“Darkness and damnation!” he shouted. “Put that away, Amalie. Just sheathe the dagger and don’t say another word.” He watched while I obeyed, then lifted me in his arms, the right arm bearing most of the weight, laid me down on the bed, and laid me. Ordinary, straightforward fucking, as in the travelers’ hut, with one crucial difference: we were in communion, with nothing between us but love.
Our bodies came together in the simplest configuration, me on my back, legs around his waist, Dominic rampant above me like a heraldic lion. Arching his supple spine, he bent his head for the occasional kiss. If it was awkward or difficult with the difference in height, it did not seem so to us; we arranged ourselves naturally, like the formation of a dance.
It was what we had yearned for all the time I was in La Sapienza, what we had been waiting for since our first meeting. We could touch and taste, see and hear, and our minds, spared the labor of imagination, were free simply to savor the experience. Conscious of the other’s physical responses and conscious of each other’s awareness, it was a doubled, perhaps quadrupled pleasure of love and sexual communion. As I clenched my muscles around him, and as he spent himself in me, we experienced the fullness and the release from the inside and the outside, knowing his and my sensations simultaneously in an infinite, reflecting-mirror progression.
Our thoughts commingled with less effort than our bodies. I shared his memory of the burning from the Eris weapon, relived the moment of wounding, but was spared this time, through Dominic’s love, from the full force of the pain. While he held me and thrust into me, then sank down beside me, pulling me up for an embrace in the sighing aftermath of love, I saw the truth I had denied: that our communion was exceptional; that Dominic’s dangerous experiment had worked; that he had survived the searing touch of the weapon because of my instantaneous communion with him as it happened. I had taken part of the burden on myself, preserving his life and his flesh. We had divided the pain and the damage, and when he came home, if we could unite, joining minds and bodies, both, in the way of lovers, we would make him, and me, whole again.
“You will not have to wait long, beloved,” he said, half asleep, “for me to repay you for you great kindness. It is what I will do for you when our daughter is born. I will make it as easy for you as I can.”
“But why did you have to do it in the first place?” I asked. “Why not just leave the weapon alone, after what it did to us?”
Dominic raised himself on one elbow, looking down at my face to be certain my question was serious. After what it did to us, he repeated. You’ve answered your own question. What kind of man would let anything or anybody do that to us and then just leave it alone?
In our communion, I began to learn the nature of men like Dominic, which women do not always appreciate: How a man must seek revenge, not only against human enemies, but against everything that threatens him. How his confidence depends on winning, on control. Some people are capable of admitting defeat and walking away, as I could with Eris, but a man like Dominic will always hold the grudge. In my love for him, I proved the old saying: To understand all is to forgive all. With him, as I had seen from the start, there is nothing to forgive, only complete understanding. I have come to admire him for what he did, for his courage to take in his hand the enemy that had wounded us both, knowing what it could do—terrified, but doing it for honor’s sake and for our future happiness.
How else could I come home to you and look you in the face and ask you to marry to me? Dominic completed my analysis, in thought, in my mind.
But you never did ask me to marry you, I said.
You see, he said as if apologizing, I knew you must be my wife. From the moment of our first communion, I knew what must be.
I remembered all those evasions and unspoken thoughts over the last months. When Dominic had convinced me to stay at La Sapienza for my full six months, to decide whether I wanted to be a sibyl or—the alternative he had not dared suggest—his wife. And when I had failed at La Sapienza, and should have quit, and Dominic was secretly glad, because I would be free.
“But you didn’t know,” I said aloud, but softly, not so angry. “You wouldn’t say anything to me, because– because you—” I didn’t like thinking about it, much less talking about it, how difficult it had been for Dominic to gear himself up for the ordeal of marriage. I could sympathize with his reluctance, yet it hurt all the same.
“No, Amalie.” Dominic’s voice was harsh. “It was not my desires that were in question, but yours.” He too was remembering those months of my seminary training, when I had worried the idea of marriage around in my mind, full of doubts and fears.
