“I’m just not comfortable,” I said, “with coming in here with nothing and ending up with so much. With living a life of luxury while everybody else works so hard. With being a wife and mother and nothing more.”
“Nonsense,” Josh said. “Those things don’t really bother you, do they?”
He had surprised me into total honesty. “Not really. Only in the sense of not wanting people to resent me.”
“Good,” Josh said, pleased with my candor. “Now listen. Nobody at Aranyi resents you. You are more Eclipsian than I am, because you never really became Terran. You’re simply moving into the kind of life that is right for you—your essential self, not the surface of your background. Everybody here understands that intuitively, that’s why you’ve been accepted so easily.” He stared at me, probing my mind like the powerful seer he was, but so rarely appeared to be outside the seminary. “And if it makes you feel better, marriage to Margrave Aranyi won’t be as easy as you think.”
“What do you mean?”
For the first time in my discussions with Josh, discomfort was evident in his voice. “You know, with Dominic’s companion living in the same house. But you mustn’t worry that your status as wife will be diminished.”
“That’s not what I’m afraid of,” I said. “Stefan is one thing about this marriage that makes me think it will work out.” After a strained pause, I said, “But I am frightened about something: ’Graven marriage sounds like going into purdah. I am Terran in that respect. I wasn’t brought up to live in a harem.”
Josh had no quick answer to this. “Dominic might not follow all that stuff so strictly. He is vir.”
“That doesn’t mean much when it comes to how a man views women, or his wife.”
“No,” Josh said, “but it should have some effect. And you’ll get used to it. If something like Dominic’s companion doesn’t bother you, these other things won’t be a problem, you’ll see.”
I had learned one thing. Men are the same, vir or not, Terran or Eclipsian. They have no sense of what matters to a woman.
Josh laughed. Maybe not, he said, embarrassed at my judgment. “Accept it, Amalie,” he said, ending the conversation and reverting to his customary lighthearted manner. “You’re destined to be Lady Aranyi. No getting out of it now.”
The next morning, at work on the accounts, Berend tried to hide a page of the records from me, turning two together as if by accident, but I caught him and forced him to show me. Dominic had made a huge expenditure of capital. He had ordered all the products of an entire tract of land to be sold—crops and cattle, wool and timber—everything but the land itself. It would take years of careful husbandry to restore the lost wealth. “Margrave Aranyi ordered the sale before he left,” Berend said at my expression of shock. “He said he wanted it all converted to coin and sent to him in Eclipsia City.”
“What is the trouble?” Dominic could not be in debt, or owe that amount of money to anyone. He did not gamble, or throw his assets away on off-world excursions, as some ’Graven did. It could not be restitution for a quarrel or feud; if a duel did not settle it, compensation was made in goods or services, never money, as Dominic had had occasion to point out at the time of my own trouble with Alicia. Trying not to be too obvious, I chose a moment when Berend was adding a long column of numbers, and used my crypta to search for the truth.
Berend knew nothing beyond what he had said. “Margrave Aranyi would not tell me why,” he said, suspecting what I was up to even if he couldn’t actually feel it. “It is his property, after all, his right.”
It occurred to me that, while he knew nothing of this one odd fact, the steward might be the ideal person to answer some of my other questions. He was educated and intelligent, close enough to ’Graven to know their ways, loyal but with sufficient independence to give me honest answers untainted by prejudice or envy. “Speaking of property,” I said, aiming for spontaneity, “do ’Graven husbands own their wives? Keep them secluded, surrounded by guards? When I marry Margrave Aranyi, will I have to ask permission every time I go outside? Will I have to wear a burqa and not speak to men?”
Berend recoiled from this sudden spate of feminine questions requiring sensitive answers. “Lady Amalie, surely another woman, perhaps Margrave Aranyi’s sister, can advise you.”
I could just imagine Eleonora’s replies—painting everything as black as possible in hopes of scaring me off. “No,” I said. “She’s been a sibyl all her adult life. She’s never had to live like a traditional married woman.”
