by Adam Roberts
Aunt Elena, his father’s sister, had been particularly wise in the ways of mourning, having lost her own love-husband several years before, and having watched a favourite cousin go down to the Mudworld to fight and not return. She had counselled Polystom not to attempt to restrain his grief for the first week, but thereafter to attempt a more manly self-control. Polystom had wept and wailed on his aunt’s shoulder for the allotted seven days, and on the eighth had found it surprisingly easy to control himself. By the end of the month his co-father was dead as well, and Polystom wept again, although the fount of his tears was not as copious the second time. After that his family endeavoured to keep him occupied to the point where absorption in his grief did not stagnate into something unhealthy, but not so much that he was unable to work through the natural grieving process. They swam and fished despite the chill of the Middenstead in Winter Year; they played catch-hoop and netgame on the lawn. Polystom spent time with each of his cousins, getting to know them a little better.
After six months, Aunt Elena began talking of the need for companionship. Firstly, she inquired, gingerly, after Polystom’s preferences. It was awkward, she admitted – given her nephew’s relatively advanced years – that she needed elucidation upon this point: ‘of course I ought to know, dear boy, but somehow I’ve remained in ignorance of the direction in which your passions flow.’
‘Women,’ said Polystom. ‘As it happens, girls.’ Then Aunt Elena began, delicately, discussing possibilities for companionship. Perhaps even marriage, eventually. With his father’s death he had inherited a splendid estate. There was no denying it – it was a large estate, she said. Large, Polystom repeated gloomily, looking through the reception-room window at the dusk-darkening forests, void now of his father’s presence. Large and beautiful, of course, Aunt Elena had added diplomatically. A jewel in the crown of the System. But if Stommi (she used the childhood abbreviation) could find a heart’s-ally, somebody with whom to share the burdens of stewardship . . . Polystom nodded. He had thought this himself, of course. Perhaps now he was ready for a wife. Perhaps that would mark his ascent into full manhood: inheriting the estate, carrying life onwards, becoming Steward, and marrying.
‘Come to a party, then,’ said Aunt Elena. ‘I’ll organise it, in my home. A fortnight today. You can fly over, and I’ll introduce you to some interesting people.’
So Polystom had taken his favourite plane, the single-seater Pterodactyl, and flown over the Middenstead and down the spine of mountains to his aunt’s elegant house, in the middle of beautiful olive-crop country. It was entirely right that the family be organising his bride for him. His sadness, still sharp, felt swathed about as with a bandage by the love of those close to him.
*
It became obvious that Aunt Elena had a particular girl in mind; a girl called Erina, who was the daughter of Eu Trachaea, the famous composer of modern operas. This Erina was a tall, slender woman, her skin the colour, said Aunt Elena, in a stage whisper, ‘of coffee blended with the finest cream’. Aunt Elena introduced the two of them. ‘You really must meet my beloved nephew,’ she said, before drifting discreetly away. Polystom smiled, stood up a little taller in his bear-leather shoes. He bowed, kissed the front of Erina’s wrist as was traditional, and offered his compliments. But he decided immediately that her skin colour, fashionable though it was, was false: there was a tannin-shaded uncertainty to the tone, as if nicotine had spread from her fingers (where she held her long brown cigarette like a pen) up her arm and across her torso.
‘You don’t smoke?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he conceded. ‘My chest is not strong enough for it. Childhood asthma, you know.’
‘What a terrible shame,’ she said, sipping at the end of her cigarette. The smoke tendrilled about her chin and neck. She pronounced the word terri-ble as two syllables. ‘To miss such pleasure!’
They were at a garden party, a very select gathering, with no more than two dozen carefully chosen guests. Savoury-smelling cooked chittlings sizzled on hotplates, book-sized pieces of thin metal with flames burning intermittently blue or invisible underneath them. Servants carried wine between the knots of people dotted over the immaculate green sward.
‘I have tried it of course,’ said Polystom, clearing his throat in a half-cough at Erina’s smoke. ‘It didn’t agree with me.’
