from nothing among people hostile to cold mages? How would we even keep warm in winter? To build a house with a hypocaust system was ruinously expensive even if Vai did much of the carpentry himself. We hadn’t a sestertius to our names.
He allowed a servant to push his mother and Wasa in the invalid chair so he could walk behind them arm in arm with me. As we paced through the compound along corridors I had never before seen, he smiled, for the people who lived in Two Gourds House did pause to look. Blessed Tanit! The man meant to make sure everyone saw him. I was both amused and embarrassed. I did not like so many people staring at me. I did not like the feeling that I was being seduced into the clutches of the mage House with lovely clothing and flattering admiration, even though I knew that was not Vai’s intention. No doubt he simply wanted to give things to me to show he could, like the sandals he had bought for me at Aunty Djeneba’s and the bed he had built for us.
The troubling confusion of my thoughts made it therefore a relief when we settled the family in the coach. When a big basket appeared with the puppy in it, to be conveyed with the girls in the coach, I thanked Serena so profusely that she smiled in a way that made me feel gauche, an emotion I would never have believed I could experience.
“The creature will give them something to keep their minds off the journey and whatever trouble lies behind us.”
The girls wept and clung first to me and then to Vai before he gently reminded them that he relied on them to take care of their mother.
Vai’s mother took my hand in hers, speaking in a low voice. “You were right. He did not leave us behind.” To my surprise she kissed me on the cheek.
From the steps we watched the cavalcade depart. The spears of the escort flashed under the bright eye of the sun. The Four Moons banner rippled in a brisk wind. Distant thunder rolled, and everyone waiting in the courtyard looked up at the cloudless sky.
Vai spoke. “The cannonade is not battle. It’s Lord Marius’s army at field maneuvers. We shall take a tour of the city today. The river walk is lovely in the sun.”
“Vai, yesterday Viridor acted as your ally, yet he is the one who betrayed you.”
He shrugged. “He did what he thought was best for his House, not out of malice. I can’t fault him for that. In a way he helped me, for none of this would have happened had I not fallen into the mansa’s hands. He and I talked it all out.”
“You are friends again? You trust him?”
“Yes.”
A steward dressed in the brown livery of Two Gourds House approached Vai. “Magister, you are required in the men’s hall. Maestra, if you will, the steward of the women’s hall attends you.”
Vai went his way and I went mine, accompanied by a young djelimuso with jangling gold bracelets on both wrists and gold earrings. In our guest suite a formidable woman stood examining the cacica’s skull. Her resplendent starched boubou and head wrap marked her as Houseborn. After a suitable exchange of greetings, she cut to the point.
“As long as you remain here in Two Gourds House, you will need persons to attend to your needs and those of your husband. Have you any particular requests, Maestra?”
I thought I might as well take the bull by the horns. “I am newly married, Maestra, and I was not raised in a mage House. As you must surely know, I am only recently released from confinement in another wing of this magnificent establishment. If you could assign me an experienced and patient woman to help me make my way, I would be grateful.”
She nodded. “Yes, you must learn to do things in the proper way. There was some talk in the servants’ quarters about the unseemly way you laced up your skirt and bounced a ball around the back courtyard. Yet Magister Serena said you acquitted yourself well when you poured wine for the men’s supper last night. So you cannot be unversed in all aspects of a woman’s duties.”
I just could not resist. “The game with the ball is called batey. I would be happy to teach it to anyone who wishes to learn, boys and girls alike, for everyone plays in the Antilles.”
She sighed. “I will be blunt, Maestra. It is my understanding that his origins are very low. The honored mansa of Four Moons House and my own cousin, who is mansa here, believe your husband to be crucial to the effort to defeat the Iberian Monster’s greedy ambitions. For him to be raised to such a position of honor is an unexpected act that speaks to his exceptional promise. If you will allow yourself to be guided by me, then you will avoid doing things that could shame your husband. As it is said, a well-behaved wife will bear well-behaved children.”
My lips closed over several imprudent retorts. I plied a different stitch. “Goodness, Maestra, I am only thinking of my husband and future children when I play batey. In the Antilles, they encourage girls and young women to play so as to strengthen themselves for childbirth.”
She frowned. “In that case, I suppose it must be seen as unexceptionable.”
Servants were assigned to guard, serve, and clean our suite, and a steward was on duty at all times to advise me in matters of propriety. No mirror graced the suite. Except when Vai and I were in the bedchamber, a djelimuso would sit in formal attendance, so it was clear the mansa did not trust me.
Playing batey along the garden wall distracted me from the intense boredom of the next many days. When I asked for books and newspapers to read, I was brought accounts of household management and plates of the current fashions, which I would have enjoyed had I had companions to share them with. The attendants kept a formal distance from me at all times despite my efforts to draw them out. In the end I sat next to the skull and browsed the books while keeping up a one-sided conversation with the cacica about my reading.
I saw Vai only at night in the intimacy of the summer cottage and our gauze-curtained bed, where he was diligent in his attentions. Afterward he fed me scraps of news before falling asleep, and kept promising we would talk more the next day. But the next day never came because after we had eaten our breakfast of rice porridge garnished with berries and cream, he would be called away. Everyone in the women’s hall treated me politely, but they weren’t friendly and confiding, and no one was interested in my stories of Expedition and the Taino or even my store of tales from my father’s journals. Two Gourds House had an ancient lineage and a vast treasure-house of wealth and power to give it consequence in the world. One thing I did not have, in that world, was anything but borrowed consequence. It was pretty clear they thought I talked too much. When I thought of how the gals in Expedition had taken me in, it made me want to cry.
Fortunately I was allowed to sew in the women’s courtyard, under the eye of the steward, who counted out needles and pins and collected them at the end of each day. I amused myself by piecing together the cut-up parts of my ruined cuirassier jacket into a serviceable garment.
One day one of the younger women ventured a personal question. “Is it true you are Phoenician, Maestra? That your marriage contract restricts him to only one wife?”
“I was born and raised in a Kena’ani household,” I replied, aware that this point was of particular interest to the unmarried woman, for a mansa’s heir might normally expect eventually to take three or four wives. “But naturally I knew nothing of the contract or the marriage until the day it happened. It was all properly arranged for us by our elders.”
In a whisper I could hear perfectly well, a sour-faced young woman murmured, “A shame the man is wasted on a trifling girl like her. You know what they say about Phoenicians. They sacrifice their children to their bloodthirsty gods, and whore out their daughters.”
“No matter, I suppose,” her friend replied with a scornful smile, “for as soon as the Iberian Monster is dispatched, they’ll send him on a Grand Tour.”
I stabbed the needle into the wool, pretending I was sewing tongues together. If only Bee had been with me, we could have demolished them.
With the first flight of barbs unleashed, they were not done with me.
“Yet I have heard a strange tale from the servants, Maestra, which I cannot believe could possibly be true. They say you strip down to almost nothing and bounce a ball on your knee. Like a savage. Or a man.”
My gaze flashed up. I was glad to see their hesitation as I took notice of them. They were right to be scared of me! Their trembling made me pounce. “Did no one tell you? My father is a spirit beast who stalks the bush but walks in this world in the shape of a man. No man can tame me, and only one man has enough strength and charm to coax me into loving him.”
