Ambassador of progress, p.12
Ambassador of Progress, page 12
A lie, and a heartbreaking lie. There was so much Fiona could do even without taking up the practice of medicine: most illness here was caused by bad sanitation and bad diet, these and the nonsterile conditions of the home and the surgery... but such aid was forbidden, until these people came up with the notion of sterility and sanitation themselves. Then she might — might — be able to give them some ideas. If, in the meantime, they asked her in the right way, she could at least present them with ideas that might tend to lead them in the right direction.
To help or not to help? Every decision had implications that were terrifying, each raised another dilemma in its place. Dilemmas that she, her cohorts, and her eventual successors would live with all their working careers. “Learn,” she’d been told, “to accept the conditions of these people’s existence. Learn to accept the fact that many will die young, and that most will live in wretchedness their entire lives. Your duty lies not to them, but to their descendants. And to your descendants. Remember that.”
She tried her best to remember, but their and her descendants were so far away, and the present wretchedness so apparent... . She tried her best not to think about it, to stay here in the Acragas palace and get as much of her work done as possible.
There had been, for example, an entire day spent training the town’s watchmen and criers, plus delegates from the majority of the deissin and the deissin themselves, in her mission, her presence here. She had to be very careful in presenting herself: what she could do, what she could not. She would not be involved in politics; she would not give military advice; she would not act as an oracle. For the present, she announced, she wanted only to live in the city and grow acquainted with it. Afterwards, perhaps, she would be able to offer a suggestion or two.
And in the meantime the Acragas project, altering the rigging of a small coastal barge in conformity with her design, was proceeding. It had sailed up and down the harbor a few times, but there had been problems with the sheets controlling the radically new sail — it was a primitive lugsail, she noticed, not a lateen or gaff sail; her diagram could have resulted in any of the three — and there were other difficulties with staying the mast. Yet the crew were enthusiastic, and would continue working with it. Necias seemed pleased.
Fiona saw Necias every day, and he had provided her with a staff of servants who, no doubt, were instructed to spy on her as much as possible. Necias’ visits were not long — there was much weighing him down now, with the preparations for war with Neda-Calacas — but he seemed genial, well-disposed toward her, and full of plans. There were also a great many social invitations, many of which had to be declined, but Fiona felt obliged to visit as many of the prominent deissin as possible; she didn’t wish them to think the Acragas family was monopolizing her. She wanted to make it clear that they could have access to her, should something arise — though what that something was, neither she nor they yet had any clear idea. The lugsail idea, if it worked, was going to wreak a massive enough change in trading patterns. That change would have to be analyzed before any others were contemplated.
For the most part Fiona intended simply to talk to people. Her own servants first of all, starting with her secretary Acragas Palvas, a junior member of the Acragas family employed chiefly to write the endless numbers of replies beginning with: “The Ambassador Fiona of Igara regrets that she cannot ...” He was an odd, awkward young man, compensating for his awkwardness by a fussy insistence on correctness. Fiona suspected that he was secretly scandalized by her. He was, she thought, doomed to this kind of role all his life: he was undistinguished except by his rigidity and punctilio, and probably was intelligent enough to know it. Perhaps, she thought, he would have been happier in the more formal, militarized society of the Brodaini, where everyone was careful to know his station and observe the forms; here among the Arrandalla he was sadly misplaced.
The others of her staff, a pair of maidservants who were also trained to act as hostesses when the situation demanded, were more forthcoming. They seemed all blushes and giggles at first, and it took some time before Fiona understood why: to these girls the idea of a woman ambassador was so unheard of it was titillating, a naughty joke. She was, to them, a minor indecency.
Fiona persevered: if she couldn’t communicate with these two young women there was very little hope for the rest of her tasks. Gradually they opened to her; under Fiona’s persistent prodding, they began to regard her less as an official and more as a woman, and subject to womanly confidences. The women of the city — those of the wealthier classes, anyway, and those who served them — lived almost entirely in their own world, carefully bordered, the world of the partillo and the servants’ hall. They rarely ventured out, and never alone: there was usually an older female relative, or if wealthy enough, liveried servants, to act as chaperones.
Their world was small, closed, intimate: there were no secrets between them. Both the maidservants considered themselves lucky: they’d both come from the lower artisan classes, families of leatherworkers and furniture makers respectively; and the Acragas family had bought their contracts when they’d reached their teens. They’d received training in acting as hostesses, and each had another valuable skill: Tibro, the elder by a year, had a fine singing voice and could play the flute, while Vico, surprisingly, was literate; her older brother had taught her to read. These various abilities raised their hopes for the marriage sweepstakes. If they were very lucky, they might have hopes of becoming a junior wife of some minor deissu or other, perhaps even an Acragas; otherwise the chances were good of becoming the wife of one of the other servants, some of whom were paid very well indeed — which would mean a stable life and a steady income, revolving around the excitement of the palace. On the whole, prospects were better than if they had stayed at home, where they would most likely have been married off to craft guildsmen, comrades of their fathers and probably much older than they; the guild system kept apprentices and journeymen too poor to marry.