‘But my smoke is irritating you,’ said Erina, smoothly. ‘How awful of me.’ She dropped the cigarette to the grass, where it stuck, glow-down, like a miniature javelin. ‘Let’s have coffee – I simply must have something to keep my fingers busy, and a coffee-thimble will do as well as anything. Over there.’ She didn’t point, but started languidly strolling towards a set of three outdoor sofas, laid out in a II pattern around a low table, and currently unoccupied. Golden samovars of hot coffee on the table released threads of steam from their nozzles.
Erina slipped onto one of the sofas, curling her legs away beneath her, shedding as she did a pair of Hermés slippers. Her bare feet, whiter than the rest of her, flashed momently in the sunshine. One of the slippers tipped onto its side, showing its gaping mouth to Polystom in a toy imitation outrage.
‘Do sit,’ she said, tapping the seat beside her with her little finger. ‘Sit down.’
He sat himself next to her, and poured her a coffee, passing the tiny cup to her by holding its rim so that she could take its ear-shaped handle between thumb and middle finger.
‘Glorious weather,’ he said, aware of a certain awkwardness between them, but not understanding why it should be there.
She looked up at the pure mauve sky, the sun’s clear eye of light. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘Aunt Elena always manages to have her parties on the very best days, weather-wise. I don’t know how she does it.’
‘Is she your aunt as well?’ Stom asked.
‘As well?’
‘As mine.’
‘Why, yes. Are we related then?’
‘I suppose it’s no surprise,’ said Stom, pouring his own coffee. ‘Most of the great families are related to one another. If we traced it back far enough, I daresay we could prove everybody a cousin of everybody else.’
‘Aunt Elena has been very dear to me, ever since I was a child,’ said Erina.
‘And to me.’
‘Only lately,’ Erina went on, tossing a sly look at her companion, ‘she seems to have decided to matchmake. Ever since I reached twenty. Apparently’ – she drew this word out enormously on its second syllable – ‘I’m too old to be single.’
‘She invited me over to this party with the same intention, I do believe,’ said Stom, feeling a relaxation in the tension between them.
‘Oh of course. I suppose she sees the two of us together.’
‘I suppose she does. Do you think she’s right?’
‘About us?’
‘Yes.’
Erina sipped slowly, drawing the moment out briefly, before saying, ‘I really don’t think so. Do you?’
‘Not at all,’ said Stom, with genuine relief in his belly. ‘I’m so glad we’re of one mind on that.’
‘Auntie doesn’t care, I think, whether I pair off with a love-husband, or just get together to have some children. But she’s said to me many times that an official pairing gives one’s twenties some sort of solidity.’
‘For me,’ said Stom, ‘I believe she has in mind a love-partnership. She thinks I need a companion.’
Erina looked coolly at him. ‘Do you?’
‘Well,’ said Stom, a little flustered by the intimacy of the question, ‘perhaps I do. My estate is rather large. And I have been by myself since my father’s death.’
‘Is your mother dead too?’
‘Oh no, but I don’t see much of her. She came for the funeral, of course, which was very nice of her, and left me with an open invitation to visit. She lives on Kaspian. I had a co-father, but I’m afraid he died as well, not long after my father.’
‘Beastly,’ said Erina. ‘Were you close to them?’
‘Yes,’ said Stom, surprised again at the indelicacy of her questions.
‘Beastly,’ she repeated. ‘Well I’m sorry I won’t be able to be the balm for your solitude. But perhaps there’s somebody else here?’ She put her cup down, and pointed with a little finger across the bright green grass. ‘There – Arassa.’ She was pointing to a sleek white-skinned woman deep in conversation with two elderly men. This woman was wearing a white cotton dress and black knee-boots that looked shiny as liquorice. ‘Dear Arassa,’ Erina said. ‘Perhaps she’s the one for you. She’s very . . .’ and she searched for the word, as if retrieving it from some distant and quite alien language – ‘very loving, I believe.’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever met her,’ mumbled Polystom.
‘No? She is charming. There was some story associated with her and her parents, I forget what exactly. Except that she lives with her grandmother now.’
‘She’s very – striking-looking,’ said Stom.
Erina, catching his tone, looked quizzically at him. ‘It is a woman you’re thinking of?’ she asked. ‘Come, let’s not stand on stupid ceremony. You can tell me. I know boys as well.’
