Under the Yoke

by S. M. Stirling

  "Well, well," she said, gesturing with her free hand. Cigarette smoke lazed from the tube of dull-gold in its ivory holder, a green musky herbal scent that was not tobacco. "Open your present, there's good children."

  Chantal looked up; she had been beside her sister, who was smiling shyly at the newcomer, warmly at Yasmin. There was no warmth in Chantal's eyes; Marya could read the thought directed at Solange: collaborationist bourgeois slut. And Solange's answer: blowsy, overblown gutter tart.

  The nun knelt by the box and undid the rope fastenings. A scent of camphor and sandalwood greeted her; the crate was full of clothes, carefully packed in thin transparent paper. Silk underwear and stockings, blouses, skirts, dresses. Unconsciously, her hands caressed the fine cloth. Chantal came and knelt beside her, running an experienced hand through the stacks; she had not grown up among textile-workers and the sweated sewing-trades for nothing.

  "This is beautiful work," she said appraisingly. "Pre-War." She stiffened. "Clean but not new, a lot of it." She looked up, full lips compressed. "This is loot!" Her hands wiped at her nightgown, as if to remove a stain.

  Solange drew on the cigarette holder, held the breath for an instant, exhaled with slow pleasure. "But yes, my child; the plunder of Paris. I sat in a truck and watched them drag it from shops and apartments. And sack the Louvre; Renoirs and Manets, mostly, for our owners the von Shrakenbergs. The fruits of victory, my old, even as you and I are."

  Yasmin reached up to give a warning squeeze to the hand on her shoulder. "C'mon, darlin', be nice. Why doan' I meets yo' at breakfast?" After the Frenchwoman had left, she yawned again and set a foot on the edge of the box.

  "Should be enough's to get yo' started," she said. More sharply, to Chantal: "An' no foolishness, hear?" She looked about, an unconscious reflex of caution. "Ahh… 'bout Solange. She friendly enough, once yo' gets to know her; bit snooty, on 'count her poppa a professor befo' the War." An aside: "He nicest ol' man y'wants to meet." Pursing her lips. "Solange… she an' the Mistis ain' just like that"—she held her index and forefinger together horizontally—"they like that, too." She crossed the fingers, and sighed at their incomprehension. "She tells the Mistis everythin'. Watch what yo' talks, 'round her." A shake of the head. "Ain' no harm in likin' yo' Mastah, if they merits it. Lovin' "em"—she shrugged—"bad fo' everybody, in the end."

  More briskly: "Anyhows, it six o'clock. Showers down the hall, bottom of the stairs; shower every mornin', that the rule. Those as doan' keep clean gets scrubbed public, with floor-brushes. Evenin' bath iff'n yo' wants to. Breakfast in th' kitchen, six-thirty; work starts seven sharp, that the general rule fo' House servants. Midday meal at one, half hour. Supper at seven, two hours fo' yoselfs, then lights out." A laugh. " 'Lessen yo' bed-wenchin', like we was last night. Sees yo' at table."

  The kitchens were a bustle, a long stone-floored chamber dimly lit by small high windows; the whole looked to have been part of the Renaissance core of the chateau. The walls were lined with stoves, fireplaces, counters, plain wood, brick, black iron; above hung racks of pots, pans, knives, strings of onions and garlic. About forty were eating at trestle-tables that could be taken up later; a makeshift arrangement, Yasmin told her, until proper dormitories and refectories could be built. An upper table for the chefs and senior House staff.

  The servants were wildly mixed. A dozen or so were like Yasmin and her father, from the old African and Asian provinces of the Domination; there were a half-dozen Germans, a scattering from as far east as China, the rest locals, mainly girls in their teens. They chattered, in French and fragments of their native tongues, and here at the upper tables mostly in the Draka dialect of English.

  Ah, she thought. Cunning. The imported serfs would turn to English as their lingua franca, and the other house-servants gradually pick it up from them, the more so as it was the language of the serf elite, the bookkeepers and foremen. The young girls would spread it in the Quarters, since most of them would marry fieldworkers and move back into the cottages. Of course, it would help that such education as there was in the Domination was in English only; writing in other tongues was forbidden on pain of death. Without a literate class French would decline into a series of mutually incomprehensible regional patois… Two generations, and it would be the despised tongue of illiterate fieldhands; a century or so, and there would be a scattering of loanwords in a new dialect of Draka English, and dusty books that only scholars could read.

