Retribution (14 page)

I put my arm around her, felt the childish
confusion and fear. She’d been exposed to so much, in such a short
time, before she was able to handle it. “Sweetheart,” I said, “rape
is when someone forces another person. It’s the forcing that makes
it rape. But when two people love each other, like Papa and me,
they make love together. It’s not rape, because we both want to do
it.”

“Did Papa put his penis in your vagina?” Jana
asked, the idea so preposterous she felt obliged to whisper. It was
one thing to have learned the abstract idea, quite another to apply
it to one’s own mother.

“Yes,” I said, unable to suppress a smile.
“That’s how we made you, and you grew inside me.” I placed her hand
on my abdomen. “Right there.”

Jana was intrigued despite her fears. She
pressed her hand against my belly as if she might feel somebody
growing there now, looking up at me for confirmation that she had
the right place. We had been over this part of the conversation
several times in the past, but Jana was too young to accept it all
without serious reservations.

“Did it hurt?”

I had always hedged on this part of the
lesson. Even Dominic wouldn’t expect me to tell Jana this truth, of
nearly dying when she was born. “Only a little,” I said. “But Papa
was in communion with me the whole time, so it wasn’t very
bad.”

Jana wasn’t asking about the birth, I
realized after I spoke, but about the conception. That, too, was
something Jana would never know about—the night I had been
“dishonored,” as Niall had so condescendingly put it. “When we made
love, when we started you, it didn’t hurt at all.” I spoke the real
truth, without guilt, of all the other nights of love. “In fact,” I
said, as her suspicious face made a mild joke irresistible, “we
enjoyed it so much we even did it a second time, and got Val.”

The look Jana gave me was most expressive.
She didn’t have to say a word to make it plain she thought Dominic
and I should have quit while we were ahead. “Did Val grow inside
you too?” she asked, commiserating.

I nodded. “You remember when my belly was so
huge and I ate so much? That was Val, growing inside, until he was
big enough to be born.” I tried to end the conversation on a
cheerful note. “And when you’re old enough, and find someone you
love, you can have a baby of your own.”

“But I don’t want a stupid baby like Val!”
Jana was shouting again. “I want a boy, like Struan.”

It was impossible not to laugh. “They’re all
babies when they’re born. But when it’s yours you love it more than
anybody in the whole world, the way I love you.” I kissed her until
she squealed.

The book lay forgotten on the edge of the
bed. We rested silently, dozing in the peace of late afternoon.
When the door opened suddenly I was sure it was Isobel, come to
help Jana bathe and get ready for supper.

It was the odor that made me open my eyes and
sit up in panic. Dominic stood over us, exuding a foul stench—of
sweat, of blood and excrement, the smell of fear itself. I reacted
instinctively, remembering the demon I had sensed earlier, putting
my arms around Jana and shielding her with my body.

“I’m sorry, Amalie,” he said. “I thought you
were asleep. I didn’t want to wake you.” It was Dominic’s voice,
Dominic’s face. I stared into the eyes. They were bloodshot, tired
eyes, but with more silver than glass. It was Dominic, not just the
shell. A filthy Dominic, but the man.

He was undressing as he spoke, in a hurry to
clean up before the evening meal. “Where’s Niall?” he asked. He
shook his head as if he had water in his ear. “I can’t sense him. I
thought you might know.”

I was weak from the day’s many trying scenes.
There had been no chance of avoiding this one, but I wished I had
had more preparation. “He’s gone, Dominic,” I said, unable to think
of any safe or creative way to break the news. “He didn’t say
where.”

“Yes, he did,” Jana said. “You told me. You
said he was going to see his mama and papa.”

Dominic seized my arm, closing his hand
around the scar of the marriage brand, forming full communion with
me instantly and brutally, so that I gasped with the sudden
possession of my being. There was no time to barricade or censor my
thoughts. Dominic learned everything he was looking for in one
overpowering moment of connection and dropped my arm, breaking
communion as roughly as he had initiated it. In all our years of
marriage it was the only time he forgot himself with me, used his
full strength without consideration for my relative weakness and
soft, feminine flesh.

