White Mare's Daughter (34 page)

Sarama had been no beauty on the steppe. Here she was even
less of one, too thin and tall and sharp of face to be reckoned even passable.
And yet Danu professed himself well content. He had great beauty for a man in
this country; women, now that she had eyes to see, watched steadily as he went
past, and sighed that he was the stranger’s chosen.

She was not forbidden to keep him to herself, but neither
was she expected to do so. This she discovered on the fourth night, when they
rested in a town so small it was hardly a town at all.
Village
, Danu called it.

They came in in the midst of a festival, a dance of the
young men that took no notice of the snow. They danced naked but for a
patterning of ocher and red earth and white chalk, and masks of deer crowned
with antlers. It was a hunting festival, she gathered, a thanksgiving for a
rich kill, with meat enough for the village for many a winter’s day.

Danu was not expected to join the dance. But after it was
over, when the men had gone off to some rite of their own, or perhaps simply to
wash off’ the paint and put away the masks and go sensibly to sleep, the Mother
of the village said to Sarama, “This is a very beautiful man, this of yours. Is
he as beautiful in the Lady’s dance as he is in face and body?”

Sarama did not know what to say. The women from Larchwood
had never said a word to her that was not of duty or necessity. The Mothers who
had offered them lodging had refrained from speech with Sarama, past the most
essential courtesies.

This Mother was warm with honeyed wine, which perhaps had
loosened her tongue. She patted Sarama’s arm and smiled a gaptoothed smile.
“There, there. Just chose him, did you? That’s the sweetest time, and well I
know it. I’ll not ask you to share him; not while he’s still so new. Pity; he
is lovely. But then you know that better than I.”

Sarama mustered a smile and a word or two, and enough
composure to finish out the festival. But when she could be together with
Danu—with a whole house to themselves, for a wonder; a hut of a single room and
indifferent cleanliness, but warm enough and dry—she let loose what had been
vexing her. “Am I supposed to share you?” she demanded.

Danu had been undressing by the fire, after having
succeeded, somewhat, in persuading the smoke to escape through the hole in the
roof. He looked over his shoulder. His brow was up. “You can choose not to,” he
said.

That was not what she had asked. “Am I supposed to?”

He shrugged. It did lovely things to the muscles of his
back. “It’s reckoned polite.” He paused. “Catin didn’t like to share me,
either. But she allowed it.”

“That’s what she did,” Sarama said. “Yes? She shared you,
but I chose you. Was that polite?”

“No,” he said, and he looked as if he wanted to laugh but
did not dare. “No, when I flung myself at you, she had already unchosen me.”

“You did not—”

“I couldn’t choose you,” he said. “A man doesn’t. But he can
persuade a woman to choose him.”

She drew a sharp breath. “You
wanted
me?”

“Is that so horrible?”

“No,” she said. “Goddess, no! But—”

“Ah,” he said. “I shouldn’t have told you.”

He did not sound remarkably regretful. She gave up her
resistance, rose from the heap of blankets—yes, clothed in nothing but her
hair—and wrapped her arms about him from behind and held tightly. “I don’t want
to share you,” she said.

“I don’t want to be shared.” Was he surprised to have made
such a confession? She thought he might be. “It’s not at all polite of me, but
I want to indulge myself in you. I don’t want anyone else to take me.”

“You people are very strange,” she said. “Mine don’t share.
The men don’t. Women must. Men take them, and take many.”

“Truly?” He turned in her arms and folded his own about her,
and regarded her with great interest. “That doesn’t sound proper.”

“Women choosing men is not proper.”

“It is very proper.”

“No,” said Sarama.

He shook his head and laughed. “We are so different,” he
said.

“Men and women are,” Sarama said. “I thought you were weak,
at first. Because you acted like a woman.”

“Like a man.”

“Like a woman.” His grin was irresistible. “Oh, you are
beautiful!”

“They say I am,” he said.

“Women are supposed to be beautiful,” she said. “Men are
supposed to be strong. You are both.”

“I try to be as I should be,” said Danu.

