Wedding (8 page)

We all lived well. I had to laugh at myself,
remembering my condescending thoughts when Dominic invited me, that
I would have to rough it in some kind of medieval stronghold. There
was indoor plumbing and hot water throughout, even when the
temperature outside was well below freezing. There was a permanent
staff of plumbers who tended the insulated pipes to insure that we
could bathe, and the linen could be washed all year around. The
bathrooms were not just for ’Graven and their guests; every
corridor of bedrooms had at least one. There were no showers, but
the bathtubs were larger than those at La Sapienza; because I am so
small, I could stretch out and float, closing my eyes, breathing
slower and slower, until I imagined myself adrift in a warm lake
under an overcast sky.

The windows were necessarily narrow and
spaced far apart, positioned high up on the walls on the lower
floors. Yet all could be opened, using a long pole with a hook at
the end if necessary, letting in the sweet, intoxicating, fresh air
of the mountains, with its scent of pine. Here in the mountains the
wind was with us day and night, moaning and keening, whistling and
sighing, like a phantom from horror stories. But I soon grew
accustomed to it, was never frightened. Like the highway noise I
had grown up with—the whooshing of steady traffic, the honking of
jams, the clatter of dropped hubcaps, the revving of too much
horsepower for too little speed—I noticed the wind only when it
changed its constant, low-level song. It was the sound from my
dream on my first night on Eclipsis, the promise of a clean,
unspoiled world realized, and its melodies lulled me to sleep as my
lungs expanded to draw in its thin vapor.

Only the lighting was primitive: lamps that
burned vegetable oil and candles made of rendered animal fat. At
night the corridors were dark; when we had guests, torches burning
pitch could be set in the wall sconces. It was no great hardship
for ’Graven; with our sensitivity to the entire spectrum of light,
we can “see” well enough in darkness to find our way around. But
the ungifted, and any of us wishing to read or write, sew or make
repairs, were dependent on daylight. Early to bed and early to rise
had a practical purpose here, and I soon adopted the same schedule
as the household.

The life of Lady Amalie and, by extension, of
’Gravina Aranyi, was far more comfortable than the grim subsistence
I had fearfully contemplated. I could not have imagined the large
household to distribute the work and keep each job within
manageable limits, nor had I understood the degree to which a guest
would be exempt from the labor required of servants and the
obligations of family. Even the care of the fire in my room,
whether wood in the fireplace or, in warmer weather, a few pieces
of charcoal in a brazier with a hood and vent to protect us from
fumes, was done for me. Each morning maids tended all the bedrooms
in use, sweeping out the ashes of the night’s fires, and laying and
lighting new ones. They made the beds and kept the rooms clean—the
quickest work of all. In this pristine environment there was no
dust and little dirt.

I also had a personal maid, a lady’s maid,
Katrina, a young woman whom Magali found for me, whose older sister
was Eleonora’s maid. Katrina was elated with her good fortune,
knowing that if she pleased me she would be ’Gravina Aranyi’s
attendant for life, a superior position with light duties and every
comfort, including her own room. Katrina looked after my clothes,
hand washing the underwear, brushing and pressing the dresses, and
kept track of the color-coded washcloths for face and body and in
place of toilet paper. She came in each morning to do my hair, and
had been shocked at the short curls that had only recently begun to
conceal the nape of my neck.

“Is it true, my lady,” Katrina asked as she
combed the unruly waves into a semblance of order, “that Terran
women cut their hair like
professional
women?”

There was that troublesome, mysterious word
again, that I had misunderstood at la Sapienza. “Yes,” I said, “I
had it short like that myself, as you see.”

Katrina blushed and giggled, covering her
mouth politely with her hand, but unable to control her reaction. I
was declaring that Dominic’s future bride was little better than a
whore. Luckily Katrina, like everyone, was eager to make excuses
for me. “I suppose,” she said, “that if you lived among them, you
had to follow the fashion.” She lowered her eyes as she spoke,
sorry for me.

