened building.
‘This is my father’s business house, not the Senior Lord’s office where we were this evening’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve been coming here since I was a child. We’ll go out through the storage and shipping area. They won’t find us this way.’
We stumbled through the unlit building behind Anndri. We passed from office areas through a large warehouse room. There was a faint light through high windows along the tops of the walls. We wove between desks, crates, stacks and piles of a range of agricultural products. The scent of sheep’s wool hung in the air, mixed with the sharper smell of some kind of mineral oil. After many minutes of trying not to trip over unseen obstacles, Anndri eased open the door to the deserted loading dock, and peered out, and then waved us through. We jumped down from the dock and dashed nervously from shadow to shadow, through back lanes and darkened streets, until we reached the outskirts of town. I breathed a sigh of relief.
‘Don’t relax now, Gaius.’ Pan whispered. ‘If they believe we are women, they will be waiting to ambush us on the way to the Wall.’
My heart started to pound again. Anndri led us beside the road, using the shadows of trees for cover. It was a slow, torturous creep towards the Wall and the tunnel entrance. We saw several groups of men, standing beside the road and talking amongst themselves. I smothered a squawk when we almost fell on two men who were hiding behind the bush to which we were heading. Anndri stumbled and the noise of crunching leaves under his feet sounded as loud as a rockfall.
‘What’s that?!’ one exclaimed.
Panddra pulled us down into shadow and made the sounds of a bird flapping out of the bush squawking in alarm.
‘Argh, nothing!’ his companion grumbled, ‘just a bird frightened by the ruckus. I’m giving up. Even having a woman isn’t worth this much hanging round.’
They slouched away to the road, but Pan made us wait interminably before she signalled to get up and continue our creeping progress. Eventually we got close to the tunnel entrance. From the cover of bushes, Anndri looked at the group of men milling about.
‘Some of them work for my father’s competitors,’ he whispered. ‘They have been aggressive against our company’s guards. If they catch us ...’ He didn’t finish the thought.
Panddra pushed us both down low behind the bush. ‘Stay here, do not move unless they find you and attack. Be ready to go as soon as I call you.’
She crept silently away, bent double. Sometime later, we heard faint voices a short distance down the road.
‘Oh no! There are men at the tunnel,’ a high female voice exclaimed.
‘We’ll have to go back quickly before they see us,’ hissed a lower female voice.
‘Come on, run for it!’ said a mid-range male voice.
The sound of footsteps running away could be clearly heard. The men at the entrance leapt down the road, shouting to each other and to the supposed women. A long time later, Panddra lowered herself down beside us, panting.
‘I’m definitely going to do more running in my training,’ she sighed. ‘Come on, let’s get down into the tunnel before they realize they’ve been tricked.’
Anndri unlocked the tunnel entrance, and gravely shook hands with both of us.
‘I’ve enjoyed meeting you both,’ he said. ‘I’ve never spoken with women before, and you’re much more like men than I thought you would be.’
‘Why, thank you, Anndri,’ said Panddra with a wry grin. ‘It’s been a pleasure meeting you too. I hope your knee heals quickly. Good luck for the final.’
Anndri grinned. ‘Perhaps my father will realise I have some talent at kickball if we win.’
‘Will you be safe going back?’ I asked.
He smiled, acknowledging my concern. ‘Yes, if I meet any of the men, I’ll just say I was looking for you too, but I didn’t see you anywhere.’
‘But won’t they recognise you as being with us previously?’ I didn’t want anything to happen to this likeable young man.
In answer, he pulled his hood low over his face, slumped and replied in a thick accent, ‘Goddess blast those women! You think you’re going to get one for free, and they get away.’
We grinned, shook hands again, and turned down into the entrance, lighting our stored lamps as we went. The door closed behind us with a brief flurry of air.
The trip back to the Most’s office seemed much shorter than the walk out had been. We talked over what we would tell the Most. In a very short time it seemed, we were climbing the steps to her office. The Most was pacing up around the rim of the stair pit as we emerged. Her face was etched in deep lines, and her short silver hair stuck out from her head in tufts where she had been running her fingers through it.
‘Oh, thank the Goddess! What took you so long? I was worried! Did you have trouble?’
She pulled us into chairs, plied us with hot drinks, and listened as we began to recount our adventure. She looked thoughtful as we described being followed and repeated the comments of the men.
‘So, the men are willing to attack women to get what they want for free. And it’s so senseless, they can’t keep you there for nine months. But they’re not thinking, obviously, just frustrated. It seems they only want the act of sex. Perhaps they feel there’s no chance to get to Festival. I think the Council of Lords have miscalculated about their fees. They w
ould be better off charging less and keeping the hope alive for more men.’
‘But, Most Elder Sister,’ I began, then stopped as I realised that I was again about to disagree with the Most.
‘Go ahead, Gaia, it is alright to think and question. In fact, it is required.’
‘Wouldn’t that make for greater disgruntlement, if they paid a fee to be in the lottery to come to Festival, but more missed out?’
She nodded thoughtfully. ‘It’s hard for me to know the dynamics of group mood in the Male Enclave. Here it’s better to include as many as possible, and keep hope alive for as long as possible, but I don’t know how the men’s council determine it. I would have thought giving every man the hope of winning a place at Summer Festival would be the best thing to do.’
‘Couldn’t we have more women come to Festival?’
‘We can encourage. But we are limited by the number of pregnant women we can support. There is a ratio of workers to pregnancies that we need to maintain. That’s why there is a portion of the men’s fee that comes to us, to help resource the care our pregnant women need. And we use some of it to fund trading. Trade and pregnancies and Festival, and the number of men who get tickets in the lottery and get chosen are all interrelated. That’s what a large part of my job is about; keeping all those pieces balanced.’
I had always thought the Most’s main task was being the chief priestess of the Temple. But her job was so much more; more pragmatic, more diplomatic and more fraught than I had ever suspected. I left the office in a muddled state, exhilarated from my night’s adventure, and sobered by the complexities of the political issues we had to grapple with.
Second Summer Festival
Gaia, Summer, Year Two, Initiates
THE NEXT FEW DAYS WERE strange. The trip to the Male Enclave occupied all my thoughts, replaying everything we’d done. I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone about it, and I noticed that Ellina, as well as Tomma and Rosie, were getting grumpy with my mental absences and preoccupation. Over and over I relived the excitement of posing as a boy. It had been the most exhilarating thing I had ever done. I tried to pass off my preoccupation as tiredness, but they weren’t happy. All I could do was to go about my days engrossed in the memories, and wait for them, or me, to get over it.