The Girl with No Name Ch. 14

The matrons made no move towards Magdala's chamber. Silvítya's suspicions that she was being tested were confirmed. She noted the matrons no longer seemed so confident.

"Very well, you're failure to obey a command will be passed to His Majesty. He'll deal with you appropriately."

With that, the matrons turned away. Silvítya immediately ran to Magdala's sleeping chamber and woke her up. When she described the confrontation, the other woman replied:

"They won't tell His Majesty anything. You did what you were supposed to do, and as you saw for yourself, they did not relay the order to me. There was nothing from His Majesty to relay. I guess they underestimated you. They're normally not so direct."

"They try this with everyone?"

"Yes, but they're usually more subtle about it. It must have been your accent...making them think it would be easy to turn you into an informant against the rest of us."

Silvítya thought about her accent. She had wanted to get rid of it the previous year, precisely because it gave such a bad impression among the educated when she first opened her mouth. However, in a place like the Grand Duke's castle, having the combination of education and a peasant's accent could be a huge asset. The Royal staff and advisors would tend to underestimate her, which would be extremely useful when she needed to gather information.

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With his women the Grand Duke was cruel, dominating, and egotistical, but he never assumed he had nothing to learn from them. He was curious about their backgrounds and their lives prior to being taken into the castle. Each of the women under his control had a unique life story and could provide him with perspective about the Duchy's society that he could not obtain through his advisors. As a group they were an important asset, not just for providing pleasure, but as a way to keep his view of his subjects grounded in reality. The concubines provided him with a good sampling of the population from the western half of the Duchy, a way he could obtain unfiltered information about the lives and attitudes of ordinary citizens.

When the girls entered his service, most were terrified and eager to please him, which was the way it should be. However, after the concubines became accustomed to their circumstances and understood how they needed to behave, the sovereign encouraged them to converse with him and talk about themselves. His ministers would have wondered why he was interested in listening to trivia about the girls' families and daily routines. While it was true that the majority of the women had little of importance to tell him as individuals, the over-all picture of the Duchy's society they provided was extremely valuable for setting realistic policies that actually addressed the needs of the public.

Unlike the castle matrons and most of his advisors, the Grand Duke never underestimated Silvítya. From the beginning he noticed the contrast between her accent and her vocabulary. He correctly assumed that his newest acquisition was born into poverty but had somehow managed to receive some education. He could tell right away she was intelligent and curious. Judging by the way she had been behaving in the plaza when he first noticed her, it seemed that she was unfamiliar with the protocol of the capitol, which meant she came from some other place and was visiting. He also had noticed the smallpox vaccination scar on the girl's shoulder. He could tell the scar was relatively recent: she had been vaccinated as an adult within the last couple of years.

At the end of her first week in the castle, the Danubian sovereign ordered Silvítya to go to his bed-chamber alone. Magdala explained:

"He does this with all of us. He likes to hear about our lives. He'll ask you things...and will expect you to answer honestly. Please don't try lying to him, about anything. You've seen what happens to a Sister who was caught telling a lie, so don't do it, even if you think if you're telling him something that sounds bad. And...he'll give you some really nice treats if you talk to him enough and tell him something interesting."

Silvítya nervously accompanied a matron to the Royal bed-chamber. As usual, the older woman was carrying a leather switch, which she used to direct the concubine with taps to her hips and shoulders. Silvítya bitterly reflected that she was being trained and directed in the same manner as a horse, responding to taps of the switch instead of verbal commands.

She was surprised to see the Grand Duke completely naked when she entered his chamber. Normally he liked to be ritually undressed before indulging himself with his women. However, Silvítya had come up alone and he did not want to bother with having her undress him. He grabbed her, pushed her onto his bed and, with no foreplay whatsoever, vigorously thrust into her body. When he finished, he ordered the girl onto her knees and deliberately humiliated her in two ways. She had to lick his penis while it was still sticky from the first round of sex, which was disgusting for the concubine and meant to be. While she was working on trying to achieve a second erection, the sovereign ran his fingers through her hair. She cringed as she felt her scalp being violated by her master's rough explorations. When the Grand Duke became hard again, he ordered her to get on her elbows and knees. He entered her from behind and thrust in his usual obsessive manner. However, Silvítya was hugely relieved that he had not entered her sphincter.

