The Gate to Women's Country (40 page)

“I've already got a husband,” Stavia claimed, not liking the sound of the word.

“Maybe. You have a live baby, maybe Papa'll let you be. If that man's still alive, maybe.”

“Still alive?”

“Likely they'll kill him. Maybe not, but likely.”

“And you don't think they'll let me go.”

“Not likely. If I was you, I wouldn't try. Better to have two good legs than two crooked legs. That's what they did
to my grandma. She come from out there, too, y'know. Women's Country. That's what she called it, Mama said.”

“What do you think your… husband is going to do?”

Susannah shook her head. “Somethin' that makes it dutiful to do whatever he wants.”

She wouldn't say anything more. Stavia was too tired to ask anything more. She fell onto the hard, straw-filled mattress
in
the attic room with a
sense
of fatality. Let happen what would. She couldn't do anything about it until morning.

She was considerably surprised at what she was asked to do about it first thing in the morning on the steps of Susannah's house.

“You take this thing,” Resolution Brome told her, handing her the implant, “and put it in Susannah.”

“Susannah!” she blurted in disbelief.

“She's had babies afore their time. There was two dropped early afore this last one. You put this thing in Susannah.”

Susannah had been watching and listening. When they were inside the house, she began to keen, a little moaning sound
in
her throat building into a low, hideous howling, “Oh, ahh, ahh, ahh. I can't. I just can't. Oh, don't make me. Oh I can't.”

“Shhh,” Stavia said automatically, as though Susannah had been a patient in the quarantine center. “Hush. You can't what?”

“I can't have another one. I get so sick. I can't have another one. I'm so tired.”

“How old are you?” Stavia asked.

“Twenty-nine,” she replied. “I'm too old. Oh I can't. I can't.”

Stavia wanted to laugh. Oh, by the Great Lady but this was a mockery, a comedy. “Susannah! Hush. Can you keep a secret from that man out there?”

The keening faded into sniveling, then into silence. “What?”

“I lied about what this thing is for.”

“What?” Dazed. Uncertain.

“It actually prevents pregnancy, Susannah. That's why I had it. So I wouldn't get pregnant on this trip. If you don't want another pregnancy, let me go ahead. If I can figure out some way to sterilize the damn thing….”

“How long?” the woman begged. “How long is it good for?”

“Years. Four years. Five. Maybe longer.”

“You got another one?”

“Why would I…? No. Just this one.”

“Ahh,” the woman cried. “Oh, let me think a little. Just a little.”

Uncertainly, Stavia filled the kettle and set it on the stove. There was good herbal tea among her supplies, better than anything Susannah had yet offered her. By the time the kettle had boiled and the tea steeped, Susannah had stopped crying. She was gasping now, in a fashion somehow resolute, as though deeply frightened but determined to meet whatever it was with courage.

“Stavia. You do something for me, I'll try to do something for you. You do something for me, I'll try to help you get away from here.”

“What? What is it?”

“You make some kind of wound on me to make him think you did what he told you. Then you put that thing in my little girl.”

“In Faith! She's only a child!”

“No, no. You put it in Chastity. They're goin' to marry her off, maybe soon. It's so hard on the young ones. If she had four or five years to grow up a little….”

“I see. And what are you going to do?”

“You'll have to tell him it doesn't always work. Or maybe it got ruined, bein' taken out that way. Probly I'll drop another baby or two then he'll let up on me. I wish he'd do it to somebody else. Oh, I do!”

“Me, for instance,” Stavia said cynically.

“Anybody but me,” Susannah admitted. “But I'll help you get away. I swear I will.”

Stavia stared at the woman through the steam from her teacup. How many times had she sat across a table, staring at someone through the steam? Morgot. Myra. Septemius. Trying to understand why people were as they were. Here was no need for much analysis. Susannah was simply beaten down, worn down, worked down. “I could use it on you and come back with one for Chastity,” Stavia whispered. “We could arrange to meet out in the woods somewhere. I could bring you a dozen of them, if you like.”

