Tortall (7 page)

With that I woke. Since it was dawn, I chose to prepare myself for the day. Once I wore my veils, I picked up the yoke with the buckets and went to fetch water for my aunt. I passed few other people. Most women preferred to wait until later in the day to fill the water jars for their houses. On my fourth trip, one other person was at the well filling buckets, the young man Fadal my cousins had talked about.

I did nothing so improper as acknowledge him. One of my cousins might have smoothed a sleeve or looked at him sidelong. They were more daring than I. They also had prettier eyes and longer lashes. I bent to my work.

“How do you stand it?” To my shock, the voice was Fadal’s. “Doing all that draped in veils? A slave in chains has more freedom to move.”

Without moving my head, I looked around. We were quite alone. People were inside, eating breakfast. Worse—or better, I wasn’t sure which—this Fadal spoke with the barest movement of his mouth in a soft, carrying tone. Girls learned it young. Had he imitated his mother and aunts, before they told him men never had to talk that way?

“Don’t you want to throw the whole bundle in the priests’ faces? Tell
them
to wear veils, if they like them so much?”

Some of the things he said were complaints I had made, it’s true. Every girl has. Every girl who is not a twittering pushover for the nearest creature to grow a mustache. But still …

“Said like a man,” I replied in the same way, only better,
because I was more practiced. “You see only the outsides of things, when it is we women who see the heart of it all.” I checked our surroundings a second time before I went on. “These veils are freedom, beardless
boy
. Before I put them on, I was a sheep on the market. My nose was longer than my cousin’s, my skin not so fine as my mother’s, my hair not so curly as my aunt’s. My teeth, my weight, my length of bone—pick, pick, pick. Then I put on the veil. Poof! The gossips have my eyes, my hands, my voice, my feet. They must judge me on my value to my family, and my family values me for who I am and what I can do.”

“You
like
the veil?” He seemed so shocked! “You like being hidden away?”

“I
like
keeping myself to myself. My heart is hidden. It is mine,” I told him. “And …” Suddenly I remembered the dream, the many women in black. “If you wished to have me beaten for speaking to a man, how would you find me? I could vanish among a crowd of women, and you would never even know which of us you spoke to.”

“But you have no power,” he protested. Now he sounded weak, or thoughtful, perhaps both.

“Again, said like a man who wears his thoughts on his face.” Really, I was getting tired of this pup. “No power? Who cooks for you, when you have a home? Who weaves and sews the clothes you wear, the sheets and blankets you sleep in? Who is awake while you sleep? No power? Ask yourself how much power a woman has the next time she hands you a bowl of food. And taste it carefully.”

My buckets were full. I shouldered my yoke, silently cursing as my veil twisted and caught under it, and walked
away, careful not to spill any water. I was almost to my aunt’s house when I heard shouting. I looked back. Some of the village boys had come to pick a fight with Fadal; who knew over what. Boys were always fighting, particularly with strangers. I went into my aunt’s house and closed the door behind me.

I had just finished topping off the water jars when the innkeeper’s wife came and pulled my aunt out into the courtyard. They whispered together urgently for a moment. Then my aunt ordered us girls to get into the kitchen and stay there. Swiftly she closed the kitchen doors and shutters before she went back to the courtyard and her friend. My cousins and I listened at the cracks in the shutters and doors, hearing distant male shouts. The noise faded, leaving us no wiser than before.

I finally gave up. My father needed his breakfast. We would hear the news soon enough. “What is going on?” he asked as I brought his simple meal. He was dressed already. From the smell of medicinal herbs, the healer had visited him while I was away.

“They did not tell us. We are only silly young girls,” I grumbled.

“And how do they expect you to learn wisdom?” my father asked me as I guided his hand to his plate and cup. “Read to me, my treasure? From the Book of the Distaff, the third chapter, the fifth lesson.”

I had reached the verse on balance in the land and water when my uncle and aunt interrupted us. “Quickly, quickly,” my uncle said. “Teky, girl, come with us. The girls must go into the hidden room. The temple priests have found a
woman dressed as a man—that boy Fadal, who stayed at the inn last night. They are taking her to the temple for burning. They will come for the girls next, to see if they were contaminated by the nearness of this Fadal.”

