Captivity

by Ann Herendeen

  The woman stopped at my threat, laughing to show she was not intimidated. “I’ve had worse than that on good days,” she said. “That’s one of Reynaldo’s love pats, that is.” She looked over her shoulder where Jana was staring thoughtfully at the remaining food. Two small nut cakes and half the mutton lay on the plate. Michaela sniffed. “Not hungry?” She bent over to take the precious food away.

  Jana had an inspiration. “I’m full now, thank you,” she said, imitating my formal politeness. “But I would like to save some to eat later.”

  The woman saw through the childish ruse. “Now, little lady,” she said, clearly admiring Jana’s spirit. “You must eat it now or I’ll eat it myself.” She pretended to grab at the food while Jana hesitated.

  “Go ahead, love,” I said to Jana. “It’s all right.” The woman stepped back, allowing Jana to finish the remaining food. Jana rose to stand beside me when she had done.

  Michaela looked from me to my daughter and back again, searching in vain for a resemblance. Something about my appearance revived her earlier resentment. “You and your soft life,” she said, as if accusing me of murder. “You won’t be so pretty when you leave here.”

  She studied my dress, a well-made, sturdy garment for travel and riding, now creased from being slept in, and stained with my vomit from yesterday, Val’s dirt, and milk from my leaking breasts. But none of that concerned her. She was fascinated by the distinctive ‘Graven sleeve. It was the fashion for married noblewomen to wear gowns and shifts with the left sleeve constructed of two pieces, one attached at the shoulder that ran to mid-biceps like a T-shirt, the other piece loose, covering from wrist to above the elbow. The pieces were held together by a few thin laces, leaving a strip of skin showing to display the marriage brand.

  Michaela came closer and touched a fingertip to the bare skin of the scar. “That must have hurt,” she said, a note of respect in her voice.

  I jerked my arm away. In my petulance, my fury at being outwitted and humiliated by a bandit’s whore, I would not lower myself to accept her admiration for something beyond her comprehension. “It is the ‘Graven Rite of Marriage,” I said, tilting my head back so I could look down my nose at her the way Dominic could look at everybody. “In the communion of husband and wife, we do not feel pain.”

  The woman shrugged, her attempt at kindness rebuffed. “I’ll have the dress, then, before it’s ruined.”

  I stared in confusion. Michaela was a big woman, strong and muscular, easily several Terran sizes larger than me. The dress, that fit me like a glove, was useless to her. “Why?” I asked. “You can’t wear it, and there’s no one here to sell it to.” As if it mattered. I was dazed with all that had happened, one deprivation after another.

  “Never you mind why,” Michaela said. “Take it off, and your shift, and be quick about it.” When I hesitated she jerked her head at the overflowing chamber pot. “Give me the dress, or you can shit on the floor, you and your spoiled little lord.”

  I took off the dress and my shift, handed them over. Michaela, like the men, treated the riding knickers as a big joke. “Not so tough, despite your breeches,” she said, eyeing me with contempt. She stuck two fingers in the waistband to judge the quality of the cloth. “That linen should be good for something.” She snapped her fingers for me to take them off.

  In my nakedness I glanced nervously from Val to Jana, afraid the woman might demand their clothes as well. Michaela saw my expression, guessed my concern. “No,” she said in a tone of high moral indignation, “we don’t waste good clothes on children.”

  Her words were disingenuous, since bandits of any age rarely waste good clothes by wearing them. They use the best items of loot as currency, to trade for food or weapons. Michaela was worried that Reynaldo would discover her disobedience in tampering with his prize. It was my clothes she wanted, not the children’s—wanted them so badly that she was willing to risk provoking Reynaldo’s telepathic punishment.

  The woman’s forceful emotions pulled me in against my will to share her thoughts. Already thinking up excuses to placate Reynaldo, Michaela reasoned that a wife was often considered damaged by the fact of the abduction alone. Margrave Aranyi, like many another robbed husband, could come to believe I had been defiled and refuse to have me back, with or without my clothes. Why not take the clothes now, Michaela thought, since Dominic might neither know nor care what became of them? It is a wager all kidnappers make, prepared to absorb the loss on the wife, staking everything on the hope of ransom for the heir.

