Singer from the Sea (7 page)

“What strange questions?” demanded Carlotta, scenting something juicy.

“Not flirty sorts of questions, silly. No, he wanted to know what I thought about the Frangían situation. So, I told him what I thought.”

“Which was?”

“Something about just leaving Frangía alone.”

“His Majesty, Marwell, Lord Paramount will love hearing that. My father says he’s very set on bringing Frangía to heel. He wants no breakaway provinces.”

“He didn’t ask me what I would say to the Lord Paramount, he asked me what I thought.”

“He danced with you!” said Glorieta soberly. “I was watching, and he wasn’t asking questions then!”

“He didn’t say a word the whole time. With him, words seem to be either a flood or a drought.”

“Well, if you didn’t like him, you might have introduced him to Barbara.” She turned away to the window to hide her face, letting herself out onto the balcony.

“Why did he come?” Carlotta said loudly and hastily. “Just a fill in? Someone for you to dance with?”

Genevieve had not thought about that. On occasion her father did send someone in his place, with or without a possible suitor in tow, but it was usually someone she knew, a family friend from Evermire, or one of the older cousins, always someone solid and respectable and no longer young. “I really don’t know,” she said.

“For heaven’s sake, Genevieve! Don’t you care?”

She shook her head, which so infuriated Carlotta that she called Genevieve a long-nosed ice maiden. When Genevieve did not respond, Carlotta leaned close.

“Did you hear Glorieta and Barbara fighting? Willum asked Barbara to dance, and she said yes!”

“Isn’t that allowed?” Genevieve asked. “I’ve seen you dancing with him.”

“I’m family,” she said. “Barbara definitely isn’t! And there’s something more to it than just dancing. Glorieta has been crying a lot lately.”

Carlotta, it seemed, didn’t know the reasons for any of it, for Glorieta refused to talk about it, and though Carlotta and Genevieve whispered about it for some time, Genevieve could not think of anything comforting to say. Finally, Carlotta yawned, collected her sister from the balcony, and they went off to their own beds below.

Genevieve turned out her light and pulled the blankets around her shoulders, but then surprised herself by lying there, worrying about Glorieta. Or Barbara. Or even Carlotta. She couldn’t help it, even though she had long ago realized that the characters in her plays were not exempt from tragedy. Characters were sometimes written out. Her own mother, for example, had been written out. Someday Genevieve herself would be written out so her soul could go flitting off into paradise where it would flutter from blossom to blossom, sipping nectar, no longer needing resignation. As for this unexpected plot twist in the Amenaj play, she would watch it, of course, but there was nothing she could do about it. All plays would come to an end eventually:

Nonetheless, she had a difficult time dismissing the quarrel between Glorieta and Barbara. She was also unable to stop thinking about the Colonel. Tonight those three characters had stepped off the stage and engaged her attention at a level that was completely new to her. They had seemed real to her, especially the Colonel, for he had made her want to touch him, even before they had danced, the way she sometimes wanted to hug Barbara, though she never did, for it would be an unpermitted sensuality. The Colonel’s arms had felt strong and safe, and his questions had not, truthfully, been all that strange, though he had seemed too casual about the first one and too oddly intense about the others. But then, he was quite young. Thirtyish. And very good looking.

Outside, in the garden, Barbara, still in her ball gown, leaned against the stones of the wall while Willum watched her from four inches away, his hands on the wall
on either side of her head, his eyes boring purposefully into hers.

“Glorieta is my friend,” she said weakly. “This wouldn’t be right.”

“If you’d really cared about that, you wouldn’t have sneaked out to meet me,” said Willum in his slow, slightly arrogant voice.

“Your father won’t allow you to marry me, Willum. You’re already betrothed.”

“Father will allow whatever I want. He thinks two brothers marrying two sisters sounds very nice but may lead to unpleasant complications. He was here tonight; he saw you. He’s quite impressed. Besides, Father’s getting elderly. He’s sixty-four. He doesn’t want me to wait ten years to give him a grandson, and Glorieta is set on having her full youth before getting married.”