‘A woman is what I’m looking for,’ said Stom, blushing. ‘But that’s not to say that I’m going to be equally attracted to every single woman I see.’
‘Poor Arassa,’ said Erina, without feeling. ‘Too buxom? Her loss, I’m sure. Or there’s Thekla,’ pointing again. ‘I was at school with Thekla.’
Stom squinted into the sun, and made out a thin body topped with massy scarlet hair wrapped about in gauze. Her face was freckled, her mouth open in the middle of telling some anecdote, her eyes wide. She was talking to an elderly woman, dressed in sober green trousers and jacket, who was in turn carefully shepherding another girl. Stom’s eye went to this latter. Her hair was black, her face turned away, her slight frame swathed in pale blue silk that wriggled and moved in the breeze to cling about the contours of her arms, her hips.
‘Who’s that with her?’ Polystom asked, blushing deeper.
‘Beeswing? She’s a tomboy. Oh, she’s trouble. Don’t you know her?’
‘No,’ said Stom, colouring deeper. ‘What a strange name.’
‘That’s not her name, of course,’ said Erina. ‘It’s a nickname, or something like that. I don’t even know where it comes from. Her name’s Dianeira. Are you interested in her?’
‘I don’t know her,’ said Stom, the blush spreading from his face to his neck and ears. The unknown girl turned, momentarily, and he caught sight of her face in profile; the delicate, almost faery features.
‘How funny,’ said Erina, and giggled in a low, languorous way. Stom flashed a look at her: that was really too rude, but she laid her hand on his sleeve. ‘Oh I’m not laughing at you, my dear,’ she said, adopting the tones of an old lady, ‘really I’m not. Only I’m imagining poor Aunt Elena’s face when she discovers that you’ve fallen for Beeswing of all people!’
It may have been the fact that Beeswing was not regarded generally as an appropriate choice that fixed Polystom’s attention so forcefully upon her; or perhaps it was fate, karma, love, whichever of those sorts of hex-words you find most convincing. Certainly, in the early days of his infatuation, when he was most overwhelmed by the beauty of her face, the delicacy and grace of her body, and by the rumoured rebellious heat of her heart – in those days, Polystom most often thought in terms of love. He wrote poetry that expressed, in more flowery words than the occasion demanded, that the two of them were meant to be together.
Aunt Elena began by expressing disbelief, and continued by voicing an elegant sort of exasperation. ‘But you don’t know what she’s like!’ she told him. It was true, but it was also a large part of the appeal. Of course he didn’t know what she was like. How, his soul cried (finely honed, he liked to think, with a genteel anguish) could any person truly know any other person? He had tried to put this sentiment into verse and had only distressed himself with the clichés that resulted. But that didn’t stop it being true; and, he told himself, there had to be some connection between the two of them, some special speech in the air between Beeswing and him, or why else would he feel this way?
‘Speak to her guardian,’ Aunt Elena advised. ‘If you really have got a crush on this girl, then at least you owe it to yourself to go into things with a full knowledge. Disabused.’ He winced. Got a crush. So vulgar a phrase. His soul flinched from its crudity, or perhaps from the notion of transience it implied. To paint true love in such colours!
‘Her guardian?’ he asked, covering his embarrassment with a nonchalant smile. ‘What’s the story there?’ The garden party was over now; some guests had departed, others were staying over in one of Elena’s many, sumptuous guest rooms. Beeswing and her elderly companion were among the latter. Most of the guests had gone into the house; Stom and his aunt were walking together over the lawn.
Dusk had fallen. Moths dripped from the darkening trees in their thousands. Their colonies nested in the upper branches throughout Spring Year, and now they flew through the purpling sky in random flitters, a grainy and swirling cloud over the lawn. Servants were erecting ecto-plasmic draperies before the open doors and open windows, gauze to prevent the insects getting indoors. Polystom parted one such delicate curtain to allow his aunt to step through the back door into the rear sitting-room.
‘Her guardian,’ Aunt Elena repeated. ‘She had co-mothers, I think; her mother and her co-mother. Her father went off somewhere, got himself lost. On Kaspian, I think. Anyway, her co-mothers were strict – possibly a little over-strict. Shall I call for some liqueur?’