“Then why couldn’t you say something?” I said. “Ask me?”
“Beloved,” he said, “I am a man, and vir, and women’s sensibilities are so alien.” Interesting, he was thinking, resting in communion after the lovemaking, but very different. “And when I came home yesterday, and there you were waiting for me at the gate, my betrothal gift in your hair, what could I think but that you were giving me the answer? That the question was understood?”
“I’m still not used to this communion,” I said. “I just wanted to hear it.”
“And when you greeted Stefan with that funny way you have, when you deliberately held out your hand for him to touch.” Dominic had not really heard my last complaint, engrossed in his happy memories. “I thought you did it to show me your reply instead of saying it in words, the answer to the question I had not had the chance to ask.” He smiled in the darkness, pleased by his recollection of the scene, preferring the romance of his interpretation to the prosaic facts. “You will have my name tattooed on your arm, as I will have yours, because you are a woman who understands the love between a man and his companion.”
He would not speak the underlying truth, that I preferred him vir. It was too precious a gift, too sensitive for us to say it aloud. Just having it implicit between us was enough.
It was late in the night, closer to morning and the new day than to the festival evening. The two moons hung low in the sky, shining through the windows flung open to the warm summer air. Dominic’s silver eyelids reflected the light—blue, green and violet—as he lay beside me looking off into his thoughts, speaking of intimate things. With his beak of a nose it was like sharing a bed with a nocturnal predator.
I lifted my hand, traced a fingertip along the magnificent curved arc. “They say a man’s nose is like his sex, you can judge his size by it.”
Dominic laughed. “I have rarely found that to be so.”
“It’s true for you,” I said, happy to have something kind to say for a change.
“And how many ‘noses’ have you compared?” he said. “Three? Four? I have seen hundreds, and I assure you, it is a myth.” He rolled over, careful not to put his full weight on me, and rubbed his face against mine. “Shall we touch noses again, my lady wife?”
“Yes, please, my lord husband.” It was the closest thing to a proposal I was going to get this night.
At dawn I woke to his hand on my breast, his thigh between my knees. He sensed the moment when my mind broke the thin layer of ice between sleep and consciousness. His kiss pulled me the rest of the way, his fingers in my sex attempting to rouse me. I opened my eyes to the faint light. His touch was balm and electric sparks, both blessing and enticement, but at that hour I am not capable of full response.
I’m sorry, Dominic, I thought to him. In the morning you must please yourself.
Throughout Aranyi Fortress, the couples of Midsummer night were saying their farewells, most of them in the way Dominic wanted to with me, although with greater success. Only those unfortunate few whose jobs required it—farm workers with animals to tend, kitchen staff on the breakfast shift—rose early on the day after. For the rest the morning lovemaking was the clearest way to show that the night’s choice was not regretted.
Dominic waited a few minutes to see if I would come to life. Truly, beloved, he said, I am not yet so used to marri
age that I can take pleasure alone.
He was an early riser in both senses, up with the sun, ready for love. I felt his great need and rolled on my back, spreading my legs. Come on, then, I said. It is Midsummer still, and you must have your full share of it. In communion I would experience his pleasure even if my own body could not match it, would be able to enjoy vicariously the climax that I could not reach directly.
Dominic accepted my offering with gratitude. Soft to his hardness, yielding to his force, with the lassitude of sleep clinging to my flesh, I half dreamed an arousal to him that was of the mind more than the body. I could give him a lover’s thoughts, if not an active body.
Later, when the morning was half gone, I woke for the day, alone in the bed. Soft rain misted the windows, a gentle watering, good for the ripening crops that this festival had honored. I yawned and stretched, beginning to feel the soreness from the night’s activity. But it was a good soreness, not too much, not really painful. As I had hoped, our communion, overcoming the disparity of our bodies and relative strength, made it possible for us to be lovers.
