The Girl with No Name

Chapter Twenty-Nine -- The Scribe

After delivering the sedative that would allow Oana to separate her soul from her body, Danka returned to the safe-house, changed into a workers' outfit, and left Novo Sókukt Tók. She returned to the farmhouse, packed her bucket, and went to sleep. She'd have to wait for Ernockt to return from work before departing. He had promised to help her leave the area, but he had to stay at his desk in the city councilmen's building until sunset. When Ernockt returned, he handed the stolen trial transcripts to Danka. She could look them over if she wanted, but after reading them she was to throw the papers into the stove. The transcripts were full of mistakes. When Danka pointed that out, her host responded:

"The scribe for the city guards is a total idiot. If you told him that you saw a flock of geese walking along a path, he'd put down it was ducks or chickens. So, after you're done reading, you can burn this and it won't trouble your conscience. I just figured you'd want to see it first."

After a few minutes, Danka opened the door of the stove and pushed in the report. She turned to her host.

"Now what? You said you'd help me leave."

"Yes, that's what I said. But I can't go with you. I have to go back to work tomorrow and we shouldn't be seen together. I've brought a donkey so you don't have to walk. I'll give you some letters so you can pursue your Path in Life in Rika Chorna. We need another scribe to follow events there anyway, and we're going to see if we can find a position for you with the Vice-Duke or the city council."

"So you expect me to work as a scribe and collect information for you?"

"Yes."

"That... really wasn't what I had in mind..."

"Maybe it wasn't. But we did help you with your revenge against Oana, didn't we? I risked my own position in this town so you could fulfill your final orders from Defender Dalibora. I hosted you for over a month and spent my own money buying everything you needed. I do expect you to repay me. I don't want any silver, and I wouldn't accept it, even if you offered. What I need from you, and expect from you, is your assistance."

"And you expect me to ride to Rika Chorna, by myself, with letters addressed to strangers, and assume nothing will happen to me along the way."

"Nothing will happen to you, because you'll be wearing your nun outfit. A nun outfit is the same in the Vice-Duchy as a collar would be in the western valley. People here don't bother nuns."

"A True Believers' nun? You expect me to travel disguised as a True Believers' nun?"

"And what's so surprising about that? You've walked all over the western valley wearing nothing but your collar. In the eastern valley, the only way a woman can safely move about alone is to be dressed as a nun. Same goal, different outfit."

Danka reluctantly put on the nun's dress. It was unbelievably hot and cumbersome. However, outside it would protect her against the cold more than almost anything else she could wear. Ernockt handed her a prayer book and protocol manual so she could learn to act like a real nun. Among other restrictions, whenever a nun was moving around and not carrying anything, she had to keep her hands together in prayer. Also, she was not allowed to look at the face of any man. She cringed at the ridiculous protocol, but realized the rules would help keep her real identity a secret, assuming she could remember to follow them.

Danka was not looking forward to the trip, because she had never traveled in November. She had spent plenty of time outside in various places over the winter, but never actually journeyed to a new destination. However, her traveling conditions certainly could be worse. She'd have a donkey to ride on and carry her belongings, and the heavy nun habit, consisting of an under-dress, public dress, and winter cape would protect her against the cold.

Danka left the following morning as soon as there was a hint of light in the pre-dawn sky. The temperature had gone below freezing the night before, making the ground solid and covering the landscape with a layer of frost. She traveled along the main road, which, combined with the fact she was riding, sped up her trip considerably. She had to remember not to look back at any men who were looking at her. Occasionally a pair or group of thuggish-looking men approached her, but as soon as they saw she was wearing a nun's dress, they moved on. The rules for overnight stays were similar for a nun in the Vice-Duchy as they were for a penitent in the western valley. The nun approached a church of her choosing, knelt until a Clergy member approached her, and was given a meal and a place to sleep. The only disadvantage of the arrangement was having to sing and pray with any other women who happened to be in the church at that time. Danka was hard-pressed to learn enough True Believers' hymns to avoid raising suspicions.

