Wedding (20 page)

Dominic turned to me. “Naomi will complete my
healing tonight. After supper.”

I stared into his eyes, searching for hidden
messages. “Fine,” I said. I went back to my bowl of lamb stew,
poking at the bones to see if I had sucked off all the meat.

Dominic put his hand on my thigh. “I need you
there, and Stefan, too.” He made it sound like a sexual
assignation.

I shrugged. After last night, little would
surprise me. I had seen some healing in La Sapienza, not much, but
enough to know it is no great mystery, just a skill that can be
learned by any gifted person with the requisite abilities. Still, I
was curious to see what Naomi could accomplish that other telepaths
could not. “I’ll be there,” I said.

The rest of the afternoon was slow and
uneventful. Only people with essential jobs made any pretense of
working. I went automatically to Berend’s office, found him sitting
in front of an open account book but staring at the wall. The book
was ten years old, taken from the shelf in error, and Berend was in
no rush to put it back. “I enjoyed our dance last night,” I said in
greeting, before realizing that even so innocuous a comment was in
poor taste.

Berend jumped at my words. “Lady Amalie,” he
said, “it was my pleasure.” Like most of the men this morning, he
had a dreamy, depleted appearance. Despite the custom, he couldn’t
help thinking fondly of his partner of last night, memories I must
try not to hear.

I couldn’t resist probing just a little. “I
also danced with Stefan Ormonde, later,” I said, trying to sound
casual, fooling neither of us. “He’s very good-looking, isn’t
he?”

“My lady.” Berend felt obligated to check
what he saw as a potentially fatal flaw. “My lady, a married woman
never notices another man. Not in that way.” He cleared his throat.
“Her husband is within his rights to– to—” He couldn’t bring
himself to say it to me, that a husband could murder his wife
merely for the appearance of infidelity, and not only would no one
blame him or punish him, his action would be approved if it was
believed there was any substance to his suspicions.

Oh, gods
. That was unimaginable
between me and Dominic. And surely it didn’t apply to Dominic’s
lover. I remembered Stefan’s words last night:
Dance with
me
, meaning,
while we have the chance
. My sense of
well-being from the night evaporated. “I’m not married yet,” I
said.

Berend took the statement as a simple fact.
“No,” he said, relaxing so far as to let his thoughts return to
their original theme. “And Stefan Ormonde is the most beautiful
creature we’ve seen at Aranyi since—” Once again my young steward’s
words had run away with him. “Since you arrived,” he finished
gallantly.

I thought of the young married man I had met
in my first days here, the proud father, and worried that not
everyone was entirely successful in relegating the events of
festival night to their proper place. What if Berend became
obsessed with Stefan, seeing him every day at meals, passing him in
the corridors and on the stairs? Dominic would no more countenance
Stefan’s infidelity than mine, I was pretty certain.

“You know,” I said, hesitating, “Stefan takes
his position very seriously.” Companion to Margrave Aranyi was an
honor that a cadet of Stefan’s integrity would be unlikely to
jeopardize in order to gratify the desires of a steward.

Berend’s face tightened at my well-meaning
words. “So do I,” he said. “I take Stefan’s position seriously. I
have to.” He looked down at the open book in front of him.
“Margrave Aranyi asked me to examine all the records of the land on
the border between Aranyi and Ormonde, going back for years. He
wants to see if Stefan might be entitled to a holding of his
own.”

“But—” I began a question, gave up. My mind
was working slowly this morning. Stefan, a younger son of gentry,
inherited neither land of his own nor his father’s title. He was as
poor in reality, despite his family’s wealth, as a clerk like
Berend—poorer, really. Berend and his family—his pretty wife,
Laura, dark-haired and plump, with sparkling black eyes and dimpled
cheeks, and their son who resembled her—had their own cottage, with
a parcel of Aranyi land and the rights to its produce as payment
for Berend’s work. If it was less convenient for them as a family
than living in rooms in the castle, it was, in this land-conscious
society, far more prestigious.

