The Gate to Women's Country (44 page)

S
TAVIA AS IPHIGENIA AND JOSHUA AS ACHILLES AND
all the rest of the cast—including the director, who had finally decided what it was she wanted from the performance—were walking through a final, afternoon rehearsal. The performance would be given that evening. The summer theater was gay with banners, and the food kiosks were already steaming with flavorful things to be sold when dusk came. The small cast was going through the play in costume and makeup, a final run-through to get used to the just-completed set, speaking their lines over the sound of the chorus practicing across the grass. The walls of Troy tumbled in wreckage about them. Hecuba huddled with Andromache. Halfway up the walls of Troy, Achilles knelt, weeping. Stavia as Iphigenia leaned down to him as directed, her hand on his cheek.

I
PHIGENIA
Achilles, why are you crying?

A
CHILLES
It's gone, all gone. My honors and my glory. Thetis, my mother, said my name would be immortal as the name of Jove himself, yet here I am beside these broken walls, alone, alone….

I
PHIGENIA I'
d not have said alone.

A
CHILLES
Who's here? Is my friend Patroclus here? Is Ajax here? Where are those of the Argive host who died? All my brave Myrmidons, where are they?

H
ECUBA
What is he saying, Agamemnon's child?

I
PHIGENIA
He cries for heroes, Hecuba. He cries for his friends or any other dead Greek to keep him company.

H
ECUBA
Lonely, is he? With us here to attend him?

P
OLYXENA
Ungrateful of him, isn't it? Achilles! We are here to keep you company. Tss, why should you be lonely?

A
CHILLES
(Passionately)
What have women to say to a warrior?

C
ASSANDRA
Oh, a woman might say much, if he would listen. Men do not listen, though. They disregard the things we say as though we were caged birds, singing our songs by rote. For instance, I've told Agamemnon what fate awaits him, but he laughs….

I
PHIGENIA
(Tittering)
He never listened to good counsel before. Why should he now?

A
CHILLES
(Continuing, as though there had been no interruption)
Yes, what have women to say to a warrior? And what has a warrior to say to women?!

A
NDROMACHE
Why, you might tell us how you made us love you. I had a father once in goodly Thebe, the city of the Cilicians. You came there, warrior. You sacked the place, slaying my father and his seven sons. What fame you brought my brothers, great Achilles, slain by such a man as you. You could speak of that.

I
PHIGENIA
Or speak of your wooing. Tell how you killed the menfolk of Briseis. Tell how you raped her there inside your tent while calling her a “fruitling of your spear.” Warriors have much that they could say to women if they would use their tongues….

A
CHILLES
It's not my fault she longed for my embrace. She threw herself before my sandaled feet, reaching with ivory arms to feel my thighs. What you call rape was only that sweet violence the trees well know when, lashed by summer storm, they crash together in the wilderness….

I
PHIGENIA
What storms these were in which so many died! What summer tempests leaving all those dead! So many husbands, fathers, brothers slain! No doubt they were struck down all tenderly, caressed by loving blades.

P
OLYXENA
If Briseis threw herself at your feet, she might have been pleading for mercy. Had you considered that?

A
CHILLES
(Sulkily)
If Patroclus were here, he'd understand. We men understand one another.

I
PHIGENIA
Well, Patroclus has gone on down to Hades along with all the rest of the dead Greeks.

H
ECUBA
And Trojans….

I
PHIGENIA
And Trojans. You'll have company enough when you come there. I've been there and I know.

P
OLYXENA
That's true! For you were slain ten years ago.

I
PHIGENIA
Ten years, such little time. But long enough to learn the way to Hell and back again.

“Stavia,” said the director uncertainly, seeing her stagger. “Are you all right?”

“Of course,” Stavia said, feeling the flood of momentary emotion depart. “Sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt.”

It had been ten years from the time she had taken Dawid to the warriors until the night a few weeks ago that he had chosen to remain with the garrison. Time enough to learn the way to Hell and back again.

S
TAVIA'S HEAD INJURY HAD BEEN WORSE THAN
they thought. The chief surgical officer had drilled holes in her skull and lifted a piece out, like the lid of a teapot, removed the clot which pressed against her brain, then laid the bone back with the scalp neatly stitched across it and white bandages to cover it all. Through it all, Stavia dreamed again of the deer, over and over again.

There was a long time during which voices spoke in other rooms, a time when everything was far away and nothing was important enough to look at or listen to. She did not really hear the conversation between Septemius and Morgot as they sat by her bed, watching her breathe, breathing for her when she forgot to do so, though the substance of it entered her, as the dreams had done.

