Wedding (7 page)

Unlike the circumscribed seminary and signal
station of La Sapienza, Aranyi Fortress, secure behind two
protective walls and backed by the impenetrable northern mountains,
was free to spread out in three dimensions. There were miles of
corridors and hundreds of rooms, for living, working, eating and
storage. There were several staircases: winding ones spiraling up
into watchtowers, broad ones leading up to the family bedrooms and
nursery, and to the servants’ quarters above. There was a dungeon,
three steep levels below the ground floor, I was informed by a
grinning boy hurrying up from the root cellar. The nearer basements
served more humdrum purposes: for keeping food, as this boy was
retrieving, for dry goods and weapons, and lower down, for the
plumbing.

The layout of the fortress was a standard
plan, but new to me who had known only the uniformity of La
Sapienza’s square shape. From a wide, deep cobblestone courtyard,
one came in at the entrance, made deliberately narrow to create one
last bottleneck for invaders should they manage to get past all the
outer defenses. From there, one could ascend a majestic stone
staircase, or turn and enter the great hall, where we ate dinner
and supper. Breakfast was served buffet style in a smaller room to
the side near the kitchen, saving work early in the day.

Guardrooms near the front and rear entrances
occupied large areas on the ground floor. The upper stories and
turrets had lookout posts and attics; the middle floors were a
mixture of workrooms and guestrooms, including the Zichmni Suite,
kept always in readiness should the Viceroy or a member of his
family arrive on short notice. Bedrooms, for family, guests and
servants, ran along the three outer walls, but the storerooms were
dark and gloomy, dug into the hard rock that sheltered us. Any work
that required bright light, like sewing, was done in rooms near the
front and top of the house.

The hall was two stories high, to give a
sense of grandeur and, more prosaically, allowing heat to rise and
dissipate from the assembled company and the enormous fireplace.
The family and guests of rank sat on chairs at the high table on a
dais at the front of the room, opposite the entrance, for safety
and warmth. Everyone else sat on benches at tables running the
length of the room. The hall had an unfurnished look most of the
time; because there was so much willing help, the household
followed the old custom of setting up trestle tables before each
meal and disassembling them again afterwards, stacking them against
the walls. It was as if every day were a potential festival, with
dancing or other entertainment to follow the food.

At the very top was the eclipse platform, the
unique feature that marked the fortress as the home of ’Graven.
Just as at La Sapienza, where we had clambered onto the roof, here
we had a special turret, a shallow cup on the highest tower. It was
used as a lookout post most of the time, but when the daily eclipse
began the watchman descended and the gifted inhabitants took his
place. I found it by instinct the first time; each day after that
the watchman would hold the door open, reporting the weather as I
pulled myself up the last few steps. Here in the mountains we were
buffeted by wind even on fair days, but regardless of rain or
sleet, snow or fog, there was no better way to replenish our
strength. Every day I could feel it, the
crypta
energy
surging through my body, nourishing me and the child.

After I had memorized the basic plan and
could find my way from my room to the great hall and back, I was
ready to learn about the work that went on. Everywhere I went, from
morning to evening, there was some kind of purposeful activity,
much of it segregated by sex. Maids mopped corridors and bathrooms
and swept out the occupied bedrooms. Seamstresses made new clothes
and linens for the household, and mended old ones. Footmen did
heavy lifting and household repairs. A cobbler and an apprentice, a
man and a boy, resoled boots and sandals and made new ones as
needed. The guards left behind to defend the castle manned the
gates and the entrances, and drilled in the courtyards.

There was a full-time laundry in the second
cellar for the larger items that could not easily be washed by
hand—sheets and towels, tablecloths and napkins. Huge stationary
washtubs were filled from taps, heated over cast-iron stoves and
agitated by a manual crank. Strong young women worked here, turning
the handles to wash and rinse, feeding the dripping things into
wringers and lugging them upstairs in baskets. In winter everything
was hung in an attic to catch the heat rising from the lower
floors. In the warmer weather that was coming now it was hung
outside.