There was a knock at the door and Katrina entered. “Margrave Aranyi sent me,” she said. “He thought you’d like help settling in.” She was carrying a bundle of my things.
I rubbed my eyes. “Settling in where?” I stood up, naked, and Katrina was there for me with a robe—soft gray wool lined in creamy pearl silk. When I opened the door to the corridor, groaning at the thought of making my way to the bathroom that was no doubt occupied, Katrina anticipated me.
“Your bathroom is in here,” she said, pointing to what I had assumed was a closet.
It was the most luxurious bathroom I had ever seen. Exquisite mosaics covered the walls, naked women cavorting and washing each other in ways more suggestive than hygienic. The bathtub would have warranted a visit from the Terran water police—a multi-level lake, with steps and shelves, that could be filled with enough water to irrigate several fields. I had already learned in my explorations that Aranyi Fortress, like all the ’Graven establishments, recycles and reuses the water from these extravagances, and I stared with longing as I sat on the toilet. The answer came as I washed my face. Dominic must have taken us to the Zichmni Suite.
“Did you have a good time last night?” I asked Katrina when I emerged.
Katrina blushed and looked at the floor. “Yes,” she said in a whisper.
We were not to talk of it, I saw. Festival night is the great shared secret. Once it is over, we must act as if it has not been, otherwise marriages would falter and people would pine for lovers beyond their reach. Dominic had indeed made an exception, spending the entire night with his betrothed.
“Well,” I said, “let’s settle in, then. Lead the way.”
Katrina hesitated. “Don’t you want to have a bath?” She permitted herself a familiarity. “If this were my room I’d be in there so long Marcin would have to fetch me out at night.” She brought her husband’s name into every conversation she could, proud of the handsome, wealthy farmer who had chosen her.
“That’s the privilege of Zichmni,” I said. “A personal lake that nobody else can enjoy.”
“Zichmni? The Zichmni Suite is on the other side.” Katrina nodded in the direction of the landing on the opposite side of the stairs.
I remembered the layout that I had worked so hard to learn. This room was close to the family’s suite of rooms, the Margrave’s bedroom and the companion’s room I had assigned to Stefan, as directed by Eleonora. Finally it dawned on me. “This is ’Gravina Aranyi’s room, isn’t it?”
Katrina must have thought I had truly fucked my brains out during festival night. “Yes, my lady,” she said, watching me warily, like an unpredictable animal that might attack on a whim. “Margrave Aranyi said there was no point in your staying in a guestroom any longer. And anyway, there’s people still in there from last night,” she added with a giggle. Katrina, new enough to marriage that she was still more a bride than a wife, was reveling in the freedoms of adult sexuality.
In the carelessness of morning fatigue, I found myself sharing her thoughts: her satisfaction, both with her lusty companion of last night and in her continued desirability this morning. Two men in the bed of Lady Amalie’s guestroom, when Katrina goes in to get her mistress’s things. One of them, dark and handsome, a dissolute face but young, asks her to join them. She makes a polite demur, smiling to show she intends no offense. The other one, fair and slender, says to his partner, ‘If you wanted a woman why did you spend the night with me?’ The first man answers, ‘In the morning, silly. Don’t you want a woman in the morning?’ The men argue about it, laughing and kissing, fumbling at each other under the covers, and Katrina gathers up what she can before they make up their minds, and slips out.
I marveled at my shy maid. “What if they had both wanted you? What would you have done?”
Katrina laughed again, unsurprised by my knowledge of her thoughts, still in last evening’s receptive mood. “Midsummer night’s over,” she said. “It was just talk. And you can’t force anyone, not during festival.” Pulling her mind away from her agreeable recollections, she returned to her morning’s duties. “You probably don’t want to go back there now.”
“No,” I said, “I guess not.”
