Wedding

by Ann Herendeen

  My favorite building of all was the dairy. There were bowls of milk set out on tables to be skimmed, churns for making butter, and shelves of all different kinds of cloth-covered cheese, hard, soft and semi-soft, ripe and fresh. It was cool in the dairy house, and peaceful once the clatter of the churns was done for the morning, and someone always offered me a morsel of something tasty.

  By now I was brave enough to visit any building or room. I had been afraid at first, could only begin to imagine how much in the way I would be, the idle lady amusing herself by watching the peasants at work. But my appetite had drawn me, a true baptism of fire, first to the kitchen. Tempted by the mouth-watering smells and curious as to how so much delicious food was prepared every day without microwaves and packaged meals, I could not stay away long. Even at La Sapienza, our “aides,” who in their natural state eat their food raw, had relied more on food supplied by shops in the nearby town than on dishes made from scratch.

  When, after breakfast on my second day, I ventured in, I saw I had done people an injustice. Everyone was courteous and welcoming. With my gift, I knew they were not pretending. I would be the mistress here; to show no interest in my new home would be the greatest insult of all. Far from resenting me, the workers expected my visits, were proud of their skills and, when they had time, answered my stupid questions with a pleased air of showing off. Poor lady, they thought, what must her life have been, among the lowlanders and the Terrans, that she should not know what squab is, has never eaten bread fresh from the oven? They smiled at me indulgently, surprised in their hard-working lives to discover that they ate better, and lived better, than the future ’Gravina Aranyi herself.

  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.

  CHAPTER 4

  My 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.

  “Oh, they’re fertile enough,” I said, laughing at her obscene gesture. “But they’re not gifted. I had to travel halfway around the– world to find a man I’m compatible with.” I compromised on the distance I would admit to having come.

  Magali did not possess crypta, but she was sensitive. Some of my peculiar worries, so different from what would bother a real Lady Amalie, must have shown in my face, been revealed in my tone of voice, and were received by her mind, as they had not been anywhere else. She nodded, her face softening in sympathy. “You must marry one of your own kind.”

  My perception of her heightened awareness made me reckless, instead of cautious as it should have. “But is he my own kind? Can I really become the wife of Margrave Aranyi?”

  Magali stared. “But Lady Amalie, you are his betrothed!” It was one thing for me to be honest about my illegitimacy, quite another to question Dominic’s judgment. “He chose you. He would not choose beneath him. Not him.” She smiled with fondness for her absent master, his regard for the Realm of Aranyi and his sense of what was due to it.

  That was my own thought, more or less. Except that Dominic hadn’t really chosen, any more than I had. We had been thrust each upon the other, the link between our minds yoking us together by compulsion, and we were trying to make the best of what neither of us would have sought out on our own.

  The look on m
y face and my continued silence led Magali to another assumption. “Lord Dominic loves you,” she said, using the title he had held for most of his life, while his father had been alive. “I always knew he’d take a wife when he was ready, once he had his fill of boys.”

  Any momentary feeling of offense was short-lived. My Terran ideas of masters and servants, nourished by holonet dramas and historical novels, had died days ago, snuffed out by reality. People don’t work for Margrave Aranyi, or even for the Aranyi Realm—they are Aranyi, as much as Dominic is. It gives them a freedom to speak and to think that a chief executive on Terra might envy. Magali could criticize her master, or joke about him with me, just as one family member can tease another. She had already stopped the curtsying, treating me with a familiarity that was far more respectful than her original fearful deference. I had been accepted as Aranyi too.

  Once I absorbed the sense of it, Magali’s remark reminded me of similar conversations I had had about Dominic at La Sapienza. Eclipsian men are encouraged to enjoy same-sex relationships before marriage. It avoids all the usual problems of teenage pregnancy, unwed motherhood and disruption of family structure that societies have always tried to regulate. But by his early twenties a man is supposed to marry a woman and set up a household; for a man of Dominic’s rank, it’s less of a suggestion, more of an imperative. Marriage has few of the romantic associations of Terra. As for most of Terra’s past, love is seen as developing after marriage, not as a requirement for it.