Singer From the Sea

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “By that time the man Papa had wanted me to marry was dead, and his son, Earl Vestik-Vanserdel, had a wife, Petrilla, and their children were half-grown. The threat was over, so the girls and I went home to Papa.” She looked sorrowfully into the distance, her face saddened by memory, her body slumped with dejection.

  After a long silence, Genevieve prompted her. “What happened then?”

  “Oh, Papa had remarried again, a woman younger than I. She and I got to be good friends, and he rather ignored us both. Maybe he’d mellowed with age, he was eighty-some-odd by then. And then when I was fortyish, I met Gardagger. He’s much older than I, of course, and he had children of his own, by his first wife. She had died shortly after the boy was born. Papa told me I’d be wise to marry him, with strong hints that if I didn’t, I might be thrown into the street with my children. Marrying Gardagger made my girls covenantable—my son had chosen to stay in common life—but they were young enough to make the change. So, we married and I came to live here, at court, to raise Gardagger’s children and mine. I might have preferred a bit more romance, and a great deal more ardor, but Gardagger is pleasant in his way, and if he’s decided he’s too old for intimacy, I shan’t make a fuss over that.

  “Father’s new wife, my friend, died of the fever shortly after I left. He married again recently, a very young woman, Marissa. I hardly know her. My daughter Sybil married and moved to Tansay, in the Sealands. She too died of the fevers, while Gardagger and I were traveling. It wasn’t until we returned home I learned she was gone. Well, the fever is the fever, after all. One cannot grieve forever. Until I heard from Lyndafal, I honestly thought she would be safe in Sealand.”

  “How does she know she isn’t?” Genevieve asked in a puzzled voice.

  “Her message says she’s seen it. Well, you know, my dear, the way you see things. Once she told me that, I remembered my last visit to her when I noticed the way Solven spoke of his future, as though all his plans were only his plans, without her in them. I thought the doctors might have told him something ill about her, but she said no, she was well. But then, since I’ve been here, at court, I’ve talked to this one and that, countesses, duchesses, marchionesses, baronesses, even a princess or two, too many of them with stories of how their daughters married older men and then died in the milk-months, even in places where the fevers aren’t much known! Well, that made me think! Perhaps it’s something to do with older men! Something in the sperm? Or something that men are exposed to in Tribunal rimais? Something they’re well aware of, which would explain the way Solven spoke!” She wiped her eyes.

  “And the women all die of the fever?”

  “That’s usually the cause that’s cited. Batfly fever.”

  “But I thought we used P’naki to prevent batfly fever.”

  “But pregnant and nursing mothers can’t take P’naki, because it deforms the child, or it gets in their milk and makes idiots out of the babies.” She made a wild, agonized gesture.

  “We should go in,” murmured Genevieve. “I see the servants peering at us, standing out here in the cold. Father will be angry, for he thinks I’m deluded and silly, and it would be better not to annoy him.”

  “Pretend I’ve been advising you about the garden,” said Alicia, pulling herself erect, head high. “Talk of roses as we go in.”

  They returned to the house discussing the merits of ancient shrub roses versus some of the more exotic varietals available through the greenhouses, and hearing this, the Marshal, who had been hovering by the stairs, red in the face and breathing angrily, decided to make himself scarce. A servant approached to say that Veswees was waiting. Alicia volunteered to stay during the fitting, and they continued to talk of gardens, Veswees chiming in from time to time, though with a very percipient look that said he was aware the conversation was all a mask.

  “And how is your friend, the brave Colonel?” he asked around a mouthful of pins.

  “Colonel Leys?” asked Genevieve, distressed to find her voice breaking on the name. She cleared her throat. “Colonel Leys is quite well, though I’ve seen little of him recently. Father seems to be keeping him very busy.”

  “Ah,” the man murmured, “what a pity. Tell me, is it customary for one of the Colonel’s rank to serve as equerry?”

  “It is not,” said the Duchess, looking up from the embroidery she had brought with her. “The Marshal should let the boy go. His career will stifle here in Havenor.”

  At the thought of Aufors being let go, some toothed thing grabbed at Genevieve’s insides and bit her, a sudden pang that came from nowhere and went as swiftly, making her gasp.

  “What?” demanded Veswees. “Did I stick you?”

  “Only a little,” said Genevieve wonderingly. “It’s nothing.”

  The Duchess knotted her thread. “What gossip have you, Veswees? What naughtiness is about in the provinces?”

  He laughed. “Ah, well, you’ve heard that Prince Thumsort has quarreled with his lady?”

  “That’s no new thing. They quarrel about once a season.”

  “True. There’s a scandal in Bliggen. Or, one should say in Halfmore.”

  Genevieve looked up, suddenly alert, and the Duchess cocked her head, smiling. “You know the place, Genevieve?”

  “Of it,” she murmured.

  “Well, it seems Viscount Willum has taken himself a wife, though he’s been long betrothed to someone else. Not only that, but she’s a commoner!”

  “Barbara,” said Genevieve with absolute certainty. “He married her!”

  “Got her pregnant first, I hear,” said the Duchess. “You know her, Genevieve?”

