to trade at a certain monthly market; they brought herbs and medicines that were in high demand, and fine basketry and cloth they wove of reeds, to trade for pottery and metal-ware. They came under an ancient religious truce which protected them from slave takers. They were respected as freemen, and some of them had even settled in one quarter of the city. She was shocked to learn that Etra raided the marshes for slaves. “The Rassiu are a sacred people,” she said. “They have a covenant with the Lord of the Waters. Your city will suffer for enslaving them, I think.”
Some of the young women of Barna’s house treated Diero with servility, fawning, as if she had the kind of power they’d known in woman slave owners. Others were trustfully respectful; others ignored her as they did all old women. She treated them all alike—kind, mild, yielding, with a dignity that set her apart. I think she was very lonely among them. Once I saw her talking with one of the younger girls, letting the girl talk and weep for home, as she had done for me.
There were no children in Barna’s house. When a girl got pregnant she moved to one of the houses where other women lived in the town and had her baby there; she kept it or gave it away as she chose. If she wanted to bring the baby up, that was fine, but if she wanted to come back and live the free life at Barna’ s house, she couldn’t bring it with her. “This is where we get ’em, not where we keep ’em!” Barna said, to a shout of approval from his men.
Soon after Pulter and the accountant arrived, a new girl was brought to the household, with a little sister from whom she refused to be parted. Very beautiful, fifteen or sixteen years old, Irad had been taken from a village west of the forest. Barna was immediately smitten with her and made his claim on her clear to the other men. Whether she was already experienced with men or simply had no defenses, she submitted to everything with no pretense of resistance, until they told her she must let her little sister be taken away. Then she turned into a lion. I didn’t see the scene, but the other men told me about it. “If you touch her I’ll kill you,” she said, whipping out a thin, long, unexpected knife from the seam of her embroidered trousers, and glaring round at Barna and all of them.
Barna began to reason with her, explaining the rules of the household, and assuring her that the child would be well cared for. Irad stood silent, her knife held ready.
At this point, Diero interfered. She came forward and stood beside the sisters, putting her hand on the little girl’s head as she cowered against Irad. She asked Barna if the girls were slaves. I can imagine her mild, unemphatic voice asking the question.
He of course proclaimed that they were free women in the City of Freedom.
“So, if they like, both of them can stay with me,” said Diero.
The men who first told me the story thought that Diero had at last become jealous, Irad being so young and so beautiful. They laughed about it. “The old vixen has a tooth or two left!” one of them said.
I didn’t think it was jealousy that moved her. Diero was without envy or possessiveness. What had made her intervene this time?
She got her way, to the extent that she went off with the child that night to her rooms. Barna of course took Irad with him for the night. But whenever he didn’t call for her, Irad stayed with little Melle in Di-ero’s rooms.
When the women of Barna’s house were all together, I was often daunted by the sheer power of their youthful femininity. I got my revenge as a male by feeling contempt for them. They were healthy, plump, mindless, content to lounge about the house all day trying on the latest stolen finery and chattering about nothing. If one or another of them went off to have a baby, it made no difference—there was no end of them, others just as young and pretty would arrive with the next convoy of raiders.
Now it occurred to me to wonder about this endless supply of girls. Were they all runaways? Did they all ask to come here? Were they all seeking freedom?
Yes, of course they were. They were escaping from masters who forced sex on them.
Was Barna’s house any better than whatever they’d escaped from?
Yes, of course it was. Here, they weren’t raped, they weren’t beaten. They were well fed, well clothed, idle.
Exactly like the women in the silk rooms at Arcamand.
I cringe, remembering how I cringed when that thought first came to me. I am ashamed now as I was then.
I thought I was keeping and cherishing Sallo in my memory, but I had forgotten her again, refused to see her, refused to see what her life and her death had shown me. I had run away again.
I had a hard time making myself go see Diero, then. For several nights I went into town to talk with Venne and Chamry and their friends. When I finally did visit Diero’s rooms, my shame kept me tongue-tied. Besides, the little girl was there. “Of course Irad is usually with Barna at night,” Diero said, “but then I get to sleep with Melle. And we tell stories, don’t we, Melle?”
The child nodded vigorously. She was about six years old, dark, and extremely small. She sat next to Diero and stared at me. When I looked back, she blinked, but went on staring. “Are you Cly?” she asked.
“No. I’m Gav.”
“Cly came to the village,” the child said. “He looked like a crow too.” “My sister used to call me Beaky,” I said.
After a minute she looked down at last. She smiled. “Beaky-beaky,” she murmured.
“Her village is near the Marshes,” Diero said. “Maybe Cly came from there. Melle looks a bit like a Rassiu herself. Look, Gav, what Melle did this morning.” She showed me a scrap of the thin, stiffly sized canvas that we used for writing lessons, since we had almost no paper. On it a few letters were written in a large uncertain script,
“T, M, O, D,” I read out. “You wrote that, Melle?”
“I did like Diero-io did,” the child said. She jumped up and brought me Diero’s scroll copybook, unrolled to the last few lines of poetry. “I just copied the big ones.”
“That’s very good,” I said.
“That one is wobbly,” Melle said, examining the D critically.
“She could learn so much more from you than I can teach her,” said Diero. She seldom expressed any wish, and when she did it was so gentle and indirect I often missed it. I caught it this time.
“It’s wobbly, but I can read it quite well,” I said to Melle. “It says D. D is how you start writing Diero’s name. Would you like to see how to do the rest of it?”
The little girl said nothing, but leapt up again and fetched the inkstand and the writing brush. I thanked her and carried them over to the table. I found a clean scrap of canvas and wrote out DIERO in big letters, pulled up a stool for Melle to perch on, and gave her the brush.
She did a pretty good job of copying, and as praised. “I can do it better,” she said, and crouched over the table to copy again, eyebrows drawn tight together, brush held tight in the sparrow-claw hand, pink tongue clamped tight between the teeth.
Again Diero had given me back something I lost when I left Arca-mand. Her eyes were bright as she watched us.
After that I came by her apartment nearly every day to read with her and to teach little Melle her letters. Often the child’s sister was there. Irad was very shy with me at first, and I with her; she was so beautiful, so unguarded, and so clearly Barna’s property. But Diero always stayed with us, protecting us both. Melle adored Diero and soon attached herself passionately to me too. She’d rush at me when I came into the room, crying, “Beaky! Beaky’s here!” and strangle me with hugging when I picked her up. That made Irad begin to trust me, and talking and playing with the child put us at ease. Melle was serious, funny, and very intelligent. In Irad’s fiercely protective love for her there was an element of admiration, almost awe. She would say, “Ennu sent me to look after Melle.”
They each wore a tiny figure of Ennu-Me, a crudely modeled clay cat’s head, on a cord around the neck.
It wasn’t hard for me to persuade Irad that learning how to read and write along with Melle was a good idea, and so she joined in the lessons. Like Diero, she was doubtful and hesitant in learning. Melle was not, and it was touching to see the little sister coaching the big one.
Lessons with the other girls in the house had never got further than half the alphabet; they always lost interest or were called away. The pleasure of teaching Melle made me think I might gather some of the young children of the town into a class. I tried, but couldn’t make it work. The women wouldn’t trust their girls to any
