Starship Home (21 page)

She was about this point in her thinking when the Don came galloping along the track on his shining black horse, and scooped her up and rode off toward Trollcastle with her. She screamed and yelled and struggled a lot but the Don was very strong for a man his size.

Meg was realizing that the discussion about her marrying the Don had only just begun.

When Meg was scooped up onto the Don’s horse she missed seeing something which might have given her a little more peace of mind during the ensuing events. What she missed seeing was the Forester child Maze, who had been on her way to the starship to visit her friend Giniveer.

Maze, on the other hand, had seen Meg, and had then seen Meg abducted by the Don. Loyal as Maze was in certain very practical ways to the Don who represented the High Law of the district (this meant that he dealt with hanging offences), she had bonds of friendship with both Meg and Giniveer and Zoe. She also thought that Topclass and Zachary were quite pretty, and sometimes even showed emerging signs of having typically female traits like intelligence and physical courage. So when Maze saw the Don swoop down on Meg and carry her off, her feelings of sisterhood transcended her sense of duty to her feudal lord and propelled her toward the starship at a flat run.

She came into the clearing yelling ‘Giniveer! Giniveer!’ and once she had reached the bridge, she quickly told the others what had happened.

Zachary was outraged. He took this as a terrible insult to his skill as a liar. ‘But I fooled him!’ he said. ‘I told him what she was like.’

‘Thou didst say she was lazy,’ Guinevere said. ‘Would a lord want a wife to work? Thou didst call her shrew. Would a lord want a docile woman of no spirit? Thou didst say,’ and she almost giggled here, ‘that she was no cook. Would a lord wish to marry with a cook?’

Zachary slumped in defeat. He was going to have to reconsider how you told lies here in the future. ‘You mean I couldn’t have sold her to him better if I’d tried.’

‘Didst not mean to sell him the wench?’ Guinevere said, her eyes widening in amazement. ‘Methought ‘twas done a-purpose!’

It was just as well Meg was not present for this conversation, because she probably would have believed Guinevere’s devious suspicions, and done Zachary a permanent physical injury. As it was, she was sitting in the women’s quarters of Trollcastle, surrounded by excited Trollwives, all of whom seemed to be under the impression that Meg had won first prize in some marital lottery, and were explaining to Meg, in babbling unison, what a lucky woman she was to have been chosen by the Don, and how thousands of women now and in the future would envy her, and how fortunate she was to get a husband at all at the advanced age of 24, and how many women both within the duchy and beyond had hoped to gain the Don’s love.

To all of this, Meg replied: ‘Let me out of here!’

The women then explained, talking over each other like birds in a tree at sundown, that there was no possibility of Meg’s being allowed out of there, because she had to be bathed and dressed for her wedding. At this point Meg stopped reasoning with the Trollwives, and certainly stopped expecting any help from them, and made a dash for the door, only to find, as Zoe had before her, that the door had no handle on the inside.

Meg then threw herself against the door, beat at it with her fists, used bad language, pleaded with anyone out there within earshot to open it and, when she had finished doing all this, she wept and kicked and beat the door all over again.

Unfortunately for Meg, the Trolls spent much of their time trying to get into other people’s fortresses while trying to stop other people from getting into their castle, and therefore the art of door-making, which is really the art of keeping people both in and out of places, was highly developed among them. She was thus dealing with a solid, solid door which yielded neither to threats, nor fists, nor kicks, nor entreaties nor tears.

When Meg had expended most of her energy on the door, Ulf’s wife tried to calm her down by explaining that she would be out of the women’s quarters in only two hours.

‘I will?’ said Meg. ‘Get out of here?’

‘Yes,’ said Ulf’s wife. ‘In two hours we go to the hall for your wedding.’

Meg screamed and threw herself at the door again.

While Meg was throwing herself at the door of the women’s quarters, Zachary was trying to talk sense to Guinevere. ‘This is serious,’ he said to her, ‘very serious.’

‘True,’ Guinevere replied, ‘the blessed state of matrimony is indeed a serious business, and I wish Meg all good things in it. Now,’ she went on briskly, the matter of Meg’s marriage having been dealt with to her satisfaction, ‘as to getting alchemical substances for my healing…’

‘She doesn’t want to get married, Guinevere!’

‘A little coyness is no bad thing in a bride,’ Guinevere said. ‘Even in one of Meg’s mature years.’

‘You’ve got to help us get her out of there,’ Zoe pleaded. ‘I mean if she really doesn’t want to marry the guy then she shouldn’t have to, right?’

