"Bradley,.Marion.Zimmer.-.Darkover.Anthology.11.-.Darkover.v1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bradley Marion Zimmer)

"That's enough," Lora commanded. "There are no kitchen slaves in the Guild; but you know no other work as yet. Marji and I do our share of the kitchen work, but I have other work to do. I have to bathe the baby before supper and you are not yet big enough to do that. And Marji is working this week getting in Farmer Coil's hay."
"The women said she could have married Farmer Coll," Janna grumbled, "and she wouldn't have to slave in the fields all the time."
And that, Lora thought, would have been a good trade? Coll was forty-nine, and had buried three wives already.
"I'll run away, like Cara," Janna grumbled. "I saw her today; she said when she and Ruyval are married I can come and live with her. At least she's a woman, a natural woman."
"That's enough, Janna," Lora commanded and went through to the front hall, where Marja n'ha Carisse was taking off her boots. They hugged each other, and Marji asked, "Nice day?"
"No, Janna's at it again. Spent the whole day playing about with her hair and down at the gate simpering to talk with that wretched Raul from the farm. Cara's simply ruined her. All she thinks of is clothes and boys."

"We should have sent Cara away a year ago," Marji agreed. "I did not realize how much harm she was doing Janna. I was like that at her age, thinking of nothing but clothes and boys; she'll get over it. We did."
"But not in time," Lora wailed. "Now she wants to go and live with her father, and keeps threatening it. It's bad enough that I have to send Loren—how can I bear to give up my baby girl, too!"
"There, there," Marji said comfortingly. "You are protected by the Oath, and the magistrate said Janna could live with you. But if she wants to go, it will do her no good to stay here. Next time she threatens to go to her father, don't just let her go, make her go. She'll learn. How is my baby?"
"I haven't bathed her yet," Lora said submissively, and Marji held her. "It won't hurt her to go without a bath for a night. You look so tired, Lori. It's too hard on you, being saddled with all the children while I get out among human beings all day. When haying is over I will stay home for a while and you can find work; it's not fair you should have Gallic as well as your two all day, all year."
"Gallic is giving me no trouble, at least. At that size, as long as I keep her dry and fed, she makes no other demands." Lori said. "And speaking of Gallic, I hear her...."
She ran into the next room, returning after a moment with a tousled, sleepy two-year-old. Marji kissed her daughter, and, carrying her over her arm, went through into the kitchen where Janna was sullenly peeling cold boiled potatoes. "Here, Janni, give those to me, I'll make a cream sauce for them, and the farm wife gave me some bacon; I'll cook it for supper." She set about preparing the meal. "No, sit down, Lori, you're worn out. Where is Lynifred?"
"A messenger came from Arilinn; a man there has a sick horse and she went, to doctor it; she will not be back till tomorrow," said Lora.
"Did you remind her that we need leather for boots for the children?"
"Yes; she said she would bring some, and then I can make boots for Janna and Gallic as well as the ones

Loren will need," said Lora, and began to cry again. Marji patted her shoulder, dished up the potatoes and fried bacon, then sat down with Callie on her knee and began to feed her daughter.
When the smaller children were in bed, and Marji and
Lora were tidying the kitchen, Marji said "I saw Cara
in the market. She and that boy were married "
"Goddess protect her," Lora said, "Cara is not sixteen!"
"Not before time, though," said Marji. "She is beginning to show."
"Well, she had nowhere else to go, after we threw her out," said Lora, "I feel it's my fault. We should have been more patient with her."
"But, my dear," Marji said, "we could not keep her, not when she was stealing from us. We forgave her a dozen times, but she was never a true Renunciate in spirit. Going about with her tunic unlaced down to here—" she gestured, "and spending all her time gawking and giggling about with the boys instead of staying properly in the house and helping you with the children! We should have sent her to Neskaya or Thendara for proper training—we had no Guild-mistress here to teach her proper behavior. And then we went into her chest and found all your best holiday skirts retrimmed—and she had sworn she had not seen them—"
"Oh, I know; but still, I feel I failed her, I tried to treat her like my own child—"
"And so did I, and so did Lynifred," said Marji, "but done is done, and she seems happy. I only hope Janna does not follow in her footsteps."
"That's what worries me," said Lora. "But perhaps if she lives with her father for a year or two, she will appreciate the Guild House. Come, my dear, let's lock up for the night."
Lying sleepless at Marji's side, while her freemate slept, Lora thought of how they had established the first small Guild House this side of the river, with three women; herself—and her daughter Janna, then five, and the infant Loren, still at the breast—fleeing from her husband who had beaten her and abused her.

