by Jo Walton
“That is why I am giving him the gold now,” Gwien said, patting Veniva’s hand. “There will be no wealth and no market if the Jarns come in force and the whole land is ruined. We cannot eat gold. If we had all been killed in the raid, then this hoard would have lain still in the earth until the end of time. It would have helped neither us nor those who count on us. If there is peace, then it will count for our taxes for many a long year, and by then wealth will have grown again. If there is no peace, then it is no good to us anyway. My father buried it. He told me where it lay and said that if the bad times came, then we could take it and flee. Where would we go, now, Veniva? Far off to the East across the sea, to the lands of sunshine and story? There are barbarians there, too. And there are near two thousand families living on our land and looking to us. Will it buy them all passage? And on what ship?” My father shook his head and pushed the pile closer to Urdo. “All my life and all my father’s life there have been war and invasion and raiding. This is my land, and my people. It seems to me that the chance this money can help you, that it will be more help now than next year, is a chance worth taking.”
Urdo gathered up the gold and counted it. “I will have my clerk send you a receipt,” he said. “And I thank you, Gwien ap Nuden, Gwien Open-Hand, with the whole of my heart for this generosity. If the priests speak truly who say that we are rewarded as we act then your open hands will flow with gold. It is with such service as this that I shall build this kingdom.”
Magor was a bigger place than Derwen, though only the home of a lord and not a town. Urdo spent much time cloistered with Duke Galba, discussing defenses, I suppose. I know he persuaded Galba to send timber and tiles to Derwen, for he asked me what would be most needed. This was a courtesy only; he had a much better idea than I did. I was glad not to have been left at home with the second pennon, and only wished that Glyn had been. I was growing tired of his teasing about sharing blankets after every time Urdo spoke with me. We rode out every day along the coast, but we saw few pirates and no action. After a month I was no longer the worst with the lance for the younger Galba began to learn with us. He told me that he would be training as an armiger so that in time he could lead the ala that would be based on his land. He sought me out to tell me this in such a way that I realized it was past time I spoke to his father.
I made an appointment to see Duke Galba alone a few days later. He was gracious and polite, showing me in to his upper chamber as if I were an important person. The room was lined with tapestries, and there was a threadbare woven rug on the wooden boards. He bowed. I bowed. He showed me to a red padded chair. I wondered if perhaps I had made a mistake and should have chosen to tell my mother instead. I sat straight and decided to be as polite as I could while explaining as little as I could about my reasons. He handed me a beaker of warm cider. I accepted it, thanking him. It would perhaps have been possible to explain to Veniva how sickened I was by the idea of being touched again by a man, but not to this old and gracious man. His grey hair was worn in a square tail at his back. He looked like a Vincan bust brought to life. However, he was a stranger and would be polite, whatever else. He would not force me to the marriage bed, which my mother perhaps might. I decided to come straight to the point.
“Duke Galba, while I know the honor you do me and my family, and while I esteem you and your family, I am afraid that I am no longer able to marry your son. I have taken oath as an armiger, and my heart has changed since my father arranged the match.” He frowned a little, but did not look surprised.
“I had heard something that made me wonder if you would be saying this to me.” I had no idea what he could have heard. Had someone told him how much more suited I was to being an armiger than to running a household? That I was better with a sword than a needle? “Are you sure you are not being too hasty? My son is my only child, heir to all of Magor, this house, the great lands, and nothing the king has offered you can be sure or lasting.”
“I am quite sure I have no wish to cease being an armiger, my duke, the life suits me.”
“You are wise,” he said. “But perhaps you may one day look on my son with more favor. You may feel sure we would not hold your previous status against you.”
I should hope not. I sipped my cider and tried to think of a way to explain diplomatically that I could never think of marriage. “There is a goddess, my lord of Magor, in whose hand I have been, and she moves me to know that although he is a worthy companion I can never feel for your son as I should.” I bowed from the waist, pleased with how well I had put this. As I mentioned the Moon Maid it crossed my mind that I had not felt her sickle when I should. I began to count days in my head. I supposed it must be all the riding, or the change of water. My nurse had always said too much riding upset the cycles.
“Well, our loss is Urdo’s gain,” Galba said, bowing again. “I believe your father has another daughter?” I assented, and he went on to talk about the land disputes, border problems, and inheritances I had been hearing about half my life and which my betrothal had been intended to settle. I praised Aurien to him, being perfectly honest about her ability with figures and fine needlework. Indeed, she was far better suited to be Magor’s lady than I. I agreed that I would do all I could to persuade both Aurien and my father to the match, and he agreed that he would speak to his son and then write to my father concerning Aurien. This was a considerable relief, for it meant that before I had to face my mother she would have got over the worst part of her anger at me. I left the chamber with my heart high. I was free of obligations save those I had freely chosen and would be glad to fulfill.
