Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  She lay fitfully slipping in and out of sleep; when she woke again, she knew it was late morning of the next day. The sun was shining through a smoky sky, and she knew she had escaped the consequences of her rashness. She was not in labor, not yet; this child would not be born today, at least.

  Kindra came when Rohana’s women came to look after her, and Rohana stretched out her hands in welcome.

  “How can I ever thank you? You have done so much for me—for all of us.”

  “No,” Kindra chided, “I did only what was necessary; I could hardly have denied that kind of help no matter where I guested.” But she smiled and bent to embrace Rohana. “I am glad nothing worse was to be faced. And this morning you look well!”

  “I am very fortunate,” Rohana said and meant it with all her heart. “And not the least of my fortune is to have such a friend as you, Kindra.”

  Kindra lowered her eyes, but she smiled.

  “Sit here beside me; I have been told by these women that I must stay in bed and do no more than a flowering cabbage, lest I excite my naughty baby to trying again to be born before his time; I am so bored!” Rohana exclaimed. “I was not born to be a vegetable! And these women think I should take for my model a nice contented cow!”

  Kindra could not help laughing a little at the image. “You, a vegetable, never! But perhaps you could pretend to be placid, perhaps like a floating cloud—”

  “When I was a young girl, I had a cousin who traveled southward to the sea; he told me of sea animals who are graceful in the water, but when they try to go on land they are so heavy that their bodies cannot support their weight, and they can only crawl and flop about.” Rohana, trying heavily to tug herself upright and turn over in bed, showed Kindra what she meant. “See, I am like one of these beached fish-creatures. I think this must be a very big baby; I was not as heavy as this even a tenday before Rian was born, and he was the largest of my children.

  Kindra sat on her bed and patted her hand comfortingly. She said, “I seem to remember that older women with later children always feel heavier and more fretful; you forget how hard the last one was. Probably just as well, or who would ever venture to have a second child, let alone a third.”

  “I am certainly less patient than I was at nineteen when Kyril was born. I had been out on a nutting party, gathering nuts till it was too dark to see,” Rohana said, “and when I woke in the night, I thought only that I had eaten too many nuts, or the stew I had eaten for supper had upset my stomach. It went on an hour before even Gabriel thought to call the midwife . . . and he was not inexperienced; his first wife had borne him a child. The midwife laughed at me, saying it would be noon at least before anything happened—but Kyril was born an hour before dawn. Even my mother did not believe how quickly it was over!”

  “Then you are one of the lucky ones who gives birth easily?” Kindra asked.

  Rohana grimaced. “Only that one time; Rian took two days to get himself born after he started signaling he was ready—and he has always been late for everything since, from dinner to birthday parties. As for Elorie—I will never tell anyone much about her birth lest young girls hearing should be frightened. But I hope this one is not so bad as that.” She shivered, and Kindra squeezed her hand.

  “Perhaps you’ll be luckier this time, then.”

  A serving woman appeared with Rohana’s breakfast on a carved wooden tray.

  “Lady Alida said you would not be getting up today, Mistress.”

  “For once,” Rohana said, “I am grateful for Lady Alida’s wish to show that she can manage everything as well as I do. Let us see her opinion of what a pregnant mother should eat, a little toast with honey, perhaps? Or did she have sense enough to consult the midwife?” She uncovered the tray: porridge and honey, with a lavish jug of cream, a dish of boiled eggs and one of cut-up fresh fruit. Evidently Alida had consulted the midwife—or Gabriel, who knew that pregnancy never affected her appetite. Thinking of Gabriel made her ask “What of the Master? I heard he was sick again last night—”

  The woman said “Aye, Lady Alida ordered him a sleeping-draught; he was abed late this morning, and he’s roaming about downstairs with his eyes swollen, growling as if he were spoiling for a fight.”

  Oh, dear. Well, at present she could not get up and deal with it. Perhaps Alida would have the sense to offer Gabriel some remedy for the after-effects of her sleeping draughts. Rohana applied herself to her breakfast with an appetite only slightly diminished by the thought of Gabriel roaming around looking for something to grumble, complain, or storm about. She was safe and insulated here.

