The Saga of the Renunciates

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Magda watched Camilla’s long, callused fingers, tender on the child; Camilla held the baby, crooning, for a moment against her meager breast. How can a neuter, a woman who has no female hormones—and besides that, she must be fifty at least— appear so motherly? How, in any case, did a neuter, an emmasca, think of herself, of children? Magda could not even guess. She had always believed that this kind of motherly feeling was a matter of hormones, no more than that.

  “Margali,” Marisela said, “Go down to the kitchen, and heat some milk; put honey in it, and bring it up here for Byrna, to have with her medicine, before she sleeps.”

  Magda went downstairs, feeling weary; now she must stir up the banked fire and heat some milk! To her aching relief, however, Irmelin was already there, quietly moving around the huge stove. Rafaella was there too, dressed for riding, eating a bowl of hot porridge at the table.

  “So Byrna’s had her baby? And now Marisela wants some hot milk and honey for her,” Irmelin said, kindly. “You sit down there by Rafi and have some tea; I made myself some when I came down, it’s poured out there. So Byrna’s had her baby— what was it? Boy or girl?”

  “A boy,” Magda said, drinking the hot tea gratefully as Irmelin put the milk to heat.

  Rafaella swore, slamming her fist on the table. “Hellfire! Poor brat, and she’ll have to give him up—Zandru’s hells, how well I remember that! There ought to be a better—hellfire!” She slammed out, leaving her porridge-bowl knocked over, spilling milk and runny porridge over the table. Magda stared after her, wondering what was the matter.

  Irmelin watched her, sighing, but she came and mopped up the milk without speaking. She said curtly, “Drink your tea, Margali, and take this up to Byrna,” and her eyes were distant, her lips set. Magda sipped at the sweet milky tea, longing almost passionately for a strong cup of black coffee. Her head was aching, and she felt exhausted. She took the milk upstairs.

  The baby, wrapped in blanket and kimono, was lying in Byrna’s arms, Byrna had been washed, her hair combed and braided, and she was lying with her eyes closed and peaceful.

  “Let me put him in the cradle while you drink your milk, breda,” Camilla said, holding the cup to her lips, but Byrna clung to the baby. “No, I want to keep him, please, please—‘

  Marisela told them to go and get some breakfast, saying she would stay with Byrna for a few hours, to make sure she did not begin bleeding, and Camilla sighed as they went down the stairs.

  “Poor little thing,” she said, “I hope Ferrika will come here in time to comfort her before she yields up her child—I am troubled about her.” She put her arm around Magda, and said, “You are weary, too—had you never delivered a child before?”

  “Never,” said Magda. “Had you?”

  “Oh, yes—I could have managed, had Keitha not been there. Rafaella’s second son was born like that, and long before she looked for it; she had not counted her time properly and did not know she was within forty days of labor.” She began to laugh. “We were riding together near Neskaya Guild House: we had been on fire-watch. She barely had time to get her breeches off; the child was born into my hands as I bent to see if she was truly in labor. We wrapped it in my tunic and she rode home beside me!” The tall emmasca chuckled. “I have heard that Dry-Town women ride till the very day they are delivered, but this equalled anything I had ever heard!”

  The smell of breakfast cooking rose up the stairs, but Camilla did not turn toward the dining-room; instead she pulled the house-door open. The street was empty and dark, snow still falling heavily, though the light was stronger. Magda felt lost in the world of thick snowflakes, lost, very alien in this strange world. She felt that if by chance she should look in a mirror she would not recognize herself. Camilla heard her sigh, and tightened her arm around Magda’s shoulder.

  “You are weary of being housebound, I can imagine; but dark and dismal as the days are now, it would be worse to be shut up inside in the full summer. The time will pass before you know it. Look, there is blood on your tunic, and on your wrist,” she added, picking up Magda’s hand. “We have an old saying in the hills where I was brought up; if blood is spilt on you before breakfast, you will shed blood before nightfall. Are your courses due?”

  For a moment Magda did not quite understand the phrase, which Camilla had spoken in the cahuenga vernacular; Camilla repeated the question in casta and Magda shook her head.

