Retribution (10 page)

Niall straightened up and moved to the door.
His parting words were too hazardous to express in the intimacy of
communion and required the distancing of language and space. “I
know Dominic cares for you, more than he could possibly love any
other woman. If I should ever marry a woman, it will be when I find
one like you, free to wed.”

By the time I had absorbed the sense of the
words Niall was in the corridor. The noise of his boots on the main
staircase boomed like thunderclaps in the silent house.

I
lay in the eerie stillness
for a few minutes, the lack of human sounds accentuating my
profound sense of abandonment. It was as if my own lover had left
me, as if my marriage had ended. With Niall gone, it felt as if the
bond between Dominic and me, the joining of mind and body that
creates the unbreakable partnerships of the ‘Graven had been
severed.

It had not been like this when Stefan had
departed for his wife and new home. Dominic had been annoyed,
shaken perhaps, unused to being the discarded partner. But our
communion had not suffered; it had remained as strong as ever while
Dominic resumed his previous life, the life of the
vir
man
on the hunt. It was a familiar existence for Dominic, one I only
dimly remembered from the first difficult months of our marriage,
and before. With Val only a month old, I was far too tired and busy
to be anything but grateful that Dominic was well able to amuse
himself. He needed to clear his head of memories, and he wasted
little time before beginning the search for Stefan’s successor.

In Eclipsia City there are many places men
can go for pleasure, fewer where they can look for love or
companionship. For Dominic the choices are more limited still. He
can be truly happy only with his own kind: gifted, of good family,
most likely to be found among the cadets of the ‘Graven Military
Academy.

But Dominic was always thorough. He sampled
the new attractions in the boy brothels and renewed his
acquaintances in the taverns and dance halls frequented by soldiers
and by the men and women who like soldiers. Once or twice he
brought someone home to the Aranyi apartments in ‘Graven Fortress,
always to a guestroom, never the Margrave’s bedroom. “Sometimes I
think dancing with a stranger is better than sex,” Dominic confided
to me one day at a hung-over midday meal, almost embarrassed to
have spent the night alone. “The communion ends with the song.” For
Dominic, for all ‘Graven, dancing is a sexual act—the touch of
hands that stimulates communion, the attentive response to the
partner’s every move—and Dominic, graceful and athletic, is an
excellent dancer.

Dominic’s inclination had always been toward
the classical model of same-sex love, the older man guiding the
younger through every aspect of the transition to adulthood. Once
Stefan had gone, it was only logical that Dominic would try to
repeat the experience.

When the new semester began, Dominic was
appointed Commandant of the ‘Graven Military Academy and for the
better part of two months he did his best to live up to his old
reputation. On the nights he took supper at home or shared my bed
while I nursed Val, I heard nothing but complaints. The gentry were
becoming as effete as the ‘Graven; every willing cadet was insipid,
boring, shallow, ignorant and stupid, not to mention ugly and
effeminate. As for unwilling boys, Dominic had learned his lesson.
He had been dismissed from his post once, would never again
jeopardize a position which suited him so well, and for which he
was genuinely qualified, over something like that. Besides, he
muttered, the unwilling boys were no more appealing than the
others.

I kissed him and comforted him as best I
could. During the week I would see little of my husband, only to
share another reunion of rehashed disappointments on each Crescent
Day, the day of two eclipses that is observed as a day of rest and
renewal by ‘Graven. The time passed in a haze of frustration and
fatigue.

Midwinter changed everything. Dominic invoked
his privilege, rarely taken, of returning to Aranyi for the
extended holidays. He had had his fill of the charmless variety of
the city, and the cadets would enjoy the festival season all the
more under the comparatively lenient supervision of subordinates.
My husband poured all his energy and organizational skill into
hosting a traditional celebration. And on the first night, as the
guests arrived to take up their residence for a month, I stood
transfixed, Val wailing forgotten in my arms, as Dominic and Niall
Galloway locked eyes, were needlessly introduced, and
metamorphosed, by the translation of perfect communion, from
separate individuals into a couple.

