The Gate to Women's Country

by Sheri S. Tepper

  "Why did there have to be a war just now?!"

  Morgot shook her head, swallowed, then did it again, as though something were stuck in her throat. "I don't know, Stavia. Things happen. Populations get edgy. Particularly when food gets short. Ever so often, they just happen. I suppose it was time."

  "What if Chernon... or Habby... what if they made themselves useful in some noncombatant role? Like... doctors, for instance?"

  "Doctors? Warriors don't have doctors."

  "I know they don't. But...."

  "No buts, Stavia. It's part of the ordinances. Warriors can't have doctors. And they must fight at close range, not at a distance. And they must see their own blood and the blood of their fellows, and they must care for their own dying and see their pain. It's part of the choice they have to make. You know all that."

  "Chernon..." she started to say, then turned away, choking.

  "I know. You see him in your mind, suffering, maimed. You see him dying. You feel his pain as though it were your own. I know, Stavia, for the sake of the Lady, you think I don't know! Every mother of sons knows! Every lover knows!"

  "Why!"

  "So that they know what they choose and know what they risk when they choose. It's their choice. They can return through the Gate to Women's Country or they can stay there, but they have to know what staying there means! They can't be asked to choose without knowing what they're doing! It can't be covered up or gilded or glossed over! Stavia, you know why!"

  "And no medically trained people." It was stupid. The ordinances were simply wrong, that's all. She didn't say this, but her tone conveyed her thought.

  "No doctors for the warriors, Stavia."

  "You treat them when they catch diseases from the Gypsies!"

  "We treat them if they have diseases we might get, yes. But they choose battle. They have to live with the consequences of battle."

  "You give them water from the well," she argued. "That's not living with the consequences...."

  "The ordinances give mercy, Stavia. That's all. They're hard, but they're merciful."

  They walked on, in silence. Tears were running down Morgot's face. Inside Stavia was merely a vacancy, a place too deep and empty for pain. She had given Chernon books. It was not merely a bit of rule breaking. She had broken the ordinances as well, and more than that, she disagreed with them. Maybe this was an ordinance that deserved to be broken.

  She couldn't talk to Morgot, but she needed to talk to someone.

  WHEN THE WARRIORS RETURNED it was almost midwinter. The whole city assembled on the walls and around the plaza. The air was crisp and cool with autumn's chill, and brown leaves from the parade ground maples blew in through the Defender's Gate when it was opened to bring in the dead. Row on row of them, the shrouds turned down to show their faces. Most of the dead, including all of those who had died early in the battle, had been buried on the battleground where they had fallen, and their litters held only their armor and their devices. At the head of each litter stood the T-staff which bore the warrior's honors. Beyond the wall, in the parade ground, the badly wounded lay on litters. Stavia and a dozen other maidens carried water from the Well of Surcease to the Council Chambers, where the Councilors mixed it with hemlock. Then the Councilors went out to the wounded warriors, offering the water to all in pain. Some warriors accepted it while others rejected it. Stavia went with Morgot on this duty, holding the cup while they drank.

  "For release from pain," Morgot said, offering the flask.

  "I do not need it, matron," said some. Some, those not too badly wounded, even grinned as they said it.

  "Give it me, lady," said others, and then Stavia took the cup and held it to their lips. They drank and sank back upon their litters, silent. Some smiled. Some merely panted, begging for the flask with their eyes. Some were unconscious but so terribly wounded that their fellows begged it on their behalf. When it was over, someone came behind and pulled the shrouds up over their faces and carried them through the gate where their mothers and sisters waited.

  There was no need of the cup for Barten. He was dead when they brought him back, speared from behind. Spearing from behind was what they always did to those who fled, or, sometimes, to those who were merely unpopular. His sister placed a red ribbon of honor on his chest; his mother wept; Myra threw herself upon his litter screaming, "So they've killed him, too, killed him, too," over and over again. When others tried to pry her away from the corpse, Myra clung to it more tenaciously.

  "Let her be," Morgot said to them. "She will come home after dark when there is no one here to see her." And she did, creeping into the house and up to her room when it was dark and chill. In the morning she went back to the plaza again, but Barten's mother and sisters had taken his body outside the walls to their family plot and buried him there. They had not sent word inviting Myra to accompany them. Custom dictated dignity at times like these, and her grief had been too self-consciously dramatic, too shrill, too unwomanly to draw their sympathetic feeling.

  "Who won?" Stavia asked, wondering why no one had told her.

  "We did, of course. Susantown has given up any idea they may have had of attacking us." Morgot sighed and pushed the hair back from her forehead.

  "How many did they lose?"

  "As many as we."

  "How many is that?"

  "About six hundred," said Morgot. "Most of them were buried on the battlefield. Another hundred or so will die from their wounds."

  "Mother! That's more than a quarter of the garrison. Almost a third!"

