Dangerous Women (79 page)

Chuck Barstow looked grimmer; he’d been a Society fighter and a gardener besides a member of the Singing Moon, not a real warrior by trade, though everyone had seen death and battle in the last eighteen months. But he was equally determined as he paced forward to keep the prisoner bracketed. From the way his eyes were fixed and showed white around the blue, he was
feeling
something too, besides the gravity of the moment, and not enjoying it.

Judy Barstow was at the far right of the table next to a woman who sat tensely upright; her white face frightened and her eyes carefully not focused.

Our prime exhibit,
thought Juniper.
Even if I just nursed Rudy, my breasts ache. But why is it so hard to breathe?

Eilir had moved to sit at the smaller, shorter table, set in an L to the larger one. She turned and her fingers flew.
Shall I find some cold tea for you?

Yes, thanks.

She drank the lukewarm chamomile thirstily as her daughter pulled a fresh book out of her saddlebags. Ice in summer was a memory, and a possibility someday when they had time for icehouses, but you could get a little coolness by using coarse porcelain.

The book was covered in black leather, carefully tooled with the words:

The Legal Proceedings of Clan Mackenzie, Second Year of the Change.

And below that:

Capital Crimes.

Eilir opened it to a fresh page, pulled out an ink bottle and a steel-nibbed pen that had come out of retirement in an antiques store in Sutterdown. Nobody thought it odd that a fourteen-year-old was acting as court clerk. Standards had changed.

The first pages of the book contained the rituals they had come up with last night, after they had hashed out the legal and moral basis for judging the case. The first pages of the book covered all that, written in Eilir’s neat print.

Juniper looked over to the Dun Carson witnesses sitting in the southeast quadrant. Everybody was still, the sensation of their focused attention like and unlike a performance.

“I have been called here to listen to the Dun’s judgment against Billy Peers Mackenzie …”

“Hey!” the man yelled. “I ain’t never said nothing about Mackenzie. That was you-all. I’m William Robert Peers.”

Juniper hesitated and then turned her head.

“I will only say this once, Mr. Peers. You will keep your mouth closed until I give you leave to speak. If you speak out of turn again, your guards will gag you. Gags are very uncomfortable. I advise you to be quiet.”

“But you can’t do that! It isn’t legal!”

Sam’s hand moved once, and the man stopped with his mouth gaping open. He reached into his sporran, pulled out the gag and shoved it into the man’s mouth with matter-of-fact competence, checking carefully to make sure that his tongue lay flat and that it wasn’t so large as to stop him from swallowing. The rags wrapped around the wooden core had been steeped in chamomile and fennel seed tea and dried so that it wouldn’t taste too foul. Straps around the head held it in place without cutting at the corners of his mouth. He struggled, though it was as ineffectual as a puppy in a man’s hands.

“I said I would speak only once. All of you, take heed. If I state a consequence will follow, it will follow. Second chances belong to the times before the Change, when we were rich enough to waste time arguing. You have one minute to stand quiet.”

A glance at her watch.

She gazed dispassionately at the struggling man trying to spit the carefully constructed gag out of his mouth. Then she began to count the measured seconds out loud. After the tenth second passed, it caught Peers’ attention. At the twentieth second, he stopped struggling.

“Better. If you cause any further disruption, you will be knocked unconscious. I have no time to waste now, in the midst of harvest.”

Peers jerked, started to struggle again, saw a sudden movement out of the corner of his eye as Sam raised a hand stiffened into a blade, flinched and subsided. Juniper waited and then turned again to the north leg of the crossroads. She lifted her arms, and Judy placed her staff in her hands; it had the Triple Moon—waxing and full and waning—above two raven heads of silver, and the shaft was also of mountain rowan.

“I have been called here by the Óenach of Dun Carson and by the Ollam of Dun Carson; Sharon Carson, Hearthmistress, Cynthia Carson, Priestess and First Armsman of Dun Carson, Ray Carson, Second Armsman and Herd Lord in Training, and Brian Carson, Herd and Harvest Lord, pro-tem, and his wife, Rebekah Carson, the tanner.

