The men who first told me the story thought that Diero had at last become jealous, Irad being so young and so beautiful. They laughed about it. “The old vixen has a tooth or two left!” one of them said.
I didn’t think it was jealousy that moved her. Diero was without envy or possessiveness. What had made her intervene this time?
She got her way, to the extent that she went off with the child that night to her rooms. Barna of course took Irad with him for the night. But whenever he didn’t call for her, Irad stayed with little Melle in Di-ero’s rooms.
When the women of Barna’s house were all together, I was often daunted by the sheer power of their youthful femininity. I got my revenge as a male by feeling contempt for them. They were healthy, plump, mindless, content to lounge about the house all day trying on the latest stolen finery and chattering about nothing. If one or another of them went off to have a baby, it made no difference—there was no end of them, others just as young and pretty would arrive with the next convoy of raiders.
Now it occurred to me to wonder about this endless supply of girls. Were they all runaways? Did they all ask to come here? Were they all seeking freedom?
Yes, of course they were. They were escaping from masters who forced sex on them.
Was Barna’s house any better than whatever they’d escaped from?
Yes, of course it was. Here, they weren’t raped, they weren’t beaten. They were well fed, well clothed, idle.
Exactly like the women in the silk rooms at Arcamand.
I cringe, remembering how I cringed when that thought first came to me. I am ashamed now as I was then.
I thought I was keeping and cherishing Sallo in my memory, but I had forgotten her again, refused to see her, refused to see what her life and her death had shown me. I had run away again.
I had a hard time making myself go see Diero, then. For several nights I went into town to talk with Venne and Chamry and their friends. When I finally did visit Diero’s rooms, my shame kept me tongue-tied. Besides, the little girl was there. “Of course Irad is usually with Barna at night,” Diero said, “but then I get to sleep with Melle. And we tell stories, don’t we, Melle?”
The child nodded vigorously. She was about six years old, dark, and extremely small. She sat next to Diero and stared at me. When I looked back, she blinked, but went on staring. “Are you Cly?” she asked.
“No. I’m Gav.”
“Cly came to the village,” the child said. “He looked like a crow too.” “My sister used to call me Beaky,” I said.
After a minute she looked down at last. She smiled. “Beaky-beaky,” she murmured.
“Her village is near the Marshes,” Diero said. “Maybe Cly came from there. Melle looks a bit like a Rassiu herself. Look, Gav, what Melle did this morning.” She showed me a scrap of the thin, stiffly sized canvas that we used for writing lessons, since we had almost no paper. On it a few letters were written in a large uncertain script,
“T, M, O, D,” I read out. “You wrote that, Melle?”
“I did like Diero-io did,” the child said. She jumped up and brought me Diero’s scroll copybook, unrolled to the last few lines of poetry. “I just copied the big ones.”
“That’s very good,” I said.
“That one is wobbly,” Melle said, examining the D critically.
“She could learn so much more from you than I can teach her,” said Diero. She seldom expressed any wish, and when she did it was so gentle and indirect I often missed it. I caught it this time.
“It’s wobbly, but I can read it quite well,” I said to Melle. “It says D. D is how you start writing Diero’s name. Would you like to see how to do the rest of it?”
The little girl said nothing, but leapt up again and fetched the inkstand and the writing brush. I thanked her and carried them over to the table. I found a clean scrap of canvas and wrote out DIERO in big letters, pulled up a stool for Melle to perch on, and gave her the brush.
She did a pretty good job of copying, and as praised. “I can do it better,” she said, and crouched over the table to copy again, eyebrows drawn tight together, brush held tight in the sparrow-claw hand, pink tongue clamped tight between the teeth.
Again Diero had given me back something I lost when I left Arca-mand. Her eyes were bright as she watched us.
