He glanced over to where Khadija ate among the women. They wouldn't be able to walk in the courtyard and talk, not in this rain. Khadija was chatting with a friend she'd made, an older woman with crooked front teeth. They both kept looking towards a blond woman about halfway between them in years. She sat by herself, which was unusual. She didn't look very happy with the world. Something must have gone wrong for her during the day. Jacques wondered what.
After supper, Jacques went up to Khadija. Her older friend smiled knowingly at him. The way she acted reminded Jacques of how Khadija's aunt might have behaved in the world from which they'd both been stolen. It amused him.
Khadija noticed it, too. It annoyed her. In French, she said, "Pay no attention to her. She thinks she knows everything."
"Who doesn't?" Jacques said, which made Khadija smile. He went on, "We could stand under the eaves, if you want to." The roofs projected out some little distance from the buildings inside the wall—far enough to need columns for support. That gave shade in the summer and, Jacques was finding, kept away the rain in the winter.
"All right," Khadija said after a moment's hesitation. As they walked out there, she added, "We have to be a little more careful about what we say, though. Easier for them to listen."
"Listen how?" Jacques asked. "There's nobody close by."
"They have ways." Khadija sounded as if she knew what she was talking about.
Jacques couldn't very well argue with her. Oh, he could, but it wouldn't do him any good. He changed the subject instead, asking, "What's wrong with that blond woman? I saw you watching her in the refectory."
Khadija rolled her eyes. "Birigida, you mean?"
"If that's her name."
"She doesn't want to work, that's what's wrong with her." Khadija didn't seem to mind talking about the other slave. "What's worse is, she's too dumb to hide it. The guards watch her all the time now. When they catch her, they give her lumps. And they keep catching her, too."
"Oh," Jacques said. "No wonder she looks like her puppy just died. At that, she's lucky. If she were a man, they'd probably kill her."
"Some luck," Khadija said. "They could do things to her they likely wouldn't do to a man, you know. They haven't—yet— but they could."
Jacques nodded. Those things happened in the Kingdom of Versailles, too. He said, "Why won't she work enough to get by? As long as you do what you have to and look busy, the guards don't bother you too much. Can't she see that?"
"I think she can. I don't think she cares," Khadija said unhappily.
"What? How can she not care, if they're beating her up? Especially if they're liable to do worse than that? Is she crazy?" Jacques said.
"Not the way you mean, or I don't think so," Khadija answered. "She doesn't think she's a king or a tree or an angel." Jacques laughed—that was what he'd meant. Khadija went on, "But there are people who always have to have other people notice them so they know they're real. Do you know what I'm saying? They can be noticed for good or bad, but they can't stand it when other people ignore them."
For a moment, Jacques didn't understand. Then, all at once, he did. "Oh, yes," he said. "I once knew a fellow who kept doing stupid things so the drill sergeant would thump him."
"That's it!" Khadija said. "That's just what I mean."
"It ended badly," Jacques said. "Finally the drill sergeant got sick of this fool and clouted him with a musket butt. He broke the fellow's jaw and knocked out about six teeth. The recruit had to go home. I don't know what happened to him after that, but I don't think it was anything good."
"I'm afraid something like that will happen to Birigida," Khadija said. "I don't know what I can do to stop it."
"Sometimes you can't do anything," Jacques said. "If people are going to be fools, how can you stop them? You wish they wouldn't, but___"
Khadija bit her lip. "I know. I know. I keep telling myself that. But she'd be all right if they hadn't grabbed her and brought her here and made her a slave. It isn't fair."
Jacques put his hand on her shoulder. She started to pull away, but then stood still. Gently, he said, "You can't even talk to her, can you?"
"No." Khadija looked out at the rain. "What's that got to do with anything? She's still a person, isn't she?"
"Some people wouldn't worry as much about their friends as you do about her," Jacques said.
"My friends have the sense to take care of themselves—like you, for instance," Khadija said. "Birigida needs somebody to worry about her."
"When you're home, you probably take in lost puppies and kittens, too," Jacques said. She stirred under his hand. He guessed that meant he was right. "Puppies and kittens don't know any better than to get lost. This Birigida does, or she ought to. Worrying about her won't get you anywhere—unless you land in trouble along with her."
Khadija's sigh held more winter than the weather. "That makes more sense than I wish it did."
"All right, then. You're a sensible person. You're the most sensible person I've ever met, I think. So listen to me, all right?" Khadija didn't tell him no. He knew she heard him. Listen to him? That, he feared, was another story.
When the weather was bad, the guards didn't make people stay busy for the sake of staying busy. Annette had wondered if they would. Busywork fit the way the late twenty-first century thought. But there was only so much of it to do. And the house slaves didn't want the garden slaves helping.
Annette needed a little while to figure out why. The house slaves feared the garden slaves would steal their jobs. They didn't want to leave the manor. They thought they would have to do harder, less comfortable work outside—and they were probably right.
Even if they were, seeing how they acted made her sad. All the slaves should have pulled together against the people who ordered them around. They should have, but they didn't. They had factions, too, and the masters and the guards used those factions to keep them divided among themselves. Annette began to understand how masters in the home timeline had stayed on top for so long, even in places where slaves outnumbered them.
She tried to talk about that with Emishtar. By the look the older woman gave her, Emishtar had always understood it. "Masters are masters," she said—she might have been talking about the weather. "Some not so bad, some bad, some worse. But always masters—oh, yes."
"There shouldn't be any," Annette said fiercely. "Not anywhere. Keeping slaves is a great wickedness." In the home timeline, she didn't think she'd ever needed that word. But she didn't know another one that fit.
"Being a slave is a great sorrow," Emishtar said. "If I had silver, though, if I had gold, would I buy slaves for myself? Of course I would. Why should I work like a donkey when someone else can work for me?"
I can't blame her, not really, Annette thought. She's from a low-tech alternate. She doesn't know about machines. Slaves are the only labor-saving devices she does know. But slaves don't save labor, not really. They just put it on someone else's shoulders.
Birigida worked harder when she had nothing to do than she did out in the garden plot. Everything she did was aimed at getting a house slave's job. She could see house slaves didn't have to do so much, too.
Nothing she tried did any good. The house slaves either ignored her or screamed at her. None of them spoke her language, but that didn't matter. A shout and a scowl and a clenched fist meant the same thing to everybody. And the guards only laughed at her. They spoke her tongue, but that didn't help her. They wouldn't do anything for her. They'd seen she didn't want to work, so they wanted to make sure she did. One of them pointed in the direction of the garden, said something Annette couldn't follow, and laughed. You'll stay there till you rot, Annette guessed.