“They won’t understand,” she said: “the horsemen. You must
learn to fight.”

“I will learn to fight,” he said. His face had gone dark.
“They are coming. I see them in the daylight now, as we walk toward my city. I
hope Catin’s dreams are as persistent. She did well to send me home, but ill to
send you away.”

“She sends me where the Lady needs me,” Sarama said.

Danu did not reply to that. In a little while there was no
need for words.

oOo

The farther they traveled, the more people seemed to
follow. They were a processional through the cities and the towns and the
villages, even in snow, or in black icy rain. Sarama had never seen such a
country, nor dreamed of one, in which cities were as common as tents in a
gathering of tribes.

The spaces between grew smaller, till city seemed to beget
city, and each had its own offspring of towns and villages. They were built in
circles, all of them, and never a straight line or a corner. Everything danced
the great dance, the spiral dance, inward and outward in dizzying progression.

Now Sarama could see that Larchwood, which had seemed so
vast and so unimaginably rich, was a small and poor city. The great city, the
king city of this country, was the one to which she came on a grey evening. It
had snowed, would snow again. The cold sank to the bone and lodged there.

The city offered no warmth to weary eyes, only blank walls
and shuttered windows. But the people who streamed out of those houses, who ran
through the snow, calling to one another, were as bright as birds in spring.

Some carried torches, some clay lamps that sent beams of
light across the snow. They were laughing, singing, dancing a long skein of
welcome. It wrapped the newcomers about and drew them inward to the city’s
heart, to the place that was sacred, because it belonged to the Lady.

The Mare and the colt were part of it. The Mare, who did not
like to be crowded, endured this with remarkable patience. The colt, having
tried and failed to climb into Danu’s arms, settled for pressing as close as
Danu would let him, and keeping his teeth to himself.

People should have been wiser; and yet Sarama could not help
but be glad to see so little fear. These people were strong of spirit. These
might, indeed, learn what they must learn in order to defend their country
against the tribes.

The Mother of Three Birds, Danu’s mother, was an imposing
presence. She was not the most vast of the Mothers that Sarama had seen, but
neither was she meager. She was the image of the Lady that was in every temple,
great belly, huge buttocks and thighs, and breasts well fit to nourish
multitudes. And multitudes she had, too, more daughters than Sarama could easily
count, and a whole pack of sons. There was even a baby, a child no more than a
summer old, wide-eyed and solemn in the arms of one of her brothers.

Danu was not the eldest of the sons, but the second or
third. They must be children of different fathers: each was quite different as
to looks, and yet they shared a common semblance, perhaps no more than a habit
of expression, that spoke vividly of their mother.

A man of the tribes would not have been ashamed to boast so
many strong children, all of whom had lived past infancy. And this was a woman.
She was blessed of the Lady, visibly and palpably the Lady’s own.

The eldest of the daughters, the Mother’s heir, was named
Tilia. She was going to be as vast as the Mother, Sarama could well see, but as
yet she was merely imposing in her bulk—and very light on her feet.

Her eyes were bold, raking Sarama and finding her too
evidently disappointing. “People said that you were beautiful,” she said, “like
the new moon in autumn. You are thin and your nose has an amazing curve, but is
that beauty?”

It seemed that Mothers’ heirs were not subject to the
discipline or the strictures of politeness that bound other women. Catin had
been much the same, and had been likewise uncorrected.

Sarama smiled at this one and said, “No, I am no beauty. I
never was.”

“You are interesting,” Tilia said. She tilted her head to
one side and studied Sarama’s face. “Yes, interesting. Very. Don’t you think
so, brother?”

Danu did not answer. His cheeks were dark above the beard.
He was blushing.

“Ah,” said Tilia, looking from him to Sarama and back again.
“So. Did she?”

He nodded. He seemed unable to do otherwise.

“I thought so,” said Tilia with every evidence of
satisfaction. “That was a venomous message the heir of Larchwood sent, though
it was oh so polite.”