It was so simple to continue like this,
forgetting I was Terran, never correcting anyone, just going with
the flow. It would only hurt Dominic—I came up with another
rationalization—if his entire household thought he was marrying a
Terran, a whore or a misfit. There was little chance we would marry
anyway, so I would not have to maintain the charade much longer. “I
wanted to look like the others, as much as I could,” I said,
smiling with pleasure at the noble lie. “And it was so easy to take
care of.”

Katrina had the servant’s desire to flaunt
her skills through her lady’s appearance. “It’s a pity you can’t
wear Margrave Aranyi’s betrothal gift,” she said, bringing out the
glass comb Dominic had given me when he came for me at La Sapienza.
She brushed her fingers over the smooth surface, admiring the
subtle colors and delicate filigree, then lifted my straggling neck
hairs, scrunching them together in her fist. “Maybe you’ll be able
to wear it by the time he comes home.”

I had not heard her last words.
Betrothal
gift
. I recalled Dominic’s hazy thoughts when he gave it to me,
and the unambiguous words. He had said his grandfather gave it to
his grandmother, and so on, for generations of Aranyi before them.
It had not been just a hint or a wish. Everybody at Aranyi knew the
meaning of this object. No wonder Dominic had been offended when I
had rejected it at first.

We never had a chance to talk
. I
clenched my teeth in anger. Every time we met there was a crisis, a
situation, that meant one of us had to go off somewhere, first me
to La Sapienza, now Dominic to this war. Our days in the travelers’
hut, which could have been a chance for us to figure things out,
had been ruined—by Eris. I almost wished I were not pregnant, that
I could have gone on the expedition. I would have enjoyed helping
to destroy that thing that had so disrupted our communion.

Katrina saw my frown and knew she had erred
in some way. “Forgive me, my lady,” she said. “You are beautiful
whether or not you wear the comb. Margrave Aranyi will be pleased
with you when he returns, however long your hair.”

I looked up, startled out of my thoughts. For
the first of countless times, I encountered the heavy
responsibility that comes with all this luxury. Katrina depended on
me. She would study my every careless word and unguarded facial
expression, interpreting them as they affected her. If her innocent
remarks offended me, I might take my annoyance out on her, punish
her for nothing or, worse, dismiss her from my service.

I made the effort to smile. “There’s nothing
to forgive, Katrina. You simply spoke the truth. I do wish I could
wear Margrave Aranyi’s gift. But he knew, when he gave it to me, it
would take time.”

There was the whole trouble. It would take
time, maybe more than a little, for Dominic and me to decide what
to do, what we wanted, what was allowed. Now that I was pregnant we
no longer had the leisure to wait for inspiration. I could almost
laugh when I thought of all the emotion I had wasted at La
Sapienza, longing for Dominic, wishing I could conceive his child,
knowing it was impractical. Now it had happened. Not as I would
have liked, but wasn’t that so often the way?

I had rejected the obvious solution. Aborting
it would be the easiest thing to do, using the power of my
crypta
, so early in the pregnancy, but I had never
considered that option. I had already made the psychological
transition to motherhood. By now I knew it was a girl and I loved
her, as I did her father, unconditionally. I wanted only to protect
and nourish this little lump in me, who had me eating like two
troopers, who made me feel ten years younger as she grew, not
sapping my strength but increasing it, so that I would have the
reserves of energy to carry her and give birth to her, and nurse
her.

Dominic wanted the child as much as I did. I
knew, from his reaction when he learned of my pregnancy, that the
way in which she had been conceived did not affect his feelings for
the child. For me Dominic was concerned, enough that he could not
bring himself to make love to me, even to touch me. For the child
he felt only fatherly pride and affection, an extension of the
crypta
-inspired love between us, intensified by a bond of
parenthood that on Eclipsis is almost unbreakable.