  “You said I was like an Amazon but not nearly enough,” she said to Kindra, spooning up the last of the eggs in her dish. “You are braver than that, I suppose. You would not hide away to avoid an unpleasantness. Yet I wish I could stay here in this bed till the baby is safely born—Gabriel could not complain at me then.”

  “We have a saying: take care what you wish for, you might get it,” Kindra said, accepting a slice of fruit. “But if you do wish to stay abed, would anyone stop you?”

  “Only my own sense of what needs to be done,” Rohana said. “I could not justify more than two days, say, abed, considering how well I feel. Then it is all to be faced again. Gabriel grows no better, and his drinking, I fear, is the last step in his disintegration.”

  Kindra asked, as the women took away the tray, “How came you to marry Lord Ardais, Rohana? Was it a family match? For he seems not entirely such a man as I would have expected you to wed.”

  “I could defend myself and say so,” said Rohana, “for surely my parents were more eager for the match than I. Yet it is not entirely true. Once I liked Gabriel well—no, I loved him.” She added quickly, “It is only fair to say he was much different then; his sickness was something which passed across him now and then like a shadow—a look now and again of absent-mindedness, forgetfulness—he would not remember a promise or a conversation. And then he had not begun drinking so heavily. I thought at that time that the drinking was only an attempt to keep his pace among some roistering companions, not a fault within himself.”

  “I still feel you were designed by nature for something other than domestic cares,” said Kindra.

  Rohana smiled. Kindra thought the mischievous smile was at odds with the heavy body and swollen features.

  “Kindra, is that a polite way of saying that I am not sufficiently dignified for a pregnant, middle-aged mother of three children who are already men and women?”

  After a moment Kindra realized that a very real insecurity lay behind the flippant words. She hastened to reassure her.

  “No indeed. I meant only—you seem too large of mind to be confined to domestic trivialities. You should have been a leronis, a wise-woman, a—I have a friend in the Guild House who is a magistrate, and you could fill that position at least as well as she.”

  “In short,” Rohana said, “an Amazon.”

  “I cannot help feeling so,” said Kindra defensively. “I still wish it were possible.”

  Rohana took her hand. She said, “Ever since I journeyed with you, I have wished it might have been so. Had I been given a real choice, I might have remained in the Tower as a leronis; Melora and I both wished for it. You know what befell Melora—and in a sense, when I wedded as my family desired, I felt that I was comforting them for what Melora could not . . .” her voice trailed off into silence. She sought Kindra’s hand and said softly, “I think sometimes that Melora meant more to me than anyone in my life; this is why Jaelle is so dear to me.”

  There are times when I feel you understand me almost as she did . . . . The women were silent, then Kindra leaned forward and put her arm round Rohana. They embraced in silence; then, abruptly, the door swung open and Dom Gabriel stood in the doorway.

  “Rohana!” he bawled, “What the devil is this? First I catch your slut of a daughter in the hay with a groom, and now I find you—” he broke off, staring in consternation. “Now do I begin to understa
nd why you have avoided my bed these many months,” he said deliberately, “but if you had to console yourself, could you not find a man—instead of a woman in breeches?”

  Rohana felt as if she had been kicked, hard, under the solar plexus; she could not catch her breath. Kindra would have moved away from her, but Rohana clung to her wrists.

  She said, “Gabriel, I have suspected for many years that you are not only sick, but demented; now I am sure of it.” She added, hearing her voice bite like acid, “Leave my room until you can conduct yourself decently to our guest, or I will have the stewards drag you out!”

  His eyes, red-rimmed, narrowed, and Rohana, wide open, could read in his mind speculations of such obscenity that she thought her heart would stop. She felt sick and slimed over with his thoughts; she wanted to scream, to hurl her porridge bowl at him, to shriek foul language that she herself only half understood.

  Kindra broke the deadlock; she rose from the edge of the bed, leaving Rohana against the pillows, and said swiftly to the chamber-woman, “Your mistress is ill, attend her. Send for the midwife!” Rohana let her eyes fall shut; her hand released Kindra’s, and she collapsed, half fainting, as the woman scurried away.