After that I came by her apartment nearly every day to read with her and to teach little Melle her letters. Often the child’s sister was there. Irad was very shy with me at first, and I with her; she was so beautiful, so unguarded, and so clearly Barna’s property. But Diero always stayed with us, protecting us both. Melle adored Diero and soon attached herself passionately to me too. She’d rush at me when I came into the room, crying, “Beaky! Beaky’s here!” and strangle me with hugging when I picked her up. That made Irad begin to trust me, and talking and playing with the child put us at ease. Melle was serious, funny, and very intelligent. In Irad’s fiercely protective love for her there was an element of admiration, almost awe. She would say, “Ennu sent me to look after Melle.”
They each wore a tiny figure of Ennu-Me, a crudely modeled clay cat’s head, on a cord around the neck.
It wasn’t hard for me to persuade Irad that learning how to read and write along with Melle was a good idea, and so she joined in the lessons. Like Diero, she was doubtful and hesitant in learning. Melle was not, and it was touching to see the little sister coaching the big one.
Lessons with the other girls in the house had never got further than half the alphabet; they always lost interest or were called away. The pleasure of teaching Melle made me think I might gather some of the young children of the town into a class. I tried, but couldn’t make it work. The women wouldn’t trust their girls to any man; the children were needed to go into the fields with their mother, or look after their baby brother; or they were simply unable to sit still long enough to learn a lesson, and their parents had no idea why they should do so. I needed Barna’s backing, his authority.
I approached him with the proposal of establishing a school, a place set aside, with regular hours. I’d teach reading and writing. To flatter his sense of superiority to me, Pulter would be asked to recite and lecture on literature. The accountant might teach a little practical arithmetic. Barna listened, nodded, and approved heartily, but when I began to suggest the place I thought suitable, he had reasons why it would not do. Finally he said, clapping me on the shoulder, “Put it off till next year, Scholar. Things are too busy now, people just can’t spare the time.”
“Children of six or seven can spare the time,” I said.
“Kiddies that age don’t want to be locked up in a classroom! They need to be running about and playing, free as birds!”
“But they aren’t free as birds,” I said. “They’re drudging at field work with their mothers, or lugging their baby sisters and brothers around. When are they going to learn anything else?”
“We’ll see that they do. I’ll talk about this with you again!” And he was off to see about the new additions to the granaries. He was indeed endlessly busy and I made allowance for it, but I was disappointed.
I made up for it to myself by offering to give talks in the room I’d hoped to use as a schoolroom. I told people I’d tell some of the history of the City States and Bendile and other lands of the Western Shore, evenings, if they wanted to come listen. I got an audience of nine or ten grown men; women didn’t go in the streets at night. My hearers mostly came just to hear stories, but a couple of them took a shrewd interest in the variety of customs and beliefs, laughing heartily at outlandish ways of doing and thinking, and ready to talk about whys and wherefores. But they’d worked hard all day, and when I went on long I’d see half my audience asleep. If I were ever to educate the Forest Brothers, I’d have to catch them younger.
My failure to start a school left me all the more time to be with Diero and Melle, and I was happier with them than anywhere else. I still went about with Barna, but his interest was all in im
mediate projects, the new buildings and planned expansion of the community kitchens. The Heart of the Forest was rapidly becoming more prosperous as the herds and gardens thrived and the raiders brought in goods. When I talked with the netmen who went into Asion, over the weak beer in the beer house Chamry frequented, they spoke only about stealing and trading. It seemed to me they were sent out mostly to get luxuries.
Venne was back from a long trip with his group, and he and some of his mates often joined us at the beer house. He liked his work. It was exciting, and he hadn’t had to shoot anybody, he said. I asked him if people outside the forest knew who they were. Over towards Piram, where he had been, he said the villagers called the raiders “Barna’s boys.” They were willing to barter with them, but were wary, always urging them to go on to the next town and “skin the merchants.”
I asked Venne if the raiders ever talked to people about the Uprising. He’d never heard of it at all. “A revolt? Slaves? How could slaves fight? We’d have to be like an army, to do that, seems like.” His ignorance made me think that only certain men were entrusted with the risky task of spreading the plans for the Uprising; but I didn’t know who they were.