“I am Juniper Mackenzie, Chief of the Clan Mackenzie. I am Ollam Brithem, high judge over our people.”

Juniper winced at the power she was claiming.
But I am needed as chief, and so I must take this burden on. Threes; everything in threes. Continue, woman, get this over.

“I am called here, by Óenach, Ollam, and the Gods to hear, to judge, and to speak. Does any deny my right, my obligation, or my calling? Speak now or hold your tongue thereafter, for this place and time is consecrated by our gathering. All we do here is holy—and legal.”

Distantly, she was aware that Peers tried to struggle again and quickly subsided as Sam gripped the back of his neck.

A long silence and she continued, face raised to the sun, eyes closed against its burning light:

“Let us be blessed!”

“
Manawyddan
—Restless Sea, wash over me.”

A green branch sprinkled salt water over her. She tasted the salt on her lips like tears. Four Priestesses came with green branches, each trailed by a child holding a bowl of salt water. Each cleansed the people in one of the quarters; the last pair assiduously cleansed the empty northeastern quarter.

“
Manawyddan—
Restless Sea! Cleanse and purify me! I make myself a vessel; to listen and to
hear
.”

“
Rhiannon—
White Mare, stand by me, run with me, carry me! That the land and I can be one, with Earth’s wisdom.”

She bent and took a pinch of the dry dust from the road and sprinkled it in front of her. There was a long ripple as the Dun Carson people did the same, and the witnesses.

“Rhiannon—White Mare, ground me.”

“
Arianrhod—Star-tressed Lady;
dance through our hearts, our minds, and through our eyes, bring Your light to us.”

She took a torch from Eilir and lit it; the resinous wood flared up. Eilir took it to the four corners of the crossroads and lit each torch.

“Arianrhod—Star-tressed Lady
; Bring Your light to me, to us, to the world.

“Sea and Land and Sky, I call on you:

“Hear and hold and witness thus,

“All that we say

“All that we agree

“All that we together do.

“Honor to our Gods! May they hold

“Our oaths

“Our truths.”

Then she spoke formally: “Let all here act with truth, with honor and with duty, that justice, safety and protection all be served for this our Clan, and may Ogma of the Honey Tongue lend us His eloquence in pursuit of Truth.”

“This Dun’s Óenach is begun! By what we decide, we are bound, each soul and our people together.”

She turned in place, looking at all the people assembled, and rapped the butt of her staff on the ground.

“I am here, we are here, the Gods are here. So mote it be!”

“
So mote it be!
” the massed voices replied.

She noticed that Rebekah said the words and was glad. They weren’t actually religious and it meant she was participating in the Clan’s work, rather than standing back, claiming religious exemption. She moved over to the chair and hoisted herself up on it. She could feel Chuck move into place behind her, still holding the spear upright as a symbol of her justice.

The morning sun was pouring down on the tarps and she could feel the heat and sweat that started to trickle down her back and breasts. The kilt had been comfortable while riding down to the crossroads through the forest … now the soft wool was sticking to her legs and her kneesocks made her legs itch.

Well, I’m not the only one uncomfortable on all the levels possible.

Juniper tapped her fingers on the table and took up the gavel that Sam had crafted her yesterday evening as they hashed out procedure. She banged it once on the block of wood and spoke formally:

“We are gathered here to make a decision with regards to the matter of the sexual assault visited upon Debbie Meijer yesterday by William Robert Peers, know to us as Billy Peers Mackenzie, who denies that he has accepted the name or Clan of Mackenzie.”

She frowned and moved her hand to stop another blow to the struggling Billy. “You will be given your time to talk at its proper place.”

He shook his head, his eyes angry and desperate, and she pursed her lips and shook her head in her turn, pointing to the poised hand. He subsided, but his black scowl remained.

“First I am going to address the greater issue. What right have we to judge and sentence and carry out these sentences upon the members of our community and those who dwell upon our land? For more than a year, we have been hurrying from incident to incident, making it up as we go along …”

A crack of laughter interrupted her. That was a charge often leveled at pre-Change wiccans:
They just make up the ritual as they go along.