  “She was at school with us,” she cried. “I should be happy for her, but, oh, what will Glorieta do? She loved him.”

  “Perhaps,” said the Duchess, “it will turn out better for her, in the end.”

  The Marshal decided that Genevieve should go to the concert with Duke Edoard. Not alone, however. Colonel Leys and Della would accompany her, awaiting her outside the private box. So chaperoned, Genevieve went.

  Afterward, she had no idea whether she had been charming to Edoard or whether she had even known he was there. All she could remember was the music, which had made her think of Stephanie’s book. Where was the bit about music? She sought the book eagerly, finding it at last upon the shelf and leafing through it until she came to the lines she had remembered:

  Our teachers tell us that each world has a song that is begun with the first life on a world, a song that sounds within the world to foster life and variation. All living creatures are a part of the song which shall be sung forever, until the last star goes out.

  Our teachers tell us that sometimes living creatures do not wish to be part of the song; they do not hear it; they rise up against it; they cry that they are larger than the song and more important than the music, and when their words drown out the song, then the world begins to die. Within the song, we are an immortal resonance. Outside it, we are like the tinkle of a tiny bell, gone quickly into nothing.

  For many ages our people, the kaikaukau whetu, sang with the spirit of earth. Then came a time when those who could not hear the song became many, and their voices drowned out the song, and the singers knew they must depart if the song was to go on living …

  And when that time came, all happened as lo had said. The ships were prepared and the song entered into them, and we went with the song into the depths. And when we were gone, lo, the Old Earth died for there was no music left within the world.

  Della’s husband returned a few days later, and soon afterward, Della whispered into Genevieve’s ear what arrangements had been made and where the Blodden girl would be kept in safety. During her tour of the royal art gallery, Genevieve passed this on to Alicia.

  “The place she will go sounds very common indeed,” she confessed. “I hope Lyndafal will not mind it.”

  “Lyndafal loves life,” said her mother softly. “She will mind nothing so long as she is alive.”

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nbsp; Aufors remained busy, and Genevieve caught only glimpses of him coming or going. Some days passed in relative quiet, except for the Marshal, who blustered about, here and there, interfering with the servants and bothering Genevieve with suggestions about the outside workers, several of whom were still laboring at long-deferred and much-needed repairs to the house. The Marshal had not yet recovered from his annoyance at the way the Lord Paramount had treated them, or at Genevieve’s “misinterpretation,” so he defined it, of that occurrence. He was therefore inclined to carp at everything, though he remained blessedly nonverbal about the specifics of what annoyed him. Almost, Genevieve thought with a wry smile, as though he thought someone might be listening.

  Genevieve herself made occasional clearly annunciated excuses for his bad temper: his gout was acting up, his bed was not comfortable, he was worried about his favorite horse. On one occasion when Della, in Genevieve’s bedroom, started to say something about their private arrangement, Genevieve laid her fingers across Della’s mouth and shook her head. If any servant from Langmarsh had been asked to install a listening device, Della would have known of it, but Della could not know what some stranger workman might have done. Thereafter, she and Della spoke of any private matter out in the stableyard.

  Veswees delivered the first dress about the time the house began preparing for the second dinner party. The gown was a marvel of cut and line, made of a fabric woven in Sealand, a soft blue with barely discernable green and darker blue stripes, cut so the stripes spiraled around her body from the high collar to the hem. Even Genevieve had to admit she looked quite wonderful in it, nose and all, though the collar required that her hair be dramatically “up,” as Veswees said. “Very high, Marchioness. Very high indeed.”

  “Veswees,” she murmured, so quietly as to be almost whispering. “Do you know why they won’t let us sing?”

  He stared into her eyes, as though searching for something there, some keyhole into which he might put a key, perhaps. Some door he might open. “I know two reasons,” he said.

  “Tell me.”

  “The first reason is a simple one. Back some hundreds of years, in the time of some Lord Paramount or other, an oracle spoke to him saying that when a noble young woman sang to the seas, the reign of the nobles on Haven should end.”

  “How strange.”

  “That’s the story, at least. The other reason is merely something I’ve thought from time to time. Voices, you know, are very individual. Harp music is harp music, well or badly played, but anonymous. The same could be said for piano, or violika, or cortuba. One string quartet, assuming competence on the part of the performers, is rather like any other string quartet. But if someone sings really well, the voice becomes totally recognizable, does it not?”

  She puzzled over this. “And so?”

  “And so, if a noblewoman were very talented in music, if she sang in public, if she became very much followed one might say, her loss would be greatly felt. Being known, and followed, and grieved over would be quite inappropriate for a noblewoman.”

  He turned away and busied himself, saying nothing more, his very posture telling her he had said all he would say. Though she had been wondering about this ever since she began reading Stephanie’s book, which referred repeatedly to singing, she let the matter drop. If Veswees was uncomfortable speaking of it, probably she herself should be equally wary.

  On the afternoon of the next dinner, a pale and weary-looking Aufors Leys came to visit her, bearing formality before him like an offering.

  “You have done well, my lady,” he said tonelessly, with a sorry attempt at a smile. “This time there are no mortal enemies on the guest list, and your seating plan has been quite thoughtfully worked out.”