I stayed where I was. I knew my father. He turned his fading eyes on his brother-in-law. “Is the faith of your girls so weak, that your temple priest will break it?” he asked gently. “Or is your priest so stupid, that he will find failure where there is none?”

My aunt folded her hands and unpinned her face veil. “That is what I told you,” she said to her husband. “We have raised our girls to follow the Oracle’s laws. They are no shame to us, that we may hide them.”

“We could be accused of impurity!” whispered my uncle. His face was covered in greasy sweat. “We live next door to the inn; they may think we are tainted!”

My father shook his head. “Purity of faith is yours alone, brother. Only you can speak for it, and the only one to whom you should ever speak of it is the god. Not to a priest who teaches you only from half of the Oracle’s books.”

“And
that
is the kind of talk that will get my daughters burned if they repeat it!” my uncle cried. “We are sheltering heretics!”

My father looked down. “If you are no longer happy to house my daughter and me, then we shall find another roof, or the god’s own stars,” he said. “We will not disturb the peace of this house, brother. But do you really wish to live in fear of those who claim to speak for the god who cooks our food, heats our homes, lights our lamps? The God in the
Flame shines in the eyes of your wife and daughters, and in the sky by day and night. That god speaks with two voices, male and female, has two faces, the sun and the moon, and spoke through an Oracle who wrote two books, not one. Nothing changes that.”

My uncle turned on his heel and walked out. My aunt followed him. Once they were gone, my cousins crept in, their eyes wide in fear. To soothe them, my father had me continue to read from the forbidden half of the Oracle’s texts, the Book of the Distaff. I stopped reading on my aunt’s return.

“He went to the temple, to witness Fadal’s burning. He fears what they would say if he was not there, but he did not say to send the girls to the hidden room,” she said, sinking down onto a pillow. “He hears what you say, brother, but he has lived in this town all his life. The temple priesthood is strong here. Until you came, the wandering priesthood was represented only by your letters and our own readings of the forbidden texts.”

“Should we go to the hidden room now?” asked my oldest cousin, her voice trembling. “I hate it, but if they come testing …”

“They would not dare, my treasure,” my aunt said. “They must not dare. Surely even they know that to burn the children of respectable citizens … There are reasons it has not been done for so long.”

“A girl,” my youngest cousin said, amazed. “A girl, dressing as a man. Why would anyone want to do that?”

“What of his companion?” asked my father. “The
strange fellow, Qiom, did I hear his name was? Has anyone told him?”

“If he is wise, he has fled. Otherwise they will burn him,” said my aunt.

Since it was time to cook lunch, my father went to sit in the kitchen with us. My uncle found us there. He was ashen, as if he had seen his world unmade.

“It was the other one, the stranger Qiom,” my uncle said as he sat at the kitchen table. “He ripped the doors from the temple. He beat every man who tried to lay hands on him. He killed the priest by throwing him into the wall. Then he took Fadal, and he ran from the town before they could close the gates.” He mopped his face with the wet cloth my aunt brought for him. “No man can run so fast! No man could have ripped the temple doors from their hinges! It is a sign from the God in the Flame! A sign, that he sent this creature to save this woman!”

“But the god has never spoken in such a fashion before,” said my father gently. “Brother, compose yourself. Breathe with the quiet strength of your wife and daughters. See how they wait? They do not spend themselves in panic.”

My cousins and I rolled our eyes and my aunt smiled. My father’s idea of womanhood was idealized. He always forgot my mother was not above screaming if she saw a furred spider or panicking if a temple priest looked at her the wrong way.

Sometime after lunch the greatest piece of news came, brought by other men who shared readings in the forbidden texts with my uncle and aunt. The temple had burned down. Somehow wood had fallen into its great fire as Qiom rescued
Fadal, setting the place ablaze. Now many of the people of Hartunjur asked each other if the god whose sole text was the Book of the Sword would have let his temple be destroyed by a creature who came to save a woman who had dressed as a man. Hearing that a wandering priest who taught the forbidden texts was in the town, they came to hear what the temple priests had not taught them.

