Wedding (14 page)

It went against his nature to boast, and
there was little to tell that would do him credit. But here, in his
household, people took the slightest act of valor as a new heroic
epic in the making. With a glass of whiskey in his right hand,
Ranulf interposing the helpful elaboration, Dominic grew
increasingly at ease and loquacious. He had forgotten, as had I,
what it was I had been about to tell him I wished.

At another time, I too would have liked to
hear about his war, even if it was no
Iliad
. But tonight,
our bitter words in my mind, I preferred to sit quietly for a while
and think. I would learn far more from Dominic directly, if and
when we ever had that promised chance to be alone. I leaned across
the empty chair to Stefan and caught his eye. A boy’s face; he
looked as if he had just turned sixteen, earning the right to carry
the sword that seemed too heavy for him on this very campaign. “I
bet you could add a thing or two to that account,” I said to
encourage him.

Stefan blushed at my mild praise. He really
was impossibly good-looking, especially remarkable in one so young,
when most boys his age seem like genetic experiments gone wrong.
“Not really, Mistress,” he said, addressing me correctly as an
unmarried woman of uncertain rank. “It wasn’t much of a battle.
Afterwards Dominic– I mean Margrave Aranyi– said he’d have to be
tortured to get him to talk about it.” He stared in unconcealed
surprise at Dominic amid the admiring throng.

“Yes, well, you see,” I said, “here at Aranyi
we’re experts at torture. All the whiskey, and the boys fluttering
their eyelashes at him. Any man would break under the strain.” I
saw I was making Stefan uncomfortable, and to curb my sarcasm
changed the subject. “Are you far from home?” I asked, although I
knew the answer. From my work with Berend I had learned that
Ormonde was the nearest independent gentry holding to Aranyi.

“No, Mistress,” Stefan said. “My father owns
some land less than a day’s ride down the mountain.” A gentleman
always understates. He owns “some land,” not the largest estate
this side of La Sapienza. He is Sir Karl at first introductions,
not the Lord of Ormonde, until it is necessary for clarification.
Stefan, a middle child in a large family, appeared to have learned
the gentlemanly code well.

Stefan looked nervously in the direction of
his parents, who were absorbed like the others in Dominic’s
narrative, although Sir Karl tore his attention away long enough to
give a small nod of permission to his son. Probably deciding it was
acceptable for Stefan to speak with this unknown Mistress Amalie on
festival night, rather than making any judgment on the content of
our conversation.

I wanted to find out what I could about
Dominic’s wound—how he had gotten it, what the original damage had
been, how his abilities and his mood had been affected before
coming home—but knew I would have to proceed cautiously with this
young man. Our moment of intense communion in the courtyard had not
carried over to inevitable familiarity. If anything, falling so
suddenly into such a revealing relationship had caused Stefan to
retreat into a protective, adolescent shyness. And there were other
obstacles.

Stefan had all the reticence of his class, to
which were added the hefty additional shares from being a cadet and
Dominic’s beloved. He had spent his entire short life taught not to
complain, about fatigue or hunger, or at frustrations in lessons or
weapons training. Once at the ’Graven Military Academy, and
elevated by Dominic’s interest, his whole being would revolve
around service—to comrades, officers, Dominic and the world of
’Graven. He would tell me nothing he thought Dominic wanted kept
hidden, and if I pushed I would lose any chance of winning his
trust.

“I knew your sister Rosalie at La Sapienza,”
I said, finding a safe approach. Everyone uses relatives as an
opening, hoping to find a connection between families. Glossing
over my dislike of that little toady to Drusilla Ladakh, I talked
at length of seminary life, from which Stefan had graduated not so
long ago. “I also knew your brother’s betrothed,” I said, when we
had exhausted this topic. “Matilda Stranyak invited me to her
wedding, but I imagine I missed it after all this time.”

“No, Mistress,” Stefan said, grateful for the
easier conversational material. “My parents have insisted on a
summer wedding, but Petrus wants to keep his freedom as long as
possible.” He glanced in Dominic’s direction, blushing endearingly
as he recognized the unflattering implications of this sentiment
while speaking to Dominic’s betrothed, and stammered an apology.
“It’s an arranged marriage,” he said, recovering quickly. “Not like
yours.” He blushed even darker, caught out at last in an intimate
thought he ought not to express.