“But all just law is based on need and precedents and the will of the people. Not much of it is from the legal system that covered the needs of a highly urban, complex society that numbered hundreds of millions and was rich enough to spare the time for slow careful perusals of accusations and defenses.

“We no longer live in the old world of cities and bureaucracies. We live in small, closed villages where the question of guilt is frequently easily established and we have no real need of the elaborate forensic apparatus used previously to establish the
beyond doubt
criteria used before.”

She met Billy’s angry eyes: “This is how we have been operating and how we will continue to operate in future, until we see a need for something different. Our methods and their success or failure were discussed and reviewed by myself and my advisors. We have reviewed the past seventeen months of work and dispute in the duns and codified the results.”

She gestured to the book beneath Eilir’s hand: “Clan Mackenzie is a conglomeration of independent settlements that have asked for and received membership in the Clan, that we may support each other and defend each other in a world where nobody can survive alone and no single family can survive alone. These are the means we have found to live together, and live decently.
And it has worked.
We are alive, where millions … hundreds of millions … almost certainly
billions
… have died.”

A low murmur went through the group as she looked around, meeting their eyes. That was why so many had joined the group she’d started with a few friends and coven-members meeting at her country retreat, and taken up all its ways. It was what she’d meant that first day, when she’d told them …

“It’s a Clan we will have to be, as it was in the old days, if we’re to live at all.”

A low approving rumble at that; the words were already folklore. Perhaps the trappings that had come along with that thought weren’t necessary, were just the by-product of that group’s obsessions and pastimes from before the Change … but the whole thing
worked,
and nobody was going to argue with that. Herself least of all.

Then she went on: “
Salus populi suprema lex
: The good of the people is the highest law. If a person lives in a Dun of the Clan, they are a member of that Dun and subject to the rules, benefits, and obligations of the group. No one compels them to remain, but if they do, it is on the group’s chosen terms. This includes the reality of work, of mutual defense, and the obligation to respect others. The Ollam and Óenach of a Dun have every right to judge wrongdoing in their territories and by their people or towards their people.

“Who chooses the Ollam? The people of the Dun. Dun Carson was led by John and Sharon Carson Mackenzie until his death fighting the Protector’s men when they tried to take Sutterdown last year. Dun Carson is led by an Ollam of five at this time. They have collectively requested that the Chief Ollam of the Clan deliver the doom in this matter, and that it be witnessed by as many sober and credible members of the other Duns as is possible. We are here today for this purpose.”

Two more people were taking down her words in shorthand. Juniper paced her speech to make it easier on her own scribe-daughter to read her lips.

“I will hear first from Debbie Meijer, who also resides in Dun Carson, but has not accepted the name of Mackenzie.”

She watched as the injured woman’s eyes focused on her, as if she’d been jarred out of some inward prison that was protection as well. Everyone looked lean and fit these days, as well as weathered, but there was gentleness to her face, as well as pain; she had blue-green eyes, and brown hair caught beneath a kerchief. She shrank back for a minute and then rose at Judy’s quiet urging and walked forward. Juniper watched her swallow and clench her teeth. She made a slight gesture and Debbie’s face contracted. She shook for an instant and then faced the Dun’s members.

“I am Debbie Meijer. I’ve lived with you at Dun Carson since … since the Protector’s men stole us from Lebanon, and I, uh, escaped. I’ve not taken the Clan or the name; I’ve been waiting for my husband, Mark, to come back. Those of you here all know that the ’tinerants have been seeking news of the people stolen from Lebanon, but not much has been heard.

“I … I’ve done my best to fit in and be useful. It’s been hard. I’ve learned and learned and learned for more than a year. I went from an independent, competent citizen to a dependent, stupid member of a farming community.”

A wave of motion shook the Carson and Rebekah stepped forward, holding out a green branch.

“I recognize Rebekah Carson.” Juniper smiled at Debbie and raised a hand with a gentle gesture to stay her words for a moment: