The Saga of the Renunciates (47 page)

Mother Lauria said, “First, because no woman can buy a place here. I am sure you had no thought of it; but if we accepted gifts, there might some day be a difference made between the few women who can pay, and the many who can bring nothing. Early in our history, we asked women to bring a dowry if they were able; and we were accused of luring rich women to us, for the sake of their dowries. Also, none of us is perfect; if we allowed such gifts we might be lured into accepting some woman not fit for the life, out of greed for her riches. So it is our first rule; no woman may bring anything to us when she enters here except the clothing she stands in. the skill of her hands, and the furnishing of her brain and mind.” She smiled and added, “That, and a more precious gift; her unknown self, that part of herself which she has never learned to use…”

She went on, but Magda did not hear; suddenly it was as if a voice had whispered in her mind:

Sisters, join hands and let us stand together before the Goddess…

Before Magda’s eyes a vision suddenly appeared, as clearly as if the circle of women seated on the armory mats had vanished; it bore the form of a woman, but taller than womankind; clothed in the gray and starry robes of the night, gems sparkling in her dark hair, and her face seemed to look upon Magda with divine compassion and tenderness.
My daughters, what do you seek…
?

In confusion, Magda wondered, is this some new test they have arranged for us? But across the circle she could still hear Mother Lauria saying to Byrna, “You may be excused if you are weary, child,” and Byrna, shifting her weight uncomfortably, replying, “No, please—this is the only chance I get to be with all of you!”

Magda could still see, faintly, the shimmering form—but was it inside her mind, a vision, or was it real, standing before her in the circle? She blinked and it was gone. Had it ever been there?

Magda wondered if she were going mad. Next, she thought grimly, I shall be hearing voices telling me I am to be the new women’s Messiah!

Rafaella had evidently been asked to lead the next round of questioning, and Magda shrank inside. Rafaella had been consistently unfriendly. She had heard only half or less of the question;

“… teach you to be women, and independent, rather than mere chattels of men?”

Keitha answered hesitantly “Maybe,—as cadets are taught in the Castle Guard, to use weapons, bear arms, protect ourselves? That is the way in which boys are taught to be men—

She braced herself for instant refutation, looking scared, but Rafaella only said mildly “But we want you to be women, Keitha, not men; why should we train you as boys are trained?”

“Because—because men are more self-sufficient, and women are meek because they have not been taught these things—

“No,” said Rafaella, “Although all Amazons must learn to defend themselves if they are attacked, there are women among us who have never held a sword in their hands; Marisela, for instance. Doria, what do you think?”

Doria suggested “Maybe—to learn a trade and get our own living, so we need not depend on any man to feed and clothe us?”

“You need not be an Amazon for that,” said a woman Magda had heard called Constanza. “I sell cheese in the market, when we make more than we can eat, and there I see many women who earn their own living; they work as maids or servants, or they do washing, or work at leather-crafts. Some do so because they have shiftless or drunken husbands, and they must support their little children alone; and I know a woman who works as a maker of wooden dishes because her husband lost a leg riding mountain trails. Yet she defers to him in everything, as he sits in his wheeled chair at the back of their stall. That alone is not the answer.”

Rafaella asked, “Margali, what do you think?”

Magda hesitated; she was sure nothing she would say could be the right answer, that this part of Training Session was only to make the newcomers unsure, to dispel their early and ignorant prejudices. She looked around the circle of women, as if she might find an answer written in one of the faces. Two of the women, she saw, were seated under a single blanket wrapped round them both, their hands enlaced, and as she looked, one of the women turned to the other and they exchanged a long kiss.

She had never seen public lovemaking between women before, and it startled her.

Rafaella was still awaiting her answer. Magda said uncertainly, “I don’t know. Perhaps you will tell us.”

“We are not asking what you
know
, but what you
think
—if you know how to think,” Rafaella said waspishly.

Thus urged, she tried to put some of her inarticulate thoughts into words.