  “Lady Alicia helped me,” she said, fighting her desire to reach out and touch him. He looked so sad, and his arms were so close. She could move one hand, only a little, and it would rest on his. She clasped both hands firmly in her lap, cleared her throat, and looked up at the ceiling. “She’s been very kind.”

  “Your dressmakers worked out well?” he asked, making an attempt at conversation.

  “Two of them made gowns for me. The woman did two very pleasant ones, beyond reproach as to taste and fabric, though rather dull. They are no doubt superbly covenantly.”

  A smile barely flickered at the corners of his mouth.

  “Craftsman Veswees finished a very dramatic gown for me to wear tonight, and he’s working on two more. Father is quite annoyed at the cost, of course. I don’t think he understood quite what he was getting into, coining here to Havenor. Things were much less expensive in Langmarsh.”

  “The provinces are much less expensive, yes. And preferable not only for that reason.”

  Long silence, while Aufors shifted from foot to foot and stared at the wall and Genevieve remained a statue graven in stone: Woman, looking at her clenched hands.

  “Is there anything else I can do for you, my lady?”

  “Oh, Aufors,” she cried, unable to contain herself. “Even though I said we must be proper, I hoped you would go on being my friend.”

  He reached for her hands, squeezed them painfully in his own, and said in a husky voice, “Never doubt it for a moment, Jenny. But don’t let me show it, for if I do, my words can only lead me directly to your hps.”

  Stunned by his words, she drew back, jerking her hands from his amid a flood of feeling that was totally foreign to her. It was like a drunkenness, a tottery feeling, as though both her legs and her brain had lost their blood supply, which had suddenly gone heatedly elsewhere in a frightening maelstrom of feeling. It was as though something clutched her there, clutched and squeezed! She was fainting, drowning, and it took all her strength not to fall forward into Aufors’s arms. Instead, she grasped the arm of her chair and flapped the fingers of her other hand at him, as though shooing chickens, meaning go away, oh, go away, what have I done?

  He gave her a look of tragic intensity and went to gasp for breath outside the room, while she, inside the room, did the same.

  Some small gibbering thing inside her laughed in hysteria, drawing her attention to what was obviously meant by a “twitch of the loins!” Good heavens! Was this lust? Was this what Carlotta felt for Willum, or Barbara felt for almost anyone? This incapacitating need? This wanting to be near, to be held, to be … well, that, yes, the act she had been instructed in then taught to unthink but which she found herself thinking of all too clearly! This wouldn’t do! It couldn’t do. Not now. Not here!

  By evening, several hours’ struggle plus a good deal of determination had somewhat restored her poise, which was essential, for at this dinner Yugh Delganor was again a guest, and tonight, he would be seated at Genevieve’s right. Despairingly, she had asked Alicia to sit once again at her left.

  “My dear, I shall be glad to be there. Are we to have entertainment?”

  Genevieve nodded. “A play. A repertory company is traveling up from Merdune, and Father has arranged for them to do a comedy for us.”

  “No doubt Prince Yugh will want to know when you’ll be ready to start your dudes here at the palace. We’ve done the gardens, the greenhouses, the stables, and one gallery, and you’ve learned it all, leaving us only the other galleries to do.”

  “I’ll try to learn quickly,” Genevieve replied, mimicking the Duchess’s meaningless public voice and inconsequential words, designed to put any listener to sleep through sheer vacuity. “We wouldn’t want the Prince to become impatient with me.”

  She hurried as she dressed, realizing with a pang that she wanted to get downstairs as quickly as possible, for that was where Aufors was undoubtedly striding about, arranging last minute details. She forced herself to slow down, taking several deep breaths and assuring herself that she was still only a mouse in the wings, a watcher of all the confusions and entanglements that were going on among other people. Soon she would observe Yugh Delganor’s play, and she would remember to crouch very small in a corner if she were to av
oid being drawn into the story and made a central part of it.

  The attempt to drag her onto center stage was not long in coming. The Duchess faced Yugh Delganor across the table. She attempted conversation, only to have each attempt quashed by a chill monosyllable or two. Even her conversation with Genevieve was stifled by the Prince’s manner.

  Finally, just before dessert, the Prince spoke. “You are looking well.”

  Though the words were complimentary, he was looking at the Duchess as though he had discovered a fly in his soup.

  “I?” said the Duchess, surprised.

  “I was speaking of the Most Honorable Marchioness, Lady Genevieve,” he replied, turning his face toward her and continuing in a measured and utterly toneless voice, “You are a very good addition to our company here at court, my lady. Everyone speaks your praises. I am so greatly moved by your beauty and grace and modesty that I shall obtain from your father permission to ask your hand in marriage.”

  At that moment a small silence fell, one of those that occurs intermittently in even large gatherings. The words, “… to ask your hand in marriage …” hung in that silence like the last reverberations of a bell. Genevieve did not reply. She sat in gelid paralysis, her wineglass held halfway to her mouth, her eyes fixed on the red shiver of its contents. The only thought she had was of her mother’s voice: the hard road. Her whole being rejected it. It could not be this road. Not possibly. This she could not do!