No sooner than I was out of doors than I felt a wave of nausea sweeping over me. I ran for the midden and stood bent double, puking and catching at my breath. I had not known I was that nervous, nor had I ever been sick from relief before. Perhaps some of the herbs in the cider disagreed with me. I drank water that night and went early to bed. I woke early with my stomach griping. I wondered if Galba had poisoned me, and why. I barely made it out of the tent that time. Yet afterwards I felt well again and rode out that day with no more trouble. Over the next month it became habit to wake sick and be recovered before breakfast. It seemed a small matter. It was another month and a half, when we were back at Caer Gloran, before my dulled mind made the right associations and I realized I must be with child.
It was early morning, and I was in the barracks kitchen heating up water on the fire. The breakfast cook was up already, measuring baked oats and chopping dried plums. He ignored me; we had given our greetings when I first came in. He was used to me being there early. Soon the girl would come round with the milk, and he would ring the bell that woke the pennon. I had just come in from outside, through the dewy garden where I had picked some mint leaves. I had a cup in my hand. When the water boiled I would pour it onto the mint in the cup and sip it until my stomach settled. I was still shuddering slightly from nausea. My breasts ached. Suddenly all these things stopped being something I took for granted. Something moved inside me, a fluttering of butterfly wings inside my belly. I saw all the symptoms together—the sickness, two, no three missed bleeding times, the ache, the rape. Something was dancing inside me. Something had clouded my mind, and now it was clear. The water boiled, I poured it onto the mint. Then I set the cup down on the end of the trestle and put both hands on my belly.
I concentrated. I reached out and called wordlessly to the Lord of Healing and the Giver of Fruits. I could feel the life within me, just quickened, just become truly alive. Even now it would be the easiest thing in the world to loosen the hold of that life and let it slip away, go back to Lethe and choose again. It is so much easier for a new child to slip away than for them to hold on. Many will go with only a thought, even the most tenacious will yield as a prayer lets them know they are not wanted. A woman must truly long to bear a child, or see it as her grim duty, to send no thought of being free of it. It is hard for many to come through those first months I had come through all unknowing. Most women lose ma
ny in the early days before they ever carry one to term. Men know little of such things. It is always a woman priest who will sing the charm to open a woman’s womb at her wedding. It should not have been possible for me to have this life inside me, this little heart beating inside the rhythm of mine. I had done nothing to seek this conception.
For a moment I longed to bear it, to feel its mouth suck milk from my breast and hear it call me mother. But only for a moment. Where could I keep it? I could not ride as an armiger unless someone else looked after it for me. I had no husband, and such a thing was unheard of. I had just pushed away all chance of marriage with young Galba, even had such a thing been possible. I had no desire for marriage, the idea brought my nausea back. I swallowed hard. Beyond sentimental dreams I had no real desire for the child. A day before I would have let it go without remorse. Even now it would do neither me nor it much harm to part. It would be better done sooner than later. I stood up, leaving my cooling cup, and made for the stinking barracks privy. “I am sorry my dear,” I addressed it in my mind as I walked “I will have to let you go. There is more to giving life than bearing a babe, and I have nowhere in the cold world to bring you into to grow up whole. Go back, try again, find another mother, good luck.”
I wiped around the seat with leaves, and sat down over the hole. I reached out my will to loosen the hold in my womb, and found I was touching nothing. The gods would not help me. I tried again, blending my will with the place where the gods were, this time quietly using the words of a hymn to reach out. There was no response. It was as if I reached out to take up Apple’s reins and found them missing. If I sought to look at the growing child I could, if I sought to unbind the thread that held it to me, I could not.
Everything I had been taught told me that if the gods refused to act, then they had good reason, or were prevented. It was their part to preserve the balance of the world, and wrong for anyone to act upon it through their own will alone. I thought back to the rape, Ulf’s dedication of me to the Father of the Slain. Did that one-eyed gallows god want me to bear this child? Was the dedication strong enough for that? I tried again, calling even on the Lady of the Dead to take back the child to her realm whence it had so lately come, but nothing happened.
I stood up and left the privy, head high. That an unmarried woman should be pregnant was unlikely enough. There were bastards in the world, but they were those married women bore to men not their husbands. Such a thing was a disgrace. I would be disgraced. My mother would never forgive me. Tears came into my eyes as I realized I would have to leave the ala. I would have to go home with no prospect of leaving, no hope of glory, only an obligation to a baby. I walked on blindly out of the barracks along the street, past the tannery towards the stables. I wanted to be with Apple.
I almost knocked Amala over. She was coming out of one of the bakehouses. When I had finished apologizing she frowned at me.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said, choking on words. She led me to one side, into the overgrown courtyard of a fallen-down house. She sat down on a wall and patted the stone to the side of her. I sat. Slowly she coaxed the story out of me. Remembering Marchel’s comments about gods, I left out mention of the dedication.
