Page 8 of The Good Daughter

Or indeed if there was anyone up ahead.

Pushing past a sheet that must have been incredibly dirty before washing if this represented an improvement, I came face to chest with a big man, with so little hair on his head and so much around his chin that it looked as if his face had been turned upside down. He leered a gap-toothed smile and made a grab for me. I pushed Uther to one side, ducked, and spun my leg out, sending the man tumbling to the ground.

“Come on!” I grabbed Uther and pushed on through the washing.

“I think you should see if that man is alright,” objected Uther, from behind. “I think you might have tripped him.”

As the washing lines came to an end, I saw two more men coming our way. If I’d been alone, I would have gone up and over the roofs, but with Uther here…

“Wait here!”

I hauled myself up onto the sloped incline of the roof and scrambled up it, Uther standing in the alley, looking lost and alone.

“You get her, I’ll get him!” said one of the men.

I could hear my pursuer struggling to mount the roof—something that’s harder than it looks. At the apex of the roof, I turned and, to the surprise of the man who had just managed to get up, I skidded back down towards him. The man went flying as I hit him and we both fell into the alley. The man hit his friend, and I got a soft landing on both of them.

“You really are most accident prone,” commented Uther, as I jumped off the groaning men, grabbed his hand, and continued on.

***

After leaving my home five years ago, I’d initially wondered where on earth I could go, but then I thought of my Aunt Leah.

Leah was my late mother’s sister, though the two had been almost as different from each other as I was from my sisters. Unwilling to bend the knee to any ruler, Leah had gone to the mountains and carved out her own small nation, largely of women, getting what they could from the land and stealing everything else. It was a wild life and a tough one, but it was one place I knew I could go where my father would not follow. Though Leah lived outside his law and thumbed her nose at royal authority, she was a living link to my mother, Cara, and my father would not move against her.

“It can’t have been an easy trip here,” my aunt observed when I arrived.

“No,” I admitted.

“However hard it was, living here will be harder.”

“I understand.”

Aunt Leah smiled. “No, you don’t. You can’t. You’ve lived a pampered and cosseted life. We don’t allow freeloaders here. Everyone pulls their weight. Everyone works and everyone fights.”

“Fights?” I wasn’t averse to working, but I prided myself on not being a violent person.

“You are a woman alone in the wilds,” said Aunt Leah, starkly. “Whether you wish it or not, one day you will need to know how to fight. Men will come for you. Someone will want to rob you of your money or your food, others will want to rob you of something more precious—which I assume you still possess?”

The whole room laughed at my blank face.

Aunt Leah looked more kindly at me. “Your virginity child. You’re sixteen, so it could go either way, but…”

“No,” I shook my head. “I mean, yes. I mean… whichever is the ‘I haven’t been robbed yet’ one.”

Aunt Leah nodded. “That’s another thing. At your age, anything in trousers looks good. Your desires outstrip your good sense. We do not permit men here frivolously. I don’t forbid my women from going off to find male companionship—for whateverthatis worth—but they don’t bring men back here. The only men here are those who were born here, and they know their place.”

I nodded. “I understand.”

My interactions with men to that point in my life had been very limited by my status. I lived an observed life; there was always a maid, a guard, a tutor, or a companion, all of whom had their first allegiance to my father, not to me. And my father, like so many fathers, wanted to keep thinking of me as his little girl for as long as possible. There had been a few instructive fumblings and exchanged kisses with boys of my own age and of noble birth, but those had mostly been children playing. Since reaching an age when other things started to happen, I’d been carefully closeted to make sure that it happened at as slow a rate as possible.

The upshot was that, although I was now free to pursue boys, I was profoundly ignorant for someone of my age, and a little nervous of what was entailed.

Five years living in my Aunt’s mountain community taught me many things. It taught me self-reliance and the value of hard work. It taught me how to hold a sword, throw a punch, and climb a rope. It taught me how to plant potatoes to obtain the best crop, how to make and mend clothes, how to ride, and how to enjoy a wider range of literature than I was permitted back home. At the urging of some of the other girls of my own age, it also taught me some things about men, up to and including the practical side of things that my father would have happily deferred forever. I was not ‘robbed’ of my virginity, I gave it up willingly. And then wondered what the fuss was about.

What I hadn’t been taught by the mountain life or the other girls was why any of this was important. They hadn’t taught me a reason to chase men or even desire them. They were… fine, but nothing special. I hadn’t learned to love.

***

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