‘If I should self-destruct, hundreds will die. Should we place Meg’s vixenish self-will above those deaths?’

‘We’ve got 38 days left for that,’ Zoe said. ‘Harold, reason with her.’

‘Well, maybe Guinevere’s right, maybe it’s time we played the Meg card,’ Harold said. ‘It’ll put the Don on our side, he may be able to help us find some of these metals…’

‘Harold, she never even gave you any detentions, you were a slimy little Spock, you never got kept in…’

‘I’m just saying this could tip the balance, Zoe! You give the Don what he wants on this one small bargaining point…’

‘Meg is not a card, she is not a small bargaining point, she is a woman! A human being, Harold. If the Don wanted to marry you…?’

‘Oh come on!’

‘If the Don wanted you as a slave, would you be calling yourself the “Harold card”? The “Harold bargaining point”? Join the human race, Harold.’

Harold saw that Zoe might just have a point here. He would perhaps be feeling differently about it were he in Meg’s shoes. Besides, Zoe was very angry and Zoe was capable of physical violence when she was angry. He decided to join the human race, even if only temporarily. ‘Okay. You made your point. We try and get her free. Guinevere?’

‘What can I, a weak woman, do in such a case?’

Zachary laughed. ‘We’re a weak woman now are we Guinevere?’

‘Aye,’ said Guinevere with such pathos in her voice that the Wyzen’s empathy was instantly aroused and she leapt onto the main console and rubbed herself against it, purring. ‘Dear Wyzen, thou art the only one who understandeth.’

Zachary thought he might be sick. ‘I’m going to be sick,’ he said.

‘Maybe you could project your image over there?’ Zoe suggested to Guinevere. ‘Like you did for Maze? Maybe you can throw a scare into them?’

‘Not in my present health,’ said Guinevere.

Harold now thought he had the solution. ‘The Slarnstaffs. What we used to cut and paste your insides when we were coming home. What the Slarn used when they captured us. We go over there in the bus, we walk in with those in our hands … who’s going to argue?’

There was silence on the bridge. Like a lot of people who have actually seen what weapons can do to human flesh and bone, Zachary had a deep distaste for weapons, but he could not stand by and see Meg kidnapped and subjected to what amounted to legal rape. Slowly, very reluctantly, Zachary said: ‘I think he’s right, Guinevere.’

‘I would not have any of ye slay a man,’ she said.

‘I wouldn’t have any of us slay a man either,’ Zachary said. ‘I’m really not into all that stuff.’

‘They can be set to stun,’ Harold said persuasively. ‘The Slarn stunned me with one, right?’

‘Aye,’ said Guinevere, very doubtfully. She had seen much of warfare over the centuries and she knew how easily the threat of violence could turn into the real thing.

‘Is it right that Meg be forced to marry?’ Zoe asked her.

Guinevere remained silent for a moment. She knew that the cause was just, and that just means to fight it lay within her gift. Slowly she opened the locker which contained the Slarnstaffs. ‘Come,’ she told them, ‘learn their use for putting men to sleep. But,’ she added sternly, ‘take human life with them, and ye shall never enter in these doors again.’

As Guinevere began to instruct her crew in the use of the Slarnstaffs, Meg was being put into her wedding dress. The custom of white bridal dresses, which had grown up in the 19th century, had survived among the Trolls and thus it was a white dress into which Meg was being forced. It was, Ulf’s wife told her, the same dress she herself had worn when Ulf had stolen her to be his bride.

‘He stole you?’ Meg yelped in outrage.

‘It was very romantic,’ Ulf’s wife answered. ‘Stole me, paid the bride price, and then we were married in the hall by Father John.’

‘
Bride price
. So in fact he bought you.’

‘I am not a slave!’ Ulf’s wife replied angrily. ‘Ulf abducted me in good style, and then paid compensation to my father for the loss of his property.’

‘Most marriages aren’t as romantic as that,’ said another Trollwife wistfully, ‘most are just arranged by the parents.’

‘I don’t consider being kidnapped and raped romantic,’ said Meg as the Trollwives held her down and fastened the delustered-satin-covered buttons of the wedding dress.

‘Well how do your people marry?’ asked Ulf’s wife.

Meg thought this might be a good opportunity to get them on side. She would explain to them how civilized people went about things and then these savages would be shamed into helping her to escape. She stopped struggling. Slowly and carefully they allowed her to sit up, while standing poised to grab her should she try to run again.