  “Oh, no, not nearly.” The snowflakes, whirling up from the street, felt cold on her cheeks. Camilla looked at her, troubled.

  “But you have been here more than forty days and you have not had them—breda, are you pregnant?”

  Damn it, was everybody watching her so closely as that? She said in exasperation “Damnation, no!”

  “But how can you possibly be sure—” Camilla’s face changed. “Margali! Have you taken a fertility-destroyer?”

  Again, for a moment, Magda did not understand; when she did she thought that was probably the nearest equivalent to the Terran medical treatment which had suppressed menstruation and female function. She nodded; it saved argument.

  “Don’t you know those drugs can kill you, child? Why do you girls do it?” Camilla broke off and sighed. “I of all people have no right to lecture you, being what I am… and beyond that danger forever. It has been so long, so long since I can even remember what it was like to be driven by those hungers and needs. But at times—when I think of Byrna’s face when she looked at her child—I wonder.” The deep sigh seemed to rack her whole body; but her lips were pressed tight together, and she stared impassively at the falling snow. Magda had wondered before; what could drive a woman to the illegal and often fatal neutering operation on Darkover; it would not have been simple even for Terran medicine, yet she had seen more than one emmasca in her travels. She did not speak her question aloud, but at her side Camilla stiffened and looked away from her, staring into the whirling snowflakes, and Magda wondered if the woman could really read her mind.

  Camilla said at last, “Only my oath-mother, Kindra, knows all; it is something of which I do not often speak, as you may imagine, but you are my sister and should know the truth. I—” she stopped again for a moment, and Magda protested, “I did not ask—you do not need to tell me anything, Camilla—”

  She does read my mind! How? Magda remembered, with a curious sting of apprehension, how at Ardais she had stood by as Lady Rohana and the leronis Alida worked with the matrix to heal Jaelle’s wound, and how she had found herself within the matrix, working with laran.

  Camilla said, “Once I—bore another name, and my family was not unknown in the Kilghard Hills. My mother said,” she added, her voice flat and detached, “that there was Hastur blood in my veins; which means probably that I was festival-born, and not the daughter of my father. I was destined for a great marriage, or for the Tower, a leronis. My father’s freehold was attacked one day by bandits; they slew many of my father’s sworn men, and me they carried away, with some of his cattle, to be a plaything for them. You can imagine, I suppose, how they used me,” she said, still in that flat, detached voice. “I was not yet fourteen years old, and mercifully I have forgotten much.”

  “Oh, Camilla!” Magda’s arms tightened around the older woman’s spare body.

  “I was ransomed, and rescued, at last,” Camilla went on, rigid in Magda’s arms, “My family was concerned, I think, mostly that I was spoilt for a grand marriage. And a leronis must be—” she paused, considering and turning over words, almost visibly, “untouched. I was not yet old enough even to know that I was with child by one of the—animals who had stolen me. I remember no more; my mind was darkened. I am told I laid hands on my life.” Her eyes were distant, looking inward on horror; at last she gave herself a little shake and her voice was alive again.

  “It mattered no further to my family what became of me. I was healed, but I knew I could never again endure the touch of any man without—horror. The Lady of Arilinn it was, Leonie Hastur, sanctioned it, tha
t I should be made emmasca, and so it was done. For many years I lived among men, as a man, and refused to admit even to myself that I was a woman. But at last I came to the Guild House; and there I found, again, that womanhood was—was possible for me.” She smiled down at Magda. “It was half a lifetime ago; sometimes for years together I remember nothing of that old life, or who I was then. We should go and sleep; only when I am weary do I talk such morbid rubbish.”

  Magda was still speechless, horror-stricken, not only by Camilla’s story, but by the frozen calm with which she told it. Camilla smiled again at her and said “My oath-mother Kindra said once to me that every woman who comes to the Guild House has her own story and every story is a tragedy, one which would hardly be believed if it was played in a theatre by actors! When I saw Keitha’s scars—I too was once beaten like an animal, and bear scars like hers on my body; so the story is fresh in my mind, and raw again.”

