The Saga of the Renunciates (29 page)

There had never been anyone else. Until now she would have sworn there never could be.

"Mag, you know there can never be anyone else, not for either of us, not on this world."

That, she thought, was partly true; they had shared the Darkovan childhood, the isolation from their peers, which had kept them from finding satisfactory mates elsewhere; drawn together by the knowledge that they were the only ones available for one another. Now she resented this; and resented, even more, how much he took it for granted.

"No, Peter. Whatever you're asking-no."

"I want you," he said, as if in pain. "I want you for always. I want to marry you again. And I want you now. Magda, Magda, come with me now! Our rooms are together, it's as if it had been intended – "

She said quietly, "You know I am not free to marry. Now."

"Oh, that! This Amazon game you are playing – "

"It's not a game." The very softness with which she spoke accentuated the finality of the words.

His voice was bitter. "Have you cut off your womanhood with your hair?"

"No," she said. "I don't think so. But I don't think womanhood means I have to go to bed with you just because you're lonely"-she had begun to use a ruder word-"and want a woman."

He touched her softly, intensely, and she hated her own arousal. He said, in triumph, "You want me, too. You know you do!"

"If I do," she said, suddenly angry, "that is
my
affair and not yours, unless
I
choose to make it so! Oh, God, Peter, why can't you understand? Do you want me just to be
kind
to you?"

He said, trying to hold her, "I'd settle for that," but she wrenched herself free.

"But I won't, and that's final! Peter, let me go. Jaelle is watching us!"

She moved away; only a few inches, but with such finality she might as well have been on one of the moons. Seeing the angry flush of offended pride lying along his cheekbones, she felt almost regretful; but nothing kinder would ever have made him believe her. He swallowed hard, and turned away; she watched him go toward Jaelle, saw the girl hold out her hand, with none of the shyness now she had shown earlier this evening. Peter took the slender fingers in his own, and although Magda could not hear what they said, she saw them move away together.

She watched them circle the dance floor, with a certain sadness. She was really free of Peter now. And suddenly, with her new dimension of awareness, she knew what she had done.

She had seen it, as they left Sain Scarp. Perhaps it was only chemistry, perhaps it was something more; but it had been immediate and unmistakable. Jaelle's weakness and collapse had misdirected Peter's response into protective kindness, self-effacing chivalry.

But it had been there, all the time, behind the kindness and the gentle, impersonal protectiveness. She had seen it again, when Jaelle had clung to Peter in her delirium. And now, feeling almost humiliated, she knew why Peter had come to her tonight; and it was not because he found her irresistible.

Peter was, first of all, a Terran agent; and he knew the rules. And one of them, a major one, was this: never, never-
never
-get seriously and deeply involved with any native woman on any planet where you're assigned. Casual liaisons were condoned, if not approved (every, spaceport in the Empire had a red-light district), but anything more serious was forbidden.

And whatever it was between Peter and Jaelle, it was very real, and it was serious. Peter had been trying, a desperate last-ditch attempt, to protect himself against this involvement which could be so disastrous to the rules under which he lived. Magda was safe, Magda was one of his own. And yet... not quite.

He's like me; his sexuality somehow got to be Darkovan, just as mine did. He doesn't react to other women. But I'm near enough so that somehow he can be content with me. As I was with him. For a while.

If Magda had come with him, tonight, he could have resisted his own powerful, and dangerous, desire for Jaelle. But Magda had driven him away, with a blow to his masculine pride; and Peter had gone straight to Jaelle to heal that wound.

Now, with sudden dread, Magda found herself worrying about them both. Peter could risk his career for Jaelle. And Jaelle-what would she risk? She was no girl of the spacesport bars, but a woman of the Comyn, and, if Magda was any judge, deeply in love.

Irritably, Magda tried to dismiss the whole matter from her mind. It was definitely not her affair. Jaelle was no child; she was only a year or two younger than Magda herself, and, judging by the way she had been talking earlier, quite sophisticated enough to take care of herself. As for endangering Peter's career, Jaelle was not free to marry.

