Retribution (20 page)

“Give these men a good dinner,” I told the
cook, in case the others had not felt the same emotion. “Then show
them where to bathe and rest. I would like to hear more before
supper.”

Suppertime seems to come earlier in autumn,
at least for those of us who do not labor in the fields. Hard work
cannot warm weary men forever while the cold and damp envelop them,
and there is ample time for entertainment, both during and after
the meal. It had been a long time since we had had any professional
music at Aranyi. When Niall had been with us we had entertained
ourselves, with the
Iliad
and other less exalted songs. If
Dominic refused to sing himself, he had enjoyed listening to
Niall’s rich baritone. He even let me indulge myself
occasionally.

Nobody really sings on Terra. From the few
stars who make the recorded music that the rest of us listen to,
down to every amateur with a pocket microphone, the unamplified
voice is rarely heard. On Eclipsis, singing is an art, the human
voice a delicate instrument. Once among Eclipsians, I had displayed
a weak, breathy soprano voice that, with practice and a patient
music master, had developed into a sound that others could hear
without gagging on their suppers. For some reason I enjoyed
subjecting people to it, even Dominic. He would not really let me
sing in public if I was embarrassing myself; his ear was too finely
attuned for such self-torture. So I assuaged my doubts.

When the musicians had eaten and rested, I
sent for them. Cleaned up from their hard journey they were an
astonishing sight, wearing the colorful finery of their profession.
The tall blond lute player accentuated his height with high-heeled
boots, his slim figure shown to advantage in skin-tight breeches, a
ruffled shirt open over his smooth chest, long curly hair cascading
down his back like an unmarried woman’s. His companion, stocky and
of middle height, dark-haired and tan-skinned, was dressed slightly
more soberly and had conventionally short hair. Both of them wore
makeup and moved and talked with the exaggerated emphasis and
gestures of stage performers, people whose art was lived in public,
not at the remove of video or the Holonet. Once the music began, no
one thought of anything but the words of the songs, the
sophisticated melodies and intricate harmonies.

The two would be honored, they assured me, to
accompany ‘Gravina Aranyi, setting about diligently to find a song
that suited my light voice, that I could learn quickly and sing
that evening. If nothing else, my participation guaranteed them a
polite reception. If ‘Gravina Aranyi was part of the ensemble there
would be no thrown fruit or unceremonious ejection without promised
payment.

The ballad we chose was a strange one, a
story of a young nobleman who is captured by a sorceress. His
betrothed, pregnant with their child, must free him from the
sorceress’s spell, which turns him first into a ravening lion, then
to a fanged serpent, and finally to a hawk with beating wings and
sharp talons. I would sing the woman’s part, plaintive and
ultimately victorious, as she tells of trying to free her beloved.
Only by holding fast to him through all his frightening changes can
she release him from enchantment and return him to human form.

We practiced for hours that afternoon until I
knew it all by heart. The lutist would sing the other parts, the
sorceress and the young man undergoing his metamorphoses, and
provide soft harmony on his instrument. The piper would play the
melody and keep time. “But hold me tight, and fear not, as you will
love your child,” I sang, in my role as the desperate woman,
relating the words of her lover, the refrain that repeats as he
instructs her on how to break the spell. Once again my eyes filled
with tears. It was the melody, I told myself, the haunting notes in
a minor key. We could sing any words to it—the day’s menu or the
household accounts—and reduce anyone who wasn’t tone deaf to a
blubbering idiot.

That night we were a resounding success, the
household applauding and cheering at the end of our song. They had
little choice, with me as the principal singer, but my gift allowed
me to sense that most of their expressed pleasure was genuine. Many
had been moved by the story. Those who were affected by music had
also felt the same strange tug on the emotions that I had when
hearing it for the first time.