The routine changed when he was finished. Instead of ordering her out of the room, the Grand Duke told his servant to follow him into an adjoining chamber containing a sunken stone bath large enough to comfortably fit three people. As he settled into the water, he directed her attention to a washbasin with salt and a fresh toothbrush. After she cleaned her mouth she was to join him in the bath.

She knew that she had to push aside her anger and bitterness over having her body violated in so many ways. Like it or not, the country's ruler was now her owner. Throughout her life she had been indoctrinated that the Grand Duke was the supreme worldly authority in the Duchy. Nothing in her background or her studies indicated that an average citizen, and much less a woman, had the right to object to a ruler's orders. Like every other Danubian, she owed him absolute and unquestioning obedience.

The bath relaxed her slightly, even though she was sitting with a man she feared and hated. He touched her shoulder and ran his finger around the vaccination scar.

"I can see that you bear the Follower's mark, the one that protects you from the pox."

"Yes, Your Majesty. Your humble serving girl bears the mark."

"Excellent. I see it is recent. Where were you when the Followers marked you?"

Silvítya was terrified, but she decided to follow Magdala's advice and tell the Grand Duke the truth. Already, through nothing more than looking at a scar, he had figured out a lot about her. If she lied about something as basic as her past and he caught her, the consequences would be too terrible to contemplate.

"Your humble servant was in Nagorónkti-Serífkti when she was marked, Your Majesty."

"Then you must have been there when the Followers visited in the summer of last year. That scar is too new for you to have received from the previous visit three years ago."

"That is correct, Your Majesty."

"But your accent...it is not from the Nagorónkti-Serífkti region. You're not from that area."

"I...your humble serving girl...is from..."

"You're from the river valley. A laborer's daughter, no doubt, judging by the way you pronounce your words. I find it interesting...a girl from the river valley receiving the Followers' mark in Nagorónkti-Serífkti. So, you seem to be well-traveled, is that not so?"

"Yes, Your Majesty. Your humble serving girl has traveled."

The Grand Duke continued his probing comments and questions, gathering information that he needed to work out the details of Silvítya's life. She was impressed and worried by her master's talent of figuring things out about a person's life through nothing more than casual comments. His memory was excellent and he was quick to catch any contradictions in what a person was telling him. Within a very short time, and without asking her directly, the Grand Duke had reconstructed her travels: starting in Rika Héckt-nemát (through her accent), Starívktaki Móskt (through vocabulary unique to the Old Believers of the Danubian Church and a couple of references to the seminary), Sevérckt nad Gorádki (through some comments about the northern mountain region), and Sebérnekt Ris (through her correct grammar and the fact she had attended the university). She later found out he did the same with all of his concubines, practicing his skill deducing details of a person's life through clues instead of through relying on deliberately spoken words.

The Grand Duke was extremely pleased with the newest addition to his collection of girls. This one had seen many places and had experienced life from the perspective of several social groups. It was very likely he'd learn some interesting facts from her and obtain a unique view of his realm. The majority of his concubines were daughters of guild members. In a few cases, like Silvítya, they had been randomly chosen off the street, but most of them had been handed over as bribes by professional tradesmen who had run afoul of the Duchy's laws, were hopelessly in debt, or had in some way offended the Grand Duke and needed to placate him. So...the girls' backgrounds were similar: the daughters of middle-class tradesmen who had led irresponsible lives and needed to extricate themselves from legal trouble. Few of the concubines had an expansive view of the world. They had grown up in a single location and had known the same people throughout their lives. Their levels of education varied, but none had university-level training. Silvítya (if that was really her name) was different, more interesting, and potentially much more useful.

