The Pearl Crucible - A Dardana Fenek Mystery - RASKOV STILL (Part 2)

(Chapter 16, Part Two)

(I’m not one for trigger warnings at all, but people are just passing through all innocent from their crypto articles and gardening columns and light banter, so I’ll just mention before you start to idly read this that Miss Raskov has a difficult story to tell about Mist’ Petro Fortunato committing assaults on women employed in the State Gallery. - Ed.)

“Ensign-Captain,” she said, “you appear to be aware that my mother is Metis Fortunato, and my younger half-sister is Alkimila Fortunato.”

“Yes,” he said. “I’ve heard this. I was raised in Helioshad also. I knew about it when I was still in upper-school, in fact. Everyone knew Hasan Raskov and his wife were raising you. It was no secret up there, though you dont’ hear any talk about it here in the city.”

“I’ve not met you to know you,” she said, studying his face. “But you’re not unfamiliar. I know of the Mardonioses. Banking?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, I know your face, Ensign-Captain.—Hasan Raskov acknowledged me as his daughter,” she said, “even though I am illegitimate. My mother,” she said bitterly, “has not acknowledged me even though I came out of her body. She had me, and the midwife offered me, and she refused me. She sent me to live with Father and has never spoken a word to me all my life.”

She put her hand to her forehead, her fingers still trembling. “I’m surprised she simply didn’t go riding every day and fall off horses or fall downstairs to get rid of me. Find a bent midwife or state nurse, perhaps. I’m sure she regrets the day she ever pulled up her skirts for Hasan Raskov.

“The poor little Raskov girl, everyone pities her, no mother, not her. Father’s kind, yes, he is, but everyone wonders what will become of that poor child. It was a burden,” she said angrily, “from an early age. Did either of you have any such burden to deal with?”

“I’m happy to say I did not,” Mardonios said quietly.

“I did not have that kind of difficulty,” I said evasively, not feeling incredibly sorry for her.

“He loved me—loves me,” she went on. “Raskov patro, that is. His wife—my maman—has always been kind too, even though he was unfaithful to her and got me on Metis Fortunato’s body. She should have hated me. I would’ve. He spared me nothing for what I wanted, and my half-brother and half-sister were also kind to me, the more so, I am sure, because I stood to inherit nothing but the quarter-part that either of them will receive. A little pocket estate outside Helioshad and a couple of tiny villages, nothing to get a good marriage with. And I am not even aristoi, even though my father is—and the man who married my mother is—and my mother is. I am only epistarch,” she said bitterly.

“So I went to Academy, Ensign-Captain, and meant it, unlike Alkimila, who played at it and does her ridiculous alleged science as art. Alkimila, whom I must curtsey to and call Miss Fortunato! I earned a degree, my master’s grade, in materials science, with an emphasis on preservation of antiquated structures and artifacts. So I got to come here. Father helped place me, and then that man was appointed the Director by the Director of the Ministry of Culture.”

She bit her lip. “You must imagine the day when we were introduced to him, the staff. Miss Azzopardo … myself … the Demi-Sub-Directors of each department of the Gallery. Nunzia was all but shaking with rage.”

Mardonios glanced at me, raising an eyebrow. “Because she was not appointed.”

She nodded.

“But as a woman, she could not have expected it.”

“Oh, her womb would have made it impossible to decide how to run the institution, Ensign-Captain,” she said sarcastically. “Every month, she would have run back and forth slashing the paintings and flinging blood on them. Yes, that’s self-evident.”

Mardonios did not reply.

“One would hope that in the capital, at least, we could pretend to be more broad-minded. But no, despite an excellent interview which they begrudged her, the Director of the Ministry named Mist’ Fortunato, who was inferior in every way to her and even, dare I say, to me.”

“It was my understanding he has—had a good reputation in the field of the arts.”

“He certainly does,” she said ironically. “It’s the penis that adds the extra touch.”

