House Rules
by Marion Zimmer Bradley
"Here is my book, Mama," Loren said. "Will you hear me read?"
"Certainly." Lora felt the skinny little boy leaning against her knee and felt the tears welling up again in­side her. Two more months and then Loren must be sent to his father. To be made into the kind of man I despise, the kind of man who fills Amazon Guild Houses. Because of the rules of the Guild House that a boy child may not live among women, and Loren was no longer a baby.
Janna came bursting in, her hair long and messy around her shoulders. "Mama, what's for dinner?"
"I haven't thought about it yet, Janni," Lora said. "Why don't you go out in the kitchen and see if there are any potatoes left; I'll fry them in goose fat."
"I'm tired of potatoes," Janna said, "When will we have meat again?"
"When we can afford it." Lora said. "Janna, why are you wearing your holiday smock?"
"Because it's the only decent dress I have," Janna whined. "Am I supposed to go around in breeches all the time like you and Marji?"
"Why not? What is wrong with them? You can work properly in them," Lora said, but she might as well have spoken to the wind.
It is Cara's doing. We should never have taken her into the House; she was very bad for Janni, Lora thought. She hardly knew her nice obedient child in this sullen brat who seemed to spend all her day arranging her hair and painting her nails, who would not work in the barn or the fowl house because she hated to get her hands dirty, and last week she had caught Janni, hardly
ten years old, lingering at the gate, twisting her curls and simpering as she talked to young Raul of King's Head Farm. Ten, and already making eyes at the lads. What did we do wrong, Marji and I? Janna was one of the reasons I fled from Darren, a few days after Loren was born ... so Janna would not be pushed into being a stick in a pretty frock, good for nothing but to dress up, sim­per at boys, and giggle and talk about boys.
Marji called from the back door, "Lora? Are you home?" and Lora pushed her unwilling daughter into the kitchen.
"Take the skins from the potatoes and slice them," she ordered, and Janna sulked.
"I spend all my time in kitchen work. If I lived with Papa at least there would be kitchen-women to do the work for me. I am a kitchen slave, that's all. And I have to be one because you and Marji—"
"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."
"And so he might have been," said Ferrika. "It is not his fault that he did as his father and grandfather had done before him. Be sure you raise your son better than that, to know what women need, and that women are human, too, and not slaves."
"But how can I raise my son to be anything at all?" Lora asked, finally bursting into tears, "when I must send him to be reared by Aric and turned into the very kind of man I most despise?"
"When does he go?" asked Ferrika.
"Day after tomorrow," said Lora.
"Why are you sending him? Why not keep him here?"
"It is required by the rules," Lora said.
"Whose rules? Tell me which provision of the Oath requires it?"
"I have been told since Loren was born that I must prepare myself to give him up to his father when he is five years old—"
"Yes," said Ferrika, "so they told you at Neskaya. In
the larger Amazon houses it is a solid rule, yes—many
boys of fifteen or more living under the same roof with many women, would indeed be disruptive. But tell me, are your two housemates pressuring you to send him away? Some Renunciates wish to be free of all male creatures, including little boys."
Lynifred turned from the fire and said, "No; I told Lora to defy the bastard and keep the boy herself. Marji feels the same."
"What I truly wish," said Marji, coming into the kitchen with Callie in her arms, "is that we could keep Loren, whom we all love, and send away Janna, who is turning this house upside down. I'm sorry, love; you know I love your daughter, but she's driving us all mad, and if she goes Cara's way, that's no credit to a House of Renunciates."
"She's right," said Lora, sobbing. "Why do we have to send a harmless baby away just because he's male,
and keep that one because she had the luck to be born a girl?"
Ferrika said, "Under most conditions, boys— especially tough street-reared boys—cannot be housed with women without trouble; I could tell you some sto­ries—there was a time in Thendara House when we kept boys till they were ten, and the experiment did not work. Even their mothers were glad to see them go. It was not safe even for the younger girls in the house; and when we let the boys stay past puberty it was disaster. So in general conference it was decided that they should be sent away before five, and certainly before puberty. But in this, every house may make its own rules." And she quoted the Renunciate Oath.
"7 alone shall determine rearing and fosterage of any child I shall bear.' If it goes against your conscience to send him to his father, then, Lora, it is your duty to find a foster father or guardian for him who will not—as you said—turn him into the very kind of man you most despise."
"I thought it was part of the Renunciate law that my son could not live with me after he was five."
Ferrika smiled. "No," she said, "you are confusing the law for all Renunciates, and the house rules of each group. In the larger houses it is established that no woman may be forced to live with men or boys; but here you may make such rules for your house as you all agree on. You might even make it known, so that some women who are considering leaving the larger houses because they cannot bear to part with young sons, could come to you here—"
"It's a thought," said Lynifred. "If young men were to be raised by Renunciates, some awareness of what women really are and what men can be might some day go into the world outside the Guild Houses." She drew on her boots. "I'll take Loren out with me and teach him horse-doctoring, now he's big enough to spend a day away from his mother."
Lora thought, Lynifred could raise a man better than most men could; certainly better than his father could. She'll raise him to be strong, honorable, hardworking, and to understand that a woman can be so as well.
"What will my husband say?" she asked.
Ferrika replied gently, "If you care what he says, Lora, you are in the wrong place."
"I don't really care what he says," Lora answered, "but I dread having to face him while he says it."
"I think we all do," Marji said, "but we'll back you up. I don't think any magistrate would rule that he is more fit to be a parent than you."
"Send Janna to him," Lynifred suggested, "and if a year of being a kitchen drudge, wash-woman, and baby-tender for her stepmother—and worse, treated as if she had no brains—does not send her fleeing back to us here, then perhaps she deserves to stay in that world."
"But I couldn't bear to see Janna go back to that—" Lora began.
"If it's what she wishes, you cannot keep her from it," said Marji. "Because we want this life, we cannot de­mand it must be for her."
Lora bent her head, knowing that Marji was right; Janna must be free to choose as she had chosen.
"So," said Lynifred, "we are all here; shall we call this a House meeting, and pass a rule that boys may live here, if the women in the house all consent, till puberty, and that girls reared here must live a year outside the house before they take the Oath? It makes good sense to me."
"And to me," said Marji. Lora wiped her eyes and said, "I am not yet able to determine what makes sense to me. I am only so grateful that I am not to lose my
son."
"And your daughter," Marji said. "A year treated as girls are treated in, say, Neskaya village would no doubt, have brought Cara back to us. Janna will be back."
"I hope so," Lora murmured, but she was not so sure. Nevertheless if Janna wanted that kind of life she could not be denied it. And if other women came here with their sons, it could be a beginning for a nucleus of men raised not to despise women. That was worth doing whatever became of them.
"I agree," she said smiling, and began to cut leather for a set of boots for Loren. He. would soon need a scabbard for his first sword, too.