“Well,” Barbara said in a teasing voice. “If you’re sure …”

He pulled her to him and put his lips over her own, holding her tightly. Slowly, her arms went around him. When he released her, she was panting, her eyes were softened and glazed looking, as though she had gone blind in the instant.

She murmured drunkenly. “You’ll have to break your betrothal to Glorieta first. I won’t have her saying that I broke up her betrothal …”

“Oh, you didn’t,” he murmured, his lips at her ear. “Believe me, you didn’t.”

“D
O YOU THINK
I
WAS TOO FORWARD
?” G
ENEVIEVE ASKED
a day or two after the soirée, when her friends had questioned her again and she had given them an abbreviated version of her conversation with the Colonel. “Was I too … unfeminine?” At Mrs. Blessingham’s school, girls were taught to be concerned about such things.

“You did rather spout,” Carlotta agreed. “And you know what Mrs. Blessingham says about spouting.”

Mrs. Blessingham went to some pains to teach her girls that when a man of the aristocracy asked a woman “What do you think?” it was almost certainly a rhetorical question. The covenants that governed the nobility, the covenants on which the world was founded, specified with absolute clarity that there should be no conflicts among noblemen and no stridency among noblewomen. Stridency among slaves, inferiors, and women had been tolerated during the human rights struggles of predispersion times, but on Haven, stridency was eschewed, as it made people uncomfortable.

Therefore, said Mrs. Blessingham, young ladies would behave like young ladies, not like political agitators. It was uncovenantly to question men’s business or one’s own status. If one’s husband or father struck a horse or servant or child, or even oneself, the proper response was to retire, to see that injuries were attended to, and to assure that the
occasion of anger was not repeated. Men were actually happier if they believed that women did not think of anything except babies and baubles and other such harmless, female kind of things. Happy men were tranquil men; tranquil men made a tranquil society. A tranquil society was the goal of women; sacrificing one’s own immediate gratifications for one’s family and society was Godly and laudatory; and doing it graciously, with unreserved resignation, displayed perfect purity of soul.

“Do you think we really have souls?” Genevieve had asked Barbara on one occasion when they were alone and no one could possibly overhear them and report them to the scrutator.

Barbara had frowned, something she rarely did. “Oh, Jenny, I had an older brother, Bertold. Sometimes I hated him. He’d hurt me. He’d twist my arm to make me cry, and then he’d laugh. But sometimes, just once in a while, he was happy, and when he was happy he was so funny and sweet. It never lasted long. He was killed because he was mean and hateful one time too many. He was Papa’s only son, and that’s why Papa is so set on … well, you know.

“After Bertold was killed, I just knew all the mean parts got washed away, and the funny, sweet parts of him were kept, like gold, panned out of gravel, and put in the treasury. Not all of him was worth keeping, but part of him … I don’t think it was lost.”

Barbara sometimes amazed Genevieve. She had such wonderful thoughts, though they, like the gold in Bertold’s nature, were sparse among the gravel of Barbara’s daily self. One had to go panning for them. And ideas weren’t universally admired, either!

“Women should not complicate any matter under consideration by offering opinions,” said Mrs. Blessingham. “To be a handsome, poised, amusing, seemingly passive but managerially brilliant woman is your goal.”

“I did spout at the soirée,” Genevieve admitted shamefacedly to Carlotta. “Father will no doubt be furious.”

Though Genevieve heard nothing directly from her father on the subject of “spouting,” it was the first thing
that came to her mind when she was summoned to Mrs. Blessingham’s sitting room a few days later. On the way there, she wondered if Colonel Leys had told her father, or if someone else had, and if now he was angry with her. If he had heard she had misbehaved, his anger could be taken for granted. She was quite pale when she arrived at Mrs. Blessingham’s office.

“Heaven, child, you’re pale as milk!”

“I thought, perhaps … Father … something …”

“It’s nothing that warrants worry! Your father merely sent a note to say he is bringing an important guest to the next soirée.” The older woman fixed the girl with a doubtful expression. “I would be concerned, of course, if your father intends to betroth you to someone. By the terms of the covenants, you should have another ten years before accepting that responsibility. I have told him as much, but he does not seem to listen.”

