I reached our house after the dinner prayer had already been said, which meant the meal had become one I would miss. No one was allowed at table after the prayer had been said, and no one not saying the prayer was allowed to eat. My mother pretended she couldn’t see me, but my father took a moment to order me to my room before going back to what was being put in front of him. I didn’t need to be told I would see and hear more of him once the meal was over; if nothing else, the silent smirks of my brothers and sisters would have told me that. All I could do was go upstairs and wait, which was precisely what I did.
The sound of my father’s tread on the stair was a very familiar one to me, but that time I wasn’t aware of his approach until he actually entered the tiny room I shared with two of my sisters. I looked up from the pallet where I sat, just in time to see the frown grow deeper on his face.
“Lateness in one thing breeds lateness in all things,” he said, quoting one of Mr. Skeel’s favorite sayings. “God alone knows why, girl, but you’ve been chosen for a great honor that you had better start preparing for as soon as I’m done with you. I was asked my permission for a man to come calling, and it won’t be long before he gets here. You’ll pretty up and put on the best dress you have, and you’ll greet him with a proper smile on your face.”
“Father, I won’t marry Pember,” I said, staring down at the bare wood floor of my room. “He stopped me just inside the stockade gates and said he would come calling, but it won’t do him any good. I won’t marry a man who means to spend his life torturing me.”
“You’ll marry who you’re told to marry,” my father returned flatly, disgust and scorn in his voice. “A girl who never done things right in her life don’t get many chances, and never like the one you’re about to get. One day Pember will be called Mr. Skeel, and then the father of his wife will be looked up to with respect. I don’t much care what he means to do to you, girl— you’ll learn to take it just the way he wants. Don’t think you won’t, girl, don’t even think you won’t.”
By then he had his belt off, and the beating he gave me was certainly more thorough than the one he’d meant to give when he’d first come in. Once it was over he called my mother to be sure I dressed the way he wanted me to, and she hummed happily while she obeyed his orders. I tried once to keep from having that dress put on me, but my father came back and held me while my mother did her part. They wanted badly to be respected and honored, and I was the one who would get that for them.
I was sitting quietly at the edge of the settle when Pember came to knock, and after he was greeted warmly and happily by both of my parents I was sent outside to sit on the porch with him. I wore nothing of the smile I was supposed to be wearing, but Pember joined everyone else in ignoring that fact as he settled himself beside me on the old but sturdy bench.
“How lovely you look, Banni,” he said in the sleekest of voices as he took my hand, pretending he was any man calling on any girl. “I’ve been counting the hours since we met at the gate, and now I’m finally here. I hope your father wasn’t too hard on you for being late to table.”
I sat silent in the dark, hearing the sounds of the night in a new, not particularly pleasant way, very aware of the feel of Pember’s hand on mine. His skin was even smoother than a woman’s, and I found that more repulsive than callus would have been. Then I gasped in pain as his arm went around my shoulders, and he chuckled without releasing me.
“How delightful to find a girl as shy as you are, Banni,” he said, deliberately misunderstanding my reaction. “It’s perfectly all right for me to put my arm around you, just as tomorrow night it will be acceptable for me to kiss you. I’m really much too impatient to go through a sevenday of this before asking for your hand, but tradition is tradition and must be observed even by me. Tonight we’ll do no more than sit here and enjoy the night, but tomorrow night—ah, I can hardly wait.”
He chuckled again then settled into silence, but his arm didn’t leave me until he himself was ready to leave. I said not a single word despite the words of extreme satisfaction exchanged between my parents after he was gone, and simply went slowly up to my room and slept.
The next day I was sent out with the goats again after I had finished my household chores, and I barely remembered to steal what food I could and put it in my sewing sack. Despite having missed a meal the night before I hadn’t eaten much that morning, something that had put a very small, very satisfied smile on my mother’s face. I had no idea why she would be satisfied—unless it was the thought that I might still be in pain—but her reaction served the purpose of taking her attention from me in the kitchen and keeping it away. If I hadn’t eaten what had been freely given, there was no reason to believe I would steal what I obviously had no appetite for.
I moved the goats into the same general area they had been in the day before, then walked around watching them as though I had nothing else on my mind. As soon as I’d gone through the gates I’d gotten the feeling that I was being watched, and because the feeling had more than once proved to be true, I knew I had to wait until it went away before I could see if the savage still lived.
I thought that if I found him dead I would envy him, and then I thought about how pleasant it would be if I were dead. Killing yourself was supposed to be a terrible sin, but I’d long since decided I knew why that was: If people killed themselves Mr. Skeel would no longer be able to make them do as he wanted, and if enough killed themselves Mr. Skeel would then have to work if he wanted to eat. Pember was very much like Mr. Skeel, so much so that he would deserve being called Mr. Skeel after his father was gone. Neither of them wanted to do any real work, so they frightened and bullied people into doing it for them.
I sank into my thoughts for a while, and when I became aware of the sunlit grazing area again the feeling of being watched was gone. I waited another moment or two to be certain, then made my way to the bushes where I’d found the savage the day before. If he’d been dead or gone I wouldn’t have been surprised, but he was neither. I rounded the bush to see him up on one knee and waiting with a knife in his hand, ready to attack. I stopped short without making a sound, but when those blue eyes touched me he settled slowly back to the ground and smiled.
“Have no fear, I mean you no harm,” he said, the words more strengthless than soft. “It was you who saved me, and I would not offer hurt in return.”
“I see no cause for you to be different from everyone else,” I answered, making no effort to respond to his smile. “Yes, I helped you, but for reasons of my own. You owe me nothing, and would be wise to be gone from here as soon as you can force yourself to it.
Our hunters defeated a force of your people once already; if they come across you alone and wounded, you won’t stand any chance at all.”
“The—‘force’—your people defeated consisted of me and two of my younger brothers,” the savage said, his face twisting into a grimace as he settled more comfortably on the ground. “I held them off after ordering my brothers to ride like blessed Wind, but was clumsy in seeing to my own withdrawal. An arrow took my shoulder and then took me from my horse, but my horse-brother was able to draw the pursuit after him while I hid. We knew nothing of there being a Dirtman group in this area—but now we do.” “Which means in future you will wisely avoid us,” I said with a nod, understanding nothing of the hardness that had entered his eyes. “Here, I’ve brought you what to eat, although I probably won’t be able to do it again. There’s very little even for us, and if I continue to take things someone will certainly notice.”