Dominic was in tears by the second verse. I
glimpsed his face, a cynical smile at his own susceptibility
curling the ends of his thin lips, before I returned to focus on my
fellow musicians so as not to lose my concentration. It was
fortunate we had started the concert late, well after the last bite
of supper had been consumed. Once the applause and the whistling
subsided, Dominic left the household to its own devices, sweeping
me out of the hall and up the stairs to the master bedroom.
My
Briseis
, Dominic thought to me, calling me by the name of
Achilles’ captive woman from the
Iliad,
as he had in what
now seemed like the golden age, before our fall from grace.

No, my love
, I answered him as he
lifted my long hair to kiss the forbidden back of my neck, a
husband’s privilege.
I am no captive. I am yours by my own
choice.

I am fortunate then
, he said,
that
you choose so recklessly
.

He did not need coaching to make love to me
that night. Our communion came on us naturally, a habit of mind we
could never entirely lose despite weeks of neglect. If it was not
the full communion of the past, we understood the reasons. We had
both had a scare, had seen the damage
crypta
can inflict
when misused between lovers. Each of us had a mental wound, a part
of the mind that must be protected, even from the other, until it
healed. We were kind in our thoughts, gentle as we uncovered that
part of the telepathic being that is most vulnerable, and most
dangerous. We let our bodies lead us, following the new path we had
discovered last time, instead of thinking our love first. It led us
to the same place—perhaps not so high a peak, but the trail was
familiar.

It was only later, in the small hours, as I
dozed beside Dominic under the heavy furs, that I recognized what
had changed. There had been that one moment, so brief my memory had
hardly registered it. As we formed our first, tentative, communion,
the inevitable result of lying naked in each other’s arms, my mind
had been jolted by the image of Reynaldo raping the girl in my
dress. For one tiny fraction of time I had felt again the hatred,
the anger and frustration that would motivate a man to assault a
smaller, weaker, female body. I had gasped and blinked, watching
through my inner eyelids, to see only a blur as Dominic kissed me.
What he had done after that had put all other thoughts, all
unpleasant memories, out of my mind.

And there was one more thing. Dominic’s inner
eyelids this night were the smoky color, the strange in-between
state, neither silver nor glass, that I had noticed on my first
lucid morning at home. I had come to associate it with the “demon,”
the torturer who had so lost his humanity that he had driven his
lover away. But Dominic had been neither demon nor torturer
tonight; his lovemaking had been gentle, and as attentive and
sensuous as ever. For all I knew, Dominic’s eyes might have
undergone some chemical transformation, permanently smoky now. With
our recent estrangement, I had not seen my husband’s face up close
for weeks.

It was possible that we were both changed by
what had happened to us. I must accept it, I told myself, like
growing old. There would come a time when my gray hairs, whose
follicles I tweaked with
crypta
to grow dark red again,
would become too numerous for me to control, when I would no longer
have to monitor myself carefully for unwanted pregnancies, when I
would use most of my waning powers to keep my teeth in my jaws and
my bones from growing porous. Dominic’s smoky eyelids might be like
his incipient receding hairline and the deepening furrows that each
smile and frown was slowly carving into his face. I would grow
accustomed to them.

Through such complacency do we bring disaster
on ourselves. My triumph at supper had given me the false sense of
invincibility that, as the warriors in the
Iliad
learned,
leads to hubris. The next day I consulted with the musicians,
showing them the text of the old Terran epic, chanting some of the
lines to demonstrate how it could be sung. The two shook their
heads over it, mystified by the alien pantheon, the unknown heroes
and battles. If only I had allowed my usual sloth to dominate. But
I was determined not to waste what I saw as a perfect opportunity
to remind Dominic of his squandered love.

“Here,” I said, “try this.” I found a passage
that had never failed when Niall sang it, in which Achilles laments
the death of his beloved Patroclus. The hero tells of how he had
never truly accepted his destined greatness, had wished instead for
the long, safe life of obscurity. Now he gladly embraces his fate,
the short life of glory, because it will bring him all the sooner
to the underworld to join his companion.

