"Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Free Amazons 03 - House Rules" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bradley Marion Zimmer)

"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 Ferнrika 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 herЧnothing 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 manЧthough 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 oldЧ"
"Yes," said Ferrika, "so they told you at Neskaya. In
the larger Amazon houses it is a solid rule, yesЧmany
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, boysЧ especially tough street-reared boysЧcannot be housed with women without trouble; I could tell you some stoнriesЧthere 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 notЧas you saidЧturn 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 hereЧ"
"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 stepmotherЧand worse, treated as if she had no brainsЧdoes 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 thatЧ" Lora began.
"If it's what she wishes, you cannot keep her from it," said Marji. "Because we want this life, we cannot deнmand 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.