Wedding (27 page)

“That doesn’t mean much when it comes to how
a man views women, or his wife.”

“No,” Josh said, “but it should have some
effect. And you’ll get used to it. If something like Dominic’s
companion doesn’t bother you, these other things won’t be a
problem, you’ll see.”

I had learned one thing. Men are the same,
vir
or not, Terran or Eclipsian. They have no sense of what
matters to a woman.

Josh laughed.
Maybe not
, he said,
embarrassed at my judgment. “Accept it, Amalie,” he said, ending
the conversation and reverting to his customary lighthearted
manner. “You’re destined to be Lady Aranyi. No getting out of it
now.”

The next morning, at work on the accounts,
Berend tried to hide a page of the records from me, turning two
together as if by accident, but I caught him and forced him to show
me. Dominic had made a huge expenditure of capital. He had ordered
all the products of an entire tract of land to be sold—crops and
cattle, wool and timber—everything but the land itself. It would
take years of careful husbandry to restore the lost wealth.
“Margrave Aranyi ordered the sale before he left,” Berend said at
my expression of shock. “He said he wanted it all converted to coin
and sent to him in Eclipsia City.”

“What is the trouble?” Dominic could not be
in debt, or owe that amount of money to anyone. He did not gamble,
or throw his assets away on off-world excursions, as some ’Graven
did. It could not be restitution for a quarrel or feud; if a duel
did not settle it, compensation was made in goods or services,
never money, as Dominic had had occasion to point out at the time
of my own trouble with Alicia. Trying not to be too obvious, I
chose a moment when Berend was adding a long column of numbers, and
used my
crypta
to search for the truth.

Berend knew nothing beyond what he had said.
“Margrave Aranyi would not tell me why,” he said, suspecting what I
was up to even if he couldn’t actually feel it. “It is his
property, after all, his right.”

It occurred to me that, while he knew nothing
of this one odd fact, the steward might be the ideal person to
answer some of my other questions. He was educated and intelligent,
close enough to ’Graven to know their ways, loyal but with
sufficient independence to give me honest answers untainted by
prejudice or envy. “Speaking of property,” I said, aiming for
spontaneity, “do ’Graven husbands own their wives? Keep them
secluded, surrounded by guards? When I marry Margrave Aranyi, will
I have to ask permission every time I go outside? Will I have to
wear a burqa and not speak to men?”

Berend recoiled from this sudden spate of
feminine questions requiring sensitive answers. “Lady Amalie,
surely another woman, perhaps Margrave Aranyi’s sister, can advise
you.”

I could just imagine Eleonora’s
replies—painting everything as black as possible in hopes of
scaring me off. “No,” I said. “She’s been a sibyl all her adult
life. She’s never had to live like a traditional married
woman.”

Berend could not deny this fact, but it took
him time to find the best way to explain what any properly brought
up young lady would have learned from her mother. He folded his
hands in front of him in preparation for a lecture. “You’re
marrying a good man. Responsible, wealthy, and honest. As his wife,
you will be expected to uphold his honor by your behavior. The
guards are there to protect you from things beyond your control,
things that could compromise you. Should you need to go out
unaccompanied by Margrave Aranyi, they will prevent any
interference that could bring your reputation into question.”

“But I’ve been going outside all the time
Margrave Aranyi was away,” I said, “to the outbuildings and—”

“Of course.” Berend said. “As ’Gravina Aranyi
you’re expected to supervise the women’s work, indoors and out,
although you should be escorted. Here in Aranyi nobody would dare
insult Margrave Aranyi through his wife. And I’m glad you reminded
me: I must arrange for a chaperon when we go over the accounts from
now on. We’ll leave the door open, and he can sit or stand outside.
It’s really only an issue when you travel, and in Eclipsia City. On
the trails and in the city, if Margrave Aranyi chooses to take you
with him, there are more opportunities for, let’s just say,
complications. He may decide that a burqa and guards provide you
with sufficient protection, or he may feel that keeping you indoors
is the safer alternative. But whatever he decides, it will be for
your own good.”

I opened my mouth, found no words coming
through, and shut it before I looked as stupid as I felt.