After Dominic released me I fell back against
the pillows, taking deep breaths and waiting for the explosion.
There was nothing. His mouth stretched in a slow, cold smile. “So,”
he said, “he crept away like a rabbit into its warren.”

“More like a fox fleeing a pack of hounds,” I
said. A passing moment of sadness creased Dominic’s face and
shadowed his eyes, shameful recognition of what Niall had so wisely
escaped. Perhaps there was hope. “If you hurry, you might still be
able to follow his trail, although it’s going to be difficult
making up with him.” I thought of my own uphill battle to achieve
forgiveness. “I had a hard enough time making up with Magali.”

Dominic laughed, a screeching sound that was
like a serrated knife on slate. “Make it up?” he shouted. “When he
runs from me without a word? If that’s how he chooses to treat me
after all we’ve been through, fuck him!” He ripped open his shirt,
pulled off boots and breeches and slammed into his room. I heard
water running for his bath but in a few minutes he returned, a pile
of objects in his arms. “Look at this. Flung it all back in my
face, like a woman breaking off her betrothal.” He dumped the
things on the floor.

Niall had scrupulously left behind every item
that could in any way be said to have come from Dominic. Jewelry,
of course, the silver ring that Dominic had given him, the two sets
of initials engraved on the inner surface, and a large steel cloak
pin trimmed with black enamel in an Aranyi crest. The copy of the
Iliad
that Dominic had had made from my gift to them was
carefully tied up with red ribbon around the cover. Even a pair of
soft leather indoor boots and a wool jacket in an understated green
plaid had been left behind, gifts that were only natural extensions
of hospitality for a young man, still growing, who had been living
with us for a year and a half.

Dominic kicked at the boots and the jacket,
picked up the book and laid it on the table. “I wonder he didn’t
leave his horse behind,” he said. His question was answered the
next day when the animal arrived, led by a Galloway retainer, a
formal note of thanks for the “loan” tied to the saddle. At least
one thing I had said to Jana had been true. Niall had gone
home.

Jana watched her father, rarely seen in all
his naked glory, and chose this moment to ask what had been on her
mind for some time. “Papa, did you put your penis in Niall’s
mouth?”

Dominic flushed with anger, but his
daughter’s innocent face and words brought him back with a sigh to
calm and love. “Yes, cherie,” he said, tenderness returning to his
speech. “I did, sometimes. Sometimes I took his in my mouth.”

Jana accepted the honest answer reverently,
breathless with wonder. Then she persevered with the subject that
had been giving her so much trouble. “Are you going to put your
penis in Mama’s mouth now?” She looked fearfully at me.

This time Dominic appeared annoyed at his
daughter. “No,” he said. “An honorable man does not treat his wife
like a whore.”

Dominic
, I thought to him,
she’s
too young—

If she’s old enough to ask the questions,
she’s old enough to hear the answers
, Dominic said. He leaned
over us, looking into Jana’s wide gray eyes. “What put all these
sophisticated questions in your head, little one?”

Jana made a face. “The shi– Reynaldo,” she
stammered, catching herself. She knew her father wouldn’t like to
hear her using that word. “I saw Reynaldo do it.”

“Another thing I have to thank him for,”
Dominic said.
Was that before or after he put her in boy’s
clothes?
He was beginning to wonder, torn between anger and
fear, what more Jana may have seen or suffered that I hadn’t told
him.

No, Dominic
, I said. I didn’t dare
admit it, days too late for it to come naturally, that I had been
the one to send Jana out in breeches, risking her safety, to
masquerade among the bandits.
Reynaldo didn’t do that
. I
tried to leave it vague, as if I had a hope in hell.

Then why—

Jana’s voice broke in. “Is that why Niall
went away, Papa, because you put your penis in his mouth?”

Dominic’s eyes widened and focused on his
daughter. “No, love,” Dominic said, the first notes of sadness
coloring his deep voice. “If that were all, he’d be here
still.”

“Why, Papa?” Jana had no way to phrase her
query, why it was wrong to do something with me but not wrong to do
it with Niall. “Why?”

