Singer From the Sea

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Glorieta put down her book, revealing an unhappy face and eyes that looked swollen from crying. “Is he bringing anyone?”

  “The dinner list says he is,” Genevieve said, pretending not to notice Glorieta’s face, which set off alarms in her mind.

  “Well, now that you’re twenty, it’s probably better if you don’t look thirteen. Here he’s spent all this money, sending you here for years and years, and if you don’t even look grown-up he’ll wonder why he bothered. Better wear something very grown-up, show your tits and be Duchessy.” Tits, shoulders, and arms which were carefully covered at every other time were shown off at soirées.

  “Like?”

  “Like the brown satin with the blush ivory roses that just barely cover your nipples. The one that matches your mahogany hair and your nut-brown skin and shows off how nice and round your front is. Tits are important to gentlemen, you can gild them, just a little, and the dress is very regal.”

  “I do rather like that one.”

  “Fine. Then you’ll be comfortable in it, and life is so much easier when one is comfortable.” She said this with a twist of her lips, as though the word meant more to her than she was saying.

  The day of a soirée was spent in readying oneself. Bathing. Grooming. Having one’s hair done. No liquids after noon—one simply couldn’t run off and pee while wearing an evening gown—but a little snack late in the afternoon, just a bit, so that one wouldn’t collapse from hunger during the presentations. Then, dressing. Makeup. Genevieve’s satin brown skin, inherited from that long ago Dark Queen, needed very little makeup; just a gloss on the lips, a touch of blush on the cheekbones and a bit of gilding on the curve of the breast to draw attention to the nipples, barely hidden by her gown. Her complexion, brows and lashes were perfect on their own, and nothing could be done to disguise the Nose.

  Gowns and girls (in that order of importance, said Barbara) were assembled in the reception rooms by sunset, and the guests began to arrive shortly thereafter. The girls moved into the reception Une when their own families or guests were announced. After joining Mrs. Blessingham in greeting their guests, they moved away so that other girls could take their places. Genevieve saw her father’s carriage from the terrace, and she was standing at Mrs. Blessingham’s left by the time the butler announced the Marshal, Lord Dustin, and his equerry, Colonel Aufors Leys. She looked up, suddenly aware that virtually every girl in the room had also looked up and was not looking away.

  They were not looking at the Marshal, who was his usual impeccably dress-uniformed self, the black of his bemedaled and gold-braided jacket serving as proper setting for his long, vertically grooved face, each set of grooves delineating one small fold beneath his chin. The man everyone was staring at was beside him, and Genevieve was staring too.

  “Oh, my,” she said to herself. “Oh, my.” She almost started to applaud the casting before realizing he was not an actor but a real person. Hair like a sunset and a lot of it, springing up from his forehead in a curly red thicket. Darker brows. Lean, but oh, such shoulders, and what straight, athletic-looking legs! He was obviously the lead character in this scene, and he was coming toward her.

  “Mrs. Blessingham,” her father intoned, bending over her hand. “Genevieve. May I present my equerry, Colonel Aufors Leys.”

  Genevieve dropped a curtsey, murmured an acknowledgment, felt her hand drawn into her father’s, and was led away with the paradigm close behind, their feet raising little dust puffs of whispers. They sat at a table near the orchestra. They sipped wine and were served hors d’oeuvres. The Marshal excused himself and went to speak to an acquaintance at another table.

  “So,” said the Colonel without preamble, “How do you think we should handle the Frangían situation, Marchioness?”

  If her father had been there, she would have smiled and murmured something about knowing very little about the Frangían situation. If the Colonel had been older, if he had said it in a teasing voice, she could not have replied at all. Colonel Aufors Leys, however, asked the question in a matter-of-fact sort of classroom voice, and she answered without thinking, for in this particular play, which seemed to be a new one, she knew the line.

  “I think we ought to leave them completely alone.”

  The Colonel choked on his wine. “I see,” he murmured, around his handkerchief. “The Lord Paramount is related to the displaced Duke of Frangía. He wishes his kinsman to be returned to the ducal palace. I don’t think he would care for that advice.”

  “What the Lord Paramount says may have little to do with reality,” she responded, still without thinking. “If he and the Duke were patient and kept any new converts out, the Frangians’ very strange religion would wipe them all out before long. Since the Frangians’ deity, the Great Whatever, is worshipped by refusing to toil, since the Frangians do not have children because children require toil, their population must be getting elderly. Also, they’re not at all militant. They’d be easy to control if the Lord Paramount really wanted to do so.”

  “If?” murmured Aufors, his brows lifting in wonder.

  “Yes. If. I have never heard it alleged that the Lord Paramount is a patient man. So, it must be that he has some good reason for talking about controlling the Frangians while not doing it. Though he fulminates against Frangía a good bit, probably to show support for the duke, he lets the people come and go as they like. He lets them make converts and keep their society alive, so he must have a secret reason for doing so. If he has a secret reason, then the last thing he would want is advice from someone who doesn’t know his reasons.”

  “What would you tell him?”

  “I’d tell the Lord Paramount he has a much better grasp of the situation than anyone else, and he must do what his royal wisdom dictates.”

  The Colonel stared at her, mouth slightly open. Then, “What reason might he have for letting them alone?”

  “I’ve never thought about it,” she said honestly, proceeding to think about it for a long, slow moment. Then she nodded, saying, “It is probable the Frangians do something or provide something that the Lord Paramount considers useful.”

  The Colonel blinked gravely at her as he considered this.

  Genevieve returned his look, unaware that they were staring at one another. She enjoyed looking at him, and she was pleased to have been able to answer his questions. She was quite sure what she had told him was correct. It was not one of those visions that arrived suddenly in a hissing radiance, but it was the only answer that took into account everything she knew. It was really only a little more complicated than foreseeing the moves in chess.

  The orchestra began playing a waltz.

  The Colonel had a very thoughtful expression on his face as he rose, bowed, and asked, “Would you care to dance?”

  She didn’t care to, really, because she had to fight her tendency to hum along with the music, but seeing daughters dancing was one of the things parents paid for at Blessingham’s, and no doubt her father would approve her dancing. She nodded and accompanied him onto the floor, where he held her firmly, never stepped on her feet, and was blessedly silent, which she preferred. Dancing and carrying on conversation at the same time was very trying.

  Since the Colonel didn’t try to make conversation, whenever he reversed or turned Genevieve could look at the other dancers. Carlotta was dancing with Tomas, the two of them seeming rather bored. Glorieta was with Willum, the same expression on their faces that Genevieve had noticed before. It was a wounded look, with an admixture of fear, revulsion, and pain. It wasn’t an expression that belonged in a ballroom, and Genevieve spun away on Aufors’s arm, telling herself she had not seen it. During the next dance, Glorieta was with Tomas and Willum was with Carlotta … no! Willum was with Barbara!

  She made a sound, for the Colonel drew her closer and asked, “What did you say?”

  “Nothing,” she murmured. “I was just surprised to see … one of my friends dancing with the betrothed of … another of my friends.”r />
  He looked across her shoulder. “The young lady in green?”

  She nodded, ever so slightly.

  “The girl’s a flirt,” he said, softly. “She’ll get herself into trouble.”

  Genevieve surprised herself by saying, “I think Barbara would welcome trouble. She is not of the nobility and she gets awfully bored trying to be covenantly.” Then she bit her lip, confused by the strange look he gave her.

  Two waltzes and a country dance later, Colonel Leys’ attention was drawn across the room, where the Marshal was preparing to leave. The Colonel bowed his thanks, then, turning so that his face was hidden from the Marshal, who awaited him in obvious impatience, he said:

  “I have an apology to make, Most Honorable Marchioness.”

  “Not at all,” she murmured, her eyes on her father, who was beginning to fume.

