Birth: A Novella (8 page)

There was another knock on the door, and
Luisa, Lady Ormonde, her nose seeming to lift of its own power and
turn up at the maudlin scene. “‘Gravina.” She curtsied to me, far
too deeply than was necessary. “My woman, Rebecca, reports that you
required her services, then turned her away.”

I let go of Katrina and tried to speak
firmly, although I was trembling from the aftereffects of the close
embrace, and the fatigue of travel and hunger. “Yes, I thought my
maid was overtired from our journey, but I was wrong. I’m sorry
about the mistake with Rebecca. Please, apologize to her on my
behalf.”

Luisa laughed in an artificial tone.
“‘Gravina Aranyi,” she said, “there is no need for that. You are
our honored guest. Sir Karl and I wish only to see to your
comfort.” She stood in the doorway, apparently requiring more from
me in the way of assurance.

I looked into her mind, as carefully as I
dared. Her thoughts were a cauldron of hatred and resentment—that I
had really married Dominic after all, with the brand in my flesh to
prove it, that I was returning to Aranyi for the birth of the
child, as only the most devoted of wives would attempt under the
circumstances, and that Stefan was still in Eclipsia City.

“Stefan will probably join us at Aranyi
during the winter break,” I said, lying, the only thing I could
think of that might appease her.

She stiffened at the name. “Supper will be
served in half an hour.” She would not deign to discuss her son
with me, who had displaced him. “Will you come downstairs,
‘Gravina, or will you be pleased to have a tray brought to your
room?”

Another trick question. I looked helplessly
from Katrina to Lady Ormonde. There were no clues. One fact was
clear: Luisa didn’t want to see any more of me, and the feeling was
mutual. “If it’s not too much trouble,” I said in a simpering
little voice I couldn’t control, “I would like a tray. So near my
time, it is tiring to travel.”

Luisa smiled in cold acquiescence. “Very
good, ‘Gravina.”

***

Roger and Tariq work slowly, using their own energy
to replenish Dominic’s. After a few agonizing minutes Dominic’s
color improves, from the ashen gray-white of death to the milky
pale of merely weak. He breathes again, gasping, his chest
expanding and emptying as violently as when I shamed him at the
tournament. His eyes blink rapidly, tears forming in the corners
and flowing across the surface, alleviating the clouded dryness of
the death-stare.

Later on I will learn the details: that
although the birth was normal, I had hemorrhaged immediately
afterward, a risk for first births to women over thirty-five; and
that Dominic, untrained in healing, having done what he could to
stop the worst of the bleeding, simply poured his entire,
slightly-more-than-human physical strength into me, allowing my
body to accelerate its clotting process and replenish some of the
lost blood.

For now I know only that he has saved me,
even at the cost of his own life. He had made the choice of
Alcestis, who was willing to die in place of her husband. It is
because of Roger and Tariq that Dominic has not had to pay the
price. But he would have.

I know what you did for me,
I say,
kissing him in communion, without turning my head or touching lips.
Neither one of us has strength to move an inch.
My dearest
love.

***

Dominic flung open the connecting door between my
bedchamber and bathroom as I was undressing for an early night at
the Ormondes’. “You didn’t come down to supper,” he said, as if
accusing me of dancing naked before the entire corps of Royal
Guards.

Once again I had disgraced myself. “I was
tired,” I said. “And Lady Ormonde asked me if I wanted a tray.”

“She also asked if you needed a maid,” he
said. “It’s a tradition between hosts and guests, a standard phrase
of etiquette. It’s not meant literally. You shame us and them by
accepting.”

“She didn’t want me at supper,” I said. “She
resents me because of Stefan.”

“Who cares?” Dominic said. “You are ‘Gravina
Aranyi. You shouldn’t give a flying fuck what people think.”

“
That’s courtesy
?” I said, shouting
at him as he was shouting at me. “That’s the stupidest thing I ever
heard. And I don’t believe it. It seems to me all I do is try to
guess what other people want, and when I guess wrong, I’m blamed
for being rude.” I caught my breath. “Well, fuck it. I’m not
playing that game anymore. I’m no good at it and I always get it
wrong.
Always.
So from now on I’m going to do exactly what I
want. Nothing else. And if you don’t like it, you know what you can
do about it.”

