Yes, of course they were. They were escaping from masters who forced sex on them.
Was Barna’s house any better than whatever they’d escaped from?
Yes, of course it was. Here, they weren’t raped, they weren’t beaten. They were well fed, well clothed, idle.
Exactly like the women in the silk rooms at Arcamand.
I cringe, remembering how I cringed when that thought first came to me. I am ashamed now as I was then.
I thought I was keeping and cherishing Sallo in my memory, but I had forgotten her again, refused to see her, refused to see what her life and her death had shown me. I had run away again.
I had a hard time making myself go see Diero, then. For several nights I went into town to talk with Venne and Chamry and their friends. When I finally did visit Diero’s rooms, my shame kept me tongue-tied. Besides, the little girl was there. “Of course Irad is usually with Barna at night,” Diero said, “but then I get to sleep with Melle. And we tell stories, don’t we, Melle?”
The child nodded vigorously. She was about six years old, dark, and extremely small. She sat next to Diero and stared at me. When I looked back, she blinked, but went on staring. “Are you Cly?” she asked.
“No. I’m Gav.”
“Cly came to the village,” the child said. “He looked like a crow too.” “My sister used to call me Beaky,” I said.
After a minute she looked down at last. She smiled. “Beaky-beaky,” she murmured.
“Her village is near the Marshes,” Diero said. “Maybe Cly came from there. Melle looks a bit like a Rassiu herself. Look, Gav, what Melle did this morning.” She showed me a scrap of the thin, stiffly sized canvas that we used for writing lessons, since we had almost no paper. On it a few letters were written in a large uncertain script,
“T, M, O, D,” I read out. “You wrote that, Melle?”
“I did like Diero-io did,” the child said. She jumped up and brought me Diero’s scroll copybook, unrolled to the last few lines of poetry. “I just copied the big ones.”
“That’s very good,” I said.
“That one is wobbly,” Melle said, examining the D critically.
“She could learn so much more from you than I can teach her,” said Diero. She seldom expressed any wish, and when she did it was so gentle and indirect I often missed it. I caught it this time.
“It’s wobbly, but I can read it quite well,” I said to Melle. “It says D. D is how you start writing Diero’s name. Would you like to see how to do the rest of it?”
The little girl said nothing, but leapt up again and fetched the inkstand and the writing brush. I thanked her and carried them over to the table. I found a clean scrap of canvas and wrote out DIERO in big letters, pulled up a stool for Melle to perch on, and gave her the brush.
She did a pretty good job of copying, and as praised. “I can do it better,” she said, and crouched over the table to copy again, eyebrows drawn tight together, brush held tight in the sparrow-claw hand, pink tongue clamped tight between the teeth.
Again Diero had given me back something I lost when I left Arca-mand. Her eyes were bright as she watched us.
After that I came by her apartment nearly every day to read with her and to teach little Melle her letters. Often the child’s sister was there. Irad was very shy with me at first, and I with her; she was so beautiful, so unguarded, and so clearly Barna’s property. But Diero always stayed with us, protecting us both. Melle adored Diero and soon attached herself passionately to me too. She’d rush at me when I came into the room, crying, “Beaky! Beaky’s here!” and strangle me with hugging when I picked her up. That made Irad begin to trust me, and talking and playing with the child put us at ease. Melle was serious, funny, and very intelligent. In Irad’s fiercely protective love for her there was an element of admiration, almost awe. She would say, “Ennu sent me to look after Melle.”
They each wore a tiny figure of Ennu-Me, a crudely modeled clay cat’s head, on a cord around the neck.
It wasn’t hard for me to persuade Irad that learning how to read and write along with Melle was a good idea, and so she joined in the lessons. Like Diero, she was doubtful and hesitant in learning. Melle was not, and it was touching to see the little sister coaching the big one.
Lessons with the other girls in the house had never got further than half the alphabet; they always lost interest or were called away. The pleasure of teaching Melle made me think I might gather some of the young children of the town into a class. I tried, but couldn’t make it work. The women wouldn’t trust their girls to any man; the children were needed to go into the fields with their mother, or look after their baby brother; or they were simply unable to sit still long enough to learn a lesson, and their parents had no idea why they should do so. I needed Barna’s backing, his authority.
I approached him with the proposal of establishing a school, a place set aside, with regular hours. I’d teach reading and writing. To flatter his sense of superiority to me, Pulter would be asked to recite and lecture on literature. The accountant might teach a little practical arithmetic. Barna listened, nodded, and approved heartily, but when I began to suggest the place I thought suitable, he had reasons why it would not do. Finally he said, clapping me on the shoulder, “Put it off till next year, Scholar. Things are too busy now, people just can’t spare the time.”
“Children of six or seven can spare the time,” I said.
“Kiddies that age don’t want to be locked up in a classroom! They need to be running about and playing, free as birds!”
“But they aren’t free as birds,” I said. “They’re drudging at field work with their mothers, or lugging their baby sisters and brothers around. When are they going to learn anything else?”
“We’ll see that they do. I’ll talk about this with you again!” And he was off to see about the new additions to the granaries. He was indeed endlessly busy and I made allowance for it, but I was disappointed.
I made up for it to myself by offering to give talks in the room I’d hoped to use as a schoolroom. I told people I’d tell some of the history of the City States and Bendile and other lands of the Western Shore, evenings, if they wanted to come listen. I got an audience of nine or ten grown men; women didn’t go in the streets at night. My hearers mostly came just to hear stories, but a couple of them took a shrewd interest in the variety of customs and beliefs, laughing heartily at outlandish ways of doing and thinking, and ready to talk about whys and wherefores. But they’d worked hard all day, and when I went on long I’d see half my audience asleep. If I were ever to educate the Forest Brothers, I’d have to catch them younger.
My failure to start a school left me all the more time to be with Diero and Melle, and I was happier with them than anywhere else. I still went about with Barna, but his interest was all in immediate projects, the new buildings and planned expansion of the community kitchens. The Heart of the Forest was rapidly becoming more prosperous as the herds and gardens thrived and the raiders brought in goods. When I talked with the netmen who went into Asion, over the weak beer in the beer house Chamry frequented, they spoke only about stealing and trading. It seemed to me they were sent out mostly to get luxuries.
Venne was back from a long trip with his group, and he and some of his mates often joined us at the beer house. He liked his work. It was exciting, and he hadn’t had to shoot anybody, he said. I asked him if people outside the forest knew who they were. Over towards Piram, where he had been, he said the villagers called the raiders “Barna’s boys.” They were willing to barter with them, but were wary, always urging them to go on to the next town and “skin the merchants.”