Berend understood my confusion. “Lady
Amalie,” he said, “Margrave Aranyi knows Stefan’s situation. But
he’s asked me to see if there’s any border land in dispute that he
could settle on his companion.” Berend looked into my face, worried
in turn that he had told me too much. “I shouldn’t have said
anything until I found the answer, one way or another.” He gave me
a wan smile. “It’s this damned morning after, leaves one careless.
Please, my lady, you won’t say anything to Stefan until I have an
answer for Margrave Aranyi?”

“No, of course I won’t.” I laughed at the
mess I had walked into. “I wouldn’t know what to say.”

Berend mistook my continued perplexity for
unhappiness. “Lady Amalie, forgive me, but surely you knew Margrave
Aranyi is
vir
? It’s no secret, here or in Eclipsia City. And
for ’Graven, with your gifts,” he bowed his head in solemn respect
at our powers, “it must be impossible to be dishonest with each
other?”

“You’d be surprised,” I said, before
realizing how Berend would take it. “Honestly, I’m not upset about
Stefan himself or Dominic’s wanting to give him land.” I thought
about what it was that did bother me. Dominic had introduced Stefan
as his
companion
. Used with the inflection Dominic gave it,
the word means a formal relationship, like spouse or partner,
solemnized by the exchange of oaths. With the twenty-five-year age
difference between them, and with Dominic’s ’Graven status, Dominic
would have been within his rights to call the boy something else,
something that made Stefan merely the object of Dominic’s
affections, not a sharer in them. Yet Dominic had chosen to call
him
companion
. Now he wanted to raise Stefan’s standing, not
simply by the choice of word, but by changing the young man’s
circumstances.

Dominic had joked last night about making me
wear a burqa and keeping me guarded, about locking me away from the
world. And while I suspected that a lot of that was just the heat
of the moment, it had reawakened all my fears on the subject of
marriage. In La Sapienza it had been made very clear to me that
marriage was an unequal association. Even if both parties were
’Graven, only one thing was on the wife’s side of the balance: her
dowry. If she came from a landed family, as she must to marry
’Graven, her dowry, while being absorbed into her husband’s
property, was still hers in name. If her husband was a poor
manager, if he lost his holdings or had to sell, her dowry could
not be disposed of without her consent. It gave her leverage, even
if it could never quite make her equal. If Stefan, who came from a
wealthy, respectable gentry family, needed Dominic’s exceptional
benevolence to make him an eligible partner, where did that leave
me?

Berend was waiting for me to tell him what
was on my mind. “You see,” I said, “I’ve been nervous about
marrying Margrave Aranyi, and I think he’s been worrying too,
because of my– my unusual situation. And I never told him, never
thought to tell him, that I do own some property.”

“Really?” Berend sat up, all business now.
“That does change things.” He smiled in anticipation of an easier
task, stood up and retrieved the current accounts book from the
shelf. “What is it?” he asked while he pulled a bottle of ink
within dipping distance and found a fresh pen. “Freehold or
inheritance? Buildings or just land? Is it on one of the ’Graven
Realms or in the city?”

“In the city,” I said, laughing at the
one-sided view of wealth. “In a way. It’s credits—electronic
credits. I can access the account anywhere there’s a holonet
terminal. So I guess that’s only in the city.”

Berend had put down his pen as I spoke and
was looking at me as if I were speaking a foreign language. I was.
I had lapsed into Terran for the terms that have no Eclipsian
equivalent. He shook his head, suppressing a frown. “So you don’t
have any land.”

“No, of course not,” I said. “How could
I?”

“I’m sorry, my lady.” Berend’s voice sank
with disappointment. “You said property.”

“It’s quite a large account,” I said. “I’ve
been saving ever since I started working, almost fifteen
years.”

“Please, Lady Amalie.” Berend held up his
hand, uninterested in any more pointless details. “I’m glad you’re
not destitute. But Margrave Aranyi has already addressed this
problem.”

“What?” I felt as if I did have a hangover
after all. “When?”

“Before he went away to fight the rebels,”
Berend said. “He made arrangements, in case– in case things didn’t
go so well. But now that he’s returned, there’s no reason for you
to be troubled.”

“But I help keep the records!” I said. “How
come I didn’t notice it?”

Berend shook his head. “Nothing in writing.
Just a solemn promise, that if he were unable to marry you, you
would be provided for as if you were his widow, with a tract of
land set aside to be considered as your dowry.”