But even while she stood and watched a group of men dancing with torches, an ancient sworddance, she wondered where in the lowering shadows Peter and Jaelle had gone...

Somehow, the savor had gone from the evening. At midnight or thereabouts, dom Gabriel, Rohana and Lady Alida, with most of the older people, said good night and withdrew, hospitably bidding their younger guests to remain and enjoy themselves as late as they chose.

Darrill sought Magda out again, and urged her to accompany him into one of the long galleries where, he said, there were some very fine ancient murals. From the way he touched her, and spoke, Magda was perfectly sure that he had no more interest in the murals than she did herself. She made some tactful excuse, and when he had gone away, she wondered why she had not taken up the challenge. Peter and Jaelle had long since disappeared and not returned; she wondered what gallery
they
were exploring. From what Jaelle had said, Magda knew it was not regarded as particularly reprehensible to share a good deal of casual kissing-or more, if she wished-on midwinter-night.

Sooner or later, now that I'm free of Peter, I must find out how I react to other men...

Then, angry with herself, she thought,
Damn it, before I complicate my life with another man
_r
I want to know more about myself! I want to know what I am to myself, not always have to see myself through a man's eyes!

A strange man came and asked her to dance again; she pleaded extreme fatigue, left the Great Hall and went up to the room she shared with Jaelle. Jaelle had not returned. Magda took off her beautiful gown, readied herself for bed and lay down. She expected to lie awake, worrying about Peter and Jaelle; instead she fell at once into a heavy sleep.

Hours later, she woke to see Jaelle standing in the doorway, barefoot, her face flushed, her short hair tousled. Her eyes were very bright. She came across the room and sat on Magda's bed.

Magda said lightly, "I didn't expect you back until later."

Magda could smell the girl's sweet heavy breath, and knew she had been drinking; was not sober now Jaelle said, "Oh, don't be angry with me, sister. I didn't want this to happen, I know how you feel."

"Angry?" Magda sat up and put her arms around Jaelle. "Darling"-the word she used was
breda
-"what right have I to be angry? Do you think-" Abruptly, it dawned on her just what Jaelle
did
think. "Do you think I'm
jealous?"

Jaelle said with a nervous giggle, "This kind of thing is easier at midsummer when there are gardens. We have spent most of the night in the long galleries." Her teeth were chattering, whether with cold or nervous excitement Magda could not tell. "I-I should have gone with him as he asked me." She looked at the connecting door into Peter's room. "But-but I wanted to be sure, I don't like deciding things in a hurry and," she added after a moment, looking at Magda in appeal, "I did not want to-to tread on the hem of your garment."

Incongruously Magda realized that she was still making mental notes about the curious idiom. She hugged the trembling girl tight, and said, "Jaelle, anything between Peter Haldane and me was a long, long time ago." As she said it, she knew that it was really true. "Do you love him,
breda?"

"I don't know," Jaelle said. "I'm not sure. I've never felt like this before."

Magda found herself wondering if Jaelle were a virgin. From her flippant jokes, and sophisticated comments, she had not thought so; but could an experienced woman be so uncertain? As if Jaelle he’d picked up the thought directly from her mind-and by now Magda was almost ready to believe that-Jaelle said in a low voice, looking down, "It's foolish, isn't it? I've come near to it many times. Before I took the oath, when Kindra saw that I liked to-to laugh with men and to flirt with them, she told me that before I bound myself, I should take a lover, test myself that way; she said that it might someday seem hard to me that I was bound by law never to marry. But somehow there was never anyone I could-could trust that much."

She added defensively, "So it never came to more than laughter or foolishness. Nor did I ever leave any man wounded by my teasing, or heart-scalded. But now"-she looked and sounded forlorn-"I have no more laughter. I think I am more afraid now, when I-when I love him, when I want him, than when I was a girl and the very thought of giving myself to any man seemed frightening, an open door to bondage and slavery... I don't know myself anymore!" Her voice was snaking and she was very close to tears. "I don't know what I want! Oh, Margali, Margali-sister, what shall I do?"