No one censured her for speaking so openly of what might
better be said in private, but the Mother intervened before Tilia could speak
again. She sent the women from Larchwood in the care of certain of her sons, to
rest and be fed. Her son who had newly returned, and Sarama, she kept with her.

Danu did not seem overly pleased by that. His sister slapped
him on the shoulder as she went to do their mother’s bidding, and said, “There,
there, brother. Tomorrow you can have it back again. But for today we’ll wait
on you, and you will undertake to endure it.”

oOo

Endurance was the word for it. This Mother’s house was
larger by far than the Mother’s house of Larchwood, and richer. Its
gathering-room was large enough for a dozen people to eat in, and for a dozen
more to wait on them. Woven hangings warmed the walls, and treasures gleamed in
niches, beautifully wrought pottery, images carved of stone or bone, and even a
shimmer of gold that proved to be the likeness of a bird. They were there,
Sarama realized, simply because they were beautiful; not because they had any
immediate or constant use.

What a strange thing: beauty for its own sake. Sarama needed
to think on it, to understand it.

But not now. She was seated next to the Mother, a position
of great honor there as it would have been among the tribes. Everyone watched
her and judged her, and reckoned her people by the way in which she conducted
herself.

She knew no other way than the courtesy of a tribesman, to
partake second after the king, to exchange politenesses but no matters of
state, and to leave a little on the plate, to be given to the women and the
children. All of that did not appear to shock anyone, though they ate
everything they were given.

It was a fine feast, with roast mutton and roast kid and a
haunch of venison, and fine bread, and milk rich with curds, and finer wine
than Sarama had tasted before. Then after it they were given cakes made with
honey and nuts, and sweet bits of fruit. Sarama recognized the cakes from
Danu’s baking. This then was where he had learned the way of them.

He should have been in great joy to be home again, but he
was clearly in discomfort, clearly distressed that he must sit and others
serve. Sarama wondered if Tilia had intended that. Sisters took petty revenge
sometimes for brotherly slights.

It was all very different from Larchwood, where she had been
thrust out to the city’s edge and away from the people, and given little honor
by the Mother or her heir. Catin might have said that these were rich people,
sheltered people, who did not know what evil might come from the wood. And yet,
thought Sarama, innocence was preferable to fear. Innocence might be amenable
to reason.

She ate and smiled, smiled and ate, and said little; but no
one seemed to expect her to babble excessively. Soon enough she was let go,
shown to a room that though tiny was beautifully appointed. It came with water
heated for washing—remarkable in winter—and a stone that had been warmed in the
hearthfire and laid at the bed’s foot.

It also, and rather to her relief, came with Danu, who was
visibly glad to be away from the feast. “I hate to be waited on,” he said.

Sarama dared not even smile. As soberly as she could, she
said, “Sometimes one has to be a prince.”

She had used the word in her own language, because she did
not know what it was in his, or even if there was such a word.

He seemed to understand. “I would rather serve than be
served. One waits so long, you see. And nothing is ever quite as one would do
it oneself.”

“I never thought of that,” she said.

“People don’t.”

His tone was brusque, almost angry. Sarama had never learned
to be conciliatory, but she could at least distract him. “Was this room yours?”
she asked.

He nodded.

“Should I be in it?”

“I would go to yours,” he said, “if you had one. But since
you don’t, and since this is not too uncomfortable—”

“It is most comfortable,” she said. “I like it.”

“Do you?”

Ah, she thought. Good. He had brightened. She judged it wise
then to pull him down with her on the bed, and to distract him completely and
most pleasantly.

oOo

Either Tilia had mercy on her brother, or the Mother
exerted her will. When morning came, Danu was keeper of the house again.

He tried to look as if it were nothing more or less than he
had expected, but Sarama caught the spark of relief in his eyes. Had he worried
that someone had supplanted him?

Clearly no one had. He muttered happily over the condition
of the pots in the kitchen, and reckoned up the winter stores, and restored
order among the servants. Not that Sarama could find any disorder; but this was
a king in his domain, and he knew well how he wished it to be ruled.