Dominic understood what she was asking. All
the anger drained out of him as he looked into her earnest, puzzled
face. He scooped her up, nuzzling her cheek. Jana turned away but
said nothing. Dominic’s face was scratchy with dark stubble and the
evil smell clung to his hair. “Come on, cherie,” Dominic said. “I
know I stink. Come in with me while I clean up, and I’ll
explain.”

As they went through my bathroom, across the
Margrave’s bedroom and into Dominic’s bathroom beyond, his voice
had resumed its modulated conversational baritone. “Between men,”
he said, “men who love each other, what is right and what is wrong
is not the same as between a man and his wife.”

“Why, Papa?” Jana asked again.

I was curious to know what answer Dominic
could make that a child could follow, and to see how his short
temper would hold out against Jana’s persistent assault. I took the
chance, now that Dominic was in a better mood, to listen in.

Dominic laughed at his daughter’s question.
He lifted Jana away from him, setting her down on the edge of the
sink while he prepared his bath. “Look at me,” he said, standing
with his legs apart. “You know men and women are made
differently.”

This was old news. Jana had made the
discovery some time ago, with her brother. She had been disgusted
at first, then triumphant. With clear physical proof of Val’s
inferiority, she could finally convince the rest of the benighted,
deceived household of the truth she had known all along. It had
been a terrible letdown. Jana had been perplexed and saddened to
learn that her beloved papa was made the same way, that she was the
one who was different. Only Dominic had been able to comfort her,
saying that she was made like her mama, like all women, and surely,
he had insisted, she knew her mama was beautiful?

“Well then,” Dominic said now, “since men and
women are not alike in their bodies, what is pleasure for a man is
not always pleasure for a woman. What a man and his companion do
together, and what a man and his wife do together, is not always
the same thing.”

Jana mulled over Dominic’s explanation,
watching as he bathed and washed his hair, toweled off and lathered
his chin. She enjoyed seeing her father wield the straight razor,
as skillful with its sharp edge as with his sword. While Dominic
scraped the last bristles from his upper lip, Jana thought of the
one detail that wasn’t clear. “Did you stick your penis in Lady
Melanie’s mouth?” Lady Melanie was not Dominic’s wife, after
all.

Dominic swore and put down the razor. A bead
of blood ran into his snarling mouth. He stared at Jana in the
mirror, remembered her age, and controlled his fury. “Do you know,
little one,” he said, “there are some things that must remain
secret, even from a man’s favorite daughter.”

Jana laughed at the old joke. “I’m your only
daughter, Papa,” she said. “But why is it a secret?”

Dominic sat down helplessly on the edge of
the bathtub and dabbed at his lip with a washcloth. “Because,” he
said, “whatever I did with Lady Melanie was a long time ago, and is
not a fit subject for conversation. She is ‘Gravina, the mother of
my natural-born son, and heir to her own realm. It is impolite to
talk about her in this way, as it would be to talk about something
your mother might have done before she married me.”

Why couldn’t he just say no?
I
thought, all my anger rekindling, anger I had thought dead if not
yet buried by the dire consequences that had followed from it.
Why couldn’t he just say he didn’t, and leave it at
that?

Jana found another angle ripe with
possibilities. “What did Mama do?” she asked.

But Dominic had had enough, and opted for an
easy escape, as I had done in the same situation. “I don’t know,”
he said, his eyes round and silvery with feigned ignorance. “She
won’t tell me. You’ll have to ask her yourself.”

Supper was ready before Jana could articulate
any more of her questions. Isobel, afraid to enter or even to knock
when Jana was with Dominic, stood miserably in the corridor. “Lady
Jana’s clean enough,” Dominic said, winking at his daughter. “She
can have a double bath tomorrow.”

By the time I had eaten the meal Magali
brought and the children came to say goodnight, I was ready for bed
myself. To Jana’s and Val’s loud shouts of joy, I agreed they could
both sleep with me that night. They deserved a few treats now that
they were home. And if their presence insured that Dominic would
not seek me out for love, even the love that was proper between a
man and his wife, all well and good. I had never needed to worry
about such a thing before.

As I was falling into a dream, Jana’s voice
bought me reluctantly back to life. “Did you ever let a man put his
penis in your mouth?” She whispered directly into my ear so that
Val wouldn’t wake up. “Before you married Papa?”