Chapter 1 - Mary

 

His handsome olive face was twisted with the ferocity of his anger, the black eyes that could in other circumstances draw her into their soft and endearing embrace were flinty, glittering with the intensity of his fury.

"What did I tell you?" he screamed, leaning over her, close enough that spittle sprayed on to her upturned face. "I tell you a thousand times - a thousand times: when we're married you don't ever, ever look at another man, not when you live in my country. It is my honour!" He slapped his chest. "Honour! And we are married three months." His voice went up an octave. "Three months ... and I see you watching the men at the river with lustful eyes!"

"I ... I was just looking out of the window," she stammered. "I didn't know ..."

"It is not an excuse!" he shouted, slamming his hand on to the arm of the sofa she cowered on. "If you look out of the window and see them, you look away. But I watched you! You gazed at them! Don't lie! You compared them to me! You shame me!"

" I didn't!" she wailed, thoroughly cowed by the sheer intensity of the anger. "I didn't!"

"You English whore! In England you told me how much you love me, how you can't live without me. You vow in the sacred ceremony to honour and obey me and bring me no shame. I give you my name, my honour, my wealth! And this is how you repay me! Slut!"

"Please, Estvan, I ..."

"Don't speak my name, whore!" He towered over her, trembling in his rage as much as she was in her fear. He'd never been like this in England; there, he'd been charming, urbane, generous, loving. Anything but this raving maniac screaming these imaginary offences at her. "Adak!" he yelled.

Adak was their ... she called him handyman; Estvan something else, a traditional name here in Aldarka. She didn't like the man or the way he looked at her sideways, always slyly, licking his lips as if in anticipation. "Don't ..." she began.

He whirled on her, hand raised to strike. "Don't speak to me, creature!"

"Estvan, pl ...."

"Silence!" he screamed, his voice almost cracking. He rattled something at her, she looked at him, uncomprehending, becoming more frightened by the second. She'd learned a few words of Aldar, usually in their love-making, but she understood not a word of that. He must have seen her mystification. "Keep you voice for yourself and speak to me with your screams. Adak! Ah!"

The burly figure of the servant - in Aldarka, she'd learned, that word went far deeper than in Britain - entered the room. He was about thirty-five, she supposed: more squat and swarthy that most Aldarkans, who were generally a taller, stately and proud-looking people with light olive complexions. He seemed to take in the scene at a glance, especially after a few words in their own language from Estvan, at which he looked at Mary with an evil grin spreading over his face. It was as if he'd known all along that something like this was going to happen. Suddenly, she felt sick.

"Did you hear, whore?" Estvan screamed. His anger hadn't diminished; if anything, it had increased. It was as if telling Adak had set the seal on something that was now set in irrevocable motion. "I told him to bring a kantara and Metoria. I will chastise your flesh and spirit, whore, in the Aldarkan way."

She began to cry. "Estvan ...."

"Silence! Cry if you must! There will be many more before this day closes! I will cleanse you, slut, if I make your flesh bleed to do it!"

Mary's thoughts were a terrified jumble. What had brought on this terrible outburst? What was a kantara? She knew Metoria: Adak's daughter, a sultry, dark-eyed girl two or three years short of Mary's twenty-four. She was supposed to be the housemaid, but spent most of her time out in the yard talking to young men from the village. When Mary had chastised her for poor and indolent work, she'd received a sneer and an angry flash from those dark eyes. She wasn't sure what the girl had said to her on the occasion, but she thought that one of the words was 'English' and the expression was said in a way that made it clear that the other wasn't a compliment. Why did Estvan want her here? She risked a look; he was gazing at the door; his anger seemed to have abated a little.

"Estvan!" she wailed. "Please, wh ...?" Her voice trailed trailed off as his head turned. He didn't scream or shout, though his chest still heaved from the effort and passion he'd expended. But now there was a new twist to his lips and a look in his eyes of such glittering malice that it shocked her into silence. Far better him screaming than looking at her like that!

She'd only ever seen him angry once before: in that Aldarkan restaurant just off Leicester Square a few days before he'd proposed to her. Two waiters had been talking in Aldarkan and suddenly he was on his feet, fists crashing on to the table. Fortunately they hadn't been served or the wine glasses, at least, would have been on the floor. As it was, she jumped in shock as he began to berate the men in a furious, low-pitched, almost hissing tirade. As it had gone on, the faces of both men had gone grey; they had trembled. At the end, they scuttled off like frightened mice.

It had excited her then, this display of mastery by what she was already thinking of as 'her man'. He sat, the anger dying in his eyes as she'd gazed at him adoringly.

"Lower-class scum," he snarled, almost to himself. Then he'd smiled at her, an expression that wiped away all traces of anger. He'd reached for her hands, taking both in his. "They are nothing but peasants," he said. "Ill-bred scum who should not speak of their betters unless they first go to their knees."

The inference was clearly that he, Estvan, was one of their betters. That had thrilled her, too, despite the fact that the very concept went against all her sociologist teachings. But then sociologist teaching was all very well, in theory; it was when you got out into the estates and started finding out just what sort of people the poor, misunderstood and down-trodden really were that you began to have doubts. Especially about those overwhelmingly confident people who spent their time 'conceptualising' and inventing new tongue-twisters to describe the theory of the week. She didn't think any of them had ever come across a drunken man in vest and underpants, penis hanging out of the slit, being invited to 'step in for a quickie, you cracker.'.

Estvan had come from a different world, it seemed, a romantic, mysterious, exciting world. She hadn't realised just how different it would turn out to be. It was, in fact, so fundamentally different from anything in her experience that 'culture shock' didn't start to describe it. It began with the land: it was rugged, predominately brown, rather than green. Towns were few, small, grimy and undistinguished, so 'out in the country' had no meaning: the whole country was country, in effect. The main living unit, as she thought of it with tatters of sociology, was the village and that was no more than a collection of families performing basic tasks. A cluster of villages in close proximity made a community presided over by a hereditary hetman; something like a lord of the manor, only with infinitely greater powers, apparently.

When she'd arrived, she'd been greeted by a crowd, all male; the women, she saw, were at windows and doors, trying to be unobtrusive yet still wanting a view. Estvan had taken her by the hand and had paraded her up and down in front of them, declaiming to much applause, taking the form of a clicking noise with the tongue. En masse, it sounded like a horde of crickets. She didn't know what he'd said, but she could recognise the looks some of them gave her, innocent and naive as she was. It seemed that he was boasting about her assets as a wife, in some considerable detail.

None of it was true: she'd been brought up very strictly and had led a sheltered life. She'd been a virgin for their marriage bed, much to Estvan's apparent delight. But that's where she found most of the difficulty: in their bed; she loved him dearly, but she simply couldn't bring herself to accept, let alone do, some of the things he demanded of her. Revolting things, like taking his penis in her mouth! He'd been disappointed, but after the first week or two had stopped asking, to her immense relief.

With that background, she'd tried to settle down to her new life. Which hadn't been easy to accept either. She was not allowed out of the house alone: two men, both carrying rifles, must accompany her at all times. And she must, on the diminishing occasions when she went to the village, wear a thick, long skirt and head scarf pulled across her face: it was almost Arabic. And in no circumstances was she ever to speak to man or allow her eyes to dwell on one.

And that's what had started this: as good as confined to the house, she would gaze out at the river and watch the slow, old-fashioned boats chug past on their way ... where? It was the only thing that kept her from going mad with boredom. Except that today a gang of men from the village were repairing the crude flood defences of the bank, stripped to the waist to do the job. And Estvan had walked in.