  "I know. War is dreadful, daughter. It always has been. Comfort yourself with the knowledge that in preconvulsion times it was worse! More died, and most of them were women, children, and old people. Also, wars were allowed to create devastations. Under our ordinances, no children are slain. No women are slain. Only men who choose to be warriors go to battle. There is no devastation."

  Stavia heard and was somewhat comforted, but Myra was inconsolable. Her cries of grief filled the house for days, and she would not be helped by anyone.

  "Can't you do anything for her?" Stavia asked. "Give her some drug or something?"

  "Better let her get it out," Morgot sighed. "She'll go on like this for a time, but eventually it'll stop. Grief is actually easier to live with than a host of other feelings, Stavia. Jealousy, for example. Or guilt. If Barten had lived, Myra would have learned a lot about both of those. As it is, Myra has nothing to reproach herself with."

  In the weeks that followed, others of the wounded warriors died and there were other ceremonies of honor in the plaza. For a time it seemed there was no day without the rattle of drum and the cry of the trumpet, then the customary quiet came again.

  Morgot summoned them all to the supper table one night and introduced a new member of the family.

  "This is Donal," she said, putting her hand on the shoulder of the stocky, stern-faced young man with the iron-colored hair. "He is just sixteen. He has elected to return to Women's Country, and we have received him very gladly from Tabithatown in the north, where he has just completed the first stage of his education. Donal is enrolled in the servitors' school here in Marthatown."

  Myra rose without a word and left the table. Morgot shook her head, meaning they should take no notice and let her go.

  Donal murmured to Joshua.

  "She was much enamored of a warrior," Joshua answered in a measured, formal tone which Stavia found unfamiliar. "He was not strictly honorable in his observance of the ordinances. He was successful in getting several girls to leave the city and live in the Gypsy encampment for his pleasure. Myra did not go that far, but she did entertain his ideas. He was recently slain."

  Donal flushed and looked down at his plate.

  "I suggest you simply ignore her," Morgot said. "She'll come around."

  "Or make yourself indispensable with the baby," Stavia suggested. "Myra would like that."

  It was Joshua who suggested that Stavia help Donal with his studies. "It's har
d for him," he told her. "I know. Books simply aren't that important in the garrison. Reading isn't encouraged. One never gets into the habit...."

  So Stavia became a tutor, in math, in history, in composition, reminding herself of half a hundred things she had almost forgotten she knew.

  "Councilwomen are not elected by the people," she told him in answer to a question. "They are chosen by other members of the Council."

  "Your mother, that is, Morgot is a Council member. How long has she been on the Council?"

  "Some years now. Since she was thirtyish," Stavia told him.

  "Isn't that very young?"

  "Rather. There aren't many that young."

  "Why did they choose her?"

  "I don't know. She doesn't say. None of them say. There's no specific number for the Council, and some women get put on and some women don't, that's all. Most of those on the Council are medically trained, I do know that. I think that's because the Council has to maintain the health of the city...."

  "That's probably it," agreed Donal. "Servitors never get on the Council, do they?"

  The idea shocked Stavia into silence. Joshua spoke from the doorway. "Servitors have one or more fraternities in each city. The Council in each city often seeks the opinion of the fraternities, if they have opinions worth seeking. And the fraternities have opinions worth seeking in proportion to the amount of studying and thinking the individual servitors do."

  Stavia stared at him, mouth open. "I knew about the servitors' fraternities, but I didn't know that."

  "No one speaks of it from the steps of the Council Chambers, Stavvy. It wouldn't sit at all well with the warriors, would it? Still, don't you think it's reasonable? After all, none of you women have ever had to make such a choice as we have made. Most of you accept your way of life without much judgment of it. Donal and I have chosen your way as our own. Wouldn't you find that interesting, if you were on the Council?"

  "I can't imagine caring what, oh, let's say Minsning thinks about anything."

  "Minsning is Sylvia's servitor, a sweet little fellow," Joshua explained to Donal with a straight face. "He has not a mean bone in his little body; he's as cheery as a sandpiper; and he's an excellent cook. I can't imagine anyone asking Minsning anything about anything except how to make a sauce, perhaps."

  "So there are servitors and servitors?" Stavia mused. This distinction was important, terribly important, though she could not quite grasp where the implications were leading her.

  Joshua laughed at her, showing his strong, slightly yellowish teeth in a wide grin. "There are women and women, aren't there? There's Morgot and there's Myra, for example....

  "Well, I have to take Donal away from you. He's due at the servitors' school, and I need to show him the way."

  When he got to the door, however, Joshua paused and gave Stavia a strange, intent look. "When I get back, there is something I must talk to you about."

  JOSHUA TALKED TO HER in the courtyard, beside the fountain, his hands at work on his forehead where the flesh wrinkled between his eyes. "Stavia, I have this strong, very troubling feeling there is something improper between you and Chernon."

