The woman’s shoes clicked, closer and closer. Hazel saw the wide skirt . . . a wife’s skirt? . . . and then a firm hand on her shoulder, pushing. She obeyed, walking ahead of the woman, bringing the littles with her. She had no idea what was coming, but . . .
“You kin look at me,” the woman said. “In here.” Hazel looked up. The woman had a broad, peaceful-looking face, with a crown of gray-brown hair in a braid above it. She had big broad hands, and a big broad body. “Let’s see you, honey . . . that’s the ugliest dress I ever did see.”
Hazel said nothing. She wasn’t about to get into trouble if she could help it.
“Didn’t your folks teach you anything about sewing?” the woman asked.
Hazel shook her head.
“You kin talk, too,” the woman said. “As long as you keep it low. No hollerin’.”
“I . . . don’t know how to sew,” Hazel said softly. Her voice felt stiff, it had been so long since she said a whole sentence.
“Well, you’ll just have to learn. You can’t go around lookin’ like that. Not in this family.”
Hazel bobbed her head. Brandy tugged on her hand.
“Hungry,” she said.
The woman looked down at the littles, her face creased with something Hazel could not read. “These littl’uns yours?” she asked. “Sisters?”
“No,” Hazel said.
“No, ma’am,” the woman said sharply. “Didn’t your folks teach you any manners?”
“No . . . ma’am,” Hazel said.
“Well, I sure will,” the woman said. “Now let me think. You littl’uns will fit into Marylou and Sallyann’s things, but you, Girlie . . . and we have to find a name for you, too.”
“My name’s Hazel,” Hazel said.
“Not anymore,” the woman said. “Your old life is gone, and your old name with it. You put off the works of the devil and the devil’s name. You will put on a godly name. When we find the right one.”
In the next weeks, Hazel settled into a life as unlike that she’d known as the raider’s ship had been. She slept in a room with ten other girls, all near or just past puberty but unmarried: the virgins’ bower. Their room opened onto a tiny courtyard separated from the main garden by a stone screen and walled off from anything but their room. The room’s other entrance was to a long corridor that led back to the main house without passing any other door.
“So we’re safe,” one of the other girls had explained the first evening. She had helped Hazel unroll her bedding onto a wooden bunk, helped her straighten the cover properly. These were all, she discovered, daughters of the man who had brought her here . . . daughters of four wives, who had produced all the other children in the house. Only the children of his first wife were permitted in the great room . . . and only when he summoned them. The others, when he wanted to see them, went to the second parlor.
“Y’all are the first outlanders in our household,” one of the other girls said.
“Can’t no one have outlanders unless they’ve got enough children to dilute the influence of y’all’s heathen ways,” another girl said.
“So we can teach you right from wrong,” yet another said.
In short order, Hazel was clad in the same snug long skirt and long-sleeved top as the others. She learned to shuffle in quick steps . . . she learned how to navigate the corridors and rooms of the big house, that seemed to sprawl on forever. She learned to stand aside respectfully when the boys ran down the hall, to duck her chin so that even the little boys, looking up, did not meet her gaze.
Once a day, she was allowed to sit with Brandy and Stassi, if all her work was done. At first they ran to her and clung, silent, crying into her shoulder. But as the days passed, they adjusted to whatever their life was like. She had asked, but they found it hard to tell her . . . and no wonder. They had been hardly able to talk clearly when the ship was taken, and too many things had happened. They had eaten honeycakes, or they had new dresses, was all they could say. At least they were being fed and cared for, and they had a little time each day to play in the garden. She saw them with the other small girls, tossing back and forth weighted streamers of bright colors.
Her work was hard—the other girls her age were accomplished seamstresses, able to produce long, smooth straight seams. They all knew how to cut cloth and shape garments . . . now they were learning embroidery, cutwork, lacework, and other fine needlework. Hazel had to master plain knitting, crochet, and spend hours hemming bedsheets and bath towels. Besides sewing, she was taught cooking—to the wives’ horror, she did not even know how to peel potatoes or chop carrots.
“Imagine!” said Secunda, the master’s second wife. “Letting a poor girl grow up knowing so little. What did they expect you to do, child? Marry a man so rich and dissolute he would expect your servants to do everything?”
“We had machines,” Hazel said.
“Oh, machines,” Prima said. She shook a finger at Hazel. “Best forget about machines, girl. The devil’s ways, making idle hands and giving women ideas. No machines here, just honest women doing women’s work the way it should be done.”
“Prima, would you taste this sauce?” Tertia bowed as she offered it.
“Ah. A touch more potherb, m’dear, but otherwise quite satisfactory.”
Hazel sniffed. She had to admit that the kitchen smelled better than any ship’s galley she’d ever been in. Every day, fresh bread from the big brick ovens; every day, fresh food prepared from the produce of the garden. And she liked chopping carrots—even onions—better than those long, straight seams. The women even laughed—here, by themselves, and softly—but they laughed. Never at the men, though. None of the jokes she’d heard all her life, bantering between the men and women of the crew. She wanted to ask why; she had a thousand questions, a million. But she’d already noticed that girls didn’t ask questions except about their work—how to do this, when to do that—and even then were often told to pay better attention.
She did her best, struggling to earn her daily visit with Brandy and Stassi. The women were quick to correct her mistakes, but she sensed that they were not hostile. They liked her as well as they could have liked any stranger thrust into their closed society, and they were as kind as custom allowed.
The closed car had gone an unknowable distance—far enough for Brun to feel mildly nauseated—when it stopped finally. Someone outside opened the door; a tall woman—the first woman she had seen on this world—reached in and grabbed her arm.
“Come on, you,” she said. After so long in the ship, the accent was understandable, if still strange. “Get out of that.”
Brun struggled up and out of the car with difficulty, not helped by the woman’s hard grip. She looked around. The groundcar looked like an illustration out of one of her father’s oldest books, high and boxy. The street on which it had driven was wide, brick-paved, and edged with low stone and brick buildings, none more than three stories tall. The woman yanked at her arm, and Brun nearly staggered.
“No time for lollygagging,” the woman said. “You don’t need to be sightseeing; get yourself inside the house like the decent woman you aren’t.” Brun could not move fast enough to satisfy the woman, even with one of the men helping—she was too big, too awkward, and the stones of the front walk hurt her feet. She glanced up at the building they were urging her towards and nearly fell up a stone step. But she had seen it—made of heavy stone blocks, it had no windows on this side, and beside the heavy door was a tall stout man who had the body language of every door guard Brun had ever seen. A prison?
It might as well have been, she found when she was inside and the matron was listing the rules in a harsh voice. Here she would stay until her baby was born, and a few weeks after, with the other sluts—unmarried pregnant women. She would cook, clean, and sew. She would be silent, like all the others; she was there to listen, not to talk. If the matron caught her whispering or lipspeaking with the other women, she’d be locked in her room for a day. With that, the matron pushed her into a narrow room with a bed and a small cabinet beside it, and shut the door on her.