‘Men and women,’ Meg explained carefully, ‘are equal before the law. For a marriage to take place, both parties have to agree to it. Sometimes,’ she said, in order to indicate how free a society she came from, ‘people live together first to see if they suit one another. Then they marry or not, depending on whether they love each other.’

The Trollwives looked at each other, but because of the veils, Meg could not read their expressions. Had she been able to see through their veils she would have been surprised to find that their faces all wore expressions of horror and disgust.

‘And how do they know that they love one another?’ Ulf’s wife inquired gently.

‘They feel it,’ said Meg. ‘It’s a mutual feeling. You just want to be with that person. You understand?’

The Trollwives nodded. They understood perfectly. ‘Lust,’ said Ulf’s wife. ‘She means lust.’

‘I mean nothing of the sort!’ said Meg.

‘What happens when the lust fades?’ asked one of the older women.

‘If people don’t love each other, and the word is
love
, then they get divorced. The marriage is dissolved.’

‘A man can desert his wife when his lust fades? And take a new woman? Until his lust for her also fades? And so on and on? Again and again?’ Ulf’s wife sounded as if she could not believe what she was hearing.

‘Well a woman can get divorced too you know,’ Meg answered. ‘It cuts both ways…’ But her explanation was cut short. The Trollwives had surrounded her, and were patting her shoulders, and cooing sympathetically. They were so sad for her, they told her, that she had grown up in such a barbarous place where women had so few rights, where there was no legal protection for women from the fickle nature of men’s lust, where such a savage custom as divorce could be used by men to oppress women. They told her that she could relax now, that she would be safe in the Duchy of the Trolls, safe from male oppression here in the civilized world.

Meg sat wondering how her explanation had gone wrong. Perhaps, she thought, words had radically changed their meanings in the past 90 years. She and the Trollwives all spoke English. They just did not seem to be able to communicate with one another.

Meanwhile, on the main screen of the starship’s bridge, a three-dimensional diagram of a Slarnstaff was slowly revolving. ‘Remember,’ Zachary was saying, ‘it’s the blue button that stuns. Don’t touch any other button, you’re likely to fry them or blow them away.’

‘What if our lives are in danger?’ Harold said.

‘Stunning’ll take care of it.’

‘But…’ said Harold. Harold’s teachers’ hearts sank when Harold said
but
. It was one of his favorite words.

‘But nothing. Stunning will take care of it.’ Zachary was having a hard time getting a very simple concept through to Harold. ‘Today, Harold, you will bring your ears and leave your brain at home, do you understand me?’

‘No,’ said Harold.

‘Your brain, Harold,’ said Zachary, slowly and firmly, ‘suffers from a disease called
intelligence
. The symptom of the Intelligence Disease is that you always question my orders. So that we won’t be bothered by an outbreak of the Intelligence Disease today, you will leave your brain at home. If you understand me say
durr
.’

To Zoe’s amazement, Harold stopped arguing and grinned. ‘Durr,’ he said.

‘You’ve got the makings of a very fine private soldier,’ Zachary said, and hefted his Slarnstaff. ‘Now let’s go.’

The Troll men-at-arms had been burnishing their armor and shining their leather since the Don had ridden back with the captive Meg on his saddle bow. Training had been abandoned for the day, and everyone was to be on hand for the wedding except for a skeleton watch on the roof. During the nuptial mass itself even the roof watch would be allowed to descend to the hall to take part, for the wedding of a Don was a great event in the life of the Duchy. Normally the preparations would go on for weeks in advance, but on this occasion, since Don Robert had only recently emerged from mourning for his first wife and their son, both dead of the fluenza epidemic which had ravaged the Duchy a little more than a year before, the ceremony was to be a quiet one.

As the Troll men-at-arms burnished armor and polished leather and carefully checked blades for any minute rust spots which may have developed since that morning, they talked about Ducal weddings in the past.

‘The last Don’s wedding, the wedding of this Don’s elder brother, the Nameless One, now that was a wedding,’ a grizzled old man-at-arms was telling some of the younger men, who had been only children at the time. ‘Killed his own best man in a duel at the wedding feast for looking too closely at the bride’s forehead … beautiful forehead she had, a Worth she was before she married and the Worth women was always noted for the beauty of their foreheads. And the bride herself dead just a few years later giving birth to young Rocky.’

‘It was after that he went mad?’ said the youngest man-at-arms.