  Magda protested, “Surely that is not true of all Renunciates, though? They cannot be all tragedies! Surely some women simply come here because they like the life, or choose it for themselves—Jaelle, she told me, grew up in the Guild House, foster-daughter to Kindra—”

  “Ask Jaelle, sometime, about her mother’s death,” said Camilla.

  “She was born in Shainsa; but it is her story, not mine, and I have no right to tell it.”

  Magda laughed uneasily. “My story is no tragedy,” she said, trying to speak lightly. “It is more like a comedy—or a farce!”

  “Ah, sister,” Camilla said, “that is the true horror of all our stories, that some men, hearing them, would think them almost funny.” But there was no mirth in her voice. “You should go to breakfast. I will give no lesson in swordplay today.” She held out her arms and gave the younger woman a quick, warm hug. “Go and sleep, chiya.”

  Magda would have rather stayed; she did not want to be alone. But she went obediently up to her room and to bed. An hour or two later she found herself awake, and unable to sleep again; she went to the kitchen and found herself some cold food; afterward, at loose ends—for the Guild Mothers had excused her from any duties today—she went into the library and read, for a time, the history of the Free Amazons. It crossed her mind that she should make careful notes, to file all this in the Terran records one day, but she did not want to think about that just yet. Later in the day Mother Lauria found her and asked her to take hall duty, the lightest of the assigned tasks inside the house. This meant only that she should go to the greenhouse and find flowers and leaves there for the decorations, which were beginning to fade, and afterward, stay in the hall and let anybody in or out, or answer the door if anyone came to the House on business.

  Magda was learning simple stitches, but she still disliked sewing; she brought down a cord belt she was braiding, and sat working at the intricate knots.

  Two or three times she got up to let someone in, and once brought a message to Marisela, which she gave at the door of the room where Byrna was sleeping, the baby tucked in beside her. She was half asleep, in the gray light of the hallway, when suddenly there was a loud and shocking banging on the door.

  Magda jumped up and pulled the heavy door open. A huge burly man, expensively dressed, stood on the doorstep: he glowered at Magda and said, using the derogatory mode, “I wish to see the woman who is in charge of this place.” But the inflection he used made it obvious that his meaning was, “Get me the bitch who is in charge of this rotten dump.”

  Magda noticed that there were two men behind him, as large as himself, both heavily armed with sword and dagger. She said, in a polite mode which was a reproof to him, “I will ask if one of the Guild Mothers is free to speak with you, messire. May I state your business?”

  “Damn right,” growled the man, “Tell the old bitch I’ve come for my wife and I want her right now and no arguments.”

  Magda shut the door in his face and went quickly to the Guild Mother’s sanctuary.

  “How white you are!” Mother Lauria exclaimed. “What’s wrong, child?”

  Magda explained. She said “I think it must be Keitha’s husband,” meanwhile glancing at the huge, copper-sheathed door commemorating the battle which had claimed their right to a woman who had, like Keitha, taken refuge here generations ago.

  Mother Lauria followed her eyes.

  “Let us hope it does not come to that, my child. But run down quickly to the armory, and tell Rafaella—no, Rafi is away with a caravan to the north. Tell Camilla to arm herself quickly, and come. I wish Jaelle were here, but there is no time to send for her. You arm yourself, too, Margali; Jaelle told me that you fought with bandits when she was wounded near Sain Scarp.”

  Magda, her heart pounding, ran down to the armory and quickly armed herself with the long knife the Amazons did not call a sword—though Magda could not see the difference. Camilla, arming herself, looked grim.

  “Nothing like this has happened for ten years and more—that we should have to defend the house by force of arms as if we were still in the Ages of Chaos!” She looked doubtfully at Magda. “And you are all but untried—

  Magda was all too aware of this. Her heart pounded as they hurried along the stairs, side by side. Mother Lauria was waiting for them in the hall. There was a furious banging, on the door, and Mother Lauria opened it again.

  The man on the doorstep began to bluster. “Are you the woman in charge of this place?”

  Mother Lauria said quietly “I have been chosen by my sisters to speak in their name. May I ask to whom I have the honor of speaking?” She spoke with the extreme courtesy of a noblewoman addressing the crudest peasant.