Berend wasn’t finished. “Don’t be misled by
Margrave Aranyi’s sophistication. He’s not like some of the other
’Graven who have lost all sense of honor. Gambling, whoring and
dueling are about all they’re interested in, and if they bother to
marry, their wives live almost as freely as Terran women. You won’t
be permitted the freedom you’d have with them, but it’s not
something to envy. Margrave Aranyi will never disgrace himself;
therefore his wife must also be above reproach. But he’ll make it
easy for you, I’m sure. Margrave Aranyi doesn’t take foolish
chances. He’ll tell you what you must do. All you’ll have to do is
obey him.”

I was staring, horrified. “Do I promise
that?” I asked in a whisper. “Do I have to swear to obey?”

“I don’t really know,” Berend said. “The
’Graven Rite of Matrimony is performed in archaic language. It’s
difficult to understand all the words. Please, ask Lady
Eleonora.”

I screwed up my courage and asked. Eleonora
laughed long and lasciviously at my nervous question. “Oh gods,”
she gasped out when she got her breath back, “the Terran
imagination is so lurid.” She looked into my frightened thoughts
and softened to me ever so slightly. “No, Amalie,” she said. “We’re
not as backward as you fear. There’s only one binding oath, and
both husband and wife take it: to keep faith with your partner. In
the literal sense of sexual fidelity, it applies only to the wife,
but in a far more important way it applies to both. It means doing
what helps your partner best, knowing his mind, so that he does not
need to ask or guess at your behavior. It’s a serious matter of
communion, of understanding the man you’re going to spend your life
with, and wanting to support him.” She looked into my mind with her
sibyl’s penetration. “I think even you can do that, Amalie.”

“So can Stefan,” I said. “But he doesn’t have
to wear a burqa or ask permission to leave the house, or be
surrounded by armed guards.”

“Of course not,” Eleonora said. “He’s a man.
It would be very strange if Dominic chose a companion who required
protection like a woman, a wife.”

“But that’s what I mean. I’m becoming a
different species, a ‘wife.’ Just because I marry someone, all of a
sudden I’m this inferior, pathetic creature who has to be guarded
and—”

“You’re not marrying ‘someone,’ ” Eleonora
said. “You’re marrying Margrave Aranyi. And you don’t have the
vaguest idea how unusual that is, do you? No, not because he’s
vir
, or over forty, or whatever other nonsense you’ve picked
up from the Terrans and even, the gods help us, from some of our
own not-so-bright specimens. Dominic is one of about three people
in this entire world with a pure ’Graven pedigree, with sufficient
brains not to require sterilization, and with a functioning sense
of responsibility to his family and his people. And you think, as
the wife of this exceptional person, you can just go sauntering
through life like a commoner?”

“No, but if I do marry him,” I said, “why
can’t I be treated like an equal?”

“Equal?
Equal?
” Eleonora’s voice was
shrill with contempt. “Besides the obvious reasons?”

“You’re right,” I said. “I had a chance to
work in a seminary, and not just any seminary, but La Sapienza
itself, and I blew it. And I’m not a Lady Melanie or even a Lady
Amalie, just a Terran with a genetic aberration. But Dominic wants
to marry me anyway. So why do I have to live like a slave?”

“Like a wife, Amalie,” Eleonora corrected me
with a sigh. “Like a wife.”

“You don’t even know what I’m talking about,”
I said. “You and Josh are equals, working together. If anything, I
guess you outrank him. Do you keep a guard at his door and make him
wear a burqa when you travel?”

Eleonora inhaled sharply, making a hissing
sound. “Don’t be coarse, Amalie,” she said. “Dominic may find it
amusing, but it’s tiresome for the rest of us.” She forced herself
into calmness before we ended up pulling out our prism-handled
daggers and shooting lightning bolts through our fingertips at each
other. She might win, but she knew Dominic wouldn’t be pleased on
his return to discover that his bride had been incinerated.

“Did it ever occur to you,” Eleonora asked,
once her voice and her emotions were under control, “that I might
have wanted some of that masculine protection from Josh? It’s what
I expected from a husband, how I was taught to value myself. But it
doesn’t come naturally to him. He missed all that, spending his
early years as a Terran. So I stopped wanting it long ago, because
my love for him is stronger than any trivial differences in our
customs. I never think about it anymore, until this stupid
discussion brought it back to me.”