Susannah shook her head. “They might catch you again. Besides, there's no need. It's comin' to an end, can't you see? More'n more babies born dead or put out to die because there's somethin' wrong with 'em. It's all comin' to an end, and I'm glad. It's just… you know, you get to love your girl children….”

“If that's what you want.”

“That's what I want. What d'you need to do it with?”

“I suppose the men drink? Beer? Something stronger than that?”

“Somethin'. Yes.”

“I need a little of whatever that is to sterilize this thing as best we can. I need something like—like an awl?”

“I got one I use to make shoes. Is it goin' to hurt her a lot?”

“I think we'd better be sure we don't hurt her at all,” Stavia said. Susannah might be able to keep a secret. She wouldn't bet her life on Chastity, however. The girl looked as though she would fade away if anyone said boo.

There were ampoules of local anesthetic in the medical kit, hidden in the lining along with a few other supplies which were, more or less, “secret.” Susannah's obvious wound was inflicted painlessly. After Chastity had drunk a strong barbiturate and while she slept, Stavia inserted the implant—after soaking it in something alcoholic, since she dared not boil it—deep in Chastity's buttock, a place which, according to Susannah, no man would ever see.

“Might be he'd feel it in her arm,” she said. “But not back there.”

“It'll hurt when she wakes up.”

“I'll tell her I kilt a big old spider in her bed. Must've bit her somethin' awful.”

Susannah reported to Resolution Brome that she had the medicine in her arm. What she actually had in her arm was an injection of beeswax, which was all either she or Stavia could think of to make a raised lump of the proper size and shape. It had been heated enough to sterilize it, or so Stavia hoped.

That night Elder Brome came to the wife-house, and Stavia lay awake listening to the sounds from below, like blows, then later, when he had gone, to Susannah's weeping. Damn it, there were other contraceptives, ancient
ones, not totally effective but better than nothing. When morning came, she explained them to Susannah. The woman seemed scarcely to hear. It was as though she wanted to die, wanted to be already dead.

Days passed. Susannah hung her kerchief upon the door latch, then Chastity did so. Weeks went by, then Susannah again.

“You haven't had your uncleanness,” Susannah said to her.

Stavia had been thinking the same thing. “Why no,” she said. “I told you. I'm pregnant.”

“They thought you 'uz lying,” the woman said. “Papa did. I'll tell him you wasn't.”

The following day they sent her to the old tumbledown wife-house at the edge of the compound where she found Chernon awaiting her. “Well, wife,” he said, with an expression that was almost a sneer. “So you're going to give me a son after all.”

“Perhaps,” she said.

He shook her angrily. “Perhaps?”

“It could be a daughter,” she whispered. “Had you thought of that?”

He turned away with an expression of disgust. “Can't you tell? You women? You can tell everything else!”

“I think there were tests, back before the convulsions. They aren't done now. We haven't the equipment.”

“Then I'll just have to wait to find out,” he said. “Assuming they decide to let me live.” He was looking out the window of the rickety house, and she followed his gaze. Under a small tree Vengeance was sitting, whittling at a stick. She walked through the other room of the house to look in the opposite direction. Cappy. So. They were still being watched.

“What do they want from us?” she asked carefully. “I can't do much healing for them without medicines and equipment. Don't they understand that?”

He laughed, a short burst of laughter. “They want you to lose the baby, Stavia. Then you won't be pregnant. Then, if they kill me, you'll be a childless widow, and they can give you to one of the boys. It's a two-way race between Vengeance and Retribution. Poor Cappy's out of it.”

“They could kill you anyway.”

“But if you have a baby, nobody else can have you.”

“Ownership,” she said with heavy irony. “Whoever impregnates me, owns me, is that it?”

“That's it!” he blurted, his face angry. “Yes. That's it. And no cheating. No saying yes then no. You have my child and you belong to me, and that's it. Once you've had the child, there'll be no point in killing me, either. If they can't have you, they might as well let me. I can help them get more women.”