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During the first weeks of her internment in the Duke's castle, Silvítya discovered that life as a concubine consisted of much more than having sex, bathing, and sleeping. The Grand Duke wanted his women to have good etiquette and to have a basic understanding of the skills expected of any upper-class woman. When she was not with the Duke or in the bathhouse, she was with one of the Royal tutors. Over the next few months she would improve her penmanship, learn how to knit and embroider, and learn how to prepare and present upper-class meals.

Ten days went by before the kitchen staff felt that Silvítya was ready to rejoin the other concubines in the dining hall. She was extremely nervous as she sat down and the others carefully watched her eat. The women were still critical of her table etiquette, but they decided that the newcomer's manners had improved just enough that they would let her stay with them. That moment marked an important accomplishment, not just because Silvítya could eat like a woman from the upper class, but also because being accepted at the dinner table meant that she was officially accepted as part of the concubine group.

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The concubines led a strange life together, as they spent their days waiting for the bell to ring. They had to pass their time engaged in activities they could break away from at a moment's notice. They played chess and cards, practiced music and embroidery, gossiped about events and people in the castle, and groomed each other in the bath. They chatted about their families, their respective towns, food, pregnancy, and compared notes on their experiences with babies and small children. They were artificially polite to each other, determined to avoid anything that hinted at conflict or discord. They knew the matrons were watching and would be quick to exploit any disputes among the group. The obsession with politeness meant the concubines did everything they could to conform to the small culture they had created. The obsession with etiquette and conformity explained their hostility towards breaches of group protocol such as Silvítya's table manners.

Silvítya did everything she could to get along with the others. Whether or not she liked them, and regardless of whether she would have wanted to be friends with them in the outside world, for the moment the other concubines were all she had. She had to establish trust with them. Her lowly background, her travels, and her education set her apart, as did her curiosity about the world. Of the group, Silvítya was by far the most traveled and intellectual. If she couldn't travel, then she wanted to go back to reading, which was an activity most of the other women did not seem to miss. She felt that the constant conversation among the women could have been much more useful to everyone if they could be discussing educational topics and books instead of the inane trivia that filled up their days.

The detail about the other concubines that secretly grated on Silvítya was their lack of interest in anything not directly related to their daily lives. Fortunately, the newcomer had passed through the hometowns of nearly all of her companions, so at least she had an introductory conversation topic to work with. She was curious about the towns, so she questioned the others to fill in information about places that she had visited only in passing.

During her first months of internment, Silvítya gravitated towards Magdala. The spokeswoman seemed a bit smarter than the other "sisters" and was good at analyzing and explaining things. She originally was from a village south of Dagurúckt-Tók, an area where Ermin and Káloyankt had vaccinated the local population the previous year. Magdala had the "mark of the Followers" on her shoulder, which meant that one of Silvítya's lovers at that time must have vaccinated her.

"The Followers of the Ancients always fascinated me. I remember people talking about a young female medical practitioner working in the town of Dagurúckt-Tók itself, and I was hoping to talk to her...see if I could join the Cult and become like her."

"Why didn't you?"

"My grandfather. He wouldn't let me go, and I didn't find out until later. I was living in his household and he was dealing with my father's debts..."

Magdala talked about her family for a while, focusing on her parents' complete irresponsibility handling their affairs. She concluded with: "...so the Royal Guards came to my grandfather's house, looking for my father. The money-lenders wanted to take control of the house, but my grandfather offered me instead of the house. I was shocked, because I couldn't imagine my grandfather dishonoring me by offering me as collateral to save his home. But he did. And the Guards took me to the moneylenders and asked them what they wanted to do with me. I was convinced they wanted to use me for their own pleasure. However, when they decided that my appearance was very pleasing to a man's eye, they offered to sell me to the Grand Duke. The Guards agreed. The Guards paid off my father's debts, brought me to the Royal Castle, and were in turn paid off by the matrons. So...that's my story. The Grand Duke bought me from my father's money-lenders."