  She started to deny it, thinking he meant something sexual, then realized that, though it had nothing to do with sex, there was something improper going on. For a moment she could not speak, but his eyes were on hers, compelling.

  "I gave him books," she whispered. "The ordinances say you can't give books to warriors, but he wasn't a warrior yet." She kept her eyes on her hands, twisting in her lap, not daring to look into his face.

  "That's specious," he said. "You know that's a rationalization, Stavvy. Warrior or not, you know what the ordinances mean." He got the familiar, pained look on his face and began to rub his forehead as though it hurt badly. "I can't... can't," he murmured to himself. "So murky... Does he still have these books?"

  "One book. I never gave him more than one at a time. He still has the last one I gave him, before I told him I couldn't give him any more."

  "Do you meet him, talk with him regularly?"

  She shook her head. "Sometimes I see him when Beneda and I go to the wall. Sometimes he's there. He hasn't really talked to me, not since that last time, the time he told me he was choosing to stay in the garrison."

  "Unlike Habby

  "Habby? Has he chosen to come home!"

  "He will choose to return. There are about five of his century who will."

  Stavia wept, the tears dripping soundlessly into her lap. She could not tell if they were tears of happiness for Habby or tears of angry grief for Chernon. "Morgot was worried he'd feel as Chernon did...."

  "No. Morgot should have known better."

  "Where will Habby go?"

  "He's agreed to go to Tabithatown. In exchange for Donal. All the towns try to keep things balanced, you know? Which doesn't help us right now with this problem." He shut his eyes, squinting, as though seeking something in the dark. "What did books mean to him, Stavia? Huh? Did he really want books, or was it something else?"

  "I don't know what you mean."

  "I feel... I feel him wanting something from you, but it isn't a book. Books. Not sex. A link of some kind. He feels some sense of attachment to you, but it isn't the usual youthfully romantic kind of thing."

  "We're friends," she offered with some dignity.

  He quit rubbing his forehead. "You may well be, Stavvy. Despite that, or, perhaps, because of that, it's important to return yourself to compliance with the ordinances. The book probably isn't very important, but we should take some steps to get it back. What I think you can do is this. Chernon is fifteen. Old enough for assignations. You can arrange to meet him in the assignation house at midwinter carnival."

  "I'm not old enough," she blurted, shocked.

  Joshua shook his head. "I don't mean you should attempt to have sex with him, child. I mean you can have a quiet time to talk with him, and that's the only one you're likely to get. He probably won't go home, not if he intends to stay in the garrison. Since the ritual of choosing hasn't actually happened yet, he could come home, one last time, but I'll wager he won't. The taverns and eating houses will all be jammed with drunken warriors and giggling women. The market swarms with them. You know that."

  "What shall I say to him, Joshua?"

  "Stavia, I don't know. I can't feel it clearly...."

  "I don't understand what you mean, you can't feel it clearly!"

  "I can't comprehend what he intends to do! Or why!"

  She stared at Joshua, trying to figure out what he meant. "If we knew that, we wouldn't need to talk to him."

  "Of course. Quite right. Well, if I were you, I would tell him that your conscience is bothering you. It is, whether you knew it or not, or I wouldn't have picked up that something is wrong. Tell him you must either get the book back or report to the Council what you have done."

  "What will they do to me?"

  "If they find out." He reached out for her. Joshua had never reached out for her before, but he did, pulling her to him and crushing her against his hard chest. For a moment she was frightened, old stories of mad servitors darting through her mind like crazed swallows, but then she felt his hand on her back, patting her, as though she had been one of the donkeys, patting her, and she smelled him, the leathery, smoky smell of him, his sweet breath on her face as he turned up her face to him. "Oh, Stavia, Stavia. If the Council finds out about it, they'll be honor bound to punish you somehow. They're not going to find out from me. I think you've punished yourself enough already. I don't think you'll break any of the ordinances soon again. But it's not you I'm worried about. It's something to do with Chernon that bothers me. If the warriors caught him with womanly books, they'd punish him severely. Why isn't he worried about that? Stavia? Hmm? Think about it. Why isn't he worried about that?"

  She went to the wall, day on day, finally managing a meeting which was unlikely to be overheard. He whispered to her to bring books to the secret hole, but she shook her head. "
I'll meet you in the assignation house, Chernon. At midwinter. Bring that last book I gave you. We'll talk about it then...."

  He was stubborn and resentful, but she felt she had already yielded too much. She would not yield again.

  "Child, you're not old enough," the assignation mistress said, a quirk at the corner of her mouth saying clearer than words could, "Oh, look at this precocious little miss, thinks she's in love with some warrior."

  Joshua had told her what to say. "It isn't sex, ma'am, if you please. He's almost like my brother, just turned fifteen, and wants to talk to me. You know how it is, there's no place quiet he can go now...."

  A flipping of records, and the woman nodded. "I see. That's Sylvia's son, Chernon. You're neighbors."