“Good,” Dominic said. “That’s fine.” He was
still standing by the bathroom door, apparently expecting me to cry
or apologize.

“So if you’re finished lecturing me on
proper ‘Graven behavior,” I said, “get the fuck out of my room.” I
swallowed and added, “My lord husband.”

He smiled in his close-mouthed, terrifying
way, and slammed the door on his way out.

Katrina had shrunk back against the far wall
at Dominic’s entrance. Now she came bravely forward. “My lady,” she
said in her soft voice, “why do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Speak so roughly to your lord husband.” She
shook her head. “Marcin would beat me if I spoke like that to him.
And he’d be right to.”

“That’s never right,” I said. “A man who
hits his wife is scum, worse than scum, a criminal.”

Katrina laughed. “Then the world is full of
criminals. Any man would beat his wife for behaving as you do.
Margrave Aranyi must love you very much, that he never lifts a
finger.”

“If he did lift a finger,” I said, touching
the prism in the handle of my dagger, “I’d blast it off and shove
it up his ass.” Then I burst into tears. I was still crying when I
got into bed, and Katrina sat with me until I slept.

***

We wake up hours later, my head on Dominic’s arm
beneath me, the baby between us. She nurses greedily, grunting as
she works to keep the milk flowing. Her dark hair is thick and
coarse, like her father’s. I feel Dominic’s energy circulating
inside me.

“Why did you want to die?” he says in a
whisper I can barely catch. He’s very weak, his deep, powerful
voice diminished to a papery rasp.

“I didn’t,” I say. “I think I
was
dying, and my mind created a little scene for me, trying to make
sense of what was happening.” I want to treat it lightly, as much
for myself as for Dominic. “I mean, I don’t really believe I’ll
meet my mother on the road to Andrade when I die.”

Dominic is not in the mood for whimsy.
But I felt it
, he thinks, the exertion of speech too great
for him.
You jumped, chose death. You chose death over life with
me.
He drags his weary mind over recent events, fixes on a
likely cause.
It must have been because of what I did with
Roger, the way I was rough with him. I knew you wouldn’t like that,
but I couldn’t stop.

That was my labor pains starting,
I
say.
Wasn’t it?

Partly
, Dominic says. He’s always
compulsively honest once he decides he is at fault.
And partly
my own anger—at him, at you. My old desires…

There is some truth to his fear—I did fall
off the ledge, if not for the reason he thinks. I feel obligated to
match Dominic’s honesty, although it doesn’t come as easily to me
as to him. But I have always been able to be honest with myself,
and he is more like an extension of me than a separate
consciousness.
I thought you didn’t love me anymore,
I
say.

How could you think that?
he says.
It’s not possible.
He dismisses my nonsensical answer.

After the tournament and what I did,
I say,
the way you were so cold and angry—it felt like you hated
me.

Dominic attempts a laugh.
You can’t mean
that. Just because I was angry.

He obviously has no idea how impressive a
spectacle his visible rage is, how enormous an occurrence is
covered by the little word “angry.”
You were gone for a week,
and when you came back you wouldn’t talk to me.
I reduce it to
simple indisputable facts.

I was furious,
he says, rueful,
remembering.
But I can’t not love you. And you were rather
magnificent yourself, you know, the way you disarmed those thugs so
quickly and neatly.

He can be gracious about it now. But I can’t
forget the pain of his extreme rage that felt like everything that
is the opposite of love.

Amalie,
he says, the thoughts lax
with fatigue,
I always love you. And I know you love me, even
when you curse and shout at me like a—

A termagant,
I repeat his word.
I
know. I’m sorry.

Stop saying you’re sorry. It’s your way,
just as mine is violent anger. That’s why I left, rather than take
it out on you or the household.

So you took it out on Stefan?

