The Rose of the World (22 page)

Mela shook her head. ‘My family from Hedera Port. Mother die of plague; father too poor to keep me. Sell me at market.’

Katla looked horrified, but Mela waved her hands at her as if banishing such an unpleasant expression. ‘And where you come from?’ she asked. ‘You speak funny, very harsh noise, very loud.’

‘I’m from the north. From Eyra—’

‘Eyra!’ the second woman cried. ‘They say so, but we not believe them. We at war: you enemy!’

‘I know,’ said Katla. ‘Raiders came to my island and raped and killed many of my people. Then they set fire to our home. My grandmother died in the fire; but my mother and I and some others they stole away to sell as slaves.’

The two women exclaimed in shock. ‘That terrible,’ said the one in blue. ‘You not choose to be here, then?’

Katla laughed bitterly. ‘Hardly. Why would any woman choose to be a whore?’

‘That not what we called,’ the one in blue said primly. ‘We houris. Courtesans. We very good at what we do. We proud of it.’

‘You are?’ Katla was astonished. ‘But you’re slaves, slaves used for sex.’

Mela shrugged.‘It not so bad. Better here than most places. Better than being sold to horrid old husband, use you when he want, give you no money. Here get paid and well treated. Not have to pray too much. Only bed one man most of time, and handsome one, too.’

‘Mela!’ the second woman exclaimed, then carried on in Istrian.

Again, the hand came up over the girl’s mouth. ‘Agia says I should not say such things about our master, but is true: he not only handsome but very . . .’ she paused, searching for a phrase, ‘nice in bed, like women lot.’

Katla sensed Mela would have embroidered upon this description given the least provocation. She changed the subject swiftly. ‘If he likes women so much, why does he cover you up?’ Katla indicated the voluminous robes both women wore.

The woman in blue tilted her head: Katla could tell she was being regarded carefully. Instead of answering, she said at last, ‘Why you dress like man?’

‘It’s practical,’ Katla said shortly. ‘I mean, you can hardly climb a rock or run very fast in one of these things, can you?’ She plucked despairingly at the gauzy thing they had draped over her. The veil lay crumpled on the floor by the bed where she had no doubt cast it off in her restless sleep.

Mela now retrieved this and held it out to Katla who took it, but did not put it on.

‘That not what women do,’ the woman called Agia said primly. ‘Women sacred. They help men perform worship. We too precious to behave like . . . urchins, running around, touching the earth and suchlike. Such behaviour is dirty, bad. That why we at war.’

‘What?’ Katla thought she must have misheard. ‘We’re at war because your people disapprove of how my people behave?’

The woman in blue nodded rapidly. ‘Your women, they have lost the Way; your men not treat them right, not treat with respect, not honour the Goddess.’

‘My people worship no goddess,’ Katla said. ‘Our god is called Sur. He is lord of the wind and the sea; of rock and wild places and the creatures of the deep.’ She thought about this even as she uttered it. The Eyrans paid their respects to the storm god with occasional prayer (mainly at times of need), with their anchor pendants and their superstitions, with the odd muttered phrase; but the old rituals had fallen by the wayside: it was rare indeed that anyone slaughtered animals in his name, or cast sacrifices into the sea. The last time she remembered a serious rite being observed had been Tam Fox’s blessing on board the
Snowland Wolf
to handfast her brother Halli and her best friend, Jenna. Even then, she had been surprised by the rather old-fashioned solemnity of the occasion which had seemed to hark – in its primitive hair-cutting and weaving, the incantation and supplication made – from another age, when the gods were closer to men. But if Sur had heard the prayers offered up or accepted the binding Tam Fox had cast into his waters, it did not seem that he had any wish to keep the bargain made for the honour paid him, for a monster had risen from the deep and wrecked their ship, and all those bright lives had been lost forever in his ocean.
So much for gods
, she thought.
I’ll have none of them
. ‘But our religion is not so . . . restrictive as yours.’

‘Restrictive?’

‘You seem to have a lot of rules, and to enforce them with punishment and pain. Burning, and the like.’ Her mouth felt dry even as she said this. She flexed, unthinking, the hand the flames of the pyre had withered.

‘It is men who make rules,’ the older woman said. ‘We worship the Lady Falla in our own way, with our mouths and our hands, and when the time right, with our bodies and souls.’

