Chapter 21: Settling In
Honeymoon, West of Abersford
He didn’t know why he woke up. They had gone to sleep early, both Maera and the covers providing him with warmth against the night chill. He remembered drifting off, then he was awake, lifting his head to find the digital clock that didn’t exist. One more thing he’d never experience again, but habits remained.
He lay in the darkness, listening to Maera’s breathing, faint under the sound of the wind and the rain that had moved in before dusk, accompanied by intense bands of lightning. Sometimes steady drops hit the window, and at other times the sound was a heavy drum, as an overladen cloud emptied its cargo. The wind ebbed and flowed like a heartbeat, whistling through cracks in the walls.
Yozef had always loved wind and rain. He remembered the stormier winters in Berkeley and nights similar to this, where he awoke next to Julie. What was her life like now? He hoped she’d moved on after the shock of his “death.” Was she married? Children? Child? They’d discovered her pregnancy before he left for the trip to the chemistry conference in Chicago. Did she keep the baby? Was it a boy or a girl? He’d missed her terribly the first months, then time slowly moved on, and the wound turned to a scar, a remembrance of what had been.
Maera shifting in the bed brought his mind back to her. Without a light and with the storm covering the stars and the moons, the room was black, but he could imagine her. Bright, inquisitive, more attractive than she recognized, fiercely loyal to her family and, he hoped, to him.
He folded away part of the covers, letting in some of the cold, moist air that came with the storm, careful not to wake Maera. The cold was good, too. Then, just about when the cold got uncomfortable, he folded back the cover and drifted off, warmed up again, lulled by the rhythm of wind, rain, heartbeats, and two breaths.
When his breathing was regular, with a slight snore, Maera opened her eyes. She hadn’t been asleep. The storm wasn’t comforting for her as for him, one of the many things to learn about her husband. Things that rarely seemed understandable. Like now. She found heavy storms threatening. No storm ever shook her family’s manor, where outside sounds were faint, even in the worst conditions.
And why would she have such experiences? Weren’t they something to avoid? To endure but not seek out? Yet Yozef did more than endure, he sought them out. That evening he’d stood on the porch, protected from the worst of the rain but exposed to the wind and the cold, the thunder shaking the overhang. He came back inside exhilarated. Did he feel a kinship with such elements? When she asked about it, he said, Feeling the forces of nature is like getting a glimpse of the power of God. She hadn’t thought of him as a devout man. He attended abbey services and was respectful but didn’t talk about the beliefs of his people, another of the many topics he skirted around when pressed.
She had been dubious about the “honeymoon.” She understood making time for a new husband and wife to know each other better, but why isolate themselves in this one-room cottage? And with no servants? They hadn’t seen another soul for more than a sixday, and they’d be here another three days. The first few days she’d felt ill at ease with only the two of them. They’d talked more than in all of their time together since she’d left Abersford, with enough details and anecdotes about families that Maera felt she “knew” his family, even though they’d never meet. She also knew more about his studies, his aspirations to help the people of Keelan, his worries about the Narthani, and his fear during the raid on St. Sidryn’s.
At first, hearing the latter made her uneasy. Few Caedelli men, especially those close to a hetman’s family, would ever admit fear. Yozef had. Flashing unbidden through her mind was the question of whether her husband was a coward. No, both Carnigan and Denes Vegga spoke not only of his insight on how to save the abbey, but also of how he took part in the fight. She didn’t believe Carnigan and Vegga would think highly of a coward.
Yozef simply made honest assessments of the way things were. Maera didn’t doubt most Caedelli men were afraid during a fight, although they’d never admit it as easily as Yozef did. He took it for granted that one should be afraid.
So, who’s braver? she thought. The man who’s afraid and won’t admit it, or the man who’s afraid, admits it, and still fights?
Another example to caution herself when making judgments about her husband.
She snuggled up next to him. The covers were warm enough, but his body next to hers was beginning to be . . . safe? No, not just safe, something else. Drifting off to sleep, she smiled when she remembered the first couple of days. They found the cottage well stocked with food, kerosene, bedding, and everything Diera could think of for their two sixdays, though no one to prepare the food for them. At home, her mother had insisted on occasionally preparing meals, and her daughters would join in, except for Maera, who would always be too busy. Maera never understood her mother’s interest in cooking.
This was different. They prepared the meals themselves, and although Maera initially proved virtually useless, Yozef was more than competent. It was only one more item to hang on the confusing tree of Yozef’s being. To her surprise, by the third day she found herself relaxed and even enjoyed working with him to ready the food they ate. She mainly assisted under his direction, but she learned fast.
More striking was that she found that when they made the meal and ate together, it was almost . . . sensual. While she knew the food they prepared wasn’t extraordinary, somehow fresh bread she kneaded herself tasted better than any she had ever experienced. Logically, she knew it wasn’t true, but there it was, anyway.