  “Please. I teased you in asking those questions. I expected only the usual, a gush of uninspired coquetry with no thought behind it and no sense in it. I was mistaken. I ask your forgiveness for you are … a very intelligent … ah, person, Most Honorable Marchioness. I hope we will meet soon again.” He bowed, kissed her hand, turned on his heels and went, leaving her standing quite still against the blue velvet draperies of the terrace arch, her mouth slightly open, and his lips still burning on her hand as though he had somehow left them behind.

  Carlotta came over, full of questions, to which Genevieve gave monosyllabic answers. She noticed a sotto voce spat going on between Glorieta and Barbara, so instead of joining her friends for supper, she said her good-nights while the soirée was still going on.

  She was curled up in bed with a book when, much later, Carlotta and Glorieta burst in upon her.

  “Oooh,” cried Glorieta. “Wasn’t he something! Wherever did your father find that one, Jenny?”

  “He’s Father’s equerry,” said Genevieve.

  “What did he say to you? What did you talk about?”

  She hesitated a moment before replying. “All he did was stare at me and ask strange questions.”

  “What strange questions?” demanded Carlotta, scenting something juicy.

  “Not flirty sorts of questions, silly. No, he wanted to know what I thought about the Frangían situation. So, I told him what I thought.”

  “Which was?”

  “Something about just leaving Frangía alone.”

  “His Majesty, Marwell, Lord Paramount will love hearing that. My father says he’s very set on bringing Frangía to heel. He wants no breakaway provinces.”

  “He didn’t ask me what I would say to the Lord Paramount, he asked me what I thought.”

  “He danced with you!” said Glorieta soberly. “I was watching, and he wasn’t asking questions then!”

  “He didn’t say a word the whole time. With him, words seem to be either a flood or a drought.”

  “Well, if you didn’t like him, you might have introduced him to Barbara.” She turned away to the window to hide her face, letting herself out onto the balcony.

  “Why did he come?” Carlotta said loudly and hastily. “Just a fill in? Someone for you to dance with?”

  Genevieve had not thought about that. On occasion her father did send someone in his place, with or without a possible suitor in tow, but it was usually someone she knew, a family friend from Evermire, or one of the older cousins, always someone solid and respectable and no longer young. “I really don’t know,” she said.

  “For heaven’s sake, Genevieve! Don’t you care?”

  She shook her head, which so infuriated Carlotta that she called Genevieve a long-nosed ice maiden. When Genevieve did not respond, Carlotta leaned close.

  “Did you hear Glorieta and Barbara fighting? Willum asked Barbara to dance, and she said yes!”

  “Isn’t that allowed?” Genevieve asked. “I’ve seen you dancing with him.”

  “I’m family,” she said. “Barbara definitely isn’t! And there’s something more to it than just dancing. Glorieta has been crying a lot lately.”

  Carlotta, it seemed, didn’t know the reasons for any of it, for Glorieta refused to talk about it, and though Carlotta and Genevieve whispered about it for some time, Genevieve could not think of anything comforting to say. Finally, Carlotta yawned, collected her sister from the balcony, and they went off to their own beds below.

  Genevieve turned out her light and pulled the blankets around her shoulders, but then surprised herself by lying there, worrying about Glorieta. Or Barbara. Or even Carlotta. She couldn’t help it, even though she had long ago realized that the characters in her plays were not exempt from tragedy. Characters were sometimes written out. Her own mother, for example, had been written out. Someday Genevieve herself would be written out so her soul could go flitting off into paradise where it would flutter from blossom to blossom, sipping nectar, no longer needing resignation. As for this unexpected plot twist in the Amenaj play, she would watch it, of course, but there was nothing she could do about it. All plays would come to an end eventually:

  Nonetheless, she had a difficult time dismissing the quarrel between Glorieta and Barbara. She was also unable to stop thinking about the Colonel. Tonight those three characters had stepped off the stage and engaged her attention at a level that was completely new to her. They had seemed real to her, especially the Colonel, for he had made her want to touch him, even before they had danced, the way she sometimes wanted to hug Barbara, though she never did, for it would be an unpermitted sensuality. The Colonel’s arms had felt strong and safe, and his questions had not, truthfully, been all that strange, though he had seemed too casual about the first one and too oddly intense about the others. But then, he was quite young. Thirtyish. And very good looking.

