Dominion (31 page)

Purchase thanked Magnus, then turned to seek out his father's attention. Merian placed his hand on Purchase's arm and rubbed it very tenderly. “Stay,” he said, the word very slow to form and exit his mouth.

Purchase clasped his fingers. “In my heart I am always here,” he answered, “but we cannot, all of us, always be where our heart is.”

“But where we should,” Merian said, and he was very clear and lucid then.

Purchase loved his father and owed him honor so did not want to argue with him, but he was full grown a long time already and his life was as much his own as any man's could be said to be—he needed neither
father nor brother nor even offspring to define that—and he was learned enough in his life to know what its purpose was: His was the fate of the lover. He argued neither with men nor with God that it should be different.

His time there was a holiday for him from the tribulations of that life, and he wanted to treat it as such, so when the music began again, he was among the first to the dance, going first with Libbie, then Mrs. Darson. To Mrs. Darson he seemed imposing and unreadable, like no man she had known before. When Libbie danced with him, though, she felt a soothing comfort that, while she had never yet felt it in such a way, she knew immediately to be profoundly masculine. There was sadness in it, but while she danced with him she feared nothing and wanted nothing else.

“Will you be a good wife for my son?” he asked her.

“I will do my utmost best,” she answered, and he knew that she would.

“He is a very lucky man in that case, and I could wish nothing more for him,” Purchase told his daughter-in-law.

Just as he knew the boy would be safe when he sent him to live at Stonehouses, he sensed he would be well off with Libbie, especially as—and this he could divine by looking at him—his son's life would be full of its own trials.

As their dance ended Libbie could scarcely believe the rumors they said about her father-in-law and his wife. What woman, she wondered, would deny such a husband? She hoped, as she went back to her new groom, he might become such a man as his father one day. And it pleased her to think what this future version of Caleum might be like.

Caleum himself was still engaged with distractions and did not muster the resolve to confront his father until it was near eventide. Purchase amused himself in the meantime by watching Julius and Cato gamble at cards. No longer having the desire for that particular vice himself, he watched only in the manner of one who is advanced at chess watching precocious children play at checkers: with interest in the players and how each approached the board and formed his strategy, but little care for the game itself, being able to see the result far in advance.

When his son finally came to him, he knew there were but few possibilities on the board, and what each move was most likely to produce for an endgame.

“How did you know about the wedding?” Caleum asked first, staring at Purchase in the amber light of a setting sun that seemed to burnish everything around them. “Or was it only happenstance that you arrived today?”

“It was published,” Purchase answered him. “When I read it, I knew I must attend.”

“And my mother?” the young man pressed.

“It was her I was looking for when I read the announcement,” Purchase answered him without elaboration.

All Caleum knew of his father was what he had been told by his relatives, or else the gossip of those who were not necessarily friends. Some saw his state as a sickness that could not be purged. To others he was renowned for his boldness and courage. His son tried to divine between these poles. Standing before him he still could not tell, and it took all of his courage to look his father in the eye and ask, “Is it true what they say of you?”

Purchase looked on Caleum with sympathy. “I cannot tell you that because I do not know either who
they
are or the words from their lips. What men believe is according to each his own needs, but what are facts are well known and I would never deny them to you.”

“Did you come here to mock me with riddles?” Caleum asked.

“The opposite of mocking. I came to celebrate you and your bride and your love for each other,” Purchase said. “I will answer whatever you ask of me, but for what is in other men's minds I do not know and do not concern myself with. Nor should you so much.”

“The schooling years have passed for me already.”

“May they never.”

“Teach me this then, Father,” Caleum said, looking him steady in the eye. “Where is my mother?”

“I have not seen her for a year,” Purchase answered. “If she knew of your wedding, I am certain she would be happy for you, as I am.”

“If you cannot answer that, what about this?” Caleum looked away at his guests, enjoying themselves on the lawn, and tried to find voice for what was truly on his mind, as it caused him more pain than the fear of his father's wrath. It was fear of rejection being replayed, but he stoppered that and asked anyway, “Why did you disown me?”

Purchase followed the boy's gaze out toward the celebration and, beyond that, to the precipice where the Darson property fell off and the rough valleys of that country resumed. “They are disowned—fatherless, motherless—who arrive here every day. Is that what I did?” Purchase asked. “Or did I give you a parenting other than my own? Perhaps it was so you did not have my failures or ambitions to cloud your judgment, or pin your failures upon, and could be your own man. Or do you fear that?”

“All my fears were consumed by the ocean when I traveled upon it as a boy. I have had no fear since then,” Caleum said, drawing up proudly.

“You will be afraid again yet,” Purchase reproached him, “unless you will be a fool. But just as fathers cannot always fathom the minds of their sons, sons do not always know the hearts of their fathers. Cannot feel empathy for their fates. You were only differently fathered, Caleum, such as happens every day and has happened at Stonehouses since my father first cultivated it.”

“Aye, and which one will stay?” Caleum asked, feeling an onrush of emotion for his old father, whom he could admire in many ways but did not understand, any better than when he was only a memory carried from boyhood.

“I don't know how long I will stay,” Purchase said. “My only home is with your mother, and I hear she is on the other lip of the ocean.”

What maze the two of them had traveled no one outside that relationship could know, but that it had been a complex dance of love and heartbreak and strange devotion was plain for anyone to see. Caleum looked at his sire and was afraid—not that his own marriage might turn out so but that they were part of a scheme larger than themselves he had yet to grasp, and that such quantum weight might be given him to bear. For his mother, he did not know whether she loved his father or not—or what she thought of her son, for that matter—but he felt sadness for both his parents.