I asked the raiders if slaves in the villages or on the farms often asked to join them. They said sometimes a boy wanted to run off with them, but they usually wouldn’t take him, for not even cattle theft roused such vengeful pursuit as slave stealing. But they all had stories about slaves who’d escaped and followed them on their own. Most of them had been such runaways themselves. “See, we knew we couldn’t get into Barna’s town without we went with Barna’s boys,” said a young man from a village on the Rassy. “And I do keep an eye out for fellows like I was.”
“And that’s how you get the girls you bring in too?” I asked.
That brought on laughter and a babble of stories and descriptions. Some girls were runaways, I gathered, but the raiders had to be careful about accepting them, “because they’ll be followed, like as not, and not know how to hide their tracks, and likely they’re with child”—and another man broke in, “It’s only the pregnant and the ugly ones and maimed and harelips that tries to join us. The ones we want are kept shut up close.”
“So how do you get them to join you?” I asked. More laughter. “Same way we get the cattle and sheep to join us,” said Venne’s leader, a short, rather pudgy man, who Venne told me was a fine hunter and scout. “Round ’em up and drive ’em!”
“But don’t touch, don’t touch,” said another man, “at least not the prettiest one or two. Barna likes ’em fresh.”
They went on telling stories. The men who had taken Irad and Melle were there, and one of them told the tale, rather boastfully, since everybody knew Irad was Barna’s favorite. “They was just out at the edge of the village, the two of ’em, in the fields, and Ater and I come by on horseback. I took one look and give Ater the wink and hopped off and grabbed the beauty, but she fought like a she-bear, I tell you. She was trying to get her hand to that knife of hers, now I know it, and lucky she didn’t, or she’d have had my guts out. And the little one was jabbing at my legs with the little sharp spade she had, cutting ’em to ribbons, so Ater had to come pull her off, and he was going to toss her aside, but the two of ’em hung on to each other so tight, so I said take both the damn little bitches then, and we tied ’em up together and put ’em up in front of me on my big mare. They screeched the whole time, but we was just far enough from the houses nobody heard. That was a lucky haul by Sampa! I doubt they missed those girls till nightfall, and by then we was halfway to the forest.”
“I wouldn’t want a woman that fought like that, with a knife and all,” said Ater, a big, slow man. “I like ’em soft.”
The conversation wandered off, as it often did in the beer house, into comparing kinds of women. Only one of the eight men around our table had a woman of his own, and he was teased remorselessly about what she did while he was off raiding. The others were talking more about what they wanted than what they had. The Heart of the Forest was still a city of men. An army camp, Barna sometimes said. The comparison was apt in many ways.
But if we were soldiers, what war were we fighting?
“He’s gone off broody again,” Venne said, and clucked like a hen. I realised somebody had made a joke about me and I’d missed it. They laughed, good-natured laughter. I was the Scholar, the bookish boy, and they liked me to play my absent-minded role.
I went back to Barna’s house. I was to give a recital that evening. Barna was there, as always, in his big chair, but he had Irad sitting on his lap, and he fondled her as he listened to me tell a tale from the Chamhan.
Though he sometimes caressed his girls in public, he had always done it jokingly, calling a group of them to come around him and “keep me warm on a winter night,” and inviting some of his men to “help themselves.” But that was after feasting and drinking, not during a recitation. Everyone knew he was besotted by Irad, calling her to his bedroom every night, ignoring all his earlier favorites. But this crass display in public was a new thing.
Irad held perfectly still, submitting to his increasingly intimate caresses, her face blank.
I stopped before the end of the chapter. The words had dried up. I’d lost the thread of the story, and so had many of my hearers. I stood silent a minute, then bowed and stepped down.
“That’s not the end, is it?” said Barna in his big voice.
I said, “No. But it seemed enough tonight, Maybe Dorremer would play for us?”
“Finish the tale!” Barna said.
But other people had begun to move about and talk, and several seconded my call for music, and Dorremer came forward with her lyre as she often did after Pulter or I recited. So it passed off, and I made my escape. I went to Diero’s rooms, not my own. I was troubled and wanted to talk with her.
