“Good! That’s a very appropriate reaction.” Morgot started out the door, then turned back. “As a matter of fact, I think we’ll take Myra along.”
“Myra! She’ll puke.”
“Well, that won’t kill her.” She went out, leaving Stavia with very mixed feelings. It was good to be included, but not always. Not in everything.
THE SOUTH WALLS of Marthatown rose up out of sheep pens and pig pens and hay barns, a bucolic clutter wedged between the walls and the patchwork of pasture and stubble field, green and yellow and ashy white, dotted with huddles of dirty-gray sheep and scattered flocks of spotted goats to the place the fences ended. Beyond that open meadows ran off to the foot of the mountains where the woodcutters worked.
The north walls of the city were girded by warriors’ territory. Armory and ceremonial rooms stood at the foot of the walls facing the parade grounds. North of the parade ground were rows of long wooden barracks, their carved gables and doors fronting on the exercise yards and the playing fields. East of these lay the pleasantly shaded walls of the officers’ residence. To the north, at some distance from the city, the virtually empty hulk of the Old Warriors’ Home huddled in a screening grove of trees. All this was garrison country—surrounded by a low fence—off limits to women and a more or less well-observed boundary for the men except when in search of what they were pleased to call “recreation.”
Beyond the Old Warriors’ Home the river ran west ward toward the sea. It came from the eastern hills, through the marsh, then over a series of little dams and weirs which irrigated farmland from the foot of the hills almost to the shoreland in the west. There, near the shore, a road came down from the northwest to cross the river at a shallow ford, and near this ford the Gypsies had their perennial though not continuous encampment, a ragged and fluid collection of shacks on wheels, some brightly painted and others the faded gray of sun-dried wood, a sprawl of messy domesticity around the blackened stones of a central cooking fire.
Morgot, in her role as chief medical officer of Marthatown, went out each week to inspect the Gypsies, or sent a delegate. True to her word, she had brought both Myra and Stavia with her on this particular occasion.
During the medical visits, there were seldom any men around—except one.
This man, who called himself Jik, met them as they pulled off the road. “Back too soon, Doctor. You women just got done with them yesterday.” He had a narrow face with a lopsided jaw. His teeth pointed in various directions, some filling in for others which were missing. One shoulder was lower than the other, and his laugh was a sneer made large. “Just yesterday I got them working.”
“You had all of them but one, Jik. A sick one.”
“Off the whole week, and not a coin out of her.”
“She’s cured now, Jik. You’ve probably already got her flat on her back milking the warriors for their amusement money.” Though this wasn’t Jik’s only source of income, Morgot knew. The man dealt in beer and scarce commodities and information and rumor, as well, all of which the Council was well aware of and used for their own purposes from time to time. Morgot got down from the wagon and pulled her bag from beneath the seat. “It’ll go quicker if you line them up for me.”
Jik made a rude gesture, but started his circuit through the wagons. Women climbed from the wheeled huts, lining up around the fire, hoisting their skirts, some wagging bottoms while others thrust pudendas in the general direction of Morgot’s wagon, laughing and catcalling, “Want some, Doctor? Want a little puss-puss, girlies? Hey?”
Morgot stared down the row, looking at each woman deeply and calmly, and in a moment the catcalls stopped. “Just in case you’ve forgotten, ladies,” she called, “I’ve got the seal, and there won’t be another doctor out until next week. No seal, no business.”
The mockery became muted.
“Swabs,” Morgot said to Stavia. “And remember to keep the vials labeled.”
“What shall I do?” whispered Myra, her face very pale.
“Just sit there,” her mother told her. “And watch.”
Stavia kept telling herself it was never as bad as she remembered that it was. They smelled, sure, but it was mostly just dirt and smoke. Morgot took two swabs from each of them, one vaginal, one rectal, dropping them into the vial that Stavia held ready before she sealed the woman on the forehead with indelible ink. Last week’s seal was still there, too, a faded circle on the left side. This week’s went on the right. The date and the medical officer’s initials. MRTM. Morgot Rentesdaughter Thalia Marthatown. No one else in Women’s Country had those initials. No one else had Stavia’s, either. SMRM. Stavia Morgotsdaughter Rentes Marthatown. Thalia was her great-grandmother’s line.
Plop, the swabs went into the vial.
“Is it labeled?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Over in the wagon, Myra was looking at everything except the line of flabby buttocks and bushy vulvas on display.
Morgot had it down to a kind of chant. “Left leg up. Thank you. Bend over, please. Thank you. You’re Vonella, aren’t you?” she asked. “I thought so. Go climb into the wagon, Vonny. You’ll have a week in the quarantine house. You can be thinking up the names of all the warriors you’ve fucked since your last clean seal, too. I’ll need them all.” The women were supposed to keep a contact book, but few of them were accurate about it.
When they had finished, Morgot asked, “All right, Jik. Are you harboring any elopers? Any silly little girl some handsome warrior has talked out here for his pleasure?”
He shifted from foot to foot. “The warrior paid me….”
“He could have paid you and gone to bed with you,” Morgot snapped. “He might have told you she’d never had sex with anyone but him, and him only once, I’d