  She shivered and turned her attention to the food, crossing herself and murmuring a quick grace. Bowls passed down the tables, eggs and bacon and mushrooms, fresh bread and fruit; the Draka must have imposed their own Anglo-Saxon habit of starting the day with a substantial meal. Coffee as well; she was surprised at that for a moment, until she remembered where Europe's sources had been before the War. The Domination's coffee planters would be anxious to restart their markets. Marya ate with slow care, a respect born of a decade of rationing and hunger, remembering grass soup and rock-hard black bread full of bark, the sticky feel of half-rotten horsemeat as she cut it from a carcass already flyblown and home to maggots. Food was life; to despise it was to despise life itself, and the toil of human hands that produced it.

  An old man limped in, sitting carefully beside Solange; she gave him a perfunctory peck on the cheek and returned to pushing her eggs around her plate with moody intensity. He nodded to Yasmin and the others, addressed Marya and Chantal:

  "Ah, my successors." One of the cooks put a plate of softboiled eggs in front of him, and a bowl of bread soaked in hot milk.

  "A little cinnamon, perhaps?" he asked the server, and sighed as he sprinkled the bland mush and began to spoon it up. "The infirmities of my digestion," he said to the nun. "One of the reasons you have been purchased to replace me." He extended a hand that trembled slightly. "Jules Lebrun, late professor of anthropology at the Sorbonne, and bookkeeper for this estate. And my daughter, Solange."

  Marya's eyes widened in involuntary surprise; she would have sworn that this man was eighty at least… No, look at the hands and neck, she thought. The hair was white and there were loose pouches beneath the watery blue eyes, but that could be trauma; the limp and hunched posture due to internal injuries. He chuckled hoarsely. "Yes, yes, not so old as I look." The chuckle turned into a cough, and Solange turned to touch him on the shoulder.

  "Pere?" she asked anxiously. "Are you well?"

  He shook his head, wiped his mouth with a handkerchief, patted her hand. "I am dying, child; but slowly, and it's in the nature of things. You should be more concerned with your own health." To Marya and Chantal: "Mesdames?"

  They rose; the nun and the communist exchanged a swift glance and stationed themselves on either side, ready to support an elbow. Lebrun rapped his cane on the flags.

  "I am not dead yet, ladies," he said. A raised eyebrow. "You, I presume, are Sister Marya?" She noticed that he caught the pronunciation, difficult for a French-speaker. "And Mademoiselle Lefarge, who I believe was a member of the Party. I find that I need little sleep, these days, and spent some time getting the records in order for you."

  They walked through the kitchen doors, into a central section of the house. Workmen's tools lay scattered about; partitions had been pulled down, doors removed; the air smelled of old dust, plaster and dry wood, and the early morning light streamed in through tall opened windows. Lebrun waggled his cane to either side and spoke in a dry lecturer's tone.

  "You see here the eighteenth-century additions to the chateau. A square block of three stories above the cellars; that was when the moat was filled in. Observe the changes the von Shrakenbergs are making; very much in the Draka taste. Fewer but larger rooms, you will notice. More light; marble floors, eventually. The stonework is sound—local tufa limestone—but structural reinforcements in steel are to be made." He walked slowly, and Marya put a hand beneath his elbow in concern.

  "I have some medical training," she said quietly. "Is there—"

  Lebrun glanced about, stop
ped for a moment, continued more quietly. "Your solicitude is appreciated, Sister, but the doctor tells me there is nothing to be done."

  "How were you hurt, sir?" Chantal asked; she had the serious, self-improving worker's respect for learning.

  He shrugged, a very Parisian gesture. "Cancer," he said. "It started while I was in New Guinea on a field trip, then started spreading more recently. Surgery, remissions, but it is beyond that now. Exacerbated by injuries sustained in the sack of Paris." A mirthless smile. "A tetrarchy of Janissaries were amusing themselves by kicking me to death, while they raped my wife and daughter; this was at my offices in the university, you understand. Mistress von Shrakenberg stopped them, as she was looking for some books at the time and the sight of them burning my library annoyed her.

  I survived, with some difficulty, as did Solange; my wife did not. It is debatable which of us was luckiest, n'est-ce pas?"