“Perhaps—by getting us out of women’s clothing, stop using the women’s language—because these affect the way we think, the words we use, the way we walk and talk and dress—” she fumbled, “because we have been taught to behave in certain ways and you will teach us different—better—ways of behaving—”

And then she was unsure, remembering Jaelle’s love of finery, and the way in which, talking to Dom Gabriel or to Lady Rohana, Jaelle’s language had been as proper as the Lady’s own.

“You are all right in a way,” said Camilla, “and you are all wrong. Yes, you will all learn to protect yourselves, by force if you cannot do so by reason or persuasion; but this in itself will not make you the equals of men. Even now, a day is coming here in Thendara when every little matter need not be put to the sword, but will be decided more rationally. For now, we accept the world as men have made it because there is no other world available, but our goal is not to make women as aggressive as men, but to survive—merely to survive—until a saner day comes. Yes, you will all learn a way to earn a living, but being independent of a husband is not enough to free you of dependence; even a rich woman who marries a poor man, so that they live upon her bounty, considers herself, by custom, bound to serve and obey her husband. Yes, you will learn to wear women’s clothes by choice and not from necessity, and to speak as you wish, not to keep your words and your minds in bonds for fear of being thought unmannerly or unwomanly. But none of these is the most important thing. Mother Lauria, will you tell them the most important thing they will learn?”

Mother Lauria leaned forward a little, to emphasize what she was saying.

“Nothing you will learn is of the slightest importance, save for this: you will learn to change the way you think about yourselves, and about other women.”

The difference is in the way you think about yourselves
… Magda thought soberly that the Guild Mother was right. Magda herself had grown up to take it for granted that she would earn her own living, had gone to the Empire Intelligence school on Alpha, had been taught to defend herself in both armed and unarmed combat. And in the Terran Zone she had had no special restrictions of dress or language.

Yet I am as much a slave to custom and convention as any village girl in the Kilghard Hills
… Was it Lady Rohana who had spoken, once, about women who think themselves free and weight themselves with invisible chains?

Men too suffer in chains of custom and convention; perhaps the woman who most needs freedom is the hidden woman within every man
… Magda did not know where the thought had come from; it was not her own, it was as if someone had spoken it clearly within the room, and yet no one was speaking except Mother Lauria; but Magda lost track of what the Guild Mother was saying She blinked, expecting to see again the form of the woman in gray and silver, the evening sky, divine compassion in her eyes… but no, there was no trace of it; her eyes opened on grayness in which strange faces moved, men and women, and before her in the gray waste a tall white tower gleamed… an
emmasca
, a woman who had been subjected to the neutering operation. “What am I then, a banshee?”

Before the angry look in the older woman’s eyes, Magda said meekly, “I don’t know; I thought—I had been told—that a neuter, an
emmasca
, was made so because she refused to think of herself as a woman.”

Camilla reached for Magda’s hand and gave it a little squeeze. Her voice was still stern, admonishing, but she gave Magda a secret smile as she said, “Why, that is true; I began by refusing to accept myself as a woman. Womanhood had been made so hideous to me, so hateful, that I was willing to accept mutilation rather than see myself as a female. Some day, perhaps, you will know why. But that is not important now. What is important is that here, in the Guild House, I learned to think of myself as a woman, and to be proud of it—to rejoice in my womanhood, even though—even though there is, in this
emmasca
body of mine, very little that is female.”

She was still holding Magda’s hand. Self-consciously, the younger woman drew it away. Camilla turned to Doria and asked “What do
you
think is the difference between men and women?”

Doria said defiantly, very determined not to be caught out again, “I say there is no difference at all!”

This answer provoked a perfect storm of jeers and laughter, with a few obscene remarks, about the politest of which was “When did you father your first child, Doria?”

“You just said the physical difference wasn’t important.” protested Doria, “Camilla cut Margali to pieces for saying the difference was a physical one, and if the physical one makes no difference—‘’

Quickly a voice—a man’s or woman’s, Magda could not tell—said, “There is an intruder; someone has strayed here, perhaps in a dream! Lock your barriers!”

