by Jude Fisher
Even so, she could feel the lord’s gaze on her, as sharp as a knife.
‘She’s neither pretty nor healthy,’ the Lord of Forent chided his harem-keeper. ‘Why is she up here and not downstairs being readied for the marketplace?’
‘My lord . . .’ Peta hesitated. ‘I thought . . . I thought her unusual colouring might appeal to you . . . You have no red-haired women here. I think once she is properly presented, it may be worth your trouble. She is . . . shall we say, spirited?’
Rui Finco laughed. ‘I shall take your word for that.’ He peered past her shoulder to the women crowded by the door. ‘Jana, Pala, you shall have the honour of my company tonight.’
Two of the women detached themselves from the group and ran to his side. He flung an arm around one; gave the other a lingering kiss through the slit in her veil. Then he leaned in close to the black-robed woman.
‘You have three days to make her ready for me. If you fail me in this, Peta,’ he said, his voice dropping to a dangerous growl which made the hairs rise on Katla’s neck, even though she could not make out the strange Istrian words, ‘you will join the Eyran on the slave-blocks: you’ve run my harem for too long; maybe a fresh hand will do them good.’
Then he hoisted the smaller of the two houris over his shoulder, slapped the other on her capacious rump and stalked off down the corridor.
There were several moments of anxious silence, then the houris ventured out to gather around Katla and Peta, clucking like hens. They lifted Katla with more care than she had expected, carried her back into the chamber and set her down on the couch. She heard the door swing to with a soft thud. This time the bolt was shot home.
‘Well, now, madam,’ Peta said softly, laying her lips close to Katla’s ear, ‘you may fool the Lord of Forent, but you not fool me. Now my future depend on you. Do not think you bring me down and survive. I will see you dead first.’
Then she hit Katla so hard in the gut that the air rushed out of her. Even as she retched and choked, Katla marvelled at the woman’s power: Peta had struck her with the flat of the hand, not with a fist which would leave a lasting bruise. Years had refined a technique like that: years of bullying and brutality.
That night they depilated all her body-hair. There was nothing she could do about it: six of them held her down while Peta applied and then ripped away the sugared-lemon cloths with a ferocity which left Katla in no doubt as to her dislike for her captive. By the end of this torment, Katla had a fairly good idea of what was in store for her, for the black-robed woman took immense pleasure in telling her at length in her broken Old Tongue: she would be oiled and perfumed and prettied up and presented to the Lord of Forent as his sexual plaything. She was to satisfy his every demand without complaint and with a smile on her face or, as Peta put it, waving a wicked-looking little curved dagger under her nose, ‘I will cut off your women’s parts and send you to the Sisters. Then you will wish you had done as I bade you, for there will never be pleasure for you in the world again.’ Katla had no idea who the Sisters might be, and she had no wish to find out; wished still less to have anyone tamper further with her person. Whatever Rui Finco might say about sending the two of them to the blocks (an infinitely more attractive proposition), in these quarters, at this time, Peta’s word was law.
After they had degraded her as much as was required by their weird customs, they sat her up and poured some vilesmelling concoction down her throat which stung and burned, and made her sleep till past noon the next day.
When she awoke, it was with a clear head and no fever. She felt weak and thirsty; but even so, better than she would have felt after a night on the stallion’s blood. She looked around. She was in a different room, and two other women – one in a blue robe, the other in lilac – sat guard in cane-woven chairs by the door, their hands busy with some sort of intricate tatting. Their fingers moved with deft purpose; and Katla remembered how Gramma Rolfsen had been proficient at the same art, sitting by the central fire in the steading’s hall, her handsome, lined old face intent on the patterned strip which was growing moment by moment in her hands. At this memory, and the flood of thoughts which followed it, Katla’s jaw clenched. Her grandmother was dead, her mother taken prisoner, her father was Sur knew where in the arctic seas; she had only herself to rely on and here she was, trapped in an excruciating double bind. If she was true to her nature and fought her captors tooth and claw, she risked her life or mutilation; if she complied and saved her neck (and parts), she would have to submit to the very man who had sent her to be burned.