  Michaela would not dream of jeopardizing her chances of wealth by mistreating the children, much as her hands itched to slap what she saw as the overindulged, ill-mannered future Margrave Aranyi who badly needed to be taught a lesson. For Jana, the most unusual child she had ever met, she was developing a grudging affection. Turning her eyes away from Val’s tantrum, she allowed herself a brief smile of approval at Jana’s more adult demeanor.

  Jana had watched, helpless and seething, as I was forced to undress. Michaela’s greasy, matted hair with its new adornment caught her attention. “You stole my mama’s comb,” Jana said. “I saw you.”

  Michaela stared in shock, as everybody seemed to, at Jana’s ferocious look and voice. The woman decided to tough things out. “Did you, you spying little whore?”

  Jana ignored my head-shakings and my whispers. “Yes,” she said. “You let Captain Reynaldo put his penis in your mouth. But Mama says that’s not how you make babies.”

  The woman shrieked with raucous laughter. “Your mama’s right about that. Now ask her what she did with your papa to get the comb herself.”

  As Jana turned a hurt face back to me, Michaela’s mood improved dramatically. She had my priceless glass comb, my well-made dress of soft wool, my shift of fine linen. She had sown discord between mother and daughter and had successfully kept me from eating. She saw she had missed one thing. “Boots,” she said.

  I was grateful for the lack of light as I sat down in the straw and took off the boots, but the cold and the dirt and the pricking of the straw against my skin frightened me. “Please,” I said. “I can’t go naked.”

  “And why not?” Michaela said.

  “Think of what my lord husband will do,” I said, disgusted at my pathetic words, unable to stop myself, “when he finds that I have been so insulted.”

  “Your lord can strip me naked ten times over,” Michaela said with a laugh, apparently relishing the idea. “It won’t hurt me any.” Reynaldo must have repeated Dominic’s words to her, his threat to avenge tenfold whatever was done to me. I could see she was playing with me, that the idea of keeping me naked had not occurred to her, that it outraged even a bandit’s sense of propriety. I sat and waited in silence.

  Michaela slung my clothes over one brawny arm, picked up the dish in the same hand, the empty water skin from yesterday in the other. “Stay here,” she said, “unless you’d like to show yourself off to the men.” She left the door unlocked, returning soon with the dirtiest, most ragged dress I had ever seen. “There you are. You won’t go naked.”

  The thing was the remains of a girl’s dress, what had once been a plain homespun garment of rough wool. Years of wear had reduced it to little more than a patchwork of threads, barely holding together in one piece. There was no underwear. Michaela saw me searching through the bundle of rags and said that women here were not so soft as to coddle themselves with linen.

  Shivering I took the stinking material, found the largest hole and put my head through. The dress bunched up at my waist, stuck at my stomach and hips, until Michaela tugged it down, snapping a few more threads in the process. “You’ll fit into it soon enough,” Michaela said. “In a day or two that plump little belly of yours will be nice and flat.”

  Her words reminded me of my biggest trouble. “Please,” I said. “I need to eat. I’m still nursing my son. If you don’t feed me, my milk will dry up. Then you’ll have to feed us both anyway.”

  My words brough
t back Michaela’s bad temper. “Tell that load of crap to a man,” she said. “Not to me. I’ve seen it many times, been through it myself—a starving woman with a healthy baby at the tit.” She frowned at the memory. “I raised my share,” she added, still resentful from my earlier remark implying that her children had died under her rough treatment.

  I understood then. She had taken my dress and clothes for her own daughter. I even caught a glimpse of the girl from her mother’s thoughts: small and thin, maybe thirteen. It was her old dress I was wearing. Michaela had seized this opportunity to get some decent clothes for her daughter, and had thereby, deliberately or not, transformed the child into an adult. Despite everything I felt a twinge of pity. Imagine having to raise a daughter here. I wished the girl well of the dress. She’d have little else to comfort her.