“Well,” she said consideringly when I had finished, “it should not be possible, but certainly it has happened. But I do not think it is a disaster. The king must certainly know. Unless he disapproves I do not see that it is too terribly hard to solve. He will be leaving this ala soon to go with the rest of his household to Caer Thanbard. You can go then to Thansethan. Everyone here will think you are with the ala of Caer Thanbard. At Thansethan you can bear your child. The monks of the White God Ever Merciful teach reverence for all life. They take in orphans and unwanted children. You can leave it there to be brought up with the others. That’s an upbringing as good as the king himself had. You can then rejoin Urdo wherever he is, and he will find a place for you in one of the new alae he is forming, where nobody will wonder where you have been for the lost months. You can take your groom with you, the little girl, and she will be familiar company for you. I don’t think there is any need to tell anyone else at all.” Amala made a little gesture with her fingers that she used to mean that another complicated logistics problem was sorted, and I burst into floods of noisy tears.
7
I wept, and He said to me “Why are you weeping? Soon you will all be free.”
I replied “Lord, because you are going out to die beneath their stones.”
He raised me up and kissed me, and said, “Kerigano, I am dying for all of us, that all our people will live. I will open up the way and be a door, that through me everyone may come to life everlasting.”
Then Maram said “Lord, are you the Promised One?”
He was still a long moment, then He smiled at us all and set His hand on the door to go out. Then He turned, and said, “Is it not written that the Promised One is beyond death? My children, forgive these my blood. Remember me.”
(That is why afterward we wear stones in His memory, and have forgiven the stones, even as He asked us.)
Then He went out and there in the sunlight the crowd was calling for His blood, and in their hands were stones, and behind them the soldiers, waiting.
—The Gospel of Kerigano
The stone they put over Goldpate was so big it must have been dragged down the hill by horses. It would have been much too heavy for anyone to lift. If it was a pebble of the White God’s mercy it was a mighty heavy one. It was the wrong color anyway; it was not marble but a great uneven chunk of dark granite. This was no part of their faith. Someone with rather different opinions had wanted to make sure she wasn’t coming out again. There was no writing on it in any civilized tongue but angular Jarnish runes were carved on the rough top. Traces of dark red pigment could still be seen deep in the runes despite weathering. The Jarnish prisoners slid their eyes aside when they passed it, and made their odd version of the evil-eye sign. It was the most barbarous thing I had yet seen.
The stone lies about a mile from the east end of the monastery of Thansethan, on the monastery’s boundary. It is there still, an odd memorial to stand so near, but nobody has ever dared suggest removing it. I walked out to it often in the months I stayed there. From it I could see far out to the east over the lands the Jarns had taken for their own. To the south rolling hills swelled and hid the view, but sometimes I could see a fog lying over the valley of the Tamer where distant Caer Tanaga lay. I would gaze out in that direction, then turn back reluctantly to the square golden-stone buildings that made up the monastery of Thansethan. I could imagine Urdo’s first splendid charge with a following of two kings and their households and all the monks who knew how to sit astride a horse. It was such a peaceful place, it was hard to imagine it full of battle din.
Although I despised Goldpate as a barbarian and a bloodcursed kinslayer, there were days when I could quite understand her desire to destroy the monastery and all who dwelt in it. Thansethan was as big as a town. Within it, counting monks alone and not guests and children and prisoners, there were near two hundred people. These were severally wise and foolish, young and old, male and female, Tanagan and Jarnish, but they were all alike in their complete surety that they knew the One and Only Truth. They truly believed everyone else was misled, or mistaken, or deliberately deceiving. I found the smugness hard to bear, even among those monks I liked.
Once the king’s party had left Garah and I were the only people sleeping in the guesthouse. We could hear the bells and bustle but were alone. The guesthouse stood within the outer walls along with the school and the infirmary and the prisoners’ quarters. The stables were within the inner walls. Unlike visitors, horses had been part of their original plans of the founder Sethan. Most of the herds roamed out in the meadows and only rarely came within. The easiest way in and out of the monastery was through the stable gate. It was a mystery to me how anyone could design a large enclosure so that there was only one way in and o
ut, and that at a great distance from anywhere anyone would be and on the opposite side of the place from anywhere anyone would want to go. The stable gate was a later addition, added apparently by some monk who found the clatter of horses on cobbles intolerable. They were good stables, dry and clean, with water butts standing near.
The best thing about the inside of the monastery was the water clock. I had read of such things but never seen one. It was an ingeniously designed thing, and carefully built. It measured the divisions of the day accurately so that the monks might give worship nine times a day at the prescribed hour. It stood in the center of the inner courtyard. When the time was near one of the younger monks would come out and wait, then when the water ran through they would ring a bell and everyone would go through into the great sacristy that took up the whole east side of the monastery. The first time I saw this I was amazed, for monks came rushing silently from every corner, from the cloister walk, down the stairs from the library, out from the kitchens and the storerooms, in from the school, the hospital, and the gardens. Only those who were actually preparing food and those whose duties had them watching the children or the prisoners did not move. It was strange to see so many brown robes swishing across towards the sacristy.