Simple rebellion would not do. She would have to bide her time, feign compliance, wait for an opportunity. She sighed: Bera and Hesta had between them tried for years to train her to patience, but it seemed after all that life was going to be her most effective teacher.
As soon as she sat up, the two women put down their tatting and got swiftly to their feet, alert to her every move. Clearly, they had been trained well. The woman called Peta ruled her harem with a certain degree of menace. That in itself might prove useful.
‘Hello,’ said Katla. She forced a smile.
The two women appeared to exchange a glance, for their veiled heads turned minutely to one another. Then the one in the lilac robe approached the bed.
‘You feel better?’ she asked. Her voice was mellifluous, her lips painted a lush rose-pink. A tiny silver star had been affixed to the runnel above her mouth. It glittered in the pale light.
Katla nodded. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked.
‘Mela,’ the woman replied. ‘I called Mela. What your name?’
That gave Katla pause. If she lied, they had only to ask Kitten Soronsen. But it still seemed foolish to part with the information lightly. In response, therefore she smiled and frowned, as if she had misheard the question. Then she said, ‘What is that thing you wear above your lip?’ She touched her finger to the corresponding spot on her own face.
The woman put her hand over her mouth and as she did so, Katla could see that the top of her hand had been painted with a myriad of fine reddish-brown lines which radiated out from the wrist and curled in undulating patterns to the base of each finger. Her nails were short and exquisitely shaped and painted with some rosy colour. If the hand was anything to go by, the rest of her must be sleek and polished to perfection. If this was how they presented their houris for his lordship’s pleasure, they were certainly going to have their work cut out dealing with her!
The two women gabbled something at one another in the southern tongue, then laughed.
‘It means . . .’ Mela started, then hesitated, giggling. ‘I suck well.’
Katla wasn’t entirely sure she’d heard this right; but she had a nasty feeling that she had. ‘Oh.’ It was hard to think of anything else to say on that subject which would not elicit details she had no wish to know. She tried again. ‘Have you always lived here?’
Mela shook her head. ‘My family from Hedera Port. Mother die of plague; father too poor to keep me. Sell me at market.’
Katla looked horrified, but Mela waved her hands at her as if banishing such an unpleasant expression. ‘And where you come from?’ she asked. ‘You speak funny, very harsh noise, very loud.’
‘I’m from the north. From Eyra—’
‘Eyra!’ the second woman cried. ‘They say so, but we not believe them. We at war: you enemy!’
‘I know,’ said Katla. ‘Raiders came to my island and raped and killed many of my people. Then they set fire to our home. My grandmother died in the fire; but my mother and I and some others they stole away to sell as slaves.’
The two women exclaimed in shock. ‘That terrible,’ said the one in blue. ‘You not choose to be here, then?’
Katla laughed bitterly. ‘Hardly. Why would any woman choose to be a whore?’
‘That not what we called,’ the one in blue said primly. ‘We houris. Courtesans. We very good at what we do. We proud of it.’
‘You are?’ Katla was astonished. ‘But
you’re slaves, slaves used for sex.’
Mela shrugged.‘It not so bad. Better here than most places. Better than being sold to horrid old husband, use you when he want, give you no money. Here get paid and well treated. Not have to pray too much. Only bed one man most of time, and handsome one, too.’
‘Mela!’ the second woman exclaimed, then carried on in Istrian.
Again, the hand came up over the girl’s mouth. ‘Agia says I should not say such things about our master, but is true: he not only handsome but very . . .’ she paused, searching for a phrase, ‘nice in bed, like women lot.’
Katla sensed Mela would have embroidered upon this description given the least provocation. She changed the subject swiftly. ‘If he likes women so much, why does he cover you up?’ Katla indicated the voluminous robes both women wore.
The woman in blue tilted her head: Katla could tell she was being regarded carefully. Instead of answering, she said at last, ‘Why you dress like man?’
‘It’s practical,’ Katla said shortly. ‘I mean, you can hardly climb a rock or run very fast in one of these things, can you?’ She plucked despairingly at the gauzy thing they had draped over her. The veil lay crumpled on the floor by the bed where she had no doubt cast it off in her restless sleep.
Mela now retrieved this and held it out to Katla who took it, but did not put it on.