Magda felt wrung, helpless.
What can I say to her?
She could understand that to Jaelle, brought up as she had been among women close-bound to one another by oath, it seemed completely natural to turn to another woman for comfort or counsel.
I
am bound to treat every woman as my mother, sister, daughter... but I've always lived by such different laws...God help me, I don't know what to say to her!
If one of her own friends in the Terran Zone-Bethany, for instance-had come to her with such a question, Magda could have turned it off with a casual or even a crude joke. But she could not do that to Jaelle.

What would Rohana have said to her? Finally, in a voice shaking as much as Jaelle's, she said, "Darling, I can't advise you. I don't know if anyone could. You must do what you feel is right." Then, to her own surprise, she found herself whispering the words of the oath of the Free Amazons: "I swear I will give myself to no man save in my own time and season and of my own free will..."

There was a moment of silence, then Jaelle whispered as if to herself, "In my own time and season," and smiled, tightening her arms around Magda; and Magda knew that somehow, by instinct, she had hit on precisely the right thing to say. She felt Jaelle's lips against her cheek for a moment; then, without a word, Jaelle pressed her hand, and went, on noiseless feet, to the connecting door, which closed a moment later behind her. She did not return.

Day after day the snow fell, pouring from gray skies as if it had forgotten how to stop. Then, ten days after midwinter, Magda was awakened by Jaelle, sitting on her bed.

"Wake up, sister, the sun is shining!"

Magda ran to the window. The sky was filled with thick, low, puffy clouds through which erratic sunshine spilled; in the courtyard below, pathways were being cleared by bundled men with long shovels; and horses, their breath streaming in the cold, were being brought around for departing guests.

Magda dressed hastily in her traveling garments, not at all sorry to resume them. Every day their stay was prolonged meant another chance of revealing who they were.

Jaelle began slowly to dress. Since midwinter, she had spent her nights at Peter’s side, although she had been careful not to be found there in the morning by dom Gabriel's servants. When Magda teased her gently about what seemed like hypocrisy, she had said, "I do not care a
sekal's
worth what dom Gabriel thinks of me; he is not my guardian and I owe no man any account of my acts. I care still less what his servants think of me. The servants know, of course; they always know such things. But if no one of them sees me there, then there will be no one whose business it is to inform dom Gabriel. And although he probably knows, too-he is not a fool, and he has seen us looking at one another-if his servants told him in so many words, he would feel compelled to ask Rohana to reprimand me for putting the women of the Comyn to shame by sharing a commoner's bed. And for his peace of mind Rohana would feel she had to come and scold me, even though she and I agreed together when I was sixteen that she was not my guardian and no longer the keeper of my conscience. And she would try not to offend me because she knows that I am a grown woman and by law the mistress of my own acts, and I would try not to be rude to her because I love her. And when we had all forced ourselves to say all these things, I would still go on sleeping with Peter whenever I chose; so it seems to me wiser not to start all that in motion."

That reasoning seemed complicated to Magda, but she had to admit that it probably saved trouble for all of them. It was even possible that dom Gabriel, if it were brought directly to his notice, might feel compelled to call Peter personally to account. By the Amazon oath, Jaelle had declared her independence of his guardianship, but Magda had heard from Jaelle that some men still refused to recognize the Amazon Charter.

Peter joined them in the hallway; he took Jaelle's hand in his as they went down the corridor, and Magda, watching, thought that the trip back to Thendara, with just the three of them, was likely to be awkward in more ways than one. She did not grudge Jaelle a single moment of her happiness-and that they were happy, no one who slaw them together could possibly doubt-but it
was
going to be awkward, and she, Magda, would bear most of the awkwardness!

The immediate family of Ardais, with a bare handful of the house-party guests, and estate officials, usually had their meals in a small breakfast room away from the Great Hall. As they came in they heard a burst of laughter. Dom Kyril was telling a funny story, which was one of the commonest midwinter pastimes, at this season when all outdoor work came to a dead stop.