Every fourth-day they all marched in procession to the house of religion and there was a service, not like those in the Dossolan churches, with their flowers and music, but merely a discourse, such as Lalette had first heard at the conventicle in Netznegon, with everybody embracing each other afterward, and prayers of grace pronounced by an Initiate. This took place at noon; after the service, no more work was done on these days.
After dinner and on the free afternoons, all were at liberty except for such matters as personal laundry. Most of the girls walked two and two for a while in the garden, where tall alleys of hollyhocks divided the vegetable plots on which some of the Myonessae labored during the day. Going on, out into the street was not forbidden, but not encouraged. Neither—as Lalette quickly discovered—was it very pleasant, for although these people of Mancherei had no badges of status, which at first seemed a very strange thing, everybody seemed to know at once that she was one of the sisterhood. This was all right as to older people, but in the half-twilight, young men would call out to her, or what was worse, sidle alongside her on the pave and try to make conversation, or offer a glass of wine.
She found their insinuation so infuriating that the second time this happened, with the fellow almost directly making an insinuation, only the memory of Tegval kept her from putting a witchery on him then and there. Dame Quasso had been walking in the garden that night. As Lalette came hurrying through the gate, she looked so long and intently that it seemed she must somehow have caught part of the Initiates’ trick of thought-reading, and to Lalette’s other troubles was added the fear of being known for a murderess.
On this night of all, the blonde Nanhilde would choose to come to her room for a talk, babbling against the clerks of account, who had allowed her far less than she deserved for some broideries she had done; “—and they gave ’Zina just double my price. I know what it is; she slips out of here on fourth-days and gets drunk with some of those clerks and lets them do anything they want. She’s awful.”
Lalette (upset, and wanting to talk about anything but this); “But how can she keep the mattern from knowing about it?”
“Oh, she is careful. A girl has to be in this place. She always gets back before bedtime, and her sister in town says she spends the afternoons there.”
Lalette sighed. “I thought, when I came here—”
Nanhilde said; “What did you expect to be different?”
Lalette’s hands fluttered. “Is there no way we can escape from the overwhelming lusts of men?”
“A girl in the Myonessae can do very well if she does not fear herself.”