“From the sheep camp.”

“Exactly,” he sneered. “I've already told them about that. It's what Michael and Stephon are planning to do anyhow, take over the city and the women. And not just Marthatown. Peggytown and Emmaburg, too. And Agathaville. And if it works there, there are other warriors ready to do it from their garrisons, too.”

“Why?” she gasped, horror-struck. “Why, Chernon?”

“Because…” For a moment he could not think why.

“Don't you have a good life in the garrison? Plenty of food? Plenty of clothing? Amusements? Do you really want to grub away as shepherds and farmers?”

“You'll do that,” he said uncertainly, seeing the look in her eye. “You'll go on doing that.”

“Will we?”

“You will or else. They know about that here. The women do it or else.”

“What was it you used to tell me about honor?” she asked.

“I haven't done anything dishonorable.” He turned to stare out the window once more. “I'll go back to the garrison. In time.”

“With or without me, Chernon?”

“With my son,” he said. “You can depend on that.”

I
T WAS OLD REJOICE
who pointed out that having Stavia and Chernon living together in the compound was an evil thing. Plentitude agreed with her.

“Her head's not shaved,” Rejoice advised her son. “None of the proper things've been done, so far's we know.”

“How do we know whether they was really married or not?” Plentitude harangued. “If she wasn't proper married, then she can't be a proper widow, can she?”

Vengeance and Retribution carried this word to Papa, and after due thought, Papa agreed that Stavia and Chernon should be married according to Holyland custom.

Chernon was taken away by the men, Vengeance and Retribution staying behind only long enough to tie Stavia down on the ancient bed frame in the derelict wife-house.

Plentitude, Cheerfulness, Rejoice, and Susannah saw to the rites. Plentitude shaved Stavia's head. Then Rejoice, Cheerfulness, and Susannah beat her. They were using whips of willow, whips which cut the skin, leaving long, ugly welts. Rejoice would have gone on doing it for some time, but Susannah stopped her.

“She's carryin',” Susannah said in an exhausted voice. “Don't do it no more, Rejoice. Let her go.”

“You did me worse than that,” Cheerfulness said.

“I know. But you wasn't carryin'.”

“So. She loses it. That's what they want, isn't it?”

“Maybe it'd kill her, too.”

Silence then for a time before the ropes were loosened. Three of them went away. Stavia was silent, immobile, so consumed by fury and a sense of violation that she could not speak, would not move.

“Reason they do it,” Susannah was saying in her weary voice, “is that you should know ahead of time. That's what your husband will do to you if you fail in duty to him. You should know how it feels, so's not to provoke him.”

“And my head,” grated Stavia. “What's the reason for that?”

“So's you don't look like anything to stir up lust. Man's got to do his duty, but he's got to do it as duty, not because he likes it.”

“Besides,” Stavia said, turning on one side with a yelp of pain. “It violates the woman, doesn't it? It diminishes her. It makes her feel shame. Which
is
what they really want.”

“Hush,” cried Susannah. “Oh, Stavia, hush. I kept them from doin' it too hard. I did what I could.”

“Get my kit,” Stavia instructed. “There's some salve in there….”

“They took it,” Susannah said. “You can't have it anymore
unless your husband says so. He'll tell you can you use it or not.”

Chernon was having his own induction into Holyland society and was not available to give permission. The wounds on her back became infected.

Two days later, made stupid and slow by pain and fever, Stavia tried to get away. Cappy was asleep. She had almost reached the woods when he woke and saw her. In his frustration, he picked up the only weapon at hand and went after her, bringing the edge of the shovel down upon her head with a solid, chunking sound. Intent upon her escape, Stavia had not even heard him coming up behind her and she felt the blow only as a silent, hideous explosion which dropped her into darkness.

When Chernon returned and saw her, he exploded in fury and would have killed Cappy if they had not held him back. He was very angry, but he did not cry.