And then what? What would we do, Dominic and
I, with this “half-Terran brat,” as Eleonora had called her? Thank
all the gods, I prayed, that she was not a boy. I would not be
giving birth to a potential Margrave Aranyi. We would not have to
worry that ’Graven Assembly might not accept her. If Dominic
acknowledged her, that was all that mattered. Whether or not we
were ultimately able to marry, Dominic’s formal recognition of the
child as his would make her natural-born, a status second only to
that of a child born in wedlock. She would be ’Gravina, and would
not suffer because of her mother’s status, or lack of it. She could
inherit a daughter’s portion, would be a desirable match when she
was old enough to marry.

It was my own case that worried me. If this
child kept Dominic and me together, what would I be? I could fool
everyone at Aranyi into thinking of me as Lady Amalie, but not
’Graven Assembly. They knew who I was, had seen me, had voted to
allow my seminary training. The Assembly would have to ratify any
formal marriage of Dominic’s, and it could only be to a woman of
his own class. To ’Graven Assembly and, eventually, inevitably, to
Dominic, I could be no more than glorified housekeeper, sharing
Dominic’s bed when he wanted me, overseeing the household, bearing
his children. However much Dominic and I might vow that to us it
would not be so, that between us there would be equality, I felt,
with a numbness closing in around my heart, that it would be only a
matter of time before I was no longer Lady Amalie but simply
Amalie, and then, most terrible of all, a memory, an attachment of
the past.

I had understood from the start I could not
continue to work in the city, living as a Terran, and expect
Dominic to visit me, to carry on some romantic relationship between
our two worlds, as distant culturally as if we lived at opposite
ends of the universe. After inhabiting his world for six months I
had learned that to remain as a hanger-on in the household of
Margrave Aranyi, a woman with no title of her own and no family,
would put as great a barrier between us. Our stations in Eclipsian
society were so unequal that the contrast would poison our love, as
thoroughly as Eris had, if more slowly. We would become trapped in
an unbreakable cycle of dependence, of guilt and shame, of grudging
forgiveness and tormented passion. The cord of our “
crypta
love” that connected us would be stretched tighter and tighter
across this chasm, until it snapped, or until it dragged us both
over the edge, into the abyss.

If that was so, I asked myself, why did I
wish to marry Dominic? How could marriage solve what love, and
crypta
, could not? The answer was strange to me, yet I
believed it. A wife was special. My life on Terra had provided no
evidence of such a concept, but I could sense it here on Eclipsis.
A husband and a wife together created a new entity—a family. If
Dominic wanted a wife, and if I was the wife he wanted, if the
glass comb had been a marriage proposal, then my only hope was to
say yes and claim my rights. As his wife I could have a permanent
place in his household, as an equal. He might not always love me in
the way he did now, but he would never cease to cherish me. I would
not stand between Dominic and any male partner he chose, but I
could have a home, and a family, for the rest of my life.

Dominic must have been struggling with this
same problem throughout the months of our separation. He had made
up his mind to try to marry me, had given me the comb, gambling
that with time he would find a solution. Now Eris had jumped the
gun on us. I was pregnant, and Dominic had done the unthinkable,
had subjected me to the brutality he had wished I might never have
to fear from him. We could not simply trust in our “
crypta
love,” not after what had happened in the travelers’ hut. We must
work to come together again, hope that Dominic could conquer his
old obsession and be a proper husband to me, and that I could adapt
to the unfamiliar role of wife.

M
y worries made me wish for
a confidante, someone I could relax with and share my troubles.
Although I could not tell her everything, I did find a sympathetic
soul in Magali. From our first meeting, when I had dissolved the
reserve between newcomer and veteran with my apparent candor,
Magali had warmed to me, and we were soon chatting guardedly each
day. She had worked twenty years at Aranyi, had risen to the top of
the chain of command, above the rest of the servants but below the
’Graven masters. Our cases were not so dissimilar. Caught in the
middle, neither all one thing nor the other, we were natural
allies.

I revealed my age without thinking as we
compared our different lives. Magali, like most Eclipsians, had
married young, had given birth to ten children, six of them living,
and had two grandchildren. She was incredulous to learn that, at
thirty-six, I had never been married, never had a child.

“Is it true what they say?” she asked,
looking for an explanation. “Terran men are sterile? Or impotent?”
She indicated limpness with her middle finger.