"Are most of the sisters' stories similar to yours?"

"Each of us has her own story...how she came to the castle. Some of us were purchased with silver, and some of us were captured. You were captured, I was purchased."

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About a month after she entered the castle, Silvítya noticed that Desislava's stomach was starting to swell. There wasn't any doubt why: the woman was pregnant. This is going to be interesting, thought Silvítya, to see how they handle pregnancies. As soon as the Grand Duke realized the concubine was pregnant, he stopped having sex with her. A few days later the castle's hair-dresser visited the concubines' quarters and braided her hair. Then Desislava left. Silvítya asked Magdala what would happen to her.

"She carries the His Majesty's seed. She will stay in the castle until she has the child. Then she'll return to her home."

"The Grand Duke will just kick her out? With a baby?"

"No, not just kick her out. His Majesty will build her a house and send her a silver piece each month. The man delivering the coin is a doctor, and he will check the child each time he visits. She will have to make her own life, but will do so on the Grand Duke's coin."

"And this happens to everyone who gets pregnant?"

"Yes, it is our Path in Life. We stay and please His Majesty until he plants his seed. Then we go home, but we continue to serve him by raising his child."

"But, even with the Duke's coin, that seems awful...to just sit in a house, alone..."

"Alone? Sister, how naïve are you? A woman favored by His Majesty and living on his coin? Many men greatly desire such a wife. She'll have her choice of men. She'll be the wife of an Army officer or a city official within a year of her return."

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A few minutes later Silvítya stood on a balcony, studying the Moon and thinking over what her companion had told her. She realized that she was much closer to achieving her teenaged dream than she had ever been before. If the Grand Duke made her pregnant, and then sent her back to her home in Rika Héckt-nemát, she'd have that nice house and nice husband she always wanted. She could return to Rika Héckt-nemát in triumph and seek revenge on that city guard who had been so cruel to her. She'd be much better off than her sister ever could be, and she'd taunt her parents for having treated her so badly. The dream, the one that had ended so badly with a bucket of stolen apples and a horrid day on the pillory, was within reach.

The strange thing about a dream or a goal is that a person can spend a lifetime pursuing it, but the moment it is within reach, one realizes that dream is no longer desired. That was what Silvítya realized, as she stood staring at the moon and thinking about her old life in Rika Héckt-nemát and a possible new life there. She no longer wanted to live in her old hometown and spend her time taunting her mother. She really had no desire to go back at all. She had moved beyond that. She didn't know what she wanted, but now she knew that she would not find it in Rika Héckt-nemát, even if she could spend the rest of her life "living on the Grand Duke's coin".

She looked under her bed and checked her supply of birth-control paste. She very grateful for Dean Fítoreckt's parting gift and would use it to prevent the Grand Duke from "planting his seed" for as long as she could. The paste would give her some time to figure out how to avoid leaving the castle burdened with the responsibility of bearing and caring for a Royal child.

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For the first time during her internment, Silvítya performed another duty she had as a concubine the day after Desislava left the group. She had to spend several afternoons in a parlor posing for two portraits. The pair of paintings were the first out of many the Grand Duke commissioned of her: in modern times there are 26 confirmed paintings portraying Silvítya alone and another 8 of her posing with a companion, housed in various museums and art collections around the country. All of the images are nude figure studies.

The Grand Duke was a generous patron of painting, but his taste in themes was limited to pictures of his women. He had two painters who worked full-time in the castle, doing nothing but painting pictures of concubines. Besides employing the two full-time painters, the ruler also provided temporary work for any reasonably-talented artist passing through the capitol. Travelling painters could count on earning some silver in Danúbikt Móskt if they paid a visit to the castle and the Grand Duke liked samples of their work.