Berend could not deny this fact, but it took him time to find the best way to explain what any properly brought up young lady would have learned from her mother. He folded his hands in front of him in preparation for a lecture. “You’re marrying a good man. Responsible, wealthy, and honest. As his wife, you will be expected to uphold his honor by your behavior. The guards are there to protect you from things beyond your control, things that could compromise you. Should you need to go out unaccompanied by Margrave Aranyi, they will prevent any interference that could bring your reputation into question.”
“But I’ve been going outside all the time Margrave Aranyi was away,” I said, “to the outbuildings and—”
“Of course.” Berend said. “As ’Gravina Aranyi you’re expected to supervise the women’s work, indoors and out, although you should be escorted. Here in Aranyi nobody would dare insult Margrave Aranyi through his wife. And I’m glad you reminded me: I must arrange for a chaperon when we go over the accounts from now on. We’ll leave the door open, and he can sit or stand outside. It’s really only an issue when you travel, and in Eclipsia City. On the trails and in the city, if Margrave Aranyi chooses to take you with him, there are more opportunities for, let’s just say, complications. He may decide that a burqa and guards provide you with sufficient protection, or he may feel that keeping you indoors is the safer alternative. But whatever he decides, it will be for your own good.”
I opened my mouth, found no words coming through, and shut it before I looked as stupid as I felt.
Berend wasn’t finished. “Don’t be misled by Margrave Aranyi’s sophistication. He’s not like some of the other ’Graven who have lost all sense of honor. Gambling, whoring and dueling are about all they’re interested in, and if they bother to marry, their wives live almost as freely as Terran women. You won’t be permitted the freedom you’d have with them, but it’s not something to envy. Margrave Aranyi will never disgrace himself; therefore his wife must also be above reproach. But he’ll make it easy for you, I’m sure. Margrave Aranyi doesn’t take foolish chances. He’ll tell you what you must do. All you’ll have to do is obey him.”
I was staring, horrified. “Do I promise that?” I asked in a whisper. “Do I have to swear to obey?”
“I don’t really know,” Berend said. “The ’Graven Rite of Matrimony is performed in archaic language. It’s difficult to understand all the words. Please, ask Lady Eleonora.”
I screwed up my courage and asked. Eleonora laughed long and lasciviously at my nervous question. “Oh gods,” she gasped out when she got her breath back, “the Terran imagination is so lurid.” She looked into my frightened thoughts and softened to me ever so slightly. “No, Amalie,” she said. “We’re not as backward as you fear. There’s only one binding oath, and both husband and wife take it: to keep faith with your partner. In the literal sense of sexual fidelity, it applies only to the wife, but in a far more important way it applies to both. It means doing what helps your partner best, knowing his mind, so that he does not need to ask or guess at your behavior. It’s a serious matter of communion, of understanding the man you’re going to spend your life with, and wanting to support him.” She looked into my mind with her sibyl’s penetration. “I think even you can do that, Amalie.”
“So can Stefan,” I said. “But he doesn’t have to wear a burqa or ask permission to leave the house, or be surrounded by armed guards.”
“Of course not,” Eleonora said. “He�
�s a man. It would be very strange if Dominic chose a companion who required protection like a woman, a wife.”
“But that’s what I mean. I’m becoming a different species, a ‘wife.’ Just because I marry someone, all of a sudden I’m this inferior, pathetic creature who has to be guarded and—”
“You’re not marrying ‘someone,’ ” Eleonora said. “You’re marrying Margrave Aranyi. And you don’t have the vaguest idea how unusual that is, do you? No, not because he’s vir, or over forty, or whatever other nonsense you’ve picked up from the Terrans and even, the gods help us, from some of our own not-so-bright specimens. Dominic is one of about three people in this entire world with a pure ’Graven pedigree, with sufficient brains not to require sterilization, and with a functioning sense of responsibility to his family and his people. And you think, as the wife of this exceptional person, you can just go sauntering through life like a commoner?”
“No, but if I do marry him,” I said, “why can’t I be treated like an equal?”