Against my will, I now felt amused and empathetic. The complaints and difficulties of citizens don’t ordinarily carry much weight with me: but women of all sorts have similar problems.

Barsina’s eye glinted at the cynical jest, too. You don’t go to a whore—or a former whore—to find someone sympathetic to a man whose pride is being put down.

For a moment, we were all three together inside, and Mardonios was outside, and he sensed it.

His cheeks got red, and he cleared his throat. “When was this, exactly?”

“Before Festivalo of ’19. The old director retired before the end of the year, and we got to go on holiday knowing Fortunato would be our superior in a few days.”

That would have been hardly more than a month after a cold, hungry Dardana Fenek arrived in Aulis, scooping buns out of dustbins to keep from starving.

“What happened then?” the ensign-captain said. “He knew who you were, I assume?”

“I should say he did. He avoided me. He neither spoke to me nor acknowledged me. I’m Miss Azzopardo’s assistant, so I did not report to him nor see him much. I was fine with that.”

“Your feelings towards him?”

“Distaste,” she said. “My parental anger is directed at my mother. He was nothing to me, no one I knew. I felt him unqualified. He knew art; he donated to the arts and was familiar with them. He should not have been the Director.”

“What did he do as Director?”

Her lip curled. “Oh, you should ask. The usual. He got started quickly. He made changes. He moved exhibits around. He made advances on Miss Azzopardo. She rebuffed him, and then he raped her on her own desk, she told me, while I was on another floor. Little things like that. Before the month was out, in fact.”

Mardonios looked shocked. “Why did you and she not go to the militia? Press charges?”

She looked at him with contempt. “Why indeed,” she said angrily. “Why, indeed, Mist’ Ensign-Captain.” She looked at me as if to say, Listen to him talk!

I shook my head. Again, he was on the outside, off-balance, cut off into ignorance by her non-answer.

We’d all three been there. A man had never asked Barsina before a bend-over in her life; that was her natural day-to-day, hour-to-hour for a few years. You wouldn’t expect much else out of a brothel contract, would you? At least she was socially useful for Mama Solene, who had good money from her and generously trickled a few obols back to Barsina’s palm.

And me? Well, a woman like me’s gone through a few things, and no man had ever once asked me any more than Barsina was asked. Most of my life, I never complained, because you didn’t, did you? It largely stopped after getting to the big city—not quite what you’d expect, that, is it? I guess when you start dressing respectable and stop staying, Yes, Sir, every sentence, men step back a moment and at least think twice.

I understood why Miss Azzopardo didn’t see a point in involving militia, but I still didn’t understand why she was so stuck to her art that she would have endured something she could have avoided by going home.

Or maybe I did.

Back to the interview. I could tell the ensign-captain was out of countenance, so I chose to save him.

“How often did this go on, Miss Raskov?” I asked.

Her eyes swiveled to me.

“He let her have several days to think about what he’d done, I suppose. He had no fear. She’s unmarried, and an epistarch whilst he was aristoi. Then, when she confronted him, he suggested that she was a poor fit for her office. Perhaps she’d like to work in the collections storage better. Or leave. Naturally, she was horrified. Everything was ruined. She’d be in a dark place in her soul and away from the greatest beauty on the planet.”

She wiped her eyes suddenly. “He then suggested she become more cooperative and keep her position.”

“And that’s what happened?”

“Yes,” she told me. “So she became. He was then less violent unless he was in the mood for such. Several times over several days at first, until he was sure of her or was sated, and then every week, or more than every week, or a couple of times a month. Then daily. As the mood took him.”

“And this went on almost two and a half years.”

“Less, happily for her, as the second year went by. But then … then when it was just over two years, then he turned his eyes to me,” she said softly.

( … This way to Chapter Sixteen part 1 … ) ( … This way to Chapter Sixteen part 3 … )

… ( … This way to Chapter One part 1 … ) …