“Father does not really listen to women, Mrs. Blessingham.”

Mrs. Blessingham, a commoner who had chosen her lifestyle, her work, and her friends, had grown unaccustomed to including herself in the category “women,” and this label made her blink.

“Well, still we must keep Papa happy, since that is what we do. I asked to see you so we can arrange with Dorothea to do your hair and with Gertrude to select your gown and be sure it is fitted properly. You have grown since last year. Most girls do not grow in height at your age, so we must be sure your stockings and small-linens still fit you well.”

“Yes, ma’am,” she said, as she always said. Then, however, she went on, betraying her own confusion. “Father has not said anything at all about a betrothal.”

“I was merely guessing, my dear. He did not say who he was bringing with him, merely that he wished you to make a good appearance. And Genevieve, please. It might be better if you did not spout. You were seen talking at a great rate at the last soirée, and it is never a good idea to go on so volubly. If it was only chatter, it can be excused as mere nervousness or even playfulness, but do avoid speaking about politics. Few women find comments
on political matters well received, and those who do tend to be elderly, with years of exposure to the talk of a husband and his colleagues. At the age of fifty or sixty, if a woman is not contentious, she can sometimes offer an opinion without being silenced.”

“That seems foolish,” Genevieve said, surprising herself. “It seems self-defeating not to let us use our minds.”

Mrs. Blessingham smiled rather ruefully. “Genevieve, it would be self-defeating among the commons. The poor are like foxes: they need intelligence in order to survive. The rich, however, have power; they don’t need good sense. Also remember that traditional things are sacred, and here on Haven, vapid noblewomen are traditional.”

Genevieve dropped a curtsey and left, her face flaming.

“It was Barbara, that cat. She told,” said Carlotta.

“No,” Genevieve said, trying to be fair. “I think it was one of the guests who heard me talking to the Colonel, and his questions were political, sort of.”

“I can’t understand why you’re so interested in politics. Where do you even learn about it?”

“I’m not all that interested,” murmured Genevieve, by now quite aware that any such interests should not be shared with her schoolmates, for they would tell their families, and their families would tell others. Besides, it was true that she wasn’t interested in politics exactly. She just wanted to know how things worked and what roles people played, and what the rules of the game were. The only real way to find such things out was to watch them or read about them.

To this end, she had haunted the library since soon after coming to Blessingham’s. It reminded her of the library at Langmarsh House: it was quiet, and if she daydreamed over an open book, no one thought she was strange. The librarian was a crickety little man with a funny beard who never bothered to learn their names and called each one of them “young lady.” He had a small office where he sat for hours at a time, reading periodicals, some from off-world, some from the provinces, most of them printed on paper particularly for nontechnological markets. Nothing of the kind was included in the reading material available to students, and Genevieve’s curiosity was piqued, particularly
when she saw that the librarían stacked the older periodicals outside his door for the maids to take away.

After several days of anticipatory guilt, she filched one from the pile and carried it off to her room. There, for the first time, she read of other worlds as described by the people on them. She read of planets that had been settled with high hopes, only to fail, while others, settled in like fashion, succeeded. Here was Dephesia, fertile and flourishing; there was Chamis, no less fertile, but perishing nonetheless. Here was Barlet’s World, healthy amid its forests and seas. There was Ares, on which a mysterious thing had happened, on which a mysterious plague was even now infecting the population. Genevieve found this information totally fascinating.

Thereafter, Genevieve “borrowed” periodicals whenever she could do so unobserved, reading and rereading them in the privacy of her own room before returning them to the discard pile, thankful for the private room that let her read without being questioned. All the girls twelve or older had private rooms, for being alone was something girls had to adjust to. When one became mistress of an estate, one would need to occupy long stretches of solitude without being lonely. Otherwise, one might actually engage in improper behavior, start fraternizing with the maids, chatting with the butler, or flirting with good-looking stable boys, which was not the thing. Not at all.

“No matter how lonely you get, do not get into the habit of chit-chat with the servants.” So said Mrs. Blessingham.