Sharing a bed with a man would also take time to adjust to. Sleeping occasionally with younger sisters was one thing. A man seemed wrong at first, though less so each night. She needed even more adjusting to a man touching her everywhere. Not that it didn’t feel good at times, and she was determined to do her duty to her husband. He hadn’t pushed his rights the first night after they’d arrived in Abersford or the second night at the cottage. He said it was out of concern for her to recover from their first night together. She had been relieved, disappointed, and confused. Her brief wondering whether he might not find her appealing was assuaged the next night, most nights thereafter, and, for the first time, yesterday morning. Her duty wasn’t as bad as her misgivings, and she wondered if, as other women had whispered to her, she would come to enjoy it as much as her husband obviously did. Time would tell.
Their days were “planned doing nothing,” as Yozef paradoxically termed it. Not that they did nothing. They walked along the beach every day. Maera ran in the surf as they had that day at Abersford and with more abandon than since childhood. They swam in the little cove below the cottage. The water was calm and not too cold, once you immersed. Yozef swam like a fish, but for her swimming had been in quiet ponds, not ocean surf. While initially she was hesitant to get into water over her head, he was solicitous and hovered nearby until she became more confident.
They played—silly games in the water, while walking, in the cottage. Who could count the most seagulls, the loser doing the meal cleanup. Not that it made any difference, because they did everything together. They taught each other songs. She didn’t understand what “doing the hokey pokey” meant, but the lilt of the tune, the word cadence, and the silly dance were addictive.
She didn’t want to live this way forever, although she began to see why Yozef was attracted to getting away. It surprised her during last night’s meal when a hint of regret seeped into her thoughts about them leaving in three days. What might seem a frivolity to most people, she now wondered if brief times away might be healthy and might make the person more effective when he returned to the real world. She wondered whether her father could use such time and knew he would only look at her askance if she suggested it.
Strange. I understand even better than before why people use the word for Yozef. I should know, because they’ve often thought that of me. Now that I’m married to Yozef, will I take on some of his str
angeness? It’s odd that the thought doesn’t bother me. She smiled again before drifting off. Maybe being married to Yozef will make me appear to others as less odd?
A New House
Their arrival back in Abersford revived the events the honeymoon had only delayed—a special Godsday service, a formal reception attended by several hundred, individual invitations for dinner with prominent citizens of Abersford, and endless stops for congratulations wherever they went. It took most of a month before the attention abated, and they settled into their new routine.
As expected, a new house was one of Maera’s first major impacts when they returned from the honeymoon. Yozef had been satisfied with his small house. As long as he had a place to eat and sleep and enough room to write, he was content. Adding Maera didn’t translate into merely adding more rooms. As Filtin Fuller had cautioned, Maera had ideas. Yozef could easily afford to build whatever Maera wanted, although her father insisted the Keelan hetman had to be generous with the newly married couple. Yozef wisely didn’t argue, particularly when Maera and her father presented a united front. The house of Yozef Kolsko, wealthy entrepreneur and mysterious man of new knowledge, and Maera Kolsko-Keelan, wife of Yozef and eldest daughter of Hetman Keelan, required a substantial home. Not as grand as her parents’ manor, but well beyond Yozef’s cottage.
At first, Maera planned to import designers and workers from Caernford, but at Yozef’s urging, she met with Dyfeld Fuller and she agreed he was competent enough for the task. Her first few ideas about the design of house were grandiose. During one session, as she leaned over a diagram of her latest idea, Dyfeld looked at Yozef and rolled his eyes. Yozef suppressed a laugh and shook a warning at the elder craftsman. Over time, Dyfeld understood best what Maera wanted, and the final design was an elegant, good-sized house, comfortable rooms, high ceilings, and many double-paned windows, a suggestion of Yozef’s that Dyfeld had grasped the advantages of and improved on.
At first, Maera assumed the original house would serve for guests; then Yozef declared they would build separate guest quarters, with the original house reserved for the Faughns. Maera was dubious about giving such a nice house to servants, and Brak was his usual gruff self, ever suspicious of charity. Yozef told the Faughns his intent was a logical step, because, as their employer moved up to a grandeur house, the most important servants also must have better quarters. Maera’s doubts disappeared when Elian broke into tears, and Brak’s objections were silenced with a stern look from Yozef and a nod to Elian’s response. The old man looked at his wife, and his visage softened. Yozef wasn’t sure he didn’t see a trace of moisture, and, with a bow and thanks to their employer, the Faughns promised ever more diligent service to justify such fine housing.
The new house would sit just downslope from the cottage and likewise face the sea. A large veranda allowed sitting and viewing on three sides, with a screen of transplanted eight-foot trees providing privacy from the Faughns’ new home. Inside, a dining room separated a generous parlor from the kitchen, three bedrooms provided for themselves and guests, and each of them had a workroom. Yozef was constantly griping about his work areas being crowded, so was pleased to find his new workroom would be the size of the old cottage, with windows on two sides, built-in bookcases, and lockable cabinets covering two walls.
Maera Finds Her Place
Yozef wasn’t surprised by Maera’s usurpation of planning the new house. While he knew she could be assertive, it was his first time on the receiving end, and he was happy to let her free him from involvement. Moreover, once the house was completed, he acknowledged to himself and to Maera, and to anyone who asked, that she had a better eye for their requirements than he did.