“But you must see how it is with me and
Dominic,” I said. “Dominic is—is—” I tried again. “He believes so
strongly in the separation of the sexes. It all comes very
naturally to him. And I’m afraid of being dominated. Of becoming a
submissive, subservient ‘wife.’ ”

“You? Submissive? With your temper?” Eleonora
saw she had wounded me. “I’m sorry, Amalie. If the communion is
true, that can’t happen. And you do have a gift, equal to
Dominic’s.” It cost her something to admit that; I could sense the
grudging evaluation behind her words. “You and Dominic will have
fights, probably more than your share, but even a gifted husband
can’t dominate a gifted wife. And once you adjust to marriage, you
will live in the way that is best for both of you. Since Dominic
can’t live like a Terran man, and you’re not on Terra, you must
live like an Eclipsian woman, like ’Gravina. If you love him as
much as he loves you, you will not think of it after a little
while. It will come to feel like the only possible way of
life.”

Eleonora knew I was not convinced. “If it’s
more important to you to live like a Terran, Josh and I can take
you back to Eclipsia City on our way home.” She saw my face and
rolled her eyes, then attempted to form communion, searching for a
way through to me. “You no longer have marriage on Terra, do you?
You don’t have wives and husbands, just sexual partners, who leave
each other when one of them gets bored, or sick, or lusts after
somebody else.”

“No,” I said. “We don’t have marriage there
like this ’Graven Rule.”

“You’re afraid of the unknown, that’s all.
The words ‘wife’ and ‘husband’ are meaningless to you. Here, being
a wife is a significant position, not just a bunch of irritating
chores to be fitted in around your real life. A wife bears her
husband’s children, rears them, runs his household.” She looked
into me the way Edwige Ertegun used to in La Sapienza. “And don’t
tell me you don’t want to do these things, because I can tell you
do.”

It was a relief not having to pretend.

Eleonora smiled at my nod of agreement. “Even
if she proves to be infertile,” she answered in the third person
the question I had been unable to ask for fear of trespassing, “a
wife is honored by her husband and the world as the woman
chosen
to be the mother of her lord’s legitimate children.
In your case, it will be your job to risk your life giving birth to
the child you carry now and any others that come after. Dominic
will go into deep communion with you, he will take as much of the
danger and the pain on himself as he can, but the risk will be
yours: your body, your life. As in childbirth, so in marriage.
Dominic’s job, among others, will be to protect you: your body,
your honor, your pride and his.”

“That’s what scares me,” I said. “All this
talk of protection and honor. I’m afraid of becoming
dependent—”

“No,” Eleonora said, “you’re afraid of
enjoying it. You’re worried that you’ll like being taken care of,
protected. But why does that bother you? Why not accept it as your
due, your right?”

There. The guilty truth was out now.
What
if he stops wanting to?
I thought.
Then where will I
be?

“’Graven marriage is for life,” Eleonora
said. “Dominic is well aware of that. If he wants to marry you,
it’s with the knowledge that he is taking on an obligation that
will end only with death. He may occasionally desire someone else,
although if you have the communion you appear to, it’s unlikely.
But he is a man. If he does, most likely he will not act on it
unless you want him to.”

“Want him to?” I remembered my reflexive,
extreme jealousy of the other morning. “How could I want him
to?”

Eleonora put her hand over mine, a half an
inch apart, to spark the communion. “You want him to be with
Stefan, don’t you?”

“But that’s different,” I said. “Stefan is
part of the marriage.”

“You’re halfway there already,” Eleonora
said. “You just don’t recognize it because it’s so natural for you.
That’s why our fortresses and manor houses have a companion’s room,
why the wife helps to choose her husband’s companion, man or woman.
She knows his preferences, wants for him what he wants
himself.”

If he wanted another woman
, I thought,
I would kill them both and not lose a minute’s sleep over
it
.

Eleonora laughed. “All right,” she said,
“just suppose Dominic develops a passion that you can’t share. He
will do his best to put it aside, to ignore it until it passes. He
will not divorce you, because he can’t. He will not want to be
adulterous, because he would be breaking his marriage oath, to keep
faith with you. He will not wish to cause you one minute’s pain,
because it would be like self-torture.” She spoke warmly, lovingly,
as I had never heard her.