  Dom Gabriel snarled, “One word from me, and three dozen women on this estate do just exactly as they please! Does no one hear me?”

  The midwife, coming in in time to hear this—in fact Kindra suspected she had been in the next room waiting for such a summons—lifted her head where she bent over Rohana attentively, to say “Lord Ardais, in this chamber alone you may not give orders; I beg you, go and give orders where you may be obeyed. May I summon your gentlemen?”

  “Rohana’s not as sick as all that; time I made a few things really clear to her, what I will an’ won’t put up with,” Dom Gabriel grumbled. “Going to throw me out of my own wife’s bedroom? Then throw that damned she-male in britches out, too!”

  “My lord, I beg you, if you will stay here, be silent,” demanded the midwife. Rohana heard all this as if from very far away, through wind and water, very distant. She struggled to sit up, hearing another sound; the distant sound—or did she hear it only through her laran—wild, hysterical sobbing; then Elorie, weeping, burst into the room. She ran and flung herself down at the edge of Rohana’s bed.

  The midwife said “You must not disturb your mother, mistress Lori—” but Rohana struggled upright.

  “Elorie, darling, what is it?”

  “Papa—” she sobbed, stumbling over the word, “He called me—he—” Her face was red with sobbing, her cheek bleeding with a long cut, one eye already blackened and swollen.

  “Gabriel,” Rohana said firmly, “what is this? I thought we agreed you would never strike the children when you were not sober.”

  Gabriel hung his head and looked wretched. “Am I to sit by and watch her play the slut with any stable-boy—”

  ‘No!” wailed Elorie, “I didn’t, and Papa is crazy if he really thought so!”

  “So then what were you up to with that young—”

  “Mother,” Elorie sobbed, “It was Shann. You know Shann; we played together when we were four years old! I scolded him because he had not properly curried my pony, and I took the currycomb in my own hand to show him what I wanted! Then when we finished, we were looking in one of the loose-boxes—”

  “Watching the stallion, an’ makin’ all kinds of lewd filthy jokes about it,” Dom Gabriel snarled, “I heard!”

  “Oh, Gabriel, the children are farm-bred; you cannot expect that they will never speak of such things,” Rohana said. “What a tempest over nothing! Elorie—?” she looked at her daughter, and Elorie wiped her eyes and said, “Well, we were talking of Greyfoot’s foal, true—but Shann meant no harm, and when Papa began to strike him with the crop, I tried to grab it—Mama, is he really crazy?”

  “Of course he is, darling, I thought you knew that,” said Rohana wearily. “You should know better than to provoke him this way. I wish you could learn to be sensible and discreet enough not to set him off.”

  “I didn’t do anything wrong,” Elorie protested.

  “I know that,” Rohana said wearily, “but you know your father; you know what will upset him.”

  Kindra interrupted, “Elorie, your mother is not well either; can’t you see that? If you must have a tantrum like an eight-year-old, can’t you find your old nurse or someone like that to have it in front of, and not trouble your mother? If there is more of this, she could go into premature labor, and that would be dangerous for her and for your little sister or brother.”

  Elorie mopped at her eyes and snuffled. “I don’t see why she wants to have a baby anyhow at her age, other ladies don’t,” she grumbled.

  Gabriel’s steward had entered the room. He said in a soft self-deprecating voice, “By your leave, sir,” and gave Gabriel his arm. Gabriel shook him off and walked to the bedside.

  “You going to let them throw me out of here, Lady?”

  “Gabriel, I beg you,” Rohana said in a stifled voice. “Truly, I am too ill to deal with all this now. Tomorrow when I am better, we will talk—that I promise you. But please now go away.”

  “Whatever you say, my love,” he mumbled and went, turning back to say, “You too, Elorie, don’t you pester your mother,” and the door closed.

  Rohana had the sense that she wanted to cry and cry until she melted into one vast lake of tears. She held painfully to composure though her heart was pounding. She held out her arms to Elorie, who was crying harder than ever.