And suddenly the grayness was gone, and Camilla snapped, “Margali, have you gone to sleep here among us? I asked you a question!‘’

Magda blinked, in disorientation, wondering if she was going mad. She said “I am sorry; my mind was—was wandering.”
It was indeed
, she thought,
but wandering where
? “I am afraid I did not hear what you asked me, oath-sister.”

“What, do you think, is the most important difference between men and women?”

Magda did not know whether Keitha or Doria had answered this question; she had no idea how long her mind had been drifting in the gray wasteland. The faces she had seen there, the image of the woman who must, she realized, be a thought form of the Goddess Avarra, were still half-lingering in her mind. She said, trying to gather her scattered thoughts, “I think it is only a woman’s body that makes the difference.” This was the enlightened Terran answer, and Magda was quite sure that it was the right one; that the only difference was the limited physical one. “Women are subject to pregnancy and menstruation, they are somewhat smaller and slighter as a general rule, they do not suffer so much from cold, their—” she stopped, it was doubtful if they would understand what she meant if she said their center of gravity was lower. “Their bodies are different, and that is the main difference.”

“Rubbish,” Camilla said harshly. She made a gesture indicating her spare, sexless body, arms muscled like a man’s.

“I never said—nor did Camilla say—that the difference was not important,” said Mother Lauria, “and it would take someone far more stupid than you, to believe that there is no difference. The difference is there, and not insignificant. Keitha, have you any idea?”

Keitha said slowly, “Maybe the difference is in the way they think. The way they—and we—are taught to think. Men think of women as property, and women think—” she frowned, and said as if discovering something, “I don’t know what women think. I don’t even know what I think.”

Mother Lauria smiled. She said, “You have come very close to it. Perhaps the most important difference between men and women is in the way society thinks about them; the different things that are expected of them. But there is no really right answer, Keitha. You, and Margali and Doria too, you have all said a part of the truth.” Stiffly she rose to her feet. “I think it is enough for tonight. And I heard the bell in the hall telling us that the Sisterhood have finished. I told the girls in the kitchen to bring us some cakes and something to drink. But let us go into the Music Room for that—it
is
getting a little chilly in here.”

A little chilly—that struck Magda as a masterpiece of understatement; her own fingers were blue with cold, and she felt that the cold of the stone floor seeped up through her legs and buttocks, even through the thick mat. Hugging the blanket round her, she rose and went after the others.

She was hungry after the supper she had not been able to eat; the cakes were short and crisp, decorated with nuts and dried fruit, and she ate several of them hungrily, and drank a huge mug of the hot spiced cider they had brought for those women who did not drink wine. Her mind was still full of the discussion; a form, she knew, of simple therapy, forcing people to think, to protest, to break up old habits of thought. But she hoped all the sessions would not be like this. She felt intensely uncomfortable, her mind still picking over the questions and the many answers that had been given. Why had she chosen to be an Amazon? What is the difference between men and women? She was still testing and re-formulating answers, things she might have said, and that, she supposed, was the reason for the discussion. She heard one of the women say to another “It’s an intelligent group,” and the listener reply skeptically, “I’m not so sure of that.”

“Oh, they’ll learn,” the first replied, “We did.”

Doria’s eyes were still red when Magda joined her. “I certainly made a fool of myself, didn’t I?”

“Oh, that’s what they intended you to feel,” Magda said lightly. “Cheer up, you didn’t sound any sillier than I did.”

“But I grew up here, I
should
have known better,” said Doria, threatening to dissolve into tears again. One of the younger girls—Magda recognized her as one of Doria’s roommates— came and wound her arms around Doria, saying comforting things to her, and led her away. Magda raised her eyes and found Keitha looking at her with a faint ironic smile.

“Trial by fire,” Keitha murmured, “Do you think we survived, fellow victim?”

Magda laughed. “Considering that their whole objective was to put us on the defensive, I think so,” she said. “It’s likely to get worse before it gets better.”