Only the kitchen employed both men and women,
because of the variety of jobs. Enough people worked in the kitchen
to populate their own village. There were the cooks, men and women,
a true meritocracy, but there were also assistants of all kinds, to
knead dough and form it into loaves and pie shells, to chop and to
mince, to make sauces and to dress meat. There were girls to peel
vegetables and pluck and clean fowl, others to wash the dishes and
scrub the pots. There were boys to bring wood and tend the fire,
and to turn the spits on which some animal was always broiling,
making the fire hiss with the drippings that missed the pan
underneath. People were constantly running in and out of the
connecting rooms—pantries, root cellars and wine cellars, cold
rooms for meat and milk and for fruit and vegetables, warmer rooms
for breads and pies—fetching things the cooks called for, taking
back what was not used.

With its roaring fire going from dawn until
after dark, for boiling caldrons and roasting meat, and to heat the
ovens built into the walls around the hearth, the kitchen seemed to
me a hellish environment. It was hot and smoky, noisy and crowded,
huge though it was in area. The cooks banged pots and pans and
waved knives, shouting and cursing at their helpers. But it was, I
soon learned, a coveted assignment. The kitchen staff worked
inside, out of the weather, and had first taste of the best food.
Nobody so privileged would complain about the fuggy atmosphere or a
few rough words from a cook.

Soon I discovered a refuge, cool and quiet:
Dominic’s library. On Terra the word is still used occasionally,
although it merely means a place where people work at retrieving
and sending information through computers and the holonet. Now I
entered a real library. Dominic likes to read when he has the
chance and he had added greatly to the collection amassed by the
previous generations of literate Margraves Aranyi. The walls were
lined with shelves filled with leather-covered books. I knew what
they were, had learned about the way in which text used to be
presented—inked type pressed onto paper, the pages bound into
volumes—but I had never held a book. For someone who had read words
only on a screen or with the holonet enrichment, a printed book was
an unbelievable treat, like seeing a fossil of an extinct species
come to life.

Almost sweating with excitement, I tilted my
head sideways to examine the titles on the spines.
Official
Procedure for the Duel of Honor
. My face fell comically, if
anyone had been around to observe it.
Comprehensive
Swordsmanship for Rapier or Broadsword
. I tried another shelf.
Morgan’s Daily Regimen of Horse Training. Hunting with Dogs in
Snow
. I was ready to cry.

I crossed the room.
The True Romance of
Ilana the Fair and Roderick the Outland Prince.
I had left the
masculine world of warfare and hunting, and entered the feminine
world of love.
The Tale of Lord Zichmni and the Divine
Qiaolian
. I knew that story. Nobody could spend any time on
Eclipsis without hearing snatches of its founding legend that was
usually sung in ballad form. I took the volume off the shelf,
running my fingers over the soft leather of the cover, riffling the
creamy pages. My first look brought the tears of frustration back
to my eyes. It was all verse, in archaic, inflected Eclipsian. It
would take me a long time to puzzle out each line, and at the end
all I would have would be the formulaic myth of the “wandering sun
god” Lord Zichmni falling from the sky and encountering the
“silver-eyed goddess” Qiaolian. It was a beautiful, even moving
account when sung. In print it could only put me to sleep.

As I prepared to give up my quest for reading
material, I noticed a smaller, enclosed bookcase, shelves protected
by wooden doors with glass panels.
The Age of Anarchy
, I saw
the first title.
History of the ’Graven Realms: Vol. 1, The
Coalition
. These were all history books, more my style. The
title
Aranyi: Fierce in War, Loyal in Peace
, probably
written by one of Dominic’s forebears, commanded my attention.
Eager to read the illustrious deeds, however embellished, of
Dominic’s family, I pulled on the delicate handle of the carved
door. It wouldn’t open. There was no lock, no key. It just would
not open. I had never encountered a
crypta
lock before, a
device like a DNA reader to ensure access by only one person.

Trust Dominic to lock away the good
stuff
. I mused on my lover’s contradictions: his pride in his
position even as he chafed at its restrictions; his pleasure in
both reading and warfare; his passion for young men and his
crypta
-inspired love for me; his skill at swordsmanship and
riding and hunting, as attested to by his books, and his incisive
speeches in ’Graven Assembly, which I had heard of, even in the
Terran Sector, from people who had been on the receiving end of his
barbed words.