On this practical note I moved into my room. My first bath in what I came to think of as ’Gravina Aranyi’s Lake took a long time, and I almost expected Dominic to come in and haul me out. But when I went downstairs at last, driven by famine, I saw that the household and our guests were in no great need of company or conversation. All over the castle, temporary couples from the night before were breaking up, reforming into their permanent relationships. Men and women flitted half-dressed out of rooms and ran back to their own quarters. Servants returned slowly to their duties; guests straggled in to a late breakfast and prepared for the journey home.
In the breakfast room, rows of hangover remedies were laid out on the sideboard: a raw egg unbeaten in a cup, with a splash of spicy, salty sauce and some of that pine resin that flavors the substance euphemistically called coffee. It may cure hangover, but I’m sure it causes something worse. Most people entered the room, took a cup, gulped the contents, and sat quietly to let it work. There was only light breakfast food—porridge, bread, fruit and cheese. Dinner would be the first serious meal of the day.
People spoke in low tones; it was unconscionable to raise one’s voice with all the aching heads and rebellious stomachs that surrounded us. Sir Nicholas Galloway strolled in, boomed a greeting to his wife, groaned at the effect on his own throbbing head, and was shushed on all sides.
At dinner I took my place at the high table without complaint. Any dread I had of meeting Sir Nicholas and Sir Karl again was assuaged when I saw their bland faces and received their polite, reserved greetings. The women were the same, friendly but distant. We nodded to each other and sat in silence, waiting for the food to be brought. There was no talk of the night’s activities, only a few muted discussions between family members as to when to head home.
Dominic and Stefan arrived together, Dominic’s left arm flung around the boy’s shoulder, hugging him close. “You see?” he was saying. “You didn’t fail; it simply takes a woman’s touch to heal a woman’s injury.”
Stefan nodded seriously, grasping Dominic’s hand. “Now we can practice again,” he said, touching the hilt of his sword and leading Dominic’s hand to rest on his own.
“After the healer finishes,” Dominic said.
If they had staged that little conversation for my benefit, I was too hungry to care. Our first full sit-down meal in twenty-six hours was all I could think of. I ate like a starving hyena, and I’m afraid my table manners did me or Dominic little credit, but this was, thankfully, not a moment when I was on display. Everybody else was attending to his plate. The hall was as peaceful today, the few phrases of conversation punctuated only by grunts and chewing sounds, as it had been cacophonous last night.
Jos
h appeared halfway through the meal, looking ten years older and ten pounds lighter, and ate in much the same way that I was disgracing myself. Eleonora greeted him with a malicious laugh. I knew Naomi would be too much for you, she thought to her husband.
Wait until you see her, Josh said, grinning in his thoughts without looking up from the food.
Naomi came in shortly after, was served by a nervous woman who had exclaimed in disgust at having to set another place when everybody was almost finished, then almost choked in fear when she saw it was the witch. Naomi looked the same as ever, serene and sleek, neither unusually tired nor hungry. She ate a huge amount of food very quickly, though, and raised her eyes from her plate only once, giving a cool smile to her lover of last night, and, in the same look, a nod of acquiescence to Dominic.
Dominic turned to me. “Naomi will complete my healing tonight. After supper.”
I stared into his eyes, searching for hidden messages. “Fine,” I said. I went back to my bowl of lamb stew, poking at the bones to see if I had sucked off all the meat.
Dominic put his hand on my thigh. “I need you there, and Stefan, too.” He made it sound like a sexual assignation.
I shrugged. After last night, little would surprise me. I had seen some healing in La Sapienza, not much, but enough to know it is no great mystery, just a skill that can be learned by any gifted person with the requisite abilities. Still, I was curious to see what Naomi could accomplish that other telepaths could not. “I’ll be there,” I said.
The rest of the afternoon was slow and uneventful. Only people with essential jobs made any pretense of working. I went automatically to Berend’s office, found him sitting in front of an open account book but staring at the wall. The book was ten years old, taken from the shelf in error, and Berend was in no rush to put it back. “I enjoyed our dance last night,” I said in greeting, before realizing that even so innocuous a comment was in poor taste.
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