No,
he says, surprised.
Why would
I? It wasn’t his fault. No, I went to him for sympathy, and he gave
it to me. He told me I should have–
showed you I was master,
was his way of expressing it. And that’s when I blew up at him, and
he said he wanted to break it off between us.

This is the aspect of Eclipsian life that
scares me.
That’s what Katrina says
. I offer my own
incident, testing him again.
Katrina says you should beat
me.

Katrina is a stupid, ignorant woman,
Dominic says.
Besides, you said if I lifted a finger,
you’d—

I remember,
I say.
You don’t have
to repeat it.

But I like it,
he says.
The way
you shout at me, the things you say. Nobody else does that.

You don’t seem to like it at the time.

Dominic tries to tighten his arm around my
shoulders in an embrace, finds he’s too weak to lift even a finger,
and settles back into the touch of light communion.
I’m not used
to it, that’s all. And you know I have a bad temper. But please,
Amalie, never doubt my love for you, exactly as you are.

The baby unclamps her lips from my nipple
and burps. Dominic cradles her head, marveling at her soft fuzz of
dark hair, and extends his little finger to her. She has milky
inner eyelids already, not open yet, like a newborn kitten, but she
can sense actions, or perhaps our thoughts. She clutches her
father’s finger determinedly, as if to hold him in the life he
almost gave up.

I take a deep breath. Honor requires that I
acknowledge what has happened, and I refuse to get this wrong. “You
saved my life,” I say aloud, needing to hear the words, a kind of
proclamation. “Roger and Tariq saved yours. I owe them a great
debt, one that will take a lifetime to repay.”

Dominic lies in silence. I think he’s fallen
asleep, until he says,
I owe them the debt, not you. It’s my
life they saved, not yours.

This is familiar ground.
I know,
I
say.
A woman doesn’t pay debts of honor.
It doesn’t matter
anymore that I will always get it wrong. So long as Dominic is
alive to scold me, to chastise me, so long as he regains his
strength so that I can safely curse and shout at him,
that
is what matters.

“Is that how I am with you?” he whispers,
appalled into speech. “Do I scold and chastise you? It’s a wonder
you wanted them to save me.”

“It’s my fault,” I say. “I shame you and
make mistakes—”

“You
never
shame me.” Dominic is
vehement, fierce, shaking with the effort of articulating his
emotion. “I shame myself, hurting you, frightening you. You can’t
be expected to know all these things. It takes years, growing up
here—”

“No,” I say, “all it takes is keeping my
marriage vow, knowing your mind, thinking before acting.”

“Don’t do that,” he says. “Promise me you
won’t start thinking our marriage to death.”

“That’s easy,” I say. “I haven’t been
thinking straight since I met you.” The baby’s sleepy head nods,
falls on my breast. Black hair and—blue eyes I think, under the
milky eyelids. She will be a beauty.

All babies have blue eyes,
Dominic
thinks.

She’ll look like him, I can see it already,
will be like him. Tall and dark-haired, quick in speech and
thought, athletic and short-tempered. I put both arms around her,
hold her safe to my side. How I love her.

Magnificent
, I think, and we sleep,
the three of us, in communion. All babies have it—communion with
parents who love them.

***

Dominic and I were no longer speaking by the time we
returned to Aranyi, the good work of our slow journey undone by the
stay at Ormonde. It was the beginning of the Midwinter season, and
the household, what was left of it, had anticipated a visit to
distant family or the quiet of an empty house, the freedom to
celebrate without the stifling presence of the master and
mistress.

I granted all requests for leave. Naomi
didn’t ask—she had already gone on her long trek into the deep
forest. She went on foot, people said, taking no provisions beyond
gifts of hothouse fruit for her mother, and with only the clothes
on her back. The old people chuckled knowingly. She’d manage fine,
they said. She knew how to get meat without snares.

I told myself not to panic, that my own
internal examinations had shown me that the child was healthy, and
that my body was adjusting well, expanding and softening in the
pelvis, gaining a good amount of weight, and going through the
correct hormonal changes. People had used natural childbirth for
centuries, I lectured myself.
Yes
, my cynical self replied,
and maternal and infant deaths had kept the population down for
centuries, too
.