‘That not what women do,’ the woman called Agia said primly. ‘Women sacred. They help men perform worship. We too precious to behave like . . . urchins, running around, touching the earth and suchlike. Such behaviour is dirty, bad. That why we at war.’
‘What?’ Katla thought she must have misheard. ‘We’re at war because your people disapprove of how my people behave?’
The woman in blue nodded rapidly. ‘Your women, they have lost the Way; your men not treat them right, not treat with respect, not honour the Goddess.’
‘My people worship no goddess,’ Katla said. ‘Our god is called Sur. He is lord of the wind and the sea; of rock and wild places and the creatures of the deep.’ She thought about this even as she uttered it. The Eyrans paid their respects to the storm god with occasional prayer (mainly at times of need), with their anchor pendants and their superstitions, with the odd muttered phrase; but the old rituals had fallen by the wayside: it was rare indeed that anyone slaughtered animals in his name, or cast sacrifices into the sea. The last time she remembered a serious rite being observed had been Tam Fox’s blessing on board the Snowland Wolf to handfast her brother Halli and her best friend, Jenna. Even then, she had been surprised by the rather old-fashioned solemnity of the occasion which had seemed to hark – in its primitive hair-cutting and weaving, the incantation and supplication made – from another age, when the gods were closer to men. But if Sur had heard the prayers offered up or accepted the binding Tam Fox had cast into his waters, it did not seem that he had any wish to keep the bargain made for the honour paid him, for a monster had risen from the deep and wrecked their ship, and all those bright lives had been lost forever in his ocean. So much for gods, she thought. I’ll have none of them. ‘But our religion is not so . . . restrictive as yours.’
‘Restrictive?’
‘You seem to have a lot of rules, and to enforce them with punishment and pain. Burning, and the like.’ Her mouth felt dry even as she said this. She flexed, unthinking, the hand the flames of the pyre had withered.
‘It is men who make rules,’ the older woman said. ‘We worship the Lady Falla in our own way, with our mouths and our hands, and when the time right, with our bodies and souls.’
‘Agia is correct,’ Mela said. ‘Men make rules, write them down, send people to the fires who not follow observances. I not think, in my heart, the Lady likes to have people fed to her fires: she goddess of life, not death.’
‘Mela!’ Agia took the lilac-robed girl by the shoulders. After gabbling at her in rapid Istrian, she turned to Katla. ‘Do not take notice of what she says; her people had nomad roots. She get in much trouble if you repeat what she say.’
‘From the Lord of Forent?’
Agia put her hand to her mouth. ‘Not so much my lord, he less strict than others. But Peta will beat her. And if the lord’s friend hear about it, then big trouble. He worship the Goddess with a fierce love, send many, many people to the fires.’
‘And who is his friend?’ Katla asked, curious.
Agia dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘My lord of Cantara,’ she said. ‘Tycho Issian.’
A shudder passed through Katla Aransen. She remembered the ranting tirade of a thin, dark man with eyes full of thwarted passion; the cowardly, bleeding boy who had condemned her with his lies; a terrified girl running through the night air. Selen Issian, daughter of Tycho Issian. Ah yes, that was a name she remembered too well.
‘And he is here, in this castle?’
Agia glanced swiftly back over her shoulder as if he might at any moment appear. ‘He due to arrive any day.’
That was worse news than any she had so far received.
‘The other women say,’ Mela crowded in close, ‘that he is mad with lust for the northern queen—’
‘Shh!’ Agia was scandalised. ‘You get us all burned!’
But Mela would not be stopped. ‘You know it is true, Agia: remember what the wizard did to Balia and Raqla, how he made them like her, all green eyes and yellow hair and thin as post. And that why we go to war with your people: to fetch her back for him. That why you here, too,’ she finished triumphantly.
‘What do you mean?’
‘He preach, all over country, make people angry, fill them with hate. Tell them how your people barbarian, treat women bad, keep them from the Way of the Goddess. So we must . . .’ She paused, seeking the right word in the less familiar Old Tongue, ‘We must . . . liberate you all. He say Eyran women be brought south, to free you from bad ways, from your evil men, make you like us. Obey men.’ This last was said with an edge of venom which had not been present in the girl’s previous observations. Katla marked it well.
