The Gate to Women's Country (41 page)

R
EHEARSAL:

I
PHIGENIA
You see, it's as we've tried to tell you, Great Achilles. Women are no good to you dead.

A
CHILLES
Then I… I, too….

I
PHIGENIA
Are but a ghost. Your killing and raping done. Your battles over. A wanderer among the shades, like us.

A
CHILLES
But I—I am an immortal! The poets say I am. Destined to walk among the Gods!

I
PHIGENIA
Are the Gods then dead?

A
CHILLES
They live!

I
PHIGENIA
And when you lived, you walked among them.

A
CHILLES
I did?

P
OLYXENA
We all did.

A
CHILLES
What did the poets mean?

I
PHIGENIA
That you would be immortal while you lived, and may still be well remembered now you're dead. Men like to think well of themselves…

P
OLYXENA
… and the poets help them do it.

A
CHILLES
(Weeps)

P
OLYXENA
He cries like a child. Poor boy.

“Stop,” called the director. “Stavia, when you do the next line, ‘Did the men cry?' bend over and touch his face.

“Touch his face?” asked Stavia. “Achilles?”

“Yes. Touch his face to see if the tears are real. And
then again, right at the end, lay your face alongside his when you say the last line.”

“Right,” said Stavia, bending, reaching out a hand to touch Joshua's face.

I
PHIGENIA
(To Polyxena)
Tell me. Did the men cry when they slit your throat?

Stavia's hand was wet and she looked at it in amazement, and at the tears coursing down Joshua's face as he looked at her.

“No, no they did not,” Polyxena cried.

“They didn't cry when they were slitting mine, either,” Stavia said, through the rasping dryness memory had made of her throat.

M
ORGOT WAS IN A COUNCIL MEETING WHEN ONE
of the women came to tell her there was a servitor waiting. If it had been Joshua, the woman would have said so, and Morgot bit down an expression of annoyance at being disturbed only to swallow it when she saw that it was Corrig, white-faced and trembling.

“What?” she asked. “Who? Stavia?”

“Yes, ma'am. Joshua felt it, too. Both of us, just a few minutes ago.”

“Hurt? Badly hurt?” Morgot fought down a shriek. “Dead?”

“Not dead. No. Joshua says we should go at once. I think so, too.”

“How far?”

“We can't tell. A long way. Too far to locate with any certainty from here.”

“You'll need a wagon to carry… tools and things.”

“Joshua says we'll get Septemius Bird to take us. Septemius knows something, Joshua thinks. Joshua is on his way to Septemius now.”

“Do you want help?”

“Yes, ma'am. Joshua said to ask you if the Councilwomen would approve Jeremiah and the two new men.”

“Councilwoman Jessie's Jeremiah? Councilwoman Carol's men?”

He nodded, seeing her puzzlement. “Joshua says they can see up close clearer than any of us.”

“Go get them,” she said. “I'll fix it with the women.”

“Morgot,” he said, forgetting himself. “Ma'am.”

“Yes, Corrig.”

“Joshua said to be sure and tell you it's all part of the other thing.”

“The garrison? Is something going to happen right away, Corrig?”

“Not right away, ma'am. But be careful.”

S
TAVIA WAS THE WINTER PRINCESS
. S
HE HAD A SHEAF
of grain in one hand and a knife in the other. The Council was sending her out to find the deer. “Cow,” they had said, pointing to the picture in the book. “This is a cow deer.” It had antlers which curved like the new moon, one point coming forward over the animal's brow and the other extending back in an enormous, weighty curve laden with branches and juttings of horn. “About this big,” they said, indicating something which would be about the height of a donkey. The cows had white fur down their chests, muzzles spattered with foam, and long, grasping tongues. Perhaps they told her this or perhaps she had read it somewhere else.

She did not know why they were sending her. Surely one of the others would be better fitted for the job. They already knew what cows were and how they should be handled. Why pick on her, a stranger? She asked them this.

“Your dowry,” they said. “The cows will be your dowry.” Why she needed a dowry, or even what one was, she couldn't remember. There was a sense of urgency about it all, however, something she could not merely ignore. Urgency and inevitability. It had to be done.

Somehow, she had lost her own clothes. They lent her boots and a heavy, quilted coat and a cap with earflaps which tied under her chin. She was naked under the coat. She could feel the cold at her crotch, a wind blowing there. It wouldn't be so cold if she could only get her legs together, but something prevented that.

It was better simply to ignore the cold at her crotch and go out into the snow. Someone had pointed out the way she should go, over there, where the fold in the hills opened up and the trees showed dark against the snowfield. Someone else had pointed out the tracks the cows had left, a cloven, vaguely triangular mark….

“She may die,” a woman said.

Whoever it was who was speaking tied the bandage more securely on her head and wiped blood from her face. Stavia ignored it.

“You shouldn't have hit her.” The same woman's voice.

“She was tryin' to get away!” A boy's voice, a young man, uncertain but defiant.

“What good
is
she to you with her head bashed
in?”
The woman asked. “What were you going to do, kill her and then do your duty on her dead body? Cover her up for decency's sake!”

The sound of a slap, a cry.

“Mind your words, woman. That was disrespectful of your son.” A man's voice, heavy, ponderous with something lubricious and inflexible about it.

Stavia decided she had listened long enough. It was time to go search for the reindeer cows. The trail led into the darkness, into the trees, the forest, where the wind soughed in the branches and all voices were stilled. Even in the dark she could see the footprints. They shone like little fiery hearts in the shadows. She followed them.

“You'll heal her, Susannah,” the man's heavy voice demanded.

“I'll do what I can.” A kind of stubborn dignity there.

“You'll heal her.”

“Husband, I'll do what I can. I've got no magic to heal wounds like this. Maybe if you'd of given her time to teach me the things she knew, I could do something. There's things in her medical bag, but I don't know what they are. Capable chops wood real good. He does skulls real good, too. You got to face it, Resolution Brome. He maybe killed this girl.”

“This devil.”

“Doesn't look like a devil to me,” she retorted with that same perverse integrity, tears bubbling through it. Stavia wanted to laugh, but she couldn't. “Looks like any worm an's
been abused bad. Looks like any wife. Beat and shaved and left hungry.”

Slap again. Cry again. Not a surprised sound, more a ritual one. Slap; ahh. Slap; ahh. The one following the other like an acknowledgment.

“You'll heal her.” It was a command. There was a promise of pain in it.

Silence. Then, “I done all I can do with what I have here. I got to get some things from my wife-house.” Some new emotion in that statement. More than the words. An ultimate sadness. A finality. Whoever the woman was, she went away, into a distance too far to follow.

It was not Stavia's concern. Stavia went back to tracking the footprints. They led down a long, winding pathway among the trees. Ahead of her was moonlight, come from somewhere. Not the sky. The earth, perhaps. Light from the snow itself. And there were the cows, their antlers curved twigs against the trunks of huge trees, standing like gray statues, as still as though carved from stone. Only their breath told her they were alive, little puffs of steam coming from their black muzzles, now, and again, and again. All she had to do was offer them the grain she carried in her left hand and drive them back.