“Never mind,” I said, “men don’t always get
what they want, assuming they know what it is.” We sat in
companionable silence while Stefan contemplated my last reply and
we listened to the hubbub around us. “There must have been some
danger,” I said to draw him out, as Dominic’s strangely hollow
account wound down, “if only because of the difference in fighting
miners and smiths instead of regular soldiers.”

“That’s what Dominic– I mean Margrave Aranyi–
said,” Stefan answered with enthusiasm. “But it was easier than
training, in a way, because once it started we didn’t have time to
think.” It had just taken a little prodding to get past the
constraint and the modesty of his gentry upbringing; he was
thrilled to talk to someone about his first battle. He told me more
about the fighting than Dominic did for years afterward, unaware in
his innocence that he was spilling his lover’s secrets. “We took
hundreds of prisoners,” he said, his face changing, a mature look
of distaste coming over it, like Eleonora’s when she arrived home.
“It should have been over then, but that’s when Dominic– I mean
Margrave Aranyi– was wounded, and then it was terrible.”

“Please,” I said, not wanting to derail his
train of thought but hoping to help him over the rough spot, “call
him Dominic when you’re talking with me. And I don’t understand.
How did he get hurt?”

Stefan, trying to keep his composure, was
looking at the floor, not at me, or he might have realized his
mistake. “Dominic was interrogating prisoners,” he said. “Using
crypta
in forced communion. I’d never seen that before. And
one of them had something in a metal case. Dominic asked him what
it was, although he must have known.” Stefan looked up now, into my
eyes, no longer considering whether to talk or not, but seeking
comfort. “Anyone with any gift at all could tell it was a piece of
that weapon the rebels had used, but Dominic made the man open the
case to show it, and then he took it.”

I didn’t dare breathe, wouldn’t take my eyes
from Stefan’s tormented face, the bowed shoulders and clasping
hands. “Dominic held it in his bare hand, the way a seer would,”
Stefan’s voice had a tearful throb as he continued, “and he held it
up to the light and tried to– to– make communion with it. And it
burned his hand, and up his arm, and he screamed, like some of the
wounded, only worse, because he was screaming with
crypta
,
not out loud, so only some of us heard it.” He was ready to break
down in sobs as he recalled the moment, his own sympathetic pain a
dull ache in his mind.

“How did you save him?” I asked.

Stefan shook his head. “But, Mistress, I
didn’t! You see him.” He inclined his head in Dominic’s direction,
still chatting with his admirers. “He can’t use his hand at all,
and the arm just hangs there.”

“No, but how did you get the weapon away from
him, stop it from burning him up completely? Or taking him
over?”

Stefan flushed again, from a belated
realization that he had said far too much. “I don’t remember,” he
lied. It was, of course, hopeless, but touching all the same. He
had betrayed Dominic’s trust, the solemn, if totally misguided oath
sworn to his first, awe-inspiring lover, and he was determined to
keep back what little remained unrevealed.

He was not yet fully aware that between me
and any true love of Dominic’s there was almost no such thing as
secrecy, a disconcerting or delightful fact, depending on the
circumstances. I would find out easily enough, when I cared to. For
now, I knew only this: that Dominic had wounded himself, that what
I had grieved over as the ruin of a life that meant everything to
me, Dominic had
chosen
, through stubbornness, pride or just
plain idiocy.

Stefan saw my face as I absorbed this
information, and his youthful devotion turned to childlike fear.
“Mistress,” he said, “Dominic made me swear to say nothing. I
promised him.” He was pleading with me not to betray him as he had
betrayed Dominic.

“It’s all right,” I said. “I won’t say a word
to Margrave Aranyi. Not one word.”

The center of the hall was cleared now, the
tabletops and trestles stacked neatly along the walls, the benches
lined up in rows in front of them. Bottles of wine and beer,
decanters of whisky, fruit and cheese, loaves of bread and pies
were laid out on the high table for people to help themselves
during the long evening; there would be no supper served tonight.
The army of men and women who had taken it on themselves to clean
up the bulk of the mess in the kitchen returned to the hall, gay
and laughing from their shared work, and ready for the pleasure
they had earned.