  Michaela was still lost in her memories. “I raised my share,” she repeated. She studied Val in his little breeches with the dark stain where he had wet them yesterday. “Strong children, not a puny runt like that one.” A bad thought struck her. “What’s the matter with him? Why’s he need diapers at his age? Why’s he so small?” Val’s verbal ability had confused her into thinking he was older, maybe three or even four. She was worried that this seemingly undersized and incontinent child was defective, that Dominic wouldn’t pay for him.

  “Nothing’s wrong with him!” I said, fierce with maternal anger. “He’s not yet two.”

  The woman looked from me to Val and back. “Not yet two? But he talks like—”

  “Yes,” I said, “he talks. But he needs a diaper at night, and food, more than just milk.”

  My matter-of-fact manner convinced the woman I was telling the truth. She laughed, shaking her head. “Not yet two, and talks like a spoiled ‘Graven lord.” Her fears allayed, she hefted the chamber pot and picked up the soiled diaper, leaving us again to return with a blackened wad of putrid cloth. “You can use this tonight.”

  For what? I was about to ask, then realized in time that it was a diaper. Again I thanked the woman with exaggerated courtesy. Perhaps this moment was my last chance. “May we have another candle? The children are afraid in the dark.”

  Michaela had done with me now. “They’ll get used to it,” she said. Far too dangerous giving light to a ‘Gravina witch. She moved through the doorway for the last time, muttering to herself, “By the time we see any of it, I’ll have earned my share of the ransom and more.” She locked the door and we heard her footsteps going up the stairs.

  Jana scowled at me with a combination of guilt and frustration over her thwarted stratagem. “I’m sorry I ate the food,” she said.

  “Don’t be,” I said. “You can’t help me if you’re hungry.”

  “I tried to save you some.”

  My heart fluttered at her courage. Five-and-a-half years old. “I know you did. You were very clever and brave, but it’s not as easy as it sounds to trick people into doing what we want.”

  I sat down again, sprawling in the straw, not bothering to avoid the wet spot from Val. This dress had known worse in its years of wear. It smelled of unwashed body, grease and smoke, goat and sheep and chicken shit, and menstrual blood. Michaela’s daughter was old enough to get her period, perhaps recently. I hugged my arms across my breasts, feeling the tight cloth giving way across my shoulders and around my hips. The wool irritated my skin and I fought the urge to scratch, to take the dress off again.

  I had almost nothing left now. Only my dwindling gift, my steel bracelet, and my cloak which, thankfully, the woman had overlooked in the dark. And one other thing. I felt around in the straw beneath me. There it was, my spare dagger in its boot-top sheath. I had been able to shake it out unseen when Michaela had demanded my boots. Most ‘Gravina have only the one, but here in the mountains, where the men fight two-handed with sword and dagger, even the women are expected to carry a spare.

  The dagger was my insurance, and Dominic’s, a defensive weapon only. It had no prism in the handle, only a blade. Threatened with violence and rape, the loss of honor, I was supposed to use it to kill myself, if I could not manage suicide with crypta alone. It was Dominic who had insisted I carry it, Dominic who had taught me to use it. He had been deaf to my protests. “The gods forbid you should ever need to use this,” he had said, his face gray with the thought. “But a thousand times worse if you should have to, and did not know how.”

  Dominic had shown me how to find the artery in my neck by feeling for the pulse with my fingers, had demonstrated on himself how to hold the blade. Then he had taken me outside to the butchering shed when a hog was to be slaughtered, had made me cut the animal’s throat myself so I could have the experience of slicing through living skin and flesh, would know the level of force required, the reality of the blood.

  There had been no playfulness, no inattention, as with the riding lessons. In my communion with Dominic, our sharing of minds, opposite yet complementary, our bond of love, I understood Dominic’s concern. I lived in his world now, a world where violence lurked at the edge of every trail, a threat to any ‘Gravina who could not protect herself. I had applied myself to the dagger training, and had killed the frantic, squealing animal without faltering. After I had done it, I had felt—confident. There is comfort in knowing that one need never try to endure the unendurable.

  I had carried the little dagger every day away from home, everywhere I wore boots: to Eclipsia City and to neighbors’ manors, to weddings and dances, holiday feasts and naming days. It had become automatic with me, to keep it in my boot, and it was lucky I had remembered it in time to save it.