The empathy between Dominic and me had been
strong that winter as my husband suffered through the emotional
void. Now I partook fully of Dominic’s passion, hoping that so
dramatic a beginning was a sign of permanence to follow. During the
short midwinter days I was a walking cliché of feminine
infatuation, my head awhirl, heart fluttering and stomach leaping
at the sight of the tall young man who so enchanted my husband. If
Niall touched me, inadvertently at table or to partner me in a
quick dance after supper, my knees threatened to buckle and I
spurted sticky wetness between my legs. The words he addressed to
me seemed to pass right through my mind and out without my hearing
them, and I flushed at the sound of his voice like a young
girl.

For two weeks I slept badly if at all, in
thrall to the hunger that drove Dominic and Niall into each other’s
arms, and Dominic’s bed, so soon after supper. While the rest of
the household celebrated the feast with late nights of song and
drinking, Dominic and Niall would slip smoothly from the crowd of
couples in the great hall, racing up the stairs, afloat on their
growing impatience, to fall half-dressed onto the wide bed of the
Margrave’s bedroom. Lying with Val in the ‘Gravina’s room, I would
buck and writhe on my soft bed, moaning aloud with the urgency of
Dominic’s need. Val woke often during those nights, startled into
tears at his mother’s strange behavior, as baby Jana had never
been. Either Val was more sensitive, or, I suspected, the intensity
was greater.

After two more weeks the holiday season came
to an end, the last of the guests departed and Niall remained at
Aranyi. It was with a sense of profound relief that I welcomed him
formally to the place at Dominic’s left hand at the high table and
settled him in the room next to Dominic’s, so recently occupied by
Stefan. We were a family again.

What had changed? Only that Dominic had
opened his mind to the possibility of communion with a young man
instead of a boy. Just as Dominic had gone from an affair with Lady
Melanie Ndoko to marriage with me, so he had moved beyond the
structured, hierarchical relationship with Stefan to welcome the
more fluid, and more profound, love he could share with another
adult. And while he could accept in time the ending of his loves
with Stefan and Lady Melanie, there was no question that Niall’s
estrangement now was nothing less than tragedy.

I must tell Dominic, warn him that our life
was crumbling around us and that he must take steps to save it. It
was odd that he did not know already. Yet I was certain, as only I
could be, that Dominic, wrapped up in his draining communion with
the dying Reynaldo, was oblivious even to the most earthshaking
developments in the land of the living.

I sat up, full of strong purpose that was
immediately vitiated. The thought of forming communion with
Dominic, of breaking in on his obsessive torture and vengeance,
filled me with dread. There was the same hellish sound in my mind I
had been hearing for days, the voice of the torturer I had come to
know and accept as my husband’s, and the moaning, agonized
responses of our prisoner. In this short time I had grown so used
to it that it had become a kind of background noise that hardly
registered.

Today there was a sobbing undertone, a
crying, almost a howling, that sounded like neither of them. It
resonated in my mind like an emotion, rose and fell in volume with
my breathing. My own fears, perhaps, expressed without my
awareness? No, my training in La Sapienza seminary had made me all
too aware of the dangers of repression in the telepathic mind. The
voice must be coming from Reynaldo, pushed to the limits of his
endurance. Amazing that the man still lived. It must be five days,
I counted on my fingers, since he was defeated and mutilated,
tortured almost constantly and denied sustenance or medical
treatment other than to keep him alive—unnaturally, as Lady Ladakh
had pointed out.

I glanced at the midday light showing through
the open window. Still some time before dinner. If Dominic started
out soon he could easily catch up with Niall. There was only one
trail out of Aranyi. Whichever way Niall chose after that, south
toward the city or north to the mountains, Dominic would be able to
track him by the strong communion that must bind them still,
however Niall wished to deny it.