I was speechless, my mind trying to take in
all the implications of things I understood imperfectly, if at
all.

“You see, my lady,” Berend continued in the
warm, soothing voice of a doctor with a wealthy hypochondriac,
“Margrave Aranyi made it very clear that his intentions are
marriage by the ’Graven Rule. So the facts that you have no dowry,
no family and no connection to a Realm are to be disregarded.
Margrave Aranyi instructed me that, whether or not he succeeds in
winning ’Graven Assembly’s approval, I am to treat you as ’Gravina
Aranyi in all respects.” He smiled. “Not that I needed him to tell
me that. But I thought you should know where you stand, seeing as
how you’re still concerned about it.”

“So in order for me to marry Margrave Aranyi,
I must be raised in status, artificially if necessary?” I
asked.

Berend wasn’t sure how to answer. “Margrave
Aranyi is being most generous. Ordinarily the dowry can’t come from
the husband’s own holdings.” He clucked his tongue at the
irregularity of Dominic’s request.

“And if– when– we marry,” I muttered the
conclusion, knowing how idiotic it was, “Margrave Aranyi and I
still won’t be equals.”

“Lady Amalie!” Berend was momentarily
diverted. “This is marriage, not a pledge between Terrans. Or
between a man and his
companion
.” Having reminded himself of
the reason he had come to work on what should be an idle afternoon,
“Please,” he said, “let me get back to this border land problem.
And you ought to be resting after dinner.”

I took the hint, going upstairs to lie on my
new bed, turning the pages of one of Dominic’s history books but
unable to read. I could hear my mother’s voice in my mind, enjoying
the chance to use a picturesque expression she had overheard or
read.
Well, Amelia, all I can say is, you’ve landed in a tub of
butter.

They don’t tell you what happened after
Cinderella married Prince Charming. How long did it take until, in
the middle of a quarrel, he said she ought to be grateful? How long
before she accused him of acting as if he’d bought her?

I studied the naked goddesses on the wall
hangings. They stood with negligent pride, legs firmly planted,
round bellies thrust forward, rosy nipples peeking through tendrils
of wavy hair that flowed over breasts firm with milk.
All wives
are bought,
they were saying.
’Gravina or Terran. He is your
lord husband; you are his lady wife. Enjoy the things he gives you,
the clothes and the jewels, the food and the luxury. Share his bed.
Bear his children. Eat and grow fat. Once he’s bought you he’s
stuck with you.

I
mmediately after supper,
Dominic went to his room for the final phase of his healing. “Give
Naomi time to work,” he said to Stefan and me as he rose from the
table, “then be ready to join us when we call for you.”

I was cautious now after my lessons from
Berend, so I neither invited Stefan to sit with me in my room nor
did I go to his. We sat with Eleonora and Josh and our guests who
would linger at Aranyi for another day after the festival. Talk
worked its way around to the subject of the recent rebellion.

“It’s a pity,” a man said, “that all that
asinine posturing with the telepathic weapon obscured a serious
message.”

“And what is that?” Eleonora asked.

“That all this,” the man waved his hand
around in vague circles, “this ’Graven way of life, has to change.
People want their freedom.”

Josh looked over with a smile. “Freedom is a
large concept,” he said. “It encompasses a great many things, some
of them contradictory.”

The man squinted at Josh. “Oh, yes,” he said,
“the seer with the Terran name.” He seemed unaware of how offensive
he sounded. “What do you call yourself? José? No, that’s
Eclipsian.”

“Josh,” Josh said.

“Well, Joze,” the man said, “you spent time
on Terra. Tell me, don’t you think they do things better there?
None of this class system, every man equal, no masters, no
servants, people free—”

“No class system?” The outraged exclamation
left my lips before I remembered that I didn’t want to be involved
in this discussion. “What do you know about it?”

The man turned his head at my question. He
was short-sighted, I realized, and placed me by voice. “Mistress
Amalie,” he said, as if indulging a forward child, “I have some
experience, I assure you. I see Terrans every year at the market in
Eclipsia City. And very instructive it is. Each and every one of
them is free to pursue wealth in any legal way, not restricted to
doing what his father did, or prevented from rising because of lack
of land.”