The men brightened. This they understood, the
love that leads men to heroism and death. The theme is a popular
one in Eclipsian art, transcending minor divisions like ‘Graven
paganism and Christian monotheism, familiar even in the guise of an
ancient Terran myth. The musicians were lovers themselves; they
could sing the parts with the authenticity of sharing the emotions
they were enacting. The piper had a mellifluous baritone voice, I
discovered. He would make a virile Achilles to the lutist’s
brighter, higher Patroclus. Or so I imagined.

Once again I had them hold their masterpiece
until near the end of the evening. I was not performing that night;
I know how far I can push, in most things, before wearing out my
welcome, and I drank quite a bit during and after the meal. The
whisky distilled at Aranyi with the water from its clear mountain
streams is pure and strong, and I’ve developed a taste for it, as
most highlanders do. After a few too many I’ve been known to say
some unladylike things, but I usually remember to say them in
Terran and I’ve never been sick or disgraced myself in front of the
household. Since Val’s involuntary weaning I’d been reacquainting
myself with the interesting effects of alcohol on the telepathic
mind.

The musicians finished their last traditional
number while the tables were cleared and disassembled. As they
announced that they would be singing something different after
their break I topped up my glass and edged my chair closer to
Dominic’s. I didn’t expect him to make love to me this time. Rather
I hoped, indeed I dared to believe, that he would finally admit
what we both knew was wrong, that he would open his heart to me,
pour out his pent-up longing, the ache of Niall’s absence. I wanted
to be there when the dam burst again, to receive the first
floodwaters of truth. That I wasn’t drowned proves the value of
intoxication. You can’t drown someone who’s already in the dead
man’s float.

The men had played only the introductory
chords when Dominic sat up suddenly and tensed. He listened for a
few words, to make sure that the sacrilege he had imagined was
real. Then he threw his heavy glass covered in sterling openwork
with perfect aim, hitting “Patroclus” so hard the man would linger
for days with a severe concussion. “Be silent!” Dominic roared as
he threw, so that the instant obedience coincided with the loud
clunk of the metal and glass connecting with the man’s skull.

The lutist toppled over onto his companion
and both fell down in a heap. The household sat transfixed, knowing
better than to attract Dominic’s attention. I drained my own glass
at a gulp and set it on the floor. Better to get the full benefit
of it, to face the storm that was about to break.

“Whose idea was this?” Dominic stood over the
musicians, the wounded lutist with blood seeping through his long
blond hair, his lover cradling his head, sobbing with terror.

Dominic seized the piper’s shoulder, his
strong fingers grinding the man’s bones. “Answer me when I ask you
a direct question,” he said in the voice of the Commandant of
‘Graven Military Academy.

The man stared hopelessly at Dominic’s cloudy
eyes, knowing any answer was wrong, including no answer. As Dominic
tightened his grip the man screamed with the pain and jerked his
head in my direction.

I was already on my feet, my hand that had
held the glass of whisky now clutching my unsheathed dagger, the
prism on the handle angled to catch the light from fireplace and
torches and bend it into my eyes. “Yes, Dominic. This perfect
evening was my idea.” I laughed with tipsy lack of concern but
stayed safely on the dais, which gave me a few badly needed extra
inches of height. “It hasn’t gone exactly as I planned.”

Dominic lifted his gaze from the musicians to
my flushed face. His glassy inner eyelids sobered me up
considerably—nothing smoky there now. He released his victim, who
slumped over his companion, a gray cast on his dark skin, and came
closer to me. “You, Amalie?” You would deliberately offend me?”

He stretched his hand out toward me, but I
was ready for him. In my drunken confidence everything seemed
effortless, perhaps a little more exciting than usual, but
manageable. The mostly red and orange light of hearth and torch was
easier to handle in my woozy state. I used the prism to form a beam
of heat and directed it at Dominic’s reaching hand, just in case.
“No, Dominic,” I said, in what I hoped was a tone of scathing
sarcasm. “It was deliberate, I admit, but I had actually thought
you would be pleased.”

Dominic took a couple of steps back from the
beam and noticed my empty glass on the floor behind me. “How many
of those had you had,” he asked, his voice a silken purr, “when you
received that divine revelation? Or were you swigging it from the
bottle by then?”