She spent a week traveling towards Novo Sumy Ris. When the town came into sight, she was tempted to go in and return to the church, but decided against taking that risk. She took a road bypassing the town and headed east towards her destination, the city of Rika Chorna.

Danka arrived just in time. As she entered Rika Chorna, snow began falling. It was the beginning of the winter's first real snowstorm, and it would be particularly severe, dropping knee-deep snow onto the central part of the Vice Duchy. She knew from experience that towns closer to the foothills, such as Novo Sumy Ris and Novo Sókukt Tók, along with the hilly roads that connected them, would receive even deeper snow. So...that was it for the year as far as traveling or trading were concerned. The roads were blocked and only the most determined or fool-hardy would venture out from wherever they happened to be when the first snow came down.

Rika Chorna, given its name for the same reason the province carried that name, was the second-largest city in the Duchy with more than 40,000 people living there. It also was the seat of the region's ruler, Vice-Duke Petroickt. Like Novo Sumy Ris, the regional capitol boasted a large church that was an exact replica of the cathedral in the original Sumy Ris. Danka recognized replicas of other old buildings from the former capitol, plus copies of less fortunate ancient buildings that had since been torn down by the Ottomans over the past two centuries. She shook her head, still wondering why, after 250 years, people were so obsessed with the old southern capitol. The Grand Duke had nearly suffered a disastrous defeat because of his desire for Sumy Ris. For the exact same reason, the Defenders did suffer a disastrous defeat. Out of three cities in the Vice-Duchy she had visited so far, Danka had seen replicas of the Sumy Ris cathedral in two of them. The replicas of the structures in the lost southern capitol surrounded the church, but the rest of the city had standard European architecture and reminded Danka of her hometown Rika Héckt-nemát. There was no city wall around Rika Chorna, nor around any other town in the Vice-Duchy.

Next to the church was the governor's palace, which was by far the most significant building in the city. It was larger and more ostentatious than the Grand Duke's castle. Unlike the castle, which was built first as a defensive structure, the palace did not have high walls and clearly was not meant to serve any military purpose. It was built solely as a seat of government and a luxury residence. Gardens surrounded it and there was a large courtyard containing a stone bathing area for summer swimming.

Danka examined her letters and found a name and house description for her contact. She led the donkey to a two-story residence that was behind the governor's palace. A woman in a merchants' guild dress answered the door and asked the "nun" where she had come from.

"From a farmhouse, right outside Novo Sókukt Tók"

"Very well, sister. You may enter."

The residence was a safe-house belonging to Ernockt's intelligence-gathering network. It had a basement with a secret passageway leading to another safe-house on the same block, so it was easy for anyone entering one residence to exit the other and evade surveillance. Inside the house there were two other "nuns" and a couple of older men dressed in traders' outfits. Outside the residence, the "nuns" couldn't talk to the men, but inside the protocol was more typical of the western valley. The men were in charge, but the women could speak freely to them and offer their opinions and advice. One of the men went out through the other house to deal with the donkey. He brought in Danka's bucket and then took the animal to a stable outside town. Meanwhile, one of the women, who introduced herself as Sister Zánktia, told Danka to bathe and issued her a clean nun's outfit. Danka drew a frustrated breath when she saw the dress. Apparently she would remain a "nun". So, the disguise was not just for traveling.

While eating dinner, the two "merchants" and the two "nuns" questioned Danka about her general knowledge of the world and the Duchy. They were impressed by what she knew and all the places she had visited. They asked her to provide writing samples and practice taking dictation, then show them what she knew about mathematics and using the abacus. They told her to sing and pray to see what her voice sounded like. Like everyone else, her hosts were bewildered by the contrast between Danka's lower-class accent and her expansive knowledge of academic and intellectual subjects. In spite of a decade of wandering and everything that had happened to her, Danka was never able to change her intonation and the way she pronounced her words. One of the men commented:

"It's fortunate nuns don't talk much. Listening to your voice is not at all pleasant."