“Equal? Equal?” Eleonora’s voice was shrill with contempt. “Besides the obvious reasons?”
“You’re right,” I said. “I had a chance to work in a seminary, and not just any seminary, but La Sapienza itself, and I blew it. And I’m not a Lady Melanie or even a Lady Amalie, just a Terran with a genetic aberration. But Dominic wants to marry me anyway. So why do I have to live like a slave?”
“Like a wife, Amalie,” Eleonora corrected me with a sigh. “Like a wife.”
“You don’t even know what I’m talking about,” I said. “You and Josh are equals, working together. If anything, I guess you outrank him. Do you keep a guard at his door and make him wear a burqa when you travel?”
Eleonora inhaled sharply, making a hissing sound. “Don’t be coarse, Amalie,” she said. “Dominic may find it amusing, but it’s tiresome for the rest of us.” She forced herself into calmness before we ended up pulling out our prism-handled daggers and shooting lightning bolts through our fingertips at each other. She might win, but she knew Dominic wouldn’t be pleased on his return to discover that his bride had been incinerated.
“Did it ever occur to you,” Eleonora asked, once her voice and her emotions were under control, “that I might have wanted some of that masculine protection from Josh? It’s what I expected from a husband, how I was taught to value myself. But it doesn’t come naturally to him. He missed all that, spending his early years as a Terran. So I stopped wanting it long ago, because my love for him is stronger than any trivial differences in our customs. I never think about it anymore, until this stupid discussion brought it back to me.”
“But you must see how it is with me and Dominic,” I said. “Dominic is—is—” I tried again. “He believes so strongly in the separation of the sexes. It all comes very naturally to him. And I’m afraid of being dominated. Of becoming a submissive, subservient ‘wife.’ ”
“You? Submissive? With your temper?” Eleonora saw she had wounded me. “I’m sorry, Amalie. If the communion is true, that can’t happen. And you do have a gift, equal to Dominic’s.” It cost her something to admit that; I could sense the grudging evaluation behind her words. “You and Dominic will have fights, probably more than your share, but even a gifted husband can’t dominate a gifted wife. And once you adjust to marriage, you will live in the way that is best for both of you. Since Dominic can’t live like a Terran man, and you’re not on Terra, you must live like an Eclipsian woman, like ’Gravina. If you love him as much as he loves you, you will not think of it after a little while. It will come to feel like the only possible way of life.”
Eleonora knew I was not convinced. “If it’s more important to you to live like a Terran, Josh and I can take you back to Eclipsia City on our way home.” She saw my face and rolled her eyes, then attempted to form communion, searching for a way through to me. “You no longer have marriage on Terra, do you? You don’t have wives and husbands, just sexual partners, who leave each other when one of them gets bored, or sick, or lusts after somebody else.”
“No,” I said. “We don’t have marriage there like this ’Graven Rule.”
“You’re afraid of the unknown, that’s all. The words ‘wife’ and ‘husband’ are meaningless to you. Here, being a wife is a significant position, not just a bunch of irritating chores to be fitted in around your real life. A wife bears her husband’s children, rears them, runs his household.” She looked into me the way Edwige Ertegun used to in La Sapienza. “And don’t tell me you don’t want to do these things, because I can tell you do.”
It was a relief not having to pretend.
Eleonora smiled at my nod of agreement. “Even if she proves to be infertile,” she answered in the third person the question I had been unable to ask for fear of trespassing, “a wife is honored by her husband and the world as the woman chosen to be the mother of her lord’s legitimate children. In your case, it will be your job to risk your life giving birth to the child you carry now and any others that come after. Dominic will go into deep communion with you, he will take as much of the danger and the pain on himself as he can, but the risk will be yours: your body, your life. As in childbirth, so in marriage. Dominic’s job, among others, will be to protect you: your body, your honor, your pride and his.”
“That’s what scares me,” I said. “All this talk of protection and honor. I’m afraid of becoming dependent—”
“No,” Eleonora said, “you’re afraid of enjoying it. You’re worried that you’ll like being taken care of, protected. But why does that bother you? Why not accept it as your due, your right?”
