Retribution (25 page)

“What do you mean?”

“You have an active imagination,” Dominic
said with a smile, “as I’ve had occasion to notice. Very creative.
Reynaldo’s warped ideas found a congenial environment. Once you had
a nice big poisonous brew all cooked up in that pretty head of
yours—” Dominic kissed my forehead. “—you found the part of my mind
that responds to such evil and infected me with it.”

“With what?” I asked, already guessing some
of the answer. “What ideas?”

“Let’s see,” Dominic said, enumerating all
the ways in which my mind had been contaminated, ticking them off
on his fingers. “You had Reynaldo telling you he had raped you. You
had that stupid bitch of a maid of yours—I’m sorry, Amalie, but I
don’t like her sneaking, ingratiating, deceiving manner—Katrina,
claiming she’d been gang-raped. You had Magali and everybody in the
household babbling on about ‘defiled’ women, and what an ‘insulted’
‘Gravina should do to save her honor, crap that nobody’s taken
seriously for centuries.

“How could you judge the merits of all that?
You worried it all around in your head until you were convinced
that on some level you had been damaged. Until you believed you
were behaving dishonorably by not killing yourself.” Dominic held
our communion at an elevated level to speak the last part, so I
would understand his true feelings. “Until you thought, in your
confusion, that I expected you to commit ritual suicide.”

“No, I didn’t think that,” I said.

“Not consciously,” Dominic said. “None of
this was on the conscious level. You rejected such thoughts with
the active part of your mind, while all the time the suggestion had
been planted, was growing there, underneath, waiting for the right
moment, when you were vulnerable.” He paused. “And then—”

“I got tanked.”

“By all the gods,” Dominic said, “you
certainly did.”

I thought of last night’s crazy scene. It was
true that much of it could have come from my own mind. Everything
Dominic had said and done was in some way a reflection of things
that were troubling me. “But what about the earlier night?” I
asked. “I wasn’t drunk then.”

“My love,” Dominic said, “I am not blaming it
all on whisky, only on your emotions, which drink exaggerates.
Reynaldo opened up all your ideas about morality, especially
between men and women, what you hate, what you fear.” He kissed me
again, a soft, apologetic kiss on the cheek. “You imagined all your
worst nightmares, and you began experimenting on me, making me act
them out. You decided to confront what terrifies you, to see if you
could face it down.”

By now it was dinnertime, our stomachs
telling us this fact as much as the bright midday sky. There was
that same feeling in the household, the watchful silence, which had
oppressed everyone after my previous misbehavior. This time it was
Dominic who pulled the rarely-used bell rope, Ranulf who answered
the unusual summons.

“My lord,” he said, his voice cold, bowing
minimally, a slight tilt of the head, only to prove he was not
being disrespectful. “My lady.”

Dominic had no patience with such stiffness.
“Ranulf,” he said. “Old friend. After all the victories we have
shared, will you abandon me now in my first defeat?” I suppressed a
smile at my husband’s masterly manipulative skill.

“Forgive me, my lord,” Ranulf said. “I
thought you had surrendered.”

“Not without a fight.” Dominic held up his
left hand, palm out, the sign of peaceful intent. “I suppose it was
you who put me to bed in my frozen state.” He winked at his old
lieutenant. “It shouldn’t happen again, but if it does, promise me
you’ll still respect me in the morning.”

Ranulf’s laugh was hearty until he glanced at
me, the sorceress who had “frozen” her husband. “Yes, my lord,” he
said.

Dominic nudged me under the covers. Holding
the sheet carefully over my nakedness, I freed my left hand and
held it out as Dominic had. “Ranulf,” I said, “I am very sorry for–
for everything. And if I frightened you—”

Ranulf drew himself up to his impressive full
height, only an inch or two shorter than Dominic.

“Ranulf,” Dominic said, “don’t get on your
high horse. There’s no shame in being afraid of ‘Gravina Aranyi.
I’m terrified of her. That’s why I’m trapped here, naked in bed in
the middle of the day.” I slapped at Dominic’s arm, but he hung on.
“You see? If you bring us dinner, perhaps my good lady wife will
let me up for supper.”