Danka came very close to tearing off her nun outfit and storming out. Dressing up as a True Believers' nun was absolutely the last disguise she wanted to wear, and now, on top of everything else, that idiot had the nerve to insult her speech. However, she had long since learned to never let her temper get the best of her. It was heavily snowing outside, her hosts had taken back their donkey, she was in a strange city with no money, and she did need to return the favor Ernockt had done for her. So, she had to hold her tongue, at least for the moment.

Danka's hosts gave her the chance to sleep and did not force her to go back out in the snowstorm. She slept alone in a bed with heavy curtains surrounding it and didn't wake up until it was already light outside. The room was bitterly cold, so she was torn between wanting to stay under the blankets and being forced to get up and use the chamber pot, thus alerting the others she was awake. She was able to resist her bladder for a few minutes, giving herself time to think about her situation and how best to deal with it. She began to wonder if Ernockt really was the one who wanted her to go to Rika Chorna. Was it possible he sent her because he was acting under orders from the Prophets in the Great Temple? As for his group of conspirators, she didn't know anything apart from what he had told her. They could be very powerful or not powerful at all. For the moment it would be better to assume the former and that she had no hope of leaving Rika Chorna without their permission.

As soon as Danka finished a late breakfast, Zánktia took her to the main church to show her around and introduce her as a new nun to the Clergy. She had to endure constant whispered reminders of how she should behave as a nun and the complicated prayer protocol she needed to use inside a True Believers' place of worship. She would have to spend the rest of the month learning hymns and Latin phrases, when to cross herself (which seemed to be continuously), and the rituals surrounding faction's weird obsession with the execution of Jesus of Nazareth. The True Believers seemed to really be worked up about that execution.

The True Believers in the Vice-Duchy were even more removed from Danubian traditions than their counterparts in the western valley. One example was the difference between the universal acceptance of collars for Public Penance by both the Old Believers and the True Believers in the west, and the rejection of collared penance in the east. Another example was celibacy. In the western valley the True Believers "encouraged" their clergy members to be celibate, but the rule could not really be enforced. In the east, the priests had to be celibate. Another example was the priests' focus on the deities themselves. In the west doctrine focused on the Lord-Creator and his enemy Beelzebub the Destroyer. In the east there was much more emphasis on praying to the Virgin Mother and the executed son.

Celibate nuns did not exist at all in the west. In the east there was the convent in Novo Sókukt Tók and multiple schools located in various cities. During her stay in Novo Sókukt Tók, Danka had learned that for any girl whose parents were not willing to pay for a private tutor, the only way to become literate was to seek education through the True Believers. The True Believer nuns ran several schools for girls in the Vice-Duchy, but they "strongly encouraged" any girl entering their schools to become a nun. That "encouragement" became a formal requirement if the girl wanted to learn anything more apart from basic literacy. In the western valley, most guilds included teaching their members' daughters how to read and write as part of their services. The Old Believers ran schools for non-guild children and taught boys and girls alike, although the classes were separated by sex. So, in the western valley most women had some knowledge of reading and writing, while in the Vice-Duchy most women were completely illiterate.

Having to learn the protocol for a nun made Danka think about her upbringing in Rika Héckt-nemát. The parish in her hometown was controlled by the True Believers, or at least it was in 1750, the year she left. Thus, she already was vaguely familiar the main points of the True Believers' doctrine. Her family didn't pay much attention to the Lord-Creator or the executed son, but they frequently prayed to the Virgin Mother for favors such as making their chickens lay eggs or making their vegetable garden grow. The town's finer residents dismissed the Síluckts and their neighbors as worthless illiterates, so they didn't bother taking the time to make the laborers understand the more complicated doctrine coming out of the Christian Bible.