Melle was asleep in the bedroom. Diero was in her sitting room without any light but the moon’s. It was a sweet clear night of early summer. The forest birds they called nightbells were singing away off among the trees, calling and answering, and sometimes a little owl wailed sweetly. Diero’s door was open. I went in and greeted her, and we sat without talking for a while. I wanted to tell her about Barna’s behavior, but I didn’t want to spoil her serenity, which always quietened me. She said at last, “You’re sad tonight, Gav.”
I heard someone run lightly up the stairs. Irad came in. Her hair was loose and she was panting for breath. “Don’t say I’m here!” she whispered, and ran out again.
Diero stood up. She was like a willow, black and silver in the moonlight. She took up the flint and steel and struck a light. The little oil lamp bloomed yellow, changing all the shadows in the room and leaving the moon’s cold radiance out in the sky. I didn’t want to lose our quiet mood, and was about to ask Diero, petulantly, why Irad was playing hide-and-seek. But there was the noise of heavier feet on the staircase, and now Barna stood in the doorway. His face was almost black, swollen, in the tangled mass of his hair and beard. “Where is the bitch?” he shouted. “Is she here?”
Diero looked down. Trained in submissiveness all her life, she was unable to answer him with anything but a shrinking silence. And I too shrank from the big man blind with rage.
He pushed past us, flung open the bedroom door, looked around in the bedroom, and came out again, staring at me. “You! You’re after her! That’s why Diero keeps her here!” He rushed at me like a great, red boar charging, his arm upraised to strike me. Diero came between us crying out his name. He knocked her aside with one hand. He seized me by the shoulders and lifted and shook me as Hoby used to do, slapped my head left and right, and threw me down.
I don’t know what happened in the next minute or two. When I could sit up and see through the dazzling blackness that pulsed in my eyes, I saw Diero huddled on the floor. Barna was gone.
I managed to get to my hands and knees, then get up. I looked into the bedroom. No one was there but a tiny shadow cowering against the wall by one o
f the beds.
I said, “Don’t be afraid, Melle, it’s all right.” I found it difficult to talk. My mouth was filling with blood and a couple of teeth were loose on the right side. “Diero will be here in a moment,” I said.
I went back to Diero. She had sat up. The lamp was still burning. In its weak pool of light I could see that the soft skin of her cheek was bruised. I could not bear to see that. I knelt down by her.
“He found her,” she whispered. “She hid in your room. He went straight there. Gav, what will you do?” She took my hand. Her hand was cold.
I shook my head, which made it ring and spin again. I kept swallowing blood.
“What will he do to her?” I said. She shrugged.
“He’s angry—he could kill her—”
“He’ll hurt her. He doesn’t kill women. Gav. You can’t stay here.” I thought she meant this room.
“You must go. Leave! She went to your room. She didn’t know where to hide. Oh, poor child. Oh, Gav! I have loved you so much!” She put her face down on my hand, weeping silently for a moment, then raised her head again. “We’ll be all right. We’re not men, we don’t matter. But you have to go.”
“I’ll take you,” I said. “And them—Irad and Melle—“ “No, no, no,” she whispered. “Gav, he’ll kill you. Go now. Now! The girls and I are safe.” She got up, pulling herself up by the table, and stood shakily a minute; then she went into the bedroom. I heard her soft voice talking to the child. She came out carrying her. Melle clung to her, hiding her face.
“Melle-sweet, you must say goodbye to Gav.”
The child turned and held out her arms, and I took her and held her tight. “It will be all right, Melle,” I said. “Do your lessons with Diero. Promise? And help Irad with them. Then you’ll both be wise.” I didn’t know what I was saying. I was in tears. I kissed the child and set her down. I took Diero’s hand and held it against my mouth a moment, and went out.
I went to my room, belted on my knife, put on my coat, and put the small copy of the Cosmologies in the pocket. I looked around the little room with its one high window, the only room of my own I’d ever had.
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