Amazon Fragment
by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Years afterward, neither Camilla nor Rafaella could ever remember exactly what had triggered their original quar­rel. Somewhere there must have been some initial re­mark, some small individual episode, which set off a series of silly, pointless squabbles, of rude remarks and covert insults, of endless bickering; but neither of them could ever trace it back and find the spark which had set all this tinder ablaze.
But it seemed to Rafaella, this winter, that Camilla had for no known reason taken a bitter dislike to her, and went out of her way to pick quarrels over every­thing. She remembered one bitter dispute over a barn-broom which they were both using in the stable one day, as a result of which Camilla had—accidentally, she insisted—shoved her into the manure pile. And another, in the kitchen, where she had stumbled and scattered a pile of trash which Camilla had laboriously swept up, and because Camilla had loudly accused her of doing it on purpose, she did not, (as normally, she insisted, she would have been glad to do) help the other woman sweep it up again.
But Camilla—it seemed to Rafaella—was forever making remarks about women who flaunted their lovers, and when Rafaella, one night in the music room, had laughingly admitted to one or two of the younger women that she had reason to believe she might be pregnant, Camilla had muttered "Harlot!" and gotten up to leave the room. Rafaella had flared, "None of your lovers would ever give you so much," and Camilla had slapped her face.
That episode had gotten them both called up in House meeting before the Guild-mothers, who, without lis-
tening to the remarks they had exchanged—Mother Lauria said sharply that she had heard all the insults young women could put on one another and was not interested—admonished them to try and live at peace. Afterward the Guild-mothers, aware of their hostility, tried to assign them separate tasks; Camilla was working in the city, and Rafaella living in the house and working in the Guild House garden, so that they really did not come in contact very often. Not nearly often enough to quarrel as often as they did. It soon seemed that they could not be in the same room without quarreling, and they made a point of seating themselves at opposite ends of the room in dining room and House meeting.
The final episode was triggered one night when they happened to be at the same time in the third-floor bath, and (by accident, Rafaella always insisted) Rafaella ran without looking into Camilla, knocking her off balance and splashing her with dirty water. Camilla turned on her furiously.
"Now see what you have done, you fat bitch!" Her thick nightgown was clinging wetly to her knees, sopping.
"Bitch yourself," Rafaella retorted, angry because for once it had really been an accident and she had actually opened her mouth to apologize, to hand Camilla the towel in her own hand, when Camilla turned on her.
Camilla did not answer. She picked up a basin at hand, and doused the gallon or so of cold, soapy bathwater over Rafaella's head.
Shocked, spluttering, furious, frantically pushing ice-cold, soapy hair out of her face, blinded, Rafaella picked up a pitcher and flung it at her.
"I'll break your head, you emmasca cat-hag!"
The pitcher, which was made of stoneware and heavy, struck Camilla on the shoulder, knocking her almost to the floor. She stumbled and went down; a woman behind her caught her and helped her to her feet. Camilla whirled; her clothes were spread out on a stool, and she caught up her dagger from her belt.
"You filthy whore, how dare you!" She rushed at Ra­faella, and Rafaella gripped at the knife in her boots, in sheer reflex—self-defense, she justified herself later. And
then they were fighting in deadly earnest, slipping on the wet stone floor of the bath, Camilla hampered by her long nightgown. It took four women to drag them apart, and both were bleeding from long, painful cuts; Kindra, roused from sleep to deal with the matter, looked grave.
"You two have been keeping the house in an uproar for half a season," she accused. "This cannot go on. While it was only harsh words, we held our peace, but this—" she looked, shocked, at the slash along Rafaella's bare arm, the two cuts on Camilla's face, "this is serious, this is oath-breaking. You are sworn, like all of us, to live at peace, as kin and sisters."
Camilla hung her head. In the slashed, dripping night­gown, she looked ludicrous. Rafaella saw Kindra's eyes on hers and wanted to cry.
Kindra said quietly, "Daughters, I ask you now to kiss one another, beg each other's pardon, and swear to live at peace as sisters should. Will you now obey me, and we need carry this no further."
Rafaella looked at Camilla with cold, fastidious dis­taste—as if, Camilla said later, I was something with a hundred legs that you had found in your porridge. "I'd rather kiss a cralmac!"
"Rafaella, my child, this is not worthy of you," Kindra said.