  Outside, in the garden, Barbara, still in her ball gown, leaned against the stones of the wall while Willum watched her from four inches away, his hands on the wall on either side of her head, his eyes boring purposefully into hers.

  “Glorieta is my friend,” she said weakly. “This wouldn’t be right.”

  “If you’d really cared about that, you wouldn’t have sneaked out to meet me,” said Willum in his slow, slightly arrogant voice.

  “Your father won’t allow you to marry me, Willum. You’re already betrothed.”

  “Father will allow whatever I want. He thinks two brothers marrying two sisters sounds very nice but may lead to unpleasant complications. He was here tonight; he saw you. He’s quite impressed. Besides, Father’s getting elderly. He’s sixty-four. He doesn’t want me to wait ten years to give him a grandson, and Glorieta is set on having her full youth before getting married.”

  “Well,” Barbara said in a teasing voice. “If you’re sure …”

  He pulled her to him and put his lips over her own, holding her tightly. Slowly, her arms went around him. When he released her, she was panting, her eyes were softened and glazed looking, as though she had gone blind in the instant.

  She murmured drunkenly. “You’ll have to break your betrothal to Glorieta first. I won’t have her saying that I broke up her betrothal …”

  “Oh, you didn’t,” he murmured, his lips at her ear. “Believe me, you didn’t.”

  TWO

  The Library

  “DO YOU THINK I WAS TOO FORWARD?” GENEVIEVE ASKED a day or two after the soirée, when her friends had questioned her again and she had given them an abbreviated version of her conversation with the Colonel. “Was I too … unfeminine?” At Mrs. Blessingham’s school, girls were taught to be concerned about such things.

  “You did rather spout,” Carlotta agreed. “And you know what Mrs. Blessingham says about spouting.”

  Mrs. Blessingham went to some pains to teach her girls that when a man of the aristocracy asked a woman “What do you think?” it was almost certainly a rhetorical question. The covenants that governed the nobility, the covenants on which the world was founded, specified with absolute clarity that there should be no conflicts among noblemen and no stridency among noblewomen. St
ridency among slaves, inferiors, and women had been tolerated during the human rights struggles of predispersion times, but on Haven, stridency was eschewed, as it made people uncomfortable.

  Therefore, said Mrs. Blessingham, young ladies would behave like young ladies, not like political agitators. It was uncovenantly to question men’s business or one’s own status. If one’s husband or father struck a horse or servant or child, or even oneself, the proper response was to retire, to see that injuries were attended to, and to assure that the occasion of anger was not repeated. Men were actually happier if they believed that women did not think of anything except babies and baubles and other such harmless, female kind of things. Happy men were tranquil men; tranquil men made a tranquil society. A tranquil society was the goal of women; sacrificing one’s own immediate gratifications for one’s family and society was Godly and laudatory; and doing it graciously, with unreserved resignation, displayed perfect purity of soul.

  “Do you think we really have souls?” Genevieve had asked Barbara on one occasion when they were alone and no one could possibly overhear them and report them to the scrutator.

  Barbara had frowned, something she rarely did. “Oh, Jenny, I had an older brother, Bertold. Sometimes I hated him. He’d hurt me. He’d twist my arm to make me cry, and then he’d laugh. But sometimes, just once in a while, he was happy, and when he was happy he was so funny and sweet. It never lasted long. He was killed because he was mean and hateful one time too many. He was Papa’s only son, and that’s why Papa is so set on … well, you know.

  “After Bertold was killed, I just knew all the mean parts got washed away, and the funny, sweet parts of him were kept, like gold, panned out of gravel, and put in the treasury. Not all of him was worth keeping, but part of him … I don’t think it was lost.”

  Barbara sometimes amazed Genevieve. She had such wonderful thoughts, though they, like the gold in Bertold’s nature, were sparse among the gravel of Barbara’s daily self. One had to go panning for them. And ideas weren’t universally admired, either!