  I motioned Jana over to sit beside me, stroking her hair when she turned her face away. The smell of the dress repulsed her but she was trying not to show it. I unsheathed the dagger, ran my thumb along the blade that I had been diligent about keeping honed and clean. Jana looked around at the motion. “A dagger!” She knew now to keep her voice down. “How?”

  I showed her how I had shaken it into the straw in the dark. My stock with her had risen sharply. “Please, Mama, may I hold it?” As Val, like me, had had no breakfast, and was demanding to be fed, I was glad to use this time to nurse him while Jana entertained herself with the knife. Dreamily I watched my daughter wield the weapon, switching it rapidly from one hand to the other, aiming it at places on the wall, slicing the air and bisecting pieces of straw.

  Here was the unsolved part of the equation. I had children to think of, not merely myself. Dominic and I had not discussed this aspect of things, although I had been pregnant with Jana during my dagger lessons. There had been no need to ask a question to which I already knew the answer. Honor and suicide are luxuries when one is a mother. I wouldn’t dream of killing myself, no matter what was done to me, not while Val and Jana were at the mercy of bandits. But a knife is always useful.

  “Don’t dull the blade, sweetheart,” I said to Jana. “We may actually need to use it.”

  Jana turned to me with shining eyes. “We can kill them all, at night when they’re asleep.”

  Dominic could, I supposed. Not me. “And how do we prevent the others from waking while we kill the first one?” I asked, smiling at her earnest face, her body taut with coiled energy, ready to explode into action.

  “With crypta, Mama,” Jana said, disappointed that I had not known this myself.

  It was coming now, I thought, disillusion and its offspring, fear. Jana would begin to wonder why I couldn’t do more with my powers. To tell her the truth would only frighten her needlessly.

  “That’s too risky,” I said, working to keep my voice level and calm. “Better to wait until Papa and Niall get here. Then there’ll be three of us to work together.”

  “But–” Jana frowned as she tried to balance all the factors in her mind. “But you’ll be too hungry then!”

  My daughter knew me well. I had indeed led the soft life Michaela so resented. Even at home, with plenty of food at every meal, I had been quick to notice my hunger, to feel diminished by a s
mall portion or a meal delayed an hour. Jana, like her father, had a healthy respect for my appetite, aware that Mama, petite though she was, required regular meals and generous servings. With good reason: pregnant twice, nursing each child for at least a year and a half, there would have been no virtue in dieting. And always the gift to feed as well.

  I patted my little pouch of stomach. “Yes,” I said, deciding partial truth was more convincing than total denial. “I’ll be very hungry. But I’ll be fine, with water to drink.” I nodded at the skin of fresh water, let Jana bring it to me, and took a few small swigs.

  Jana, not wholly convinced by my words, but unable to sustain her end of the argument any longer, resumed her knife play. Val, never as robust as his sister, sat contentedly in my lap, suckling determinedly, draining both breasts as he had last night, with no solid food to slake his appetite.

  Reynaldo must have thought of it, I realized, must have learned from his own experience, the terrible effects of starvation on the mind’s abilities. The use of crypta is a physical act, no different from walking or riding in its caloric demands. Just as the muscles require fuel to perform adequately, so does the brain. Without the essential energy food provides, my gift would become a passive talent, allowing me merely to receive others’ thoughts. And without a prism or the full spectrum of light, I had no way to do much more than listen.

  I went over it all, drearily, around and around, like riding in the Aranyi courtyard, my mind unable to focus long on anything. For a little while my body would live off my stored fat. My plump belly that Michaela had laughed at would sustain me at first, but soon my body would break down its own muscles and bones to keep me alive and to make the milk for Val. It was as if I could sense the goodness being sucked out of my body through my nipples into Val’s greedy little lips, could feel the calcium draining out of my bones, taking my teeth one by one, as Michaela’s had undoubtedly gone.

  The first thing to go would be my crypta powers, in the body’s unreasoning, instinctive, rationing of scarce resources. No use powering wasteful mental activity if the rest of the body cannot function. I would be lucky if I could manage to prevent myself and the children from succumbing to disease.