Worst of all, he had forbidden her to read, or to read to Janna ... books, he said, only kept a woman from what was proper for her. When he had wanted to betroth Janna, at five, to the thirty-year-old lord of the nearby estate, she had rebelled and fled to the Neskaya Guild House to take the Oath.
Then she had met Marji, newly come to the Guild, pregnant at that time with Callie. When her husband kept on pestering the Neskaya Guild House, the Guild-mother had sent them both to establish a Guild House here in this little village, with Lynifred, a veteran Renunciate almost fifty years old. For more than a year the village had treated them like outcasts, especially when they took in the runaway Cara at fourteen, until Lynifred managed to save a dozen horses who had been poisoned by witchgrass, and Lora went down to the village and offered to teach women the special skills of midwifery that she had learned in the Arilinn Guild House. Now they had been, to some degree, accepted; women in need of a midwife were as likely to summon her as the dirty, slatternly old woman who had been the village midwife since anyone could remember. Lynifred was now the local horse-doctor, all the better liked because she was not above removing a bone from a cat's throat, or splinting the leg of a dog caught in a trap. "They are the Goddess' creatures, too," she said, "even if they are not riches like horses or cattle."
The trouble had started, she thought, when Cara discovered boys and in no Amazon spirit had decided she wanted to experiment with them. This Janna had heartily followed, too, against Lora's prohibition.
Cara had seemed interested only in catching a husband. Well, now she had one, and Lora honestly hoped the girl was happy.
Marji hired herself out to work in the fields, which was awkward, because Farmer Coll wanted to marry her, and had accused her of trying to snare him with spells; fortunately there was not too much superstition in the village. Still it was an awkward situation, since Coll was regarded as a good catch, and the local women, many of whom would have liked to be Farmer Coil's wife, felt angry because Marji scorned what they thought so

valuable, while Marji only wished Coll would marry one of them, and be done with it.
Lora knew she must sleep; there were only three more days before Loren must go to his father, and she supposed Janna would choose to go, too. Deeply as Lora loved her daughter, she knew Janna was not happy; but she did not think Janna would be happy in her father's house either; and she shrank from the thought of losing both children.
She felt she had not slept at all when she heard sounds in the kitchen, and roused up to go and make up a fire; Lynifred had ridden in at dawn and with her was another woman, muffled in cloak and boots against the early chill.
"This is Ferrika, midwife at Armida," Lynifred said. The strange woman wore an Amazon earring but wore ordinary skirts, not the usual breeches and leather boots.
"I must work among ordinary people," Ferrika said. "There is no sense in antagonizing them before they know me."
Lora put on a kettle for tea, and cooked a big pot of oatmeal porridge, and with it fried a little of the bacon Marji had brought home. The women sat with their feet to the fire, drying their snow-stiffened cloaks, and Ferrika asked for the news.
"Only that a fosterling whom we had to ask to leave has married, and is running about already showing her pregnancy less than a tenday past the marriage," said Lora despondently. "It says little for our care of her."
"I am sure the villagers know her ways as well as we do," Lynifred said. "It is not a reflection on your quality as a mother, Lora."
"I am not so sure of that," Lora answered. "Janna is beginning to imitate her—nothing in her head but boys, and fussing with her clothes."
"Almost all teenage girls are like that," Ferrika said, "unless they have had an early and dreadful lesson in what conformity can bring on girls in this world. When Janna sees Cara a drudge to her husband she will be glad to know how she can escape that fate."
"I wasn't," Lynifred said, and Ferrika laughed.
"Nor I," said Lora. "Nevertheless I married when the

time came, thinking it better to have my own house and kitchen than work in my mother's. And even so, if I had married a decent man—though I thought my husband good when we were married."