There. The guilty truth was out now. What if he stops wanting to? I thought. Then where will I be?
“’Graven marriage is for life,” Eleonora said. “Dominic is well aware of that. If he wants to marry you, it’s with the knowledge that he is taking on an obligation that will end only with death. He may occasionally desire someone else, although if you have the communion you appear to, it’s unlikely. But he is a man. If he does, most likely he will not act on it unless you want him to.”
“Want him to?” I remembered my reflexive, extreme jealousy of the other morning. “How could I want him to?”
Eleonora put her hand over mine, a half an inch apart, to spark the communion. “You want him to be with Stefan, don’t you?”
“But that’s different,” I said. “Stefan is part of the marriage.”
“You’re halfway there already,” Eleonora said. “You just don’t recognize it because it’s so natural for you. That’s why our fortresses and manor houses have a companion’s room, why the wife helps to choose her husband’s companion, man or woman. She knows his preferences, wants for him what he wants himself.”
If he wanted another woman, I thought, I would kill them both and not lose a minute’s sleep over it.
Eleonora laughed. “All right,” she said, “just suppose Dominic develops a passion that you can’t share. He will do his best to put it aside, to ignore it until it passes. He will not divorce you, because he can’t. He will not want to be adulterous, because he would be breaking his marriage oath, to keep faith with you. He will not wish to cause you one minute’s pain, because it would be like self-torture.” She spoke warmly, lovingly, as I had never heard her.
She was speaking, I realized at last, not about my marriage, but her own. Whether the feelings she spoke of were hers or Josh’s, she was describing the ideal of ’Graven marriage, what my marriage could be if Dominic and I were true in our communion. “When you take the oath to keep faith with Dominic,” she said, “he will take the same oath, say the same words, promise the same things. He will be tied to you in the same way that you are tied to him, forever.”
“It sounds like being a prisoner.”
Eleonora shrugged. “You are a prisoner,” she said. “Of crypta, of communion. Can you deny it?”
I stood in front of her, staring blindly, lost in my thoughts, no longer able to dredge up the words to make her see.
> “Look,” she said, “I didn’t want to admit it, but I saw it—we all saw it—when my brother came home. He was in pain, crippled. And as soon as he saw you, when the two of you formed communion, something happened. He was healed right there in the courtyard, when you did that strange thing, touching Stefan’s hand.”
“But Dominic wasn’t healed then,” I said. “He still couldn’t use his arm.”
“The gods give me strength.” Eleonora had had enough of this conversation. “Dominic was healed then in the sense that he was capable of being healed. Before that moment, all any of us could do for him was cosmetic: restore the muscles and the skin, smooth away the scars. But he was never going to use that arm again. It was a blockage in the mind, the nerves.”
“It was something to do with his alien genome,” I said, thinking back to that strange healing session. “He needed Naomi.”
“Even Naomi couldn’t have done much for him without his being able to receive her help,” Eleonora said. “And we all felt it there at the gate. Josh was nearly knocked off his horse with the impact, he told me.” She giggled, a silly, girlish, refreshing sound from so controlled a woman. “Even that old hardass Ranulf,” Eleonora spoke with intimate freedom of her Midsummer-night partner. “Even he knew you had proven yourself to be ’Gravina Aranyi. He may not be gifted, but he’s known Dominic all his life.”
I recalled that moment during the festival, Dominic’s congratulation at my virile partner for that athletic, sexual dance. “Dominic’s a little in love with Ranulf, isn’t he?” I asked, smiling at my lover’s secret I had uncovered. I could imagine it so easily: the young Dominic, about Stefan’s age, the unworldly face from the portrait, looking up to the trusted retainer, his rugged masculinity, in the prime of manhood then. Dominic must have had a boyhood crush on Ranulf that had never completely faded, merely developed into an ongoing respectful friendship spiced with just enough sexual awareness on both sides to keep it from growing stale…
Wedding Page 20