Tibro and Vico were remarkably frank about these matters — and what they said was common enough knowledge, anyway. The social system of Arrandal, particularly as regarded respectable partnership and marriage, revolved around money. The deissin married one another’s daughters in order to keep their wealth within a limited circle, and to stabilize trading relationships. The servants, guilds-men, and small traders spent much of their lives acquiring enough capital to marry and start a family; and ambitious working girls put aside much of their own meager pay in order to make themselves more attractive to prospective husbands.
Illicit relationships, Fiona learned, had their financial aspect as well. Rich men, in addition to their various wives, often kept mistresses, usually without any attempt at concealing them: a mistress kept in style added to one’s own status, since it proved one could afford her. Fiona would very much have liked to have talked to one of these women — perhaps later, after the furor of her arrival died down, she could arrange it.
The results of all these financial constrictions on sexual passion seemed clear: large-scale, open, and more or less legal prostitution, catering to all wages and tastes; plus a large and lively literature, both of unfulfilled longing and of adultery. When Fiona asked Tibro, the vocalist, to sing some songs of the common people, she complied with a series of ballads about chaste couples who, too poor to marry, are forced to love one another from afar for years, usually with the woman trying her best to avoid marriage to an older, more suitable candidate, before finally being able to marry — or, alternately, dying before they could fulfill their love for one another. Campas’ elaborate poems about shepherds and shepherdesses living their frustrating and chaste lives, Fiona thought, made a little more sense against this background.
More lively were the songs about fornication. Usually these involved a young, junior wife married to an older deissu, and who acquired a lover her own age. Universally these women seemed to come to bad ends: dying at the hands of jealous husbands, betrayed by their lovers, condemned by the law, shut up in nunneries. The deissin had an active and jealous regard for their property, among which they most certainly counted their wives.
And so the ballads painted contrary pictures: one of ideal, continent couples locked in hopeless, unfulfilled love; the other of lusty young men and women cheerfully trysting in odd corners of the palace, hiding from the watchdogs of the doddering but jealous spouse. Two views of Arrandalla society, Fiona thought, with the truth probably lurking somewhere in between.
She’d reported her conclusions to the ship, and her surreptitious recording of Tibro’s ballads were on file. Artifacts of a civilization, keys to help Fiona’s successors live within this culture and perhaps to comprehend it, and to provide, in some future, material for an academic thesis, “Marriage and Morality in Classical Arrandal.”
None of which, of course, would help her now.
Fiona leaned out her window, seeing a swift dispatch boat skimming over the canal below, a self-important little man sitting in the sternsheets with a dispatch case. She was three storeys above the green, sluggish canal, and the fresh southerly trade wind kept the smell at bay. Across the canal was a moored barge on which an old woman was stringing laundry that she’d just washed in the filthy water. Fiona thought of typhoid and shuddered.
There was a scratching on her bedroom door, and Tibro’s soft voice. Fiona called her in. “Campas is here, Ambassador,” Tibro reported. “He has a message from the Abessu-Denorru.”
Fiona shook the woolly morning thoughts out of her head and blinked. “Very well,” she said. “Show him into the study. Offer him tea or wine if he wants it. I’ll be with him directly.”
Tibro bobbed and backed from the room. Fiona changed from her sleeping-caftan to one of her receiving gowns — in her own apartments she’d given up wearing her privy-coat — and combed her hair into some kind of order, then stepped out of her bedroom, down a passage, and into her private study door. Campas, dressed in a tunic of dark red with the Acragas insigne, the god Pastas, on the shoulder, rose to greet her. She waved him back to his chair and found a chair herself.
“The Abessu-Denorru regrets he will be unable to visit you today,” Campas said. “He’ll be busy all day reviewing the army.”
“I thank the Abessu-Denorru for his courtesy,” Fiona said, wondering if this was the entire message.
“He has authorized me to tell you,” Campas added, “that war with Neda-Calacas will be declared officially tomorrow, which will be followed shortly thereafter by declarations from all the cities of the Elva. The fleet will sail immediately to commence a blockade, and the army will march as soon as logistical preparations are concluded, probably in a few days.”
Fiona nodded. “I thank the Abeissu Necias for the information,” she said.
Campas leaned forward, lowering his voice to a more intimate tone, his ringed fingers linked in front of him. “Because of the policy complications bound to arise with all the allied armies in the field,” he said, “the Abessu-Denorru will be accompanying the army himself, along with Marshal Palastinas and the drandor Tegestu. He would count it a favor, Ambassador Fiona, if you would accompany him.”
Fiona felt her chin jerk upward in surprise, and she deliberately paused for a second, composing her answer.
“I am surprised,” she said. “Why should the Abessu-Denorru feel my presence would be of value? I can give no military advice, you know.”
Before Campas could answer came a scratching at the door, followed by Tibro’s entering with tea and cakes. She bobbed to both of them, poured tea in silence, and then backed from the room, leaving the door open.