‘Agia is correct,’ Mela said. ‘Men make rules, write them down, send people to the fires who not follow observances. I not think, in my heart, the Lady likes to have people fed to her fires: she goddess of life, not death.’

‘Mela!’ Agia took the lilac-robed girl by the shoulders. After gabbling at her in rapid Istrian, she turned to Katla. ‘Do not take notice of what she says; her people had nomad roots. She get in much trouble if you repeat what she say.’

‘From the Lord of Forent?’

Agia put her hand to her mouth. ‘Not so much my lord, he less strict than others. But Peta will beat her. And if the lord’s friend hear about it, then big trouble. He worship the Goddess with a fierce love, send many, many people to the fires.’

‘And who is his friend?’ Katla asked, curious.

Agia dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘My lord of Cantara,’ she said. ‘Tycho Issian.’

A shudder passed through Katla Aransen. She remembered the ranting tirade of a thin, dark man with eyes full of thwarted passion; the cowardly, bleeding boy who had condemned her with his lies; a terrified girl running through the night air. Selen Issian, daughter of Tycho Issian. Ah yes, that was a name she remembered too well.

‘And he is here, in this castle?’

Agia glanced swiftly back over her shoulder as if he might at any moment appear. ‘He due to arrive any day.’

That was worse news than any she had so far received.

‘The other women say,’ Mela crowded in close, ‘that he is mad with lust for the northern queen—’

‘Shh!’ Agia was scandalised. ‘You get us all burned!’

But Mela would not be stopped. ‘You know it is true, Agia: remember what the wizard did to Balia and Raqla, how he made them like her, all green eyes and yellow hair and thin as post. And that why we go to war with your people: to fetch her back for him. That why you here, too,’ she finished triumphantly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘He preach, all over country, make people angry, fill them with hate. Tell them how your people barbarian, treat women bad, keep them from the Way of the Goddess. So we must . . .’ She paused, seeking the right word in the less familiar Old Tongue, ‘We must . . . liberate you all. He say Eyran women be brought south, to free you from bad ways, from your evil men, make you like us. Obey men.’ This last was said with an edge of venom which had not been present in the girl’s previous observations. Katla marked it well.

So it was not her so-called sacrilege alone which had sparked this war: that much was something of a comfort, if comfort there was to be gained from the situation. ‘It seems to me,’ she said after a while, ‘that you are the ones who need liberating.’

Agia’s hands flew up to her mouth.‘You mad!’she declared. ‘I want no more of this. I fetch Peta. You not say such things when she here.’

Katla watched her unbolt the door and her heart leapt with sudden hope; only to fall again at the sound of a key turning securely in the lock on the other side. She sighed. No chance of escape, then, at least not at the moment. She might as well sow some mischief instead.

Leaning in closer to Mela, Katla said firmly, ‘I think your people have it all wrong about the northern ways. We are not barbarians; indeed, my people consider some of your customs as primitive – I mean, these – what do you call them again?’ She touched the girl’s lilac robe.

‘Sabatka,’ Mela said.

‘Sabatka. Well, it’s very pretty, but really it’s just designed to hide you from other men’s eyes, isn’t it? It’s all about ownership – horses tethered in stables, pigs in pens, oxen yoked to a cart; and you women wrapped up in silk and hidden away from the sight of others. Your men are afraid that if they give you any freedom, you might take it and walk away from them! And who knows what might happen then? You might question what they do, you might have opinions, you might take power of your own. So what do they do? They shroud you in these hideous things, lock you away, treat you like toys for their pleasure, and tell you it’s the Goddess’s will; and you let them do it!’

Mela had gone very still, as if she was trying hard to concentrate on Katla’s unfamiliar pronunciation of the Old Tongue. But she did not protest or cry out in horror; rather, from the pensive line of her mouth and the inclination of her head, she seemed to be giving careful consideration to these seditious words.

Katla gave her some moments for it all to sink in, then ploughed on. ‘No man has ever told me what to do, and no man ever shall. I choose my own path, and fight for it when I have to. I can tell you more, if you would like.’

It was an offer which would send her to the fires if she had misjudged her audience.

She had not.

