Eric Flint - This Rough Magic

Tonight there were more devotees than ever. The priestess looked around. The women from the Little Arsenal, smuggled in and hidden, were here in numbers. She was not surprised. The cult was mainly Greek, these days, although-as she proved herself-it did not make objection to foreign worshipers. The great Mother considered them to be women first; nationality was a secondary and unimportant thing. In troubled times, the Goddess knew that women came back to the old religion.

The priestess noticed that the devotees were looking thin and pinched-not starving, yet, but starvation was not going to be far away. She sighed. The women and children were always the first to suffer in sieges. And the women hiding away would be, if anything, worse victims than those who were legitimately within the walls. After the rite she would move to speak to them, to see if anything could be done.

The rite soothed her, and even seemed to give some comfort and courage to the other women. Enough so that when the priestess drew one aside as the rest left, she did not even get a token resistance to her questions.

"There are two of the guards," the woman said wearily. "They found where we women were hidden and now they demand some of the men's rations and money to keep their silence. They are selling food to those who have money. They were demanding sex, too, but some of the men said they would kill them, even if it meant discovery."

The priestess frowned. "We will see what can be done. Do you know the names of these two?"

The women nodded.

On the small black altar the half almond lay, unwithered, still waiting. The priestess looked at it and sighed again. There was power there. But it was not hers. It was not anyone's… without a price.

Stella had come over principally to gossip, but officially to see if Maria would sell her a few eggs. They were sitting in the kitchen because it seemed the place where Stella's smaller two could do the least damage. Maria looked on Stella's younger children-who were now engaged in an exercise in seeing how far they could try everybody's patience-as an experience that would put most women off motherhood. They were both little boys, and Stella let them get away with the kind of mayhem she plainly didn't tolerate in her older daughters.

There was a furious bleating from the goat, followed by a polite knock at the door. Maria went to it. Stella peered curiously around her shoulder-and gasped to see who the visitor was.

Contessa Renate De Belmondo did turn up on her charitable missions at any place she chose. Still, she was the first lady of the island, and this was a tiny Scuolo house-not where you would expect to find her.

She smiled as brightly as if this was a Case Vecchie mansion, while Stella made big eyes and backed up. "Maria, my dear, may I come in?"

Maria was more than a little flustered too, but she had her pride. With Stella watching, she had little option but to behave as coolly as she could, as if she entertained the governor's wife in her kitchen every day. She made her best attempt at a curtsey. "Certainly, milady. I am very glad to see you again."

Renate De Belmondo smiled and came in. "My dear, what a gorgeous rug. Where did you find it?"

Maria felt herself glow. The woolen rug was one of the few luxuries she had bought for Umberto and herself during their stay in the forestry region of Istria. It glowed with bright peasant colors, but was also beautifully woven. "I bought it at a fair in Istria. It comes from Dalmatia somewhere. The Illyrian women make them."

"It's a beautiful piece. We get some southern Illyrian goods here, but nothing nearly so fine." The contessa allowed herself to become aware of Stella, and the two children peering around her skirts. "Good morning. Signora Mavroukis, is it not?"

Stella did her best to curtsey with two clinging children. "Milady! Do you know everybody on Corfu?"

The contessa shrugged and laughed. "No. But I try. Signora, I hate to interrupt, but I need to talk to Maria. Can you spare her to me for a little while?"

Stella was plainly dying of curiosity, but could hardly say "I'll stay and eavesdrop." So she made as polite an exit as possible while, the moment that Renate De Belmondo turned her head away, miming to Maria: I'll talk to you later. I want to hear all about it.

When the door was firmly shut, and Maria's curiosity also fully aflame, she still felt she had to go through the niceties. "I have some of the local spoon-sweets, milady."

"Thank you. That would be delicious. And perhaps a glass of water?" Lady De Belmondo fanned herself with her hand; somehow, it was not an affected gesture. "I'm not getting any younger, and it is so hot already for walking. By August the full heat will be with us, and I'm really not looking forward to that at all. The first rains of autumn are always such a blessing."

So Maria fetched out the spoon-sweets and cool water from the earthenware ewer in the shade around the back of the house. They talked polite nothings while the contessa sampled the Sultanina glyko. "Ah. I love the flavor the arbaroriza-the rose geranium-gives to the grapes. Delicate yet definite."

"You speak Greek, Milady?"

"Fluently." She nodded her head gravely. "You really have to learn it, if you are going to live here. It's one of the greatest mistakes so many of the Venetians make. If you can't talk to people you can't get along with them, or really understand them."

"I am determined to learn," Maria said decisively.

The contessa smiled. "You will find the local people happy to teach."

Finally Maria could restrain herself no longer. "Milady, why have you come to see me?"

The contessa half hid a small smile behind her hand. "Because I need your help. Your husband is fairly senior in the Little Arsenal, and I hope less set in his ways than old Grisini. I want, through you, to enlist his aid."

"I can try," said Maria doubtfully. "But the truth is, milady, Umberto is not the most flexible man in the world either. He's a good man, but he's a senior guildsman, and you don't get to be a senior guildsman without being very set in their traditions and ways."

The contessa nodded with understanding. "I have something of a problem with the wives and children of the Greek workers."

Maria made a face. "They're out there," she said, waving her hand vaguely in the direction of the rest of the island. "Their husbands must be distraught. Why did the men come in to the fortress when the siege threatened? They could have run away like the peasants did. They would have at least been together and a little safer."

Renate De Belmondo looked speculatively at Maria. And then said calmly: "They did one better. They brought the women in here. They're hiding in the sheds at the back of the Little Arsenal. There are more than sixty women and an uncertain number of children there, at least double that number. They're living on the men's rations, and a couple of the guards have found them and are exploiting the situation. According to my informant the men think the Illyrians must have informed on them. They're ready to kill the guards… which would be trouble. And the Illyrian workers too."

"Which would be more trouble," said Maria, grimly. "Those Illyrians are keen on using their knives, according to Umberto." She sighed. "The trouble between the Illyrians and the Corfiotes goes way back, he says, and both sides hold a grudge. The Corfiotes complain the Illyrians are stealing their work, the Illyrians say the Corfiotes are stealing their places."

"Oh, it goes back a lot further than that," chuckled the contessa dryly. "Further than you may think. Corfu has had waves of settlers for many thousands of years, but the original people of the region came here when there was no channel between here and the mainland, just a broad marshy valley and big bay. Then the invaders came; they were not the Illyrians… or even the Illyrians' forefathers, but they came from the same general direction: Thrace. The Illyrians are merely the inheritors of that hatred. Anyway, the point is that the hatred goes back so far that there is no counting the years. So far that there is a peasant belief among the women, that a desperate priestess of the Earth mother gave herself to be the bride of the lord of the under-earth to save her child. It's one of those things about the magic of Corfu I was telling you about. He moved the earth to drown the armies and forever put the sea between the invaders and this place."