However, the house was only a preamble for Maera, the inveterate organizer. Once they settled the major issues of the house, she shifted focus to target number two—Yozef’s daily schedules. As his enterprises grew, he went from one urgent issue to another. Between working with the various craftsmen, going to meetings, and doing his writing, no day was without too many tasks. Maera brought a sense of order similar to how she functioned for her father. Yozef at first chaffed but quickly came to appreciate having an “assistant.” First, more got done. She kept track of progress and interleaved times better than Yozef’s seat-of-his-pants scheduling, and it pleased his workers to have his regular attention, instead of waiting for a crisis.
Second, he had someone to blame when he preferred to avoid a meeting or a person. “Sorry, Ser Businessman, but my schedule is full today. Please see Maera Kolsko-Keelan to arrange a time.” Maera then judged whether the event was important enough for his time, scheduled it efficiently if it was, and intimidated those whose meeting rationale was mainly self-interest.
A third advantage was that Maera scheduled daily time for him to write. She didn’t understand the significance of his writings but recognized their importance to him and fit in an hour most days. It was his explanation that raised her suspicions: that he needed to write down his daily thoughts in English, because his written Caedelli wasn’t good enough.
As soon as the words left his mouth, Yozef recognized she didn’t believe him. He tried to recover by adding that he also worked on science notes to discuss with Cadwulf and the scholastics. He had already transmitted to Cadwulf all he remembered of mathematics, and the Beynoms’ son had moved beyond Yozef’s level on his own and was in active correspondence with several mathematics scholastics elsewhere on Caedellium. Yozef foresaw the irregular communications turning into a more formal mathematical periodical, if enough practitioners developed—if not on Caedellium, then eventually elsewhere on Anyar.
He filled the one set of journals with everything he remembered about science, which the Caedelli were not yet ready to assimilate. The second set recounted how he came to Anyar and as much as he recollected of the history and the cultures of Earth. A key to both sets was the English-Caedelli dictionary he’d started when first learning Caedelli, along with a grammar supplement. These were the most carefully secreted journals, because he didn’t want anyone, particularly Maera, to read them and think him mad.
She pestered him at first on teaching her English but quit when she realized it was one place he wouldn’t accommodate her. He couldn’t risk that she would read the secret journals, either by accident or in her inability to contain her curiosity.
Maera kept up a steady, voluminous correspondence with her father. He partly filled her place as the hetman’s aide with a young scholastic from St. Tomo’s abbey in Caernford. However, Culich Keelan still valued his daughter’s insights and skill with words. Though now separated by distance and time, she continued summarizing and editing, albeit at a slower pace, as she and her father passed papers back and forth.
Still, her change in status awakened a need to establish a position uniquely her own. An opportunity emerged from a casual remark made to her by Diera Beynom, as the two women walked together one afternoon.
“Maera, do me a favor and ask Yozef how his planning for the university is coming along.”
“University? What’s that? Another of Yozef’s projects? I’ve never heard the word.”
“Never . . . ? You mean he hasn’t told you his idea to expand the number of scholastics at St. Sidryn’s and house them in new buildings? I though Culich told me months ago he was going to discuss the idea with you when you first visited. He must have forgotten, what with everything else going on. Anyway, Yozef calls his idea a ‘university.’ You say Yozef hasn’t mentioned it to you?”
A chagrinned Maera shook her head. “No, and that’s not the only thing he doesn’t talk about.”
“Oh, dear, I hope the two of you aren’t having problems already.”
Maera sighed. “Not really. He’s . . . you know, Yozef. He treats me well, is considerate, and is the most interesting person I’ve ever met. Still, there’s always the underlying sense there so much more he isn’t telling me.”
“Yes, that’s Yozef. I think most of us who’ve known him longer
accept it as part of his idiosyncrasy. It may be one thing you have to come to terms with on your own, unless you want to make it a serious issue with him, which I’d caution against doing.”
Maera looked with surprise at the older woman. “Why? What do you think might happen?”
“While Yozef may seem mild mannered, which has been my experience with him, my instincts are that he can be immovable. He accommodates to a point and then shuts down. I wouldn’t recommend that in a new marriage.”
“I don’t know, Diera. It’s bothering me more and more, even though part of me knows our marriage is going well. No, better than well. I was resigned to a marriage to benefit the clan, possibly to a man I didn’t even like. Instead, I find myself with a husband I truly enjoy being with and whom I respect. Am I just being silly?”
“Silly? No. It’s normal to want to know everything about the person you marry and with whom you share a bed. A difficult truth is that we never know anyone completely. Even Sistian, after all of our years together, still surprises me occasionally with something new. That little sense of mystery adds continuing spice to a marriage.”
Maera laughed. “In that case, I may be the most seasoned woman on Caedellium! All right, Diera, I’ll try to listen to your advice and focus on what’s going so well. Now, what about this university?”
Yozef and Maera had barely begun to eat that evening when she queried him.
“Diera mentioned today your idea to expand the number of St. Sidryn’s scholastics and gather them into what you call a university. Diera’s enthused about the concept and asked me how plans were progressing. Naturally, I had no answer, since you’ve never mentioned it to me.”
The Pen and the Sword (Destiny's Crucible Book 2) Page 26