Camilla said, in shaking rage, "Let her keep away from me, and I will promise to keep my hands off her dirty throat. I will promise no more!"
Kindra stared from one to the other of them, angry and appalled. "We cannot have this here! You know that!"
"Then send me away," Camilla flared, "where I need not listen night and day to her taunting! There are other Guild Houses in the Domains!"
Rafaella's eyes rested on Camilla; she felt her lip curl as she said, "Perhaps that would settle it best. I am try­ing to stay as far away from her as I can, but it seems the House is not big enough for us both. If she chooses to leave here, that would solve everyone's problem."
Kindra shook her head. "You are my oath-daughters, both of you; that would be no solution. Children," she pleaded, "will you not, for my sake, sit down together
and talk this through?" She held out a hand to each of them; Camilla lowered her eyes and pretended not to see, and Kindra said in despair, "Will you leave me no choice but to bring this before the judges?"
"Oh, Kindra," Rafaella said, and her eyes filled with tears, "I have tried, truly I have, but I can't live with her! One of us must go, even if—" she heard her voice catch in a sob, "even if it must be me!"
Would Kindra actually send her away? She thought, wretchedly, Does she care more for that emmasca than for me! A year ago she would have flung herself into Kindra's arms and cried, promising to do everything Kindra asked. She moved toward Kindra, on the verge of breaking down, longing for Kindra to take her into her arms, but Kindra frowned and drew back. She said, and her voice was hard, "It is not to me, Rafaella, but to Camilla, that you must make your apology."
"To her?" Rafaella was cold and incredulous. "Never!" She wanted to cry out, Kindra, don't you love me anymore at all? But she swallowed the words back, knowing she had no right to speak them.
Kindra took Camilla's long fingers in hers. She said "Kima, my child, you are the elder, and you have been one of us longer. She is a child. Will you yield? I should not ask it. Yet I do."
Camilla's voice was husky; but her eyes were tearless and her face like stone. "It is unfair for you to ask it, Kindra. You know I would do anything for you save this, but I have done nothing to merit her persecution—"
"Nothing?" Rafaella cried, "You—"
"Rafi!" Kindra's voice was not loud; but it cut Rafa­ella off in mid-syllable.
Camilla went on, steadily, "If she will apologize, I will accept her apology, and carry this no further, but I will not crawl to her and beg forgiveness for allowing her to ill-use me!"
Kindra sighed. She said, "You have left me no choice," and summoned the women who had disarmed them. "Keep them in separate rooms while I send for the judges."
Left alone, frightened as the night crawled on, Rafa­ella heard the words of her oath echoing in her mind.
And if I prove false to my oath, I shall submit myself to the Guild-mothers for such discipline as they see fit, and if I fail, let them slay me like an animal and consign my body unburied to corruption and my soul to the mercy of the Goddess....
Oath-breaking. She had once heard her father say that the most vicious crime was to turn drawn steel against kinfolk; she had been brought up on the ballad of the outlaw berserker who had slain his brethren and been exiled by his last remaining sister ... and she had drawn her dagger on Camilla. True, Camilla had first come at her with a dagger. But perhaps the woman had only been trying to frighten her ... it need not have come to a fight. The slash on her arm smarted and throbbed; no one had troubled to bandage it. By oath, Camilla is my sister ... mother and sister and daughter to every other woman oath bound to the Guild. And I drew my dagger on a kinswoman, the more so because she, too, is Kindra's oath-daughter.
But Kindra could not help her now.
She does not love me at all! She would not pledge herself to me ... she loves Camilla better than me!
At last one of the women came and summoned them, and Rafaella saw the pale angry face of her fellow cul­prit. They stood side by side before the four Guild-moth­ers, their slashed garments and small wounds telling the tale, and Kindra added that they had refused, before witnesses, to compromise or amend their quarrel. Mother Callista, the oldest of the Guild-mothers, and one of the judges of the Guild, said at last. "This is oath-breaking," and Rafaella trembled.
What will they do to me? she wondered.
Mother Lauria said, "You, Camilla n'ha Kyria, Rafa­ella n'ha Doria, stand before me. This is no game; I ask you two for the last time if you are willing to join hands, exchange a kiss as sisters, and pledge to amend your quarrel before it is too late. You will have no other chance."
Camilla said, her hands clenched into hard fists, "I would rather you killed me, than apologize without fault and grovel before her!"