Mela caught her by the hand and squeezed it tight. Her painted mouth curved into a delighted smile. Then with one clever, painted nail she removed the tiny silver star from above her top lip.

‘Well, that’s a start!’ Katla muttered cheerfully. And then she began to tell Mela about a woman’s lot in the Northern Isles: how as children they were educated alongside the boys; how they often chose their own husbands, and could renounce them if the marriage went awry; how they ran the farms when their husbands were away and held sway over their own households, even when the men came home; how they could earn their own money, and inherit estates; how some of them travelled and fought and had no man at all, but lived by their wits and their skills. Like nomads, even. But even as she framed these concepts for the Istrian woman, something gnawed at her. Life was not entirely equitable for the women of Eyra. They worked hard and they died young. Men still had more freedom and more power, and there were as many instances of injustices and oppression as there were different people in the islands; but at least there were laws which enshrined a woman’s rights as well as any man’s; and no one burned anyone else. But there was still much room for improvement.

Even so, her conviction seemed to have won the Istrian girl over, for by the time Aglia returned with Peta and her women, Mela’s eyes were shining so brightly, Katla could see them gleaming through her veil.

Fourteen

Treachery

Auda, the King’s mother, sat in her carved chair at the corner of the hearth in Halbo Castle’s Great Hall and regarded her son and daughter-by-law with the ancient, hooded eyes of a raven assessing its next meal. This impression was heightened by her dress and demeanour. Huddled in the shadows in the thick black widow’s weeds she steadfastly refused to give up (even though her husband had been dead for four years, and she had not loved him for the best part of twenty-four), with her beady eyes reflecting the light of the fire and her arthritic fingers wrapped like claws around the handle of her stick, she looked very much like the carrion bird for which her family was named. At fifty-five, Auda was not an old woman by Eyran standards, where a rigorous climate, a culture of toughness and a refusal to mollycoddle could result (if famine or disease did not intervene) in a very ripe old age. Eyra had more than its fair share of old crones, and it seemed as if Auda was driving herself towards such status with a grim will, as her once-fine appearance, generosity and gentle spirit were daily transforming into bitterness, frustration and malevolence.

It had not always been so.

At fifteen, she had been a celebrated beauty, exotic in a region known for its pale blondes and striking auburn-haired girls, with her lustrous black hair, her hazel eyes and regal bearing. Every lord and chieftain in the Northern Isles in that time had striven to win her hand. Contests had been held by her father, feats of bravery and skill and downright idiocy – horse fights and sword fights, wrestling and archery, seal-catching and cow-tipping, tree-chopping and spear-casting. Ashar Stenson, Prince of Halbo, had been the victor in every event in which he participated. Handsome he was, with his flowing yellow hair and plaited beard, his weather-tanned skin and his sharp blue eyes, his great stature and well-muscled limbs. The scars of a hundred duels and battles criss-crossed his forearms and puckered his chest in a fascinating web which told of fates run their course and lives cut short, and the famous luck of the royal house. She loved him at first sight. At thirty-three he was confident and attractive, a man who had outlived one wife already (dead in childbirth, and the babe, for shame, as well) and had a well-earned reputation for his lusty pursuit of the ladies of the court – a man, in short, in comparison to the scores of callow boys who came to ply their suit. But even so, Auda had turned him down, much to the chagrin of her father and uncles, who plainly saw the political advantage to be had in marrying their charge to the heir to the throne. Whether she had done so out of wilfulness or arrogance, none could determine. None but Auda herself.

The truth of it was that she had been awash in an unfamiliar sea of desire. It frightened the wits out of her. She had never stood to win so much; nor yet to lose it. And so she withheld herself. This merely provoked Ashar to pursue her harder. He wooed her with furs and amber and silver, with fabulous weavings from the Southern Continent, with bards sent to sing her praises and with declarations of devotion. He had her brought to Halbo and showed her the castle that would be hers should she accept his troth. Still she would not take him. He tried to force her one night; she bit his cheek, leaving a mark which never fully healed, and fled the city. How could he resist such a hell-cat? He sent armed men after her entourage and had her brought, raging, back to Halbo; where instead of paying a seither to marry them whether she would or no, he stripped to the waist and had four men beat him close to senseless in front of her for his temerity, until she cried out in horror and agreed to wed him.