Ranulf was still laughing to himself when he
returned shortly with enough provisions for two days. “What did he
mean,” I asked Dominic as we dug in, “last night, when he said it
wouldn’t be the first time he had carried the master to his
bed?”

Dominic smiled at the direction my thoughts
had taken. “Ranulf was never my lover, much as I might have wished
it when I was younger. He’s ungifted, and not one to feel
attraction for his own sex. And he would consider it most improper
to enjoy such liberty with a member of the family.” There was a
hint of pride in his voice at the man’s old-fashioned sense of
propriety.

“No, he meant my father. When he was in the
last stages of his illness, almost unmanageable, it was only Ranulf
he trusted. He knew Ranulf’s touch; it calmed him. Ranulf would
carry him upstairs in the evenings, after supper, and put him to
bed.”

We ate the rest of the meal quickly in a
depressed silence, my mind on the monster of a man who had fathered
both my worst enemy and this man I sat next to in bed—the person
whom, except for my children, I loved more than anybody in the
world. Zoltan’s malignant influence continued through his two so
very different sons. Long after Zoltan’s death, even after his son
Reynaldo’s death, we were still being controlled—

Helpless in the grip of our communion
,
Dominic had said of himself. I gestured at the pile of filthy
clothes on the floor, at us, prisoners in bed in our own house,
afraid to break communion. “And all this was my fault?”

“No, Amalie,” Dominic said, “it was my fault.
All those thoughts you got from Reynaldo and put in my head—the new
ones you gave me and the old ones you activated—I stopped fighting
them. I began to accept them, to enjoy them again. We didn’t need
Reynaldo any more, we were torturing each other, you and I, trying
out all the vile, cruel, immoral thoughts that Reynaldo sent to you
before he died, and liberated in me.”

I remembered the changes I had noticed in
Dominic two nights ago, after I sang, our last loving night
together, changes I had thought might be permanent. “What makes you
think it will stop now?” I asked. It had been going on for a month
after Reynaldo’s death. “Maybe it will never stop.”

Dominic groaned. “It will stop because we
will make it stop. We are both aware of it now and we will end it,
by performing an ancient ritual of purification. Tomorrow we will
clean house.”

O
nce the household had
finished its meal we sent for Ranulf again. Dominic spoke quickly
and with his usual confidence. “Ranulf, ‘Gravina Aranyi and I have
an unpleasant task ahead of us tomorrow.”

Ranulf nodded his understanding. “About time,
my lord, you got that stink out from under our noses.”

Dominic seemed to relish the plain speaking.
“Yes, Ranulf. You’re right as always. But you won’t escape.” He
grinned at his old retainer. “We’ll need your help.”

“I was afraid of that,” Ranulf said. “What
will it be, my lord? Exposure or burning?”

“He should go in the family vault,” Dominic
said. “He was my brother.”

I blinked but hid my surprise. There would be
few Aranyi secrets that Ranulf did not share.

Ranulf shook his head, preparing to spit. “He
was an outlaw.” He remembered my presence and choked it back.
“Treat him like any other. Head on a pike, leave the body for
wolves and birds.”

It was time I participated in the discussion.
“Dominic,” I said. “I don’t care who his father was. I will not
have his remains anywhere on our land.”

Dominic hesitated. The ‘Graven ties of family
extend to, and beyond, death. Every male Aranyi, every wife and
unmarried daughter spends eternity moldering in the capacious stone
vault nestled in a grove of birch trees a short distance from the
castle’s back courtyard. But this was one body that would not join
them.

Since Dominic had spoken openly to Ranulf, I
felt free to do the same. “I’m not superstitious. I don’t believe
in ghosts, and I know a corpse cannot have any power over the
living. But after last night I will not feel comfortable, and I
can’t see how you will, either, until that filth, half-brother or
not, is completely disembodied, reduced to atoms.”

“But you’re not superstitious.” Dominic
lifted a mocking eyebrow and looked to Ranulf for a second
opinion.

Ranulf’s face gave nothing away. “‘Gravina
Aranyi may be right.”

“Is that what you want,” I asked Dominic,
“when you die, to lie beside Reynaldo forever?”

Dominic shrugged. “When I die I won’t be in
any condition to complain.”