  The man snarled, “I am Shann MacShann, and I want my wife, not a lot of talk. You filthy bitches lured her away from me, and I want her sent out to me this minute!”

  “No woman is allowed to come to us except of her free will,” said Mother Lauria, “If your wife came here it was because she wished to renounce her marriage for cause. No woman within these walls is wife to you.”

  “Don’t you chop logic with me, you—” The man spat out a gutter insult. “You bring my wife out here to me, or I’ll come in there and take her!”

  Magda’s hand tightened on her knife, but the Guild Mother’s voice was calm. “By the rules of this place, no man may ever pass our walls except by special invitation; and I am afraid I really have nothing more to say to you, sir. If the woman who was once your wife wishes to speak with you, she may send you a message and settle any business left unsettled between you, but until she wishes to do so—”

  “Look, that wife of mine, she gets mad at me sometimes, once she ran away to her mother and stayed almost forty days, but she come cryin’ back to me again. How do I know you’re not holding her there and she wanting to come back?’”

  “Just why would we do a thing like that?” asked Mother Lauria mildly.

  “You think I don’t know what goes on in places like this?”

  “Yes,” said Mother Lauria, “I think you do not know at all.”

  “Keitha, she’s too much a woman to get along without a man!” Shann blustered, “You send her out here right now!”

  “I’m really afraid, you know,” said the Guild Mother with great composure, “that you are going to have to accept my word: Keitha n’ha Casilda has expressed no desire to return to you. If you wish to hear this from her own lips, we allow visitors on the night of High Moon, and you are welcome to come, unweaponed, alone or with members of your immediate family, and speak to her either alone or in our presence, as she herself wishes. But at this hour and on this day no man may enter here unless he has business here, and you, sir, assuredly have none. I ask you now to take yourself and your men away from here, and not to create a commotion on our doorstep.”

  “I tell you, I’m coming in and get my wife,” Shann shouted, whipped out his sword and started up the steps. Camilla and Magda, long knives drawn, quickly stepped forward and blocked the way.

  “You think I’m not a match for a pair of girls?�
�� He whipped the sword down, but Camilla, moving swiftly as a striking snake, caught his blade with hers and struck it from his hand. He missed his footing on the stairs and stumbled, almost falling. He shouted to his men “Come on! Let’s get in there!”

  Magda braced herself for another attack. The white light of the snow in the street, the two huge men slowly advancing, Camilla at her shoulder, the knife-scars on her face white and drawn. For Magda the scant few seconds it took for the men to mount the first step seemed to last an eternity.

  Then the men were on them and Magda felt herself thrusting, twisting the steel; the man’s sword clanged, whipped sideways, slashed quickly back, and Magda felt a line of fire slice along her leg.

  It didn’t hurt, not yet, but while she blocked the next stroke— skills learned in Intelligence training, years ago, were coming back rapidly—what she mostly felt was shock.

  You get this kind of training, it’s routine, but you don’t expect to have to use it, not really. You find you can do it, her thoughts raced, but you don’t believe it, not while you’re doing it, not even while you’re bleeding. Her mind lagged behind but her body was fighting, driving the men back, down the steps. One slipped in the snow and Magda felt the sword go in under his breastbone before she fully knew it, felt the body sliding back off the blade, pulled by its own dead weight. She brought her knife up to guard against the next man; did not realize that Shann had gone down, bleeding, under Camilla’s sword; that Camilla had said, to the third man, “Had enough?”

  Magda did not hear: she was going after the third man in a flurry of sword-strokes, forcing him back and down the steps. Her blood sounded loud in her own ears and there was a blurry haze, blood-colored, before her eyes. A voice inside her seemed to be screaming, Kill them, kill them all! All of her rage against the Darkovan men who had kept her from the work and the world she wanted, her terror of the bandits who had disarmed her and shown her her own weakness—it was almost a sensual frenzy, letting the sword move almost without volition, until she heard someone shouting her name. By now the sound meant nothing. She saw the man before her slip, stumble to his knees. Then another sword struck hers down; she whirled to face her attacker and in the moment before she struck, she saw Camilla’s face; it made her pause, just a moment, and her sword went flying with a violence that knocked her hand numb.