The Gate to Women's Country

he was fifteen? Well, she hadn’t. She was thirty-seven, so he was fifteen. She had been twenty-two when… when everything. All this pretense that the summons was unexpected was really so much playacting, a futile attempt to convince herself that something unforeseen might happen despite her knowing very well what the plot required. Despite Dawid’s ritual visits on holidays, his twice-yearly homecomings—during which the initial shyness of the original separation had turned to fondness, then to shyness again, finally becoming the expected, though no less wounding, alienation—despite all that, she had chosen to go on thinking of him as she had when he was five and had gone into the hands of the warriors.

So, now, she must guard against speaking to that child, for this was no child confronting her in his polished breastplate and high helmet, with pouted lips outthrust. No child anymore.

“Dawid,” she said formally, bowing a little to indicate the respect she bore him. And “Gentlemen,” for the respect she bore these others, also. One had to grant them that; one could grant so little else. She risked one raking glance across the ranked faces above the shining armor, subconsciously thinking to see faces that she knew could not be there. Those that were there were young. No old faces. No old faces at all.

“Madam,” intoned one member of the host. Marcus, she thought, examining what she could see of his visage between the cheek and nose guards of his helmet; Marcus, probably, though it might have been another of her sister Myra’s sons—all three looked disconcertingly alike and had, even as babies. “Madam,” he said, “your warrior son greets you.”

“I greet my warrior son,” the actor Stavia said while the observer Stavia annoyed herself by weeping, though inwardly and silently, as befitted the occasion.

“I challenge you, madam,” said Dawid. His voice was light, very light, almost a child’s voice, still, and she knew he had been practicing that phrase in the shower room and in corners of the refectory, no doubt listening with heartbreaking attention for the vibrant echo of command. Still, it quavered with a child’s uncertainty.

“Oh?” she questioned, cocking her head. “How have I offended?”

“During my last homecoming”—he gave the word the aversive twist she had believed only a mature warrior could give it, “homecoming,” as though it were something dirty; well, perhaps it was—“you made a suggestion to me which was unworthy of my honor.”

“Did I, indeed?” The actor Stavia was properly puzzled. “I cannot remember any such.”

“You said,” his voice quavered. “You said I would be welcome to return to my mother’s house through the Gate to Women’s Country.”

“Well, and so you would be,” she said calmly, wishing this farce were done with so she might go home and weep. “So are any of our sons.”

“Madam, I summoned you here to tell you that such a suggestion offends my honor! I am no longer your son. I am proud to name myself a son of the warriors. I have become a Defender!”

So, and well, and what had she expected? Still, for a moment she could not respond. The observer Stavia held the actor in thrall, just for this moment, seeking in that face the face of the five-year-old Dawid, mighty hunter of grasshoppers, thunderer on the toy drum, singer of nursery rhymes, leading contender in the skipping race from home to candy shop. That level-browed, serious-eyed, gentle-lipped child. No more. No more.

No, it was all bronze and leather now. The Marthatown garrison tattoo was on his upper arm. He had a cut on his chin where he had shaved himself, though his skin looked like a baby’s. Still the arms and chest were muscular and almost adult, almost a man’s body. Fit for love. Fit for slaughter.

Get on with it, wept the observer Stavia.

“Then I relinquish all claim to you, Dawid, son of the warriors. You need not visit us again.” A pause for the words which were not obligatory but which she was determined upon. Let him know, even now, that it cut both ways. “You are not my son.” She bowed, believing for a moment that the dizziness which struck her would prevent her getting her head up, but then the actor had her up and wheeling about, finding her way almost by instinct. Women could not return through the Defender’s Gate. There was a corridor here to the left, she told herself, remembering what she had been told and managing to get into it with level tread, not breaking stride, not hurrying or slowing. Even the hiss behind her did not hurry her steps. A serpent’s hiss, but by only a few, possibly only one set of lips, and those not Dawid’s. Stavia had played by the rules since Dawid was born, and all those metal-clad automatons knew it. They could not hiss her in good conscience, and only zealots would do it. Despite them, she would not hurry. No, no, and no, the thing must be done properly if it had to be done at all.

And then, ahead of her at the end of the narrow corridor she saw it for the first time, the gate that all the fuss was about, narrow and quite unprepossessing. The Gate to Women’s Country, as described: a simple sheet of polished wood, with a bronze plaque upon it showing the ghost of Iphigenia holding a child before the walls of Troy. On the right was a bronze latch in the shape of a pomegranate, set low, so that even a small woman could reach it easily. Her eyes sought it, her thumb pressed it down, and the door swung open smoothly, as though well used, well oiled.

In the plaza arcade, where the gate opened, old Septemius Bird was waiting for her with his nieces, Kostia and Tonia, their twinned exoticism long since become familiar and dear. Though not friends of her childhood, they were neighbors now, and Morgot must have told them the summons had come. Beneda was there as well,