‘He was mad before that, boy, and bad as well,’ said the old man-at-arms. ‘Now get on with it, I want to see my face in that boot before you’re finished.’

As the preparations advanced, Father John went to the women’s quarters to talk to the bride. Ten minutes later he knocked to be let out of the women’s quarters again, and he seemed a worried man as he went to the Don, who, now resplendent in his best black leather, was in the hall making a personal inspection of the wedding preparations.

‘My lord,’ Father John began, ‘there seems to be a problem.’

‘No,’ the Don said carefully, so that there should be no misunderstanding, ‘there is not.’

When the Don spoke carefully so that there should be no misunderstanding, he sounded dangerous. This was because at these times he was very dangerous indeed. The priest, who was fully aware of this, nevertheless went on. ‘The bride won’t give her consent,’ he said.

The Don could not see how this was logically possible. ‘But once a bride has been stolen according to traditional practice,’ he pointed out, ‘she automatically gives her consent.’

‘The Lady Henderson,’ said Father John carefully, for he too spoke in this way when he wished there to be no misunderstanding as to his meaning, ‘does not seem to recognize our customs in this matter.’

The Don smiled with his lips but not his eyes. ‘Has it been explained to the Lady Henderson that I could have any bride that I wanted? That not a day passes but someone comes here wanting me to marry their daughter? That I am said to be handsome, the possessor of the finest set of calves in the region, the best horseman in the Duchy and the most dangerous swordsman ever to draw blade?’ The Don was puzzled. No one had ever denied these things. What did he have to do or be to win this woman?

‘All this has been explained to the Lady Henderson,’ Father John replied, ‘but she says she is,’ and here he dropped his voice as if uttering an obscenity, ‘she says that she is her own woman. Whatever that expression may mean,’ he added hastily.

‘But she’s nothing of the sort,’ the Don said, thinking the while that the Lady Henderson must come from a very strange place indeed, ‘for in the absence of her father and brothers, she was legally owned by Zachary. We established that, she agreed herself that this was the case. I stole her from Zachary, and so therefore, according to both law and reason, she’s legally owned by me.’

‘She says that she won’t give her consent during the marriage service,’ said Father John.

‘She won’t say the “I will”,’ the Don translated.

The priest nodded.

The Don paused in thought for a moment and then smiled as he saw the rational solution. ‘Then I’ll say it for both of us.’

‘I think, my lord, that that would be a most doubtful expedient.’

The Don thought about it some more. He had never struck a case like this before. ‘I am the Law, correct?’

‘Correct.’

‘As the Law, I declare that the Lady Henderson and I are married. Since we are now married, as her husband according to civil law I can give consent on her behalf. Now, Father John, you will read the wedding service for me and my wife!’ The Don smiled triumphantly. He had thought his way through the legal tangle to a perfectly acceptable solution. Striding to the door to the women’s quarters, he struck it three times and shouted, ‘Bring out the bride!’

A short time later, the guards on the roof were alerted that the wedding was about to begin, and so quit their posts and went down the stairs to the hall. And an even shorter time after that, the school bus emerged from the forest trail and chugged its way uphill toward Trollcastle.

Bumping around in her seat inside the bus, Zoe was getting worried. ‘What if we’re too late? Maze says that when Trolls kidnap women they marry them straight away. What if we’re too late?’

Zachary changed gears. ‘I guess if we’re too late to stop the wedding, then we get to throw rice,’ he said.

‘That’s not funny, Zachary!’ Zoe expostulated. ‘This isn’t the Dark Ages!’

Harold looked up toward the castle where saddled horses were hitched to a rail near the gate. ‘It isn’t?’ he asked. ‘Think again.’

A few moments later, the bus came to a halt near the castle doors. Zachary took the ignition keys, and they all got out, and moved to the big ironbound wooden doors. Zachary pushed. They were barred. He waved the others back, and then, pointing his Slarnstaff, pressed a number of buttons. With a crashing noise the doors disintegrated, their iron bindings clanging to the ground.

‘Which buttons did you press?’ Harold asked excitedly.

‘None of your business,’ Zachary said. ‘Guinevere only told me because I’m so smart,’ he added, as he led the way in across the wreckage of the doors and into the castle.

‘Can’t be the red one, that’s flame, can’t be the white, that’s light,’ Harold was saying to himself.

‘It’s a combination and don’t experiment,’ Zachary answered as they headed for the hall.

