The clan of the cave bear_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [39]
The beatings were given, supposedly, to force her totem into submission, but Iza knew he enjoyed it. At first, she hoped her mate would give her to some other man if she produced no children. She hated the strutting braggart even before she was given to him, and when she found out who her mate was to be, she could do nothing but cling to her mother in desperation. Her mother could offer only consolation; she had no more say in the matter than her daughter. But her mate did not give her away. Iza was medicine woman, the highest-ranked woman in the Clan, and it gave him a feeling of manliness to have control over her. When the strength of his totem, and his manhood, was in question because his mate produced no offspring, the physical power he had over her compensated for it.
Though the beatings were allowed in the hope that they would result in a child, Iza sensed that Brun disapproved. She was sure if Brun had been leader at the time, she would not have been given to that particular man. A man did not prove his manhood, in Brun’s opinion, by overcoming women. Women had no alternative but to submit. It was unworthy of a man to pit himself against a lesser adversary or to allow his emotions to be provoked by a woman. It was a man’s duty to command women, to maintain discipline, to hunt and provide, to control his emotions, and to show no sign of pain when he was suffering. A woman might be cuffed if she was lazy or disrespectful, but not in anger and not with joy, only to discipline. Though some men struck women more often than others, few men made a habit of it. Only Iza’s mate had made it a regular practice.
After Creb joined their fire, her mate was even more reluctant to give her away. Iza was not only medicine woman, she was the woman who cooked for Mog-ur. If Iza left his fire, Mog-ur would too. Her mate had imagined that the rest of the clan thought he was learning secrets from the great magician. In truth, Creb was never more than properly polite in all the time they shared the same hearth and hardly deigned to notice the man on many occasions. Especially, Iza was sure, when Creb noticed a particularly colorful bruise.
For all the beatings, Iza continued to make use of her herbal magic. Yet, when she found herself pregnant, she resigned herself to her fate. Some spirit had finally overcome both her totem and her magic. Perhaps it was his; but, Iza thought, if the vital principle of his totem had finally prevailed, why had the spirit deserted him when the cave collapsed? She held out one last hope. She wished for a daughter, a girl to detract from his newly gained esteem, and a girl to carry on her line of medicine women, though she had been ready to end the line with herself rather than have a child while she lived with her mate. If she gave birth to a son, her mate would have been fully vindicated; a girl would still leave something to be desired. Now Iza wanted a girl even more—not to deny her dead mate’s posthumous prestige, but to allow her to live with Creb.
Iza put her medicine bag away and crawled into her fur beside the peacefully sleeping child. Ayla must be lucky, Iza thought. There’s the new cave, and she is going to be allowed to stay with me, and we are going to share Creb’s fire. Maybe her luck will bring me a daughter, too. Iza put her arm around Ayla and snuggled close to her warm little body.
After breakfast the next morning, Iza beckoned to the child and headed upstream. As they walked beside the water, the medicine woman looked for certain plants. After a few moments, Iza saw a clearing on the other side and crossed over. Growing on the open ground were several plants, about a foot high with dull green leaves attached to long stalks tipped with spikes of small, densely packed, green flowers. Iza dug up the red-rooted pigweed and headed for a marshy area beside sluggish backwater and found scouring-rush horsetail ferns and, farther upstream,