Callista said, "Rafaella, will you apologize?"
Rafaella had the craven thought, If I do, then perhaps they will only punish her ... if I break down now and apologize, they will think I do so because I am afraid of punishment, and they will know I am more cowardly, that she is braver and more defiant than I am! Show myself cowardly before her? Never!
She said, spitting the words out, "Beat me, then, or kill me if you will! Is this Amazon justice?"
"Kill you?" Mother Callista laughed, not amused. "We are not Guardsmen, to challenge your defiance, and reward you for your stubbornness because you are able to disguise it as heroism. You stand here, then, ready to submit yourselves to punishment? Or will you apologize and pledge to live at peace?"
Rafaella felt her stomach lurch, her knees almost too weak to hold her upright. What are they going to do to us? She wanted to cry out, beg for mercy, but before Camilla's cold, defiant face she thought she would rather die there and then, than show herself afraid. Neither of them spoke, and at last Mother Lauria shrugged.
"On your own heads, then, you silly, stupid girls! You have left us no choice. Go and fetch the chains."
Chains! Rafaella thought in horror. This is worse than I feared....
Camilla was deathly white; Rafaella wondered for a moment if she would faint. Mother Lauria said, "Make sure neither of them has any weapons."
They stood side by side, each trying to ignore the oth­er's presence as they were searched to the skin. Rafaella was shaking, but before Camilla's iron control she re­solved she would not betray any sign of her terror.
Mother Callista stretched her hand out and one of the women handed her a pair of handcuffs, joined by a short length of chain, not more than three inches. She said, "You two have refused to keep your oath of your free will, and will not pledge to live together at peace. Now you will be chained together wrist to wrist; you will eat together, sleep together, work together and live together until you have learned to live in company as sisters must do. When you discover that neither of you can take so much as a single step without her. sister's cooperation, then you will learn a lesson that whatever we do of ne-
cessity involves another. Most of us learn this lesson less painfully. Camilla, are you left-handed?"
"Yes," said Camilla reluctantly.
"Give me your right hand, then. Rafaella, are you left­handed?"
"Right."
"That is good; otherwise you would have had to flip a coin, and abide by the lot." Her mouth tight with angry distaste, she buckled the handcuffs on their wrists.
Some of the women watching giggled a little, ner­vously. One of them intoned, "May you be forever one," mocking the phrase of catenas marriage, and frowned at the Guild-mother's angry look.
"Leave them now," Mother Callista said, "and go up to bed, all of you. This shameful episode is finished."
Camilla said nervously, "What do we do now?"
Mother Callista said indifferently, "That is for you to decide. Together." She rose without a backward glance and went out of the room. Kindra looked at them for a moment and seemed about to speak, then she, too, turned and went up to bed.
One of the women who had witnessed the quarrel said, "Maybe now you silly brats will stop keeping us in an uproar night and day—and if you want to fight, you'll have all the time you want to do it where it won't bother anyone else!"
Rafaella sat with tears rolling down her face. Unfair, cruel, humiliating! How could Kindra have let them do this to me? Why didn't Kindra warn me what would hap­pen? Doesn't she love me at all? They all hate me, they're all taking Camilla's part....
She moved automatically to wipe away her tears and felt the metal cuff jerk hard on her hand, pulling Camil­la's wrist up toward her eyes. Camilla yanked hard on it and said, "Stop that, damn it!"
Rafaella began to cry, sobbing helplessly, her free hand up to her face. Camilla said coldly, "Now you may weep, when it is too late to mend matters."
"And what did you do to mend them?" Rafaella de­manded, snuffling.
Camilla's voice was icy. "Nothing. You need not re­mind me what a fool I am."
For a long time neither of them moved. The fire burned low and the room was very dark. Rafaella saw out of the corner of her eyes that Camilla raised her hand to her face as if she was wiping away tears, but thought, Her crying? That emmasca? I don't think she's human enough to know how to cry! And indeed, Camilla made no sound or movement.
Rafaella felt weary, incapable of coherent thought. She had never been so tired in her life. How would she stand this? How long would it last? Since the Guild-mother said they would eat together and work together and sleep together, she wondered if it would be many days. How could she possibly endure it, to have her enemy always at her elbow? She shuddered, and saw Camilla turn to stare angrily at her.