  “Mother, don’t be sick, don’t die,” the girl begged, and Rohana could feel the frail shoulders trembling in her arms.

  “Don’t be foolish, love; but I must have rest,” she said. “That is all I need; your father has upset me terribly. Please run along now.”

  The midwife rose from the foot of the bed and said “I want it quiet in here,” and Elorie, still sobbing and wiping her face, hurried out.

  Rohana still clung to Kindra’s hand; when all the other women had gone away, she whispered to Kindra, “Don’t leave me. I could not blame you if you refused to remain here another minute, but I beg you not to leave me alone with—” she broke off, choking. “But why should you stay? I should never have exposed you to such—such unspeakable accusations—it is my fault . . . .”

  Kindra squeezed her hand. She said, “There is no honor in contending with a madman or a drunkard. I have heard worse. And—I asked you this once before in a somewhat different form—does it really offend you so much? Is it such an unspeakable accusation as all that?”

  Shocked and startled—of all things this was the last she had expected to hear—Rohana said “Oh. That. Oh, I see. No, I loved Melora, and I swore an oath to her, but it was the way Gabriel said it, as if it was the filthiest thing he could think of to say—about you or about me—”

  “To the lewd of mind, all things are filthy,” Kindra said. “He did not spare his own daughter, I noticed, and on flimsier evidence yet. The truth is that I really love you, Rohana, and I feel no shame about it, according to custom or not. I would not have spoken of this while you are sick and busy with other things, but he has brought it out. I feel no evil in loving a woman, and if he were an example of loving a man, I would feel disgust for any woman who chose men instead.”

  Rohana said in a low voice, “I can certainly understand that. I said to you once—in the Dry Towns—that in the Domains, when two young men swear the oath of bredin, that they will be friends all their lives, and that not even a wife or children shall ever part them, there is nothing but honor for them; but if two maidens swear such an oath, no one takes it seriously, or at best, take it to mean only—I shall love you until some man comes between us. Why should it be so different?”

  “I would say—and I do not know if you would agree—” Kindra said, “that it is because men never take seriously anything women choose to do unless it concerns a man. But that is why I am a Renunciate and you are not. But I would willingly swear an oath with y
ou, Rohana.”

  And if you were a Renunciate I could love you without caring what people said; my primary vows and commitments are to my sisters.

  It was not the first time Rohana had suspected Kindra had more than a little laran. She was touched and overwhelmed by the thought that Kindra loved her; she had thought before this that the Renunciate was the only person who understood her; but it seemed that Gabriel’s accusation had fouled a thing she thought wholly innocent. No, she does not understand this about me, I love her, but not like this, and almost without realizing it, she withdrew her hand from Kindra’s.

  The Amazon looked sad, but as she had said, this was why she was a Renunciate and Rohana was not. She had not expected Rohana—certainly not in her present state of turmoil—to understand. She said gently, “Hush, you mustn’t worry about anything now; there will be time enough to talk about all this when you are stronger.”

  Rohana was almost relieved at the sense of exhaustion and weariness that swept over her. She reached up her arms and hugged Kindra childishly, grateful for her kindliness and strength.

  “You’re so good to me,” she whispered. “The best of friends.”

  Kindra thought, I would have spared her that scene with Dom Gabriel. Yet it is what he is, and it is what she must face sooner or later.

  She kissed Rohana again on the forehead and silently went out of the room.

  If we are fortunate, it will not send her into premature labor.

  VIII

  Rohana woke from a nightmare of going into labor alone, unprepared and in the desert outside the Dry Towns. Waking, she realized with enormous relief that she was not in labor, and the child in her body was quiescent, with only the routine dreaming movements. All the same she knew from experience—after all she had already been through this three times—that such dreams were a warning. Labor was near, though not imminent. She rose sluggishly and dressed in an old unlaced house gown. She was not able to face the thought of breakfasting in the Great Hall, but Alida would be only too pleased to deputize for her. She sent for some fruit and tea; when she had finished, one of her women appeared at the door.