My father talked to the men about what the temple priests left out of the Oracle’s writings. He taught them about the Oracle’s wise wife, who was his first councilor. He told my favorite story, one almost forgotten in the lands where the God in the Flame and the Oracle were supreme, of the Oracle’s oldest daughter, the general who had dressed in armor to defend her father’s temple city.

At last my father’s cough returned ferociously. As the healer brought him a cup of syrup, my father waved to me. “Teky, read to them,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Read to them from the Book of the Distaff.” He raised his voice to the men. “This is not in your copies of the Oracle’s Books,” he said, and coughed for long moments. He swallowed a mouthful of syrup, then continued, “It is this the temple priests do not want you to hear. Tekalimy will read to you.”

“A woman!” someone in the back of the room cried. “Reading!”

My father half-rose from his cushions. “Have you heard nothing of what I have said?” he demanded. His cheeks were flushed with his rising fever. I reached out to calm him, to press him back down to his cushions, but he shook off my hand. “Without our women we are only half of ourselves! If our women are unclean, we are half-unclean! Teky! Read!”

I stood, trembling, the book open and heavy in my hands. Never had I read before so many men. Never had I seen so many angry pairs of eyes, all burning me where I stood. Who was I? Would someone here betray me when the Council of Priests sent a new man here?

Then I remembered my words just that morning to Fadal. Under the black veil that covered my mouth, I smiled. Who could identify me? I was another set of black veils among a town full of them. Away from my father, I was simply another pair of eyes, another pair of feet.

As for those men’s eyes burning me, they touched only my veils. I was safe inside them, looking out. They could no more know what was in my heart than they could know my face.

I began to read the Oracle’s words. “ ‘If you look at the god and see only the sun, you see only half the god,’ ” I read. My voice shook, then steadied. I had been reading these words all my life. “ ‘If you look at humanity and see only man, you see only half of your soul. Attend to women as you attend to men, with heart and mind intent.’ ” From the corner of my eye I could see my father nod as, coughing softly, he drank the rest of his medicine.

I read until he raised his hand, then closed the book. As he leaned forward to question the men on what they had heard, I retired with the book in my hands, as I often did. I went no farther than my aunt’s kitchen. She was the only one there. “Come,” she said, and took me to a stable down the street. There I found women and girls, the families of the men who talked now with my father. They, too, had come for learning, summoned by my aunt and cousins, who had prepared
them for me. They, too, were shaken by the events in the temple. While I had read to the men, they had listened in the shadows and outside the windows. Now my aunt and my cousins gave out slates and chalk or worn copies of The Book of the Sword: The Lessons of the Law.

“The Book of the Sword?” asked one newcomer, frightened. “Are you mad? It is forbidden to us!”

I opened the book to the Lesson of Family and read, “ ‘Only by reading will the word of the God in the Flame blaze clearly in the eyes of all. If your wife does not read, you must teach her. It is your sacred duty, and the sacred duty of your wife, to teach your children to read. Without reading, we are all without light in the dark, without fire in the cold.’ ” I closed the book and said to the newcomer, “This is the beginning to the most important lesson in The Book of the Sword: the lesson of The Rights of Women Under the Law of the God. How many of you can read?”

They raised their hands. My aunt and cousins had been busy: half of them could. Now, without my telling them, those who could moved to share books with those who could not as I read the first lesson for all to hear. From the letters that made it up, the others would begin to learn to read, but they would also hear their rights as set out by the Oracle. Even temple priests would have to acknowledge them if these women petitioned the courts for their rights under The Book of the Sword.

“ ‘If a woman shall bear a man’s children and he divorces her, he is forbidden to turn her out of his house penniless. If he does so, she may appeal to the court of the temple,’ ” I read. I heard chalk squeak as the women wrote
that down. “All men know this. The god did not wish us to be without power. The god did not tell the Oracle to make us powerless,” I explained. Father did not know I used the Lessons of the Law. I was supposed only to teach them to read. But he had never said what I was to use, and he could hardly quarrel with how I taught when he was not there to hear me.