She wished she was safely in her own room, her own bed. But how could she go to bed with Camilla chained to her wrist? This was worse than a beating! She would not make the first move, nor ask that they go upstairs.
Although, soon or late, I must go up to the bathroom— sooner, rather than later, since I have been pregnant ... well, I will not ask her.
And she felt that she had won a kind of victory when it was Camilla who finally muttered, "I suppose we can­not sit here all night. Shall we go upstairs, then?"
"I don't mind," Rafaella said ungraciously, but it was hard to keep pace with Camilla's long steps, and Rafa­ella stumbled and fell on the stairs, dragging Camilla down; Camilla swore.
"Will you break my shins, too, damn you?"
"Do you think I break my own leg to spite you, bitch?"
"How do I know what you are likely to do?"
Rafaella lapsed into furious silence. Even years later she remembered the angry humiliation of having to re­lieve herself with the other woman at her elbow, and the struggle she had not to cry. I won't give her the satisfaction! Camilla herself behaved with complete, calm aloofness, as if she were completely alone. Rafaella won­dered how she could accept it so calmly.
(Years later Camilla said to her, "I wanted to scream, to cry for hours, to slap you. But you were so arrogant,
so aloof, as if you didn't know I was there. I felt I couldn't behave worse than you did, I had to pretend to be calm ... then, too, I had had more practice than you in enduring humiliations. You did not know, then, how much I had endured in the way of torment, that I could endure this, too....")
Rafaella said coldly, "Well, are we to sleep on the floor in the hallway here?"
"Where they can all jeer at us in the morning? Not likely!"
Rafaella said reluctantly, "There is room in my bed."
"You would like to wake all your friends, then, to jeer at me?"
Rafaella realized that the three other women who slept in her room knew nothing of what had happened. "Would you rather wake your friends?"
"What friends?" Camilla asked, "I sleep alone—which I am sure you have never done in your life—and at least in my bed we will not be seen!"
Discouraged, Rafaella muttered assent. In Camilla's room she had to struggle one-handed to get off her boots. Camilla was already undressed, in the slashed, still-damp nightgown she had been wearing. Rafaella de­cided not to take off anything else.
Rafaella slept badly, in her clothes, and on an unac­customed side. Every time she stirred, the handcuffs jerked her awake again. When she woke, she felt abruptly the surging, uneasy nausea which she had felt only a few times before, but which the Guild-mothers had told her some women suffered in early pregnancy; she sat up, sick and retching, and Camilla grumbled, waking abruptly, "Lie down! What in the devil—"
"I'm sick," Rafaella mumbled miserably, and hurried off down the hall, Camilla angrily stumbling behind. She knelt over the basin, retching, sunk in hopeless misery. Devra, there early for kitchen-duty, came to wipe her face with a cold cloth.
"Poor Rafi, I hoped you would escape this—" she broke off, staring in angry shock at Camilla.
"What—"
Rafaella was too sick and wretched to explain. Camilla said briefly, "We fought. This is how they punished us."
Devra stared in dismay. "But Rafi, this is terrible, when you are sick—does Kindra know? Can she do this to you now?"
Rafaella could not answer she could only think, I brought it on myself. Camilla was standing there, her face turned away in angry disgust. Stumbling to the room for her boots, Rafaella found that she was crying helplessly.
"Oh, shut up," Camilla shouted. "Is that all you can think to do, cry all the time?"
"I—I can't help it—"
"It's bad enough to be kept awake all night with you jerking around, and wake up with you throwing up all over everything, do I have to listen to you bawling all day, too? Shut up or I'll slap you soft-headed!"
"Just you try it!"
Camilla raised her hand for a blow, but discovered that the force of the slap threw her off balance. They fell together in a tangle on the bed. Camilla, swearing, hauled herself upright.
"Where are you going now?" Rafaella demanded.
"To wash myself, dirty pig, and dress, or don't you wash? And am I to go to breakfast in my dirty nightgear?"
Rafaella said shakily, "I'm not hungry." She felt she could not face the room full of women.
But Camilla said coldly, "I am. I'm not pregnant," and Rafaella had no choice but to trail along awkwardly to the bath where Camilla awkwardly washed herself with one hand. She turned her face stubbornly away while Camilla dressed. The room was full of women who stared or giggled or whispered to one another. Rafaella supposed every woman in the Guild House knew the story by now. In the dining room they had to argue again about where they would sit; finally they balanced awkwardly on the end of the bench. Rafaella could not eat, though she drank a little hot milk. Kindra, at a nearby table, turned and looked at them, but, though it seemed to Rafaella that her glance was sympathetic, she did not speak.