  He resumed his walk. "Now, ahead of us is the oldest section of the manor; fifteenth-century. Most interesting; when you see the outside you will note the checkerboard effect, red brick and white stone. Two round towers of four stories facing south, with conical roofs of black Angers slate; on the eastern side, two square towers, one three stories and one five; and the rear of the house, looking out on the wine-cellar and the chapel. The most thoroughly renovated section, begun two years ago when the von Shrakenbergs took up their land-grant here; fascinating to watch it change. The master tells me they plan to put a whole new wing in there, on the north side, when the more utilitarian parts of their building program are done. 'Decent baths,' was one of the phrases he used, by which a Draka means something rather Roman. Ah, here we are."

  They had passed into a corridor in the family apartments, the area renovated in the Draka style. Smooth glowing-white marble floors under soft indirect lighting, doors in lustrous tropical woods a dark contrast. The walls were mosaic murals, done in iridescent glass, copper, coral, gold; scenes of hunting, harvest and war. A pride of lions at bay amidst tumbled rocks, against a background of thorn trees and scrub grass; horses reared amid a tumult of huge black-coated dogs, and the lances of the shouting riders glittered. They turned a corner, and were amidst a landscape of cool hills green with clipped tea-bushes and neat rows of shade trees, with a mansion's red-tiled roof and white walls half-hidden among gardens. Workers in garish cotton garb plucked leaves and dropped them in wicker panniers slung over their backs.

  "Ceylon," Lebrun said. "The von Shrakenbergs have relatives there. The Draka took it from the Dutch in 1796; their ancestors, rather—they were still a British colony then. And here is one the mistress did the drawings for herself—"

  A German farmhouse burning under a bright winter sun, the pillar of black smoke a dun club in the white and blue arch of the sky. Dead cattle bloating in the farmyard, torn by ravens, one crushed into an obscene pancake shape by the treads of a tank. Skeletal trees about the steading, their branches like strands of black hair frozen in a tossing moment of agony; a human figure hung by the neck from a branch, with snow drifted into his open mouth. Self-propelled guns were scattered back across the fields, the long barrels elevated, their slim lines broken by the cylindrical bulloness of muzzle-breaks and bore-evacuators, the vehicles half invisible in mottled white-on-gray camouflage. In the foreground a group of figures, Draka soldiers bulky in their white parkas and Bared bucket helmets.

  They were grouped about the bow of a Hond battletank, under the shadow of its cannon. The detail was amazing for a medium as coarse as mosaic; the nun could make out the eagle pommel of a knife, duct-tape about the forestock of a rifle, a loop of fresh ears dangling from a belt. And recognize faces: Tanya von Shrakenberg rested her palms on a map spread over the sloping frontal plate; her bulbous tank-commander's communication helmet weighed down one corner. Marya stooped to peer at the other figure, a man who tapped a finger on the map and pointed with the drum-magazined assault rifle in his other hand.

  "Master Edward?" she asked.

  "Exactement," Lebrun replied. "Note that there is a caption." The two women stepped back to view the cursive script below the mural: The Progress of Mankind. Lebrun laughed with a rattle of phlegm. "Our owners' sense of humor," he said, and led them into a stairwell that was old stone and new wood, stained and polished.

  "Observe; we are on the ground level, behind the lesser tower of the east wall. Behind there is Mistress Tanya's bedroom; not to be entered without permission."

  He began climbing the spiral staircase, slowly and with pauses for breath. "At least I will no longer have to climb these stairs… the second floor; library. Not to be entered unless you have the privilege. And here— the office."

  The door swung open, and they blinked into bright daylight. The office was a room fifteen feet by thirty, the last ten jutting out onto the final stage of the square tower that formed the southeast corner of the manor. It had originally been open between the rectangular roof and the waist-high balustrade; the renovations had closed it in with sliding panels of glass. They had been pushed back, and a pleasant scent of cut grass and damp earth was blowing in. Bookcases and filing cabinets lined the walls; two desks flanked the entrance, neatly arrayed with ledgers, blotters, adding machines, pens, telephones.

  "Where you will work," Lebrun said. He walked forward to the tower section. "The owners' desks; Mistress Tanya uses this as a studio, as well; she says the light is good." His cane tapped on the smooth brown tile; he settled himself with a sigh on the cushioned divan that ran beneath the windows.

