“In there,” he said, pointing. The wagon looked cleaner than some of the others.
“Get her out here.”
“Can’t you go…?”
“You know the rules, Jik. Examination is done in public, with everybody knowing all about it. No secrets. No girly saying she didn’t know old Rosy had the plup. This way everybody knows who’s got what and whether they’re curable or not.”
“She’s only a kid.”
“Weren’t they all kids once?”
Jik had some trouble getting the girl out, and when Stavia saw who it was, her mouth dropped open and she felt her face turning bright red. It was one of Myra’s friends. Tally. Seventeen, just like Myra. From the wagon behind her came a muffled exclamation. Myra had seen her, too.
“You’re Tally,” Morgot said, as impersonally as if she’d never seen her before. “I’ll make up a page for you in my Gypsy book….”
“I’m not….” the girl protested. “I didn’t….”
“Stand up straight and lift your skirts.”
“I… Morgot, please.”
“Lift—your—skirts.”
“Might as well, honey,” cried one of the Gypsies. “She’ll get that swab up your ass one way or another.”
The girl started crying, her hands before her eyes and her mouth twisted up. “Do you want to go home?” Morgot asked. “You can come back to Women’s Country, you know. Or you can stay here. If you stay here too long, however, we won’t take you back. Once disease is chronic, we don’t take people back or allow them to stay near the city.”
“Barten said he’d take me away….”
Stavia heard the sound from behind her in the wagon, the intake of breath, the creaking of that breath, like aching wood, stressed in wind.
“Oh? Really! I think he probably told my daughter Myra the same thing. Where did you think he’d take you? Into the wilds? Did he plan to join the Gypsies with you? He’s already taken you as far as he intended to, girl. What’s the matter, couldn’t he wait two months until carnival? Or did he have other plans for carnival and want to get some fun out of you in the meantime?”
The girl broke and ran toward the wagon, weeping.
Stavia whispered, shocked, “You were mean.”
“I was, wasn’t I?”
“Did you know she was here?”
“I’d heard rumors to that effect.”
Stavia said nothing in a combination of furious embarrassment for Myra and anger for herself. Morgot had planned this!
“If you make it embarrassing enough, they usually don’t repeat,” Morgot said in a low voice. “I really don’t want to come out here next time and find Myra in that wagon. Barten has quite a history of getting girls from Women’s Country out here. Dishonoring them is part of the fun for him. I think Tally is his third or fourth. It’s as though the girls were some kind of spoils of battle. They keep score, you know—some of the warriors in the garrison. How many women they’ve taken. It’s a kind of game with them.”
“I didn’t know,” Stavia mumbled, abashed. She still felt angry but she couldn’t be angry at Morgot. This wasn’t one of the things she had learned in women’s studies. It wasn’t one of the things Habby had talked about, or Byram.
“Not all of them do it, Stavvy. I don’t think Habby would. Or Byram.”
“How did you know I was thinking about them?”
“I think about them. All the time.”
IN THE WAGON, Myra rode with her scarlet face straight forward, her mouth clamped in a grim, voiceless line. Tally lay in the back of the wagon, crying noisily, with many gulps and sniffles. The other woman, Vonella, chatted as though a week in quarantine was a treat for her.
“It probably is,” Stavia thought. “Showers and a clean bed and cooked food and too much of our precious antibiotics.”
“I’ve got a daughter in Marthatown somewhere,” Vonella said. “And a son in the garrison at Susan.”
“Then what are you doing out there?” Stavia demanded, forgetting for the moment that she was a child and not supposed to ask personal questions.
“Stavia!” Morgot warned.
“Oh, it’s all right, Doctor,” the woman said. “I don’t mind the kid askin’ and I don’t mind sayin’. I just wasn’t suited for town, you know? Too clean. Too neat. Too much expected of you all the time. Studies and work and crafty things—no more time to yourself than a dog with the itch. Somebody after you all the time to cook better or weave better or be responsible for somethin’. I’d rather be out here, travelin’ around. Jik’s an old villain, but he’s not bad to us, really. Some of the men are all right. We have some times.”
Morgot sighed. “Have you been pregnant since you’ve been with Jik?”
The woman didn’t answer.
“Did your baby disappear? Did Jik kill it? Or did it die?”
“It died,” the woman said sullenly.”
“How much of what Jik collects from your… your clients do you get? Half? Less than that?”
The woman didn’t answer.
“How many times have you had a disease? You know, you keep passing these diseases around, and they lead to cancer. We can’t cure cancer. People got close to a cure once, so it’s said, but that’s all lost now. Since the convulsions, we can’t treat a lot of things that were curable before.” Morgot said it as though she didn’t really care, but Stavia knew she did. “You’re no better than a slave, Vonella. You’ve been taken captive, and you don’t even know it.”
The woman threw up her hands, exclaiming angrily, “Oh I know. I do know. Likely I’ll kill myself well before my three score and ten. I smoke willow, too, and that’s no good for the lungs. And we all drink a bit there in camp. Jik makes good beer….”
“From stolen grain,” Morgot remarked.
“Well, he gets it where he gets it. Smoking and drinking and fucking. One or the other will probably kill me, right enough, but who wants to live to be old, anyhow? I’ve never wanted to be old.” Vonella waved her hands again, exorcising age and infirmity.
“You’ll probably have your wish,” Morgot agreed. “Slaves mostly died