“Please, Dominic,” I said. “Ranulf mentioned
burning and I think that’s best. No trace of him left, just ashes
to scatter in the wind.”

“As you wish, my love.” Dominic was unable to
withstand the force of my emotion boring into him through our
communion. It was his wish, too, I saw, only he had his own
superstitious reasons for resisting it. He gave detailed
instructions to Ranulf for gathering wood and charcoal, for loading
pack animals and choosing the mounts for us to ride. “And Ranulf,
can you find ‘Gravina Aranyi a pair of breeches and a shirt?”

This time Ranulf spat, into the fireplace.
“No, my lord. This is no job for a lady. Not for any woman.”

I felt a surge of love for this loyal Aranyi
lieutenant and his old-fashioned chivalry. “You’re right,” I said.
“It’s no job for me. But I was involved in this too, and I must do
my share of the cleanup.” In my respect for Ranulf I wanted him to
know something of the facts, to accept my participation not as
Terran meddling but as the duty of ‘Graven. “Reynaldo had
crypta
, he was Aranyi, and he used it against me, he—” I
couldn’t say it to anyone but Dominic.

Ranulf bowed deeply to me. “I understand, my
lady. I will find you some clothes.” The door shut quietly behind
him.

“There was no need for that.” Dominic’s voice
was heavy with disapproval, his face hard. “Nobody, not even
Ranulf, need know what that shithead did to you.” The smoky texture
had returned to his irises.

I recognized a demoralizing truth. “You don’t
think it’s crap,” I said. “You do believe a defiled woman is
dishonored. If I had been physically raped, you’d—”

“No!” Dominic screamed. He almost hurled
himself out of the bed. “No, Amalie. Maybe before I understood such
things, I would think it.” He bent his head, covering his face with
his hands, and his voice became a melting, warm bath of beautiful
rich sounds, halfway between speech and sobs. “Before I knew what
it is to love a woman I could accept such insanity, because it
would never affect me.”

He paused to catch his breath. When he spoke
again his voice was deeper and lower than I had ever heard it. He
whispered his confession to his lap, a rounded graceful figure
doubled over in misery. “The thought of any man touching you
against your will makes me almost lose my reason, both for your
sake, the thought of your pain, and because of my own selfish
pride. I taught you the ‘Graven suicide because I thought my wife
must always choose death over dishonor. But also, truly, I wanted
you to have the option of death if you were ever faced with
something you felt you could not endure.” Dominic looked up, into
my eyes.

We were still in communion; the truth was
readable in his thoughts. I stared into the mirrored surfaces of
his eyes, the smokiness cleared away with the tears.
Total
communion
, I had said of our love. With all this seething below
the placid surface.

Dominic broke our stare, turning his head to
cry his next words to the wall. “After I had taught you, and you
were captured, when I thought of losing you—no matter what your
sufferings, for me to lose you to death—I found that was the worst
thing I could imagine.” He wept in my arms like a child.

Like a child, he seemed inconsolable, bawling
his guilt, his chest heaving—a large, strong child who rocked the
solid bed frame with his sobs. He was terrified at the reality we
had danced around, that on some level, the entrenched ‘Graven
tradition was strong in him, that a part of him would have expected
my suicide had I been raped.

“But I wasn’t,” I said. “And I wouldn’t.” It
was foreign to me, the concept of feminine dishonor, impossible for
me in adulthood to adopt the native Eclipsian’s view of the proper
response to violation. If that was the Terran part of me then there
was one good thing that had come from growing up in that world. “I
would never do a thing like that, whatever you wanted. I would
think about killing myself to escape torture, but if I survived,
and got home safe with the children, it would never occur to me.”
Dominic must know that, the words only confirming what the
communion already showed him.

The words, and the communion, made no
impression. Dominic had retreated beyond my reach for the extent of
this passionate storm. I could not comfort him with words or
thoughts; he seemed on the edge of a kind of hysteria. I lifted his
head in my arms like an infant, offering my breast out of
desperation, stopping the weeping as I would a young child’s,
pushing a nipple at his wet mouth. He gulped it in, calming himself
with the act of suckling. “There, there,” I said. “It’s all right,
my love.” I cradled the dark head at my breast, felt the warmth of
his lips on me, the tears against my skin.