  Marya stepped up to look at the canvases on the walls: landscapes, several portraits of a dark-haired Draka girl in her teens. Two paintings were propped on easels. One was completed; it showed a man standing nude beside a swimming-pool in bright sunlight. Master Edward, she thought. But younger. Younger and without the scars, water beading on brown-tanned skin and outlining a long-legged athlete's body of taut muscle, broad-shouldered and thick-armed without being heavy. The other was three-quarters complete, a watercolor nude of a female figure lying on a white blanket beneath a vine-trellis of pale mauve wisteria. The treatment was free, the brush-strokes almost Impressionist, sensuous contrasts of dappled sunlight, flesh-tones, hair.

  "My daughter," Lebrun said, pointing with his cane. "I am, I fear, something of a disappointment to her, hard as she wheedled to get me this position. She will persist in believing that I will live another twenty years; only natural, in one who has lost so much." He peered shrewdly at Chantal. "Ah, Mademoiselle Lefarge, you are thinking that there is not one of us who has not lost much. Remember, if you please, that each of us has his breaking point, the unendurable thing."

  He waved a hand at their expressions, shaking his head and settling his head back into the cushions, eyes closed. Then they opened, rheumy but sharp. "Please, mesdames, no pity.' Slowly: "I have regrets enough, myself, but no complaints… I was born in 1885, did you know? In Paris; ah, Paris before the Great War… they do not call it la belle epoqué for nothing, it was truly a golden age—not that we thought so at the time!" Another shake of the head. "Every generation thinks its own youth was a period like no other; mine had the misfortune to be right." Silence for a moment.

  "We were very arrogant… we believed in Reason, and Democracy, and greatly in Science (or machinery); together they would abolish war and poverty, unlock the secrets of the Universe, exempt us from history." A dry laugh. "Indeed, history has come to an end, but not as we imagined. Not as we could imagine. I was born into the pinnacle of Western civilization, and I have lived to see it fall—by its own folly. When I was a young man, the Domination was no more than a cloud on the horizon, an African anachronism that had somehow acquired the knack of machine-industry."

  His hand tightened on the head of the cane. "Our god Progress would destroy them, we thought. Which it would have done, of a certainty, had we not committed deicide; here in the heartland of enlightenment we made the Great War, and Hitler's war which was nothing but its sequel. That was what let the barbari
ans inside the walls; we were undermined from within; we conquered ourselves, we Europeans. And so I will die a slave, and my child and my grandchildren after her." He paused. "The Draka… they are an abominable people, in the mass if not always as individuals. But do not blame them for what has happened; blame us, us old men. We deserve our fate, although you do not. I have seen a world die, and while watching this new one being born has a certain academic interest"—he rose, his gaze going to the door at the rear of the room—"I can see what it must become, and have no desire to live in it."

  Louder, in English: "Good morning, Mistress. I trust you slept well?"

  Tanya von Shrakenberg yawned as she padded into the room on silent bare feet, feeling a pleasant early-morning drowsiness. She had never been able to sleep past sunrise, no matter how late the night before. Six hours is plenty, she thought, as the two new wenches made awkward attempts at the half-bow of informality, and she took another bite at the peach in her right hand.

  "Mornin', Jules," she said. "Slept well enough, when I did." Tanya finished the peach and flicked the stone across the room with a snap of her wrist. It struck the metal of the wastebasket with a crack and pattered down to the bottom in fragments; she pulled a kerchief from one sleeve of the loose Moorish-style djellaba she wore to wipe hands and mouth.

  What I really want is bacon and hominy, she thought. And another two cups of coffee. And a cigarette. That would be against the doctor's orders, though; cut down on the caffeine, no tobacco, restrict the fats and salts, limit the alcohol… Shit, the things I do for the Race, she thought. Can't even ball with my husband. She grinned and rubbed a red mark on the side of her neck: there were some remarkably pleasant alternatives…

  Tanya walked past the elderly Frenchman and leaned a knee against the divan. There was lawn below, and then low beds of flowers where the ancient moat had been filled in a century before. She squinted against the young sun beyond, as it outlined the beeches and poplars of the gardens that separated the manor from the first belt of orchards; light broke through the leaves with a flickering dazzle, a nimbus about shadow-black trunks and branches, and the birds were loud. She had spent some time learning them, the hollow cry of hoopoes, golden orioles fluting or giving their distinctive raucous cat-screams. Tanya laid a hand on her stomach.Someday I will bring you here, little one, and teach you how to read the birds' songs, she thought.