Raptor by Gary Jennings Page B

accused me of being an impostor among the brothers—and what he had found between my legs evidently confirmed that accusation—so I had to heed his warning that, if anyone else learned of it, I should be expelled in disgrace from St. Damian’s.
    When that sordid business was discovered, and I was expelled, I had first to undergo Dom Clement’s sad and compassionate but searching inquisition:
    “This is extremely difficult for me, Thorn, my—daughter. Any imputation of sin to a female, or any female’s voluntary confession of sin, is customarily made to Domina Aetherea of St. Pelagia’s, or to one of her deaconesses. But I must ask, and you must tell me truthfully. Were you a virgin, Thorn, when this nastiness commenced?”
    I must have been as red in the face as he was, but I tried to make a coherent reply. “Why… I… I hardly know. It is only just now, Nonnus Clement, that you have begun to call me a female. I am so… so astonished and bewildered to know that I am one… Well, Brother Peter also told me so, but I could not believe it… Since I never have thought of myself as a female, Nonnus Clement, how could I ever have wondered whether I was a virgin or not?”
    Dom Clement looked away from me, and said to the empty air, “Let us make this easier on us both, Thorn. Do me the favor of telling me that you were not a virgin.”
    “If that is what you wish, Nonnus. But I truly do not know if—”
    “Please. Just say it.”
    “Very well, Nonnus. I was not a virgin.”
    He breathed a sigh of relief. “And I shall accept your word. You see, if you had been a virgin, and had allowed Brother Peter to take advantage of you, and this had come to my knowledge, I should have had to sentence you to a hundred lashes of punishment.”
    I swallowed loudly, and nodded silently.
    “Now, another question. Did you take pleasure in the sin you have been committing?”
    “Again, Nonnus Clement, I… I hardly know what to reply. What pleasure is to be found in that sin? I cannot be sure whether I found any or not.”
    The abbot coughed and went red once more. “I am not intimately acquainted with any of the venereal sins, but I have it on good report that you would recognize the pleasure if you did experience it. And the intensity of the pleasure taken in any sin is a reliable measure of that sin’s gravity. Also, the more irresistible one’s impulse to repeat and to reexperience that pleasure, the more certain one can be that it is at the devil’s instigation.”
    For the first time in this colloquy, I spoke firmly. “Both the sin and the repetition were at the demand of Brother Peter.” I added, “All that I know of pleasure, Nonnus… well, pleasure is what I feel when… akh, when I bathe in the cascades… or when I see a juika-bloth take wing…”
    The abbot looked even more troubled, and bent forward to peer narrowly at me, and asked, “Have you ever, perchance, seen omens in the flowing of those waters? Or in the flight of those birds?”
    “Omens? No, I have never seen omens in anything, Nonnus Clement. It never occurred to me to seek for any.”
    “It is well,” he said, obviously again relieved. “This affair is already complicated enough. Have the goodness now, Thorn, to take yourself out of sight of the brothers for the remainder of the day, and sleep tonight in the stable’s hayloft. After Vigil tomorrow, I will escort you to the chapel for absolution.”
    “Ja, Nonnus. But may I ask…? You said I risked being punished with the lash. What of Brother Peter, niu?”
    “Akh, ja, he will be punished, never fear. Not so severely as in the case of your having been a virgin. But he will be confined and made to do lengthy penance with the Computus.”
    I went meekly off to the stable, as bidden, but I was harboring an unchristian resentment that Peter should be so lightly dealt with. The Computus is the treatise dealing with the calculations of the sun’s and moon’s movements that determine the