The musicians, having eaten and rested,
brought out wind and stringed instruments and began playing dance
music. Couples sprang up and stood facing each other in two lines.
Dominic, his narrative ended and his audience dispersed, strode
over to me and held out his right arm. “We must open the ball by
leading the reel,” he said. He was flushed and relaxed, but he
seemed sober enough, although I had seen him refill his glass
several times.

My extreme anger had left me clearheaded. If
I spoiled Dominic’s return home and the Midsummer festival, I would
characterize myself forever as ungracious, a termagant, not worthy
to be Dominic’s wife. My reputation would be sunk, and no apology,
no explanation, no act of atonement could ever raise it. Staring
straight ahead through Dominic’s chest, I took his arm and stood
with him at the head of the long double row of couples. Dominic
thought the steps to me a few beats ahead of time so I was able to
complete the first figure without difficulty. After that it was all
repetition. Grasping his gloved left hand, I held it or lifted it
as needed. The action of our dance appeared natural to observers,
with no hint that I was doing more of the work than the other
women.

There was little communion between us now
other than that generated by our touching hands, but our connection
had in some way intensified with my anger. Dominic was serene and
confident; my fury seemed to amuse him or at least not to bother
him. He did not respond in kind, but absorbed my wrath as if it
were an energizing force, dancing with his feline grace, tall and
lithe, slightly aloof. I felt the eyes of the entire room on us,
many of them envious of me, a few of Dominic. Not wishing to come
off badly in the comparison, I forced myself to pay attention to
the dance, to be a competent partner to Dominic if I could not
aspire to his elegance.

We finished the reel, and continued with a
couples dance like a waltz. Again Dominic guided me mentally
through the steps. Unlike the reel, the waltz allows for, even
encourages, conversation between partners, but I remained icily
silent, ignoring Dominic’s thoughts, nodding or shaking my head at
direct questions, staring around me as we danced instead of looking
at him or pressing close to him, as other women did with their men.
His height gave me an excuse, as I was not tall enough to rest my
head on his shoulder, and leaning against his chest would make real
dancing impossible. In my rage I held myself stiffly, never
relaxing into his embrace or synchronizing with his movements.
Dominic, although noticing something wasn’t right, was too caught
up in the festival mood to examine me closely.

At the end of our two dances, full of food
and out of breath, I asked to sit down. Dominic led me back to my
seat and held out his arm to Stefan. “Now it’s your turn,” he said,
smiling. Stefan sat for a moment, worried by my cold look that
something of our earlier conversation had come out during the
waltz. Since Dominic did not appear to be angry, Stefan had no
reason to shield himself from his lover’s thoughts, and when he saw
that I had not broken my promise to him he stood up eagerly at
Dominic’s invitation. He was still a boy in many ways, able to
enjoy the moment and ignore unsolved problems.

I watched them as they danced. Whatever
Dominic might guess of Stefan’s revelations, he showed no sign of
disappointment, and the young man clearly felt no fear of his older
lover. He danced in Dominic’s arms, smiling up at him shyly but
happily. As I had had to do, Stefan held and lifted Dominic’s hand
when the formation of the dance called for it, but it came easily
to them both, a natural and fluid adjustment to an awkward
situation that they accepted without complaint. Putting his right
arm around Stefan’s thin shoulders, gazing down into his face with
a loving look, Dominic had the contented air of a man at peace with
himself and the world.

Josh led Eleonora back to her seat and bowed
jauntily to me. “May I have the pleasure of a dance with Lady
Amalie,” he asked, “before she is ’Gravina Aranyi and forbidden?”
Whether from Eleonora or from his own talent as seer, Josh had
already found out the household’s name for me.

I shook my head as I stood up, trying for
lightness, achieving only petulance. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m
not really even Lady Amalie.”

“Hush!” Josh said with a laugh as we touched
hands lightly for a circle dance. “Don’t demolish everyone’s
romantic ideas on Midsummer.” There was little chance of serious
conversation in this sex-segregated concentric formation of
twirling and clapping, the kind of dance I had learned at La
Sapienza. At the beginning, Josh probed lightly at my outer layer
of consciousness, as one expects from a seer, and tolerates,
however much one may wish for privacy.