As Danka looked at all the Virgin Mother statues displayed around the church in Rika Chorna, her thoughts drifted to Lilith. In her mind the two deities, the Virgin Mother and Lilith, were both foreign goddesses. The goddess who actually had character and did things and fought back when the Lord-Creator mistreated her was a subject of her admiration. The goddess who did nothing apart from having a kid, without even bothering to have sex like a normal human being, was a subject of her derision. As for the Son of Man and execution that was the focus of the entire True Believers' religion, Danka thought: so what? People are executed all the time. Why was being crucified in Jerusalem any worse than hanging on an impalement hook in the Kingdom of the Moon? Why was one man's execution more important than another's? Of course, she knew the answers to most of those questions, having read the Christian Bible. But those answers made no sense to someone who was not, and never would be, a Christian. She considered herself a Follower of the Ancients, and if she was the last Follower in the entire Realm of the Living, then so be it. Zánktia told her they understood her distaste for the True Believer's doctrines and practices. Her hosts reminded her that their mission was to undermine the True Believers by collecting information and providing it to the Grand Duke and the Prophets in Danúbikt Móskt.

Danka responded that she'd do whatever she could to undermine the True Believers, because her hatred of their doctrine and beliefs was visceral.

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Danka moved out of the safe-house at the beginning of December. Her handlers felt she was ready to begin the next phase of training for her clandestine life by living among the city's real nuns. Zánktia took her to a house adjacent to the church to live with 17 other women, all nuns who had gone through the True Believers' school system and ordained at the convent in Novo Sókukt Tók. Danka stood out among her companions because she was an outsider and much more attractive than any of the others. She was 23, but she looked considerably younger because she had been administering herself doses of Babáckt Yaga's mushroom tea over the past seven years. The others looked her over with suspicion and jealousy. On the first night at her new home, Danka had to endure a sermon by the leading nun talking about the danger of physical beauty and how it led to carnal sin.

The nuns in Rika Chorna divided themselves into two groups: scribes and instructors. The younger women spent their days transcribing endless hymn sheets and copying or preparing church correspondence such as letters and directives. The clergy from the main church kept meticulous records of all happenings, which the Bishop wanted transcribed in clear, attractive handwriting on fine parchment. Danka frequently transformed a hastily-written note into a finely-written letter with improved vocabulary, converting it into a document that could be sent off and make the author look good to his reader. Meanwhile, the older and more trusted members of the group spent their days in a less grueling manner, giving literacy classes to local girls in a house adjacent to the one where they lived.

Danka took notes on anything she felt was important and compiled them into a sheet of parchment written with the smallest handwriting possible to conserve space and paper. She kept the reports hidden in a special pocket inside the lining of her dress. She read and memorized as much as she could of her companions' writings, making notes and passing them to her contact. She spent her sparse spare time reading every book in the house, although unfortunately most of the material was about theology and True Believers' doctrine. She received plenty of insight about the workings of the diocese and its relationship with the Roman Church, but not much else. Every few days Zánktia passed by with a delivery of washed linens and Danka slipped her the notes she had collected over the past few days. Usually there was a small paper handed to her in return, containing comments on what information was useful and what information was not, along with requests for additional notes on specific topics or persons.

Danka's handlers seemed especially interested in learning about movements within the clergy, knowing who was traveling to different locations and why. During the winter there was not much movement, but Zánktia wanted Danka to practice providing information on any traveling to prepare her to make comprehensive reports when the True Believers moved about in the summer. Danka sighed. Next summer. She couldn't imagine spending an entire summer in her horrible outfit sitting at a desk in a room full of insufferable, hostile, ugly, companions. She'd have to figure out how to extricate herself.

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Danka spent four months transcribing documents. Throughout the entire winter she never left the residence, except to go to the church for daily prayers and hymn practice. Danka's fellow scribes did not talk much to each other and talked even less to her. They sang and prayed as a group, but spent their meals and their duties in silence. She slept in a room with five other women, but never conversed with them.

The room was cold and usually Danka was so tired that she fell asleep immediately. However, about once a week she had insomnia and would spend hours lying awake, thinking about Ilmátarkt. She didn't have much time to think about him or truly grieve over his death during the past year, but lying alone in that cold bed, tormented by loneliness and sexual frustration, she realized how much she missed her late husband. She could have enjoyed a happy life with him, had the Destroyer not taken him away. He satisfied her sexually, treated her with respect, and challenged her intellect. Also, in his own manner, detached and intellectual as it was, he did love her. She could not share the pain of being a widow with anyone, so she had to grieve for him in silence, by staring into the darkness and allowing tears to run down her cheeks.