"Ah," someone jeered, "so you have wedded di cate­nas, you two?"
"Camilla is a Dry Towner, to put her woman in chains!"
Rafaella began to realize what she had never recog­nized before; Camilla was not particularly well liked. Most of the taunts were aimed at her; what few expres­sions of sympathy were spoken, came to Rafaella. But most of the women seemed to avoid them, embarrassed.
It was a miserable day, punctuated with insults and occasional slaps, jerking at the cuffs that bound them, hobbling awkwardly around the house to their assigned tasks. After a time they began to be able to walk without pulling one another off balance, but they still argued angrily over almost every step and when, toward eve­ning, Rafaella began to cry with exhaustion, Camilla slapped her again, and Rafaella turned and grabbed at her throat. They went down together, fighting, clawing, gripping at any part of each other they could reach, sob­bing with rage and humiliation ... they could not, with their hands chained together, even get a good grip on one another's hair!
Abruptly, Rafaella began to laugh. She lay back, re­leased Camilla, and lay laughing helplessly on the rug.
"What's so damned funny?"
"You are," Rafaella gurgled, "and I am. We are. Can't you see how idiotic we are? Here we are fighting this way and we can't even get at each other—any more than we can get away from each other!"
Camilla began slowly to chuckle. She said, "And I can't even run away without taking you along." They laughed together till the tears ran down their faces, Ra­faella holding her sides with pain.
"My shoulder," Camilla groaned. "I think it's broken—"
"Did I do that? I'm sorry, I didn't mean—oh, this is ridiculous—"
"It isn't hurt, I guess. Just pulled. Did I hurt you?" Camilla asked, "I didn't want—" she helped the other girl to her feet. Rafaella stumbled on the stairs and Ca­milla reached out and steadied her. Surprised, Rafaella thanked her.
"Don't thank me," Camilla grumbled. "If you fall, I am sure to break my knee!"
In the bathroom, Rafaella looked wistfully at one of the tubs.
"I wish I could have a bath. But I don't see how—-"
Camilla began to laugh. "I don't think there is a tub big enough to hold us both."
For some reason that struck them both as funny, too. Camilla said, roughly, "If you will wash my face, I will wash yours."
Weakly, tears of laughter dripping down their faces, they washed one another. As they went down to dinner, Rafaella said shyly, "Before we go in—let us agree where to sit so we don't have to haul on one another before the rest of them—"
Camilla shrugged. "As you will. Where we sat this morning, then?"
When they had found a seat, Camilla said harshly to the serving-woman, "Here, you, we can't chew our meat like dogs. They have not given us back our knives; we must have something to cut our meat with!"
Kindra heard them. She said, "Here," and handed her own knife to Camilla, watching while they cut up the meat into bites. When Camilla had finished, she sheathed it again without comment and walked to her own seat. Rafaella watched her walk away, wondering, Is she gloating over us?
After dinner some of the women gathered in the music room to hear Kindra and Devra sing ballads; Ra­faella and Camilla sat on a cushion to listen, but the novelty of the sight was wearing off and no one paid any attention to them. When they separated to go up­stairs, Rezi stopped beside Rafaella and nudged her.
"I thought you boasted of never sharing your bed with a woman, Rafi!"
Rafaella felt hot crimson suffusing her face. She knew Kindra was watching them. Camilla snapped "Let her alone!"
"Why, Camilla, gallantry? And after only one night in her bed? Tell me, what is this magic which a woman of her kind can cast on you, so that already you guard her like a lover—"
"Shut up, damn you," Camilla said, her voice danger­ously quiet. "I will not always be chained."
"So now the sworn foes are bredhin'y?" someone else jeered. "Like bride and groom, strangers before, and afterward—"
Camilla said in an undertone "Let's get out of here. We don't have to stay here and listen to that."
They got out of the room hurriedly, to a chorus of jeers, catcalls, and ribald jokes. On the stairs, looking at the tears in Rafaella's eyes, Camilla said quietly, "I am sorry about that, Rafaella. I would not willingly have exposed you to that kind of joke. I know they do not like me, but I had thought they were your friends—"
Rafaella swallowed hard. She said, "I thought so, too."