“How did you find out?” Morgot asked.

“Ah.” Septemius thought about this. “I would say through the innocent eye, madam. Through untutored observation, in which we do not perceive the fabric of your lives, worked into the pattern you are accustomed to showing others. We are therefore free to make other patterns from the threads we see. We unraveled all your threads and from their substance rewove the truth. Our attention focused, for example, on the amount of medical attention given women before and after carnival….”

“To prevent disease,” Morgot said quietly.

“There was rather more to it than that. After all, we itinerants have had experience with what you do to prevent disease. We've been in the quarantine house, and it's no lengthy process. No, all this doctoring was to do
something more, to prevent pregnancy during carnival, to assure pregnancy afterward. I assume the servitors chosen to father children provide the necessary… ah… wherewithal.”

“Yes. They do. Willingly.”

Stavia imagined his lips curving. “I did not think you took it by force. Then, too, madam, I am a magician. Magicians understand misdirection. We do it all the time. We say, watch my left hand, and then the right hand plays the trick. So it was easy for us to see the misdirection in what you were doing. You women were saying, ‘Watch us bringing sons to their warrior fathers, watch us weeping,' and all the time the trick was going on somewhere else.”

“Surely you weren't sure,” Morgot said. “You're not supposed to know anything about it.”

“There were other clues.” Septemius nodded. “Firstly, everyone said that more men came back through the gates in each succeeding generation. That argued for something, didn't it? Selection, perhaps? Tonia and Kostia are attending classes in Women's Country, and they bring their books home. Remarkable how many books in Women's Country refer to selection. Even Chernon had a book with something in it of great importance to Women's Country. Put there as a clue, I'm sure. Put there, so that those with eyes will see it. Needless to say, he couldn't see it. He sought the secret of Women's Country, and it was there before his eyes….

“And then there's the matter of the servitors. Some of them, of course, are like Sylvia's Minsning, fluttery little fellows who are simply happier in Women's Country as cooks or tailors or what have you. For the most part, however, the servitors are more like Joshua or Corrig, highly competent, calm, judicious men, and they are highly respected, particularly by the most competent women. It argues that both their status and their skills exceed what is generally supposed.”

“Skills?”

“You know what I'm talking about, Councilwoman. We need not play games with one another. I am too old for that. They have martial skills to be sure—I saw that in action down in the Holylands—but something other than that as well. My nieces have it, too. I've known a few others who have it. It's a valued trait among showmen,
this ability to hear trouble at a distance, to know where people are, to know what's going to happen. The old words for it were telepathy, clairvoyance. They are very old words, from before the convulsions, though I think they were only theoretical then. Tell me, did you women plan it?”

She shook her head. “It just appeared. Like a gift. A surprisingly high number of the men who came back had it, that's all.”

“Perhaps because they had it, they chose to come back.”

“We've considered that.”

“And, of course, you've bred that quality in.”

“We've tried,” she admitted. “We had hoped many women might turn up with it, but there are very few women with the talent. It does tend to breed true in sons. I am glad to know about your nieces. For a time we worried that it might be sex-linked.” She rose to look out the window, turned to stare at Stavia's pale face, then sat down once more. “I suppose Kostia and Tonia know all about this.”

“They do. And all three of us are as safe as any secret holder you may know, Morgot. We would not do anything to endanger you or Stavia or Women's Country. Believe me, we understand it far better than… well, than this poor child lying here on the bed. She had worked so hard all her young life, being good, being womanly, arguing every point of it with herself that she had not had time to understand the whole of it at all.”

“She broke the ordinances,” Morgot said, her voice very cold.

“She did not understand them. She did not see them as one thing but as many. She thought she could break one without touching the others. Also, I have a feeling that she did not so much break them as bend them, and it is likely you should be glad she did,” he said. “She found out about the planned rebellion, something you otherwise might not have known until too late.” He had told Morgot about Stavia's terrible secret almost as soon as they had arrived.

“As for the rebellion, we have known about it since it began. Women's Country has been here for three hundred years, Septemius. How long could we have survived
if we had not known about rebellions? How many rebellions do you think there have been? Every decade, every score of years there is a rebellion. Some faction in a garrison begins to feel aggrieved. Some group of women begin to play the fool. Rebellions! They begin like a boil, swelling and pustulent, and we let them grow until they come to a head. Then we lance them, and there is pain, and the swelling goes down. Until next time. It is true, we didn't know precisely when it was planned this time, and that information is good to have. But the servitors knew about it, long before you told me. It was more difficult in the early years. Then we used spies….”