“I don’t remember anything?”
“No. You don’t remember, for example, what Chernon said about the conspiracy. You don’t remember telling Septemius about it. Because if you don’t remember, then no one will worry about your knowing….”
“Ah. I see.” She thought about it and did see. No one must know that she knew, that any of them knew. She didn’t have to make anything up. She could just say she didn’t remember, didn’t remember. She could just lie to Beneda her friend. Lie to her.
“All right,” said the actor Stavia. “Let them come.”
BENEDA AND SYLVIA CAME, and came again. They talked, among other things, of Stavia’s baby. Chernon’s baby. How wonderful that Stavia was having Chernon’s baby. Beneda bubbled and giggled, as though she had planned it, as though she had prayed for it. Stavia smiled, when she could, and said she didn’t remember.
Of course, Stavia’s child could be a girl. A daughter, sharing some of the qualities of Beneda and herself, perhaps. Someone to be company. While Stavia gained strength over the slow weeks, she eased herself with this thought. Corrig was gentle with her, bringing her flowers and books, rubbing the marks on her back with ointment, tempting her to eat when she did not much seem to care. One night she found herself clinging to him, crying as she had not cried since she was a child, with him rocking her to and fro as Morgot once had done.
“Hush, my darling,” he whispered. “Little bird, little fish, shhh.” As though she had been a baby.
“I’m not a bird,” she sobbed, trying to feel indignant.
“My bird,” he lulled her. “My little bird, my little fish, something dear and loved and rockable.”
“As big as a huge old jenny-ass,” she cried. “Like I’d swallowed a melon.”
“Or the moon, or the sun, or a bale of hay,” he crooned, the chair creaking as it carried them back and forth, a pendulum swinging. “Or an ancient elephant or whale. Leviathan, behemoth, huge she is, like the spread of a tree or the girth of a watering trough. Big as the moon. Monstrous huge….”
She could not stop the giggle which bubbled up unbidden. The tears dried and a wondering comfort replaced them.
“Corrig?”
“Hmmm?”
“When this is all over, will you still be here? With me?”
“Such is my intention,” he said. “I have this consistent hunger for you, Stavia. Maybe it’s because of all the things Habby used to tell me about you.”
“What?” she demanded wonderingly. “What did he say?”
“Oh,” he resumed rocking, chuckling to himself. “All kinds of very interesting things….”
“And do you see what will happen to us?”
“Oh, and I do,” he said. “There will be a girl child. Yours and mine. And we will name her Susannah.”
“Poor woman. She did try her best for me.”
“We will go into the southland, Joshua and I and others, and we will bring back all the young women there.”
“Good,” she sighed.
“And we will have another daughter. Her name will be—Spring.”
“Ah. And what about this baby, Corrig?”
“This is a boy baby, Stavia.”
He rocked her gently while she cried.
It was the next evening that Corrig told her—tentatively, as one might offer a bit of food to a possibly dangerous animal—that Chernon had returned to the garrison.
“Where has he been?” she asked in a sick whisper. “I thought he was dead.”
“There was no point in upsetting you by talking about him. Actually, he’s been traveling with a group of Gypsies, but he has been in touch with the garrison officers from time to time.”
“Why did he come back!”
“You know why.”
“Because it would have been dishonorable to do anything else?” she sneered.
“And because he knows you’re carrying his child, perhaps.”
Seemingly, that was not all.
Morgot came to Stavia’s room that same evening and asked her to get dressed. “The Council wants to see you,” she said. “Ask you some questions.”
“About what?”
“Your brief sojourn with the Holylanders. They’ve been told all about it. It’s just that there’s a big decision coming up, and they want to be quite sure they have all the facts.”
“It’s Chernon, isn’t it? He’s come back full of information about how women can be enslaved. How their heads can be shaved and they can be beaten. He’s talking to everyone in the garrison.”
“He is, yes. He’s evidently heard that you ‘can’t remember anything,’ so he’s telling whatever story he pleases. He orates like something demented, but people are listening. He’s been allowed to rejoin his century, the twenty-five. The servitors tell me the things he’s saying are being widely accepted by a great many of the warriors.”
“Oh, by our most merciful Lady.”
“It may seem like a crisis to you, Stavia, but we’ve had worse. Now get your boots on.”
The meeting was a very short one, mostly questions about the Holylanders and the beliefs they had held. Toward the end of it, they asked Stavia to join the Council, not so much because she had earned the responsibility as because it would be helpful to have her as a member. She was still too young by at least a decade, they felt, but her unpleasant experiences had given her knowledge and insights that could be valuable to them. Besides, they wanted her under the Council oath for a whole variety of information. She, too weary even to argue, consented.
A MAN CAME to the garrison at Marthatown and knocked on Michael’s door late at night, slipping inside like a shadow when the door was opened. He was, he said, from the garrison at Peggytown. Peggytown garrison was wavering. Her Commander wanted Michael and Stephon and Patras to meet him and help him out of a difficulty.
“What the hell?” sneered Stephon.
“Shh,” Michael directed. “What do you mean, they’re wavering?”
“Some of the men think it’s dishonorable. They may spoil the whole thing. Our Commander wants to talk to you about it.”
“We don’t have time to….,” Stephon began.
“Shh,” said Michael again. “We need everything to hold together, Steph. We don’t want a break.”
“That’s what my Commander said. He doesn’t think it’s really serious, but