"But they take it out on me because I have brought this on you," Camilla said bitterly, and was silent. "I am older than you, and I first drew my dagger. You should have told Kindra that. Why did you not?"
Rafaella bent her head. She mumbled, "I don't know."
She had thought of it. And then she thought, If they send me away, even in disgrace, I have kinsmen and kins­women, I will not be wholly alone. But Camilla is emmasca and I once heard Kindra say that her kin had cast her off. She has nowhere else to go.
She said instead, "I must have clean clothes for tomor­row. Will you come to my room while I fetch them?"
"Of course. Though I hope your roommates are not there ..." Camilla said, stifled. "I am afraid of them ... they all dislike me, and you are so popular—"
Rafaella said, really shocked, "Why, everyone in the house likes you!"
"No," said Camilla, bitterly, "they are carefully polite to me because I am emmasca, mutilata ... no one truly likes me save Kindra, and now she will hate me, too, because I have brought trouble and disgrace upon you, her pet and darling...."
"Kindra does not love me at all," Rafaella said, and began to cry. Camilla looked at her in dismay. "She took your part against me, Camilla ... and I thought she loved me ..." and all the old hurt surged over her again. Trying to keep back her sobs, she went to her chest and took out a fresh tunic and under-tunic, clean breeches
and stockings. She said "I do not want to sleep in my
clothes again	"
"You need not," Camilla said, and then, bitterness breaking through, "unless you are afraid to undress in my presence, knowing I am a lover of women...."
"Don't be silly," Rafaella said. "That never occurred to me; do you think I even listened to their rude jokes?" Then she realized, suddenly, that Camilla was not joking. "But you are serious! Truly, I never thought it!"
"If you did not, it is sure you are the only one who did not," Camilla said. Rafaella stopped and stood very still, looking at the taut face, the thin mouth. It seemed that she was seeing Camilla for the first time, and some­thing that had been no more than a word, an insult, suddenly became real to her. She thought; perhaps she was even Kindra's lover, perhaps it was for her sake that Kindra would not pledge to me ... but she was afraid and ashamed to say the words. Finally she said, feeling the words awkward on her lips, "That was not—not nec­essary, Camilla. I do not care what they say."
What can I say to her? I loved Kindra and I never really understood, and now I do not know what to say to her. I feel like a fool.
And Kindra loved me, too. But if she loved me as she said, why did she drive me into the arms of a man? Shak­ing, suddenly aware of a thousand things beyond her knowledge, feeling suddenly very young and childlike, she turned her eyes away from Camilla. She said "Will you unfasten my cuffs, please? I cannot reach the but­tons on that wrist."
They helped each other undress; but although Camilla did not remove her under-tunic, as she turned to get out of her trousers, Rafaella saw what she had not seen that morning when the other woman dressed, the terrible scars all along Camilla's shoulders and back. She drew a long breath of consternation.
This must be why she never bathes in the common room, why she always sleeps alone. How came she by those dreadful scars?
Camilla said, very low, "Now you have seen. Now you can spread the tale of my—my degradation, of how I am doubly mutilated... "
Rafaella turned away. She said, "Hell, no. I have trou­bles enough of my own to worry about."
Camilla drew a long breath. "I had thought... Kindra
would have spoken to you of this. It is told from here
to Dalereuth, I suppose, in the Guild Houses; how I had
to be stripped naked at my oath-taking because I had
nothing like to a woman's form, and—and they would
not believe me a woman	"
Rafaella said "You wrong Kindra if you think she would spread such a tale. Nor has any woman who saw you stripped spoken of it to me. But how came you so scarred, Camilla?"
"I—I would rather not speak of it," Camilla said. "I was very young, but I do not like to remember it ... perhaps some day I will tell you. But I—I cannot talk about it."
"As you like," Rafaella was quiet as they climbed into bed and shifted about for a comfortable place. Rafaella woke suddenly, hearing her companion scream aloud, moan, start upright, wildly flailing her hands.
"Don't. It's all right, Camilla—it is only me, there is no one to harm you...."
Camilla started and shivered, staring at her in the darkness.
"Oh—Rafi—I am sorry I woke you—"
"I am only sorry you cannot sleep without nightmares."
Camilla said after a long minute, "I was afraid. I— there was a time when I was tied—like an animal—and beaten like an animal, too. Mercifully, I have forgotten much, but sometimes I still have nightmares...."