While I thought of him and reflected on his
attractive blend of opposing qualities, the doors of the cabinet
popped open. I had opened the lock, with patience and calm, by
recreating my lover’s character in memory. Afterwards Dominic
refused to believe what I had done, made me show him how I could
open the lock, then laughed in amazement, saying we didn’t need to
be married after all, we were already one flesh. Now I grabbed the
book of Aranyi history, in case the doors slammed in my face if I
hesitated. I had been away from computers and the holonet for six
months, and was feeling the need of the true addict for the visual,
not just spoken, word. By the time Dominic returned, I hoped to
impress him with my knowledge of Aranyi’s past.

But even a sloth like me tired of indoor
amusement eventually. It was spring; many days were warm enough
that the night’s snowfall melted soon after breakfast. I could put
on my boots against the mud and visit the outbuildings.

There were so many places to investigate, so
many strange new occupations to observe. There were barns, some for
storing summer crops after the harvest, some for housing the
grazing herds of animals when winter forced them indoors. There
were shearing sheds for sheep and milking sheds for the cows and
goats and ewes. There was a forge and smithy, for making and
repairing all the farm equipment, and the shoes and myriad other
stuff that horses require. A mill powered by wind ground grain into
flour. In the smokehouse, fragrant chips of a variety of woods
preserved fresh meat and fish for the months when game was scarce.
An icehouse, built partly below the cold ground, packed with snow
and insulated with straw, kept a few perishables frozen until
autumn returned to do the work naturally.

Some buildings held more fascination than
others. There was a mews, with falcons and hawks, and a Master
Falconer to care for them. Alaric was a neat little man, soldierly
and reserved, with something of the birds’ own concentration on his
work. He was polite, like everyone I encountered, inviting me to
watch as he exercised the birds, freeing them from their leather
hoods and letting them swoop and dive for a lure of rabbit
meat.

There was an enormous stable, somewhat
depleted now, for Dominic’s hunting horses and his battle charger,
and those of the men-at-arms who lived nearby. Like the hawks, the
horses not away at the war with their masters were taken out every
day by the grooms for exercise in a large circular yard. The little
mare that had carried me from La Sapienza was here, mine now, a
gift from Dominic. Her name was
Firefly
, according to the
wooden sign over her stall. Not terribly original, but I liked it
and saw no need to choose another. She knew me from the journey we
had made together and would greet me with a whinny. On my first
visit a groom offered to accompany me for a ride, but since Dominic
had left no orders on this subject I was able to decline graciously
on the pretext that he would not like me to go without him.

My favorite building of all was the dairy.
There were bowls of milk set out on tables to be skimmed, churns
for making butter, and shelves of all different kinds of
cloth-covered cheese, hard, soft and semi-soft, ripe and fresh. It
was cool in the dairy house, and peaceful once the clatter of the
churns was done for the morning, and someone always offered me a
morsel of something tasty.

By now I was brave enough to visit any
building or room. I had been afraid at first, could only begin to
imagine how much in the way I would be, the idle lady amusing
herself by watching the peasants at work. But my appetite had drawn
me, a true baptism of fire, first to the kitchen. Tempted by the
mouth-watering smells and curious as to how so much delicious food
was prepared every day without microwaves and packaged meals, I
could not stay away long. Even at La Sapienza, our “aides,” who in
their natural state eat their food raw, had relied more on food
supplied by shops in the nearby town than on dishes made from
scratch.

When, after breakfast on my second day, I
ventured in, I saw I had done people an injustice. Everyone was
courteous and welcoming. With my gift, I knew they were not
pretending. I would be the mistress here; to show no interest in my
new home would be the greatest insult of all. Far from resenting
me, the workers expected my visits, were proud of their skills and,
when they had time, answered my stupid questions with a pleased air
of showing off.
Poor lady
, they thought, w
hat must her
life have been, among the lowlanders and the Terrans, that she
should not know what squab is, has never eaten bread fresh from the
oven?
They smiled at me indulgently, surprised in their
hard-working lives to discover that they ate better, and lived
better, than the future ’Gravina Aranyi herself.