“I hope the two of you figure out a way that brings you peace,” he said at last. He knew then, the moment he felt empathy for his father, that his own fate would be otherwise, and the point and purpose of his life would be different. “I hope you find a way home.” He left
Purchase and returned to seek out his wife, who would give him untold joy and a life far apart from the other generations at Stonehouses. Of this he was sure.

That evening, when the wedding was over and the newlyweds made their way off to start their life together, Purchase Merian picked up again his own permanent burden and set out in search of his wife. The purpose of his road was to find her, and he still imagined that if the two of them could only unite in lasting happiness it would be very glorious. He would not have rest before this and knew that as well. He was glad indeed his son was at Stonehouses and protected from knowing too much at too young an age, even if he was proving very precocious.

Libbie had always heard about the generosity of those at Stonehouses to friends and strangers alike, especially when Jasper Merian was still in his prime. The winter she first made a home there, however, was the coldest time she had so far known in her remembered life. She was not in the main house, of course, but the new place Caleum had put up with Magnus's help on the southern side of the lake, and she could not imagine a place of greater desolation and distance from life's comforts.

She knew her husband had built their home with her in mind, and it moved her to see all he had done to make it pleasant for her; still, she could not help but notice what was absent. For instance, when he showed her the glassed-in windows that framed the parlor, with a view out to the blue-green waters of the lake—gathering both the eastern and western light of the sun as it passed through the day—instead of thinking herself lucky to have such a fine picture window, she wondered only how she would endure not looking out on the vista she was used to from her parents' house. She always reprimanded herself after such a thought, but the glass in the window seemed hard and forbidding to her, as opposed to the warm wooden shutters with which she had grown up. Furthermore, the distance from Magnus and Adelia in the main house, to say nothing of the next nearest neighbor, seemed to her so great that they might as well have been at the other edge of creation.

The building itself was the same size as her parents' home, but, because it was occupied by only the two of them, it felt massive and empty. At night it was especially barren, and there was an echo that reverberated through the halls, which reminded her that she no longer heard
her mother's voice in the morning, or even her brothers fighting with each other at all hours of the day.

“I have built it for us to fill together,” said Caleum, who had spent the entire summer with his uncle and two hired men building for them a small replica of the main building, and he could not believe she did not find it agreeable, as he himself felt very rich when he finished putting it up. “The parlor will be warm when you have made curtains of your own design for the windows. The empty sounds will be padded by the paper you hang on the walls. The echoing rooms will fill with our children.”

She listened to him attentively, and was soothed by his words, until she heard his voice say
children.
Children? She knew certainly it was part of what was expected of her; however, she had not thought what it meant until she heard it from his mouth. When he said the word so assuredly she felt a crisis of fear, as its reality was brought home to her. She did not know if she was brave enough to face the danger she knew birth to be. She started then to weep.

Her mother had lectured her on what she might expect during her first days and weeks of marriage. Even if it had been for the most part a pleasant picture, and she had entered married life optimistically, Libbie could not divorce it from the stories she had heard since her girlhood of women who died during their labors. So when her husband came into their bedroom that first night, despite all her excitement about their new marriage, and even the physical spark that had passed between them early in their courtship, she was afraid to be with him as his wife.

Caleum was mystified by her tears but tried nonetheless to console her. “You are only being homesick,” he reasoned thoughtfully, unaware of her growing panic. “You will get used to it here.”

She tried to stop her tears. “Yes, you are right,” she said. “I know we will have a successful marriage and life together.”

When she finally recovered from crying, he drew nearer to her. He was at first patient, thinking her reluctance was like her tears, and that it would pass just as soon as she became accustomed to him and her new surroundings. When his patience was not rewarded, though, he grew angry and became increasingly hostile in his entreaties.

This did not have the intended effect, however, so that in the end he backed down and drew to one side of their new bed. She stayed on her side, as each stared out separately into the first night of their life together.

“I don't mean to be rough with you,” he told her from his side.

“Nor do I mean to keep myself from you,” she answered.

“We are married now.”

“For what it means.”

“It is supposed to mean we are bound up with each other for the duration of things.”

“What is it we will have to endure?”

“That I do not know, but I don't mean to be rough with you either.”

“Nor do I mean to keep myself from you.”

Having reached an understanding in principle, they both relaxed slightly in the darkened room. They did not have a long history together that they could call upon, or even a fight before this one to use as trail mark, but they tried to find their way back to one another nonetheless.

“How will you decorate the house?” he asked her eventually.

“I don't know. I've never had anything so big or empty to try and fill.”

“I will help you in it.”

“You mean you will help me with the sewing and choosing fabric for curtains?” She laughed.

“No, not the curtains, but I might have something to say about the tableware,” he replied lightly, making her giggle even more. “I knew from the very first that you should be my wife and all that means,” he said then, catching her unaware with tenderness.

“As did I,” she answered him, finding herself grown less afraid.

He ventured then to approach nearer to her and reach out with his fingers for hers under the covers. She seized on them violently, and he could tell by this pressure what it was the matter.

“Are you afraid?”

“Mm-hm.”

He could not truthfully tell her not to be, because he was amateur as she and not so experienced as to give advice. However, he took care to show her every consideration after that, so when he moved closer beside her, she did not startle but simply closed her eyes. She knew it was part of her duty and was also anxious to have it be over, and as he inched closer to her she felt herself on the edge of some radiant mystery, which she understood to be general knowledge among her sex, but nonetheless seemed colossal as she lay at its gateway.