Like a child dawdling on the first day of
school, I looked for any excuse to put off my important task. I
decided not to risk alienating the entire household a second time
by opening communion with Dominic—and, inevitably, Reynaldo. Better
to wait for a safer moment, when Dominic was alone. If terror of
Dominic’s reaction to the news added to my reluctance, I could
hardly blame myself after the past days’ events. In the meantime I
should try to make up with my friends. First, though, I would need
to convince one of them it was safe to talk to me. And I must find
a way to bring her here.

I fingered the bell-pull that hung by the
head of the bed. Never before had I needed to summon help. Always,
in the past, Katrina would be bustling in and out, Isobel chasing
the children eager to visit their mama first thing after breakfast,
Magali wanting to consult over menus and where to put guests. The
only request I had had to make at times had been to insist,
politely but firmly, on privacy.

Well, now I would have to ring the bell. I
wasn’t even sure where it rang, who it was supposed to call. The
heavy rope scratched my palm as I tugged on it. Immediately the
silence, if anything, seemed to intensify, as if the bell, wherever
it rang, had caused everyone not merely to be quiet, but to listen
with bated breath. Should I ring again? No, it would simply take my
household a while to decide who would brave “mad Lady Aranyi” alone
in her room.

Wary steps climbed the main staircase, came
slowly down the corridor. The person stopped outside the door to my
room, no doubt working up the needed courage to knock on the door.
Magali herself, I sensed her presence.

I was both pleased and scared. Magali had
been my first real friend when I had arrived at Aranyi, unsure of
myself, pregnant with Jana, before Dominic and I married. At a time
when I had been alone in the world, had seen no place for me
anywhere, it was Magali who had made me feel welcome. It was she
who had started the custom of calling me “Lady Amalie” as if I were
a lord’s daughter. I had always trusted in her loyalty, relied on
her support—as Dominic had with Ranulf, I thought, with an aching
sadness at the change that had occurred. If I could win Magali over
the rest of the household would follow. But she would be my
greatest challenge, and I had had no practice.

“Magali,” I called before her knuckles landed
on the door. “Magali, please come in.” There was no point in
concealing my gift. Better to show I could use it benignly.

The woman entered, standing, as Jana had,
midway between my bed and the escape route of the open door. She
clasped her hands, each holding the other as if they might
otherwise fly out of control. “My lady,” she said, her head held
high in a defiant posture, “you summoned an attendant. I regret to
inform you that Katrina is temporarily unavailable. If I may be of
assistance in the interim, you have only to command.” She had
racked her brain for every five-dollar word, every highfalutin
phrase she knew, only refraining from using formal, courtly speech
because it was difficult for her and would have been a deliberate
provocation.

I decided to ignore the mannered performance.
“Yes, Magali. I’m afraid I do need to ask a great favor.” I spoke
slowly, breathing shallow nervous breaths, as frightened as when I
was first captured. “I have only just learned of the inexcusable
things I said to you two nights ago, words that were the result of
sickness and fear. And although I know it will be the most
difficult thing you have ever had to do, I am asking you now, as my
oldest friend here, if you can forgive the unforgivable; if,
despite the enormity of the affront, you can find it in your heart
to put friendship ahead of pride.” For all my lack of preparation,
the words sounded rehearsed.

Magali stood very straight in front of me,
only a slight tremble betraying her agitation. “My lady,” she said,
“I do have my pride. Never before have I been accused of disloyalty
to Aranyi, to my home.”

At least she had dropped the elaborate
over-refinement of her first words. “Magali,” I said, “you are
right. You have never been accused of disloyalty. Not ever. What I
said, and did, on my return, offensive as it seemed, was
meaningless. It was the ravings of madness. My apology now is for
the words. The thoughts never existed.”

The woman scrutinized me as if I were her
first glimpse of a strange, not quite human, species. “But the
thoughts did exist,” she said, adding a belated “my lady” in a
pretense of civility. “We saw what you did to our master, your lord
husband. Those thoughts were real enough for everyone to see.”

She had given me an opening, if I knew how to
use it. “Yes,” I said, “I treated my husband shamefully. But do
you, do any of you, doubt my genuine love for him, and my respect
for him?”