There was a reason for that open door, Fiona knew, and it annoyed her. Passion was so constrained in this society that it was assumed that if an unattached man and woman were alone for more than a few seconds, nature would take its course. That the couple might deny that anything transpired counted for little: they were alone, yes? He is a man; she is a woman — what could be more natural? The door was open, not so that Tibro could spy on them, but rather so that she could act as a discreet chaperone. Because of her own cultural antecedents the assumptions behind that open door drove Fiona to fist-clenching fury; and she was irrationally tempted to closet herself with all manner of men simply to outrage as many conventions as she could. Let them gossip all they want, she thought. What does it matter to me?
But, of course, it did matter: she was here on sufferance and could not afford to outrage local opinion, not yet — and so the door stayed open. And through the door came the sounds of Tibro’s reed flute, allowing discreet conversation.
“The Abessu-Denorru wishes me to accompany the army,” Fiona said. “Why?”
Campas’ answer was quick. “Your peoples — the Igaralla, I mean — they have sent an ambassador to Neda-Calacas, yes?”
“That’s true,” Fiona said.
“The Igaralla are neutral in this war, you have made that clear,” Campas said. “There’s no other power on the continent that can make that claim. And you can communicate with your people in that, that star-ship of yours; the city walls are no barrier. It may be useful to have a neutral representative on hand — we may have to conduct negotiations regarding prisoner exchange, for example, or — eventually — for surrender. We will win, you know,” Campas said, matter-of-fact. “It may take a year or two, but Neda-Calacas can’t hold out against all of us.”
Fiona was silent for a long moment, taken completely aback. The proposal, of course, was completely logical; she could see nothing wrong with offering the kind of assistance requested here, and there might be some interesting data coming out of the campaign — on the Brodaini, for example — but on the other hand wars had a way of involving people in unforeseen ways. She decided to temporize.
“I regret I can’t give an immediate answer,” she said. “I’ll have to communicate with my superiors.” Which, to be sure, was truthful enough.
“There will be a delay of several days before the army marches,” Campas said. “Will that time be sufficient?”
“I should think so.”
Campas leaned back in his chair, stretching his long legs out before him, crossing them. He looked at her with a careless smile. “You are satisfied with your conditions here?” she asked. “No problems with the staff?”
Well: the official part of the visit seemed to be over. Fiona relaxed as well, picking up her teacup. “No complaints. The embassy will have to acquire its own building sooner or later, of course,” she said. “But I’m being treated very well, thank you.”
“An embassy of one is unusual, here,” Campas said.
“It serves two purposes,” Fiona said. “A single ambassador, traveling on her own, was thought to be less threatening — we didn’t want to alarm you, not with a lot of people swooping down from the sky. Also, since we had a limited number of people on our ship, and we intend to be here for a very long time, there’s a problem with personnel. We have to plan far ahead, especially since we intend to have an embassy in every major country, if we can.” She sipped her tea, shifting in her seat. “But I will have an assistant in a year or so, I expect. With the Abessu-Denorru’s permission.”
“You didn’t want to alarm us, you say, with a large embassy,” Campas said. “Is that why your people sent a woman?”
Bull’s eye, Fiona thought with surprise. Campas was quick, quicker than she’d thought.
“That — idea had occurred to us,” she said. “But not all of our ambassadors are women. It was more a matter of interest and aptitude among the candidates.” This conversation was beginning to get too close to matters she preferred the Arrandalla not to know, at present; she moved swiftly to change the topic.
“Will you be going with the army, Campas?” she asked.
Campas accepted the change of topic without comment. “Alas, yes,” he said with a wry grin. “I’ll be with Necias in the field. They’re putting me on staff, to help deal with the Brodaini.”
“The Brodaini, now — you’ve lived among them, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” Campas said noncommittally. “Necias wanted me to learn their language. A curious people.”
“A violent people,” Fiona said. “How do you advise an outsider, someone like myself, to deal with the Brodaini?”
Campas grinned. “Learn to apologize quickly and sincerely,” he said.
Fiona smiled and spoke in Gostu. “Ban-demmin, may your arm never weaken, I intended no offense,” she said, and Campas laughed — it was a genuine laugh, filling the small room, a hearty, healthy reminder that the Arrandalla laughed loudly and often, as did her own people. A needed reminder: they were all careful around her, a little in awe, their speech formal and very... diplomatic. She joined his laughter, achingly aware of how long it had been since she had laughed with someone.
Tibro’s flute hesitated, then continued its song.
“Bro-demmin would be better,” Campas said, still smiling as he settled in his chair. “More subservient.”
“Not from an ambassador.”
He nodded, conceding the point. There was a small silence as each waited for the other to fill it; then Fiona spoke.
“Do you know Tegestu? I’ve only seen him once, the night of my last performance.” Campas frowned, his fingers plucking at his doublet as he considered his answer.
“I’m acquainted with Tegestu,” he said. “I’ve met him many times. But I can’t say I know him, no. Yet I know he’s a very remarkable man.”
“Remarkable? In what way?” Fiona asked. Her recorder had been turned on and was quietly collecting every word. Data, to be transcribed later: The Brodaini, as described by an Arrandalla Observer.
“He’s very intelligent, very quick,” Campas said. “And he’s made the compromises necessary to live here, and made them understandable to his followers in their own terms — that’s his great achievement, I think,”