‘If you like, Aunt. Go on: over-strict?’
‘Oh well,’ she said, sitting down and beckoning a servant. ‘Perhaps over-strict. It’s so difficult knowing how to handle the young. I’m sure the parents were only acting with her best interests in heart, merely insisting upon a certain discipline. Anyway, Beeswing didn’t respond well to discipline. Yes, a half bottle.’ This last to a servant, who hurried away.
Stom sat opposite his aunt. ‘Really?’ In his head he was imagining this fragile creature as a heart-strong rebel against heavy-handed parenting. A free spirit. A faery raised by cattle. He had already decided, with instant certainty, that the two of them were soulmates – decided this without having exchanged so much as a word with her. This particular romantic ideal, like something out of a poem, brought enormous solidity to his heart’s yearning.
‘She ran away. Several times. Talk to her guardian, and she’ll tell you. Ungovernable, she’s simply ungovernable. Oh Stommi,’ added Aunt Elena with a gushing little rush of words, leaning forward to rest her hand on his knee, ‘I can see you’re smitten, it’s obvious you’re smitten, but please don’t rush into anything. Will you at least promise me that?’
The next day he took breakfast at eleven, at a large round table set on the lawn, and made sure to sit next to Beeswing’s guardian. This was a compactly stout little woman called Elena like his own aunt, and addressed by everybody as ‘Elena Marina’ to distinguish her. Beeswing herself was not at breakfast. ‘In her room, reading,’ said Elena Marina, a tinge of disapprobation to her words.
Stom almost didn’t want to ask, for fear of being disappointed by a negative answer, but he had to know. ‘Poetry?’
‘She does read a lot of poetry,’ Elena Marina conceded, as Stom’s heartbeat sped with the thrill of confirmation. ‘She reads a lot of everything. Too much, in my opinion. She doesn’t spend enough time where she is; always running away, even to the point of running away from herself in her own head. Did your aunt tell you her story?’
‘A little of it. She ran away from her co-mothers?’
‘My cousins, both,’ said Elena Marina. ‘By different branches of the family, but both of them were my cousins. They worked hard with her, they tried, but she won’t accept the need for discipline. That’s why they were compelled to give up on her in the end.’
‘They’re still alive?’
‘Oh yes, oh certainly. They do visit, from time to time. But mostly they spend their time on the moon of Berthing. They have a house up there, you know.’
‘It was extraordinarily kind of you to take over as guardian,’ said Stom. But the instant he said this Elena Marina blushed a bruise-purple colour from cheeks to neck, and he realised that he had touched a very tender spot. Despite her manner of easy gentility, Stom realised, she must have undertaken guardianship for a fee. It was her way of earning a living, which made her, in effect, a servant, although a servant of a slightly grander station than most: a governess or tutor, something of that rank. ‘Aunt’ was evidently a courtesy title, and when she had said that Beeswing’s co-mothers were both her cousins (rather overstressing the fact, in retrospect), she must have meant on the sinistral side. Perhaps she was the offspring of a playful son’s adventure with a servant, a daughter experimenting with a handsome field-hand, something along those lines. It was a common enough story. Stom smiled his most charming smile, and said something bland to cover her awkwardness, although inwardly he experienced a rush of lofty disdain for her miniature pride, her rather pathetic imitation of breeding. A servant! Passing herself off as the equal of the guests at the party! The very idea!
‘How old is she?’ he asked. It was rather a direct question, but the fact that Elena Marina was only a glorified servant rather relieved Stom of the need to be too polite.
‘She’s eighteen.’
‘Old enough to do without a guardian.’
Another deep-coloured blush. Polystom understood that she had interpreted his observation as a criticism; you cling to her for the money and status, instead of letting her go, although really she should be making her own way in the world. He hadn’t meant this, or didn’t think he had, but didn’t feel particularly awkward about her awkwardness. He couldn’t help it if people misinterpreted what he said. And besides, there was no point in worrying about upsetting a servant.
‘Her co-parents specifically requested,’ she said, slightly flustered, ‘that I look after her into her majority. In so many ways, you see, she’s still a child.’