"Why, this must be worse for you than for me, then," Rafaella said, compassionately. Tied like an animal... beaten like an animal... what can have come to her?
"Camilla," she said at last, "I am sorry. Our quarrel was my fault; I splashed you with dirty water and I should have apologized and never let it come to this. Tomorrow I will go to Kindra and tell her, and ask that I alone should be punished. You can be freed, then, and need not have nightmares of being tied up."
Camilla bent her head. She said, "You make me ashamed. I knew you would apologize and I didn't want
that, because that would mean you were better than I. I think if you had apologized I would have pretended not to hear, so I need not acknowledge it."
"Then we are both to blame," Rafaella said, hesitat­ing, "Will you—will you exchange forgiveness with me, Camilla?"
"Willingly—oath-sister." Camilla used the ritual phrase, com'hi-letzis.
Rafaella leaned over and lightly kissed her on the lips; wondering, touched Camilla's face with her fingertips. No one in the Guild House had ever seen Camilla cry. Even when she had been brought in from the battle in the hills with a great wound in her leg and it had to be cleansed and cauterized with acid, she did not cry out or weep!
Camilla said, "I always wanted to be your friend. You were Kindra's kinswoman, and for that alone I would have loved you. And yet I could not refrain from making a quarrel with you and bringing this upon you.. .." her voice broke. "And because you are beautiful and everyone loves you, and because you are pregnant."
"But you are the best fighter in the house, everyone admires your courage and your strength."
"I am a freak," Camilla said, her voice shaking, "An emmasca, not a woman at all."
"But Camilla, Camilla—" Rafaella protested, dis­mayed, putting her arms around the older woman; it had never occurred to her that Camilla, who had, after all, chosen to undergo the neutering operation, could possi­bly feel like this. She was not to know for many years why Camilla had had this choice forced upon her, but she sensed tragedy and it made her gentle.
"I thought you despised my womanhood; you taunted me for being pregnant—"
"Taunted you? If I did, it was only out of envy—" Camilla said, choking.
Rafaella said incredulously, "Envy? Of this insane— insane trouble I have gotten myself into? And I have been hating myself for being such a fool, vulnerable...."
"Envy because you are to have a child," Camilla said, "and I never shall, now ... nor, I suppose, really want
to, though sometimes it seems to me hard ... nor could I ever, I suppose, make myself vulnerable in such a way. Is it worth it, Rafaella? Is it really such a delight to you, what you do with men, enough to make Up for all the risks?"
"I suppose you would not think it so," Rafaella said, trying not to remember that her reasons had been quite otherwise, "you who are so defiant about being a lover of women."
"Defiant?" Camilla shrugged. "Perhaps, If you had had my experience, you would not think so much, per­haps, of what men desire of women." She turned her eyes away, but Rafaella, thinking of the terrible scars Camilla bore, guessed at something too dreadful to be spoken. She put her arms around the older woman in silent sympathy, but Camilla was rigid, unmoving. She said, "I did not die. That is what I cannot forgive myself. To live with the memory. That is what none of my kins­women could forgive me; that I lived when a decent woman would have died." She pulled herself free of Rafaella's arms. "Don't touch me, Rafaella, I'm not fit to live."
"Don't say that, Camilla, don't—" Rafaella said, hold­ing her.
After a moment the older woman shuddered and said "I'm sorry. I get like that sometimes. And when I heard you were pregnant, it seemed I could not bear my hate— that you were young, lovely, cherished ... but it was myself I hated ... for all the things I would never have or enjoy...." She smiled, bleakly, in the dark. "It is all born of nightmares. Forgive me, Rafaella."
"I think," Rafaella said, subdued, turning her hand within the chain so that her hand lay within Camilla's, "that I should ask you to forgive me instead, breda."
"We will forgive one another, then," Camilla said, squeezing the soft hands. "Come, you must sleep, it is not good for a woman with child to lose sleep this way. Here, will you sleep better like this?" She eased the pillow under Rafaella's side and neck. "Lie quite still, and when you wake up tomorrow, maybe you will not be sick and I can sleep a little longer."
They were chained together for another three days;
but now they had learned to help one another, and it cemented a friendship which was to endure lifelong, and to go so deep that in years after, neither could ever remember why they had quarreled.