Inside the hall, Meg stood, bound and gagged with strips of delustered white satin, and supported on each side by a Trollwife. Alongside her on her right was the Don in shining black leather and steel, and on his right was his best man Ulf. Father John stood before them. ‘Wilt thou obey him, and serve him, love honor and keep him,’ he was saying, ‘in sickness and in health; and forsaking all other keep thee only unto him as long as ye both shall live?’

‘Ahl see tascist tig dead tirst,’ Meg said through her delustered satin gag.

‘I consent on my dear wife’s behalf,’ the Don said.

The Trollwives were weeping. ‘It’s so beautiful,’ said one, and ‘so romantic,’ said another.

‘Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?’ intoned Father John at which point there was a shattering crash, and the doors at the back of the hall disintegrated. Harold, Zoe and Zachary walked in, line abreast, Slarnstaffs at the ready, and advanced up the hall between the ranks of Trolls and Trollwives, who stood frozen in silence. Zachary was profoundly grateful that the display of firepower had created a temporary sense of caution among the Trolls.

When the starship crew reached the stage where the wedding was taking place Zachary pointed his Slarnstaff at a chair. Fire gushed from the flanged end of his Slarnstaff and the chair exploded into flames. Zachary looked at the Don. ‘Give us back Meg or we tear down the castle.’

The Don paused, but he did not know Zachary well enough to call his bluff. Perhaps this stranger was capable of doing what he said. Perhaps he was not. Perhaps he possessed the will to kill the Don’s people, and perhaps he did not. The Don was a true aristocrat, and identified with his people; they served him and he served them, and he would not gamble with their lives. Better he never marry at all than do so. He nodded to the Trollwives who held Meg. ‘Release her.’ Swiftly the Trollwives untied Meg’s gag and the bonds securing her hands, and then Meg, Zoe and Harold were moving swiftly back down the hall, with Zachary moving behind them, walking backwards, watching their backs.

As the starship party moved from the hall, the Don gestured to his men. It was done with hand signals. Some to control the fire which could spread from the blazing chair, some to go this way, some that. The Troll men-at-arms were running out, the women moving back to their quarters.

As the starship crew emerged from the castle, they saw to their horror that Troll men-at-arms had reached the school bus before them. One was leaping from the bus’s doorway and others were behind the bus, pushing. The bus was rolling downhill as the starship crew ran for it. By the time they reached it, it was already travelling too fast for them to get aboard.

‘How come they know about handbrakes?’ howled an agonized Zachary.

They grouped, Meg in the centre, the other three around her, Slarnstaffs at the ready. The Don was walking out of the castle toward them, crunching his way over the wreckage of his castle doors. ‘It’s a long way home,’ the Don said. ‘And anything could happen on the road. Why don’t we talk?’

There was a moment’s silence, then Meg suddenly broke from the circle, and, holding her wedding skirts in one hand, was running for the horses tethered near the castle gate. She untied one, her left foot was in the stirrup, she turned the horse as she mounted, and now she was untying the others. Controlling her horse with her thighs, reaching for the reins with one hand and ripping away her Troll bride’s veil with the other, she yelled ‘Come on!’, and Zoe, Harold and Zachary were running toward her, covering their retreat with their Slarnstaffs.

The Don stood, stilled with admiration for Meg. ‘What a woman,’ he was saying, as his men looked to him for orders. ‘What a wife she’ll make,’ he said to himself, as Zoe, Harold and Zachary scrambled awkwardly onto horses, and Meg drove off the remainder of them with wild cries. ‘What a wife for a Don, what a mother for his sons,’ the Don said as he watched the starship people ride away.

‘They’ve shamed you,’ said a voice in his ear. The Don turned to find Marlowe the village sorcerer standing behind him, red glinting through the dark glass on one side of his wraparound shades. ‘They’ve shamed you in front of your men. Get rid of them. Now.’

‘Sorcerer? You tempt me to violence against my chosen bride?’

‘They’re dangerous. They’ll bring the Slarn, they’ll use their fire weapons to help the Sullivans. Get rid of them now. Slay them.’

‘You tempt me to murder the woman I love?’ The Don’s face went cold. ‘A hanging offence. Court is in session, the verdict is guilty, the punishment death.’ He paused, as Marlowe looked round wildly for an avenue of escape. ‘However, Marlowe, our families have long helped one another. In view of that, your punishment is commuted to banishment from my sight. Now leave. While you’re still a guest. And let me not see you from this day on.’

At this, Marlowe turned, and ran from the Don’s presence. He would live. He would find help elsewhere. He could still possess the starship for his own.