So it was not her so-called sacrilege alone which had sparked this war: that much was something of a comfort, if comfort there was to be gained from the situation. ‘It seems to me,’ she said after a while, ‘that you are the ones who need liberating.’
Agia’s hands flew up to her mouth.‘You mad!’she declared. ‘I want no more of this. I fetch Peta. You not say such things when she here.’
Katla watched her unbolt the door and her heart leapt with sudden hope; only to fall again at the sound of a key turning securely in the lock on the other side. She sighed. No chance of escape, then, at least not at the moment. She might as well sow some mischief instead.
Leaning in closer to Mela, Katla said firmly, ‘I think your people have it all wrong about the northern ways. We are not barbarians; indeed, my people consider some of your customs as primitive – I mean, these – what do you call them again?’ She touched the girl’s lilac robe.
‘Sabatka,’ Mela said.
‘Sabatka. Well, it’s very pretty, but really it’s just designed to hide you from other men’s eyes, isn’t it? It’s all about ownership – horses tethered in stables, pigs in pens, oxen yoked to a cart; and you women wrapped up in silk and hidden away from the sight of others. Your men are afraid that if they give you any freedom, you might take it and walk away from them! And who knows what might happen then? You might question what they do, you might have opinions, you might take power of your own. So what do they do? They shroud you in these hideous things, lock you away, treat you like toys for their pleasure, and tell you it’s the Goddess’s will; and you let them do it!’
Mela had gone very still, as if she was trying hard to concentrate on Katla’s unfamiliar pronunciation of the Old Tongue. But she did not protest or cry out in horror; rather, from the pensive line of her mouth and the inclination of her head, she seemed to be giving careful consideration to these seditious words.
Katla gave her some moments for it all to sink in
, then ploughed on. ‘No man has ever told me what to do, and no man ever shall. I choose my own path, and fight for it when I have to. I can tell you more, if you would like.’
It was an offer which would send her to the fires if she had misjudged her audience.
She had not.
Mela caught her by the hand and squeezed it tight. Her painted mouth curved into a delighted smile. Then with one clever, painted nail she removed the tiny silver star from above her top lip.
‘Well, that’s a start!’ Katla muttered cheerfully. And then she began to tell Mela about a woman’s lot in the Northern Isles: how as children they were educated alongside the boys; how they often chose their own husbands, and could renounce them if the marriage went awry; how they ran the farms when their husbands were away and held sway over their own households, even when the men came home; how they could earn their own money, and inherit estates; how some of them travelled and fought and had no man at all, but lived by their wits and their skills. Like nomads, even. But even as she framed these concepts for the Istrian woman, something gnawed at her. Life was not entirely equitable for the women of Eyra. They worked hard and they died young. Men still had more freedom and more power, and there were as many instances of injustices and oppression as there were different people in the islands; but at least there were laws which enshrined a woman’s rights as well as any man’s; and no one burned anyone else. But there was still much room for improvement.
Even so, her conviction seemed to have won the Istrian girl over, for by the time Aglia returned with Peta and her women, Mela’s eyes were shining so brightly, Katla could see them gleaming through her veil.
Fourteen
Treachery
Auda, the King’s mother, sat in her carved chair at the corner of the hearth in Halbo Castle’s Great Hall and regarded her son and daughter-by-law with the ancient, hooded eyes of a raven assessing its next meal. This impression was heightened by her dress and demeanour. Huddled in the shadows in the thick black widow’s weeds she steadfastly refused to give up (even though her husband had been dead for four years, and she had not loved him for the best part of twenty-four), with her beady eyes reflecting the light of the fire and her arthritic fingers wrapped like claws around the handle of her stick, she looked very much like the carrion bird for which her family was named. At fifty-five, Auda was not an old woman by Eyran standards, where a rigorous climate, a culture of toughness and a refusal to mollycoddle could result (if famine or disease did not intervene) in a very ripe old age. Eyra had more than its fair share of old crones, and it seemed as if Auda was driving herself towards such status with a grim will, as her once-fine appearance, generosity and gentle spirit were daily transforming into bitterness, frustration and malevolence.