Hugh Cook - The Worshippers and the Way

"Half a hundred!" said Penelope. "I'm worth more than that."

"No you're not," said Hatch. "Polk the Cash has had a valuer take a look at you."

"He's done no such thing," said Penelope. "I'd have known."

"You wouldn't have known," said Hatch. "They're very discreet."

"How can he tell what I'm worth when he never saw me with my clothes off?"

"Female, Frangoni, age 25, tall, big-breasted," said Hatch.

"Value, 49 crowns and a fraction. I saw the report myself. You're worth just less than the money you owe."

"So what do you expect me to do about it?" said Penelope.

"You'd better do something," said Hatch. "Because Polk is threatening to claim you as his slave."

"Then let him threaten," said Penelope.

She was either carefree or thoughtfree, one or the other.

Certainly she had never got to grips with the management of money, for this is part of that greater discipline of managing oneself, and Penelope had lived largely unmanaged either by herself or by anyone else.

"He's got a buyer already," said Hatch, striving to make the woman see sense, though he suspected there was no more profit to be had from arguing with Penelope than in arguing with a goldfish.

"The buyer is from the Stepping Stone Islands. He'll take you north, never to be seen again."

"That's a nonsense," said Penelope.

"What do you mean, a nonsense?" said Hatch.

"Just that. I can't be sold, because I'm someone's slave already."

"Whose?" said Hatch.

"The Silver Emperor's, of course."

"What are you talking about?" said Hatch, intensely irritated by this nonsense.

"We're all his slaves," said Penelope. "We Frangoni, I mean."

"No!" said Hatch, dismayed by the immensity of this error.

"You're not his slave at all. Only the men are his slaves."

"What do you mean, only the men?"

"Just that," said Hatch, wondering if his sister really was this ignorant or if this was her idea of a joke. "Only the men are his slaves. The women are free. That's the law."

"Why do the men always get the good things?" said Penelope.

"Because that's how the world was made," said Hatch. "So you're free, and because you're free, you can be bought and sold, which means – Penelope, you've really gone too far this time. Polk can come in here and claim you. Which is exactly what he's going to do. Then he'll sell you to this foreigner, and that man, that man can rape you at will or – or cut off your hair and sell it!"

Hatch hoped to terrify Penelope into a realization of the precariousness of her own position, and thereby to curb the increasing recklessness of her spending. It was possible that, by doing a deal with Lupus Lon Oliver in accordance with the wisdom of Sesno Felvus, Hatch would shortly be in a position to pay off Penelope's debts. But that would bring no joy to anyone if she simply went out and mortgaged herself all over again.

Yet in his attempt to terrify, Hatch proved less than adequate.

"Rape me!" said Penelope scornfully. "Is that what he'll do?"

"Yes," said Hatch, who truthfully thought that there was a strong probability that anyone who bought Penelope as a slave would do exactly that.

"So what do you care?" said Penelope.

"I'm your brother," said Hatch. "Of course I care. I don't want to see you taken, kidnapped, stolen, sold."

"So what do you want?" said Penelope, with surprising bitterness.

"Why," said Hatch, "I want what any brother would want for his sister. To see you married and pregnant."

Hatch was trying hard. Amongst the Frangoni, fecundity was highly valued, and one of the politest things one could say to a woman was "May you soon be pregnant". Hatch seldom said any such thing to his sister, for such formal politesse was not commonly required between brother and sister. But he felt that the stress of the moment called for an extra effort.

"Married!" said Penelope. "Pregnant! Since when have you wanted me either? It was because of you I had to murder my husband."

"Grief of a dog!" said Hatch. "We're not going to go into that again, are we?"

"Why not?" said Penelope. "This is my husband we're talking about. Not a – a flowerpot!"

"Oh come on," said Hatch, annoyed by Penelope's quibbling pettishness. "A fine young woman like you can always get another husband."

"That's not the point," said Penelope. "I had one, and now he's dead."

"Of course he's dead," said Hatch, infuriated by Penelope's obtuseness. "That was the whole point of getting him married. You knew that before you went into it."

"Yes, yes, but you're my brother, so what could I do? You made me a murderer!"

"As I recall," said Hatch, making a heroic attempt to govern the passion of his mounting rage, "it was me who did the killing.

All you had to do was step outside."

"That's all!?"

"Well, yes," said Hatch, who thought he had now won this argument, and that Penelope should acknowledge as much. "Stop making such a fuss! I mean, you weren't in love with him or anything. Were you?"

"What would you know about it?"

"Well of course you weren't. You never even met him till you were married, and then – "

"Then you killed him!" said Penelope.

"If it hadn't been for me," said Hatch, deeply vexed by this continued onslaught, "you'd never have married him in the first place. You'd never even have met him. I found him for you, so it was thanks to me – "

"Yes. You found him. So you're responsible!"

"Responsible?," said Hatch, baffled by this display of female irrationality. "Responsible for what?"

"For killing him!" screamed Penelope. "For killing my husband! Murder, bloody murder, killing him, cutting his throat, stabbing him, slashing him, blood, blood, blood everywhere, you killed him, and he was mine, and – and – and I – I loved him!"

With those final words, her hysteria stammered into irreconcilable grief, and she burst into tears.

Hatch still had no clear conception of what, if anything, he might have done to upset her. True, he had killed her husband, but it should be pure pleasure for a Frangoni girl to help her brother encompass a necessary murder. And even supposing the experience did not prove to be an unalloyed pleasure, it was still a duty for a sister to thus help a brother. But… well, if marriage really meant so much to her | | "If marriage really means so much to you," said Hatch, "you could always marry me."

This was a very great-hearted and self-sacrificing gesture, for Hatch did not by any means want to marry his sister. She knew him well, very well indeed, and he was a true Frangoni male in that he was ever uneasy in the presence of any female who knew too much about him. The Frangoni consider it best to bed with strangers, for to bed with someone is to be emotionally vulnerable, and a stranger is more likely to be ignorant of one's weak points. Consequently, amongst the Frangoni a brother will rarely marry his sister except under the compulsion of a compelling duty.

Penelope squeezed the tears out of her eyes, mastered her sobs, then said:

"You? You're offering to marry me?"

"Yes," said Hatch, already regretting the offer, but putting a good face on it. "It might stall Polk for a month or two."

"Stall Polk!" said Penelope, sorrow turning to outrage. "I should marry you for that? You! Marry you!?"

"Why, yes," said Hatch, starting to feel offended. "Why shouldn't you marry me?"

Asodo Hatch did not consider himself thin-skinned.

Nevertheless, when a man invites a woman to marry him, he is apt to be disconcerted if her reaction is one of baleful fury, and Hatch, being in many ways a very average and conventional man, was so disconcerted.

"Marry you?" screamed Penelope. "You with your wife in drugs and dying? You with your fancy whore on the top of the hill?"